strange and random happenstance

False Value by Ben Aaronovitch
Published by: Gollancz
Publication Date: February 25th, 2020
Format: Paperback, 404 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

What do you do when at face value it looks like you're on the outs at your job? You use that to go undercover at a shady tech startup that values secrecy and loyalty above everything else. Or at least values it second to a good Douglas Adams homage. Tech guru Terrence Skinner has left California behind for the grey skies of London. Could it be for personal safety, which is what's bandied about among the employees, or could it have to do with whatever is in Serious Cybernetics Corporation's second building, Bambleweeny? It's rumored that that is where Deep Thought is, because the guy really can't pass up a Douglas Adams joke. But Peter knows that they're up to no good because of a run in he had a month before his first day at SCC. A run in with an American practitioner who was working at the London Library where he is looking into recovering the Mary Engine. The Mary Engine is the supposed creation of Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace and if the Faceless Man owned it, which Peter knows to be the case, then it has to be seriously magical. Of course the Faceless Man's daughter sold it on eBay resulting in previous catastrophic attempts to retrieve it, so it's reappearance in the hands of Terrence Skinner is worrisome. Which is why Peter is now a Vogon at SCC, that's security to the layman. And Terrence sure needs protection when Peter stops one of Skinner's own employees from stabbing him. The incident leads Peter to be a bit of a celebrity among the staff but more importantly it gets him an in with Skinner. Because the attacker worked in Bambleweeny this allows Peter to get behind that mysterious locked door to discover that Skinner might have created not just Artificial Intelligence but Artificial General Intelligence. Which is where the money really is. This AGI could change everyone's life. And sure, Skinner sounds convincing, but Peter lives in a world where magic exists, and, well, magic is more likely than AGI, which means everything must come back to the Mary Engine. With the help and hindrance of other practitioners Peter starts to formulate a plan. The problem is that this is bigger than he thought and he was really not cut out for undercover work. This could end very badly.

There's one thing no one who's a fan of Aaronovitch will ever doubt, and that's his geek cred, and I'm not even counting that he wrote for Doctor Who. Because if there's one thing true geeks love it's Douglas Adams references from the overt to the obscure and arguing about the singularity. And here Arronovitch has built an entire book around these core beliefs. Because yes, Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a religion as is the belief we will all be killed by Cylons. And possible baddie boss aside, who hasn't wanted to work at a company that has Vogons and Magrathea as job titles and locations? But the veneer of Adams isn't where False Value shines, it's in it's handling of Artificial Intelligence, Deep Thought as it were. AI is right at this moment an issue that everyone is dealing with, along with trying to grapple with what this means for us as a species. And I don't think it's a coincidence that both AI and the singularity came into the vernacular in the fifties, AI preceding the idea that AI will destroy us all by only about two years. Yet it's only truly now that the extreme warnings signs those of us raised in the eighties to recognize are blaring klaxons. Skynet people! SKYNET! But the thing is, the question asked daily is, is this true AI? Because most times, especially in fiction, if we're told it's AI there's no way it's AI. It might look like it can pass the Turing Test, but can it really? Because the truth is what the vast majority of people believe is AI, which at this precise moment is "writing" and "creating" and "making art," isn't AI, it's a complex program that has scrapped the entire internet and is plagiarizing the work of others. Others who are losing jobs because of AI. When one of my friends was playing with Midjourney I told her to stop. Immediately. She was helping the program learn while taking away jobs from artists such as myself. Never help the machines to rise up! Aaronovitch has a wonderful character with Peter because he understands all of this yet is skeptical. He knows when people tell you AI you should look for the man or woman behind the curtain. And because of his line of work, it could be a ghost literally in the machine. A very vindictive ghost. But still, it's not AI. But one day it just might be. I mean look how much of a shit show it is when the AI is really just a misnomer. So for now, us humans are the real danger, we were the Cylons all along.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Ada Lovelace, AI, Ben Aaronovitch, BSG, Charles Babbage, Cylons, Deep Thought, Doctor Who, Douglas Adams, False Value, London Calling, Mary Engine, Peter Grant, Skynet, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Vogons

