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newnumber6Lots of reading done recently that I need to get caught up on. So, without further ado...
Finished: The Evolutionary Void by Peter F. Hamilton
The third and final book of a series (although there was a previous series set hundreds of years in the same universe), The Evolutionary Void concludes the story of a "void" in the center of the galaxy that apparently contains a paradise-type world full of psychic powers, that lots of people want to enter, except doing so threatens the whole galaxy if it expands.
I like the series as a whole, and it's hard to talk about it without going over the same grounds I've talked about before. I suppose the only important thing to discuss is "Is it a satisfying conclusion?", and the answer is...
No, not entirely. However, GETTING to the conclusion is satisfying to a certain extent, even most of the book is enjoyable. It's just when they actually get to the point where the Void issue is dealt with, it's... a little too pat. (Spoilers, not major ones, no huge mystery-blowing ones, but some)
Occasionally, I'll read a book series where you can tell the author fell in love with his own characters, because when the conclusion happens, everybody gets an almost absurdly happy ending, to the point of people thought dead (or actually dead) coming back, conflicts settled, promotions given, heroism moments given, mysteries solved revealing characters who really did die had some spectacularly unheard of awesome effect on the universe, etc, etc.
This isn't quite that bad. But there is SOME of that vibe to it. And I think, to the book's detriment. I don't need a complete grimdark ending, I don't expect one, but for such a big sprawling storyline with so many plotlines, I'd hope that at least some turned out badly.
And, beyond that, the solution itself, it seemed too quick and reliant on aspects of the Void that were iffy enough already.
So, it's an enjoyable ride, but seems to go off the rails particularly at the point where everybody (well, not EVERYBODY, but a bunch of storylines at once) make it inside the Void.
I still think I might read it again at some point, though.
Finished: Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd Century America by Robert Charles Wilson
This is a story of... 22nd Century America. Which is a lot like 19th Century America, due to the world essentially running out of oil, and a fundamentalist religious revival that spurns the knowledge that they blame for getting the world into the crises of the past centuries. It's told by a writer friend of the title character, who is the nephew of the President (more like Dictator), and a potential rival, and who has plenty of unorthodox ideas.
This story almost reads like the author wanted to write a Civil War era story (or maybe earlier, but it feels very Civil Warish to me), except he knew that his bread and butter was SF fans, and so he set it in the future that gave him much of what he wanted, and allowed him to improvise other elements. I've liked Wilson's work before, but this one doesn't do it for me, it feels a bit... artificial, ironically because of the attempt to give it a naturalistic style, as of someone who wrote in the past, with occasional asides to the audience, and footnotes, and things like that. However, as the writer is occasionally very naive, this causes some problems such as an overly indulgent tongue-in-cheek vibe to certain passages were we know he is supposed to not understand something that we do. Also a bit annoying is his perfectly transcribing foreign languages that he doesn't understand or provide a translation of (with at least one of the language, there is, towards the end, an excuse given), but you can tell he, or others, are extremely misinterpretting what is being said. And, like I said, it feels artificial.
A more significant problem is I rarely got especially interested or invested in the world, and loathing many of the characters in the artistocracy (who, granted, were meant to be despicable) doesn't help. I mean, it's a little annoying to read a character earnestly defend slavery as natural, even if it's not meant to be approved of.
Compare this to The Windup Girl, which also relies a little on a "out of oil, so old ways become more common" idea, but the difference is, I was INTERESTED in that world. This one, I wasn't, especially, even when they brought in the occasional reference to higher tech (or, more commonly, tech that we're all familiar with but is much higher than the local standard, which can occasionally provide interesting contrasts, but in this book, not so much). It just felt like I was tricked into reading a historical-esque story.
It's not horrible, I never seriously contemplated just not finishing, and a certain type of person might really like it, and it does some nice things like (minor spoiler for a character element) the title character being gay, but a big deal never being made of it solely because his best friend/narrator is totally oblivious to it. And also occasional bits, like the time at war, were actually interesting. But I don't expect I'll read it again anytime soon, perhaps ever.
I did find it for only $2 (discount clearance bin at a bookstore), so I suppose I can't complain much.
