Month: September 2008

Senior Angelo Osic is a doctor in one of the refugee flooded neighborhoods of Panama.  The United Socialist States of South America has launched a new war in its efforts to reshape the human race into something purer, but all of that is far away from the life Angelo lives–until an emaciated woman with a bloody stump at the end of her arm shows up and demands him to grow her a new one.

Events rapidly spin out of his control, and Angelo flees on the first spaceship leaving earth–a mercenary transport taking hundreds of superhuman warriors to fight in a bloody planet-wide war among Japanese colonists.  As he tries desperately to evade socialist assassins, he makes friends among the mercenaries on the spaceship–as well as deadly enemies.  In the eerily realistic virtual reality world of the training simulators, Angelo dies a hundred times and slowly becomes desensitized to killing.

As the ship reaches its final destination–a world awash in a genocidal bloodbath–and Angelo’s enemies finally start to catch up with him, how will he maintain his humanity?  Will he ever be able to feel love and compassion again–or will he become the monster he fears the world is making him?

This book is violent.  It is violent and gritty. Rape, murder, assassination, brutal disfiguration and torture, graphic battle scenes and massive acts of genocide–it’s all in there. That said, the book is not about the violence–it’s about moral dilemmas, how we respond to injustice, and how we can maintain our humanity in the face of the most horrific evil this world can see.

Unlike a lot of cyberpunk, Angelo wants to be good–he desperately wants to be an upright, moral person–but time and again he finds himself in situations where he cannot avoid getting his hands bloody, sometimes up to his elbows.  How he responds to this evil, and how he endures it without becoming evil himself, is where the story has its meat.

On My Way to Paradise is a book that makes you think, and after you put it down, you can’t put it out of your mind.  It’s a book that has the power to change your life and how you see the world.

I found it by listening to it as a free audiobook on a podcast that podfaded shortly after, so I only caught the first seven chapters.  For the next year and a half, the story haunted me–I could not forget about it, or about the dilemmas and issues it raised.  I hunted all the bookstores for it, but sadly it’s been out of print for over a decade.  When I finally did find out that Pioneer Book had a copy in their warehouse, I ordered it and finished it a week or two later.  If I regret anything, it’s that I didn’t order it sooner.

This is honestly one of the best books I’ve read.  It is a masterpiece.  I’ve rarely read anything so real and down to earth, anything that resonates as truth so deeply.  It’s definitely not for everybody, but this book is incredible.  I’ve rarely read anythings so powerful–or so meaningful.

They came completely unexpected. Hundreds of silver spaceships, hovering above all the capitols and major population centers of the Earth. For nearly a week, as thousands rioted in the streets below, they sat there, waiting. And then came the voice of Karellen, chief of the overlords, viceroy of Earth, heralding a new, planet-wide administration that was destined to end war, poverty, hunger, disease, ignorance, and fear. But as the generations pass and a new breed of humanity arises–one that has known no suffering, no danger, no religion but science, and no creative drive beyond sheer curiosity–mankind is about to discover that their welfare is not the overlords’ primary goal. Humanity’s time in the universe is about to come to an end–and a new, alien beginning.

I read this book in three days, but if I didn’t have any distractions or obligations, I could probably have read it in less than half a day. It’s very short–Clarke doesn’t take time to develop characters, describe the setting, give long info dumps, or show off his prosaic skills. He doesn’t even get into detailed explanations of how everything that happens happens. He waves his hand and gives us the broadest possible sweep of human civilization as mankind finally transcends human existence.

Partially because of the broad brush which Clarke uses to paint his picture, I found myself second guessing him at several turns. I was very skeptical of Clarke’s premises and conclusions, and found it very difficult to believe this story at several points. Believability of the aliens was not nearly so much an issue for me as was believability of humanity.

For example, when the overlords bring out a device that allows people to view any scene from any moment in the past, the world’s religious traditions are exposed and within a generation nobody in the world is religious. That’s not how religious experience works, though. Even if all of the religions in the world were hoaxes–which I’m perfectly willing to allow for the sake of a story–many, if not most of the adherents would continue to hold onto their beliefs, if only for no other reason than to hold onto something. There would be a lot more chaos and upheaval, and religion would stay with us in one form or another, if for no other reason than we as humans are religious creatures. It’s in our nature, whether or not any of the world’s religions are true. Clarke seems to demonstrate an ignorance of this as he paints the future with his broad brush.