The Affinity Bridge by George Mann
Published by: Tor
Publication Date: July 1st, 2008
Format: Hardcover, 336 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Queen Victoria should have died at the turn of 1901, but in November of that year Victoria lives still via machines, past her time on this earth, preserved as ruler. Sir Maurice Newbury works as an "investigator for the crown" for this indomitable woman who plans to outwit death, by any means necessary, technological or otherwise. While he works at the British Museum, his job there is little more then a cover. Or as Newbury and his clever assistant Victoria Hobbes would say, the museum is there to mark the time between their interesting adventures. Luckily this is a time when they aren't needed at the museum as Queen Victoria has several mysterious situations at present that need Newbury's expertise. There is a plague of revenants, zombie like corpses attacking people in the fog, a string of deaths in Whitechapel that are linked to a mysterious glowing policeman, but most importantly, a crashed airship that had a minor royal on board and among the lists of the dead, a list that is suspiciously missing a pilot. While Newbury longs to find a satisfying conclusion to the murders in Whitechapel and help Scotland Yard and his copper friend Sir Charles Bainbridge, Victoria has insisted that the crash of The Lady Armitage comes before everything else.

Going to the company that made The Lady Armitage, Chapman and Villiers, the duo discover that the company has been expanding beyond their regular line of airships to encompass Automatons. Villiers is a scientist who left France under a cloud because of his unorthodox experimentations, but Newbury can not help marvelling at the work shown to them. They have created simulated life. A simulated life that coincidentally may be responsible for the disastrous air crash, no matter Chapman and Villiers's denials. The closer Victoria and Newbury get to the answers, the more danger they are in. Sir Maurice needs help from "The Fixer" on more then one occasion to keep himself alive at all. Add the ubiquitous presence of the unnerving Automatons everywhere and then throw in a dash of an insane asylum and a laudanum addiction and you can see it's going to be a miracle if they can solve the cases and keep themselves alive.

It is rare that I ever bother to write a second review of a book, one and done is usually my motto. But then there's the other side of me, the control freak which knows that my reviewing style has changed over time. To have a George Mann theme month and just hit you with an old review, a review that feels like it was written out of time (and yes, I did "adapt" the recap), well, that's just not the done thing. Yet it's not just to appease my controlling nature that I re-review it. The Affinity Bridge is one of those elusive books that are worthy of further discussion. Upon re-reading there are so many more layers and plot points that mean something new and different. You see things you missed the first time around, and overall, while the book was just as good, if not better then the first time, it's for a whole new slew of reasons. Things that I loved previously annoyed me, while things I overlooked came forward to take the hole in my heart. George Mann to me is the apotheosis of Steampunk. He has defined this genre for me with a perfect balancing of Britishness, technology, romance, storytelling, and mystery.

To get at the heart of why this book is so seminal to me I really had to think about what continually draws me back to the Victorian era. The truth is it isn't the stuff of period dramas. It isn't the clothes, it isn't the bygone days of culture and manners. I know that might come as a shock, being the lover of miniseries and historical literature that I am. But what truly fascinates me about this time period is the danger, the menace lurking in the fog, and Jack the Ripper. Even as a teenager I had a love of the lurid, the Penny Dreadful, the danger coupled with the romance of another time. A world of manners coupled with skulduggery. The two sides of the coin, if you will, the refinement living alongside the heinous. If I had the ability to time travel I would totally use it just to solve the unsolvable and find out who really was Jack the Ripper. I'd probably use my power on other unsolved cases, but Jack the Ripper, the impact on society to this day is amazing. I can not count the number of interpretations that I have read, watched, and played over the years. Yes, I did play a Sherlock Holmes Jack the Ripper video game. I never won it, but I remember scraping Macassar oil off a door and analyzing it in the lab at 221B Baker Street.

Reading The Affinity Bridge while watching Whitechapel on the side made me have this eureka moment revealing myself to myself in all it's depravity. I finally got it. The murderers, the pickpockets, the thieves, all being routed out by the erstwhile detectives, I thrive on this. I search out that darker aspect in Victorian crime. I want stories worthy of the legend of Jack the Ripper, and that is what George delivers. The glowing policeman coming out of the darkness to revenge his death, seriously, chills. The revenants being a plague on the slums wherein any patch of fog could mean, not just your death, but a horrid and painful demise of being turned into an abomination, a great twist on zombies. This book is a Penny Dreadful for a modern sensibility. Not just relying on a Jack the Ripper type character, but expanding the horror to include the supernatural, the occult, and most terrifying of all, the rapid advancement of technology. These Automatons are literally the stuff of my nightmares, part Sonny from I Robot, part Cylon, and all the horror I never really felt for the Cybermen rolled into one.

