Devaneios/Musings/Träumereien - Book Reviews

Non-Communication: "Solaris" by Stanislaw Lem

2022-09-04T00:15:00.002+01:00

(The first time I read this novel was by using an Europa-America paper edition that for the life of me I can’t find right now. I even looked in the attic! Short of that, I’m using the digital photo of that particular edition.)

Lem's description of the surface of “Solaris” is so extraordinary and poetic that a movie that never shows the planet is missing the point that everything it creates has come from itself as its own form of communication. Lem himself (who ought to know best) said that the novel was about communication and not about gender. Lem was very much interested on how would humans react to an entity so different from themselves? How unbearable would it be if your only form of communication were to be your own thoughts repeated back to you, in physical form? Kelvin's wife's suicide was an expression of non-communication but when she is resurrected for him, both of them still find it impossible to understand her presence in his life. The planet communicates with its visitors the only way it can, by picking up chaotic human thoughts and recreating what it finds there. But just as you cannot understand any conscious motivation in what the planet does, the planet does not read the difference between memory, desire and guilt, and simply repeats the riddle back to you - which you may well have travelled so far to escape from. Is it in fact conscious at all? Lem was one of the first SF writers to envisage that in travelling out of the earth, we may encounter entities that are so different in biology and behaviour that we may not even realise that they are entities, with no human characteristics at all. China Mieville's 'Embassytown' is another novel presenting us with a completely unhuman species, and as a study of how two species whose language systems are wildly different may communicate (unfortunately miles away from Lem’s masterpiece).

Lem is perhaps the first great pessimist of hard SF literature (there were probably always more pessimists in the East than in the West, but the overwhelming majority of them were in the field of social science fiction). On another level, Solaris for me is an indictment against the self-centredness of human civilization and modern science, as well as the lack of imagination of the scientific community. The title character of the story, the mysterious planet, is the absolute "alien", whose basic properties are not even understood by the scientists of the distant future. They come up with hundreds of theories that lead nowhere without doing anything about it, and when the “creature” (entity?) contacts them, it does so on a level that people would prefer not to acknowledge. Because despite all its results - perceived or real - the human mind is only one step away from the primitive animal world, but it is by no means certain that this is the same for other sentient entities.

This re-read this time round, highlighted for me a special feature of the novel: it analyses itself on the fly. The "solarist" science that emerges step by step in the story - the collection of fictitious books written about the planet - does not only produce theories, but also practices self-reflection. When a future writer talks about the failure of science, or about its transformation into a messianic religion (because we believe that one day there will be a Grand Theory That Answers Everything), then Lem metaphorically adds marginal notes to his own novel.

Most contemporary SF authors with the arguably exception of Peter Watts to a lesser extent Alastair Reynolds are actually writing about people when they write about "aliens" - extremely distorted, emphasizing certain characteristics of us, or adapting to different physical requirements, but still human-like civilizations - but here Lem laid the foundations of a new trend that did not extend to the vast majority of contemporary space opera.

What about Tarkovsky’s movie? It was the most fucking, pointless, incomprehensible, pretentious boring piece of shit I ever had to endure. Imagine 3 hours of sitting around waiting for something to happen, but it never does. The actors are all on vicodin, the plot is nebulous at best, and the characters are absolutely unrelatable. Was it too much to ask for one single interesting thing to happen throughout the entire movie? Was it too much for it to have provoked any thought other than when does the movie start? As for the gender issue, I'm afraid that by 'flipping' gender in a work that many in the audience know, you simply draw attention to a directorial decision that will too many seem just perverse. “Solaris” was written when it was written, even though it is in a lot of ways timeless, and at that time most space scientists and astronauts were men. Gender flipping may arise from a desire to remove gender issues from a work but in fact succeeds only in making the work about gender. In fact gender is one of the less important aspects of the story. How anyone gets the idea from the Tarkovsky version that Solaris is some sort of embodiment of Female is one of the most 'impregnable' things I’ve heard. Utter bollocks!

NB: For this re-read used the edition by Bill Johnston, directly translated from Polish into English. Still a 5 star read for me after all these years.

SF = Speculative Fiction.

Wodehousian vs.Tricksiness: "The Fifth Head of Cerberus" by Gene Wolfe

2022-09-02T01:45:00.001+01:00

(my paper edition bought in Tema Bookshop at Xenon Mall)

After "The Book of the New Sun" and "The Book of the Long Sun", I’ve finished re-reading “The Fifth Head of Cerberus” once again! And thought about it for a long time after as usual. Everything came together so beautifully. I loved how different mini-stories, with their characters not knowing what the reader knows from previous segments, build a tone without knowing what they're seeing. And at the very beginning (hence not a spoiler) when someone reminiscing comments that as a child they were blown away with amazement by a mundane thing like the library, but didn’t bat an eyelid at the incredible things like the slaves.

There are some suggestions, not entirely fanciful, that "The Fifth Head of Cerberus" can be read as a prequel to “The Book of the New Sun”, although it's more a case that certain elements in the one are perhaps echoed in the other - just as Long Sun contains elements that link it to New whilst being a radically different work. It's as much a case as enjoying the additional richness of the tapestry if you spot a linking thread.

(paper edition bought in 2000; 12,2 euros)

Vance for example has a deep-seated suspicion of moralism and hypocrisy. I think the appearance of profundity in Wolfe is that Vance's psychology is rather more straightforward: characters in Vance generally know what they want. Wolfe's characters generally aren't fully aware of what they want any more than they're fully aware of anything else. One reason why none of them are capable of telling a story straight. The critical consensus seems to be that Wolfe has taken Vance as his starting point and superseded him. Some people argue, though, that while Vance doesn't play the same kind of narrative games as Wolfe, his lightness of touch and range of tone mean that it's Vance, not Wolfe, who is the neglected genius.I’m not sure I buy into this. Or perhaps I'm justifying my own lightweight intellect in saying that I should take Vance's Wodehousian brio over Wolfe's tricksiness every time, but I just can’t.

Theologically Subtle SF: "The Book of The Long Sun" by Gene Wolfe

2022-08-31T01:07:00.038+01:00

(My 4 volumes paper editions)

On making first contact with Earthlings Mr Spock stands next to his spaceship banging his intergalactic communicator against the ships hull "hang on a minute, this things playing up again, it sounded as though you said you thought we were all the result of some kind of gigantic cosmic accident" If there is more out there Conifer it won't change the original questions where did the Universe come from and whose idea was it?

I think science itself - not necessarily science-fiction, but science as a nebulous concept that lets clever people do things - is becoming the modern religion. It sounds absurd put like that; surely people leaping on big-S Science, Reason over Superstition, the pursuit of facts and hard truth over the supernatural and divine is a good thing?

The problem is, scientism (a term that's been around a while) isn't really about pursuing scientific truth - it's about believing Science will solve every problem ever without anyone needing to do anything themselves. We don't need to reduce our reliance on limited resources, or reduce food waste to feed hungry people because Scientists Will Find A Way.

That's not a philosophy based on scientific understanding, it's turning Science as a discipline of study into an omnipotent deity that can apparently produce matter out of nowhere.

A scientific approach to space travel, for example, is that it is likely that other planets will have natural resources and the possibility of supporting life and can be colonised, if we can surmount the difficulties inherent to space exploration.

