The Left Hand of Darkness
I have, of course, heard about this book by Ursula Le Guin – it’s up there as a seminal work, really, of early scifi especially. I think it counts as spec fic more than scifi per se, but that’s a bit beside the point. I bought it last weekend and read it over the week.
I have a friend who is a big scifi fan who read the Wizard of Earthsea series and was incredibly disappointed – actually, I think he only read the first one and didn’t bother with the others. I may have mentioned this before; to me, Le Guin and some of those other early writers are doing line sketches, whereas a lot of the stuff coming out these days is oil colours – whether they’re consciously thinking about it or not, I think they’re heavily movie-influenced, and writing for a grander and more detailed vision than the earlier writers. Now, I’m perfectly ready to be wrong about that, but it sounds good.
The Left Hand of Darkness is named for a poem of the planet Gethen, where it’s set – light is the left hand of darkness, darkness the right hand of light. Very yin and yang, which is what the whole thing is about, really: the natives of Gethen are ambisexual, that is they are neither man nor woman, or perhaps both, for most of the month, and then come into ‘kemmer’ for a few days – their sex is then decided by the others around them who are also coming into kemmer.
This way of looking at gender was really interesting, but I’ve got to say I wasn’t entirely sure what Le Guin was aiming to do. Her narrator for most of the book was male (from off-world), and he referred to all of the Gethenians as ‘he’. The only times they were described as female were almost derogatory or insulting, which I was really surprised and disappointed by. Now, maybe this is because they were a fairly non-aggressive race, so this was a male reaction to pacificism, but still, it was a bit uncomfortable to read.
Nonetheless, I actually did like the story. It was a poignant story, and she certainly doesn’t spare her characters. It hints at a much grander story – of the Ekumen, the not-governing body bringing 83 worlds together… the Hain, who seeded all of those world with humans… but the story itself, on Gethen, is also very personal and immediate. I think I liked it.
Fly by Night
I finally finished this today – it’s one of the books VATE sent me to review. It’s by Frances Hardinge; I think it may be a debut. It was brilliant! Highly original and interesting. The writing was very entertaining – the descriptions were original and evocative; the characters were fascinating and believable; and the world as a whole is one I would love to read more about. I’m really looking forward to writing the review, and I think I will probably donate the book to school – I can’t in good conscience have it sitting on my bookcase and not being read by other people who might enjoy it.
Weight
Not mine, Jeanette Winterson’s. In the same series as Atwood’s Penelopiad, it’s the re-telling of Atlas and Herakles’ story (I was very glad she called him that, not Hercules, although she spelt it with a ‘c’. Anyway). It’s very different from Penelope’s story, because Winterson has put herself into the story to some extent, talking about the changes and boundaries and re-telling stories from her own perspective. The story is mostly told from Atlas’ point of view, although some is from Herakles, which was also interesting: he is totally the thug, which of course he was when you cut to the bone. Atlas came across as very gentle; Winterson gives him a curious back-story: living on Atlantis, giving a reason for the war against the gods….
It’s good. Sometimes I don’t really understand why people who write seemingly serious literature insist on having sex in their books, but there you go – guess I can’t have everything my way.
Pushing Ice
The latest Alastair Reynolds – it’s been out for only 6 months or so, since it refers to an article in Scientific American in mid-2005 (about suspended animation being a closer reality than scifi readers might think). Once again, fantastic.
Much closer to home, this time, in that it starts in the 2050s and goes from there. It spans a huge amount of time, and it is most definitely science fiction, but still – at least the Earth is real and known, in this story, unlike the Revelation Space quartet. The characters are not as alien, the tech not as incomprehensible. It is true space opera: the gamut of human experiences, emotions, treacheries and heroism. All done in a style that still leaves me amazed at the sheer finesse of his writing, the exquisite way he manages to introduces new ideas and issues and not make it feel like a lurch in the plot. The man is a master. I am simply hanging out for the next book, and I have no idea when it might get coming out… or – terrifying thought – if there even will be one. Horrible thought!!
Century Rain
Another Alastair Reynolds book, completely (well, mostly, I think… hmmm… now that I think about it…) unrelated to the Absolution Gap et al universe. Once again, parallel stories happening, but only two, and they joined up much more quickly than in his other novels. It was also less techy that the others, probably because it isn’t set so far into the future – only (!) the 23rd century (again, mostly…). The characters were exceptionally well-drawn, as expected; I have to say that Reynolds doesn’t exactly give his characters an easy time of it, as a general rule. I really like the way Reynolds writes: he seems essentially to assume that he is describing a real place and time, and he’s just reminding the reader of stuff they already ought to know. Clever. His descriptions are unintrusive, which is highly commendable – like I said, it’s not like he’s trying to ram this new world down your throat.
Exceptionally highly recommended.
Cornelia Funke and Anna Lanyon
I know it’s a bit sad, but for only the second time in my life I sent a fan email to an author – to Cornelia Funke. I got areply today, from her sister, who apparently has taken on the task of answering the fan mail Cornelia receives. (Although of course, she still reads all of it, and it’s very precious to her….) Anyway, she let me in on the tentative title of the third Ink book: Inkdeath. Oh dear.