Finished: The Sunless Countries (Book Four of Virga) by Karl Schroeder
Another novel set in Virga, an approximately Earth-sized engineered habitat, filled with air and small cities who must rotate to produce their own gravity and use fusion suns to provide light and warmth.
This novel brings back Hayden Griffith from the first novel in the series, although really it's the story of Leal, a university professor in a country that, as the title implies, doesn't have its own sun... they don't live in complete darkness, their cities are lit, but it's lit like a city might be lit at night. She must struggle with her country's politics changing dramatically for the worse, all while there's a mysterious outside threat... a threat that might be from outside Virga itself.
Always enjoy this series, and this one is no exception... both fun big SF ideas and low-tech swashbuckling adventure, coexisting in one seamlessly. And one of Schroeder's strengths - people who seem like villains but who have a point (although not all of the bad folks in this one share that quality).
Slight weaknesses in that some of the virulent political struggle in the city read a bit too silly, and occasionally the story jumped a few months suddenly when I'd have liked to stay a little longer. Also, usually in this series, the story of each book more or less stands alone. There are plot threads that continue from book to book and sometimes a supporting character is left in one place in one book and takes the lead in another book to finish their story, but it still feels like each is its own story. But in this case it felt a lot more like a cliffhanger ending, that this was only part of the story.
Still, looking forward to reading the conclusion (Ashes of Candesce), although I think I'll still wait till paperback.
Finished: Catching Fire (Book Two of the Hunger Games Trilogy) by Suzanne Collins
Don't want to give a plot outline because it kind of spoils the first book. But behind the cut later there may be some of that by implication. So, anyway, although I did enjoy this book more than the first one, it still suffers from many of the same weaknesses.
But let's get one out of the way it improves on, at least. In the first book, I complained that except for a very small group of characters, nobody else in the games (or the book, in fact) seems to get any development. In this one, they don't have that much of a problem - quite a lot of them get some development.
However, that almost highlights one of my other problems. (Spoilers, where I'll also go into the other problems)
It feels like a lot of the times, characters, like plot twists, just exist as... tools, for the author. Very blunt tools. So many times a character will survive just long enough to give some vital clue that helps the game of the others, and then once they're no longer of any use, they can be discarded.
It's the same way that there are often threats that cause OMG DRAMA AND TENSION AND FEAR, but then all the EFFECTS of such are almost instantly wiped out a short time later. People suffer horrifying chemical burns from one of the gamesmaster tricks, but then it turns out, water makes it all better! Nothing has the power of feeling like it happens because it's a real world and real consequences follow actions, it feels like it happens because the writer needs something to happen and engineers the story around it.
Still, I did like it better than the first, the tension is higher and it feels like the main character actually makes more choices instead of just being backed into things.
I am going to finish the series.. in fact, my brother just borrowed the last book from my stepbrother, as apparently he and his wife also enjoy it, and they're not normally readers. I've said it before: Even though I think it's overrated (though I do enjoy it), I have to applaud them for getting people excited about reading.
Anyway, I'll read it after my brother (though I'll still probably buy the last book myself, since I like owning books, though this means I can wait for it to be used).
Finished: The Lord of the Sands of Time by Issui Ogawa
This is another book from the Haika Soru imprint, which takes Japanese SF novels and translates them and releases them in North America. They're also, I shouldn't have been surprised to find out and yet somehow was, the same company that released Battle Royale here (though, at the time, not under the name). So far I've had good experiences with them.
This one is an alien invasion story, with a twist... the aliens keep traveling back in time to earlier and earlier eras in their quest for total victory, forcing the human side to do the same, sending their AI war cyborgs back to create alternate timelines and repel them. Most of the story is set in an alternate 3rd century Japan, although there are chapters set throughout history.
I'm not thrilled at all the handling of time travel and timelines in the book, it feels a little sloppy and inconsistent at times, which I normally hate, and includes things like "allies already in the past sometimes disappear if the future makes their creation impossible" (but sometimes don't, too!), and sometimes I feel like the alien threat (even though it's designed to be not impossible to defeat, but hard to completely eradicate and that's what you need to do to win) seem to occasionally be too stupid to believe (in that if they were a little smarter they SHOULD be undefeatable, and there's no reason given what else we know about them that they aren't).
