Reading Well: The Book of Phoenix by Nnedi Okorafor

Posted on January 17, 2017 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Nnedi Okorafor is an important figure in science fiction. She is working to create not just science fiction by an African writer, but an African science fiction. That’s a huge, complex, messy, inaccurate, and unfair statement, and has far more to it than I can unpack in a Reading Well post, but it’s very much part of Okorafor’s context. (For what it’s worth, I don’t know how she sees or positions herself.)

The Book of Phoenix (2015) tells the story of Phoenix and her struggles against the forces that created her. She is a SpeciMan, created to be a weapon through various forms of genetic engineering by a military-industrial complex that controls North America. With the help of some allies, Phoenix escapes her confinement: the rest of the book details her flight and her escalating resistance against her creators.

There is a framing device, set even further in the future, so we are really doubly -displaced: first, to that very far-flung and desolate future and then to the Phoenix’s time. It’s an entertaining and creative read, and the relationships between the main characters–two of whom are love interests for Phoenix, one of whom is not–ring true and deep.

Throughout, Okorafor muses on the contrast between what she presents as a pan-African perspective and an American one, and while some of those details may be heavy-handed, most are intelligent and creative, and Phoenix herself is a compelling figure, full of fury and passion and insight.

The Book of Phoenix is not a classic, but it is part of an important project; if that interests you, the book will as well.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

The Book of Phoenix is a short book, and I think Okorafor is very smart about how deeply she dives into world-building throughout it. There is enough for the world to feel real, but little is explained that is not immediately relevant to the plot or the characters. That brevity and focus is a model I could do well to emulate.

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Reading Well: The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

Posted on January 8, 2017 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Scott Lynch‘s The Lies of Locke Lamora (2013) surprised me. The mixture of world-building, long con game, and more traditional inverted-hero plot takes a while to get going, but once it does, the book is a very fast, very engaging read.

The inverted-hero trope is met through Locke Lamora himself, a preternaturally gifted thief and con man operating in the underground of the city of Camorr. The novel moves around in time quite a bit, from Locke’s youth as an apprentice-thief to (some of) the initial adventures of five young thieves known as The Gentleman Bastards to the dominant plot, which involves a brutal attempt to gain control of Camorr’s underground by a mysterious figure known as The Grey King.

Camorr and the surrounding lands are clearly intended to hold more stories, and are filled with both backstory and mystery, and if some of the touches are a bit over the top (ritual shark fighting from floating logs, anyone?), it’s all energetically and richly done.

The story just increases in momentum and interest as you move through it: if you are moderately intrigued by the first 100 pages, you will be fully hooked for the last 100 (and the 500 in between–it is a quick read, but not a short book).

I don’t know that I will return to Camorr, but the time spent there was worthwhile, and a TV or movie or video game franchise is certainly possible.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

Just go for it. It feels like Lynch has a deep affection for things, and then just finds a way to fold them into his fiction–from sharks to long cons to the way cities in early Dungeons & Dragons type games were a connected series of distinctly flavored neighborhoods, each with its own challenges and themes. There is something energetic and enjoyable in reading about things someone else loves.

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Reading Well: The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey

Posted on December 30, 2016 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Until I began reading The Girl with All the Gifts (2014), I didn’t realize how familiar I was with the author. Here listed as M. R. Carey, it’s the same Mike Carey who wrote one of the greatest comic book arcs in recent memory, Lucifer, as well as a 40 issue run on Hellblazer.

If that turns you off, stop and pretend you don’t know it: The Girl with All the Gifts is an engrossing thriller, a page-turner to the very end, and a book that takes some familiar tropes–teens coming of age, vampires, post-apocalyptic settings–and turns them on their heads.

Most importantly, the characters are compelling: from the young protagonist to her adult adversaries and protectors, they are well sketched and their motivations are far richer than often occurs in the genre. Additionally, the science is intriguing, and the plot is propulsive. This isn’t great literature, but it’s highly enjoyable, and his take on vampires (vampires with a slight zombie component, even) is inventive.

One minor quibble: writing for comics trains one to climax and denouement very, very quickly (often in the space of a few panels, let alone pages). For me, The Girl with All the Gifts ends far too rapidly, but the mechanics of the end remain quite satisfying nonetheless.