(bought in Tema Bookshop at Xenom Mall in 2000; 16,9 euros)

A scientist approach is that the energy and oil crisis is nothing to worry about because we can just go to space and get all the oil we need.

I suspect you are doing the genre a disservice by calling science fiction "a" religion. If it is anything, like a nebula, it is the birthplace of religions.

In fact all our established religions could be seen as sci-fi turned turned serious. Did the Zoroastrians really believe that Ahura Mazda was fighting his equivalent dark side or did they take it to be a great tale? Did the early post-vedic Hindus sincerely think the new god Krishna was a metaphor or literally believe he had a weapon (the chakra) that could even today beat any light sabre? Do those who purport to belong to the Jedi as a religion really come from too far away, or too near in time for many of us to take them seriously?

(bought in Tema Bookshop at Xenom Maal in 2003; 20,64 euros)

Yes, science fiction throws up possibilities that would otherwise not occur to us, but so did mythology, and so I'd like to invert your argument and suggest not that sci-fi is the new religion, but religion is the outdated SF...

After "The Book of the New Sun", Gene Wolfe`s novel sequence “The Book of the Long Sun” describes a universe in inhabited by humans, post-humans, aliens, android “chemical people”, sentient machines, all ruled by computer-generated “gods”, who possesses all the powers, arrogance, beauty and self-awareness of “real” gods. And then there is The Outsider, beyond everything within the world, yet able to speak to the heart of individual selves. In other words, the Living God of Judaeo-Christian theology, both immanent and transcendent.

Wolfe`s science fictions are the most theologically subtle pieces of writing in all of modern literature.

SF = Speculative Fiction.

Vance vs. Wolfe: “The Book of the New Sun” by Gene Wolfe

2022-08-29T00:47:00.080+01:00

(my 5 volumes paper editions)

‘“I have heard those who dig for their livelihood say there is no land anywhere in which they can trench without turning up the shards of the past,” says Severian. No matter where the spade turns the soil, it uncovers broken pavements and corroding metal; and scholars write that the kind of sand that artists call polychrome (because flecks of every colour are mixed with its whiteness) is actually not sand at all, but the glass of the past, now pounded to powder by aeons of tumbling in the clamorous sea.’

In “The Book of the New Sun” by Gene Wolfe

Welcome aboard. You are journeying upon one of the most dizzying, dazzling and deceiving ships you have ever ventured on. Welcome to Urth. In many ways, you will never leave…

TBotNS is one novel in five volumes, just like “The Lord of the Rings”. It's not an unending series of the Wheel of Time sort. You really MUST pay attention to what Wolfe “doesn't” say. In fact I'm sure I missed a lot when I read it years ago...that’s why it's been always on my "re-read" list for ages. That said, I can certainly see why some don't like it and why it hasn't gained wider popularity. It is a very unconventional narrative and actually quite hard work requiring the reader participate, making deductions and intuitive leaps to fill in the intentional gaps left by the author.

On the question of genre -- Science Fiction versus Fantasy -- I would argue that “The Book of the New Sun” (TBotNS) is fantasy of the best kind. It's mythopoeia of the same type as, and on a similar scale to, Tolkien's. The fact that the towers are also rockets, the monsters are aliens, the gods are Cthuhlu-esque, the magic is science, etc., doesn't change the fact that Wolfe is dealing with the myths, themes, and archetypes that trace their heritage back to classical and primitive mythologies. The most concise illustration of this point is the painting the curator Rudesind is cleaning when Severian encounters him on his errand to Ultan's library (p. 36 of the omnibus edition). The astronaut on the desolate moon (that in Severian's time has become a terraformed paradise) is a armored knight errant in the Waste Land. There is so much in that image; contemplating such gems is one of the great joys of reading this novel.

(paper edition bought in 1997 in Tema Bookshop at Xenon Mall; 14,9 euros)

Having said, AGAIN, is this science fiction or fantasy? For starters, I can understand some people being potentially put off by the Torturer in the title and the leather-clad bloke on the cover...it probably would have put me off if I'd been browsing in a bookshop. I adored the bit where the painting is being cleaned. I hadn't read the back of my edition when I started, so I hadn't initially realised it was set on this world in the future, so when I realised he was cleaning a picture of a man on the moon was when I realised it was on Earth/Urth. Contardicting msyelf, I could still argue that it's SF though, SF very cleverly dressed as fantasy - it all sort of has its roots in reality rather than magic/myth etc. But I am quite swayed by your argument.

(paper edition bought in 1997 in Tema Bookshop at Xenon Mall; 14,9 euros)

Nevertheless, this is a fantastic series that improves enormously on re-reading. Give it a year or two to settle, though. Like I said, just read all of Wolfe, it will repay you forever.

As for Vance again, he's a fantastic stylist and does a great line in melancholy sarcasm, but he's not a deep moral thinker in the same way as Wolfe. I love Vance for cruel and angry chuckles, but he doesn't tickle at profundity. Vance has a black humour that is wonderfully funny and horribly cruel at the same time. He doesn't I agree aim at profundity, but he is a fantastic stylist and I think him at the very least Wolfe's equal (not that comparing them makes much sense in the end, and both are marvellous). Frankly, profundity isn't the only test of literature, precision and tone matter too, and Vance at his best is hard to equal on the light accuracy of his prose.

Well, if you can deliver great prose AND be profound, I consider that a plus. Vance tends to lay things out in rather obvious fantasy metaphor, but there's more mystery and ambiguity in Wolfe. I've re-read some Vance books many times, and enjoy them a great deal, but they don't haunt me in the way Wolfe does.

(paper edition bought in 2003 in Tema Bookshop at Xenon Mall; 17,2 euros)

I think Wolfe obviously enjoys his SF/Fantasy elements too much to appeal to someone who doesn't enjoy them. But I don't think most fantasy prepares you for the kind of things that Wolfe has to offer - he too often frustrates those kinds of interest. Although Wolfe admires Tolkien, I don' t think Tolkien is a deep influence. (He doesn't have anything of Tolkien's romantic melancholy.)

It's too simple to see Vance as frivolous and Wolfe as profound. Vance for example has a deep-seated suspicion of moralism and hypocrisy. I think the appearance of profundity in Wolfe is that Vance's psychology is rather more straightforward: characters in Vance generally know what they want. Wolfe's characters generally aren't fully aware of what they want any more than they're fully aware of anything else. One reason why none of them are capable of telling a story straight.

I think Vance is best in his fantasy really. SF requires some kind of genuflection in the direction of plausibility that dampens Vance's imagination too much.

I think that TBotNS has flaws that severely damage its appeal to non-sf readers: the writing isn't conventionally "beautiful," and the book doesn't yield satisfaction without really picking at the details and figuring out what 's going on. To non-SF readers, I think it's offputting without seeming "important" or "literary."

Even still, I thought the result was ultimately a disappointment, but still impressive. But definitely nothing on the order of Ulysses. If SF has anything on the order of Ulysses (in terms of temperament, conceit, structure, self-awareness, theme), it would probably be Samuel Delany's Dhalgren. Though Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker is pretty incredible as well.

I also love that quotation about the sands being glass. These little pleasures keep coming as the series progresses. There's another offhand remark about a time when all the mountains were not carved into the likeness of various tyrants. And what about the alien beings that travel backwards in time? My favourite bit is still to come, where Severian fights an alzabo, the creature from which they make the cannibal-ritual serum, speaking in the voice of a child it's eaten. Somehow the successive books just continue to deepen the mysteries.