That said, I really enjoyed the book as a whole, it had a nice heart throughout and an epic scale. Suffers from the usual 'translated story problem' (characters, dialogue and just plain writing style sometimes feeling a bit stilted, perhaps due to translation) but less so than some of the other books of this imprint I've read.
Finished: Transition by Iain M. Banks
Unusual for Banks, a SF novel that doesn't take place in the Culture, or even in space at all (really, if it takes place in space, even if it's not actually a Culture book, it often feels like it might as well be, just in a part of the universe far away from their influence). This book takes place on Earth, or rather Earths. It's about parallel universe, and a shadowy group who travel from world to world using a special drug, and manipulating events to their liking, and particularly about a power struggle within the group. It jumps around from a bunch of different characters and viewpoints.
It starts out rather well, a quite entertaining setup, a mysterious organization that might be good or bad or bits of both, peeks at other worlds, all the good stuff that a multiple-universe themed story can get into. And it stays that way though most of the book.
Unfortunately, it all kinds of falls apart at the end (not as bad as City at the End of Time, another book that had people who could jump into parallel universes and also turned to $!@$ at the end), many of the storylines that get significant page time tend to not really matter much to the plot (at least, not enough to need that much time), questions that were looming never get resolved. It all goes to hell when (spoilers ahoy) a character develops a bunch of new powers that were unheard of before (the first one, that's okay, it's the subsequent ones that get out of hand). And then other characters with new powers are used to chase them. And then there's a big confrontation, but it doesn't seem to matter because it doesn't really feel like it comes directly out of the hundreds of pages before, but rather out of nowhere. A shame too, because I was quite enjoying it... and I guess it still has that value, a lot of the book is sort of entertaining glimpses of alternate worlds and different (to me, but still quite common) mindsets and just interesting characters, and the ending doesn't actually take away from that... one of the stories where the journey is more interesting than the destination. It's just a shame in this case the destination was SUCH a letdown (but again, at least not utter %@!% like City at the End of Time, just rather unsatisfying).
And a particular part of that journey stood out: I used to be in the habit of selecting quotes from the books I read that particularly resonated with me... more often in rereads, but occasionally in new ones too. I've gotten out of the habit, but there's one in this one I do want to highlight. It doesn't even really matter in the context of the story (but I'll cut it anyway), it's not a part of the plot, it's just one of the characters talking about a part of his history... it's a little piece about torture in general.
Some context: The world it takes place on is one of many where terrorism is a problem, but it's Christian terrorists, and much of the world regards Christianity as a 'religion made for terrorism' on account of doctrines like Original Sin (so killing babies is okay, because they're all sinners) and the horrid notion that no matter what despicable acts you do, God will forgive you if you believe).
The viewpoint character in this section is a professional torturer, and he is interrogating one of his heroes - a cop who stopped a terrorist attack in a "ticking time bomb" scenario by torture. It's years later, and now he's in questioning (because he punched out someone who insisted he was a hero, and that somebody was the son of a Justice Minister). The ex-cop insisted that what he had done all those years ago was wrong and he needed to be punished.
I said that I still thought he was being too harsh on himself. He had done the right thing.
He looked tired and defeated now, and we had, as I have made clear, applied no physical pressure whatsoever to him up to this point. "The thing is," he said, "maybe in the same situation, even knowing what I know now, I'd still do the same thing. I'd still tear that Christian bastard's nails out, get him to talk, find out where the bomb was, hope that the plods got the right street, the right end of it, the right fucking city." He looked at me with what might have been defiance or even a sort of pleading. "But I'd still insist that I was charged and prosecuted." He shook his head again. "Don't you see? You can't have a state where torture is legal, not for anything. You start saying it's only for the most serious cases, but that never lasts. It should always be illegal, for everybody, for everything. You might not stop it. Laws against murder don't stop all murders, do they? But you make sure people don't even think about it unless it's a desperate situation, something immediate. And you have to make the torturer pay. In full. There has to be that disincentive, or they'll all be at it." He raised his head and looked about him, his gaze obviously being meant to take in not just the room we were in but the whole building; maybe even more than that. "Or you end up with this." He looked at me. "With you. Whoever you are."
