Book Review: The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy by Stanisław Lem

The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy by Stanisław Lem

Paperback, 149 pages

Published 1985 by Mariner Books (first published 1971)

One of my missions is to promote the trans-real Science Fiction to the younger generation but I realize that I am still discovering the treasure trove still out there to read. This is my third book by Stanislaw Lem who is a Polish Sci-Fi writer who is most remembered for is excellent alien contact novel Solaris that has twice been made into a film. In this novel he out Dicks Philip K Dick with a textured political mind-fuck that will have any reader who takes seriously questioning what is real.

It is very important when considering Lem's work that he was writing from behind the Iron Curtain. This novel is translated from Polish and it makes one wonder when you read how much of the literary devices are direct translations. The first thirty-five pages, for example, are one very long paragraph that gives the book a surreal feeling from the outset. The book that follows is a surreal experience that is probably not for everyone.

I didn't know until I finished the book that it was the third in a series about space Traveler Ijon Tichy who is likely a Russian Cosmonaut although I don't think it was directly said. Anyways the story is set-off by Tichy returning to earth for a meeting of the 8th Futurological conference being held in Costa Rica.

“He also said - pointedly - that space travel nowadays was an escape from the problems of Earth. That is, one took off for the stars in the hope that the worst would happen and be done within one's absence. And indeed I couldn't deny that more than once I had peered anxiously out the porthole - especially when returning from a long voyage - to see whether or not our planet resembled a burnt potato.”

So yeah, Earth is a fucked up mess and while this gathering of future thinking leaders and writers are gathered in this massive hotel the revolution is growing underneath them. This massive hotel is used to highlight the massive class divisions. I think there is a statement here not just about the ruling class but also intellectuals who are largely insulated from the effects of the global crisis. Throughout the book, the Futurologists who are a device standing in for the genre community suggest many funny possible futures. Like the Japanese delegation who suggests tall buildings that would have all the needs of life contained in one location, not that different from the concept of walkable neighborhoods.

It seems that those on the ground are optimistic about the future. Bombs and attacks on the conference happen over and over but the meeting goes on. While Cli-fi is common today it is cool to see a work tackle the subject from behind the Iron curtain. Lem was not alone as Brunner had just tackled the subject in Stand on Zanzibar and won the Hugo for it. This book, however, is a satire and despite tackling same subject is hilarious at times. This book has more in common with Kurt Vonnegut.

“Books are no longer read but eaten, not made of paper but of some informational substance, fully digestible, sugar-coated.”

That is one funny example, but once the meeting is on we learn that the opposing forces are employing Hulluccigenics to effect the meeting, this leads the academics to join the battle and I think here Lem was making a statement about Science Fiction writers of the new wave who were part of the social justice movements but maybe I am overthinking it.

I don't think you can spoil this novel but he point becomes clear when the main character Tichy is shot and has to be flash-frozen until a future when he can have his life saved. This ends up being the year 2038. Tichy wakes up in a world that is not the utopia his colleagues wanted but it is also not exactly the dystopia they feared. This future dominated by Psychems is a very weird drug-induced future where people at least believe they are happy. Virtual reality induced by drugs about thirty years before The Matrix.

Comedy, Tragedy, and plenty of thought experiments all mixed in with hilarious wordplay and prose experiments that jump off the page and twist the reader's brain as much as any drug. Lem is a genius working on a Vonnegut level here. I think this is a great example of proto-bizarro absurdist science fiction. Must read if that sounds like your jam.

“Anyhow, the criterion of common sense was never applicable to the history of the human race. Averroës, Kant, Socrates, Newton, Voltaire, could any of them have believed it possible that in the twentieth century the scourge of cities, the poisoner of lungs, the mass murderer and idol of millions would be a metal receptacle on wheels, and that people would actually prefer being crushed to death inside it during frantic weekends exoduses instead of staying, safe and sound, at home?”

