Damnit Delaney. I made it all the way through, I made it all the way to the last story, suffered through all of Ellison's introductions, sampled worksDamnit Delaney. I made it all the way through, I made it all the way to the last story, suffered through all of Ellison's introductions, sampled works by some of the most prominent science fiction (or speculative fiction, whichever you prefer) writers, and you had to go and give me a quote I couldn't walk away from. You had to go and give me something that just rang so true, after this whole book, after even my beloved Philip K. Dick, after my six-week seven-country trip, that I need to take this quote, and this quote only:
"There are times when you must walk by yourself because it hurts so much to be alone."...more
This is probably the most marked up, worn, and otherwise distressed book I own. And I bought it new.
Read for AP English Junior year, and a class SophoThis is probably the most marked up, worn, and otherwise distressed book I own. And I bought it new.
Read for AP English Junior year, and a class Sophomore year of college entitled "Ghosts That Haunt Us;" final paper for that class was a synthesis of Slaughterhouse with the philosophy of the Mind-Body Duality.
I'm finding it hard to write any sort of review that doesn't make it sound like I hated it. I didn't hate the stories, but I found them dry and dated.I'm finding it hard to write any sort of review that doesn't make it sound like I hated it. I didn't hate the stories, but I found them dry and dated.
For the time, I can understand how this was influential. It does fit the time period.
It's not so much the science fiction that bothers me, actually, it's the writing. And I'm sure I would have liked this more if Breuer had been a better writer or even had a modicum of finesse in his craft. I mean, the world of Paradise and Iron was rather well-constructed, I just couldn't stand any more of Davy's American stoic heroism, which goes for most of the other main characters as well. Pip-pip, hooray, all sort of machismo.
Granted, this does cycle back around to it being dated. And trust me, I'm not one for faulting men because they are men and they write for a masculine audience, but the treatment of women in this as pretty, frail, helpless things with such homely names as Mildred (who started out as a particularly strong character and became more subdued over the course of the novel) was dated unto offensiveness.
Onto his endings. I actually liked the ending to the first story, thought it worked rather well in its abruptness, but then as the stories continued I discovered that all of them came to a rather abrupt, almost brusque, end. Rather as if the writer had figured he'd wrapped up all the ends nicely in a bow, and had nothing else to say or do, and without any finesse simply up and stopped. Pip-pip. Hooray....more
After having read it several times (So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish and Mostly Harmless one less time than the others), you really do start to piAfter having read it several times (So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish and Mostly Harmless one less time than the others), you really do start to pick up on various little things between each book.
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is probably by far the best known, if only for the fact that not only was it a radio play, then a BBC special, but then also it's bizarrely adapted 2005 feature film release (which I'm partially okay with, because Douglas Adams cowrote the script, and because Alan Rickman voices Marvin). We all know and love it for its zany screwballery, subtly scathing satire (fucking alliteration), and half a dozen token terms (42, knowing where your towel is, the Vogons, the Babel fish, not entirely unlike, the Infinite Improbability Drive, Slartibartfast, Deep Thought, and so on and so forth).
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe follows in much the same manner, half continuation and half entirely different story line. For some reason, I can never remember that the Frogstar attack on the Guide offices comprises the first half of the book, which is particularly odd because I love the tank shooting out the floor and yelling "Hell's bells!" on its way down; I always think it's in the third book, which makes no sense at all. Actually, it does make a sort of sense, because I grew up watching the BBC serial before my parents decided it was time to enlighten me as to the actual book series, and the Frogstar attack and Zarniwoop are not in the BBC serial. (My favorite part of the serial went from the beginning up until right before they landed on Magrathea, and pretty much any of the bits where the Guide spoke. I wasn't entirely a fan of the Restaurant at the End of the Universe bit, and discovering that the serial ended before the end of the second book threw me for a loop.) But for the most part, the first and second book follow with the same comic vein, and everything seems to make a sort of sense.
Life, the Universe, and Everything is, for me at any rate, a bit of a turning point. It's still uproariously funny as the first two (Krikkit Wars! ha!), but the feel is just that side of different. To me, it sits between the rampant ridiculosity of the first two books, and the dark humor of the last two. It's also the point at which things get a little bit more "mucky," as in, our protagonists are now doing more mucking about in time and space than we saw before (picking up from where Restaurant left off, but starting on a course that is a bit more . . . involved, we'll say). It's also the end of Zaphod's quest, and the last time the character actually shows up, and he doesn't really do much. In a way, I guess, Zaphod lends a sort of levity to the proceedings because he is so bouncy and vacant, and his position of power as captain (and ex-president) of the Heart of Gold kind of give him that edge as the person you tend to allow to lead even if you don't think it's really that good of an idea. Arthur is the ultimate protagonist, yes, because he is the everyman and a reflection of humanity, but he's not the person leading the expedition. He's the person stuff keeps happening to on a cosmological level.
(Hmmm, I could've been an English major and written my thesis on this. Oh well.)
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish marks, for me at least, the beginning of the dark humor. Zaphod and Trillian are only mentioned a few times, Ford is stuck in a bizarre space ship with tools whizzing through the corridors (to be honest, I still don't get that part), and Arthur is now in love with a woman named Fenchurch. It is also, of course, the death of Marvin. I mean, who doesn't love Marvin? He's so depressed.