And, one intriguing note: Carey worked on the novel at the same time as he worked on the screenplay (the film came out to generally positive reviews earlier this year, I have not seen it), and they diverged as part of that creative process. I find that fascinating.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

Mix the action/adventure with the character study while not losing the strength of each. The pacing is quick and the page-turning quotient is very high, but the characters remain real, and even the ones that are “bad guys” (or indeterminate gals) have clearly coherent motivations.

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Reading Well: Lilith’s Brood by Octavia Butler

Posted on December 20, 2016 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Octavia Butler‘s Lilith’s Brood is the best “hard” science fiction I’ve read since The Sparrow.

It’s actually a trilogy of short novels (maybe even novellas)–Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rites (1988), and Imago (1989)–that were collected under the title Xenogenesis (1989) and then republished as Lilith’s Brood in 2000.

The novel/s revolve/s around the encounters between humanity and an alien race, the Oankali. Earth has been ravaged by an incredibly destructive war, and the survivors are either isolated in very remote places or are with the Oankali as something between prisoners and guests. The aliens, a tri-gendered race who survive by searching out new races and exchanging genetic material with them, vary drastically in appearance and create an intense revulsion in humans, at least initially.

Humanity holds a special attraction for them due to the presence of cancer, a seductively intriguing condition for a race that is able to modify genetic structures at will. Humans that live and mate with Oankali are made genetically perfect: disease-free, strong, etc., but many elect instead to resist the presence of the aliens, sometimes violently. Most of those that live outside the presence of the Oankali are sterilized, which contributes both to the resistance and to the draw of integrating with Oankali family groups.

The books trace out conflicts around sexual rights, freedom, and the line where true understanding across the species barrier remains impossible. The first book is the story of Lilith Iyapo, a human tasked by the Oankali with starting the resettlement of Earth; the second follows one of her children, an Oankli-human mix known as a construct; and the third, a next-generation construct who is the first to possess the full range of Oankali genetic skills.

I called this “hard” science fiction, but don’t be put off: the books are character-driven and almost lyrical. This is Butler writing near the height of her considerable powers, and the intelligence and scope of consideration she gives to the various points of view and challenges embedded in the setting is fantastic. Oankali culture is shown with clarity and sympathy, which is truly the mark of mastery in books about aliens.

Brilliantly, she also sums up the essential conflict of humanity as being the poor luck to be a species that is both highly intelligent and highly hierarchical, a combination the Oankali rarely see. That’s an insight worth reflecting on.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

Butler’s restraint in showing Oankali perspectives and culture is fantastic: by focusing on a small handful of issues, she is able to make the aliens understandable and sympathetic. I think the temptation is to delve into all, or nearly all, of the corners of an alien culture, and doing so may often make it harder for the reader to really gain the level of desired insight.

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@TheMovies with PopPop: Theeb

Posted on December 10, 2016 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Theeb (Arabic for wolf) is a 2014 Jordanian movie directed by Naji Abu Nomar that won various awards and was a 2015 Oscar nominee for best foreign film.

It’s set in the Mideastern theatre of WWI, with the Arab uprising against the Ottoman Empire (Lawrence, anyone?) as the background.

A Bedouin boy, Theeb, is the youngest of three sons of a nomadic desert family, who in the past, earned their livelihoods as “pilgrim guides,” folks who would guide people on the Haj across their stretch of desert to Medina, knowing where the various wells and oases were. The war and the new railroad have almost eliminated their livelihood. The father has recently died, and the oldest brother is now head of the family, with Hussein, the middle son perhaps in his early 20’s, and Theeb a pre-adolescent – all deeply rooted to their way of life, knowledgeable about the geography of their area, and bound by codes of hospitality and service to fellow clans.

One evening an Arab and a young blond Englishman (Lawrence, anyone?) appear at their camp and request to be guided across their stretch of desert to the next set of wells. Though somewhat reluctantly, given the war, the Ottomans, and the Arab revolt against them, they agree. Hussein is to be the guide. When they set off, Theeb trails behind – and eventually, as the Englishman insists they don’t have time to go back with him, accompanies them.

