Book Foo Post
Dec. 16th, 2007 10:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6Some Book Foo!
Finished: Quarantine, by Greg Egan
Started: Mysterium, by Robert Charles Wilson (reread)
Minor spoilers behind the cut - not so much big spoilers, but things that the back of the book _should_ have said. Quick thoughts: Liked it.
The back of the book goes at great length to describe how the book is about how unknown forces enclosed the solar system in an impenetrable bubble, blocking out the stars, and so on. Actually, for most of the book this is only background, it's not really what the book is _about_ - its not irrelevent, the plot certainly involves it, but the book is about much more. Mostly it's about what happens when people have the ability to customize their brain with mods that let them do various things, block out or enhance certain emotions or tasks, and the negative things that can happen when that's done. (I have encountered a different edition of the book which mentions this, so the problem is probably with my edition). And really, that's the more interesting part of the story. Egan does pretty well with it, and scattered within are some really cool ideas and (abstract) mental images. It's a very different book from Spin (which also involved a barrier 'blocking out the stars' but was much more focused on it), and though I think I liked Spin better, it's not entirely fair to compare them (yes, I know I just did). Still, it was a reasonably fun read.
Finished: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, by Max Brooks
Started: Broken Angels, by Richard Morgan
Very minor WWZ spoilers beyond the cut.
Overall I rather enjoyed it. I might have preferred a little more focus on particular characters telling their whole story, rather than a wide variety telling little tiny pieces of their survival scenario, but it is at least a different take on the whole zombie apocalypse, which is usually very tight and closed in on one group, rather than seeing how everybody is doing. It's also more optomistic than most (it's not really a spoiler since the book is written from the perspective of people who survived the 'war'). But there's some nice thought here into what people would do, treating the problem with some degree of logic after the initial panic set in, how the world might cope with an invasion and prepare so that it doesn't happen again, as well as exploring some of the myriad complications of how the zombie plague works.
My big problem with the book came from its annoying curious shyness to mention by name anybody in the 'present day' who is famous or political. They dance around the issue. They refer to what I assume must be the Iraq war as the 'last brushfire war', and talk about the President in power at the time, but never give names. This is annoying because all the people the author makes up, there are names used frequently... some of them are so vivid I thought they were historical characters until I looked them up. If the author wanted to make it recognizably our world, he should have used the names. It feels false otherwise. It's supposed to be a historyish book. A few people might not be mentioned by name, but, well, ask people about their memories about 9/11 and the immediate aftermath, why it happened, they're not going to say "the administration of the time" did this or "the mayor of New York", they're going to say "Bush" and "Guliani". It really took me out of the story every single time they vaguely alluded to a real person but did contortions to avoid actually saying the name. (The worst of it was the VP in the immediate aftermath who was a presidential candidate before the war, and was referred to only as "the Whacko").
Failing using the real names, if legal reasons couldn't allow that, he should have invented names and at least kept the feel of _a_ real world that _could_ have been ours.
There were also a few times where some parts of the world felt a little phony or stereotypical, but I suppose I'm not really in a position to judge having never seen them firsthand myself or know how much the author researched. And in a book which spans the whole world, giving reactions of various areas, written by one author, I think it's understandable if there are a few places where it doesn't feel authentic.
Still, certainly worth a read.
Now, after having read the book, does it have any bearing on my Great Canadian Zombie Film idea? Thoughts behind cut (only the minorest WWZ spoilers)
I was disappointed, but not terribly surprised, to find that WWZ does deal with zombies freezing in the cold. However, it's not a _big_ part of the story, and I came up with it independently, so I still feel justified in using it as a big part of my hypothetical zombie movie. I also would be using my own rules for zombies, some of which match Brooks (as one would expect) but some which are different, too. So, no particular conflicts. The GCZF would be focused on a small area with a limited number of survivors, and so of course be very different in feel anyway.
Finished: Quarantine, by Greg Egan
Started: Mysterium, by Robert Charles Wilson (reread)
Minor spoilers behind the cut - not so much big spoilers, but things that the back of the book _should_ have said. Quick thoughts: Liked it.
The back of the book goes at great length to describe how the book is about how unknown forces enclosed the solar system in an impenetrable bubble, blocking out the stars, and so on. Actually, for most of the book this is only background, it's not really what the book is _about_ - its not irrelevent, the plot certainly involves it, but the book is about much more. Mostly it's about what happens when people have the ability to customize their brain with mods that let them do various things, block out or enhance certain emotions or tasks, and the negative things that can happen when that's done. (I have encountered a different edition of the book which mentions this, so the problem is probably with my edition). And really, that's the more interesting part of the story. Egan does pretty well with it, and scattered within are some really cool ideas and (abstract) mental images. It's a very different book from Spin (which also involved a barrier 'blocking out the stars' but was much more focused on it), and though I think I liked Spin better, it's not entirely fair to compare them (yes, I know I just did). Still, it was a reasonably fun read.
Finished: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, by Max Brooks
Started: Broken Angels, by Richard Morgan
Very minor WWZ spoilers beyond the cut.
Overall I rather enjoyed it. I might have preferred a little more focus on particular characters telling their whole story, rather than a wide variety telling little tiny pieces of their survival scenario, but it is at least a different take on the whole zombie apocalypse, which is usually very tight and closed in on one group, rather than seeing how everybody is doing. It's also more optomistic than most (it's not really a spoiler since the book is written from the perspective of people who survived the 'war'). But there's some nice thought here into what people would do, treating the problem with some degree of logic after the initial panic set in, how the world might cope with an invasion and prepare so that it doesn't happen again, as well as exploring some of the myriad complications of how the zombie plague works.
My big problem with the book came from its annoying curious shyness to mention by name anybody in the 'present day' who is famous or political. They dance around the issue. They refer to what I assume must be the Iraq war as the 'last brushfire war', and talk about the President in power at the time, but never give names. This is annoying because all the people the author makes up, there are names used frequently... some of them are so vivid I thought they were historical characters until I looked them up. If the author wanted to make it recognizably our world, he should have used the names. It feels false otherwise. It's supposed to be a historyish book. A few people might not be mentioned by name, but, well, ask people about their memories about 9/11 and the immediate aftermath, why it happened, they're not going to say "the administration of the time" did this or "the mayor of New York", they're going to say "Bush" and "Guliani". It really took me out of the story every single time they vaguely alluded to a real person but did contortions to avoid actually saying the name. (The worst of it was the VP in the immediate aftermath who was a presidential candidate before the war, and was referred to only as "the Whacko").
Failing using the real names, if legal reasons couldn't allow that, he should have invented names and at least kept the feel of _a_ real world that _could_ have been ours.
There were also a few times where some parts of the world felt a little phony or stereotypical, but I suppose I'm not really in a position to judge having never seen them firsthand myself or know how much the author researched. And in a book which spans the whole world, giving reactions of various areas, written by one author, I think it's understandable if there are a few places where it doesn't feel authentic.
Still, certainly worth a read.
Now, after having read the book, does it have any bearing on my Great Canadian Zombie Film idea? Thoughts behind cut (only the minorest WWZ spoilers)
I was disappointed, but not terribly surprised, to find that WWZ does deal with zombies freezing in the cold. However, it's not a _big_ part of the story, and I came up with it independently, so I still feel justified in using it as a big part of my hypothetical zombie movie. I also would be using my own rules for zombies, some of which match Brooks (as one would expect) but some which are different, too. So, no particular conflicts. The GCZF would be focused on a small area with a limited number of survivors, and so of course be very different in feel anyway.
