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Hard to be Coming Through Reviews
Mar. 18th, 2015 08:14 pmHi,
So I got through two more books and here's my review of them.
First up Hard to be a God by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, a classic piece of Russian sci-fi literature from the authors of Roadside Picnic. Hard to be a God has recently been made into a movie and from the trailer I knew that I had to read it. Not surprisingly there's a new Kindle version out that's tied into the movie. So I gave ago
The book concerns one Don Ramata who is a minor noble in the feudal society of Arkanar. In actuality he's a scientist from Earth who has come to this planet to see if theories of historical development actually occur in practice. Arkanar is located on a planet very similar to Earth but a few thousand years behind in history, which allows Ramata to blend in with the locals and provides a vibrant petri dish for historical development. Much like Federation officers, Ramata is not allowed to interfere in the natural course of history. This restriction becomes more and more tedious as Don Reba a high-ranking Noble begins a pogrom against knowledge and intellectualism. Don Ramada tries to save who he can but knows he's only able to save a small handful. He has the power to do more but is torn by indecision — will his actions cause more harm than good.
That’s really the focus of the book — Ramata’s wrestling with his desire to bring these people out of darkness and his fear that he’ll only make things worse. In the end Don Reba pushes things to a head and Ramata must make a choice.
I thought the book was good and I do want to see the movie, but it suffers a bit because the authors had fairly different views on how the book should develop. From their earliest notes there’s a split between the desire for a more swashbuckling adventure story and a more nuanced tale of what we owe other people. The latter won out, but you keep expecting a little more adventure than what you get.
After that, I jumped into Something Coming Through by Paul McAuley. After global warming and limited nuclear conflict has messed up the planet, the Jackaroo showed up and offered alien technology and colony planets to help humanity regain its footing. Despite a lot of concern over what it means to accept the aliens’ gifts, humanity doesn’t have any choice and take the bet. Still, there are a lot of strange interactions between humans and alien technologies, especially things left over from the Elder Races, previous client species of the Jackeroo.
Chloe works in London tracking down outbreaks of these disruptions caused by alien tech. She stumbled across a teenaged boy and his younger sister who are making weird drawings and communicating with someone they call “Ugly Chicken”. Meanwhile, on the colony world of Mangala, Inspector Vic Gayle and his new partner Skip have just been called to the site of a murder where the victim appears to have been killed with alien tech. The parallel story threads weave back and forth until meeting up for the final climax.
I think I’ve decided that while I like a lot of ideas that McAuley puts out, I’m just not that thrilled by him as a writer. I feel this is way more subjective on my part. It’s not I don’t like what he writes, I’m just not liking how he writes it. Basically, it takes *forever* for this book to get off the ground. It was really pretty hard reading. The last quarter of the book is where it really starts to pick up, but it ends with most questions unanswered. It’s really more of a detective novel with some sci-fi trappings thrown on.
I’m really jazzed by the idea of “aliens show up and make us their sidekick/client/charity case”, but I haven’t read any really good executions of that idea for some reason. Ah well.
Later
Tom
So I got through two more books and here's my review of them.
First up Hard to be a God by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, a classic piece of Russian sci-fi literature from the authors of Roadside Picnic. Hard to be a God has recently been made into a movie and from the trailer I knew that I had to read it. Not surprisingly there's a new Kindle version out that's tied into the movie. So I gave ago
The book concerns one Don Ramata who is a minor noble in the feudal society of Arkanar. In actuality he's a scientist from Earth who has come to this planet to see if theories of historical development actually occur in practice. Arkanar is located on a planet very similar to Earth but a few thousand years behind in history, which allows Ramata to blend in with the locals and provides a vibrant petri dish for historical development. Much like Federation officers, Ramata is not allowed to interfere in the natural course of history. This restriction becomes more and more tedious as Don Reba a high-ranking Noble begins a pogrom against knowledge and intellectualism. Don Ramada tries to save who he can but knows he's only able to save a small handful. He has the power to do more but is torn by indecision — will his actions cause more harm than good.
That’s really the focus of the book — Ramata’s wrestling with his desire to bring these people out of darkness and his fear that he’ll only make things worse. In the end Don Reba pushes things to a head and Ramata must make a choice.
I thought the book was good and I do want to see the movie, but it suffers a bit because the authors had fairly different views on how the book should develop. From their earliest notes there’s a split between the desire for a more swashbuckling adventure story and a more nuanced tale of what we owe other people. The latter won out, but you keep expecting a little more adventure than what you get.
After that, I jumped into Something Coming Through by Paul McAuley. After global warming and limited nuclear conflict has messed up the planet, the Jackaroo showed up and offered alien technology and colony planets to help humanity regain its footing. Despite a lot of concern over what it means to accept the aliens’ gifts, humanity doesn’t have any choice and take the bet. Still, there are a lot of strange interactions between humans and alien technologies, especially things left over from the Elder Races, previous client species of the Jackeroo.
Chloe works in London tracking down outbreaks of these disruptions caused by alien tech. She stumbled across a teenaged boy and his younger sister who are making weird drawings and communicating with someone they call “Ugly Chicken”. Meanwhile, on the colony world of Mangala, Inspector Vic Gayle and his new partner Skip have just been called to the site of a murder where the victim appears to have been killed with alien tech. The parallel story threads weave back and forth until meeting up for the final climax.
I think I’ve decided that while I like a lot of ideas that McAuley puts out, I’m just not that thrilled by him as a writer. I feel this is way more subjective on my part. It’s not I don’t like what he writes, I’m just not liking how he writes it. Basically, it takes *forever* for this book to get off the ground. It was really pretty hard reading. The last quarter of the book is where it really starts to pick up, but it ends with most questions unanswered. It’s really more of a detective novel with some sci-fi trappings thrown on.
I’m really jazzed by the idea of “aliens show up and make us their sidekick/client/charity case”, but I haven’t read any really good executions of that idea for some reason. Ah well.
Later
Tom
