On "Neuromancer" by William Gibson ****

On sentence level, this is one of the best-written books on my science-fiction reading list. Gibson seems genuinely interested in writing pretty words. I have on some level intended to this this book for decades, but on another level, it's always scared me a bit--seemed a bit too dry and detailed--and so I've stayed away. I'm glad I finally dared get past the first few pages. It is dense, but it's also a great read.

I wanted to read Gibson's work on the science fiction list in part because it is considered, so far as I understand, seminal in the creation of the cyberpunk genre. I never quite knew what that was, but now that I've read Gibson, I think I have some understanding. We're talking Matrix here, and indeed, much of what would later show up in those Matrix is anticipated here in Gibson, who himself writes of the Matrix and of people living in and out of a cyberspace world. Amazingly, this book was written back in the mid-1980s, when the Internet was the playhouse mostly just of the military and of a few true computer geeks (like some of my friends were).

The story revolves around a man named Case, who once did some high white-collar crimes, bilking companies he worked for of millions with savvy computer hacking. He might have had loads of money, but his accounts were frozen and the companies fried his brains to ensure he never worked in computers again. When we meet him, he is a drug dealer and a drug addict hanging on the streets of Tokyo.

Someone wants him to go to work for them. They want him badly enough that they offer to pay for surgery to correct his brain ("offer" may be a light word here--they more or less insist). In exchange, Case has to do some computer work for them. As it turns out, this computer work involves a lot of hacking into alternate cyberspace worlds, monitoring others, and searching for something. This is where things are a bit murky and dense and why Gibson's work demands close or second readings. Case doesn't know exactly who his boss is working for--and thus who he is working for--so he goes in search. In part, this is because the correction to his brain is temporal; if he quits, toxins will be released that will return him to his fried-brain state. Eventually, Case figures out that he's working for an artificial intelligence (that's right, for a computer), called Wintermute. Wintermute's got designs on the human race, on computer's generally. What exactly they are never became clear to me. At points, the narrative shifts so often between the computer world and the real world that the two begin to blur.

Nevertheless, it's a fun ride.

On "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card ****

This one came highly recommended by someone when I noted that I was going to do a classic science fiction list. No doubt, this is one of the newest books on said list, but I did want some newer contemporary writers represented. I can see why the book was recommended. It's a great book in terms of propelling one along as a reader to want to read more and more.

The story is essentially that of Ender Wiggin, a child who is drafted into the army at the age of six. This is a world that is looking for a superhero, and Ender is just that, as were potentially his two siblings, Peter and Valentine. The problem was that Peter was too violent, Valentine not quite what the bigwigs wanted either. So Ender is it. He's a third, in a world where couples are allowed only two children, so he's already known as an outlier. This in turn means that he's likely to be beaten up by other kids--and by Peter.

One day, faced with a mob, Ender beats up the lead kid, beats him up so badly that the kid will never threaten him again--nor anyone. That's the goal. But he feels guilty about treating others like so, the way Peter would. So Ender has, in addition to proclivities to violence, a kind of empathy to tame it.

Along come the generals to take him off to battle academy. The academy essentially consists of playing battle games in zero gravity--something akin to laser tag of sorts. In between, there are classes and video games. As technically too young for the school, Ender is again an outsider, prone to getting beaten up. However, he's savvy, knows how to work the politics so that he gets what he wants, over and over. And he's good at the games too, which lends him respect, even when he's told, for example, not to fight.

Eventually, he works his way up at the school and then is promoted to commander school, where the battles become huge simulations of actual battles with the buggers, as they are known.

This is why Eros (i.e., Earth) needs a superhero. Twice, the buggers tried to invade Eros, and both times they barely were repelled. Unless humans prepare for the next onslaught and have a brilliant commander, there is no hope. Ender is that hope. And with each command battle, Ender proves why he is.

There are a few tricks Card drops in near the end of the book that I won't reveal here. Suffice to say that the ever-feeling Ender is a reluctant warrior.

Card treats his children like adults--or in other words, he writes them as if they are adults. They are precocious, and they aren't allowed to be children in this particular world, but still, they don't come across to me quite the way kids would, and in that sense, I had something of a hard time with the characterizations in this book. But if you can accept that or get beyond it, the story is an intriguing one. And the characters were well enough drawn that I actually found myself caring about them, despite how fantastic they seemed.