Book Review: China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh

China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh

Paperback, 313 pages

Published April 15th 1997 by Orb Books (first published March 1992)

Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel (1993)

Nebula Award Nominee for Best Novel (1992)

Locus Award for Best First Novel (1993)

James Tiptree Jr. Award (1992)

Lambda Literary Award for Gay Men's Science Fiction/Fantasy (1993)

China Mountain Zhang is a debut novel? Really? This forward-thinking and groundbreaking work was released in 1992? Wow. I admit this is my first time reading Maureen F. McHugh, I had it in my TBR forever, I don't even remember where I bought, but I assumed I just saw it on the shelf at a used book store and thought it sounded good. I was pushed over the edge to read it when Luke Barrage on the Science Fiction Book Review Podcast gave it high marks.

In the time when this novel was written, the USSR had recently collapsed. In hindsight, the possibility of that country falling apart doesn't seem that weird but in 1984 no science fiction writers were imagining a future without the Soviet Union. One of the things that makes this novel so impressive in the early 90s McHugh saw a future where the United States had the same thing happen to it. This became eerie as I read this turning the coronavirus shut down and the country is on the verge of an economic collapse that this novel predicts. (p.290) Not to forget that the 21st century is often labeled "The Chinese Century" as only two superpowers remain, and Chinese influence is growing all the time. In the world of this novel shows a totally Chinese century. The job of science fiction is not to predict, any of the greats in the field will tell you that but when you read about mass shootings in John Brunner's books from the sixties or the Chinese century in this novel from 1992 it is still impressive.

On paper, this might not seem like the kinda book I would enjoy. First of all as a storyteller I am very plot-driven, and while character and setting are important to me a book that relies almost entirely on just being a slice of life normally wouldn't be my jam. That said the world-building is some of the best I have ever read, and I really enjoy that. It is subtle and naturally done with very fine touches to make this world feel well lived in. The only thing that pulled me a little out of the story was the chapters set on Mars, but that is just the science being inaccurate. On that tangent, I am fine with a surreal Bradbury-ian or Burrough-ish surreal sci-fi Mars when the novel is consistent. The problem here is that the rest of the novel felt realistic to me. This is one minor nitpick I have.

China Mountain Zhang is a well formated for a slice of life novel that really doesn't use twists. It starts with Zhang our title character and spins out to a few different characters from there. The characters do have arcs but they are very subtle. Through the various point of view characters, we get different windows into post-revolution communist Chinese influenced America, An Arctic research station, a Chinese Mars farm colony, and a Chinese university. There are short elements of cyberpunk that is peppered through-out, people in this future be engineered to network and share data.

The Stereotype of Sci-fi is that the settings overshadow the characters, but this is not the case. Zhang, Alexi, and San-Xiang are products of this would but they are fully developed characters.To a certain degree, each of them are total subjects to the forces of their world. That is something that we who currently in quarantine thanks to a virus all relate too. San-Xiang has to get surgery to not appear what this culture deems as ugly, Zhang who is half Latino gets gene therapy to look more Chinese, both things that seem hard to understand in our largely politically sensitive 21st century, but the century in this novel is so very different. They want desperately to matter in this culture and be able to assimilate into the Chinese motherland. The main character is gay and the book was given an award for gay men's Sci-fi, but honestly, I didn't notice he was until late in the book.

The political theory of the novel is laid out very clearly in two info-dumps that happened to work for me but might come off as heavy-handed to some. This book is not pro-capitalism but it is very far from promoting communism. In that sense, I don't know if I can call this a traditional dystopia. I mean the problems with communism are best illustrated When Zhang is assigned a new apartment building that has no water above the fifth floor. This is a great critique of Mao and Soviet Style communism but In reality, the 21st-century version has enough capitalism to look more privileged than anything dystopic. Again McHugh's job was not to predict.

This novel simply explores the idea of a Chinese century dialed to 11. The second civil war of this novel might seem like outlandish a few years ago but the one thing this novel missed was how the partisan divide would drive this fight. Told through a Mosaic a style That John Brunner brought to genre in the late Sixties with Stand on Zanzibar is more common today, and maybe best used in David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. Unlike the those two books, the characters are more closely tied together and this novel is not bloated. It is a short and effective read, perfect length of around three hundred pages.

I enjoyed this book, but I think it is more of an important book than a fun one. I think it has a lot to teach about world-building and it holds a very revealing mirror to China in the late 20th century. Worthy of all the awards and as this second great depression looms I hope McHugh is not right about the collapse of this economy and how that will go down in a Chinese century.