I wonder if the dodgy accents were part of a Clever Strategy. The character narrating the book's not sure who he is any more, and we are slowly figuring out why as we read. Wolfe seems to be attempting to write in the persona of a not-very-good writer, a high-risk plan even by his standards. The hint we got from the end of the Long Sun books and the start of the Short Sun is that Nettle was responsible for Horn's writing-style being readable. Nine times out of ten when Wolfe does something like this it's to hide a vital piece of information in plain sight. I worry, after a third reading, that this was the tenth time.

SUSY: "The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time" by Stephen Hawking, G.F.R. Ellis

2022-08-26T23:29:00.028+01:00

What do we know about General Relativity now that we did not back then, say, in 1975 when this book first came out? Not much General Relativity wise:

1. Take a space and curve it;

2. Transport a vector round a loop in said space which gives a measure of the space;

3. Realize you can find a frame which looks locally Euclidean;

4. Do a little bit more maths like the one in Hawking’s and Ellis’ book;

5. Work out the Laplacian for the space;

6. Find out that a mass gives the space curvature;

7. Write down Einstein's equation.

Hey presto! The above is confirmed by experiment.

Lucky to have re-read another good oldie physics book. After all these years, it’s refreshing to see this book is still able to defend the honour of dame "spacetime" and her beauty.

Let’s take the first one:

1. Take a space and curve it.

Please bring to me a piece of “Space”, so that I can curve it and make a hat for my rabbit. Until that we are stuck and cannot follow the other steps. Meanwhile please read (at least) the following links carefully and come back to me so that then we can proceed further.

1. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/supersymmetry-fails-test-forcing-physics-seek-new-idea/

2. http://www.fis.cinvestav.mx/~lmontano/sciam/scientificamerican0514-34.pdf

3.http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/06/28/483805061/has-physics-gotten-something-really-important-really-wrong

4. https://www.wired.com/2011/10/solvay-congress/

Have you read them?

(putting my devil's advocate hat now): Dialectical thought and the latest results from the LHC has now undone the ontological and the philosophical foundation of “spacetime” manifold and mathematical idealism based on GR. The virtual pillars of Einstein’s “Castle in the Air” made of “Continuous fields” (along with Gravitational Waves, Higgs boson etc. ad nauseum of official physics) have been demolished. “Matter in motion” as the primary aspect of the universe and objective reality – the brilliant intuition of Heraclitus is being confirmed as natural science slowly emerges from the alienating “spacetime” fog.

Of course, I wouldn't get my hopes up too high regarding link 3. ("The Singular Universe and The Reality of Time"). I read this again and found nothing to get too excited about.

Smolin's contribution was the most interesting (generally for the way he writes), but again, rather similar ground to what he had already covered in his previous (solo) work ("Time Reborn"). Roberto Mangabeira Unger's (majority) contribution was well written, but rather lacking in substance (and overly repetitive) I thought. Scanning at a selection of critiques, I don't seem to be far removed from the 'more qualified others' on this.

I fear that proving that Time is Real, might be just as difficult as proving it to be emergent, unreal, or quite simply illusory. This was true in 1975 and it’s still true today.

My point is that if SUSY falls on its sword, it will drag down with it all continuous (independent) field-based physics, Higgs field, spacetime field etc. and most of New Physics (as Einstein himself feared); only QED and technologies based on quantum dynamics of New Physics will survive and may in fact now even prosper in new directions. Physics will be back to square one that it was before the spacetime fog set in!

Gobbledygook SF: "The Exile Fleet" by J. S. Dewes

2022-08-20T00:20:00.001+01:00

A long time ago I learned a bit about Conformal Cyclic Cosmology, a theory posited by Roger Penrose. My layman's understanding of this is that the big bang singularity was actually the end of a "previous" universe and that ours will end in a second big bang singularity (not to be confused with the big crunch). At the end of the universe only photons will remain and as they "ignore" both space and time and as the universe will then be empty of stuff for it to interact with, they will obey their own co-ordinate system and effectively (from their frame of reference) all exist in the same place at the same time. So, my random bloke theory is that everything is falling (and hence accelerating) through space and time, away from each other and towards this oddly coordinated second singularity. None of that stupid flat divide between “normal” and Dark Matter stuff…Of course, everyone knows that it’s the Great and Wise Kim Jong-Un that controls all movement within the universe....peasants! I quite like Dark Matter but in stuff like this there is no “quite”. You either like it or you don't. Now, go away Dewes and study the ways of the dark stuff If you want the force to be strong in you otherwise you’ll only write SF crap …

Along with Dewes’ novels, my books can also be purchased in the foyer.

NB: This second volume is even worse than the first volume, if such a thing is even possible…

Glimpses of Lisbon Watercolour: Praça do Carrasco

2022-08-14T22:49:00.012+01:00

8/12:

Some of my roots in Lisbon are here...

Let’s Just Make Shit Up: "The Last Watch" by J. S. Dewes

2022-08-13T00:40:00.005+01:00

According to all cosmic background radiation studies, any map of the universe must show the Earth at the center. This indisputable scientific fact has caused such massive consternation among astrophysicists, that they call the phenomenon the "Axis of Evil." The entire universe, according to the most modern science, centers on the Earth's plane of its ecliptic. This could be one of the premises of the “The Last Watch” due to the fact that’s so full of stupid Physics from beginning to end. And the region dividing normal and dark matter is flat? WTF? Some studies of the CMB point to some sort of spin during the "big bang" for some reason the universe was rotating before it came into being. If it was rotating there must have been something for it to rotate in. What is the black stuff in between the regions ? Is it something, or nothing, or both? Does Dewes even know what she writes about or is she just making shit up?

How can someone who’s so ignorant of basic Newtonian Physics write SF in the first place?? Does Dewes know that perhaps 'dark stuff' is where the outward force of a rotating galaxy balances the inward force of gravity (of course, this only happens if you're travelling with the object. If not, it behaves as if, and it is, experiencing an inward force. The inward, centripetal force is a real force; the outward, centrifugal, force is a pseudo force --- it is needed to restore the validity of Newton's laws in an accelerating frame of reference. Pseudo forces are easily distinguishable from real forces because they are directly proportional to the mass of the body they act upon. The "balancing" only makes sense in the accelerating frame; But none of this means that the dark energy isn't a pseudo something needed to preserve the validity of general relativity when the universe is viewed from our perspective.

Dewes, a piece of free advice: the Universe is homogeneous and isotropic over large distances, meaning dark energy is spread throughout the Universe equally. Bugger, that's done my head in!

Sadly, I have to characterize this novel as a broadly misleading, unfocused, and unnecessary exercise in stuffing an gobbledegook devoid of much on-point content with the kind of contrived filler one might expect to endure on the Discovery Channel. I am very disappointed to see this sort of rather thoughtless and undisciplined effort.

Is this the "let’s just make shit up" approach to SF nowadays? Or maybe Dewes is just trying to wind people up, for a laugh? How can someone writing so called SF be so ignorant of how science in physics and cosmology really works? And also be completely ignorant of said physics and cosmology? That’s contemporary SF for you!

NB: I’m gonna read the second volume “The Exile Fleet” just to see how far stupidity can go…

SF = Speculative Fiction.

