1972: To Your Scattered Bodies Go

               To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip José Farmer is the weirdest Hugo Winner yet. Certainly stranger than Dune, Lord of Light, and even The Big Time and that book was about people at a rest point outside of the space time continuum. Despite its strangest, or perhaps because of it, it was a good book and earned its Hugo.

                The novel is the first of five books that takes place on Riverworld, which, despite the closeness of its name, has no relation to ring world. Riverworld is a massive planet Earth like planet that has been terraformed to contain one river valley that starts at the North Pole and runs its way around the planet until it arrives back at the North Pole. This valley is millions of miles long. The mounts that border the valley are higher than Mount Everest and impossible to climb. This setting is strange but not any stranger than other sci-fi books. What makes To Your Scattered Bodies Go truly strange is what Farmer does with this location: he populates it with every human that has ever lived who have all woken up at the same time on the River World. Despite the huge population of every human that ever lived, the number of people stays stable because people cannot reproduce and death is not the end. People are simply resurrected somewhere else on the river whenever they die. Yeah, it is a bit strange.

                With every human that ever lived populating his world, Farmer employs quite a few famous ones for this story. The main character is Sir Richard Burton, a 19^th century English adventurer who lived a rather colorful life. Burton’s life was so crazy it is hard to believe he was a real person. He served in India and the Crimean War and impersonated a Pashtun from Afghanistan to travel to Mecca. His publishing company was the first to translate the Karma Sutra into English. He wrote about falconry, fencing, sexual practices, and human behavior. Richard Burton was sort of 19^th century most interesting man in the world. He also had a pretty impressive beard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ST-Burton.jpg). In short, he makes for a great main character.

                During the book Burton travels with different companions up the river to try to discover its source and figure out why Riverworld exists and who put everyone here. He meets many interesting people from a science fiction writer that is clearly a stand in for Farmer (his name is Peter Jairus Frigate), Alice Liddel (the girl Alice in Alice in Wonderland is based on), an alien, a Neanderthal, and the infamous Herman Goring. I thought it was a nice touch to use Goring instead of the more obvious Hitler. The interaction between the historic characters is believable especially considering that Richard Burton died before Goring was born and had no knowledge of his crimes.

                Farmer’s writing is engaging and, as I mentioned before, Richard Burton is a great main character. Everything moves along briskly and it is interesting what happen to people as they are forced to live near each other and how they react. It involves a lot of bloodshed and intermixing of languages and peoples in ways that ever would have been possible.

                The only reason I would not recommend this novel is that it is the first in a series and if you don’t want to read four books to learn the whole story then you should probably pass. The ending is fairly unsatisfying since it is only part one. I haven’t read the other ones yet so I don’t know if To Your Scattered Bodies Go is just the beginning of a great story or the only good part of an increasingly strange series.

                It is a good though and anyone who is interested in a series with a truly strange premise and a good adventure should look no further then To Your Scattered Bodies Go.

1971: Ringworld

                Ringworld by Larry Niven is the first Hugo Winner in a long time that really puts the science in science fiction. By that I don’t mean that Ringworld is completely scientifically accurate, there is faster-then-light travel and all manner of currently impossible technology, but rather the book has a much stronger veneer of science and makes a consecrated effort to explain its fantastic elements in actual scientific principles. That and it’s a pretty good adventure as well.

                I have mentioned before on this blog that scientific rigor is not terrible important to me. It is more important that a work follows its own rules rather than be completely accurate. That has made me wary of more “hard” science fiction. I worry, perhaps unjustly, that the rigor and the science will get in the way of a good story and that the writing will be dry and boring. I am not sure why I hold this prejudice except that I imagine that people who are into the hard science are not as interested in stories.

                If Ringworld is one of the better examples of “hard” science fiction than I have little to worry about. Niven has crafted an interesting story about a man named Louis Wu that has been hired by an alien named Nessus to travel to an unknown star system. Louis just turned 200 years old and is getting bored with life so he accepts the job. He and Nessus are joined by different type of alien named Speaker to Animals (usually just referred to as Speaker) and a young human girl named Teela Brown who Louis had met at his 200^th birthday party. Nessus has hired them to explore a strange object called the ring world. To picture the ring world just think of the Halo from the Halo games series. The Halos are exactly like the ring world. The only difference I noticed was the scale. While Halo, to my recollection, never stated how big the Halos were, Niven is fairly exact about the enormity of ring world. The width of ring world is about 1 million miles from edge to edge and the ring is approximately the same diameter of earth’s orbit.  Put these two figures together and the ring world has the equivalent surface area of 3 million earths.

