Tag: Science Fiction

Burning Chrome, by William Gibson: Cyberpunk as an Alternate Now

Burning Chrome, William GibsonWilliam Gibson blew the Science Fiction world wide open in the mid eighties with his cyberpunk novels, particularly the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick award winning Neuromancer. Ridley Scott gave us the visual aesthetic with Blade Runner, but Gibson firmly established Cyberpunk as a literary movement. As a genre it would go on to live a fairly short life, plateauing in the late eighties, followed by a handful of peak post-cyberpunk moments in the nineties (Snow Crash, Ghost in the Shell) culminating in The Matrix and then almost immediately fading into relative obscurity.

Burning Chrome collects Gibson’s short fiction, mostly published in OMNI magazine in the early eighties. Unlike a lot of short fiction collections, this one isn’t a totally mixed bag, most of the stories ranging from “good” to “great”. Three of them, (Johnny Mnemonic, New Rose Hotel, and Burning Chrome) are set in the same universe as Gibson’s Sprawl series (Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive), with some of their characters and events mentioned or referenced in the main novels.

William GibsonAs a rambling aside, I was born in 1984, making me much too young to have experienced cyberpunk when it was new and revolutionary. When I read cyberpunk now, nearing the third decade of the twenty-first century, it’s hard to think of it as anything other than a form of retrofuturism. The technological tropes of the genre were one possible direction for things to head. In reality, they didn’t. Instead of the cumbersome and clunky virtual reality user interfaces, and “jacking in”, we went with the more boring, economical methods: a little white search box on a screen, and fingers on keys or key analogs. Just as space opera was written back before anybody knew the realities of space travel, cyberpunk was written before anyone knew the realities of the internet. All we knew was that it was going to change everything, no one knew how exactly.

There are of course still giant multinational evil corporations, another trope of the genre, but instead of inspiring monolithic dread, they have friendly, marketable faces. We all know that Amazon is terrible to their employees, and drives small businesses into the ground, but it’s just so.. convenient. We all know that our devices are made by slaves, but those new animated emoji are just so cute. In the twenty-first century we adore the giant evil corporation. We buy their devices to put in our homes and listen to our conversations, so it’ll be easier to order things with our voices. Convenience kills us, slowly but assuredly.

“It was hot, the night we burned Chrome.”

This current drowning-in-technology age has brought with it a sort of resurgence in, not specifically cyberpunk, but a more modern interpretation of its core theme: alienation among ubiquities connection. Being alone together. Television shows like Black Mirror embody this better than anything else currently around. There has also been a cyberpunk resurgence in pop culture, specifically music, visible primarily in the retrowave / synthwave / “outrun” genre of electronic music. Retrowave is a Baudrillardian simulacra of eighties electronic music usually created by those too young to have first-hand experience of eighties culture. It’s created with postmodern sensibilities, as an idea of what eighties culture could’ve been, not what it actually was. A sort of copy of a copy of some collective idea that never existed, except in the imaginings of its purveyors. Highly influenced by multimedia created in the eighties, specifically science fiction and horror films and books, it’s dark and menacing, and accompanies with it a mental image of dystopic science fictional landscapes. It’s the aural version of cyberpunk.

I say all of this because I think right now, with all of these elements converging, is the perfect time to read cyberpunk literature. Our temporal distance from its inception gives us the perspective to appreciate it as retrofuturism, and the relational closeness of the technological and emotional aspects of our lives to its themes, creates this nebulous landscape that makes it highly relatable to our modern moment. Our technology makes us chrome and neon and dark inside, but externally we’re living it up on social media while we collectively experience a sort of soul-death alone behind our screens, our modern day mirrorshades.

It’s a weird ass world, and these stories give us a glimpse into a stranger one that could’ve been, had just a few things played out differently. Cyberpunk is an alternate now.

