Guilherme Solari's Blog

Claustrophobic dystopia (5 stars)

“There was nothing to do, no place to go, the city pressed in around him and every square foot of it was like this filled with people, children, noise, heat.”

Make Room! Make Room! imagines the 1999 of the “future” – it was written in 1966 – where 35 million people live in New York. The world’s resources are all but exhausted and people live literally on top of each other. Because of the overcrowding, it is also a world of great social strife, with daily violent protests as the social security rations dwindle.

The story follows a police detective called Andy Rusch, who is sent to investigate the murder of a big shot mobster with ties to politicians. Much of the book shows the heavy contrast between the upscale living conditions of the rich and the dog eat dog world of the majority of the population. Even so, resources like water and meat are expensive and getting rarer even for the wealthy. The book made me feel spoiled for taking for granted the simple luxuries of being able to eat a steak, having a shower or a cup of coffee.

“The meat was indescribably good and he cut it into very small pieces, savoring each one slowly.”

It is a very claustrophobic book, that shows a vision of a future in slow but inevitable decline brought by overpopulation. Institutions like the police are all but scrapped, murder cases pile up and go by with no investigation, detectives are sent to riot duty to contain the hungry masses. The descriptions of the crowds are gripping and privacy is non-existent, not really because of mass surveillance, but because people are everywhere and families need to share apartments.

“The oil is gone, the topsoil depleted and washed away, the trees chopped down, the animals extinct, the earth poisoned, and all we have to show for this is seven billion people fighting over the scraps that are left, living a miserable existence – and still breeding without control.”

The book was adapted to film in 1973 as Soylent Green, with Charlton Heston as Rusch. The film differs a bit from the book as it focuses more on the origin of the Soylent substance used to feed the masses. In “Make Room!” when it seems that things cannot get any worse they sure became even worse, in heartbreaking ways. It is an incredible and claustrophobic dystopia about a still very much possible future of dwindling resources.

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Paranoia and a slow descent into madness (4 stars)

“Happiness, he thought, is knowing you got some pills.”

A Scanner Darkly follows Bob Arctor, a narcotics undercover agent that lives among junkies trying to find the source of a drug named substance D, or slow death. He wears a “scrambler suit” when dealing with his superiors, so that not even they now his true identity – and he is simply called Fred – until one day he is called to spy on none other than Bob Arctor himself.

This is a narrative of a slow descent into madness as Fred/Bob Arctor’s identity gets scrambled. There are pa parallels as to how the drugs are affecting the left and right hemispheres of his brain and how his dual personalities are getting mixed together.

Add to this surveillance paranoia, questions about social roles and the nature of identity, VERY bad trips and you have psychedelic sci fi at it’s best. The description of “junkie logic” is incredible, that simulacrum of real logic that only makes sense when you are deep under the influence. Who after all can you trust when you can’t trust your own mind?

The version I read also had a post-face in which the author described how many of the friends that served as basis for characters in the novel died or went insane. It really reminded me how the visceral edge of the book came after all from Philip K. Dick’s own biography.

“But the actual touch of her lingered, inside his heart. That remained. In all the years of his life ahead, the long years without her, with never seeing her or hearing from her or knowing anything about her, if she was alive or happy or dead or what, that touch stayed locked within him, sealed in himself, and never went away. That one touch of her hand.”

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Brain-eating AIs revolt against Asimov’s laws (4 stars)

Originally released in 1982, Software mainly follows Cobb, a retired scientist that created a race of sentient robots that took over the moon after a 2001 revolt, the boppers. Decades later, and old and alcoholic Cobb is contacted by the boppers with the promise of receiving eternal life. The catch is that the robots want to eat his brain to do it.

Like many other works of cyberpunk, Software deals with themes like the nature of identity, free will, how technology changes society and the basis of intelligence. The setting is an intriguing one, set not in sprawling cities, but in places like an anarchic Florida turned – even further – into a senior citizen utopia where the old ones endlessly relive the 1960’s. It is an interesting reminder that a world of advanced medicine also brings an older population, and Social Security woes.

‘To stop the rioting, the Gimmie had turned the whole state of Florida over to the pheezers. There was no rent there, and free weekly food drops. The pheezers flocked there in droves, and “did their own thing.” Living in abandoned motels, listening to their crummy old music, and holding dances like it was 1963, for God’s sake.’

There is a curious symbiosis between human and bopper society, that with it’s superior technology sells back to mankind human organs grown in vat farms. Bopper society is also very intriguing by itself in Software. It is undergoing a tense friction between small boppers – mostly human-sized robots – with the big boppers, who are the size of entire buildings and may be the next AI evolutionary step. The big boppers are bent on “absorbing” – actually eating – the brains of small boppers and humans alike in their search of knowleadge and power.

