Eight Against Who the Hell Cares

Eight Against Utopia
by Douglas R. Mason 
p. 1966

Douglas Mason’s Eight Against Utopia sounded like a really great concept for its time. Eight people, living in a domed city 7000 years in the future, realize their so-called Utopia is not all it seems and embark on an escape mission to the supposedly hostile outside world, not knowing what dangers await.

Will they all make it out? How will they pass the barriers? Will the traitor in their midst endanger their secret mission? And what dangers will they encounter outside the dome?

To answer those questions: Yes. Easily. No. And nothing.

Okay, so maybe it’s not that straightforward, but still, I was expecting a lot more from Mason’s book, based on the premise. What I got instead was a dry, monotonous, misogynist novella that is 90% action writing yet somehow, nothing really happens.

Having read more than a fair share of sixties and seventies science fiction, I know these stories tend to be more about the concept than about the characters. They were written in a time when possibilities seemed endless, and there wasn’t the pervasive sense that everything had been done before. The intelligent, masculine, alpha male hero was very much ‘in’ at the time, and women tended towards the passive, supportive, smart but weak types. These are things I’ve accepted about this niche genre, but they are not things I look for in a good story. Knowing what to expect and accepting it regardless are two entirely different things. Some times I am able to look past it because the concept is so well done, but this is not the case in Eight Against Utopia.

For starters, in a story where the basic plot is rebelling against Utopia, the Utopia you’re fleeing should be a character in and of itself. It was about halfway through this itty bitty book that I realized I’d completely forgotten what the domed city was even called. I had to flip back to the beginning where my eyes had glazed over at the routine descriptions and futuristic names thrown at us to remind myself that it was called Carthage. The only real hint we get that Carthage isn’t quite as ideal as it appears to be is that it directly monitors the thoughts of its citizens.

Okay. I mean, yeah, that totally sucks, but I’m gonna need more than that to go on. I mean, we didn’t even get to know what exactly Carthage does with its detractors, only vague implications that they are reprogrammed. If I’m going to invest myself in a story about fleeing a false Utopia, I want to know exactly why, dammit.

Thanks to the aforementioned thought monitoring, every single character is dull as a mayo sandwich on white bread. I thought this might go away when they finally escaped the city and their thoughts were free, but it didn’t. They were still all boring and indistinguishable, and none more so than the central hero, Gaul Kalmar, who spent half the novella being trailed by two women who—of course—ended up inexplicably competing for him.

What the story lacked in characterization, it should have made up for in concept execution and philosophy, but it utterly failed to deliver on these fronts as well. As I’d said before, 90% of the book is describing people’s actions escaping from the city, and no one really seems to talk about why they are doing it, or how they feel, or whether they regret it, or what they expected to find on the outside to aid in their survival. In 158 pages of novel, Mason spends more time talking about how comparatively attractive the women are than he does about why Gaul conceived of this mission of self-exile and how he convinced the others to come along.

Oh, and there are totally nine people who escape, not eight, so this was a stupid title as well. I hope it was the publisher’s idea to change the title from its original (From Carthage Then I Came) and not Mason’s, but I really don’t know. I wouldn’t really be surprised if Mason just rattled off the title as carelessly as he did the rest of this novel so he could move on to something better.

What Really Matters is What You Like, Not What You Are Like

High Fidelity
by Nick Hornby
p. 1995

My first full book of 2014 is Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, the story of Rob, a guy in his mid-thirties who owns a record shop and has just been dumped by his long-term girlfriend, Laura. This latest in a long series of rejections in Rob’s life sends him on an internalized tailspin that eventually leads to contacting his top five exes in a quest to figure out what exactly went wrong in his life.

High Fidelity is my first foray into Nick Hornby’s work and I suspect I will be seeking out more. Hornby has a refreshing style—hilarious and relatable. Rob Fleming is a fantastic protagonist, too, even when I want to strangle him, and I wanted to strangle him a lot. That’s just the thing, Rob is not a perfect person, far from it, but he possesses this strangely pathetic self-loathing that is just too perfectly realized to not be relatable. Sure, maybe we haven’t messed things up as poorly as Rob has done—or maybe we’ve done worse—either way, Rob’s downward spiral, though at times cringe-worthy, is wholly engaging. You want to see Rob’s road to self-realization, you want to see if he’ll actually get there, because if someone as screwed up and self-centered as Rob Fleming can make peace with himself, maybe there’s hope for the rest of us.