(And of course, he does go on to torture him, because it's his job, although he tells himself he's doing about the minimum expected for that situation, since he was accused with being associated with terrorist groups (a charge so vague, the narrator points out, it can be applied to anybody they want to torture, even themselves)
Yes. This, a thousand times this. I used to think that people who torture, even for a 'good cause', should be brought to trial and they could decide if the torture was necessary. Now, I think that this is more proper... the only question at a trial should be whether he actually committed the crime, there should be no mitigating circumstances. Because otherwise people will excuse, excuse, excuse, not just in the exceptional cases, but in the less exceptional cases.
People will still 'do what it takes' to protect us. There are people all the time who are willing to die for our safety, if they're real heroes they will be willing to put their own freedom on the line to save us... and if they're just sadistic bastards, this will make them think twice.
I don't care how entertaining 24 was, Jack Bauer should be in jail.
Finished: Blindsight by Peter Watts (reread)
Read this so many times. But still love it. And although I think I've already quoted this one, since I'm in a quoting mood (although there are plenty of great quotable parts in this):
"Watching the world from a distance, it occurred to me at last: I knew exactly what Chelsea had meant, with her Luddite ramblings about desaturated Humanity and the colorless interactions of virtual space. I'd known all along. I'd just never been able to see how it was any different from real life."
Started: Not entirely sure, because I JUST finished and still haven't chosen replacement books, but right now I'm thinking Spin Control by Chris Moriarty and maybe a reread of something.
I have a bit of TV to talk about, but I think I might wait till next week so I can discuss a whole season of one show.
Finished: The Evolutionary Void by Peter F. Hamilton
The third and final book of a series (although there was a previous series set hundreds of years in the same universe), The Evolutionary Void concludes the story of a "void" in the center of the galaxy that apparently contains a paradise-type world full of psychic powers, that lots of people want to enter, except doing so threatens the whole galaxy if it expands.
I like the series as a whole, and it's hard to talk about it without going over the same grounds I've talked about before. I suppose the only important thing to discuss is "Is it a satisfying conclusion?", and the answer is...
No, not entirely. However, GETTING to the conclusion is satisfying to a certain extent, even most of the book is enjoyable. It's just when they actually get to the point where the Void issue is dealt with, it's... a little too pat. (Spoilers, not major ones, no huge mystery-blowing ones, but some)
Occasionally, I'll read a book series where you can tell the author fell in love with his own characters, because when the conclusion happens, everybody gets an almost absurdly happy ending, to the point of people thought dead (or actually dead) coming back, conflicts settled, promotions given, heroism moments given, mysteries solved revealing characters who really did die had some spectacularly unheard of awesome effect on the universe, etc, etc.
This isn't quite that bad. But there is SOME of that vibe to it. And I think, to the book's detriment. I don't need a complete grimdark ending, I don't expect one, but for such a big sprawling storyline with so many plotlines, I'd hope that at least some turned out badly.
And, beyond that, the solution itself, it seemed too quick and reliant on aspects of the Void that were iffy enough already.
So, it's an enjoyable ride, but seems to go off the rails particularly at the point where everybody (well, not EVERYBODY, but a bunch of storylines at once) make it inside the Void.
I still think I might read it again at some point, though.
Finished: Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd Century America by Robert Charles Wilson
This is a story of... 22nd Century America. Which is a lot like 19th Century America, due to the world essentially running out of oil, and a fundamentalist religious revival that spurns the knowledge that they blame for getting the world into the crises of the past centuries. It's told by a writer friend of the title character, who is the nephew of the President (more like Dictator), and a potential rival, and who has plenty of unorthodox ideas.
This story almost reads like the author wanted to write a Civil War era story (or maybe earlier, but it feels very Civil Warish to me), except he knew that his bread and butter was SF fans, and so he set it in the future that gave him much of what he wanted, and allowed him to improvise other elements. I've liked Wilson's work before, but this one doesn't do it for me, it feels a bit... artificial, ironically because of the attempt to give it a naturalistic style, as of someone who wrote in the past, with occasional asides to the audience, and footnotes, and things like that. However, as the writer is occasionally very naive, this causes some problems such as an overly indulgent tongue-in-cheek vibe to certain passages were we know he is supposed to not understand something that we do. Also a bit annoying is his perfectly transcribing foreign languages that he doesn't understand or provide a translation of (with at least one of the language, there is, towards the end, an excuse given), but you can tell he, or others, are extremely misinterpretting what is being said. And, like I said, it feels artificial.
