Matters literary

[sawyl]

I'm currently reading Extension du Domaine (actually I'm reading Whatever - the Anglo version) by Houellebecq and I'm totally loving it, but rather worryingly, I seem to have rather a lot in common with the main character. Maybe that's why doctor_squale recommended it. Anyway, just to prove that there are still things that interest me, I'm going to ramble about literary matters for a while. Consider yourselves warned.

In other recent literary news, I've performed my annual reread of The Handmaid's Tale - something the astute may already have realised from the recent scrabble obsession - and as always seems to be the case, everything seem to be getting closer and closer to the Republic of Gilead with every passing day. Recently I've heard almost daily echos of what Aunt Lydia says in the Red Centre:

"There is more than one kind of freedom," said Aunt Lydia. "Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it"

Very much a case of Berlin's Two Concepts of Liberty repackaged for the PR tyrants in charge of the Republic.

Prior to reading Handmaid, I read Iron Sunrise by Charlie Stross, which I enjoyed. It's isn't really a sequel to Singularity Sky, but it does revisits some characters - namely Martin, Rachel and Herman - and adds a few new ones including grumpy goth Wednesday, a war blogger called Frank the Nose and a bunch of post-Nietzchean freaks who's core idiology involves a technological variant on the shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out theory of helping out. In the course of nosing out stuff on Stross last week, I turned up this gem: "The Singularity is this enormous turd that Vernor Vinge crapped into the punchbowl of sf writing, and now nobody wanting to take a drink can ignore it." What I want to know is, was he watching the Mars U ep of Futurama when he came up with his scatological metaphor?

I've also recently read Neal Asher's Brass Man, a direct sequel to two of his other novels which has the possessed scientist Skellor from Line of Polity, joining up with the psychotic android Mr Crane from Gridlinked, in an attempt to find out more about the possession. There is also a plot about a knight on a semi-barbarous world full of Asher's trademark monsters, a series of flashbacks that explain Crane's history prior to Gridlinked, a set of attack ships named after Tarot cards, and Big Questions about our obligations to the less fortunate. I enjoyed it, although I suspect that it won't make much sense when read without it's prequels.

Comments

Brass Man

[(Anonymous)]

Glad you enjoyed it!
http://freespace.virgin.net/n.asher

Re: Brass Man

[sawyl.livejournal.com]

Glad you enjoyed it!

Very much so. I particularly liked the way the description of Crane's madness expanded some of the events in Gridlinked and explained quite why the Cheyne separatists were quite so leery of him.

I also enjoyed the fragility of Cormac's existence. In both Brass Man and Line of Polity, he went from being tucked up safe and warm in a wrath-of-God warship to being unceremoniously dumped in a hostile environment with his ship left in tatters. It reminded me of something that I remember seeing in an interview with a pilot who'd been shot down in the first Gulf War. He said, "It's amazing. One minute your a modern day knight of the air, flying along at twice the speed of sound and then suddenly, you're shot down and you're on your own in the middle of the desert with a bottle of water." I like that. The idea that no matter how great your technology, no matter how powerful you are are present, you're only a couple of steps away from a situation where you have to fight for survival.