It’s a scary book.  It’s taken its rightful place as one of the cultural dystopias in the public consciousness along with Brave New World and 1984.  Fahrenheit 451 is a well-known and famous classic so I hardly have any place discussing whether it is a ‘good’ book or a ‘bad’ book, but I do have a place in discussing whether it is proving true.

As mentioned repeatedly before, I work for a Library System.  I do not work at or for any one library, but I manage, in part, the technology behind seventy different libraries.  As part of my job I respond to the technical needs and questions of the member libraries and I periodically attend library conferences where the future of libraries is discussed.

In Fahrenheit 451 book burning is not really the great evil.  It is a natural response to a cultural anomie towards knowledge.  Having a book isn’t a grand crime against the state as much as it is a grand crime against the society.  Pursuit of knowledge is frivolous and dangerous for everyone and so book-burning is a honorable and necessary response.

It is easy to dismiss any dystopian novel if one only attends to the specific evils.  Our culture is hardly going down the road of Alpha and Beta people or Room 101s.  The motivations and causes of the dystopian settings must be analyzed outside of the  fictional results.  Fahrenheit 451 has a number of foundation motivations, media distraction and anti-intellectualism among them, both of which are present concerns in contemporary society.  But is there any basis for this?  As much as we might fear the coming ‘idiocracy’  that doesn’t make it a looming threat.

From the standpoint of libraries, things are not so terribly bad at all.  Library circulation is almost universally up.  The rate, by percentage, has fallen off to an extent, but libraries are hardly flailing.  They are getting more patrons than ever before, more books are checked out than in any time in history, and the number of library resources is growing as fast as our culture itself.

Books, well, physical books are living on borrowed time.  E-books will someday become more convenient, cheaper, and more accessible than any physical book, but is that such a bad thing?  Books themselves were an improvement on fragile papyrus, expensive velium, and immovable stone.  E-books and other digital distribution methods will not destroy books, they will improve books.  Even in this future world, the libraries that Ray Bradbury loved so much, have a place.  Already our library system is setting up methods of e-book distribution.  Our libraries provide public wireless, printing capability, and power for a casual read.  Our current catalog allows for searches of our system to be made anywhere in the world and holds can be placed for later pickup.  Combine the search with a digital distribution method and libraries will transcend any fire that Guy Montag might light.

True enough, libraries are on a point of change and they do not always respond so optimistically, but neither books nor libraries no intellectualism seem to be slowing in anyway.  If anything, the great battles fought over such a nebulous concept are signs of its triumphant success.  The digital age has become both a near infinite source of and a tremendous inspiration to knowledge and any backlash, no matter how loud or vigorous, is little more than dying screams.

I enjoyed Farhenheit 451 immensely.  It is a tremendous work and expertly written, but reading it I could not help but feel that it’s power is lost on me.  Perhaps in the Cold War, when it was written, the sense of doom was greater, but sitting here at a computer, connected to more ‘books’ than anyone ever has been in history, the fear is lost.  Farhenheit 451 was successful.  What it set out to do has already been done.  Every book has been fireproofed and rendered immune.  The ashes that are left mean not a thing.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Seven Pillars of Wisdom is T.W Lawrence’s (Lawrence of Arabia) notes and autobiographical memoir of his time served as a liason officer during the Arab Revolt.  Way way back in the day I reviewed a book called Eastern Approaches, the story of Fitzroy MacLean, one of the first SAS officers and an english member of diplomatic core that explored Soviet Central Asia.  I mention both of these books because they’re similar: heroic individuals who explored the harshest parts of the world during war time and then wrote about their story with singular humility and deference.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom is not a general history of world war 2 or even specifically the Arab Revolt that ended Turkish dominance in the middle east.  There are enough blanks in the narrative to greatly encourage further study.  Presumably Lawrence was writing for his contemporaries who already knew the political details of the causes and aftermath, but after almost a hundred years there’s a lot lacking.

What it lacks from the air, it makes up for on the ground.  Lawrence nearly maps the entire desert for the benefit of his readers, remarking on the snakes, the various wells visited, the character of the various people and towns.  He follows the revolt from the Arab position and in that capacity is near flawless.