A lot of other elements were missing in this book, such as character development, development of the setting, a strong buildup of tension, etc etc. However, as hard, classic sci fi, Childhood’s End doesn’t necessarily need those things to be an accomplished work within its genre. Hard sci fi–especially 50s and 60s sci fi–is all about grand, transcendent concepts, and here Childhood’s End succeeds, especially towards the end. When I finished the story and found out humanity’s final destiny, I was left with a sense of overwhelming awe at the grand cosmic scope of the story’s final message, much as I was with 2001: A Space Odyssey. You really feel, by the end, that you’re staring the incomprehensibly infinite right in the face. Good, hard sci fi will do that to you, and it’s wonderful.

I think this story did what Clarke set out for it to do, despite some of the conceptual spottiness that irked me in the beginning and the middle. The ending was solid, and did an excellent job showing what it means to transcend humanity. If you’re looking for a good story, this book probably will frustrate you, but if you’re interested in dreaming about man’s destiny among the stars, this book will give you that sense of awe and wonder that only classic science fiction can.

Lyra is a young girl who lives in Jordan college, Oxford university, with her daemon–a shapeshifting, talking animal companion that is as much a part of her as her growing, changing personality. She is perfectly content to stay at the university forever, exploring and playing games with the local children and their daemons.

All of that changes, however, when children across the countryside start to disappear. At first, it starts in far away places, but soon the mysterious “gobblers,” as the kidnappers are called, hit close to home, and Lyra is swept away into an adventure that takes her far to the north, to the land of auroras and the midnight sun; of witches and clans of ferocious talking polar bear warriors, and evil plans that have been revolving around Lyra since long before she was born.

I rated this novel a solid four stars. It had some elements in it that were fantastically wonderful and imaginative, such as the idea of daemons. In Pullman’s universe, every human being has a daemon, an animal companion that represents one’s personality and is as much an integral part of any human being as their head or arm. Adults’ daemons have fixed themselves onto a certain form, but since children are still growing and changing, their daemons can change shapes at will. Whatever one thinks, so does the other; whatever one feels, so does the other; and whenever one dies, so does the other (usually).

This concept of personal daemons was by far the strongest element of this novel. It ranks among one of the most satisfyingly imaginative fantasy elements I’ve ever seen in a story. It got me wondering “if I had a daemon, what kind would it be?” (probably a black bear), and I felt like a little kid imagining what it would be like to have one. Even though he doesn’t set out all of the rules concerning daemons (Do they need to eat like regular animals? Do they go to the bathroom?), it adds a sense of wonder to the novels and gives insight into the thoughts and emotions of the characters in a delightful way. It also ends up driving the plot, when you find out why the gobblers are kidnapping children.

There were other areas, however, where I felt that the novel was weak, mostly with regards to the plot. The first hundred pages were too slow. Pullman is fairly good about building up tension, but he releases it too quickly. For the first half of the novel, I felt as if Lyra was only getting swept around by things outside her control, rather than actually doing anything, and that was slightly annoying. The explanation for some of the crucial events, such as the opening scene, didn’t make much sense to me. The twist at the end, while surprising, was far from inevitable, and I felt jolted in a less than satisfying way. This is the first novel in a trilogy, and the first novel does not stand on its own as a complete story. It ends on a cliffhanger, somewhere near the bottom of the cliff.

Aside from the plot, however, I think Pullman does a good job. The characters were fairly interesting, with strong personalities that drove the story, and the setting was really well done. There were times in reading the story when I felt that I was up in the north, surrounded by forests dimly lit by the aurora, or flying high in a marvelous balloon above the freezing wastes, or in the midst of the bear castle, surrounded by the reek of bird poop and bear odors watching the bears fight in an epic battle.

There were a lot of things that I liked about this book, and the experience itself was very pleasant. It felt like a fantasy world, and that made it really fun.

A lot of people told me that Pullman is very anti-God and that his books are really preachy–or at least that a significant group of people are wrong to think of it that way. I can see how he sets up the church (he never refers to it as more than “the church”) like a straw man, but in this book at least, he wasn’t very preachy. I can’t really pass a verdict on his treatment of religion until I read the other two books, though, so I’m going to have to hold off on that discussion.