A more significant problem is I rarely got especially interested or invested in the world, and loathing many of the characters in the artistocracy (who, granted, were meant to be despicable) doesn't help. I mean, it's a little annoying to read a character earnestly defend slavery as natural, even if it's not meant to be approved of.
Compare this to The Windup Girl, which also relies a little on a "out of oil, so old ways become more common" idea, but the difference is, I was INTERESTED in that world. This one, I wasn't, especially, even when they brought in the occasional reference to higher tech (or, more commonly, tech that we're all familiar with but is much higher than the local standard, which can occasionally provide interesting contrasts, but in this book, not so much). It just felt like I was tricked into reading a historical-esque story.
It's not horrible, I never seriously contemplated just not finishing, and a certain type of person might really like it, and it does some nice things like (minor spoiler for a character element) the title character being gay, but a big deal never being made of it solely because his best friend/narrator is totally oblivious to it. And also occasional bits, like the time at war, were actually interesting. But I don't expect I'll read it again anytime soon, perhaps ever.
I did find it for only $2 (discount clearance bin at a bookstore), so I suppose I can't complain much.
Finished: The Sunless Countries (Book Four of Virga) by Karl Schroeder
Another novel set in Virga, an approximately Earth-sized engineered habitat, filled with air and small cities who must rotate to produce their own gravity and use fusion suns to provide light and warmth.
This novel brings back Hayden Griffith from the first novel in the series, although really it's the story of Leal, a university professor in a country that, as the title implies, doesn't have its own sun... they don't live in complete darkness, their cities are lit, but it's lit like a city might be lit at night. She must struggle with her country's politics changing dramatically for the worse, all while there's a mysterious outside threat... a threat that might be from outside Virga itself.
Always enjoy this series, and this one is no exception... both fun big SF ideas and low-tech swashbuckling adventure, coexisting in one seamlessly. And one of Schroeder's strengths - people who seem like villains but who have a point (although not all of the bad folks in this one share that quality).
Slight weaknesses in that some of the virulent political struggle in the city read a bit too silly, and occasionally the story jumped a few months suddenly when I'd have liked to stay a little longer. Also, usually in this series, the story of each book more or less stands alone. There are plot threads that continue from book to book and sometimes a supporting character is left in one place in one book and takes the lead in another book to finish their story, but it still feels like each is its own story. But in this case it felt a lot more like a cliffhanger ending, that this was only part of the story.
Still, looking forward to reading the conclusion (Ashes of Candesce), although I think I'll still wait till paperback.
Finished: Catching Fire (Book Two of the Hunger Games Trilogy) by Suzanne Collins
Don't want to give a plot outline because it kind of spoils the first book. But behind the cut later there may be some of that by implication. So, anyway, although I did enjoy this book more than the first one, it still suffers from many of the same weaknesses.
But let's get one out of the way it improves on, at least. In the first book, I complained that except for a very small group of characters, nobody else in the games (or the book, in fact) seems to get any development. In this one, they don't have that much of a problem - quite a lot of them get some development.
However, that almost highlights one of my other problems. (Spoilers, where I'll also go into the other problems)
It feels like a lot of the times, characters, like plot twists, just exist as... tools, for the author. Very blunt tools. So many times a character will survive just long enough to give some vital clue that helps the game of the others, and then once they're no longer of any use, they can be discarded.
It's the same way that there are often threats that cause OMG DRAMA AND TENSION AND FEAR, but then all the EFFECTS of such are almost instantly wiped out a short time later. People suffer horrifying chemical burns from one of the gamesmaster tricks, but then it turns out, water makes it all better! Nothing has the power of feeling like it happens because it's a real world and real consequences follow actions, it feels like it happens because the writer needs something to happen and engineers the story around it.
Still, I did like it better than the first, the tension is higher and it feels like the main character actually makes more choices instead of just being backed into things.
I am going to finish the series.. in fact, my brother just borrowed the last book from my stepbrother, as apparently he and his wife also enjoy it, and they're not normally readers. I've said it before: Even though I think it's overrated (though I do enjoy it), I have to applaud them for getting people excited about reading.