Things get complicated – the well to which they were guiding them is now poisoned by the blood of some of the men they were to meet, and as they reach the next well, they are attacked by a group of former “pilgrim guides” who are now allied with the Ottomans. The Englishman, his Arab companion and Hussein are all killed. Theeb survives and shows skill and cunning beyond his years to survive, eventually meeting the badly wounded former “pilgrim guide” who had been part of the group who had attacked them and killed Hussein and the others.

Theeb and the wounded man stay together and get to the railroad station where the man sells the goods he took from the Englishman to the Ottoman lieutenant. And the story reaches its conclusion…

In some ways a coming-of-age tale; in others a revenge story, and in a sense a desert western — a couple of absorbing hours, with Arab hospitality, lots of camel riding, cleverness, and transport to one of those wonderfully different worlds. Well worth seeing.

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Reading Well: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J.K. Rowling

Posted on December 5, 2016 by Daniel (@MKNN)

The latest (final?) installment of the Harry Potter saga is a play, rather than a novel: J.K. Rowling‘s Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (2016) is in production in London and will  be, well, potentially forever I suppose. Probably a decent last-longer bet between it and Hamilton in there somewhere.

The play involves both our familiar cast of characters and their offspring, most notably the sons of Draco Malfoy (Scorpius) and Harry Potter himself (Albus).

The stagecraft required to put on this play is stunning: scenes switch very quickly, and with full magical intent. At a minimum, that should be interesting to watch, assuming there is an inevitable broadcast of the production at some point. Dramatically, it’s fine: the lines between good and evil are, as in the books, simultaneously crystal clear and a little bit muddied for at least a key character or two, and the central tropes of the misery and challenges and intense triumphs of adolescence are all on show, with the stakes predictably higher than those at your local high school.

It really falls into one of two buckets for most folks: either, no matter what, you will read it and, if the opportunity presents itself, go see it in person; or, you will remain bewildered over what, exactly, all the fuss is about.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

Um … write a series of books that are arguably the most influential contemporary literature in at least a century? Become rich enough to write plays that contain insanely difficult stage directions with no fear of being edited? Yeah, of course. All of that.

Also, just write a play. I think playwriting is the most difficult literary form–even more so than poetry for me. So I would have to have a thriving artistic career to even try it “for real.”

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@TheMovies with PopPop: Mustang

Posted on November 29, 2016 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Mustang is a 2015 Turkish (Turkish-French production) movie directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven. It’s a movie that combines an almost fairy tale like story with the very serious issues of young women coming of age and the struggles with modernization in traditional societies.

The film, in Turkish with English subtitles and nominated for several film awards and the winner of a few, is set in more or less current time in a remote town in northern Turkey. Five young women, ages perhaps 10-16, sisters and cousins, are being raised by their grandmother in the house of one of their uncles/fathers. While unclear – to me – how many are his daughters, whether the others are the children of one or more of his brothers, whether one or more brothers have died, or what happened to the mothers, what is clear is that the 5 of them have formed a close knit tight pack, loving, teasing, sharing with each other; clearly differentiated in various ways, but a quite happy pack of young women.

The fairy tale aspect is that some of the young women have now reached, and others are reaching, the age of serious interest in young men, and the grandmother and uncle have increasingly become concerned about protecting their honor – only virgins are marriageable, certified by a doctor as necessary. So a struggle ensues where the house is slowly transformed into a fortress and the girls find ever more clever ways of getting out. After a few quite wonderful and comedic scenes, including a mass escape to attend a soccer match to which as a result of previous violence at a match, men have been barred and therefore all the local women can go, a new strategy is put into place by the grandmother and uncle of marrying them off. Things escalate, get complicated, some quite serious notes are introduced, and things end varyingly, from happily to tragically, from enthusiastic to dismal marriages, and with the two youngest attempting a final escape.

Of the five young women, only one had prior acting experience. They form a delightful ensemble. The scenes and strategies of the old women of the town are also quite special. The uncle of course is an ambiguous character.

The film transcends the narrowness of its setting and is universally recognizable, with situations and settings applicable everywhere from the least to the most traditional settings.

It’s not a great movie, but a very good one, that will make you laugh, make you angry, and mainly engage you.

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Reading Well: My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

Posted on November 23, 2016 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Not only am I pretty late to the Elena Ferrante party, works like My Brilliant Friend (2012)–that is, what is considered “serious” contemporary literature, stuff that is positively reviewed in major newspapers and the like–rarely finds its way onto my reading pile. I don’t have much to add to the wealth of material on this book, the first of Ferrante’s four volume Neapolitan series.