Book Review: Dead Sky By Weston Ochse

Dead Sky By Weston Ochse

Paperback, 480 pages

Published November 2019 by Solaris

The first book in this series was a masterpiece of military horror and science fiction. Military sci-fi in the last 50 years comes in a pretty standard mold, one that has been fashioned over and over again based on the Heinlein Starship Troopers template. Lots of great works have been done in the mold from the Forever War by Vietnam war vet Joe Handleman to Card's Ender's Game and Scalzi's Old Man's War. I know Weston and I both agree on last year's The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley as a fantastic entry in the genre. Being that Weston is Vet and long time military contractor it gives him special insight and like Handleman he used that insight to create a great entry in that mold with the Grunt series. (I have only read book one so far, but it is really good).

As good as Grunt Life was Burning Sky took on the same important theme of PTSD and did something rare in military sci-fi it broke new ground. It could be said that This series is more military horror than Sci-fi and the second book is more horror than the first. We are dealing with supernatural creatures, not aliens. The thing that made the first book special to me is that it also dealt with the experiences of trauma, reality, and sense of being all through the lens of PTSD. That is why I was so surprised that when I interviewed Weston for my podcast (link below) and he said he hadn't read Philip K Dick yet.

Like me take a quick aside...While he fixed that because he made reference to the PKD book Cosmic Puppets that has the same demons as his book in it. Very funny scene by the way and The interview contains the moment where we at Dickheads put the characters of this book on the trail! (Ha!)

Burning Sky was a masterpiece in my opinion and it is still, in my opinion, Weston's strongest work to date. It has what is reality aspect of it that makes it a true story of post Traumatic pain. It gives that novel an extra weight that is hard to top. That is my biggest problem with Dead Sky. It is fun and exciting. It has great moments of suspense and character moments. It never reaches the jaw-dropping reveals of the first book. Sometimes it is hard when the mystery is revealed. Jaws is not nearly as scary when you see the mechanical shark.

Dead Sky is not a bad book, it is a really fun book. I read it pretty fast, and Weston's grasp of characters is strong enough that I stayed up late reading it. The biggest problem this novel has is the powerhouse of the first book. The first book dealt with heavy issues of the unending trauma of violence and war. I feel this was more action fun and less of the themes mixing with the plot. That is what was so impressive about the first book is those themes mixed in so perfectly.

It is hard to talk about the plot without spoiling the first book. The main character who goes by the name Boy Scout propels some of the book's best moments with one of his new skills. The Trauma sticks to hit in the form of connection quite literally to his demons. One of the strongest aspects of the book is Boy Scout's relationship with Sister Rene the character that teaches him this skill.

I like Dead Sky a lot. But I LOVED Burning Sky. It was fun and worth it to spend time with these characters. This series is done with this second book but the characters might not be. Either way I recommend both but it is hard to go wrong with Weston.

Book Review: The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells

The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells

Paperback, 186 pages

Published May 2017 by Gollancz (first published 1896)

SF Masterworks edition!

“An animal may be ferocious and cunning enough, but it takes a real man to tell a lie.”

I know it is amazing that at this point in my life I have never read this Wells classic. While I have read The Time Machine and War of The Worlds multiple times and even Food of the Gods I was nervous the last few decades about reading Doctor Moreau because I feared that it glorified animal experimentation. I know, I could not be more wrong. I don't think ole HG was actually a liberationist but the message in its 1896 way is without a doubt a form of early animal rights.

If is hard to deny passages like...

“Before, they had been beasts, their instincts fitly adapted to their surroundings, and happy as living things may be. Now they stumbled in the shackles of humanity, lived in a fear that never died, fretted by a law they could not understand; their mock-human existence, begun in an agony, was one long internal struggle, one long dread of Moreau —”

Wells often made messages a huge part of his work, it was undeniable that Time Machine commented on the still controversial issue of evolution something he was familiar with having worked as a Lab assistant with one Darwin's associates. The War of The Worlds was clearly a message to the people of his Britain about their ever-expanding colonial empire. Food of the Gods if I remember correctly was about class inequality.

So there are many messages in this novel besides animal rights, also the hubris of science gone mad, and the nature of what makes us human. That to me is the heart of what makes this story so scary, the blurred lines between nature and humanity.