High points: The Hinterlands, New Rose Hotel, and Burning Chrome

Low Points: Johnny Mnemonic, Red Star, Winter Orbit

Johnny MnemonicJohnny Mnemonic: 2/5
I find Gibson’s writing very difficult to digest here. The structure of the writing is unlike anything else I’ve read, and I think it’s safe to say that no one quite saw the world the was that he did. Weird concepts, weird execution. Set in the Sprawl universe. This was adapted into the not-so-great Keanu Reeves film in the mid nineties.

The Gernsback Continuum: 4/5
A man gets stuck in an idea of a future 1980s that never was. Built out of the retrofuturism of 1930s design. Great little paranoid Philip K. Dickian story.

Fragments of a Hologram Rose: 3/5
A melancholy take on lost love and being out of place in the world. The ASP tech is a cool idea, and it seems to be the analogue of reading someone’s journal, in a sense.

The Belonging Kind: 3/5
Nice analog for social anxiety, it was fun but nothing special.

The Hinterlands: 5/5
This is a new personal favorite. It’s written in exquisitely beautiful prose, and has such a unique story, like nothing I’ve ever read. I actually read it twice in a row, because I was initially confused by the first few sections. It all became much clearer with the accompanying context of the rest of the story. A great little tale about loss, alien contact, and psychology. I loved it.

Red Star, Winter Orbit: 1/5
Very difficult to follow, kind of boring.

New Rose HotelNew Rose Hotel: 5/5
A great corporate espionage noir. For me, this is the definitive high-tech low-life story. It was adapted into the eponymous Christopher Walken/Willem Dafoe film by Abel Ferrara in 1998. Set in the Sprawl universe.

The Winter Market: 4/5
Entertainment in an age where we’ve moved beyond the audiovisual form, and into something much stranger. I enjoyed the existentialism.

Dogfight: 3/5
A drifter on the way to Florida picks up a competitive VR game, and befriends a college student.

Burning Chrome: 4/5
The most ‘Cyberpunk’ story in the collection. Set in the Sprawl universe.

Science Fiction: Five Short Reviews

Under The Skin Michael FaberUnder The Skin, by Michael Faber
Literary science fiction that is compulsively creepy and disturbing in all the right ways. Orwellian by way of Ursula Le Guin or Octavia Butler. More Animal Farm than 1984. I think fans of Jeff VanderMeer’s style of New Weird fiction would have a lot to enjoy here.

It’s a moral story, without particularly taking any one side, mostly just intended to provoke some discussion I imagine. It could easily be interpreted as an animal rights activism novel, but I’m not so sure it actually is. I thouroghly enjoyed Under the Skin; very unnerving and hard to put down.

I read this before watching the film, and loved both. They are as different from one another as they are similar.

 

The Affirmation Christopher PriestThe Affirmation, by Christopher Priest

I genuinely can’t decide if I liked this or not. I certainly enjoyed reading it, but doing so was somewhat like losing my mind. I also have a suspicion that Priest crafted the novel precisely to elicit this effect on the reader, which makes me respect him even more in an odd way. All in all, I’m very confused, but I still enjoyed it.

I have a theory that this book inspired Haruki Murakami to write Sputnik Sweetheart. There are just so many similarities in story, narrative, and theme between the two novels to ignore. Plus, I kind of love the idea of Murakami reading Christopher Priest. Maybe I’ve invented this whole thing.

The closest conclusion I can come to is that The Affirmation is a story about mental illness, or maybe alternate realities, or maybe self identity, or maybe something else entirely. I really don’t know, but it was good and I’d read it again.

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet Becky ChambersThe Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers

I’ve never read a book quite like this. There wasn’t much of a story at all, but it was still engaging just on the strength of the characters alone. Each chapter felt like a moral-of-the-week episode in a nineties TV series. The overall arc is more about the characters and how their relationships change over time than any actual describable narrative.

That all sounds kind of negative when I read it back, but it’s not meant to be. Mostly I’m just impressed with how well it worked here, because I think something like this would be incredibly difficult to pull off.

