Here (Graphic Novel)

Here by Richard McGuire is an amazing and masterful book. McGuire is able to convey ideas and feelings that he would not otherwise be able to communicate by pictures or words alone. The novel is poetic, almost musical, having a rhythm to it. After I finished the book, I felt the stillness I associate with listening to the last notes of a symphony. Even now, weeks later, when I think about the book I am mesmerized.

Here explores the idea of space and time. It takes place in a single location over billions of years, going from the distant past to the distant future. Most of the book takes place in one room of one house between 1907 and 2015. Most of the two page layouts contain scenes from multiple years juxtaposed. Storylines interweave. Ideas and experiences repeat yet contain their own unique qualities. The book contains numerous vignettes and stories, yet the overall experience is greater than the sum of its parts.

Here felt familiar, making me nod and think, “Yes, this is my story. Yes, I remember that.” In addition, I actually am one of those people who goes past a spot and remembers its history and wonders about its future. I am so grateful to know that I am not alone in that. I am so grateful for having experienced Here.

An Alien Heat (SF Novel)

Time-travel. Aliens. Menageries. Virtue. Love.

An Alien Heat by Michael Moorcock is a short, quirky novel that was written in the early 1970’s. The novel is set in the distant future. Bored earth inhabitants continuously create and recreate their surroundings and bodies in ways that amuse them. Often they will base their creations on what they know —however accurate or inaccurate—of different historical periods. Many of the inhabitants also have menageries filled with people from different time periods, animals, and aliens.

At yet another boring party, an alien announces that the Universe is near the end of time. Instead of paying attention to his warning, the inhabitants put the alien into a menagerie. Also at the party is a woman from 1896. Jherek is determined to experience love with her. First, he acquires her from someone else’s menagerie. He then attempts to win her love. When she suddenly disappears, he pursues her back to her own time period.

I found the novel mildly amusing and a tiny bit thought provoking. When I first began the novel, I was bored by the bored characters. But I slowly found Jherek endearing in his own misguided way. This is the first book in The Dancers at the End of Time series and the novel left me curious about the other books.

The Age of Innocence (Pulitzer Winning Novel)

Society. Etiquette. Expectations. Family. Loyalty. Divorce. Honesty. Innocence. Emancipation. Love.

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, marking the first time a woman won the award. The novel is set in New York upper-class society in the 1870’s, where almost every action is prescribed by etiquette and tradition. While the characters live in outer opulence, their imaginations are impoverished.

Briefly, the story opens with Newland Archer about to announce his engagement to May Welland. He has romantic ideas about what their life will be like together. His expectations are complicated by the arrival of May’s cousin Ellen Olenska, a woman separated from her husband after an abusive marriage. Her presence back in New York is scandalous. Newland soon finds himself intrigued by the woman and then falling in love with her. Unlike May who is kind, innocent, and does what she is expected to do, Ellen has an honest perspective and questions life. At one point, in thinking about May, he wonders how can he emancipate a woman who isn’t even aware there is anything to be emancipated from. Newland and Ellen must deal with their loyalty to May and their attraction for one another.

I’m finding that reading a classic as a bookworm is different from reading a classic as an English major. After all, I don’t have to read the book, and I almost didn’t read the Age of Innocence because in the beginning it felt too stilted and confining. Slowly I began to be motivated by the urge to see good craftsmanship. I began to pay attention to where Wharton included a lot of detail and where there was almost none. At one point she does not even refer to May by name, helping the reader to understand how insignificant May had become. The obnoxious details that I detested in the beginning of the novel invoked in me the tediousness of all the little social rules the characters were observing. I enjoyed how Wharton paralleled and contrasted the beginning and near ending scenes of the novel. The last scene was perfect.

My mind, ever changed by reading too many time-travel books, still can’t wrap itself around the idea of sitting here in 2011, reading a book about the 1870’s that was published in1920. At the end of the novel, Archer’s adult son represents the new world to come, which is now over a century old. I realize that I look at my life differently than most people. I am aware that so many of the things that people get upset about are just passing trends, which will soon be replaced by more passing trends. Both classics and science fiction reinforce that perspective. Now, on to some good old fashioned robot novels.

The Magnificent Ambersons (Pulitzer Winning Novel)

An Old Love. A Spoiled Son. Repudiations. Changing Fortunes. The Dawn of the Automobile. Gossip. Comeuppance. Riffraff.  

The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington is the winner of the 1919 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel. This novel has the feel of a period piece. It describes the rise of the automobile, the metamorphosing of towns into cities, and how wealth changed possession from old families to those associated with industrialism. The novel has been made into a number of movies.