And then on to Mostly Harmless. When I first read the entirety of the trilogy, having already gone through the first three before being stopped in the early chapters of the fourth (I think that's when I moved . . . maybe), I felt like there was something off about Mostly Harmless. I chalked it up to the fact that I hadn't read it before, whereas the other books I'd had previous experience in, and settled on knowing the least about it. Rereading it, however, proves that it actually wasn't me that was off, it's that the book is actually decidedly different from the others (Adams, himself, noted that the last two books where different, and described Mostly Harmless as "bleak"). First of all, a lot of the zany craziness has dropped away, appearing mostly in the Ford Prefect storyline. Trillian is an entirely different character than her previous incarnations: she's presented as rather heartless and self-centered, whereas before she was sort of quiet and calm and hyper-intelligent. Also, the traveling that's done in Mostly Harmless is caught up in parallel universes, creating schisms upon schisms in the cosmological makeup that gives quite a different feel than simply an Infinite Improbability Drive. Perhaps it's too, I dunno, heavy? Too heavy in the sense that it's more "mundane," more of a normal thing than a ludicrous Infinite Improbability Drive, which is easier to grasp because it's completely beyond our means to grasp it. Parallel universes, though also completely beyond our scope of comprehension, are more well-known, and not just the creation of a comical genius.
Is this making any sense?
On another note (and another thing!), there are some funny coincidences I've recently noticed between the Guide and new technology. For instance, the Amazon Kindle or iTouch/iPhone . . . wouldn't they make a weird sort of sense with the words "Don't Panic" written on them?
Also, Wikipedia. Could this possibly be the current form of the Guide? It can be, for the most part, "wildly inaccurate" and it has "supplanted" the Encyclopedia Brittanica as "the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom". It's also cheaper, because you don't have to buy it. Hmmm, makes you wonder....more
Interesting storyline. Neat artwork. I actually kinda enjoyed the squabbles between the "siblings," it really made the more human, and you can sort ofInteresting storyline. Neat artwork. I actually kinda enjoyed the squabbles between the "siblings," it really made the more human, and you can sort of map out their entire life together and how Hargreeves made them into what they are "today," in more ways than one. Would like to know more about Séance, and the brother that died (or turned into a statue? or was that a memorial to him?). Also, what exactly are all of their powers? (Only Number 5, Séance, and Vanya were obvious.) Basically, would like some more backstory, but the fact that it wasn't all given in this episode is fantastic, actually. Keeps me intrigued.
In conclusion, not bad for someone from My Chemical Romance (blech)....more
Rating this was really hard, because I really liked it (really, really liked it) but I have such qualms with the ending, which could very possibly be Rating this was really hard, because I really liked it (really, really liked it) but I have such qualms with the ending, which could very possibly be a testament to Niffenegger's writing, I'm not sure. Anyway.
There were several things I wanted to talk about while I was reading it, more or less having to do with the notion of time-travel in the book. Obviously, there's always the immediate connection between Henry DeTamble and Billy Pilgrim, both of which are unstuck in time, Henry because of a bizarre disorder and Billy because of an existential break-down possibly hightened by Post Traumatic Shock Syndrome (I believe that's what it's "technically" called, but don't quote me) (this is also a literary theory I find to be too easy of an excuse). But also I found parallels between TTW and Octavia Butler's "Kindred," the story of a black woman pulled back through time by one of her ancestors, a white slaveholder, to the period before the Civil War. The interesting thing I found about both of these are the link between Dana and Rufus (in "Kindred") that defies time and space, and an almost identical link between Henry and young Clare as an agenda to look at the concept of "soul mates." This then creates an ontological question concerning the nature of free-will and destiny, as Niffenegger herself states numerous times that Henry believes in free-will to a point, in that he's free to do whatever or so he believes, but because he is so immeshed in time what happens between him and Clare is more destiny: they are free to do what they will, but they'll always end up where they are meant to be type thing.
Another aspect that struck me was the idea of time being a biological construct, which was like "holy shit rock on!" Because time itself is little more than our perception of change and cause-and-effect, and the physical concept of space-time is nonlinear, that all time happens right now and it will always happen at any given moment, not so much circular as it is ever-present. But the notion that time itself can be a flux in our biological make-up was STUNNING. If I were a little more awake, maybe I could expound a little more about why that interested me so much.
(But to that effect, it did bother me a little that Niffenegger told her story more or less linearally, despite the constant jumping back and forth that Henry undergoes. I almost wish the whole thing was like that, with very little linear telling [which of course would be problematic with Clare's perception of events; hmmm . . .:]).
IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THE BOOK AND YOU PLAN ON READING IT, PLEASE STOP READING THIS REVIEW HERE! I DON'T WANT TO RUIN THE ENDING FOR YOU!
This was one of the saddest books I've ever read, aside from "Where the Red Fern Grows," but what I didn't like was that there was no real time to devote to being sad and crying over Henry's fate/destiny/end because the story kept going, no moment to allow the reader a bit of catharsis. And this probably wouldn't have been so bad if Henry hadn't lost his feet and could do nothing else but wait for his final moment. I felt that Henry was such a dynamic character and that he would have been one of those types of people who burn out instead of fade away, if he were a real person, but in the narrative he's not given that chance. When he flashes back to that morning at the Meadow I wanted him to be running when he's shot, not simply appearing, getting shot, and returning to the New Year's party. And the story kept going after! Which, granted, it is actually more of Clare's story (she is, of course, the time-traveler's wife and gets the first and final words of the story), and this does illuminate Henry's ever-present being in time and space. And then maybe he's not so much fading away as he is always existing. I don't know. I have mixed feelings about it....more
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