It’s a comfort read, like a warm bowl of soup, but with fantastic world-building and great characters. This universe is very lived in, and extremely ripe for more stories in the future.

Chasm City Alastair ReynoldsChasm City, by Alastair Reynolds

“How long would you have to live; how much good would you need to do, to compensate for one act of pure evil you’d committed as a younger man?”

Very, very good. One of those books that I massively enjoy having read, past tense, but ultimately didn’t enjoy while reading. It slogs, and turns its wheels for about 200 pages in the middle, but I see now why it was necessary, and it ultimately pays off in strides.

Strong similarities to Iain M. Banks’ Use of Weapons, except that it didn’t rely on a reveal in the same way, instead slowly telling the reader what is afoot. It’s subtle, but I strongly suspect that it’s intentional. I picked up on it around 1/3 of the way through, and was initially disappointed, thinking that it might be a shocking twist ending that was too obvious and heavy handed. However, my initial assessment of the reality of the situation I thought I comprehended early on, was incomplete and less than half of the true picture.

Ultimately, this novel is about redemption. It’s a personal favorite of mine, and I suggest it to everyone.

Saturn Run John Sandford CteinSaturn Run, by John Sandford and Ctein

It’s been a while since I’ve read some good old fashioned hard science fiction. Hard SF novels are a different sort of beast than most novels. I find they usually need to be approached differently and appreciated using a different set of metrics.

It doesn’t have to be the case, but a lot of times hard SF will lose itself in the details, which can be fun if you’re interested in those specific details. Other times, hard SF will sacrifice an ungodly amount of character development for those same details, which is a little less forgivable, but it’s amazing what I can forgive in the narrative department when I’m really into the “hard” part of the science.

Saturn Run, unfortunately, falls victim to both of these pitfalls, but you know what? I don’t care, I’m letting it slide. Different metrics for different books. It describes in detail one of the coolest conceptual heatsinks that I’ve ever come across. It’s not particularly well written in the traditional sense, and the prose is merely passable, but the conceptual stuff here is fascinating, and it’s really fun once it gets going.

I do think the novel nailed the sort of macro decisions that humanity would make in this sort of first contact scenario, but at a micro level the individual characters were not very believable to me. The story also dragged a lot in the middle. I would’ve enjoyed it much more if it were tightened up a little. But, it had a stellar second half and it really stuck the landing. Somebody could come along and adapt this into a fantastically entertaining smart summer blockbuster a la Interstellar.

Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison®

Dangerous VisionsSomething clicked in my head when I turned thirty; I started devouring older science fiction stories. I was an avid reader during my teens, but I read very little during my twenties for whatever reason. I think I suddenly realized how many valuable novels and stories and how much interesting history and perspective I missed out on throughout my twenties. Catching up for lost time became a real priority in my thirties.

The Golden Age science fiction stories of the thirties, forties and fifties were a little less focused on stylistic prose or quality writing, and a little too culturally and scientifically removed from my era to interest me. Instead of beginning there, I jumped forward to the New Wave era that hit in the mid sixties. Story-wise, New Wave was much more inwardly focused, and valued style and prose as much as the Golden Age valued grand ideas and outward exploration. This was the beginning of what a lot of folks today call “Literary Science Fiction” or “Speculative Fiction”. It was a concerted effort spearheaded by Harlan Ellison® (yes, his name actually has a ® in it) to bring Sci-Fi out of the pulps and show the world the literary value of speculation in fiction.

Harlan EllisonDangerous Visions is the defining Speculative Fiction anthology of the New Wave era. Released in 1967, this anthology announced New Wave SF to the world. It contains 35 stories, each never before published. When assembling the anthology, Ellison had each author write a story that they thought explored a dangerous vision or concept. There are some excellent stories here, a few decent ones, and some real stinkers that are terribly trite and not at all dangerous or visionary. Then again, it’s hard to read these within the context of the time in which they were written. Free love, the civil rights movement, women’s lib, etc. Considering all of this, I was surprised by how misogynistic and backward some of these stories were. There has been a lot of progress since the sixties.