On "Second Foundation" by Isaac Asimov ***

This final book in Asimov's Foundation Trilogy is essentially a high-tech tale of hide-and-go-seek. It recounts the story of a band of fellows from the First Foundation attempting to find the location of the Second Foundation, and the Second Foundation attempting to remain hidden. Way back in the first book of the trilogy, a man named Hari Selden founded the Foundation as a means to maintain scientific know-how amid a crumbling empire so that civilization goes into the dark ages for a few hundred years rather than a few thousand. The Foundation is founded around men with a lot of physical scientific knowledge. Selden, himself, was a mathematician, but he used it to create sets of probabilities that could predict the future, and as becomes clear by the second book in the series, to control people's minds.

That there is a Second Foundation on the opposite side of the galaxy is a myth or rumor that has long existed. This Second Foundation, the rumor goes, belongs to people who can control minds and predict the future but who do not have any technical know-how.

A band of fellows come to the conclusion that such a foundation exists and decide that they must discover and destroy it so that the First Foundation will not falter.

Meanwhile, the Second Foundation is worried. It's worried because the future that has been foretold has been messed up by an individual. As a result, the probability that the galaxy will descend into complete chaos has risen to heights that demand action.

Since readers know that there is a Second Foundation, the book is intriguing mostly because readers don't know the actual location of the Second Foundation. Like the First Foundationers in search of it, readers move forward with excitement to see if the place where this foundation exist will ever be found. Asimov throws a number of twist endings in toward the last few chapters, as the First Foundationers reach various conclusions: that the Foundation doesn't exist, that it does and it's scattered or all among us, and so on. Each option seems plausible. But readers are in on an irony that the poor First Foundationers are not.

If the trilogy is seen as an exploration of fate versus choice, Asimov's answer seems to come down slightly in favor of fate. But to say that he wholly embraces fate would be difficult. After all, the probabilities, once the appearance of the Mule occurs in book 2, are stacked against what Selden had predicted mathematically, so to keep such events in line, they must be perennially fine-tuned by a set of men who pull strings. If so, then someone somewhere pulling the strings still have free choice, even if those being pulled along do not.

On "Foundation and Empire" by Isaac Asimov **

This second book in Asimov's Foundation Trilogy covers the history of the Foundation as it rises to power and the Empire as it makes its final decline. Or rather, that is the story it tells in its first section. After that, the tale becomes mostly one about the Foundation.

Taking the story up where he left off, Asimov recounts how the Empire falls through means that are entirely predictable and beyond the control of any one person. A trader sets out to save the Foundation by destroying the Empire and learns later that his actions have no bearing on the Empire's eventual fall and Foundation's triumph. The seeds of the Empire's failure had already been planted and would flower no matter who came about.

Asimov debunks this idea, however, in the book's second half. Years pass, and the Foundation's rulers become greedy and selfish. A set of traders set out to overthrow this ruling class. However, in the midst of their planning, a mutant arises who goes by the name the Mule. This mutant has raised an army that quickly overwhelms the Foundation's strongholds, and now the traders throw their lot in with the Foundation rather than against it.

But the Mule is indominatable. Unpredicted in Hari Selden's mathematical proclamation of future history, this one man DOES make a difference, shattering the Foundation and bringing all under his control, including remnants of the old Empire. Society will not be what Selden had predicted, because one man can change history.

Asimov focuses then on a small cast of characters, including a clown who has escaped from the Mule and who chums along with some traders and a psychohistorian. They are on a quest to find the Secound Foundation, a set of psychohistorians (rather than the physical scientists of the First Foundation), both of whom were set up at the end of the previous Empire to guard society and bring about a universal government and peace faster than would be possible if chaos were let reign. The final chapters bring some surprises and major diagesis of the various ideas and themes. This is much more a book of ideas than of fine or interesting writing and characterization.