                I am a sucker for ancient civilizations and mysterious objects so all this about Ringworld appealed to me. The idea of a strange object that has the surface area of 3 million Earths is a pretth great hook for me. Niven’s detail sells the size of the structure and dimensions of the world. It was fun exploring the planet with Louis Wu and his crew. It becomes more interesting as they discover people and ruins of a pervious advanced civilization. Niven has an easy to read style that helps the story move at a brisk pace.

                Ringworld is not the first Hugo Winner to feature aliens but it is one of the first to have aliens as main characters. Nessus and Speaker and interesting characters but they fall short of the depth and complexity of the Estraven from The Left Hand of Darkness. Part of this stems from Niven’s aliens suffering from what I have heard called “Star Trek syndrome”. “Star Trek syndrome” basically means that aliens are built around one defined characteristic such as Vulcans being logical and Klingons being warlike. In the case of Ringworld we have Nessus, who as a Pierson’s Puppeteer, is a coward and their entire advanced civilization seems to be built around cowardice and Speaker, who as a Kzin, is aggressive and violent. Perhaps it is unfair to the characters. They are fairly well developed but the societies they come from are so one dimensional that it is difficult from them to be as deep as they could be. I still liked them though. Pierson’s Puppeteers are one of the stranger aliens I have read about. They are a four legged creature with what appears to be two heads coming out of its back. While these heads have one each and lips, they are not heads as we would think of them. Instead they are more like hands with eyes with the Pierson’s  Puppeteers’ brain located inside its body. It is a strange configuration but it works. The Kzin are far more conventional. They are essentially 8 foot fall cat people. The Kzin fought a series of wars with humans in the past and lost most of their empire. There is a whole series of books about the Man-Kzin wars but I haven’t read them. It should be noted that Speaker is the second cat-esque alien to appear in a Hugo Winner and he is much better than the creepy overly sexualized Tigerishka from The Wanderer. Even his name is much better.

                There really was only one thing that rubbed me the wrong way about this book and that was its sexual content. It is not overly graphic but it feels bit juvenile like what a stereotypical teenage boy would like sex to be. Teela Brown seems to be in the story only for sex and her innate luck. Again it’s not over the top but it can seem a tad strained.

                All and all this leaves Ringworld as a pretty good adventure story. It is certainly not my favorite Hugo Winner but I liked it quite a bit. I didn’t need all of the scientific details that Niven but it didn’t detract from the story. If you are looking for a good science fiction novel, look no further than Ringworld.

1970: The Left Hand of Darkness

                Over the years I realized that I do not read science fiction for the science. While the nuts and bolts of the actual science can be interesting, it is not compelling to me. No, what I look for are places and worlds to explore, cultures to understand, interesting plots, and dynamic characters. That is why I loved Dune and Lord of Light and disliked the Wanderer. All those things are in Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin, the 1970 Hugo Winner, and I loved nearly every word of it.

                It is worth noting before we get started that Ursula LeGuin is the first woman to win the Hugo Award and only the second one nominated in the 17 years the Hugos that had existed at that point. There won’t be a dissection of that fact; I just felt it was worth noting. This blog is to discuss the quality of books and authors are judged solely on their works; nothing else.

                LeGuin has nothing to fear on that account, though, because as I wrote earlier, I loved this novel. It had all the elements that I love in a good novel. Before we get into each of those elements, I should explain the backstory for the work. The Left Hand of Darkness is part of LeGuin’s Hanish Cycle, a series of loosely connected books about The Ekumen, an organization of planets and civilizations. Since space travel is so difficult interplanetary warfare is impossible so the main purpose of the organization is facilitate communication and trade. The Ekumen has an unusual yet sensible way of bringing other planets into the fold: it sends one person, called the Envoy, to a planet to convince them to join. Why just one person? Because two people are an invasion. The Ekumen reason that one person is less of a threat and shows the nonviolent nature of the organization.

                The protanganist, Genly Ai, of The Left Hand of Darkness is one such Envoy and he has been sent to the icy world of Gethen. Gethen is interesting for two reasons: it is in icy age and the people have not set gender. The Gethens have no gender except during kemmer where they turn male or female depending on whom they are with. So a person can be both a father and a mother. LeGuin does an excellent job describing a society where the normal male/female relations do not exist. One of the the interesting ramifications of this is most Gethens believe Genly is a pervert because he is stuck as male. Gethens do not fight wars (I found this a bit hard to believe but more on that later) but they are hardly a peaceful or nonviolent people. Instead of war, Gethens are engaged in constant and complex political infighting that can end with assassinations and murder as often as not. For Genly Ai this complicated political situation is made even more difficult by a Gethen practice called shifgrethor. Shifgrethor is a nuanced face saving mechanism that all Gethens use and understand and Genly is mostly clueless. As someone who has lived in worked in the Middle East I am familiar with something like this and it can be frustrating.