Danio Cerra’s Story: "All the Seas of the World" by Guy Gavriel Kay

2022-08-07T00:33:00.000+01:00

“There are many different ways for a home to be lost, and for the world to become defined by that loss.”

In “All the Seas of the World” by Guy Gavriel Kay

I’ve heard being mentioned that one of the many joys of being resolutely middle aged is that one can dispense with the utter tosh that is the usual "fantasy" genre, whether in book, film or TV; it should be left to the prepubescent where it belongs... There is nothing sadder than a grown man (it's usually men) rattling on about “The Lord of the Rings” (LINK) or talking in Klingon. It was also mentioned that those that persist in reading this literary compost into adulthood are generally the wassock, that odd boy, the newt fancier, and the dustbin man who winks at your youngest daughter...Of course, I disagree - I think what is sadder by far is some resolutely middle-aged man telling other middle-aged men what they can or can't enjoy. Many years ago I stumbled across a forum where fans discussed WWE wrestling. I took great joy in taking the piss and pointing out it was all fake. Some of the contributors replied that they knew it was all fake, they enjoyed the spectacle, the 'storylines' and why did it bother me so much that I had to comment on what someone else liked? I had a Damascene moment at that moment and realised that not only should it not bother me what anybody else enjoys (legal issues aside) but I was acting like an Olympic level twat. I apologised (I know, actually apologising on the Internet, weird) and attained a whole new level of maturity. Sometimes a little introspection goes a long way. Just a thought. The same goes for Fantasy. Is it any good generally? Nope. Most of it is crap and one of the main reasons I don’t like Fantasy generally is due our modern obsession with trilogies and series that involve an overall narrative arc. Traditionally fantasy series tended to be comprised of linked but standalone entries, with shared characters and settings, that could be read together or separately, and which the author could pick up or set down at will. That is why, in film, audiences were disappointed by the ending of “The Empire Strikes Back” - they expected a sense of completion even in a middle entry, knowing they would have to wait three years for the next. I can't help feeling that long series that have an arc that requires multiple books (chapters, really) to complete is an incentive for writers to become diffuse and rambling, and sometimes to lose control of their material, as may have happened here...and then there’s the Gavriel Kay’s way because he does not trilogies per se. Kay is after something else. I.e., writing loosely linked standalone novels that make sense by themselves. The problems with Kay’s work lie elsewhere.

You haven’t read the “A Brightness Long Ago” don’t bother reading this. You’ll miss a ton of things if you do. It does not look like it in the beginning of the novel, but this is Danio Cerra’s story again. I knew this one was coming out soon so I did read the “previous” volume to have all the “data” fresh in my mind (not that it mattered in the end but it was good to know what Danio was up to “before”…). Unfortunately still a lot of exposition which kept putting me out of the story which was definitely a bummer (it basically jarred my enjoyment of the novel). This propensity that Kay possesses to tell and not show is killing me…

You-can-be-metoo-girlpower-yay! : "Prey" by Dan Trachtenberg

2022-08-06T23:18:00.063+01:00

Another SF stupid movie:

- I like how the dog conveniently disappeared without explanation when they got ambushed by the lion when they were out hunting it. Also a big fan of how the enraged bear runs directly up to completely defenseless Naru and inexplicably decides not to tear her in half instead turning around and chasing her dog around for no apparent reason (eh eh eh; probably the best stupid scene in the movie);

- I noticed how the predators movements slowed down when fighting her compared to earlier when he was moving like a jedi in fights...;

- The look of the predator was off putting. It was like he was made to look like a stone age version... or perhaps under developed. Maybe dumped on the planet with basic weapons to prove himself etc etc But when I saw the face it felt less of a predator movie and more just a bog standard Disney "monster" movie for kids;

- The CGI was terrible, in 2022 to be putting that out...;

- Also the pistol, that seems to have just been shoved in there as the actual story behind it was that it belonged to a pirate captain. The pirate gives it to the predator which is how it ends up with them. I don't know timelines of pirates in history so unless they make a follow up based in that era and somehow its found from the current movie and blah blah;

- Also the most annoying moment when he says 'if it bleeds, we can kill it'. I turned it off for an hour before I came back to finish the movie... just pissed off with this crap;

- Predator comes off like Harry and Marv from Home Alone where it keeps walking into every traps and getting stabbed so many times and just walks it off. It takes away the reward from the main female character when the Predator kept making mistakes. Unlike the original movie when the Predator gets hurt, it becomes more interesting when it learns from it and doesn't walk into traps, at one point it uses its own blood to lures Arnold into a trap. Not only the movie is stupid, but also the Predador...

- The initial 'woe-is-me'-narrative in the first half hour, and that smug, 'you-can-be-metoo-girlpower-yay!'-look at the young girl in the final scene...Too bad, I really wanted it to be Message-free, but I guess they just can't help themselve, can they?

- She can barely kill a rabbit at the start and at the end she's overpowering a fucking predator and setting up traps there's no way she could know would work. How she suddenly 'evolved' into a killing machine that could kill a predator was also another glaring stupidity; That, plus the implications of the flint lock pistol ending up in the hands of the tribe left a real sour final taste in my mouth;

- The most crucial environmental feature to this film is a mud pit. The entire finale revolves around a mud pit. Our lead is covered in mud at one point in the film. The stupid guys making the movie decided to wash her off, and write in a magic flower [LOL). Rather than just do what makes the most sense and copy the first film;

- The one thing about the language that kept taking me out, is they are supposed to be speaking Comanche to each other right? And when its English, its just us understanding Comanche as an audience. They aren't actually speaking English to each other. Standard in all kinds of films. But then every so often she would actually speak Comanche and it reminded us as an audience, oh yeah I don't speak Comanche. And I'd get pulled out. For example, in Star Wars they are supposed to be speaking a language called "Basic". Obviously they are really speaking English but in the SW universe there is no England and hence no English. Part of the fantasy is we as an audience understand their language.

I can deal with bad dialogue, bad CGI, shaky camera, woman being better then men at something they have been doing since dawn of time. But when mum said "have a cup of tea" I was done.

The best character was the dog.

Bottom-line: Avoid this at all costs if you love the Predador franchise.

Best of my blog: 16 years, 2092 posts, and 1 054 671 hits later

2022-08-04T00:44:00.007+01:00

Show-not-Tell: "A Brightness Long Ago" by Guy Gavriel Kay

2022-07-31T00:29:00.004+01:00

What makes up a good SF story/novel?

1. How to make your prose work on a sentence-by-sentence basis. This means some understanding of grammar but also the use of simile and metaphor to enliven the surface of your writing. Reading someone like the American James Lee Burke would be a good way of understanding how imagery works (which “A Brightness Long Ago”checks);

2. Structure - particularly beginnings and ends of chapters and Beginning-Middle-End in respect of the whole book. When do you start to reveal information? How can you use foreshadowing? Where should the heroine suffer a reversal? (which “A Brightness Long Ago”checks);

3. How to create conflict between characters to raise the reader's interest. This doesn't mean goodies versus baddies. It might mean conflict between people who are actually working towards the same goal. Readers are interested in what's going to happen next, but also in the differences between people - so you have to show those differences in a dramatic way, through their actions and their dialogue (which “A Brightness Long Ago”checks);

4. Which leads to that old warhorse, “Show not Tell”. Beginning writers often feel that they have to give you a lot of information so that you understand the context of their story and their characters. But readers are more interested in what's happening now, on the page in front of them, and will happily pick up context as they go (which “A Brightness Long Ago”does not check).