On "Foundation" by Isaac Asimov ***

The first in a trilogy, this novel is more focused on plot than on individual characters, and more focused on theme than on much of anything else. Asimov essentially sets out to tell the history of a galactic society, and this history has smackings of the history of Western civilization. I'm reminded a lot of the history of the Roman Empire. In terms of novels, I'm reminded of multigenerational novels, like Naguib Mahfouz's The Harafish.

We begin at a time when a single empire dominates the galaxy. Unfortunately, its power is waning. But historical forces, at least from the perspective of the novel, are predictable. And one psychohistorian, as such people are called, has figured out, via math and science, what the future holds. Follow his advice, and when the empire falls, it will reestablish itself in a thousand years; don't follow it, and the empire won't return for thirty thousand years. Luckily, he's smart enough to have been able also to predict how the rulers of the empire will react. They banish him to the outskirts of the empire, but they allow him to create an encyclopedia, which will store all of society's knowledge (the idea of such a book seems, in a way, rather antiquated now, in our Internet age).

True to form, the Foundation, as it is called, does retain scientific knowledge. But it does so without much in the way of control over the planet where it is centered. Meanwhile, the edges of the empire have collapsed, and in its place, are now a set of warring planets. The Foundation remains, however, through clever politics, playing one planet against another--and also by forging a religion. The religion gives it power in a soft sense but not a hard sense (think Catholicism of the Middle Ages). The priests control the masses, and the ruling class dare not stray too far from what the heads of the religion (i.e., the Foundation) wants.

As time moves forward, however, religion's influence begins to wane in favor of traders (capitalism, mercantilism, etc.). Now it is these men who play one planet against another, introducing technologies in order to further the Foundation's control.

A book of ideas more than characters, the piece focuses on three main crises. One doesn't end up caring much about any of the people involved, but as a book of ideas, it is fairly interesting.

On "2001" by Arthur C. Clarke ****

Reading the prefatory material to this book, it sounds as if Clarke actually wrote the screenplay to the film with the director Stanley Kubrick before he wrote the book. So in a sense, this book is an adaptation or an extended treatment. And it's impossible not to compare the two works. One is a classic movie, engaging in parts and a mind trip in others. Clarke's book lays out the principles of the movie in my more dogmatic and thus less-interesting form. That's not to say that the book isn't intriguing in its own right.

Take, for example, the beginning sections of the film and the book, which deal with prehistoric man. I find those sections of the film rather dull. For one, one doesn't quite understand what's going on among these prelinguistic apes, and such doesn't make for the most-compelling viewing. In the book, the thoughts of the lead ape are described in detail, and you get the sense of discovery that early pre-man has hit upon: hunting, not just gathering; tools; killing others.

Skip ahead to the future, and man is out exploring space. When a strange monolith is discovered on the moon, similar to the one that the apes discovered, the United States decides to send men to Saturn to study the monolith's possible origins. Here, the film and book fairly well match each other, though the book goes into more detail. Clarke is masterful in predicting future technological advances, though some things seem strangely anachronistic as well (a video phone hooked up by cables?). Both the film and movie do a good job of explaining how technically some things might be accomplished, given enough manpower and will.

This middle section if the most-compelling part of both works, as a computer that runs the spaceship that is taking five astronauts to one of Saturn's moons decides that its human counterparts aren't up to the job--and that their presence threatens its own existence. Herein, Dave Bowman does all he can to save his crew, himself, and his mission, as the plot centers on man versus self-cognizant machine.

It's the last section that I was most curious to see "adapted." In the film, this becomes a masterful 1970s tripout. What in the world could Clarke have done in the book? Well, it becomes a description of the universe and of the possible origins of man--a lecture of sorts, of far less interest. And of the ultimate ending? In the movie, with less explanation, the scenes of Bowman hanging out in a room are mysterious and strange. In the book, all of this is explained. Strange, sure, but not as mysterious. In all the tripout is replaced with something much more in keeping with science fiction and with the thoughts of someone whose done a lot of thinking about the subject of intelligence, which makes for much less ambiguity and thus for something that is not quite as much of a classic.

On "Return from the Stars" by Stanislaw Lem *****

I think of Lem as the author of Solaris, and as such (because of the movies), I think of him as the writer of slow theme-heavy, deep-thinking science fiction, even though until now I had never read him. But the novel, as written here, fits within those preconceptions--perhaps, not quite as slow as the Solaris movies but certainly not heavy on plot.