Briefly, the beautiful and wealthy Isabel had two suitors. After one does something silly and embarrassing, Isabel chooses the safe one. They marry and have one child, George. She worships him and thinks he can do no wrong. To most other people he is an arrogant and obnoxious child. Tarkington refers to people hoping that he will get his “comeuppance.” The novel follows his growing up, including his success at proving his social superiority to those around him, his falling in live with Lucy—the daughter of Isabel’s old boyfriend, the death of George's father, and George's efforts to protect his mother from the gossip of the town’s people.

The Magnificent Ambersons made me think about a number of things. First, despite George being a young man, he is very resistant to change, which is different than most novels. Second, the idea of evolving towns expanded my awareness of my own city. Yesterday, when I was out walking and looking at the various buildings, I thought of the different eras they come from and how the area has changed over the decades. Third, our society is currently undergoing tremendous changes, the West losing substantial power and influence. Reading about another time of great change gives some perspective to our current situation.

Alternating reading Science Fiction and Pulitzer Winners is giving my brain a workout. I was surprised that both make me think about the passing of time and how transitory our current world really is.

Books as Lifeline (Thoughts)

Years ago, after perhaps the most tragic event of my life, I found a job in a bookstore. I knew almost no one in the city in which I was living. I was emotionally numb, confused, sad, and angry with a God I wasn’t even sure existed. But I had my books, which I could buy at discount no less. The days that I either opened or closed the store and was by myself, I would down from the office perch and feel all the authors and all the stories. It was magical and nurturing. The books helped me survive.

Recently I have begun to seriously clean out my childhood home, which I also shared with my mother the last few years of her life. I never realized I could feel so emotionally raw and vulnerable. I found medical bills from my father, who died of cancer when I was a child. I found a letter my uncle wrote when my cousin was first institutionalized. I am revisiting tragedies, celebrations, parts of my life and my parents’ lives now ended.  My neighbor, trying to be helpful, told me just to keep a box of Kleenex beside me and keep on throwing things out. But I couldn’t cry. Instead I got stupid, overwhelmed, and plain physically ill. Then, I went to the library and took out Jasper Fforde’s The Well of Lost Plots and laughed so hard that I felt like a relatively whole person again. (My comments will come later on in the week when I finish the book. I am savoring every last belly laugh.)

During these past few weeks I have felt as though books have once again thrown me a lifeline. One night when I had incapacitating insomnia, I imagined what it would be like to have someone make me a nice cup of red bush tea, like the characters in Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. Not only was I comforted by my memories from reading the books, but I was also comforted by the fact that I live in a world where thousand and thousands of people want to read about such gentleness and caring. Images from Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book and Blackout/All Clear, Jo Walton’s Among Others, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars series, Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series, Sharon Shinn Troubled Waters and Clifford D. Simak’s Way Station have also brought me tremendous peace in the past few weeks. 

While I love a great adventure and a cleaver plot, relish a book where I learn something new, appreciate an innovative setting or a fresh way of conveying a story, I sometimes need books that can sustain me through difficult times. Novels can have the power to heal or to keep someone afloat until help arrives. Sometimes I wish there were rating scales for that: May Help Feel Better about the Human Race, Makes English Majors Laugh So Hard that They Forget Their World Is Falling Apart, Contains Beautiful Scenes that Can Be Replayed in Head When Surrounded by Something Really Unpleasant, Helps Feel Courageous and Able to Take on Any Foe.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (Book)

A Time Machine Repairman. Present Indefinite. A Computer Program with Low Self-Esteem. Universe 31. A Boy and His Dad. Regret. A Science Fictional World. Grammar. Time Loops. The Chromo-adventurer’s Survival Kit. Boxes Within Boxes. Buddhas. Causal Loops. Chromodiegetic Experiments.

A nominee for the 2011 Campbell award, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu is the type of novel that pushes the boundaries of what we normally think of as a story. We —well, at least I—normally think of novels in terms of threads: woven, intertwined, looping back, loosely gathered, etc. How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe is more of a collage, with layers. One of those layers consists of a story about a boy and his dad trying to build a time machine. An overlapping layer is the grown boy, now a time machine repairman, shooting his future self and then getting caught in a time loop. Some of the layers are incredibly literal and sensate. Other layers are mostly metaphor. Humor is interspersed with deep psychological insight. At times the novel reminds me of a prose poem.

The novel works for me. The story feels familiar; I have lived some of those moments. The novel has expanded my way of thinking about how to construct a novel. As much as I adore The Dervish House, I wish that How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe had won the Campbell award simply so that more people would be encouraged to read it. I am a firm believer that we need to continue to expand the way we think and the way we express ideas.