As a story, the best part is Lawrence’s own transition.  He begins as a rather reluctant staff officer who nevertheless is eager to help the Arab cause.  As the revolt progresses he becomes increasingly disillusioned by his own place in what is likely a fraud.  England’s support for the Arab revolt is hardly an act of generosity with Turkey a German ally.  As the tolls of war grow Lawrence finds himself the near leader of a revolt he’s lost his own position in.

It’s a rather terrible story, but it’s phenomenal reading.  The writing is rather archaic and Lawrence does spend a great deal on details, the texture of the land for example, that most readers would probably rather do without, but as a complete work it’s a rousing adventure story of the finest calibre.

A note worth mentioning, there are a handful of different versions of the tale.  Lawrence himself repeatedly revised his work, mostly to edit down it’s original length.  I read a version stored for free here.  (The book is out of copyright.)

Final note:  I’m still editing.  It’s going tolerably well, if only very slowly.  I’m hopeful that I get it all together this year.

I read Laser Space Communications as part of my Lonetracker research.  It’s pretty technical overall, at least for me, but it was an interesting read.  It seems to be fairly expensive to get a hold of so if someone is looking around for it I can lend it out.  *I wish I was better at physics.

After finishing Count Zero last week I jumped into Mona Lisa Overdrive, William Gibson’s third and final novel in that Sprawl trilogy, a science fiction series set in a hypertechnological, paranoid,  corporate dominated, cyber-dystopia that began with Neuromancer.

Mona Lisa Overdrive ended the trilogy and brought to a close, or mostly a close, the story that began with Case and Mollys adventure in Neuromancer.  Molly makes a return and she’s part of this third novel.  I’m reviewing, of course, a novel that’s nearly two decades old.  I’ve quite a bit of catching up to do, but all in all the Sprawl trilogy is the in total probably the best series I’ve ever read.  While none of books match the sheer joy of Neuromancer or capture the near mystical sense of expectation I had reading it, they each shed light on simply a fascinating world that seems, despite all the futuristic technology, to be just around the corner.

Seeing as I wrote out my general criticisms just two days ago with Count Zero I’ll let this stand as is.  Read Neuromancer, at the very least!

Count Zero

I finished Count Zero as part of my read-a-thon.  It’s loosely the sequel to Neuromancer, which I read a few months ago and loved.  This ‘sequel’ is set in the same world and a few years later, but has none of the same characters, although they are obliquely mentioned.  It’d be easy to argue that it’s not a true sequel at all, but it continued one important plot thread was left behind at the end of Neuromancer.  (No I’m not going to give that away.  Everyone should read Neuromancer, not pick it up through a review.)

Count Zero has the same rock solid prose, as fast paced as an old detective novel, but with post-modern (literally) color.  The world is the same paranoid, hyper-technological wasteland as the first.  The characters were not as good as Neuromancer.  They were interesting and had their quirks, but none of them changed all that much.  Even the character that was literally dragged into a new world didn’t experience all that much of an epiphany at his new surroundings and the female lead that was similarly introduced to world very much beyond her seemed to pick up it in her very first chapter.  Still, it was excellent and not just from the writing or the world (which I’m fond of.)  The story kept along the thread that I mentioned before and read in that context you can see a certain devious subtlety that hints at more to come.

If anything, the story just suffered from having a bigger world to work with.  Neuromancer only had the necessity of describing the protagonists’ immediate world.  A sequel, nearly by definition, has to expand the circle, but that means incorporating far more than the story itself requires.  In the cases where it over-reached, the plot came across as too weak.  Where it failed to expand, there was confusion.  It tried hard to fill the void, but sadly, it wasn’t as much of a thrill to follow as in Neuromancer, but well, that was a tough act to follow.

Currently I’m reading Mona Lisa Overdrive.  That’s the third story in the general arc.  I’m hoping it has the same prose, but with a defter touch.  Cheers!

Very cool, very interesting, very inspiring.  I kind of want to start.    Let’s start raising the albedo of Mars.  Why can’t we get this ball rolling? Let’s do this.

It’s all very far in the future, of course and even having read the book I don’t trust myself to try to explain the process.  Instead…read the book!  It’s pretty great.