I'll get back to that in a moment but first the plot. I know there have been attempts to make films based on this work but they are mostly terrible. The closest we probably got was when Richard Stanley (Color out of Space) was fired during pre-production in the 90s. Do yourself a favor and listen to the Post-Mortem with Mick Garris interview with Stanley released a few months ago. The story behind the movie is amazing.

TIODM is a short and very Victoria novel, told in the first person that is better executed than Wells earlier novel The Time Machine. I have laughed when I have seen this work called Lovecraftian and have to remind people that this pre-dates ole HP and was likely an influence on him.

While this novel is delightfully creepy and weird, it is told without Lovecraft purple prose and a serious economy of words. Wells doesn't waste time. To me this felt like it could have been Pendrick's journal but you have to believe he was a good writer. Very few first-person narratives work for me in that way because it often feels "written" a good example of natural-sounding first person is Stephen King's Delores Claiborne.

Oh yeah the Story, it is about Pendrick the survivor of a shipwreck who is rescued by Montgomery who is on his way to re-join his master the mad scientist Doctor Moreau. Through a series of excellently laid out beats of suspense, Penrick learns that the disgraced British vivisector Moreau has come to this remote place to conduct his experiments. Those include spliced genes of humans and animals.

This is amazing science fiction considering it was written in the 19th century long before the genre had a name. Indeed Wells called his works Scientific Romances. This book is body horror, that is almost a hundred years before Barker and Cronenberg would make that a thing. The question, however, is what is the more freaky part? The man-beasts or the speeches that Doctor Moreau gives. I think the later...

I know that Wells mostly comes off as stuffy to modern eyes, but I think this novel was a pretty smooth read. To me, it is the most vivid of Wells novels and the most timeless there is very little that draws attention to the fact that the novel is one hundred and twenty four years old. It is more powerful and scary than most of the horror fiction today. That is one reason it should be read. Also, I loved this quote:

“It is when suffering finds a voice and sets our nerves quivering that this pity comes troubling us.”

What we do to animals has not progressed far enough in the years since this book was written. It is often in the case of animals that humans are afraid to look at the horrors they are personally responsible for. That is often because the suffering directly benefits humans. From flavor to entertainment nothing is off-limits and sadly it is the law. I hope there is a change before this book gets much older but that is up to us all.

Book Review: The Naked Sun by Issac Asimov

The Naked Sun by Issac Asimov

Mass Market Paperback, 15th printing, 208 pages

Published 1996 by HarperCollins Publishers (first published December 1956)

I have no idea if Asimov was planning a trilogy featuring Elijah Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw when he wrote the first book Caves of Steel, it is hard to say because it was decades between books two and three. None the less The Naked Sun is an excellent sequel to Caves of Steel. That first book was a very character-driven spin on the detective noir that was augmented by the fantastic world-building. The world of the first book was earth in the far future, although set in the same universe as the Foundation centuries before the events of that series. Part of the strength of the first book was the dynamic between Baley and Olivaw. One of the complaints about genre works from this era (the 50s) and Asimov, in general, is that he was more focused on the gee-whiz than the actual characters.

This book could be accused of that since it the main thrust of the novel is clearly the world of Solaria. I read this and am writing this review during the major American shut-down for the coronavirus. Social distancing has become one of the main concepts of life on planet earth at the moment. In the world of this novel that is the way of life. Solaria is an underpopulated world where the robot servants outnumber human colonists. Everyone lives at a distance from each other and even married couples only "see" each other. Contact is not a social norm.

So not only is this a cool sci-fi world, but it is the perfect set-up for a sci-fi murder mystery novel. Even better conceptionally as a sequel to Caves of Steel, it is a genius reversal since the overcrowded New York of the first novel is so central to that story. Baley and Olivaw are important to the story but their dynamic is less important since the arc of their being forced together was solved. Early in the book Baley is forced to take this off-world mission, and a part of me wished we had more Baley and Olivaw NY mysteries and in my headcanon, they exist.

So Asimov gets Baley off-world, the how of this is completely ignored he just gets to this far off world by "ways" and that is fine, the trip was not the point. Once on this world, the mystery which I won't spoil is a great very Sherlock Holmes-ish spin. It even gets to the point when Baley is quoting the master fictional detective when you eliminate the possible... I don't need to re-type that do I? Asimov does really great social and world-building, some of the new characters have interesting elements but the weakness is that our returning characters don't get developed.