I liked the combination of a tongue-in-cheek and humorous tone with big ideas in Software. The bopper society is an intriguing one, fast-paced and based on competition, as the success of sentience in boppers is attributed not only to the fact that they were created to learn, but that they were created to compete.

‘That was my big idea, Sta-Hi. To make the robots evolve. They were designed to build copies of themselves, but they had to fight over the parts. Natural selection.’

It is also interesting to see how oppressive Asimov’s robot laws sound to an intelligent machine, as they put human needs and protection above the machines’. I liked how this struggle even mirrors the ones from real minorities. The machines go as far as calling Asimov’s Laws “human-chauvinist”.

Another big theme is if consciousness can be transfered. A robot can of course replicate it’s mind and software, but is the new robot the same being or just a perfect copy? And the same goes to humans. If a computer maps and backups your entire mind, is it still you in there?

I found that the characters were one of the strong points of the book, and they really kept me interested in the narrative, like the junkie Sta-High and the primordial sentient bopper Ralph Numbers. I liked how the book got into each character’s perspectives.

Software is just the first book in the “Ware Tetralogy”, comprised of Software, Wetware, Freeware and Realware. I am looking forward for the next books in the series.

O post Review: Software, by Rudy Rucker apareceu primeiro em Guilherme Solari.

A truly creative fantasy setting (5 stars)

Cugel the Clever is the second book in the Dying Earth series of Jack Vance, a setting in the extreme future of the Earth when the Sun is dying and so much time has passed that things went back to fantasy in a way, with wizards and monsters roaming the last days of the planet.

In a genre loaded with the usual dragons and elves, Dying Earth stands on it’s own with a stunningly creative world of truly bizarre creatures and concepts. It really is refreshing to read a book where the worldbuilding is actually new and doesn’t rely on revisiting Tolkien tropes and archetypes. The book brings different tales that could well be read as complete unrelated short stories, like in the first title of the series, but here they are cunningly woven together as a greater story.

The narrative introduces us to Cugel, a rogue of loose morals that tries to rob one Iucounu the Laughing Magician. As punishment, he is forced across the world by the wizard in a quest to retrieve an artifact and in his journey back home he meets exotic societies and characters. Peasants that work for decades for the privilege of inheriting eyes that see the world as a paradise, shell creatures that rear rumors from the sea, mages that construct strange rock formations for centuries trying to conjure a rare creature, pilgrims lost in bizarre theological discussions, indecipherable monsters, creatures and mysteries.

The character of Cugel improves the already fascinating Dying Earth setting of Vance. He is a bastard, willingly or unwillingly sowing destruction wherever he goes. Half the fun of the book is to watch this malevolent character cause trouble, the other half is reading how Cugel tries to use his wits to avoid trouble, like curses or traps, with mixed results. Cugel may be the clever, but he is not as clever as he thinks.

The book is beautifully written, Jack Vance manages to create a believable and exotic world without having to explain it completely, keeping it as a mystery for the reader. The first Dying Earth book brought a fascinating world, and Cugel the Clever only improved on it with great characters and humor.

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A sad testament of the human ability to adapt (5 stars)

“I am one; you are others; this is in the inevitable nature of things.”

Originally from 1961, this book from anthropologist Theodora Kroeber – mother of science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin – tells the story of California’s last “wild” native: Ishi. He was captured starving and desperate in a ranch not far from San Francisco in the August of 1911. All of his people, the Yahi – that inhabited the region for 3 thousand years – were exterminated in less than 50 by gold rushes, violence and disease.

Ishi wandered alone for months before being captures. He stayed under the care of anthropologists of the University of California, where he spent his last years as an informal assistant and a curiosity for visitors. With no immunity for the illnesses common in civilization, he would die four years after being discovered.

The first half of the book describes with detail the destruction of Ishi’s tribe and it’s culture based on his account and data the anthropologists pieces together from other sources. Ishi was a survivor from the Three Knolls massacre in 1865, from which only 33 members of his tribe escaped. The remaining members of the tribe hid for 44 years in the mountains avoiding any contact with the white man and died one by one, until only Ishi remained with his sister and his mother.

The second part of the book shows Ishi learning about the modern world. Imagine, if you can, the cultural shock of a forty-year old man that lived with a knowledge equivalent of the stone age coming into the 20th century. Ishi is a testament of the human ability to adapt, and faced this new world with ingenuity, wisdom, beauty and humor.