Harlan Ellison® writes an introduction to every story, and the author has a brief afterword. The introductions quickly became my least favorite part of the book, as Ellison gushes and extols endlessly about each author. It became a little tedious, like an advertisement by a stakeholder for their project right before experiencing the project itself. I eventually began skipping the introductions, only coming back to read them if I wanted more background about an author or story. I would much rather let each work speak for itself than hear the editor of the anthology tell me why it is valuable.

Some of these stories may have been dangerous visions in the late sixties. Now? Mostly not so much. I still immensely enjoyed the anthology, and there is a huge wealth of knowledge and historical perspective to be gained from reading it. I rated each story individually, with the average rating for the whole collection being 3 out of 5, rounded up.

 

Individual reviews:
Evensong, Lester del Rey: 4/5
A desperate God on the run from Man’s vengeance. The idea of man slowly becoming more and more powerful, until God must fear Man. Very nice prose.

Flies, Robert Silverberg: 1/5
Robert Silverberg completely botches the definition of empathy in the most pseudo-intellectual manner imaginable. I get what he was trying to say, but he failed miserably.

The Day After the Day After the Martians Came, Fredrick Pohl: 3/5
Probably really great in ’67, but it relied very heavily on cultural jokes that everyone at the time would’ve been familiar with; I’ve never heard any of them. Still a cool little story.

Riders of the Purple Wage, Philip Jose Farmer: 1/5
Nearly incoherent misogynistic rambling about a future where everyone is mentally deficient. He almost had an idea, but gets distracted by how women are fat liars and just want to have abortions all of the time. This is Ellison’s favorite story in the collection, which is uh… okay dude.

The Malley System, Miriam Allen deFord: 2/5
A future in which violent crimes are punished in unique ways. It didn’t really resonate with me.

A Toy for Juliette, Robert Bloch: 5/5
Terrific. Sadistic and disturbing, but written very well and with a nice cyclical tone.

The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World, Harlan Ellison: 2/5
A sequel to the previous story. Started out strong, but devolved rather rapidly. I find myself disliking Ellison more and more as I go on.

The Night That All Time Broke Out, Brian W. Aldiss: 3/5
Cool premise, uneven execution.

The Man who Went to the Moon Twice, Howard Rodman: 4/5
Not speculative fiction at all, but I really liked it.

Faith of our Fathers, Philip K. Dick: 3/5
This one had a lot going for it; a little let down by the ending.

The Jigsaw Man, Larry Niven: 3/5
Tackles the problem of organ shortages in a world were immortality is in reach…for some.

Gonna Roll The Bones, Fritz Leiber: 4/5
I nearly didn’t read this one after suffering through its terribly heavy handed first sentence. I’m glad I did. Like most old science fiction, it was too misogynistic for my liking, but the storytelling and prose eventually won me over.

Lord Randy, My Son, Joe L. Hensley: 5/5
My favorite so far. Great characters, and a captivating, sad story.

Eutopia, Poul Anderson: 4/5
Inter dimensional anthropology. I liked this one, although the language was a bit too ‘fantasy’ for my personal tastes.

Incident in Moderan, David R. Bunch: 5/5
Happy warmonger robots. Awesome.

The Escaping, David R. Bunch: 0/5
Terrible. Total gibberish.

The Doll-House, James Cross: 3/5
Like a twilight zone episode. One of those cautionary tales.

Sex and/or Mr Morrison, Carol Emshwiller: 3/5
I like her writing style. I didn’t quite get the story but the prose was beautiful.

Shall The Dust Praise Thee?, Damon Knight: 3/5
God’s vengeance may have been a little bit more than he bargained for. It seems that man could only take so much torment. This could’ve been executed a lot better, but I liked the concept.