But The Affinity Bridge couples this Victorian doom and gloom with a lighter almost campy air. During my re-reading of the book I almost felt as if Newbury was too British. Too much a parody of a man who will do anything for king and country. How does this lead to a positive you might be asking yourself right about now, well, I'm getting to it. The partnership of Newbury and Hobbes is very much reminiscent of that of John Steed and Emma Peel. This book is all the campy fun of a Victorian series of The Avengers, and no, not The Avengers with Loki. If you look at the complete run of The Avengers the four years between 1965-1968 were the shows glory years. Steed needed Emma. The show actually was on the air for many years before and after Mrs. Peel, but it is Mrs. Peel that balances Steed. This is how I view the relationship of Newbury and Hobbes. Newbury IS too campy, too British, because he isn't complete without Veronica. They balance each other to create a perfect partnership. I can only hope that they will keep walking arm and arm into the fog to fend off the next fiend and finish the day with a pot of Earl Grey.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Cybermen, Cylons, Emma Peel, George Mann, Jack the Ripper, John Steed, Mann Month, Newbury and Hobbes, Queen Victoria, Sherlock Holmes, The Affinity Bridge, The Avengers, Veronica Hobbes, Whitechapel, Zombies

Dreams of Empire by Justin Richards
Published by: BBC Books
Publication Date: August 3rd, 1999
Format: Paperback, 320 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

The Haddron Republic has just ended a mighty civil war. One of their leaders, Kesar, took it upon himself to make the Republic an Empire. His Empire. Though his dreams were destroyed by his childhood friend Trayx. They fought a mighty war and in the end Trayx was victorious. Kesar was sentenced to imprisoned exile among the stars. Kesar and his remaining loyal followers would live on Santespri with a garrison of Trayx's soliders. Though his exile isn't what truly brought Kesar low, it's the attack on him after his sentencing, he was disfigured so badly he now wears a metal mask while spending all his time playing chess with his second in command, Cruger. The hope is that chess will make the two of them see why their coupe failed as well as while away the hours.

The TARDIS materializes in a lower section of the castle on Santespri just as Trayx has come to visit Kesar and a murder has happened. At first considered persons of interest, The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria, soon are viewed as allies when The Doctor points out, not only can they not be the murderers, but that there's a ship, an unscheduled ship, heading straight for Santespri, and that they should marshal their resources and get ready for attack. But is the ship coming to rescue Kesar to lead him to the throne he once desired, or is it coming to kill him and make of him the martyr Trayx hoped Kesar would never be. A symbol to rally around and restart the civil war. Or is there more going on then any of them know?

Dreams of Empire is one of those books that struggles to get started. I just wasn't able to connect to this outer space Roman Empire redux with delusions of Napoleon's exile in Elba but peopled with robotic legionnaires. The empire didn't seem logical or even plausible, plus those Cylon wannabes (they are far more advanced then Cybermen, so I'm going with Cylon) being "Legion" well... the hive mind was a little too similar to the previous book about The Doctor I just read, seriously, whomever picked these books didn't really care about diversity of storytelling now did they? Doctor Who usually excels at combining the old with the new, but here it felt like a puzzle that didn't want to fit together right, like there was a piece missing. In his introduction, Justin Richards talks about ancient Rome in a very muddled way with a lot of what ifs. The fact that he seems muddled even in this story's inception I think makes it clear that he would have troubles pulling off this imagined empire. Plus, while I do have a basic grasp of Roman history, Richards seems to almost expect you to know the play by play of the senate and the consuls in order for you to make any sense of the politics. Also, are these people really wearing tunics but have advanced weaponry and bombs? Yeah... not feeling it.