                While Genly Ai is a great character and it is fasnating to read about his struggles, the novel is also told through perspective of Estraven, a Karhide noble that arranges Genly’s first audience with the king. To go into more detail would spoil the book but Estraven is a great character and it is interesting to see events from his perspective.

 The societies of the two nations Genly Ai visits feel fleshed out and unique. Karhide is a late feudal era monarchy and Orgoreyn is an industrializing nation with a communist social structure. LeGuin lavishly describes the countryside and the architecture of both places making them feel quite real. I really loved the depth she gives to each society. Too often in science fiction alien societies are too one-dimensional to be really interested.  Star Trek is particularly guilt of this.

The book could be better though. My first critique is more of a backhanded compliment. I wish the novel was longer. It is barely over 300 pages but easily could be another 100 or 200 pages. Gethen is such a rich world that it seems a shame that we can’t read more about it. As far as I know, LeGuin has never returned to Gethen. The Left Hand of Darkness doesn’t need a sequel, I just wish it was a bit longer.

I mentioned earlier how the Gethens don’t go to war. LeGuin has stated that, since they have no set gender, Gethens don’t have a concept of the Other.  There is no “us and them” in their minds. While I find that assertion somewhat dubious (it is her book so she can say what she wants) the Gethens do have a degree of nationalism and do seem to have lower regard for other nations. This is clearly an “us and them” way of thinking. People don’t need much a reason to separate themselves from others. The fact that Orgoreyn and Karhide speak different languages would be enough. I get what LeGuin was trying for but it didn’t really work.

Don’t let my small complaints get in the way of enjoying The Left Hand of Darkness. It is a quality read and puts the 1970s Hugo Winners off to a good start.

A review of the 1960s

                I am just going to come right out and say it: the 1960s had better Hugo Winner than the 1950s. Much better. Only Albert Bester’s The Demolished Man holds up to the best books of the 60s. In sci-fi terms, the 1960s was light years ahead of the 1950s.

                The 1950s is supposed to be “The Golden Age of Science Fiction” where the science fiction moved from the pulp of the 1920s to the 1940s to the more literary work that would start in the 1960s. It was an awkward transition and it’s not for the pulpy elements. I love pulp science fiction and fantasy. I have read and adored all eleven Martian books by Edgar Rice Burroughs and am a huge fan of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert Howard. If you want to experience the best of pulp go read those authors and forget most of the Hugo Winners of the 1950s, except for The Demolished Man.

                But enough of that; this is about the 60s, not the 50s. And if the 60s Hugo Winners are any indication of what I will be reading in the 70s and beyond I am excited. While I did not like every book, there were many that wonderful ones with some I expected to be good others and others came out of nowhere.

                Most of the books I expected to be good were very good such as Dune, Starship Troopers, The Moon is A Harsh Mistress, The Man in the High Castle, and A Canticle for Leibowitz. But I knew about these books and the expectation that I would enjoy them did not give me the same joy as when I found something truly unexpected that I loved. For this decade it was two Roger Zelazny novels, This Immortal and Lord of Light, and Clifford Simak’s Way Station. Unlike the other novels mentioned above, I knew virtually nothing about either author, had never read their work, or even known someone who had read their work. Finding novels that take me by surprise like that is one of the man reasons I started this project. So if I have to suffer through some duds like the Wanderer or Strange in a Strange Land it is worth to find fresh and original works.

                Stranger in a Strange Land was my biggest disappointment this decade. I liked the other three Heinlein books I have read but this one did not click with me. What is so disappointing is that my sister-in-law and one of my other brother’s girlfriend told me how much they loved the book and were excited that I was going to read it. Sorry, ladies, it just didn’t do it for me. I did not grok it.

                The 1960s where a good decade for science fiction and I am pumped to find what the 1970s has in store. Stay tuned for The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin, the first woman to win the Hugo.

1969: Stand on Zanzibar

              The year is 2010. The world is overcrowded and, as a result, most nations have implemented strict eugenics program and children have become a rarity. A scientist in the socialist nation of Yatakang has discovered a way to eliminate genetic defects. The United States is fighting a Vietnam-style war with the Chinese. Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere dominate television. The tiny African nation of Beninia contracts its development to multinational conglomerate General Tectonics. Men are called “codders” and women are known as “shiggies”. This is the world of John Brunner’s 1969 Hugo Award winning novel Stand on Zanzibar.