“And so, stoic and unafraid, departed the last wild Indian of America. He closes a chapter in history. He looked upon us as sophisticated children—smart, but not wise. We knew many things, and much that is false. He knew nature, which is always true. His were the qualities of character that last forever. He was kind; he had courage and self-restraint, and though all had been taken from him, there was no bitterness in his heart. His soul was that of a child, his mind that of a philosopher.”

Ishi wasn’t his real name, it means only “men” in the yana language. For them, it was improper for a person the say their own name, they needed to be introduced by another member of the tribe. But Ishi had no one else to introduce him. His real name was never known.

O post Review: In Two Worlds, by Theodora Kroeber apareceu primeiro em Guilherme Solari.

Richard Adams used to make up stories about little bunnies for his daughters during long car rides in the English country. One day, infuriated at a lousy children’s book he bought, he considered: “I can do better than that”. The result is one of England’s most beloved young reader’s novels.

The story of Watership Down, edited originally in 1972, starts when the rabbit Fiver begins to have visions showing a great catastrophe destroying his colony. “The field is full of blood”, he says. This trope is based on Cassandra’s myth, and much like the Greek prophetess, the little bunny’s visions are ignored by the leaders and only a small group decides to escape in search of a better place.

When my girlfriend asks her English friends about Watership Down their expression shows love and fear at the same time. Love because the animal characters actions and personalities are built in a very endearing way by the author. Fear because the little furry creature’s deaths are many and bloody. Like all good children’s literature, Watership Down does not insult the young reader’s intelligence with simplified messages.

The bunnies have anthropomorphic thoughts and can speak, but the book was built around real rabbit’s behavior, their organization, their ways of feeding, etc. It’s interesting how the author imagined how it would be a society of hunted creatures, instead of hunters like us. They are in a constant state of fear, always alert to any weird sound or noise.

Adams also created a sort bunny speak, called “Lapine”, that even without the depth of other literary created languages like those made by Tolkien, has consistent prefixes and endings to convey and exotic but realistic tone. The rabbits also have a rich mythology with several stories intertwined.

There is the solar god Fritz, the black rabbit Inlé (bringer of death), the primordial rabbit El-ahraiah and his many tales deceiving dogs or stealthily attacking gardens. The characters are very well constructed. Fiver is the prophet flirting with madness, Hazel the leader, Bigwig the warrior, Blackberry is pretty much the scientist, Dandelion is the bard, and entertains his friend with his tales. The book has a curious flavor, like a Greek tragedy or a Shakespearean epic only with bunnies.

One of the best books I have ever read. The ambience makes the reader really imagine how life is a few centimeters from the ground and think about how frail life is. And also about the number of stories that are hidden everywhere.

O post Review: Watership Down, by Richard Adams apareceu primeiro em Guilherme Solari.

Fantasy orcs + modern weapons = marine madness (3 stars)

Grunts begins like a typical fantasy novel, with a horde of orcs working for a necromancer as they prepare themselves for a final assault against the forces of light and good. Things take a weird turn when the greenskins find the ancient lair of a dragon filled with all kind of modern weapons, like rifles, tanks, and assault helicopters.

Along with this arsenal, orcs also acquire the attitude and language of marines, and use modern military tactics in different combat situations. The battles between the orc marines and elfs, paladins and halflings is the high point of the book, filled with one liners like “pass me another elf, this one is split”, and when a general hears he is charged with crimes against humanity he answers: “thank you.”

The reader should be warned that the book revels in it’s black humor and political incorrectness. The violence is very graphic, as are the rape jokes.

I liked the idea of Grunts, but it seemed to me like a joke stretched too far. After the initial novelty and baddass factor of ORC MARINES elapses, the reader is left with unidimensional characters whose motivations change just because the plot needs them to, wooden plots and deus ex machina moments. Out of nowhere, a race of sentient space insects shows up, out of nowhere they are defeated. It was a bit of a struggle to read all the way through.

Grunts seemed for me like a hyperactive child babbling whatever crazy idea came to her mind. At first it is charming, but soon you are staring at your watch wondering when it will end.

O post Review: Grunts, by Mary Gentle apareceu primeiro em Guilherme Solari.

The first sci fi book ever written! (5 stars)

Published in 1818, Frankenstein is considered the first work o science fiction. It tells the story of one Victor Frankenstein, scientist that creates a living being out of dead body parts.

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS

The unnamed creature of the book – commonly called Frankenstein in pop culture – is a very different than how it was portrayed in film. He is mentally and physically agile, by far the most articulate character in the book. He is even prone to citing passages from Paradise Lost, as he finds an uncanny likeness between his own social exile and that of Lucifer in Milton’s epic poem.