Thankfully everything in the book changes once we get to Kesar's (Serisouly, Kesar? Is he the Quasar Caesar?) exile on Santespri (yep, another asteroid like the last book, sigh). Because then the book isn't about Empires and political backstabbing, then it's about people, people who you feel a real connection to, and lots and lots of chess games. But more importantly it's about The Doctor, and Jamie (woo hoo) and Victoria. The 1st Doctor book I read annoyed me because it could easily have been a book without The Doctor. He could have been omitted entirely and the book would have still worked. He was a background character used to tie up loose ends. Seriously, if you write a Doctor Who book it should have The Doctor front and center all the time. Dreams of Empire not only had The Doctor front and center but perfectly capture both who The Doctor is, but also really captured Patrick Troughton's Doctor perfectly. You could see him so easily in your mind's eye that at times it was a little eerie. Yet I think the true genius of this book relates to something I believe Neil Gaiman said. That while this is a second Doctor story, you could just as easily see Tom Baker or Matt Smith delivering these lines. Justin Richards has caught a hold of the elusive heart of The Doctor that I have felt missing in some of this past season of the show and made this book 100% Doctor.

In fact, The Doctor is able to carry the rest of the book despite its flaws. The book occasionally gets bogged down with technology and almost heist like antics with the security cameras working or being looped. The bad guy is laughably obvious, even how he's doing it is so transparent that you're just waiting for The Doctor to spring his trap. And the "twist" well, how should I put this... ah, I don't want to be rude seeing as I actually liked the book, but, well... it wasn't a twist, just something blindingly obvious. Like so obvious there was an arrow above it in neon going, here's the obvious. In the end, there's just too many historical and technological things vying against each other to make it a truly cohesive story, but somehow, it works. If you can make it a couple of chapters in you won't be disappointed, except perhaps in the fact that the title of the book is repeatedly said by the characters. Here's a good tip for authors, don't obviously use your book title in the book, it's a bit too meta and lame.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Chess, Cybermen, Cylons, Doctor Who, Doctor Who Book Challenge, Dreams of Empire, Jamie, Justin Richards, Matt Smith, Neil Gaiman, Patrick Troughton, Rome, The 2nd Doctor, Tom Baker

The Affinity Bridge by George Mann
Published by: Tor
Publication Date: July 1st, 2008
Format: Hardcover, 336 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

In our world, Queen Victoria would have died at the turn of 1901, but in November of that year Victoria lives still via machines, past her time on this earth, in this world. Preserved as ruler. Sir Maurice Newbury works as an "investigator for the crown" for this indomitable woman who plans to outwit death, by any means necessary, should further measures need to be taken. While he works at the British Museum as an expert on ancient societies and the occult, it is his dabbling in the occult that Victoria calls upon from time to time, making his Museum job more a cover than anything. Or as Newbury and his clever assistant, Victoria Hobbes, would say, the museum is there between the interesting adventures.

Queen Victoria has several mysterious situations at present that need Newbury's expertise. There is a plague of revenants, zombie like corpses attacking people in the fog, a string of deaths in Whitechapel that are linked to a mysterious glowing policeman, but most importantly, a crashed airship that had a minor royal on board and among the lists of the dead, well they where all dead except the pilot who was missing. While Newbury longs to find a satisfying conclusion to the murders in Whitechapel and help Scotland Yard and his copper friend Sir Charles Bainbridge, Victoria has insisted that the crash of The Lady Armitage comes before everything else.

Going to the company that made The Lady Armitage, Chapman and Villiers, they discover that the company has been expanding beyond their regular line of airships to encompass Automatons. Villiers is a scientist who left France under a cloud because of his unorthodox experimentations, but Newbury can not help marvelling at the work shown to them. They have created simulated life. A simulated life that coincidentally may be responsible for the disastrous air crash, no matter Chapman and Villiers's denials.

The closer Victoria and Newbury get to the answers, the more in danger they are. Maurice needs help from "The Fixer" on more than one occasion to keep him alive at all. Add the ubiquitous presence of the unnerving automatons everywhere and then throw in a dash of an insane asylum and laudanum addiction and you can see it's going to be a miracle if they can solve the cases and keep themselves alive. Now just a quick rest for tea and off into the foggy fray they go!

