Category Archives: Novels

Terror (1989)

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This book caught my attention because of the title. The spine of the book was sticking out and it read “Terror” in a really small font and I thought, “wow thats really bad graphic design” so I picked it up. 

Little did I know, this book was based in my obscure hometown, Hilo, and the details of my town in this book were so accurate, down to Hawaiian culture and myths. 

I tried researching whether the author, Frederick Pohl, had lived in Hawai’i for any amount of time but I couldn’t find anything. There was just a mention of him going on a cruise through the islands once. 

But for some reason, he mentions Hawai’i occasionally in his other works and knows a strange amount about the geology and history of the islands, probably from the extensive research he had done for this book.

The premise of the book is strange. It centers around two terrorist groups; one is a group of locals/Hawaiians that are anti-colonial and want white people and their impact off of the islands. The other group is the US government which is conspiring to insert a nuclear bomb into a dormant volcano near the islands in order to create an explosion as large as the one that killed the dinosaurs, in order to create a cloud of dust that would lower the grain productivity of the Soviet Union. It’s pretty absurd and I would love to know how it ends, but I am a bit past halfway done and this post is already overdue. 

I am kind of confused as to whether this is definitively SF but if it is then it may be colonization, apocalyptic, and hard SF due to the chapters of pure scientific explanations. 

I don’t recommend it but it isn’t necessarily bad or too offensive, more funny. 

I like that there is so much research into Hilo and volcanoes, and I don’t really like how there was a solid paragraph justifying why the main character (white mainlander) couldn’t tell apart “orientals” which were so abundant here haha.

Pohl, Frederick. “Terror” (1986). New York: The Berkley Publishing Group, 1989. 

Ball Lightning by Cixin Liu

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I chose Ball Lightning for three reasons, only one of which is actually a fair assessment of the book. Reason 1 was that the cover was pretty. Reason 2 (the good one) was that I had heard good things about the author, Cixin Liu, from friends in the past. Reason 3 (my personal favorite and the most convincing) was that the reviewer featured on the cover was none other than Barack Obama, which was unexpected enough that I decided I needed to read it for the memes if nothing else.  

The book follows Chen, a man whose parents were killed by ball lightning in his youth. This event sparked a lifelong obsession with the phenomenon, leading him down dangerous paths and into revolutionary knowledge. I would classify this novel as definitively hard SF, as it delves into a real life phenomenon and brings in a lot of actual science. While I am usually more of a fan of soft SF, the science here was one of my favorite aspects of the story. I really appreciated the realism that it granted a story that is clearly speculative fiction, and the details about research funding felt pretty realistic and grounded the story well. 

One thing that frustrates me about this novel is its portrayal of female characters. All of the female characters feel like they are there fully to tell us something about the male characters. There was one scene with a female character whose only character trait was ‘desirable’ who was flirting with Chen, who ignored her and felt powerful for it. Chen is only interested in Lin Yun, his love interest, because she has not like other girls energy. I did not finish the entire novel, so I cannot say for sure whether this pattern held, but it was very annoying to me as a female reader. 

I think I would recommend this book, mainly because I think it was really well researched and Liu has a great command of suspense. While I had my issues with the novel, I still found myself wanting to know what happened next and invested in the plot. 

 

A note: The novel was originally published in Chinese in 2005, but the English translation was published in 2018.

Works Cited

Liu, Cixin. Ball Lightning. Translated by Joel Martinsen, Tor Books, 2018.

Cosmic Engineers

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Cover of Cosmic Engineers by Simak

I chose this book because it was my favorite cover art of any of the books I had seen in The Green Hand, and I wanted to read more of Simak’s work. I absolutely love the bright colors, the mountain range in the background and the cute little planet right of the robot’s head. I would absolutely draw something like this background, so naturally I had to read the book. I just the wish the story had as much personality as the cover. The story follows a group of humans, most notably two space journalist Herb and Gary and a woman, Caroline, who they woke from suspended animation. Caroline was aware throughout her 1,000 years in suspended animation and spent the time training her brain and developing new concepts about spatial relativity and the physical nature of space. The humans are called to by a group of robots, the Cosmic Engineers, who are trying to protect the universe and need the help of beings with creativity (something they don’t possess). Together the humans and Cosmic Engineers, well it was mostly Caroline, they prevent two universes from colliding, stop the bad guy aliens and go home happy.

This story is an optimistic space opera written in the Golden Age of SF and contains a multitude of interesting SF elements. Some interesting elements include the idea of robots outliving their creators but remaining devoted to them, the concept of humans abandoning Earth, anti-government and pro-individualism. The evil aliens in the story are a thinly veiled allegory for wither German National or Soviet Socialism. From the anti-collectivist sentiments and glorification of humanities’ creativity and brave heroism, is evident that the author was writing this story as an American 1964.