It is also worth pointing out that the creature is not a monster initially. He has good impulses, but becomes aggressive after being constantly attacked and ostracized. Abandoned and left confused with no answers by his own creator after his “birth”, the creature is even shot after saving a woman and is later chased by a family of peasants that he secretly helped for months. He becomes a monster because he is treated as such by humanity.

The book is an example of the popular 19th century motif of the doppelgänger – like Edgar Allan Poe‘s short story William Wilson, Oscar Wilde‘s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Louis Stevenson‘s Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde, to name a few. These are stories about the existence of a “evil side“ to every person. A dark, bestial and primal side, hiding behind our appearance of reason and control. A precursory representation of psychoanalysis‘ Id.

One can see a clear change in Victor Frankenstein‘s character after the creation of his monster. He was obsessed with his scientific pursuits and shun away his family and friends. As soon as his monster is created, his personality shifts and he starts again to value human contact. Is like he is “exorcised“ of that evil. Frankenstein‘s lust for vengeance later on in the story mirrors the creature at the beginning. He is first the hunted and then the hunter.

Frankenstein is a book about that madness that comes when science is not mediated by moral, and perhaps this is why the book is still relevant almost two centuries after it was published. Human beings have created a nuclear arsenal that can destroy the planet many times over. Just an example of how such an insanity remains alive and well today.

O post Review: Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley apareceu primeiro em Guilherme Solari.

Great premise, but barren plot and characters (3 stars)

A sci fi classic, the Foundation series is set over thousands of years. In a distant future, humanity is spread all over the galaxy in an enormous empire that doesn’t even know it’s original planet anymore. Enter mathematician Hari Seldon, who develops a science called psychohistory. This science postulates that the actions of a single individual are unpredictable, but the ones from large populations can be predicted almost as an exact science. Hari Seldon, thus, manages to predict that the empire will fall and that a period of 30 thousand years of barbarism and destruction will follow.

He concludes that nothing can stop this, but Hari Seldon develops a plan to shorten the dark period from 30 to one thousand years. He intends to build in two extreme corners of the galaxy scientific foundations with all of humanity’s knowledge, so that it survives this space Middle Ages.

With the fall of the empire, the fragile foundation sees itself cornered by several kingdoms that wish to conquer it, in particular because it still possesses nuclear technology. Incapable of defending itself militarily, the Foundation sells technology to neighboring kingdoms trying to maintain a balance of power between them. If one became strong enough to conquer the others, the Foundation would be finished. Asimov based this balance of powers in the fall of the Roman Empire.

The book has an excellent premise and a central part in the history of science fiction literature, but Foundation didn’t really grab me. Asimov uses too many Deus ex Machina gimmicks. Two or three times the Foundation completely subverts a lost political situation by a miraculous twist in the plot. The characters are also very barren, they seem more like mouths to push the narrative along then actual people.

O post Review: Foundation, by Isaac Asimov apareceu primeiro em Guilherme Solari.

How would you live you life again? (5 stars)

Originally published in 1986, Replay is a time travel story with a twist. It raises the question: what would you do if you died right now and woke up 25 years ago back in your teenage body? What if this happened several times and you could relive your life again, and again, and again?

[THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS]

The plot begins with Jeff Winston, a 43-year-old radio broadcaster that dies of a heart attack in 1988 during a phone conversation with his wife. He immediately wakes up back in 1963 and how he was at 18, still a law school student, but now with the memory of everything that would happen in the next 25 years.

The first thing that Jeff does is become a millionaire, by betting – correctly – in all the sports events he remembers. The he goes to Las Vegas, gets a trophy wife, becomes a billionaire as he knows the best company stocks to buy. Despites his efforts taking better care of his health and having a whole hospital at his disposal, Jeff dies again in 1988 and wakes up back in 1963, in a phenomenon that would repeat itself several more times.

Jeff balances himself between omnipotence and impotence. He tries to stop JFK’s assassination before it happens, but the president ends up killed by someone else. He tries to find his old wife in his new life, who drives him off in some lives and accepts him in others, evolving a different personality each time. He has a daughter in a life, who he fears will be lost in a limbo when he “reboots”. And Jeff accumulates a knowledge that he has no one to share with. Until he discovers he is not the only one “replaying” his life.

It is very interesting how the character goes through different stages along his replays, enthusiasm, depression, acceptance. Author Ken Grimwood showed great sensibility recreating all these existences, with moments of new happiness and new pain. The point that came across to me is that if we lived our lives again we wouldn’t correct the mistakes of the past, we would only make new ones. Replay is a book that transcends science fiction and makes the reader think about their own story.

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