Hal Bregg has returned from a mission into the nether regions of the galaxy, one that tried the limits of human ability (to become a pilot for the mission, he had to undergo a series of tests that involved severe isolation, including one in which an astronaut is left untethered and away from any spacecraft or station in a spacesuit in the middle of space for an undetermined amount of time; most men go crazy). As such, while he has aged only a few years (he's now in his forties), the earth he returns to has aged 150 years--and it is very different, so different that the return of those on his mission is barely mentioned in media reports. Technology has far outstripped Bregg's period, and interest in the stars has fallen by the wayside.

The first hundred pages or so of this book involve mostly Bregg's exploration of this new earth, a place that is a technological utopia. Cities are built on levels stretching to the sky, with television screens standing in for the outdoors. Gravity has been conquered, allowing crafts to be built that, even if they manage to crash, are perfectly suited to keeping anything inside from being damaged. Robots have taken over doing most daily tasks, leaving humans to relax or to oversee the overseeing robots. Life-time marriage has been replaced by temporal contracts that can be renewed for periods of time. But most important, man's baser instincts have been conquered through a medical procedure that removes aggression from the human body. There are no more wars, no more violent crimes--but neither is there much in the way of desire to explore other worlds or to accomplish feats no one else has ever achieved. Fear grips man as much as sheer apathy.

In this sense, Bregg is confronted with a different vision of life, one he does not initially like. Is the cost of conquering human passion worth the loss of that passion? What's more, what was the value of Bregg's journey to the stars if no one appreciates it now, and if technology itself has now made trips like Bregg's conceptually utterly easy to accomplish (even if no one has an interest in pursuing them)?

In time, Bregg meets up with a crew member for a little boxing match (boxing being an aggressive sport no one has any interest in now, other than those who have not gone through the medical procedure). He meets a woman for whom he develops quick feelings, and he marries her. And finally, he meets another old crew member and learns that in fact another trip to the stars is being planned. Will Bregg go?

The world has rubbed off on Bregg, and he's come to see exploration as pointless. But his faith in it seems to be somewhat restored by his old colleague, who denotes that man's need to explore is not based on what riches he will bring back from his voyage (did the antarctic explorers expect to find gold at the South Pole?) but on the need to accomplish grand feats and to know what is out there. Were the universe a big black blank instead of a place full of stars and alternate worlds, men would still go into the blackness to see what was there. And Bregg, taking a walk afterward, seems to recognize again that sense of wonder he had as a child.

On "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert A. Heinlein ****

I'd been told to read Starship Troopers by people in the know, this more than Heinlein's classic Stranger in a Strange Land. I ended up reading neither, as both were out of stock at the library. And I can  say that the choice of this book was not a bad one. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is essentially a story about the founding of a nation, a fight for independence--but with many odd social and technological considerations included.

It starts off more or less as a story of friends, a man and a computer--a very intelligent computer, with access to records that affect an entire colony. This computer appears to have self-awareness. (Having just seen Her, I had to think often about how many other people this computer was pretending to be "specially" linked to. It was Mike to the narrator, Michelle to a later friend. Events in the book suggest it was not playing both sides, friends to both rebels and approved government.)

The narrator, Manuel, is not particularly political, but somehow he gets drawn into a meeting that seems vaguely communistic--though as the text goes on, the eventual government that emerges appears to be more inclined toward anarchy and then finally something more like the U.S. government in its early days. There he meets a couple of folks, a man and a woman, who draw him into their attempts to free the moon from its owners on Earth (essentially, a UN-type board--ownership shared by all peoples). The issue is that the moon grows food for Earth, and the people of the moon are essentially treated like slaves (they see little in return for their work, though they don't pay taxes, and because they live on the moon, which has less gravity, they are not really free to return to Earth without health consequences). Manuel introduces the two agitators to Mike the computer, and together they all begin to hash out plans to sever ties with Earth.

Eventually, the novel becomes an account of war, one in which Mike takes a major role, saving the Lunies from encroachments of troops sent from Earth and plotting out large rocks to send to Earth as asteroid bombs that eventually convince the Earthlings to grant the Lunies their independence. Strangely, by the novel's end, one has a certain amount of feeling for the computer, who becomes a very real type of character.