That's my syllabus, anyway. :-)

Lottery winners: "Stand on Zanzibar" by John Brunner

2022-07-23T16:57:00.009+01:00

(my edition bought in 15th of September 2000)

Should SF be seen as prescient? Only in hindsight, which makes any "predictions" worthless. Unless the author in question develops a track record of being right (in which case I'd be interested in seeing what they wrote about Bitcoin). Given the millions of SF authors, bashing out billions of pages, it is no surprise that simply due to dumb luck, some of their guesses will come true: in some form. However, since these stories have to relate to readers living in the present if the authors make up stuff that is too "out there", they will lose their readers. So any predictions are generally just linear extrapolations from the present. It is notable that almost nobody predicted the rise of the personal computer or the internet. And those who did (John Brunner's "The Shockwave Rider" from 1975 being probably the closest) did not see it becoming what it is today (the novel in which computer viruses called 'tapeworms' were 'invented'. Remember 'Stuxnet'?). Authors should not be judged on what they got right. Lottery winners are not acclaimed "prescient". Instead they should be read because their stories are well written.

Novelists don't live in a bubble. They respond to things which are going on around them and process them into fiction. Atwood, in particular, rejects the idea that her work is science fiction and sees it as speculative explorations of how real world issues might play out to create dystopias. The Handmaid's Tale was inspired by the Iranian revolution and growing religiosity in US politics, and Oryx and Crake trilogy is an exploration of climate change and social breakdown. The possibility of a pandemic seems to have been on the radar of many people for a while now (with the obvious exception of our dear government, which truly does seem to live under a rock) so it isn't surprising that it has inspired writers - Louise Welsh and Minette Walters have both written excellent and hard hitting novels on post pandemic societies in recent years.

(cost me 2450 escudos; in today's currency it'd amount to roughly 12.2 euros)

What does “Stand on Zanzibar” bring to the table? Well, it's worrying to see that the 1967 prediction Brunner used was a population of 7 billion in 2010, essentially spot on (6.9 billion in fact; I know, I looked it up…). “Stand on Zanzibar” always deserves a nod for what it got right (coming to think of it, so does "The Sheep Look Up”, and “The Jagged Orbit”).

I think it was Ursula Le Guin who said that there was no foresight in SF, only lies. Well, if the past and the present are anything to go by, the future is full of them.

Core Functions: "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson

2022-07-16T00:40:00.033+01:00

(my own copy bought in 1996 at Tema bookshop at the Xenon Mall)

Did Charles Dickens predict the welfare state, did Oscar Wilde predict single-sex marriages, did Jane Austen give any inkling that it might one day be possible for women to be enfranchised? I think the predictive power of fiction is extremely low. Futurologists have a punt at it but even they miss the mark in the vast majority of their prognostications. You know, I think the secret to good SF is to make the reader believe what they are reading is real. Like real people and places involved in fantastic situations that are completely believable, even though logic says this can not be so.

SF is not necessarily positive in its forecasts or messages. Jean Raspail's "The Camp of the Saints" from 1973 with its deplorable plot of France being overrun by illegal immigrants from Asia is seen by many as a source-book for The Great Replacement Theory advanced by white supremacist groups. One of Neal Stephenson's first novels was from 1992, “Snow Crash”, and drew on ideas and trends that were already present. I read it back then and enjoyed it, a fast moving thriller, a broken state, big corps, privatised public goods, mind viruses and the like. Information and matter in rapid motion, smashing representations and reality together like some weird large collider of another kind. William Gibson had written Neuromancer by then, so cyberpunks had a named space, a place to swarm and to grow evermore inter-pelleted and fractally entwined with meatspace, the so-called Real World.

(my own copy bought in 1996 at Tema bookshop at the Xenon Mall)

While Gibson is mostly given credit for coining the term and inspiring all sorts of people to make real aspects of his fictions there was an earlier author who kinda got there first. John M Ford's “Web of Angels” was published in 1980 and largely relates to such a linked web of machine devices, computers that afford all sorts of bodies for minds to ride like horses. It's a fun read, very inventive, very imaginative, and includes mentions of an Antikythera device, an anomalous innovation that seems out-of-place.

Science may make the familiar strange, undermine and disturb. Fictions help people re-appraise and reconsolidate some necessary structure in these suddenly new found worlds. Science and fiction are inevitably bound together. It is no great surprise to find that Science Fiction is especially relevant to our modern world of Global Environmental Change.

(my own copy bought in 1996 at Tema bookshop at the Xenon Mall)

Re-reading Stephenson’s novel after so many years the shortcomings appear to be obvious, especially the last 1/3 of it. This last 1/3 seems like old code that just gets neglected because no one can remember what it does or why it does it. And it seems the editor of this novel was afraid of what might go wrong if he touched it. So it seems new bits got bolted on as Stephenson went along, with old “core functions” getting tarted up with new “front ends” and so on. The last part should have been scrapped and the the novel “restarted” from the beginning. Writers like Stephenson may be obsolete nowadays, but wouldn't life in the pub on a Friday night be so different without them doing their stuff? Those SF writers with red rimmed poppy out eyes, telling you about their week in front of a screen, you know what I mean? We'll so miss that red glow in a dark pub when writers like Stephenson are no longer producing top-notch stuff. Instead we’ll have unending CRAPPY YA SF.

Gore-Filled Fest: "The Hunger of the Gods" by John Gwynne

2022-07-09T00:36:00.009+01:00

Many eons ago, in one of my usual outings to London in May, I went to a Titus Andronicus play (I don’t remember at what theatre). What I remember was that particular staging went for (very convincingly) graphic realism for all the various mutilations and deaths. And it was a studio production too, so the audience were literally only feet away from the mayhem. There were several occasions when members of the audience fainted and had to be discreetly removed to the foyer to recover. I remember one particular scene being a primary cause. The actress played Lavinia with exceptional power and commitment and her performance, coupled with the extreme realism in the way her injuries were depicted was often the cue for a muffled sigh of horror and a small thump from somewhere in the first few rows! All I ask of SF for is good internal consistency and some thought as to the impact bit events of fantasy would have on culture/behaviour and not a gore-filled fest without rhyme or reason. Willing suspension of disbelief is far more effective than realistic gore-filled effects. If the imaginations of audience members are dependent on super realistic gore-filled effects, then they have atrophied. Possibly this stultification is the effect of "realism" in films and TV which tries to keep slightly ahead of audience expectations, but always fails. I recollect being told that “Silence of the Lambs” was the most frightening film ever, that “Reservoir Dogs” actually showed man having his ear cut off and thrown to the floor, etc. No, I can't say I'll be rushing to read ultra realistic gore-filled effects. Paucity of imagination drives these tendencies, which worsens the condition. The most frightening effects are always the unseen ones. Has Gwynne ever read one of his own novels? I don’t know why I keep bothering. This one is even worse than the last one. Give me Abercrombie any day of the week but not Gwynne. Won’t be reading any more of Gwynnes’s work, that’s for sure. End of the line.

SF = Speculative Fiction.