The most successful element of the book is the central friendship between Elena and Raffaella (or, as they are more usually referred to, Lenù and Lila), which is traced in My Brilliant Friend from when they were very young girls well into their teenage years (which, in Naples in the middle of the 20th century includes marriage for one of them). The two are well matched, but follow separate trajectories–one using their academic success as a vehicle to escape the small neighborhood that rings their lives, the other embarking on a more traditional arc of marriage, albeit to what amounts, within that context, to a transgressive choice of partner.

Transgression is a central theme of the book: Lenù spectacularly exceeds the academic expectations of young women of her time and place, allowing her to literally exit from the neighborhood to pursue higher education; Lila who, if anything, was even more intellectually gifted, picks and chooses her moments to move beyond the expectations of those around her. These scenes, which range from trips into dark cellars to the production of a self-designed line of footwear to the constant negotiation of the changing political landscape of their few blocks on the outskirts of Naples, are portrayed with a direct touch that manages to never overstate their objective importance while retaining their primacy for the characters involved.

The key question is whether the friendship is sufficient: for many, the honesty and clarity with which the intense, somewhat obsessive nature of youthful friendships (and, perhaps, specifically young, female friendship) will carry the book through its entirety.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

Other than be spectacularly successful and generate a global buzz in the pursuit of uncovering my true identity? There is an honesty to Ferrante’s writing that is to be emulated: this is, I believe, what allows the book to simultaneously present the events from the perspectives of children and young adults and to never feel juvenile, to never lose a sense of sophistication in its world-building.

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Reading Well: Supernova: The Knight, The Princess, and the Falling Star by Dewi Lestari

Posted on November 10, 2016 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Supernova (2001) by Dewi Lestari came to my attention via an article I cannot find now that talked about the global diversity of contemporary science fiction–Lestari is Indonesian, and the book is firmly set there. The subtitle was added for later editions to differentiate it from other related novels and, somewhere along the line, the author began to be referred to as Dee, not Dewi.

There are several intertwined stories in the book, most notably the interplay of the characters of the main story and two fictional authors who are collaborating in writing that story. One of the authors (they are a male couple) is a psuedo-philosopher, and the book is clearly an attempt to play with loose concepts drawn from quantum physics and postmodern philosophy.

It’s a bit scattered, and unfortunately Lestari discards the character I was most invested in following about halfway through for others who are more clearly symbolic representations of ideals instead of flesh and blood creatures of fiction.

I may suffer from too much familiarity (many of these notions were relatively central to my thesis), and people new to notions of quantum entanglement) or post-Foucauldian analyses of the way relationships intertwine may find this a reasonable introduction to those concepts. Lestari has a nice touch with humor, and the lighter moments of the book are the most successful.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

I am pretty enamored, and quite familiar, with of a lot of the ideas that the fictional authors discuss in Supernova. It would be neat to weave those into my own writing, for sure.

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Reading Well: Close to the Machine by Ellen Ullman

Posted on October 28, 2016 by Daniel (@MKNN)

I don’t understand how I’ve never encountered Ellen Ullman‘s writing before: she writes elegantly and intelligently about the role of technology–and specifically software and software development–in our world. Close to the Machine (1997) talks about her career as a (female, no less) programmer in Silicon Valley during the very early days of the information revolution.

The first half of the book should be required reading for anyone seeking to understand what it means to create software or trying to think through what the implications of that particularly peculiar industry are for the rest of the world. It’s that good, and Ullman is unflinching as she wrestles with her own political disconnects and with what the implications are of creating tools that all too often and all too easily lose sight of their users.

She loses some steam in her second half, when the book becomes more of a personal memoir, but the writing remains confident and skillful. She has written two novels, and I will be reading one of them (The Bug, which looks to explore some of the same concerns) at some point in the next months. But it is her technical commentary and insight that had me as excited as I read it as anything I’ve picked up over the past few years.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

I don’t see my life as being memoir-worthy. And yet what is remarkable about this book is her insight and her observations, not the particular accomplishments. Sometimes, I wish I could frame my own insights in ways that felt like they could explicitly stand alone, instead of reflecting into the world through fiction. But usually, I just wish I could write more fiction.

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