Also of interest in the novel is Heinlein's take on families. With a lack of women on the moon, families take on a group form: one woman with several husbands, and then eventually several men and women together. I've read of the former in certain Asian cultures where women are in short supply, but I don't think I've read any anthropological works that would feature something akin to what Heinlein describes.

On "The Stars My Destination" by Alfred Bester **

This is supposed to be one of the best science fiction novels of all time. As such, it has, as SNL's Stephan would say, "everything." Unfortunately, I don't mean that in a good way. I felt like the novel was a bit too much of a mix of every plot one could think of.

It starts off well enough. Bester can write a great sentence. But once the lead lines peter out, we're dropped into what seems much more like the pulp world that Bester was writing to.

The world in which Bester writes is one in which people can "jaunt." That is, they can think about where they want to go and end up there. Jaunting is limited to places one knows intimately and usually to small spurts.

Next, after a history on the subject, we find our main character Gully Foyle in a space ship (Nomad) out in some forsaken place. He is a lone survivor, and he sends out a distress signal when another ship comes by, but he is ignored. This sets the events of the novel into orbit, so to speak. Abandoned, he crashes the ship onto an asteroid. The inhabitants of the asteroid tattoo his face and marry him to a local.

He vows revenge for his face--he will punish whoever ran the ship that ignored his distress signal. And so it is that he goes in search of the person running the ship, torturing various crew members he's able to find along the way to get the information he needs.

In the process he runs into a woman with telekinetic powers he hires to speak to him when he's among rich people (since he can only speak lower-class dialect). He becomes a magician of sorts. He recovers a treasure hid on the ship he was abandoned on that he crashed into an asteroid and becomes rich enough to seek who he will get revenge on. A radioactive detective comes chasing after Foyle (radioactive because he was caught in a horrible accident at one time and now can only be in proximity to people for about five minutes before they get sick). Everyone is looking for the riches--and more important for something called PyrE, which is an explosive that can be blown up by mind action (for use in a war).

Foyle eventually finds out who ordered him to be ignored, but in the process he learns also the meaning of forgiveness and redemption. And jaunting across a vast degree of space time.

More happens, of course, in between all this. The whole thing seemed very convoluted, and the only thing missing, it seemed, was a vampire.

On "A Canticle for Leibowitz" by Walter M. Miller Jr. *****

This is a friend of mine's favorite science fiction novel. When I decided to do a whole reading list of classic science fiction, he emphasized that this was one I had to read. I don't think it would have been on my list initially if he hadn't, so I'm glad that he emphasized its importance. I'm also glad he emphasized its importance so that I would stick with it. A book about Catholic monks didn't particularly seem like something I would fancy, and the early going portions of the novel seemed very much concerned with that religious world.

But something is much different about this world. We've reverted to the Dark Age. In fact, Miller tells essentially the story of human history here. An atomic war has taken back into an era pretechnology, where superstition reigns. The masses (one has to believe these are the same masses who let their anger stoke illogical choices in political elections) blame scientists and knowledge for man's destruction and set about to destroy virtually all higher learning. The Church is the one that saves a few precious documents. And it is these documents that astound here in the early-going portions of the book, for among them is the work of an atomic engineer named Leibowitz, and his scratch pad of formulas is pondered over by many a monk. He is, in fact, accorded among the saints.

The novel splits into three sections, each of them ending in death. In the first, Francis, a novice monk, discovers a bomb shelter with relics of Leibowitz's. There is much anguish over whether the relics are genuine or fake and over how best to position the discovery so that the Church will accord Leibowitz sainthood. A counterfeit set of relics would actually set back Leibowitz's cause.

There is much irony in the second section, set many hundred years later, wherein a new enlightenment is coming into being. During this period, science is again beginning to find its own--and questioning the value of religion. Now Leibowitz's work is called into question for its actual usefulness. Modern minds surely know more than their predecessors. And when a scientist comes to deliver the fatal blow to Leibowitz's papers, showing that they are worthless, he is surprised to find in them things of actual value, things that he as a scientist is just discovering. This unleashes new theories: That Leibowitz and the supposed advanced civilization of the past was actually an alien race, and that this race left the planet, leaving in its place an inferior race with too much technology on its hands and not enough brains to know how to use it properly (i.e., to not blow itself up with it). Meanwhile, war lurks on the horizon.