I distinctly remember the day I picked up this book. I was in Saint Louis on the way to my best friend's wedding in Arkansas. We had stopped for two nights in Saint Louis because my friend Matt's family is there and it was a very nice half way point. Upon planning a trip to any town I research the bookstores in advance. I was very excited to go to Left Bank Books, which I had heard so much about. But being in a literary town I have high standards. Sadly, the bookstore left me wanting... yet... there, below a window in the basement I found this book. I had been wanting to buy it, there was more than a little cover lust and I loved the handling of the type, especially how George Mann's name was framed, also, I've always loved the name Hobbes since Calvin and Hobbes. So the bookstore itself was a bust, yet the find made me joyous. I had even greater joy later upon learning that George was going to be at last years Teslacon. I was going for Gail Carriger, but I met two more authors there that I now consider friends, George was one of them.

The Affinity Bridge spoke to me on so many levels. One being the sheer Britishness of it. Just count the times they have tea and you will start to feel the call of Queen and Country... is that a stiff upper lip developing? Also, I adore people who, while working covertly, also have a cool day job; British Museum, hello! I'd take that any day! Though it was the pacing that drew me in more than anything. Some Steampunk books have a flaw of constant action with a quick tea break. This break neck speed doesn't always appeal to my Victorian sensibilities, or even my British sensibilities. You would not see The Avengers rushing about. Sure, they had an action packed punch up when needed, but they took the time for the crime to unwind, sure, in their case many people died, but the leisurely pace from one clue to the next with taking lots of time for tea and strolling arm and arm to the crime gives the book a nice lazy Sunday afternoon vibe. Action packed, yet relaxing and inviting.

I also liked the automatons. Given how they play out, there are many Doctor Who Cybermen references that could be bandied about. In particular the fact that the Chapman and Villiers plant is located in Battersea and they used the Battersea Power Station made famous by Pink Floyd for the conversion facility in the David Tennant two-parter, Rise of the Cybermen and The Age of Steel. Yet, George makes them far scarier than I have even felt the Cybermen where. With their fluidity of motion and their mirrored eyes, I would be more likely to compare them to Steampunk Cylons. Needless to say, they freaked me out, and once we find the reason for their malfunctioning, they go into the truly terrifying category. Well done George, you have succeeded in giving me robot nightmares that Doctor Who has failed to do since I was a little girl playing in my grandfather's gravel pit.

Finally there is the Blue Policeman. He caught me at page whatever he first appeared on and George cleverly kept him off stage for awhile, but not too long, pushing me forward to find out what the frak was going on. Side note, I view frak is perfectly acceptable in this review because of the automatons similarities to cylons, end note. I also loved that, most likely, it was a mystery in a mystery. Always keep us guessing George and you'll always keep me reading, though maybe edit that fight scene on the train a little but thanks for downplaying the "zombie card". Can't wait for the next one, Egyptian overtones I hope judging by the title, The Osiris Ritual!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Airships, Calvin and Hobbes, Cybermen, Cylons, David Tennant, George Mann, Newbury and Hobbes, Queen Victoria, The Affinity Bridge, The Avengers, The Osiris Ritual, Victoria Hobbes

The Affinity Bridge by George Mann
Published by: Tor
Publication Date: July 1st, 2008
Format: Hardcover, 336 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

In our world, Queen Victoria would have died at the turn of 1901, but in November of that year Victoria lives still via machines, past her time on this earth, in this world. Preserved as ruler. Sir Maurice Newbury works as an "investigator for the crown" for this indomitable woman who plans to outwit death, by any means necessary, should further measures need to be taken. While he works at the British Museum as an expert on ancient societies and the occult, it is his dabbling in the occult that Victoria calls upon from time to time, making his Museum job more a cover than anything. Or as Newbury and his clever assistant, Victoria Hobbes, would say, the museum is there between the interesting adventures.

Queen Victoria has several mysterious situations at present that need Newbury's expertise. There is a plague of revenants, zombie like corpses attacking people in the fog, a string of deaths in Whitechapel that are linked to a mysterious glowing policeman, but most importantly, a crashed airship that had a minor royal on board and among the lists of the dead, well they where all dead except the pilot who was missing. While Newbury longs to find a satisfying conclusion to the murders in Whitechapel and help Scotland Yard and his copper friend Sir Charles Bainbridge, Victoria has insisted that the crash of The Lady Armitage comes before everything else.