Anyway, I'll read it after my brother (though I'll still probably buy the last book myself, since I like owning books, though this means I can wait for it to be used).
Finished: The Lord of the Sands of Time by Issui Ogawa
This is another book from the Haika Soru imprint, which takes Japanese SF novels and translates them and releases them in North America. They're also, I shouldn't have been surprised to find out and yet somehow was, the same company that released Battle Royale here (though, at the time, not under the name). So far I've had good experiences with them.
This one is an alien invasion story, with a twist... the aliens keep traveling back in time to earlier and earlier eras in their quest for total victory, forcing the human side to do the same, sending their AI war cyborgs back to create alternate timelines and repel them. Most of the story is set in an alternate 3rd century Japan, although there are chapters set throughout history.
I'm not thrilled at all the handling of time travel and timelines in the book, it feels a little sloppy and inconsistent at times, which I normally hate, and includes things like "allies already in the past sometimes disappear if the future makes their creation impossible" (but sometimes don't, too!), and sometimes I feel like the alien threat (even though it's designed to be not impossible to defeat, but hard to completely eradicate and that's what you need to do to win) seem to occasionally be too stupid to believe (in that if they were a little smarter they SHOULD be undefeatable, and there's no reason given what else we know about them that they aren't).
That said, I really enjoyed the book as a whole, it had a nice heart throughout and an epic scale. Suffers from the usual 'translated story problem' (characters, dialogue and just plain writing style sometimes feeling a bit stilted, perhaps due to translation) but less so than some of the other books of this imprint I've read.
Finished: Transition by Iain M. Banks
Unusual for Banks, a SF novel that doesn't take place in the Culture, or even in space at all (really, if it takes place in space, even if it's not actually a Culture book, it often feels like it might as well be, just in a part of the universe far away from their influence). This book takes place on Earth, or rather Earths. It's about parallel universe, and a shadowy group who travel from world to world using a special drug, and manipulating events to their liking, and particularly about a power struggle within the group. It jumps around from a bunch of different characters and viewpoints.
It starts out rather well, a quite entertaining setup, a mysterious organization that might be good or bad or bits of both, peeks at other worlds, all the good stuff that a multiple-universe themed story can get into. And it stays that way though most of the book.
Unfortunately, it all kinds of falls apart at the end (not as bad as City at the End of Time, another book that had people who could jump into parallel universes and also turned to $!@$ at the end), many of the storylines that get significant page time tend to not really matter much to the plot (at least, not enough to need that much time), questions that were looming never get resolved. It all goes to hell when (spoilers ahoy) a character develops a bunch of new powers that were unheard of before (the first one, that's okay, it's the subsequent ones that get out of hand). And then other characters with new powers are used to chase them. And then there's a big confrontation, but it doesn't seem to matter because it doesn't really feel like it comes directly out of the hundreds of pages before, but rather out of nowhere. A shame too, because I was quite enjoying it... and I guess it still has that value, a lot of the book is sort of entertaining glimpses of alternate worlds and different (to me, but still quite common) mindsets and just interesting characters, and the ending doesn't actually take away from that... one of the stories where the journey is more interesting than the destination. It's just a shame in this case the destination was SUCH a letdown (but again, at least not utter %@!% like City at the End of Time, just rather unsatisfying).
And a particular part of that journey stood out: I used to be in the habit of selecting quotes from the books I read that particularly resonated with me... more often in rereads, but occasionally in new ones too. I've gotten out of the habit, but there's one in this one I do want to highlight. It doesn't even really matter in the context of the story (but I'll cut it anyway), it's not a part of the plot, it's just one of the characters talking about a part of his history... it's a little piece about torture in general.
Some context: The world it takes place on is one of many where terrorism is a problem, but it's Christian terrorists, and much of the world regards Christianity as a 'religion made for terrorism' on account of doctrines like Original Sin (so killing babies is okay, because they're all sinners) and the horrid notion that no matter what despicable acts you do, God will forgive you if you believe).
The viewpoint character in this section is a professional torturer, and he is interrogating one of his heroes - a cop who stopped a terrorist attack in a "ticking time bomb" scenario by torture. It's years later, and now he's in questioning (because he punched out someone who insisted he was a hero, and that somebody was the son of a Justice Minister). The ex-cop insisted that what he had done all those years ago was wrong and he needed to be punished.