Glimpses of Lisbon Watercolour: Lisbon Ex-libries

2022-07-03T14:32:00.004+01:00

07/12:

(Our turtle Sally likes to see me painting at home...)

I'm a native "alfacinha". I can't ever get tired of my City. Such a nice feel to it still, lively but not loud, busy but not intimidating, relaxed and exciting all at once. Take the funicular up the hill early evening and wander the narrow streets at the top, with bars opening and places coming to life with locals and music is a great way to spend an evening. Few glasses of wine and it's as good as it gets!

SFional FAQ: "The Shadow of the Gods" by John Gwynne

2022-07-02T18:47:00.028+01:00

I basically read SF for its creation of plausible alternate worlds - I’m not really interested in the often trite, gore-filled cliched plots. I agree with the thought that plausible realistic worlds have a depth that you can’t see, just like the real world. So asides that aren’t developed, spaces for me to fill in are good. And for it to work the author must have a vision that goes wider than the story they are telling, as it seems Gwynne is going for here. Of course if you put a lot of effort into that wider vision then you have the scope for setting more tales in the same context, without having to do so much hard work (I’m thinking 2nd volume here of this trilogy…). I’m sure authors that do that feel constrained though from time to time by wrong turnings they took earlier.

In “Shadow of the Gods”, I get the feeling Gwynne could have written a FAQ chapter, into which he could have stuffed as much world building and entertainment as possible. That’s why I always say, writers should never argue with editors; they should rather let all of them fight it out whether the expository narrative should be an appendix, or stay in second-last place. Maybe one wants the appendix; or maybe the other says the exposition is entertaining enough, fills gaps that maintain pace in the early chapters and adds punch to the wrap-up. One of the editors always wins the argument - for which writers like Gwynne should be glad. My tip - stay plausible and don't be scared of making a humongous exposition, so long as it keeps the reader entertained. But I’ve got to draw the line at having exposition left and right! Pacing-wise the novel got rather wonky at times when exposition got the better of Gwynne (which unfortunately happens a lot in his novels). Let's try the second volume next and see how it fares.

SF = Speculative Fiction.

Relevant SF: "Antarctica" by Kim Stanley Robinson

2022-06-25T01:42:00.003+01:00

(my edition from 1998 bought in Paris)

I hate the word "relevant/premonitory" when applied to SF. It seems a horribly pessimistic idea that we can only relate to things that are right in front of us or directly to do with us and our own tribe or corner of the world rather than just relating to a shared experience of being human. I´m not an Argentinian but I love Borges and Cortázar. I never grew up in the post-revolutionary USSR but I love the work of Andrey Platonov. Ditto with Iceland in the 1900s and Halldor Laxness´s “Independent People”. They´re relevant to me because they describe the experience of being humans. All books, no matter how contemporary, will one day be set in "the past". All books will one day describe a world that no longer exists. Re-reading for example "Lanark" by Alasdair Gray, somewhat closer in time and geography to my own upbringing at the British Council, I was struck by how that too is set in, both in terms of actual setting and in its mental landscape and attitudes, a Scotland that has now largely passed into myth just as much as the Scotland of clans and crofters and clearances had before it. Our world, or rather our worlds, our individual experiences and memories and perceptions that mold our realities, are always doomed to oblivion, even if the physical places survive. That´s what I like about “Antarctica” - it preserves these individual slices of worlds from being forgotten, at least for a little while, before climate change changes it forever.

(Gibert Jeune bookshop, Paris, 1998, 95 Francs; 2880 escudos - 14.4 euros)

For me, that´s where the relevance of SF comes from and it´ll remain relevant as long as humans still exist. I think people will always want to read about the past - people haven't stopped reading Dickens or Jane Austen, Shakespeare or Graham Greene because the world they describe has largely disappeared. The human conflicts and dramas they describe are as relevant as ever. So, even if our world changes beyond recognition - some people will still read books, and mostly they'll read the new stuff, the stuff that hasn't been written yet, but a few people will read the old books like “Antarctica”, because we all want to be Wade (one of the characters in the novel) and not because they are relevant, but because they're good. Unfortunately, I had to go back to one of Stanley Robinson’s earlier ones to recover the feeling that he can still write good SF. Will people read Stanley Robinson in the future…? Who knows? What I do know is that “Antarctica” is his best work so far.

SF = Speculative Fiction.

Nespolino: Homemade Loquat Liqueur

2022-06-23T00:17:00.032+01:00

(23.06.2022 -> let's see what I'll get after a few months of marinating in the jar...Aiming to take the first sip in the Fall)

(23.05.2022)

(My biggest loquat tree in the garden)

(My smaller loquat tree in the garden)

Meh: "Annals of the Black Company" by Glenn Cook

2022-06-19T01:30:00.005+01:00

A long time ago, when Grimdark was not Grimdark, I came across the “Black Company” books and read the first three. After so many eons, I decided to have another go to see how they’d withstand the test of time. This time round, maybe because I read the the first trilogy in one go, I found the change over the three books awkward. The first book is exactly what it is marketed as even back then: the lives of a group of hardened soldiers in a very dark, war-ravaged world. The characters aren't necessarily good, and they aren't heroes in the traditional fantasy sense. Of course we have a big war going on and it’s widespread all over the continent and our characters are the usual mere cogs in the narrative. The highlight of the first book is the comradeship of the soldiers. The next two novels definitely get weirder as we get into the bigger issues. Our characters actually start to become The Heroes a la Abercrombie, which is a little uncomfortable. Suddenly, our crew of nobody squaddies are the ones who are finding the super-secret talismans, and our company becomes the center of a prophecy that could disjoint the world's incredibly overpowered overlords. We stumble on to the secret history of the dark powers in the world, that only our single team of wonderful and all-knowing soldiers now knows (and are the only survivors of - the usual fantasy fodder basically). Little of it is well-explained; you just have to agree to "go with it" and hope that eventually we will find out what is going on as our characters find out. There are numerous unexplained jumps in the narrative and you just have to follow along hoping an explanation will be provided. There are some interesting characters, and conflicts abound. The writing is not very descriptive but still shows a somewhat minimalist use of language. I personally can't stand awkward exposition or info dumps that we see in a lot of fantasy, so It was a breath of fresh air fantasy-wise. My favourite point of the series was that I liked that the novels were only around 300ish pages long and weren’t padded out to a 1,000 page door-stoppers because every rock has to be described (*argh*) as we see in a lot of contemporary Fantasy. Still a meh read after all these years.

Quintessential ÜberSF: "The Complete Robot" by Isaac Asimov

2022-06-12T01:14:00.038+01:00

(my edition still in quite good condition even after almost 30 years...)

I genuinely think the critical opposition to SF is increasingly overstated; I'm not entirely sure what "being taken seriously" even means any more except in the nerd media sense of "nothing but glowing praise from serious critics". The greats of SF - the real greats, that is, the authors who have properly endured and those new authors who have something really interesting to say - do do well. But perhaps the reason there's little serious critical comment on SF is that there's not a lot to say about it? It's well supported in the popular media, and the amateur/blog scenes, so does it need to be included in the broadsheets or LRB too?