If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?, Theodore Sturgeon: 5/5
So far, the only story that I would actually consider a ‘Dangerous Vision’. It’s disturbing, and pokes at deeply held moral and cultural constructs. It also really weirded me out. Disturbing.

What Happens To Auguste Clarot?, Larry Eisenberg: 1/5
Meh.

Ersatz, Henry Slesar: 2/5
Slightly less meh.

Go, Go, Go, Said The Bird, Sonya Dorman: 2/5
Post apocalyptic cannibals.

The Happy Breed, John T. Sladek: 4/5
People slowly turning their happiness over to machines. A really solid little cautionary tale, born of a fear of technology. It’s even more interesting thinking about how much more we depend on technology these days.

Encounter With a Hick, Jonathan Brand: 3/5
A fun little biblical/evolution bar conversation recounted to an authority.

From the Government Printing Office, Kris Neville: 1/5
Told from the POV of a 3.5 year old in the future. Boring.

Land of the Great Horses, R. A. Lafferty: 4/5
Cool little story about the origin of Gypsies.

The Recognition, J.G. Ballard: 3/5
Terrific writing, not speculative fiction at all. Not particularly dangerous either—maybe in the 60s—in the 2010s it’s a bit trite.

Judas, John Brunner: 5/5
Okay, I have to read more John Brunner. This story was incredible and exactly the type of thing I was looking for in this book. Solid solid solid.

Test to Destruction, Keith Laumer: 4/5
Political usurping, tyrany, sentient hive mind aliens, testing people’s limits and morality.

Carcinoma Angels, Norman Spinrad: 3/5
An overachiever sets his sights on cancer; takes it one step too far. This one is kind of quirky/fun.

AUTO-DA-FÉ, Roger Zelazny: 3/5
Man vs machine, told in a matador vs bull analogy. I liked it. It felt like a fairytale or half remembered dream of a mechanic.

Aye, and Gomorrah…, Samuel R. Delany: 1/5
A story about attraction between earth bound people, and neutered space dwelling people. Interesting concept, bad execution. It didn’t flow well, and was hard to follow.

The Expanse: Origins, by James S.A. Corey, Hallie Lambert, Georgia Lee

The Expanse: Origins

First things first, these stories follow The Expanse television series continuity and not necessarily the book series continuity. Granted, there isn’t much difference between the two, but they are growing further apart as the show continues to develop the books to series, and I’m starting to make an effort to keep them separate in my head. Each issue collected here covers a backstory for an individual main character on the show. The first four of these were originally released as individual digital comics. They are combined in this collection with a new fifth issue covering Detective Miller’s backstory before the events of The Expanse, and this is the only physical release of these issues.

James S.A. Corey (Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham), the writers of The Expanse book series and the television adaptation, created these backstories, but the nitty gritty writing is done by Hallie Lambert and Georgia Lee, two more writers from the show.

The stories are a little uneven, quality wise, but the Naomi, Amos, and Miller issues are very good. I’d read 100 more issues of Miller going around catching bad guys and being morally ambiguous on Ceres. All in all, they’re much better than the usual TV tie-in comic book fare, and this collection is definitely worth checking out if you’re a fan of The Expanse.

Issue #1: James Holden: 2/5
Holden disobeys an order to fire on a ship, gets into a fight with a superior officer, gets discharged. I was really hoping for more from this. It doesn’t tell us anything that we didn’t already know, and the artwork was fairly generic. The Alex/Amos/Naomi backstories in the novels/novellas have a lot more to them, so hopefully their issues in this series will get into some of that stuff.

Issue #2: Naomi Nagata: 4/5
This is a great little backstory for The Expanse tv series involving Naomi hiring Amos as a mechanic for the Canterbury. The story hints heavily toward additional background yet to be revealed for both Naomi and Amos. It has some terrific moments that really add to the overall development of these characters. I think it’s a massive improvement compared to the first issue which focused on Holden, although the artwork is still just.. Okay.

