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50books_poc2009-06-08 09:14 pm
mizchalmers.livejournal.com) wrote in 50books_poc2009-06-08 09:14 pm
Entry tags:
Mary Anne Mohanraj, Ken Liu, Rebecca Haile, Octavia Butler
25. Mary Anne Mohanraj, "Jump Space", and Ken Liu, "Single Bit Error", from Thoughtcrime Experiments, ed Sumana Harihareswara and Leonard Richardson
First the disclaimers: I have known Leonard and Sumana for, like, ever, and when they announced the idea for this anthology I was so intrigued that I threw some cash in the pot, and so I am thanked in the acknowledgments. Yay!
Even cooler, the story they sort of chose for me is "Jump Space", which I purely love. It's a head-on collision between the Heinlein juvenile adventure stories I adored as a kid - the Have Spacesuit Will Travel or Space Family Stones - and a thoroughly 21st century set of attitudes towards love, sex, dating one's professor, marriage, faithfulness, jealousy, prostitution, slavery and even raising children (my main preoccupation these days and one that Heinlein tended to rather idealize...)
I liked "Jump Space" so much that I was startled to find a story in Thoughtcrime that I liked even better. It is "Single Bit Error" by Ken Liu. Can't tell you much about it without spoiling a rather excellent surprise, but wow, it's just a stunner. Weaves together theoretical computer science and existential philosophy in a way I've always thought could be done, but never quite managed to do or see anyone else doing...
You should allow for my extreme bias in favor of my friends; despite this utter lack of objectivity I recommend this anthology to anyone who's interested in the best and bravest modern science fiction.
26. Rebecca Haile, Held at a Distance
Haile fled Ethiopia as a child and returned many years later, with her husband, to visit her family. This book is the memoir of that trip. It's a thoughtful and wistful tale; the passages on her father's house, where Haile retraces his movements on the bloody night that ended their life in Ethiopia, are powerful and evocative. My favorite chapter, though, was "The Engineer", about Haile's uncle Tadesse, an entrepreneur with interests in construction, marble mining and damming the sources of the Blue Nile to irrigate the desert. The portrait of this eccentric, peremptory philanthropist just leaps off the page.
27. Octavia Butler, Wild Seed
I'm in a blue funk at the moment and couldn't get stuck into anything until I picked this up and found some solace in Butler's cool, dispassionate prose. Others have already praised this remarkable book to the skies, freeing me to pick out just a few of the things I liked best. If Butler's Fledgling was a brilliant commentary on venture capitalism, Doro, the character who exists only as a mind that moves from body to body, killing as he goes, is an extraordinarily effective allegory for (among many other things) institutional slavery, colonialism, investment banking and the patriarchy. It comes in many different guises but we always recognize - and however unwillingly, must obey - its voice.
In this reading Anyanwu, the heroine, becomes the many things that an effective resistance might have to look like: deathless, healing, protean and almost inhumanly merciful. Keep this one somewhere safe. It's an essential handbook to the revolution.
First the disclaimers: I have known Leonard and Sumana for, like, ever, and when they announced the idea for this anthology I was so intrigued that I threw some cash in the pot, and so I am thanked in the acknowledgments. Yay!
Even cooler, the story they sort of chose for me is "Jump Space", which I purely love. It's a head-on collision between the Heinlein juvenile adventure stories I adored as a kid - the Have Spacesuit Will Travel or Space Family Stones - and a thoroughly 21st century set of attitudes towards love, sex, dating one's professor, marriage, faithfulness, jealousy, prostitution, slavery and even raising children (my main preoccupation these days and one that Heinlein tended to rather idealize...)
I liked "Jump Space" so much that I was startled to find a story in Thoughtcrime that I liked even better. It is "Single Bit Error" by Ken Liu. Can't tell you much about it without spoiling a rather excellent surprise, but wow, it's just a stunner. Weaves together theoretical computer science and existential philosophy in a way I've always thought could be done, but never quite managed to do or see anyone else doing...
You should allow for my extreme bias in favor of my friends; despite this utter lack of objectivity I recommend this anthology to anyone who's interested in the best and bravest modern science fiction.
26. Rebecca Haile, Held at a Distance
Haile fled Ethiopia as a child and returned many years later, with her husband, to visit her family. This book is the memoir of that trip. It's a thoughtful and wistful tale; the passages on her father's house, where Haile retraces his movements on the bloody night that ended their life in Ethiopia, are powerful and evocative. My favorite chapter, though, was "The Engineer", about Haile's uncle Tadesse, an entrepreneur with interests in construction, marble mining and damming the sources of the Blue Nile to irrigate the desert. The portrait of this eccentric, peremptory philanthropist just leaps off the page.
27. Octavia Butler, Wild Seed
I'm in a blue funk at the moment and couldn't get stuck into anything until I picked this up and found some solace in Butler's cool, dispassionate prose. Others have already praised this remarkable book to the skies, freeing me to pick out just a few of the things I liked best. If Butler's Fledgling was a brilliant commentary on venture capitalism, Doro, the character who exists only as a mind that moves from body to body, killing as he goes, is an extraordinarily effective allegory for (among many other things) institutional slavery, colonialism, investment banking and the patriarchy. It comes in many different guises but we always recognize - and however unwillingly, must obey - its voice.
In this reading Anyanwu, the heroine, becomes the many things that an effective resistance might have to look like: deathless, healing, protean and almost inhumanly merciful. Keep this one somewhere safe. It's an essential handbook to the revolution.
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I'm going to have to re-read Wild Seed -- it never occurred to me to read it that way.
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(I should not tease; one would never know from reading my own reviews that I really do proofread. Or try to.)
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And I clearly have to seek out the anthology containing "Jump Space" now. :)
On #27, I'll have to read that; I just read Mind of My Mind which also deals with Doro, and have been trying to scrape up time to review it.