High Fidelity is definitely a dated story. Obviously the idea of owning a profitable record shop in this day and age is laughable, even more so than it was a couple decades ago, but for the more obvious reason that the technology has become obsolete. The resolution—Rob’s reentry into the world of deejaying—also kind of falls flat by today’s standards, though maybe it wasn’t so laughable when it was written. 

More importantly, Rob and his record store cohorts (which he can barely call friends, though they’re probably the best ones he’s got) cram every minute of this novel with pop culture references and being a good two and a half decades younger than Rob and his friends, I understandably failed to comprehend most of them. You can pretty much guess at their meaning based on context, but I can’t help but feel like I’ve missed out on something—like someone is purposefully making references that go over my head while I’m standing in the room.

At the story’s start, Rob is of the mentality that “what really matters is what you like, not what you are like.” This thinking is, of course, erroneous, but not far off from the things that dictate our pop-saturated culture today. It would be interesting to see what Rob would look like if his story were taking place right now, but no doubt he wouldn’t get three pages without being declared the biggest ‘hipster’ alive and the story would get buried unless it took the parody route and played Rob off like a tool. The only reason this story—and Rob as a protagonist—works is because it was written before ‘hipster’ entered the vernacular and thus lost all meaning.

For all the story’s faults, its dialogue was realistic and its style was catchy and you can’t help but feel for Rob in spite of his faults. When Laura’s dad passes away after a long illness and she tearfully calls Rob up (initiating their slow drift back into each other's orbit), Rob’s monologue when receiving the news is one of my favorite bits in the story:

“I think about people dying all the time, but they’re always people connected with me. I’ve thought about how I would feel if Laura died, and how Laura would feel if I died, and how I’d feel if my mum or dad died, but I never thought about Laura’s mum or dad dying. I wouldn’t, would I? And even though he was ill for the entire duration of my relationship with Laura, it never really bothered me: it was more like, my dad’s got a beard, Laura’s dad’s got angina. I never thought it would actually lead to anything. Now he’s gone, of course, I wish... what? What do I wish? That I’d been nicer to him? I was perfectly nice to him, the few times we met. That we’d been closer? He was me common-law father-in-law, and we were very different, and he was sick, and... we were as close as we needed to be. You’re supposed to wish things when people die, to fill yourself full of regrets, to give yourself a hard time for all your mistakes and omissions, and I’m doing all that as best I can. It’s just that I can’t find any mistakes and omissions. He was my ex-girlfriend’s dad, you know? What am I supposed to feel?”

The end of the story implies that Rob has become a better person through the experience of reconnecting with his exes; I’m not certain I agree with that, and the final state of his relationship with Laura feels off to me, but I kind of like that it’s hard to decide if Rob’s really a changed man or not. It gives the story some ambiguity and makes you really think about how you’d have handled it all in his shoes.

I remember seeing the John Cusack film version of this years back and kind of liking it, and in celebration of reading this book, I watched it again, only this time I kind of hated it. I think it was a poor adaptation of this book. They got most of the action right, and Cusack is actually the perfect choice to play Rob, but the whole thing felt a lot less charming than the book. Maybe it’s the conversion trip across the ocean that did it, maybe it was the script or acting, or something else. The book just feels more genuine.

From World War Z to A for Anything

Please disregard the fact that my last book review was published more than a week into this new year, I'm still including it among my list of books read in 2013 because it was still 2013 when I started it... And shut up, I'm grandfathering it in!

Well, if the number of reviews on this site published in 2013 isn't indication enough, I will come right out and say it: I failed to meet my book quota for 2013. I set out to read 40 books within one calendar year and I only read 28 (more like 27 and a half, really).

I couldn't really tell you why it happened. I had started out the year so well. By the midway point, I was well on my way to fulfilling my quota. But somewhere around the middle of the year, I must have run out of steam. My reading slowed during the summer months, the months when, in my childhood years, I did the most casual reading. I got busy with work and friends, I watched too much television (I suspect the 9 season long marathon of "Supernatural" I began with some friends in May possibly had something to do with this slowing down...), I played around on Reddit too much in my free time. I just put it off in general. I tried to pick it up at the end of the year, but it was too little too late to catch up with my goals.