Going to the company that made The Lady Armitage, Chapman and Villiers, they discover that the company has been expanding beyond their regular line of airships to encompass Automatons. Villiers is a scientist who left France under a cloud because of his unorthodox experimentations, but Newbury can not help marvelling at the work shown to them. They have created simulated life. A simulated life that coincidentally may be responsible for the disastrous air crash, no matter Chapman and Villiers's denials.

The closer Victoria and Newbury get to the answers, the more in danger they are. Maurice needs help from "The Fixer" on more than one occasion to keep him alive at all. Add the ubiquitous presence of the unnerving automatons everywhere and then throw in a dash of an insane asylum and laudanum addiction and you can see it's going to be a miracle if they can solve the cases and keep themselves alive. Now just a quick rest for tea and off into the foggy fray they go!

I distinctly remember the day I picked up this book. I was in Saint Louis on the way to my best friend's wedding in Arkansas. We had stopped for two nights in Saint Louis because my friend Matt's family is there and it was a very nice half way point. Upon planning a trip to any town I research the bookstores in advance. I was very excited to go to Left Bank Books, which I had heard so much about. But being in a literary town I have high standards. Sadly, the bookstore left me wanting... yet... there, below a window in the basement I found this book. I had been wanting to buy it, there was more than a little cover lust and I loved the handling of the type, especially how George Mann's name was framed, also, I've always loved the name Hobbes since Calvin and Hobbes. So the bookstore itself was a bust, yet the find made me joyous. I had even greater joy later upon learning that George was going to be at last years Teslacon. I was going for Gail Carriger, but I met two more authors there that I now consider friends, George was one of them.

The Affinity Bridge spoke to me on so many levels. One being the sheer Britishness of it. Just count the times they have tea and you will start to feel the call of Queen and Country... is that a stiff upper lip developing? Also, I adore people who, while working covertly, also have a cool day job; British Museum, hello! I'd take that any day! Though it was the pacing that drew me in more than anything. Some Steampunk books have a flaw of constant action with a quick tea break. This break neck speed doesn't always appeal to my Victorian sensibilities, or even my British sensibilities. You would not see The Avengers rushing about. Sure, they had an action packed punch up when needed, but they took the time for the crime to unwind, sure, in their case many people died, but the leisurely pace from one clue to the next with taking lots of time for tea and strolling arm and arm to the crime gives the book a nice lazy Sunday afternoon vibe. Action packed, yet relaxing and inviting.

I also liked the automatons. Given how they play out, there are many Doctor Who Cybermen references that could be bandied about. In particular the fact that the Chapman and Villiers plant is located in Battersea and they used the Battersea Power Station made famous by Pink Floyd for the conversion facility in the David Tennant two-parter, Rise of the Cybermen and The Age of Steel. Yet, George makes them far scarier than I have even felt the Cybermen where. With their fluidity of motion and their mirrored eyes, I would be more likely to compare them to Steampunk Cylons. Needless to say, they freaked me out, and once we find the reason for their malfunctioning, they go into the truly terrifying category. Well done George, you have succeeded in giving me robot nightmares that Doctor Who has failed to do since I was a little girl playing in my grandfather's gravel pit.

Finally there is the Blue Policeman. He caught me at page whatever he first appeared on and George cleverly kept him off stage for awhile, but not too long, pushing me forward to find out what the frak was going on. Side note, I view frak is perfectly acceptable in this review because of the automatons similarities to cylons, end note. I also loved that, most likely, it was a mystery in a mystery. Always keep us guessing George and you'll always keep me reading, though maybe edit that fight scene on the train a little but thanks for downplaying the "zombie card". Can't wait for the next one, Egyptian overtones I hope judging by the title, The Osiris Ritual!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Airships, Calvin and Hobbes, Cybermen, Cylons, David Tennant, George Mann, Newbury and Hobbes, Queen Victoria, The Affinity Bridge, The Avengers, The Osiris Ritual, Victorian Hobbes

Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas by John Scalzi
Published by: Tor
Publication Date: June 5th, 2012
Format: Paperback, 320 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Five disparate young officers have been assigned to the Universal Union's Capital Ship Intrepid. Very quickly they realize this ship isn't like other ships. Everyone seems really busy all the time and capable of the most amazing disappearing feats whenever certain of the officers appear. Also, everyone is really jumpy about "away missions." Looking into it, the newbies erstwhile ringleader, Ensign Andrew Dahl, soon discovers that the "away missions" seem to have a very high mortality rate. Someone ALWAYS dies. Depending on which officer is with them, it might be quite a few someones. In the last five years the death rate has grown staggeringly high on the Intrepid versus other ships in the Dub U. The deaths though aren't the only weird thing. During moments of drama or high action, people's personalities change and they do some of the stupidest things, therefore ending up dead. Convinced that there is some reason for this, Dahl and his gang stumble upon something that could explain everything... but you also have to be batshit crazy to think it plausible.