I think the major complaint is that the very best of SF books never make the longlists/shortlists of mainstream literary awards. If these mainstream awards were marketed as best in the nebulous maybe-genre of literary fiction this wouldn't be a problem, but they're marketed as best in all fiction. If you have an award that markets itself as best in all fiction, yet continually overlooks talented writers in a certain field, then SF has a fair complaint of being stuck with an implied second-class citizenship status tag. Except that the ones who "endure" tend to be the ones with something to them often described in terms of having something "beyond" the SF exterior, and so on. You even use the term "serious critics" to apparently describe non-specifically-SF critics.

These books have "crossover appeal" or "something to say about people as well as technology". Not direct quotes but attitudes prevalent in those "serious critics"' positive reviews of SF. The problem isn't that there's exactly opposition - fantasy and SF series on TV and in the written word do still get critical praise - but there is differentiation. The SF aspects of the fiction are deemed the coating, and it's only when the SF work has some serious part to it as well that it becomes "good" or "taken seriously". There's something in the attitude there that says that SF is inherently juvenile or lesser to those great novels with something to say about the human spirit or society or whatever.

A SF novel that's a good novel shouldn't have to be a crossover novel - it should just be a good SF novel. There's still a stigma to the term science fiction that has more to do with stereotypes of the fans (and therefore writers) of those works, which are still pretty prevalent. It might not be restricted to the white male shut-in, but it's still often associated with a certain type of social ineptitude. Yeah, "mainstream" culture is happily incorporating "nerd" culture into its allusions and characters these days, but they're still a curiosity, a kind of benign freakshow. It might not be all that negative or persecuting, but it still refuses to see SF as something that can be thrilling and profound in its own right.

(2200 escudos back in 1994; bought in Valentim de Carvalho vynil and bookshop in Rossio; incidentally this shop does exist anymore...)

I don't think 'true' SF will ever win literary awards. In it's purest form it's a philosophical or intellectual genre that undertakes a fundamentally different job from 'literary' fiction. Literary fiction is descended from the novel, which stood in contrast to older forms of romance or satirical/philosophical prose in that it tried to capture the nature of human experience (albeit often with a moral or political purpose). SF's roots lie in an older satirical and philosophical approach, (and that's without considering romances, which are closer to genre fiction as a whole).

SF ideas are often used as metaphors in more novellistic approaches - that's a huge part of P K Dick's appeal as his use of androids and replicants and illusion expresses something complex about the human experience. These are mixed up with dystopic elements drawn from SF's satirical roots, but the reason for his strong critical reputation is that his works are essentially novelistic - they try and show us what it is to be alive and human (rather than tell us how we should be alive or human).

Contrast this with “The Complete Robot” (which I re-read recently after about thirty years away) which is very clearly a philosophical and Utopian work with little interest in cracking open the nature of human experience. It's not a matter of one being better than the other (although I personally think that the novelistic approach has a more enduring appeal) but that the goals of the two types of writing make them impossible to compare. To be honest, I don't think that SF fans and critics have a strong idea of what SF is really for. Even awards lists within the genre can be made of books with very different goals and approaches which makes choosing between them very difficult - it's the old business of do you prefer a book that does a simple thing well or one that doesn't quite pull off something very ambitious?

How to judge fiction? If we take literature seriously then we surely need to look at the best examples, and there are several mentioned in the article and the comments above (but nothing of Christopher Priest's "The Adjacent" - another outstanding author woefully ignored by the mainstream). However, SF fans can, in my opinion, often be their own (and even their beloved authors) worst enemies. Lots of indifferent or poor writers in SF and 'fantasy' are buttressed by undiscriminating fans prepared to buy any old crap that they churn out. Even worse, there often seems to be little or no interest in reading anything much outside the genre, with the result that fans frequently have naive and inflated opinions of the qualities of the stuff they read. I'm totally weary of excitable 'fan recommendations' taking me to books that are just shoddily written crap, and fed up of standards of evaluation that are so limited. This is partially true of any 'genre' fiction, but you rarely hear of other genre readers absolutely demanding that their chosen literature must be taken seriously by the mainstream.

Call me a snob if you wish, but just to repeat, we need to look at the best examples to judge literature, and apart from a handful of authors, much SF and 'fantasy' is really just awful.

I'm adding an additional note, because after some reflection, I think an example might clarify my criticism: take “The Complete Robot” as a prime example. I won’t even bother calling it a SF collection. Why the need to classify it at all as a SF? Why not just accord it the status of a favourite/excellent/great collection of short-stories? Place it in the company of some of the other fine collections of the last 200 years. See how it fares: does it get its ba...sorry, shins kicked? Does it stand proud? It’s a great collection even after 30 years. Period. There are reviewers who do this sort of thing with verve, intelligence, and fearlessness. The Australian writer and critic James Bradley is a wonderful example, who also, by the way, includes M. John Harrison’s “Empty Space” on his Best Books of 2012 list - note 'Best Books', not 'Best SF Books' or something of that ilk - and who also, interestingly, compares George R.R. Martin and Hilary Mantel. “The Complete Robot” will still be read when I’m not around any more. I wonder how many contemporary works (be it SF or not) will still be read 50 years from now.

SF = Speculative Fiction.

Pornish Fabulation: "Kingdoms of Death" by Christopher Ruocchio

2022-06-04T01:07:00.014+01:00

Fantasy, myth and imagination are integral parts of the human psyche; to try and reject them even as fictions is the sign of a mind that wants to suppress its true nature in order to appear "better" based on societal norms - hence the opprobrium levelled at Fantasy. What I am saying is that magic, commercialism and fantasy are alike in that the motivation behind them all is to deceive (either for good or evil). Consequently they are shallow - like the facades in a film set - and a common environment for those who wish to profit from deceiving. That is not to say that they can not be entertaining, each, after all, relies upon it's allure. To which I would not count myself immune - I enjoy magician's performances, I smile at chimpanzee removal men playing pianos and I think the Gormenghast trilogy is fantastic. But what they do not have is depth. People are mistaken when they assign intellectual heft to them, they are confectioneries not sustaining rich stews. Take “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” say. Because this has depth, it can not be fantasy. Alice has much to say about childhood experience, education at the time and so on. “Gormenghast” has not depth, it has sophistication, cohesion and complexity, but only as a consequence of its fully realised fantasy. A picture of a naked woman is art or pornography because of its purpose, not because the observer views it as art or pornography. Sorry to be so deluded. What about the 4^th installment of the Sun Eater? Almost as good as the other three (but not quite there).

For me Fantasy (Urban or not, Space Opera or not) should be about modern-day fabulation, and not about "rebooting" old stories; like any truly great interpretation of past works, there is something more than just rehashing and feature-spotting. Even genre authors should be challenging this "world-building" novel trope; we are no longer dominated by the Salvatores, Eddings and Jordans with their endless glossaries of fantasy terms. Do we have modern fabulists? Not sure. I'd say Ruocchio, Mieville and Gaiman and suchlike are very much taking the fabulist approach, even if not slavishly rewriting fairytales. Too bad this time round, Roucchio decided to go down the torture porn path…not necessary. Let’s hope the next novel is better than this one.