I’ll start with my favorite aspects. The main scientist is a woman who not only saves our universe but saves another universe and actually creates universes. She is far from the damsel in distress that most stories in the Golden Age of SF portray. I also loved the optimistic and positive portrayal of humanity. So much SF reveals the ugly flaws of humanity or imagines alien races that are far superior. Yet in this story, humanity is refreshingly celebrated as uniquely creative and adventurous. However, it could be a little hard to get through. The characters are flat, and the plot just chugs forward without any tension to keep the reader engaged. I got lost in the inconsistent details of the plot and accidentally ended up skimming some parts. There just wasn’t any depth or sentiment in the writing.

I looked at the publication page and it turns out this was originally a short story that Simak wrote in 1939 but he adapted it into a novel. I think it should have stayed a short story and I would be interested in reading it. However, I am not sure I would recommend the novel and would perhaps direct people to some of Simak’s better, richer writing. I am frustrated because the concept of a genius woman saving the universe and celebrating humanity is something I love. But I guess you really can’t judge a book by its cover; for such lively and colorful cover art, the story was grey.

 

 

Original Publicaiton as a Novel:
 Simak, Clifford Donald. Cosmic Engineers. Gnome Press, 1950.
Version I read:

Simak, Clifford Donald. Cosmic Engineers. Paperback Library, 1970

Green Hand Book Review: Venus Plus X

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Sturgeon, Theodore. Venus plus X. New York: Dell, 1979.

 

I chose Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon because the cover first caught my attention. The book covers that I looked at before finding the book dealt with space but I thought this one looked cooler. The pages were also colored, which most of the other books did not have. After reading the little blurb on the cover, I quickly found out that it dealt with the theme of gender and its erasure of it. Within this course, I found that the topic of power relations, including race, gender, and sexuality intrigued me the most–and this book seemed to fit my interests. In class, we also mentioned Sturgeon a few times but did not read any works from him so I thought this book would be perfect!

 

Venus Plus X follows the trope of a confused time traveler everyman coming into consciousness in a futuristic isolated community. In this community called Ledom, all of the members are gender-neutral and hidden from the rest of society; there is some ambiguity as to whether or not this society is utopic or just a means for human preservation. The protagonist Charlie Johns explores culture and technology, with interesting discourse about patriarchy, religion, reproductive practices and rights, and outlook on life. This story runs concurrently with an (underdeveloped) story of a “progressive” contemporary American family of the 60s who came off as only a foil. When it is revealed that the members of society are intersex and the process of how the members become intersex, the protagonist is disgusted and homophobic. While attempting to travel back to his time, it is brought to light that Charlie did not arrive through time travel. He’s a “control” person maintained by the Ledom for research purposes. He lives on the outside of civilization since he can’t be assimilated into Ledom society. The story ends with a nuclear bomb being set off but Ledom survives because of their technology.

 

This book was published amid Golden-Age SF with themes of sex, gender, sexuality, religion, technology, and human preservation. I think this book is interesting when looking at the context of the time period: It precedes both the Sexual Revolution and Second-Wave Feminism in the latter part of the 1960s. In this way, Venus Plus X is in some way a proto-feminist reading of society, where the core of the novel is an argument that the presumption that women and men are very different is wrong and socially destructive. Some ideas and dialogue are definitely antiquated but the messages are still applicable to our society today. It is also a story about human survival because the story also coincides with the middle of the Cold War, with the idea of forward-thinking technology and preservation.

 

I would recommend this book to people who like slow exposition stories. The book was quite slow at times and I found myself skimming through some parts. The latter half of the story is definitely where it picks up!

 

Extra notes: Venus Plus X was a finalist for the 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel.

Dolphin Sex: Book Review of Startide Rising

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When book hunting at Green Hand, I wanted to find a book that was good in the sense that it had been awarded something or came highly recommended. After some digging, I came across US author David Brin’s Startide Rising which won the Hugo and Nebula Awards (according to its cover). It is a sci-fi epic about a human expedition, led by dolphins that have been uplifted to human intelligence (there is also an uplifted chimpanzee scientist), that has uncovered secrets to the origins of life in the universe, a secret many alien empires are persuing and are fighting over in the space above the downed ship. On a water planet (conveniently for a crew of dolphins), the humans and company must survive and escape to Earth without getting captured with plenty of politics and competing philosophies at play. It is the typical “trapped with time running out” story that includes clear-cut heroes loved by all trying to do the best in the world they can. There are also comments on the process of uplifting and echoes of the consequences of playing God with nature that veer quite close to social commentary. That is what makes the book great with enough backstory to make Tolkien jealous and personal politics and strategizing to give Game of Thrones a run for its money with an interesting story. The downside, as the title suggests, is the weird moments of over-sexualization. I could’ve enjoyed the book just as much without the dolphin-human romance and the perspective of horny dolphin thoughts.

Overall, I’d recommend the book if you’re willing to take it with a grain of salt; it can be cringe-inducing at moments, but it does do a good job of making an entertaining sci-fi epic with some deeper thought if you want to go that far.

Citation: Brin, David. Startide Rising. New York: Bantam Books Inc., 1983.

Cover:

Startide Rising (The Uplift Saga, Book 2) | Science Book a Day