If I had met my goals last year, I suppose I would have increased the quota for this year. One might suppose that since I failed to meet my goals, that I might set the bar lower this time, but I'm not going to do that. I intend to keep the same quota from 2013 and read 40 books this year. I will just have to be more focused on the reading this time around.

Some statistics for my year of reading:

First book read: World War Z by Max Brooks

Last book read: A for Anything by Damon Knight

Oldest book read: Treasure Island, 1883

Most recent book read: a tie; Directive 51 and Mockingjay, both published in 2010

Favorite read of the year: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury 

Least favorite read of the year: Second Skin by John Hawkes (this is not even a contest... seriously. And I read books this year called Blood Worm and The Devil's Cat). Second place dishonors goes to The Worthy by Will Clarke

Pages read: 8,284, roughly

Average book size: about 296 pages per book

Percentage of quota met: 70%

Books I reread this year: Just one, Kick Me by Paul Feig. All the rest were new to me

Quota for 2014: 40 books

First book up for 2014: High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

A for Angsty Adolescent Assholes

A for Anything
by Damon Knight
p. 1961

A lot of fifties and sixties science fiction often revolved around ‘what if’ questions and Damon Knight’s A for Anything poses the question: what if you had a machine that produced duplicates of any physical object—even people? It’s a question that sets up Knight’s world and a whole slew of philosophical questions; the only drawback is that Knight does not really answer any of them.

I suppose there is a thin line between writing a book that compels the reader to examine these philosophies and one that just posits the questions without ever intending to answer them, so as to let the reader do all the work. You could argue that Knight’s intention was the former, or perhaps he got lazy and it’s the latter. I guess it doesn’t really matter in the end.

A for Anything’s first 3 chapters (comprised of 33 pages) hint at a very different type of novel, one that details the immediate aftermath of such an invention—referred to only as a ‘gismo’—falling into the average person’s hands. In chapter one, some random guy gets the first gismo in the mail anonymously. In chapter two, we learn everyone is talking about them and wants one but no one knows where they came from and chapter three hints at a changed world as the darker nature of man’s insatiable materialism takes hold.

Then you get to chapter four and everything is different. We have jumped in time to the ‘present’ world of the story being told. My book says it’s the year 2049; Wikipedia says 2149. I really hope that my book had a typo and it actually is supposed to be 2149 because less than a century seems way too short for life to have changed so dramatically, especially since characters refer to pre-gismo times as ‘ancient’ several times, and tell stories of their ancestors as if they were speaking about knights of the round table.

Thanks to the advent of the gismo, the world has evolved (or devolved, depending on if you view this world as a Utopia or Dystopia) into a society divided by powerful clans, dependent on slave labor, provided by ‘duped’ humans. It’s not quite clear which humans are being duped; I suppose we can assume that everyone who isn’t related to someone who has a gismo is a slave. In any case, slaves outnumber the ruling families fifty to one but inconceivably, revolt has never been an issue before.

Our ‘hero’ is the sixteen-year-old privileged heir to his clan, Dick Jones, and his name is... stunningly appropriate. I kept waiting for the part where Dick grows up, learns to control his anger, gets a few lessons in impulse control and possibly, gradually, learns the error of treating humans (even duped ones) like slaves and joins them in overturning society... but that doesn’t happen. Dick remains, well... a dick.

A for Anything caught me off guard with its stylistic choices. With such a powerful ‘what if’ guiding the story, a world of the future so changed from our own, and a host of philosophical and ethical questions raised about the issues of of slavery, one would assume this book would include a lot of talking but instead we are treated to a surprising amount of action. Dick’s tale starts with a lethal duel with his cousin and he continues to feud with people he meets at ‘Eagles,’ the militaristic base he is sent to for his secondary schooling. The ending seems kind of tacked on, as Dick somehow becomes involved with an uprising completely unrelated to the slaves, which is quickly squashed when the actual slave revolt sneaks in first and ruins everyone else’s plans. Dick, despite being exposed to plenty of ethical debates, never chooses a side on anything (apart from his own, of course), and yet his actions and opinions seem to be highly regarded. Weird.