Start-up vs. Big Company Buzz: "The Project: Developing a Career in Global Project Management" by David Power

2022-05-28T01:10:00.000+01:00

Something I see too often is the inverse opposite issue with project management when corporate leaders become tasked with a responsibility, something recurring annually, maybe a huge event, something with a sizeable budget, predictable but different each time, and they don't have the skills for project management as much as we have with coping skills and learning from our mistakes - they seek out someone to promote from within, and no one ever wants to step up or down or sideways into project management - it's like at every area in a large company I've ever worked for everyone avoids it like the plague and people get 'stuck' with the title. I envy those that WANT the title, where are you, people?! How should a company turn such a need into a hireable position from outside - when they always want to promote from within but no one is willing, and those that do interview seem reticent to do something they're unfamiliar with without a long training. With books like these we always came looking for insights in finding the right kind of people to hire who won't wait around for parameters to follow from previous projects but think creatively and research their asses off to find new solutions we didn't think of. I always say: “WHERE ARE THESE PEOPLE?!”

For a junior role in project management I can firmly say that someone aspiring to PM: should they start off at a small company (<40 people) or at large organisation (thousands of employees)? That’s the one million dollar question. I would probably opt for a larger organisation due to the benefits including access to more resources, working alongside amazing people who are very experienced and more exposure (I started at a very large company myself many eons ago). However, I do see the allure of working for a small company and the advantage of being able to potentially have the ability to mould your career based on your wants in a shorter space of time. Overall, it depends on the person; if you want the comfort, abundance and professionalism of a large organisation, go for it. If you want the start-up buzz, (probably) less corporate environment and (potentially) more control over your future, pick the right company and get that PM role. Either way, choose to be a PM; don’t let the company decide for you that you’ll work as a PM…

Many people simply think that Project Management is about being organized and having the ability to follow a schedule. This is far from the truth and even more so when you are managing Global Projects. Although its not an easy job, for those who truly enjoy all aspects of Project Management, they will enjoy the challenges, the failures, and the victories that comes with it.

There's a lot of talk about the technical aspect (PMP, etc.) of project management. Not much about the soft skill angle of it. In IT services, project management has more or less become a default path for career progression. It's important to understand if one has the aptitude for project management. It's great to see somebody coming forward to talk about it as Powers did when addressing Project Management at a global scale.

Addressing the elephant in the room: I think it's time, people start talking about the intricacies or the deeper aspects of this career path, so that the future generation can benefit from it and make informed career choices.

Mimetic Fiction: "To Be Taught, If Fortunate" by Becky Chambers

2022-05-21T01:24:00.002+01:00

Don't listen to the people telling you that you have to read more contemporary SF. Why? Because you cannot judge contemporary SF with any authority without having read a reasonable amount of old stuff. SF is an evolutionary genre, so it needs to evolve to stay relevant: you'll actually find that much contemporary SF is not that much more advanced in a literary or thematic sense than what was produced in the late 1980s - as that decade ended, progress in SF's evolution slowed enormously and a lot - not all of it, but a lot of it - is simply riffing on themes that were covered extensively between 1950 and 1990. I find that almost everyone who sticks to what is new has no contextual or historical overview of the genre, which you need to make informed judgements.

For example, I find Weir very traditional and he's done nothing to move SF forward - 'A Fall of Moondust' is fairly routine even for Clarke - Charles Logan's 'Shipwreck' and Joanna Russ' 'We Who Are About To...' tackled Weir's first novel concept and put it to bed in the 70s. Chambers is pretty much a soap opera writer who seems unable to handle conceptual breakthrough - for example, 'To Be Taught If Fortunate' really fails to take Blish's concept of Pantropy from the 1950s any further. Her character-focus approach is a lighter version of what Maureen F. McHugh did in the early 90s with far more facility and maturity - not that I'm averse to characterisation, anything but, but Chambers isn't that great at it. I agree that turning a mirror toward society is important, but SF does this metaphorically, through a glass darkly rather than directly like mimetic fiction - SF reflects in a distorting mirror rather than just holding it up to nature such a representational view of Art is pre-modern and a bit simplistic for the fractured realities of the contemporary world, I feel. The vast majority of contemporary SF writers don't really signal paradigm shift very well and are pretty unsurprising in their lack of innovation - they're comfort reads only in my opinion. Look at the work of Dave Hutchinson, Nina Allan, Adam Roberts, Chris Beckett, Tom Toner and old master Gibson, Priest and M. John Harrison. These are the people pushing the envelope. Emma Newman is fine too and Tchaikovsky has his moments (and lots of crap too). I'm not saying don't read contemporary SF at all, I'm saying it really isn't that vibrant currently - especially when compared to (for example) the 1980s. I respect the opposing points of view, as it does mirror that of a large number of readers I see on Goodreads saying this is a masterpiece, but most contemporary SF is inherently explored by conservative writers with seemingly low literary ambitions. There are not truly evolutionary writers right now in contemporary SF (maybe Ada Palmer, and K. J. Parker could fit the bill but what do I know…), though admittedly this is a very tough call for all SF writers now, to innovate after a century or more of mass media - after all, we've all seen everything now...or have we? Have a good day.

SF = Speculative Fiction.

Protocyberpunk: "Licht - Die Trilogie" von M. John Harrison

2022-05-15T01:08:00.011+01:00

In "Light" by M John Harrison the blurb on the back was actually the ending for some reason. This was one of the few things I remembered about the novel when I first read it in English. After re-reading the trilogy after all these years, I still feel that was a very odd choice. I don't usually even read the blurb on the back cover. I like to go in blind, so to speak, and let the story win me over on its merits, especially if it's an author I've not read before. If the title or the cover intrigues me, I'll try it, but I have managed to break my obsession with having to finish a book, so if it's crap out it goes. I think that reading the blurb worked for “Light”, though. Although a Wikipedia overview really isn't the same thing as the back blurb, it's the closest thing to an alternative version I could find — and it somehow seems to suggest something that's a little more rip-roaring and then… I don't know. “Light” in a nutshell is space opera and also protocyberpunk without the noir.

“Light” is more successful than “Nova Swing” (in some days I’d venture to say it’s really crap)… and maybe about the same as “Empty Space” (also crap in some days, and not crap in some others). Now that I think about it, I did come to “Light” from another angle: I read something else by John Harrison, and I think he called it quits with writing bleak science fiction, weird fiction, and using that sort of prose style that only Harrison can do; I believe I may have read this novel’s blurb after the book itself. But now, some years after reading it and having recently re-read it, I think of “Light” as being more of a puzzle box, with the blurb as being the 'solution' and (if read first) something that might function to give the narrative(s) some sense of inevitability that might juxtapose nicely with the ideas of choice.

When I'm reading a good John Harrison's novel it always seems to me the narrative is packed differently when compared to other authors, i.e., it seems there's more information between the words...In "Light" there's rewarding in rereading for those that want it....but maybe not a lot of answers.

In the same trilogy, “Nova Swing” and “Empty Space” are sort of similar in some of their mood and style: Nova Swing's sort of like Tarkovsky crossed with Chandler, and “Empty Space” combines that Tarkovsky/Chandler mix with Light's shenanigans.

He's an author I always look forward to reading, but I find quite tricky to recommend. John Harrison is not a writer, he’s an author. Actual authors like John Harrison don't give a rat's ass what you do. They don't even care if you read what they've written. After all, they're not in it for the money. Like writers are. Life is way too short to take it completely seriously, and silly stuff often makes it worth living. That said, reading is a great thing for me and I advise anybody to do it. What is a wrong or right book is a matter of taste.

NB: Diesmal habe ich die ganze trilogie auf Deutsch gelesen.