Issue #3: Alex Kamal: 2/5
Ehh, It was okay. I was hoping for something much more interesting in Alex’s past.

Issue #4: Amos Burton: 4/5
What a clever way to give a little hint of Amos’ backstory. His life from The Churn is so tragic. I cannot wait to see how they handle it on the show. Also, the inclusion of the infamous socio/psychopath trolley problem test in this was a nice touch.

Issue #5: Josephus Miller: 5/5
The best of the five for sure. This story makes the whole collection worth checking out. Heartbreaking and bittersweet. Miller makes some concessions to take down a big hitter on Ceres, and it costs him more than what he bargained for.

Stories of Your Life and Others, by Ted Chiang

Stories of Your Life and Others, by Ted Chiang

Ted Chiang’s name continually comes up in lists of great short stories. He’s never written a novel, but his short fiction has won nearly every SF award that exists. 4 Nebulas, 4 Hugos, John W. Campbell, Locus, and on and on. He’s greatly admired among authors and almost entirely unknown by most readers. I’ve heard him referenced as an inspiration by several authors that I enjoy reading. Specifically Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham (who collectively write the Expanse series under the pseudonym James S. A. Corey cite him as “the best SF writer”. I figured I should probably do myself a service and check this collection out.

After reading it, I have to agree that his writing is mind-blowing. High concept science fiction that is grounded heavily in the real world. A writer of ideas. Every single story is incredibly unique, tonally diverse and powerful in different ways. If the quality among these 8 stories wasn’t at such a consistently high level, I’d say that Chiang was merely a ghostwriting team, comprised of 8 different authors, all exceptionally talented, each with different interests, politics and prose styles. Every story genuinely feels like it could be penned by a different author. I’ve never come across a creative powerhouse like this guy. He impressed the hell out of me with every sentence.

Ted Chiang“My message to you is this: pretend that you have free will. It’s essential that you behave as if your decisions matter, even though you know they don’t. The reality isn’t important: what’s important is your belief, and believing the lie is the only way to avoid a waking coma. Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has.”

Tower of Babylon: 5/5
Killer story. The Old Testament cosmology was especially fun to hear described–passing beyond the moon, sun and stars, etc. A telling of the construction and journey up the tower of Babylon, and what lies beyond the vault of heaven. Blew my mind right open. Seriously creative. I get why it won all kinds of awards.

Understand: 5/5
Again, with the unique approach to storytelling. While reading this one, I started realizing how some of these concepts have clearly influenced other stories. Most obviously, the movie Limitless and the Max Barry novel Lexicon. I particularly liked how the language and vocabulary of the story evolves as the protagonist’s intelligence and recall increases.

Division By Zero: 4/5
An examination of loss of belief, mental illness, suicide and math. What happens when everything you’ve worked for in your life, every kind of order that you’ve relied on, is suddenly incorrect?

Story of Your Life: 6/5
Stop what you’re doing now and read this. This is the absolute best short story I have ever read. Chiang’s grasp on the English language is deeply integrated into the story itself, causality, and omniscience. It’s insanely good. This was the basis for the Denis Villeneuve film Arrival.

Seventy-Two Letters: 3/5
Interesting concepts, but storywise it was a little boring. The power of language to shape action and perception. Reminded me a lot of early 50s Asimov. All conceptual, not much character development.

The Evolution of Human Science: 3/5
Interesting and extremely short little tale about a scientific understanding breaking down between regular humans and meta-humans. Conceptually cool, but too short to really be that interesting.

Hell is the Absence of God: 5/5
The moral of the story? God is a maniacal motherfucker who doesn’t give a shit about humans, and you should love him unconditionally. This one was a real brain twister. I loved it.

Liking What You See: A Documentary: 5/5
Advertisers, elective localized brain damage, culture jamming, politics, coming of age, concepts of beauty, love, relationships. This was terrific and heavily subversive.

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