I said that I still thought he was being too harsh on himself. He had done the right thing.
He looked tired and defeated now, and we had, as I have made clear, applied no physical pressure whatsoever to him up to this point. "The thing is," he said, "maybe in the same situation, even knowing what I know now, I'd still do the same thing. I'd still tear that Christian bastard's nails out, get him to talk, find out where the bomb was, hope that the plods got the right street, the right end of it, the right fucking city." He looked at me with what might have been defiance or even a sort of pleading. "But I'd still insist that I was charged and prosecuted." He shook his head again. "Don't you see? You can't have a state where torture is legal, not for anything. You start saying it's only for the most serious cases, but that never lasts. It should always be illegal, for everybody, for everything. You might not stop it. Laws against murder don't stop all murders, do they? But you make sure people don't even think about it unless it's a desperate situation, something immediate. And you have to make the torturer pay. In full. There has to be that disincentive, or they'll all be at it." He raised his head and looked about him, his gaze obviously being meant to take in not just the room we were in but the whole building; maybe even more than that. "Or you end up with this." He looked at me. "With you. Whoever you are."
(And of course, he does go on to torture him, because it's his job, although he tells himself he's doing about the minimum expected for that situation, since he was accused with being associated with terrorist groups (a charge so vague, the narrator points out, it can be applied to anybody they want to torture, even themselves)
Yes. This, a thousand times this. I used to think that people who torture, even for a 'good cause', should be brought to trial and they could decide if the torture was necessary. Now, I think that this is more proper... the only question at a trial should be whether he actually committed the crime, there should be no mitigating circumstances. Because otherwise people will excuse, excuse, excuse, not just in the exceptional cases, but in the less exceptional cases.
People will still 'do what it takes' to protect us. There are people all the time who are willing to die for our safety, if they're real heroes they will be willing to put their own freedom on the line to save us... and if they're just sadistic bastards, this will make them think twice.
I don't care how entertaining 24 was, Jack Bauer should be in jail.
Finished: Blindsight by Peter Watts (reread)
Read this so many times. But still love it. And although I think I've already quoted this one, since I'm in a quoting mood (although there are plenty of great quotable parts in this):
"Watching the world from a distance, it occurred to me at last: I knew exactly what Chelsea had meant, with her Luddite ramblings about desaturated Humanity and the colorless interactions of virtual space. I'd known all along. I'd just never been able to see how it was any different from real life."
Started: Not entirely sure, because I JUST finished and still haven't chosen replacement books, but right now I'm thinking Spin Control by Chris Moriarty and maybe a reread of something.
I have a bit of TV to talk about, but I think I might wait till next week so I can discuss a whole season of one show.
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Date: 2012-06-22 03:10 am (UTC)But that's not important! re: Comstock, I read a short story in an anthology about Julian Comstock's early years. While it was an entertaining story, I wasn't sold on the world as something I wanted to read more of as a post-apocalyptic setting. The short story presented its case and did not overstay its welcome, basically. I suspected that the novel might, and so haven't made an effort to get it. Also, the short story was a little bit like "Little House on the Prairie" set after the bomb. The books not the TV show; dunno if you've ever encountered either.
Also I really enjoyed Blindsight when I read it. I'm trying so hard to read and get rid of books right now that I have no space at all for rereads but that was a good one.
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Date: 2012-06-24 03:21 pm (UTC)I think that short story was actually what RCW expanded into the full novel. And yeah, I can see that comparison, I guess, although I've never read the books or seen a full episode of the show, I'm familiar enough with it through brief clips and commercials and such to at least know what you're talking about, if not completely understand your point.
Yes, space is always a problem. Sooner or later I'll have to make the plunge and go all digital myself, but, not yet, I still like owning them, so I'll have to keep making space. Blindsight is at least one of those ones that the author made available free on his website, so if you (or anyone else who happens to read this comment stream later) feel like a reread, it's available here. And I'm waiting with bated breath for his sidequel, (currently with the working title Echopraxia), taking place on Earth during the events of the first novel.
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Date: 2012-06-24 03:23 pm (UTC)