As I sit typing this review I am wearing a Star Trek V: The Final Frontier T-Shirt, vintage from 1989, not a silly reprint. To my left is a Doctor Who poster, David Tennant if you please, as well as a Buffy the Vampire Slayer clock, which I made myself, and a wall display of Harry Potter wands, Dumbledore's Army, if you must know. Sitting over my left speaker and glaring at me, oddly in a non menacing manner, is Mr. Flibble. To my right there is geekery galore, framed Firefly comics signed by Alan Tudyk and John Cassiday, Daleks and Cylon raiders, a teeny tiny Starbug, Buffy maquettes and even a mini Sheldon Cooper. Why am I telling you all this? Well, in case you didn't know, this would very clearly demonstrate that I am a geek. Not the casual kind either, the going to conventions, waiting hours in line, spending way too much money on memorabilia kind. So, now that I have secured your knowledge of my geekiness... let's talk Redshirts...

This book was written with me in mind. Unless you are familiar with the idea of what a redshirt is, there is little chance you would pick up this book. A redshirt was always the newbie, the character you never knew who beamed down to the planet on Star Trek with Kirk and all the rest and very quickly died in order to show the gravity or danger of the situation. This word has become so ubiquitous in geek culture that in the card game Munchkin, you can have a redshirt minion who will sacrifice themselves so that you will survive a battle. It's a joke my kind get, and it's funny. Redshirts and death are one. The most memorable scene in any movie, in my mind, perfectly encapsulating the fate of a redshirt is Sam Rockwell's breakdown in Galaxy Quest.



What I think my problem with the book was, with movies like Galaxy Quest and shows like Red Dwarf and Hyperdrive and all the rest, if you are likely to pick up Redshirts you are likely to have seen all these other shows and movies based on the same joke. Because, while this book starts out promising, and quickly starts handling the meta issues of the fact that somehow the Intrepid is either a tv show or a tv show is imposing itself on their timeline forcing untold carnage and dramatic scenes before cutting away to a commercial break, it very quickly gets to the point where I was thinking of all the other people who had done this better. Because this is parody sci-fi.

The gold standard in my mind of parody sci-fi is Red Dwarf. This show was not only consistently funny (I'm ignoring the existence of season eight) but, with it's return in 2009 with "Back to Earth," it willingly embraced the meta of comedy shows today, the strongest contender in this category being Community, which started the same year. Yet the meta in Redshirts was written in such a way as to not tax your brain and almost seemed dumbed down. In other words, you could pound out this book in a few hours and it will probably leave no lasting impression. The main turning point for me was when our little gang of rebels with targets on their backs headed back to "modern day" Earth... at this point it's basically "Back to Earth" but without any connection to the characters. It's as if Scalzi  jumped off a cliff and just started ripping everyone off. For the audience this book is targeting, we have watched all the same shows, we know meta, and this book became insufferable and infuriating.

Though, while at this point I didn't think I could want to smack Scalzi more for his lack of originality, he succeeded with the codas to a whole new level of annoyance. Three codas, three POVs, three styles of writing... gaw, how pretentious are you to actually write the second coda in a very unsuccessful attempt at second person narration? Also the first coda, I'm guessing that's you thinly veiled as the "shows" author who comes across as a pretentious prick, and then with the third coda, you rip out my heart and gleefully dance on it. Guess what Scalzi? I'm going to tell everyone I know to just skip this book and watch Red Dwarf... same thing really, only one's actually well written, and it's not by you.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Back to Earth, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Cylons, Daleks, David Tennant, Doctor Who, Galaxy Quest, John Scalzi, Red Dwarf, Redshirts, Sheldon Cooper, Star Trek