One element that was underplayed in this book was R.Daneel having to fake as a spacer. It is there but very lightly. Baley's conflict of leaving earth and more importantly his family is touched on in the opening chapters and in the last few. That aspect seems to get ignored in between. Good stuff is happening. The mystery elements are carefully plotted. It is the world built on social isolation that I think will really interest people at this time. What it says about our culture at this exact moment is interesting, but the motivations are not close. If you are looking for a science fiction novel that comments on our current situation you should look more closely at The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner. The benefit of that book is it is a warning and reminder it could be worse.

None the less The Naked Sun is a fun little novel overflowing with fun Asimov-ian ideas and concepts. The mystery works and it is short. I like these novels and their simplicity so much better than many of thew high concept novels of Asimov. Give me a couple months and I will get to book three soon.

Book Review: Deus X By Norman Spinrad

Deus X By Norman Spinrad

Mass Market Paperback, 176 pages

Published December 1992 by Spectra

Reading this book for the first time in 2020 or after it will seem dated but like many classics of Science Fiction, it is important to remember when they were written. It is very important when judging this masterful short Sci-fi novel to remember that it was written and released in 1992 one year into Clinton's first term. Norman Spinrad is still with us and commenting on the world, he was even a guest on our podcast. Long lost writers like Brunner or Asimov often get credit for being ahead of the times. This novel is amazingly forward-thinking for the time it was written. Respect to Spinrad for that.

This review will be spoiler-heavy but it is somewhat hard to find book at this point and I think the most important thing this novel does is open up discussion of themes common in Science Fiction. Can we survive? and if technology saves us will we still be human?

Before I get detailed about this novel let me point out that this novel is in part a Climate Change novel, decades before Cli-fi was a literary movement, before many in the world admitted that this was a crisis or concern. Next, let's consider that this novel is also a work of cyberpunk, now Spinrad pokes fun at the literary movement that was inspired by his generation of New wave sci-fi writers. This is done when the narrator basically admits that he is in the fringes of a cyberpunk story.

Marley Phillipe is a cool character riding out the climate apocalypse with an increasingly robotic body and sailboat called the Mellow Yellow. His plan to die peacefully and get high. His plan is interrupted when the Catholic Church recruits him for a mission. You see the population of the world to escape the slow death of the run-away Greenhouse effect has created a virtual world called the Big Board. The idea is that most people have uploaded their minds to the Big Board.

This presents the catholic church with a conflict. They don't believe the cyber minds are actual souls but with the world dying they need to preserve their history. So they uploaded the memory of Father De Leone and his mind has since disappeared from the Big Board. The Church brings Marley to Rome to investigate, and he eventually learns that hackers are holding his mind hostage and their demands are simple. Recognize our virtual souls.

I read this book during the stay at home order of the Coronavirus it was impossible not to see similar nature to the Big Board. We have all become home units plugged into the internet which is becoming the social interface. This book takes place after Earth has become dead, the garden of Eden has thrown us out and the big question becomes is this new existence actually living? What if our cyber selves were trying to prove they had a soul?

This is a very provocative novel and amazing for the time it was written. This is a short and powerful work.

Consider this from page 135:

"Was this what God saw, if there was one, the whole wide world and all these space probes and sat-feeds besides, from the inside of Creation? Was this what Pierre De Leone saw from inside the system itself?

Deserted cityscapes. Entertainment channel Disneyworlds. Oceans Lapping against the great seawalls. Sat imagines of melting polar caps, spreading deserts. Eavesdropped videophone conversations. News Channels. corporate systems babbling to each other..."

"...Were these to be our Spiritual successors ?"

and two pages later...

"The World out there is dying. The world in here... From this perspective, it was all too clear. When the biosphere is gone we will go on."

Deus X questions what it means to be human, and what it means to be spiritual. The last barrier before humans can transition to a digital existence is the spiritual question. The great fear of this novel is a species taking that last step, one willing to destroy the planet that sustains itself can feel better about if their digital soul is one it can reckon with their god. Goddamn Spinrad wrote a hell of a novel here and when you consider how early into the internet we were at this point it makes it more impressive.

You should read it. Big thumbs up.