Also before I sign out: Time Dilation – Albert Einstein and the Theory of Relativity

Just something cool I found while doing a bit of research.

The Graveyard Book starts off with probably the most horrific intro I could think of for a children’s story.  Bod’s parents are killed whole he’s a baby.  He manages to escape his crib and crawl to the nearby graveyard.  Jack, the murderer, tracks the baby down, but Bod is saved by the local ghosts and taken in.  He’s granted a pair of ghost parents, the Owenses, and a guardian, the enigmatic Silas, a sort of half-living, half-dead gravekeeper.

Bod goes along being raised and learning more about his past.  I’ll save any reader the particular details, but it all goes along with quite a bit of humor and artistry.  The various personages of the graveyard, all hundreds of years dead and not exactly up on the world, give advice and amusement.  Bod learns the powers of the dead, fading and hiding, and explores the ghoul gate.  He mets the Sneer, the witch, and a little girl.

I won’t give away the ending.  I wish the story had explored Jack a bit more.  There was plenty of material to explore and it wraps together all too nicely all too quickly, I thought, but it was a very cool concept and a neat story.  The book has pages of art work, black and white drawings that sort of remind me of spartan outlines of the title cards used for the Jeeves and Wooster series.

Currently I’m reading the book Terraforming by Martin Beech.  It’s nonfiction research for my own story.  After that I’ll be reading The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon.

The Seeker?  Good name?  I don’t know maybe.  Female protagonist, male writer?  Seem legitimate?  Maybe.  Might push it a bit.  My restaurant is cooler than that one…

There’s not much for me to really review.  I went through the story picking out bits of description I loved and ransacked it for things that my own story does better. (I hope.)  It’s a bit pompous, but I think my own writing style has more than a few similarities to Mr. McDevitts.  Probably not true, but I’ve love it if it was.

The Seeker is fairly standard science fiction fare as far as the book goes.  It’s bulky, few hundred pages, and a good chunk of that is describing the world.  It’s part of a series or shared world so a few of the characters exist already.  They’ve been described by Alex Benedict, the protagonists boss, seems to get far more a second billing than I would he maybe should in a book that caries his name as a subtitle.  The actual protagonist though, Chase Kolpath is pretty handy in a pinch and a scrappy enjoyable partner.  She seems a bit like Archie Goodwin to Nero Wolfe, except Benedict is far more personable (though quite a bit less brilliant.)

The story seems to stretch itself in a few places.  The antagonist gets discovered rather late in the book and they seem to have acted well beyond any reasonable motivation, but the actual search, (It is named the Seeker afterall) is plausible and enthralling.

Will I read another Jack McDevitt book, another Alex Benedict book?  Maybe, but not soon.  My own writing is too similar for me.  I’ve got too much of my own book to work through, but I wouldn’t pass that along as a slight.  If I can get my book together half as well as The Seeker, I’ll have done rather well.

I’m plowing through my stack of books pretty quickly.  I’m almost done with The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaimon, but I’ll probably hold off reviewing it until next week.

The first on the stack is an old wilted book with yellowed pages and a creased spine.  1.75 is printed in the top corner in black letters.  It looks like a small travel guide, twenty years old and dumped in an attic.

Happens to be one of the most exciting science fiction books I’ve ever read.  Book, is maybe not the best classification.  It’s four short stories each separate from each other all set in a distant future where society, technology, business, and exploration have long since challenged the present norms.  The first story is a navy training expedition into space, a grueling year journey that is almost always lethal to a few crewmen.  The second story is a 1984esque world of social classification and bureaucracy.  The third is a world so crowded space and privacy are the ultimate signs of wealth.  The last is about a rig, somewhat akin to an oil rig, that harvests resources from a peaceful ocean planet.  It doesn’t stay peaceful for long, but the enemy is, well, not what one would expect.

Jack Vance is a well-known author and I probably should have delved into one of his books quite a bit sooner.  He writes with the sparse and fast-paced style more common to the era of small books and detective paperbacks and it works very well for short stories.  I must have gone through a hundred pages a minute, only stopping to digest each story before it whizzed completely by.  I definitely expect to read more of his stuff.  (Also George RR Martin recently helped with an anthology of his stuff.

Next book up is The Secret by Jack McDevitt.