The last section finds us in a very modern world, more advanced than even our own at the present time. Men are traveling across space, just beginning to colonize distant planets. But war still looms, and unfortunately, as before, technology proves to be man's undoing. All the material capabilities in the world do us no good if we don't have the ability to love one another. It sounds like a trite lesson, but Miller draws it out into one compelling novel.

On "The Martian Chronicles" by Ray Bradbury ****

I didn't know what I was getting into when I started this book and was a bit surprised once I started reading it. What I'd long thought was a novel is more a collection of linked stories. Some characters reappear, and there is a general historical timeline that is stuck to chronologically, but this is not a novel in the sense of having the development of a character (unless Mars itself is the character) over the course of the work.

While Asimov's I, Robot seemed more interested in philosophical ideas about intelligence and ethics, Bradbury's work is more concerned with history. The latter is also more of a stylist, with writing that is memorable for its own sake. The history that Bradbury focuses on seems to me to be one of Earth, and most especially of the New World. The extended metaphor between the settlement of the New World and the settlement of Mars is made explicit more than once.

Bradbury's book begins with a story written from the point of view of a race of Martians. In that story, a woman has visions of men from Earth visiting the planet. And indeed, the next several stories revolve around attempts to explore and colonize the planet, with each little group of Earth men killed off in some way before they can bring back news of a successful landing to the people back on the home planet. But in time, Earthlings eventually establish a foothold, this made possible largely through a disease that wipes out Mars's original inhabitants (ala the American Indians).

Eventually, more and more people come to Mars, and it is increasingly seen as a place for young men to go off to make their fortune. And that is where Bradbury's work takes a dark turn, for as Mars begins to be settled, Earth finds itself enveloped in a world war, and new settlements drop accordingly--indeed, as the Martians disappeared, so it seems that humanity itself also will.

On "I, Robot," by Isaac Asimov ****

Asimov's robot book seems more like a set of stories on a theme involving one character that sort of weaves around them as a frame than it seems like an actual novel. And when I say they seem like stories, I could also say they seem more like philosophical conundrums that are explored using fictional devices. The conundrums are in a sense ethical ones, created when three basic rules of robotics are put into place: (1) robots are not to harm humans or allow humans to be harmed; (2) robots must obey humans unless that means disobeying the first law; and (3) robots must preserve themselves so long as that preservation doesn't interfere with laws one and two. What happens when one law seems to interfere with another? How does a robot interpret this law? And how do humans re-create robots to be most useful if a law seems to actually be interfering with a robot's function?

The stories are in more or less chronological order, as robots go from being less sophisticated to more. In the first tale, a robot is used for a nanny of sorts. The mother dislikes the degree to which the child has become connected to the robot and so tries to sever the relationship. The thing is a machine, after all, and has no concern for the child outside of what is was programmed with. But what, in the end, is the difference?

In the next tale, a more sophisticated robot gets stuck in a loop near a mine because of its need to obey rules two and three, but in doing so, it loses sight of rule one through miscommunication and nearly brings about the death of two humans sent to set up the mine.

In yet another story, a robot comes to believe that because it is superior to humans in physical strength, it must in fact be created by a being superior to humans. No amount of reasoning seems able to dissuade the robot of its point of view.

In the tale "Liar," a robot tells people what they want to hear in order to avoid offending them and to make them happier. This becomes a problem, however, when intersecting facts prove that the robot is just making things up, and thus making humans feel worse than they would have had the truth come out in the first place. Arguably, this robot is following the first rule, but it seems a rather dimwitted view of the first rule.

As we move toward the end of the book, the robots become more and more sophisticated till at the end, they stand far above humans even in terms of societal control. Rule one is tantamount, but robots have come to see their importance to rule one as so ingrained in societal structure that rule three has actually come to predominate (over rule two). In the end, it is the preservation of the robots themselves that will allow the preservation of the humans.