Spin

Satisfying--like the sensation you get after finishing a wonderful dessert or the perfect cup of coffee--describes how I felt after I finished reading the 2006 Hugo winning novel, Spin by Robert Charles Wilson. It had just the right combination of character development and science. I liked how the plot, using two different timelines, continued to introduce questions for the reader, answered some questions while introducing more questions, and finally answered the overarching questions of the novel. I felt rewarded when the two timelines finally merged.

The story is told from the view point of Tyler Dupree, who is friends with twins Jason and Diane. At the beginning of The Spin they are 12 and 13, just being kids one night when all of a sudden all the stars disappear. In time, they learn that a temporal barrier has been place around the earth; one second on earth is equivalent to 3.17 years in the rest of the universe. The story goes on to chronicle how The Spin affects the friends’ lives for the next few decades on earth.

The style of the book reminds me of Robert J. Sawyer’s The Neanderthal Parallax trilogy: both focus on the characters, take place--more or less--in the present, have a strong “what if this happened” element, and extrapolate from some interesting science. The writing is very good and tight; many of the descriptions are used to either further the plot or to develop the characters.

The “chocolate sprinkles on top” for me was when Wilson alluded to Robert Heinlein’s Stranger In A Strange Land, the 1962 Hugo winner. Once I finish reading the Hugo winning novels I definitely want to read more of Robert Charles Wilson’s novels.

The Forever War

The Politics of War. Perspective. Centuries contrasted with the critical, minute actions of a life. These are some of the thoughts that went through my mind the day after I finished reading the 1976 Hugo and Locus Awards and 1975 Nebula Award winning novel, The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. In a nutshell, the novel is the story of William Mandella, from his basic training and combat in the first real battle in the war against the Taurans (an alien species) to his—and the war’s—final battle over a thousand years later. Due to time dilation caused when the troops travel through space, decades and even centuries pass between each battle and between Mandella’s communications from earth. This gives Mandella and the reader the unique opportunity to witness the radically changing cultural and social norms on earth.

I enjoyed The Forever War much more than an earlier Hugo winning war story, Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein. I found I could much more easily care about Mandella, even though at times I was irritated by some of his homophobia. While the novel was written partially as a response to Vietnam—in which Halderman served, it still speaks to the experience of war today. I was painfully reminded of the way US troops are deployed repeatedly to Afghanistan and Iraq during the current war. Because I am not a person who would normally read a war novel, The Forever War helped to expand my awareness of the troops who have fought and continue to fight in wars.

1856

I just finished reading The Englishwoman in America, which was first published in 1856. Isabella Lucy Bird describes her trip to America. How life has changed in a century and a half! She traveled by train, steamer, carriage, and clipper. She talked about the 400 daily newspapers published in the 32 states of the United States. Slavery was still legal in half the states. Neither women nor blacks had the vote. Cholera was epidemic in both Canada and the United States, taking thousands of lives. She had to dip her pen in ink to write her journal.

What would Isabella say in her blog if she suddenly appeared in 2009? The newspapers are almost extinct. We’ve been traveling by car and plane for almost a century, and we can teleconference with relatives in Europe. We have a black president. People text while commuting. We have vaccines for our latest epidemic.

What would the world be like if we were suddenly sent to 2162? Will we transport in nanoseconds? Will the United States, or even countries, exist? Will we communicate instantly with each other via implants? Will we be able to “download” programs that will instantly vaccinate us for new diseases like we do computer viruses? Will the truly amazing changes be, not in the areas of technology, but in how we think about ourselves, our fellow human, sentient beings, and the world? Sign me up, I want to know.

Time Traveling

I finished reading The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger late last night. What a marvelous book. Some of the scenes from the book are still floating through my mind. I am beginning to read and write poetry again. In many ways the novel is a very long poem, scene by scene illustrating the metaphor of memory.

Lately, my life has resonated with the story of the Time Traveler’s Wife. My father died at 51, my mother at 84. I have been cleaning out their house. I look at old pictures, read old letters. Most of the people are gone. A few weeks ago, I was telling my last surviving aunt that it feels so odd to look at these pictures that were taken long before I was born. It feels odd to look in on their lives. I am the time traveler.

On June 5th 2009 I read the introduction to the Dore Lectures on Mental Science, which was written on June 5th 1909. I felt like Thomas Troward was sitting in the living room with me, speaking those words that he had written a century ago. How did he know that I would so desperately need those ideas? It was as though part of him had traveled to the future.

Life is much more asynchronous than we realize. The Time Traveler’s Wife does a beautiful job of helping us to think about that.