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newnumber6Finished: Babel-17, by Samuel R. Delany
Started: American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
Thoughts, minor spoilers, after the cut tag...
Unfortunately Babel-17 bogged down a little in the middle (with the whole 'style' thing), so I didn't like it as much as I hoped, but there were still a lot of nifty ideas here. From 'discorporate' (dead) people being used to perform certain jobs, to the main theme of language, and how certain languages might lack certain ideas and prevent concepts from being even considered. This idea came up to a certain extent in 1984, with Newspeak, but it was more developed here, and the reverse was explored... languages in which certain insights are actually part of the language, such that a race with a highly technical language was described as being able to perfectly replicate a human-designed building, right down to the color of the walls, using only something like 9 words to describe it to each other. I'm not sure it'd work to that extent, but still, there is some validity to the idea that our language contains certain assumptions we might not see unless we saw them from the perspective of another.
American Gods focuses on Shadow, a man just released from prison, only to find the life he was waiting to come home to has suddenly fallen apart with the death of his wife. He meets a man on the plane ride to the funeral who offers him a job, which presumably gets him drawn into the apocalyptic events that the back of the book talks about. So far, as usual with Gaiman, it's very easy reading, he has a very smooth style that you can sink right into without much trouble. I haven't gotten deep enough into the plot to say how good it is, but I'm enjoying it for the moment at least.
Started: American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
Thoughts, minor spoilers, after the cut tag...
Unfortunately Babel-17 bogged down a little in the middle (with the whole 'style' thing), so I didn't like it as much as I hoped, but there were still a lot of nifty ideas here. From 'discorporate' (dead) people being used to perform certain jobs, to the main theme of language, and how certain languages might lack certain ideas and prevent concepts from being even considered. This idea came up to a certain extent in 1984, with Newspeak, but it was more developed here, and the reverse was explored... languages in which certain insights are actually part of the language, such that a race with a highly technical language was described as being able to perfectly replicate a human-designed building, right down to the color of the walls, using only something like 9 words to describe it to each other. I'm not sure it'd work to that extent, but still, there is some validity to the idea that our language contains certain assumptions we might not see unless we saw them from the perspective of another.
American Gods focuses on Shadow, a man just released from prison, only to find the life he was waiting to come home to has suddenly fallen apart with the death of his wife. He meets a man on the plane ride to the funeral who offers him a job, which presumably gets him drawn into the apocalyptic events that the back of the book talks about. So far, as usual with Gaiman, it's very easy reading, he has a very smooth style that you can sink right into without much trouble. I haven't gotten deep enough into the plot to say how good it is, but I'm enjoying it for the moment at least.