On "The War of the Worlds" by H. G. Wells ****

While Wells's Time Machine seemed silly to me, though it had certain philosophical ideas behind it that were interesting to think about, this work seemed the opposite. The plot was compelling, but there seemed to me to be a lot less in terms of interesting ideas behind it. Still, I'd take War of the Worlds any day, because a good story is kind of essential to a good novel.

A few things did strike me of interest in this book, however, beyond the plot. One was the matter-of-fact manner in which Wells reported the story. The novel reads like a true account by a man who was on the ground where aliens have landed. Hence, he's at times caught up in things that seem perfunctory, and beyond that, as a reader, one is left wondering what exactly is the deal with these aliens and eventually whether humanity itself will survive. In that sense, the book seemed like an account of war from the point of view of a civilian, and that was the sense in which the book seemed the most affecting to me. Life changes a lot obviously in such a situation--and quickly. And yet, misinformation and the slow spread of information means that many aren't aware of what is happening at any given moment. Hence, some continue life as normal even as an invading army begins to take its toll in part of the country; then later, people panic, not knowing exactly what is about to occur or what has.

The other thing that was of interest to me was how the novel plays out versus the way Orson Welles's famous radio play does. It was, in fact, quite an adaptation, for Wells's book is in many ways more of a standard book, matter-of-fact tone notwithstanding.

Beyond these things, another item of interest were the enemies themselves, whose technology is vastly superior to human technology and whose main goal is to harvest humans for blood, the means by which these creatures live. It's a gruesome idea fully described on a par with some other more-recent science fiction. In this sense, humans are reduced to something akin to farm and hunting animals, which makes for commentary, I suppose, on how we deal with nature ourselves.

The book is in the public domain and can be accessed here.

On "The Time Machine" by H. G. Wells ***

I have not read much science fiction outside of the work of Philip K. Dick, who forged a reading list of mine a couple of years ago, so I've decided to embark on a reading list of classic science fiction.

I say I haven't read much, but in fact, I actually read quite a bit of the nineteenth-century science fiction (Jules Verne particularly comes to mind) when I was a kid. Forced to read one thousand pages per quarter from a select reading list, Verne and authors like him were often my staple. Had more contemporary science fiction books been on that list (and in the school library), I'd have definitely tried them. Thing is, I loved sci-fi--mostly because of Star Wars (something I probably wouldn't find myself drawn to as much as an adult, prequels notwithstanding)--or so I thought. But the few times I've read more contemporary stuff, I've usually been disappointed. I think that's because, as with sci-fi movies, while I like philosophical ideas and intense thrills, I'm not much for action. I'm more of an Alien fan than an Aliens fan, for instance.

So the reading list this time will include mostly those twentieth-century masters I haven't ever read, and I'm hoping they'll be interesting more for their ideas than for their action and, in addition, that they'll be at least fairly decently written. (The other issue I have with much genre fiction is the degree to which authors rely on cliches, but a good author, I've found, often doesn't, meaning that when younger, I often dismissed genre fiction out of hand when I should have considered each work separately, because as I discovered when reading a mystery list about a decade ago, there are some really brilliant genre writers out there. The classics are often classics for a reason, and I was wrong to be snooty about them.
 
The Time Machine, however, was a bit of a disappointment. I enjoyed the first few chapters, as Wells waxed poetic on ideas about physics that I would have thought postdated him (the connection between traveling through time and traveling through space, and the dynamics of the fourth dimension), but the story got rather hokey once the narrator headed off into the grand future.

Of course, the description of future was itself a social commentary. In it, humankind had evolved into two factions: a light and a dark, a good and an evil. But while the ones who lived above ground were peace loving, they had become so appeased with easy living that they failed any longer to advance. For Wells, this seemed a dangerous proposition. We must struggle if we are to evolve (there seemed a slight critique of communism here, as if the greed of capitalism is something we should want, as opposed to the peace communism would supposedly bring). But by the same token, those below ground had descended to the lowest rungs of decency, becoming essentially cannibals, even as they continued to use machinery.

Most of the plot revolves around the narrator's time machine being stolen and him attempting to recover it so that he can get back to his own time, a familiar plot indeed, though perhaps unique in Wells's time. The book is available online here.