I think I quite like being a fan. I think I’ve written before about the issues of being a fan, me being such a snob and all… but the look on Anna Lanyon’s face, after I heard her speaking about her books Malinche and The New World of Martin Cortes, and then I asked her for her autograph, was incredibly worthwhile. I think, if I were an author, I would get a kick out of anyone saying they liked my work. Surely you don’t get sick of that too quickly?
Inkspell
This is the sequel to Inkheart – I’m sure I’ve raved about Cornelia Funke. I intro’d someone at work to her, he read the first, and then bought the sequel still in hardback (mind you, kids’ books are sooo much cheaper!). He gave it to me, and … well, it is of course brilliant. She certainly doesn’t pull any punches, though. No holding back on tricky issues and not too soppy about some of the characters, either! The feelings of Dustfinger for Resa, and Fenoglio for one of his characters, are certainly not straight forward. I think this is good; it’s real, anyway, which I think is good in a fantasy for kids – helps to think through these things in a less threatening way, or sonething (eh; what do I know).
Inkspell
I have just started reading Inkspell, the sequel to Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke. I didn’t buy it; I told a fellow English teacher at school about her, and he read the first one weekend, and then the next week came to school and announced he had bought the sequel and was getting through it, too. (As an aside, I love kids’ books; they’re cheaper than adult books, even when they are the same length!) It is, of course, fantastic, and the style is as enchanting as ever. And I really must make a list of the books quoted at the start of the chapters and find them.
I am still entertained by the publishing house , too – called The Chicken House – and its web address, http://www.doublecluck.com. Tee hee.
Mentoring Yr9s in literature
I volunteered/agreed to help out with the enhancement programme at school for Yr9 students; they get to choose a book, and then have to do a presentation on the themes/messages to the other students in the programme. Each kid gets paried with a mentor to help them think through the issues. I took on four, because I had already read two of the books; this has gone down to three, because the girl who chose Wuthering Heights has gone on holiadys early… for which I am grateful, since it’s a while since I read it and I don’t really feel like reading it again (hate every single character, although I quite like the book itself).
I read Saint of Dragons, by Jason Hightman, yesterday. It was in the 4-9 year old section at Borders, which I don’t really get – it’s a good 300-odd pages, and in some parts a bit dark; it certainly wouldn’t be read by even a standard 9 year old by themselves, I would have thought. Anyway. It wasn’t too bad; interesting ideas – about a boy who turns out to be the descendant of St George, who has to join his father in hunting dragons down. I was a bit disappointed, though, because the ideas weren’t completely carried through with, and some of the writing was pretty simplistic. I think I’ll try and get the boy to think about the issue of heroism – who is a hero? What makes someone not a hero? – because that is pretty big throughout the book… and could have been more so, had Hightman explored it more.
Before that one, I read The Sea, by John Banville. Winner of the Booker Prize this year, making it only the second winner I have ever read (the first was Life of Pi, which I did enjoy). It is not the sort of book I would have chosen to read, and it will be interesting to see what my mentoree thought of it. I quite liked it, in an odd sort of way… the style sometimes got a bit annoying, always going back and forth in time – the present stuff written in the present tense, which is pretty unusual, but generally intriguing. It’s about a man whose wife has recently died revisiting the site of childhood holidays, reliving the traumas and joys, in an effort to get away from his grief. I did like it, I think.
The other book is The Chrysalids, by John Wyndham, which is the other book that I had previously read. I love Wyndham; I think he embodies speculative fiction, as opposed to science fiction, exceptionally well. His ideas are so cool, and he writes in such an unembellished way; I think this is very much a product of the pre-blockbuster time, pre-Star Wars basically. He wasn’t writing for film. HG Wells, Ursula Le Guin, Andre Norton – I think they’re in the same category. I really like all of them, their sparse detail; I have described Wells and Le Guin in particular as drawing pencil sketches, as opposed to the full-on oils of, say, Simon Green or Julian May or, dare I say it, Robert Jordan. It’s interesting: I read Le Guin and some Norton early on in my scifi reading – Wyndham too, actually – so I enjoy it. One friend in particular, who has really only read more recent scifi/fantasy, really couldn’t get into Le Guin. Anyway – The Chrysalids – excellent book. Deviations… the cleverest part, I think, is how he lists the things people see as deviations, and includes things that we, the readers, know are not deviations. Sigh. I must re-read Day of the Triffids.
Hell Island
A Matthew Riley book; I got it for free when I bought a couple of books in the “Fifty Amazing Reads” or whatever it was promotion. It was very short, but quite entertaining. I’ve only read one other Riley, and I quite liked it too, but the same things annoyed me – too much gratuitous use of italics, mostly, and a few too many exclamation marks! Again, though – as with Cussler – I quite like the adventures, so I am willing to put up with a few annoyances. As long as I have breaks between reading them, so I can partially forget about it in the meantime.
Randomly Yours, Alex 