                And what a world it is. Whatever feelings I have for Stand on Zanzibar (and I have many and they are often in conflict), Brunner created an interesting and complex world which is impressive considering that I read the book in 2012 and it was mildly amusing to think that the book’s future setting was actually two years in the past. That being said and as I mentioned earlier, I have conflicting feelings about this book. I found it, at times, to be each of the following: brilliant, silly, clever, annoying, very realistic, and absolutely ridiculous. Let’s start with the plot and then start deconstructing my feelings on the book.

                The plot is mostly focused on two characters: Norman House and Donald Hogan, two gentlemen that share an apartment (and occasionally shiggy) in New York. Norman is an African American (called an Afram in this book) Muslim who used his race to become a vice president in the General Tectonics (GT) conglomerate at the age of 26. That is not to say that Norman is stupid or untalented, for he neither of those things. Rather he is very ambitious and not afraid to use whatever means he can to succeed. For example, early in the novel, Norman personally stops a “mucker” (slang for a person running amok) that is attacking the GT computer by freezing her arm off with liquid hydrogen. Norman is a tough guy and he eventually takes of GT’s administration and development of Beninia. Brunner sums up Donald in one sentence: “Donald Hogan is a spy.” At the beginning of the novel he is more of a spy in waiting and is later activated for a special mission to Yatakang, a fictional country that is a combination of Indonesia and Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam and Thailand. Until he is called up, Donald is meek and bookish and seems unsuited for his role. While Donald and Norman are roommates they aren’t actually friends and their paths cross in strange ways once they move to their eventual roles.

                While what I described is the main plot, it is hardly the only one. The novel is broken up into a number of sections titled "Continuity"  (Most of the linear narrative is contained in these chapters), "Tracking with Closeups" (focusing closely on ancillary characters before they become part of the main narrative, or simply serve to paint a picture of the state of the world), "The Happening World" ( These chapters consist of collage-like collections of short, sometimes single-sentence, descriptive passages), and  "Context" (These chapters provide a setting for the novel). From what I have read this is similar to the structure of John Dos Passos’s U.S.A. Trilogy, a series of novels that I have not read. The structure works, for the most part, though not all side stories are created equal. Some feel needless, or worse, seem to be setting up a side story that goes nowhere. But it gives a good feeling for the world that Brunner has created.

                What I just mentioned was some of the good elements of the book but there are others as well. Brunner’s writing is good. Dialogue is believable and it doesn’t have some of the clunky workmanlike sentence structure and pacing that I noticed in earlier Hugo winners. In general I liked the story except there were a few sections that went on needlessly long such as at a party where it jumps around to different conversations for nearly 50 pages. Or at least what I imagine was 50 pages. I read Stand on Zanzibar on my Kindle so judging pages can be difficult.

                Slang in science fiction is a tricky thing. Often times it feels dated, silly, or annoying or all three at once such as fracking in the new Battlestar Galatica. Or anything from the Jetsons. That said, the slang in Stand on Zanzibar is mostly pretty good. There is a slight 60s vibe to some of it but for the most part it seems reasonable. Saying “whereinole” for “what the hell” feels right and I absolutely love Afram for African American. Since the correct word has changed so many times of the last few decades Afram seems very logical to me. “Shiggy” as a word for a woman works well in the book, though I would not recommend it for daily use. My wife was not too keen when I called her my favorite shiggy.

                What I disliked was how dystopian the book is. Nearly every aspect of this future is terrible. The U.S. government has become increasingly authoritarian with strict eugenics rules and forced conscription for what feels like any ongoing Vietnam War. Not that those are ideas for a novel but Brunner doesn’t really give an explanation on why this is. He mentions overcrowding and a U.S. population around 400 million but that hardly seem justified for the draconian measures taken by the U.S. government. George Orwell’s 1984 was bleak but at least we knew why. With all the world building that takes place in Stand on Zanzibar some explanation seem necessary. I find it hard to understand a great deal of science fiction takes place in the near future is so dystopian rather than being like the present, some stuff is good and some stuff is bad.

                Another aspect I found somewhat maddening was the character of Chad Mulligan. Chad himself does not appear until a good way into the book but excerpts from his books are fixtures of The Happening World sections. I found Chad Mulligan to be a pompous self-righteous prick, which won’t be a problem if the book didn’t treat him like a genius and prophet. Everyone has met someone like Chad: an individual who spouts garbage on how the world really is and if we only opened our eyes we would see it like they do. Personally, I find Rand Paul supporters to be like this. Even the titles of his books are self-important. What would you think of a person whose books are titled things like You’re an Ignorant Idiot and You: Beast?

                While Stand on Zanzibar is not my favorite Hugo winner, I did like it and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to read a different, more literate science fiction. It is worth your time.

                That is it for the 1960s. For my next blog I will write about the decade as a whole and what I thought of it. Spoiler alert: for the most part the 60s were better for Hugo awards than the 50s.