I can’t say I disliked A for Anything. I felt more engaged in the action than in other old sci-fi novels I’ve delved into. It is a bit of a departure from what I’ve been reading lately—namely post-apocalyptic fiction that deal with the everyman. Knight’s story takes place in an established world, long after the so-called ‘apocalyptic’ event, and is not necessarily suggesting that the world is all that bad. I’ve spent a long time since I put the book down wondering if Knight was suggesting the world was a Utopia.

I guess I just expected more from the story than I got. The most interesting characters are quickly discarded, often unceremoniously, and their motivations are never clear. Furthermore, with all the debates on morality and Dick’s impulsiveness and anger—not to mention the novel’s traditional set up as a coming of age story—I really expected Dick to be the first to learn the error of his society’s ways and rise up with the slaves but the slave leader of the revolt is portrayed as being a bit villainous. Yet, I still sided with the slaves, because I was more invested in their fate than Dick’s teenage angst. In spite of the promise of its premise, A for Anything is a story about growing older, but not necessarily about growing up.

Yo-Ho-Ho and a Bottle of Rum

Treasure Island
by Robert Louis Stevenson
p. 1883

It feels strange to admit that I’ve never actually read Treasure Island when the story is itself such a mainstay in pop culture. For sure, it is a tenacious tale that has been reinterpreted over and over again every couple of years for almost a century and a half, and no doubt it will continue to endure the ages because it is such a classic adventure tale with vibrant characters.

It’s always the infamous rogue pirate Long John Silver who gets the most press when people think of Treasure Island, and that’s not a bad impulse, per se, but though Silver is a dynamic and complex character, finally reading him as he’s written made me realize he’s actually rather pathetic. Silver may have been able to round up a herd of mutineers to steal the treasure, but his grasp on their loyalty is tenuous at the best of times and in the end, he is defeated by a smaller party of men, half of whom weren’t even accustomed to sea life, and one of whom is a 14-year-old boy. The film portrayals have gotten one thing right though: Long John Silver is a man of ever-shifting motives and he goes through the whole range of them, but he does have a special fondness for Jim Hawkins and I felt it strongly throughout the book, though I wish we would have had more context as to why.

As for Jim Hawkins, I was a little disappointed that he was so... competent. You have to keep reminding yourself that your narrator is a teenage boy (even upon the retelling of the story, some years later), because he doesn’t present as one. He makes a lot of mistakes, but he’s astoundingly efficient for a boy who has never set foot on a boat before. Hawkins is the catalyst for the treasure hunt, he discovers the mutiny plot, he single-handedly regains control of the ship, endures a bit of suffering and isolation and eventually kills a man who attempts to attack him, and none of this seems to have a lasting effect on his psyche. I would imagine in real life, a boy would show a little more reticence in Jim’s place but young Hawkins is quite bold when confronting the pirates, and he never really sees any consequences for his rash behavior. Everything pretty much works out for the kid. Still, Treasure Island was intended as a boys' adventure novel; that Jim shows incredible mettle and comes out on top is not all that surprising considering the genre.

I’m actually surprised that Smollett, the captain of the Hispaniola, which takes the party to and from their voyage, isn’t a more renown pop culture icon because he was totally awesome. The captain had some of the best lines in the book and it was during the parts where he exerted his leadership that I most felt myself attuned to the action. I wish Robert Louis Stevenson had written a book entirely about Captain Smollett and his prior adventures because I would totally read that.

I am a kid who grew up on "Muppet Treasure Island" and Disney's futuristic reinvention, "Treasure Planet," and I like both of those adaptations, even if they soft-pedal things a bit. Last year I caught a new mini-series adaptation with a pretty great cast, including Eddie Izzard as Long John Silver and Elijah Wood (of all people) as Ben Gunn. For whatever reason, it was on SyFy, so I watched it expecting some fantastical twist on the tale but it ended up having no science fiction elements and I'm still perplexed as to how SyFy ended up with it. That version was a fairly faithful update but what I'm really interested in is the new Starz series starting next month, "Black Sails," which is a prequel to Treasure Island featuring a young John Silver. In an age where the antihero is king, it should be quite compelling to see a story entirely from the pirates' point of view.