Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis

I haven’t ever read much science fiction so when my local library reading program (see previous post) suggested trying it, I looked up award winners in the area. I also learned a new word – diptych. These two novels by Willis together (a diptych) won the 2011 Hugo Award for best novel. And, they should be read as one novel, but each are pretty long (512 and 656 pages, respectively) on their own.

In these novels historians from 2060 are sent back in time. Grad students, rather than reading about WWII, pick their topic of study and then schedule visits back in time. For example, one grad student, Michael, is interested in heroes so he picks 5-6 different heroes he wants to observe. He has to go to wardrobe for the correct costumes and for one of his characters he has to get an implant so that he has an American accent. There are some limits to time travel. For example, he’s not allowed near divergence points where he might impact the historical outcome. However, something goes wrong and three grad students remain in 1940 London long after their assignments are over.

Historians might be interested in seeing how accurate Willis got all the bombings going on in England at the time. I know it made me realize I hadn’t quite understood the full impact of the bombings on London during WWII. Willis depicts life in the underground shelters and how ordinary citizens adjust to a new normal where every night they head to a shelter. And, each morning they come up wondering what buildings will have been destroyed. One of the graduate students, Polly, works in a department store and it really becomes an act of courage to report to work every day. Not so much for her as her adviser insisted she pick a store that wasn’t hit, but for everyone else showing up each day so people can continue to come in and buy clothes.

The third graduate student is working with evacuated children outside of London. She has two especially challenging charges. Once the three graduate students realize something has gone wrong and meet up in London they begin to wonder if these two kids or possibly their own interactions with people during their time travel trip are causing some kind of upheaval that is preventing them from leaving 1940 and returning to 2060. Meanwhile in 2060 their adviser and a young student with a crush on Polly are trying to bring them back.

I do recommend reading the two books together. The history of WWII and the drama of the three graduate students all seem realistic – that is you come to care whether they make it back to 2060 or not.

Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach

I recently read this book after hearing about it from a friend multiple times. I have to admit the premise is very interesting; Washington, Oregon and Northern California secede from the United States to become Ecotopia. Also interesting is that it was published in 1975. It is written from the point-of-view of a reporter, William Weston, who is the first American allowed in the country in twenty years. The book alternates between his columns he is sending back to the US and his journal writings.

Many of the ideas in the book are beginning to be implemented now. For example, in Ecotopia all the plastics are made from plants. Weston reports what happens if these plastics come in contact with the soil:

“However, by chemical advances that have so far remained secret, Ecotopian scientists have built into these molecules “keyholes,” which can be opened only by soil micro-organisms! Once they are unlocked, the whole structure decomposed rapidly.”

And, here is what happened with dams in Ecotopia:

“The new government even went so far as to dynamite some of the dams which had been built on the rivers – on the dubious grounds that they prevented ‘white-water’ recreational boating or interfered with the salmon runs – which have been reestablished with great effort and enjoy much public support.”

We are currently seeing debate about dams all over the Pacific Northwest. And, salmon ladders are routinely added to dams these days. We’re talking about turning a small dam area here in Bend into a kayak or rafting throughway. Biodegradable plastics or compostable products are also more commonly being used. I think the most radical event in Ecotopia was that after the secession cars were immediately banned and a public transit system instituted.

I think this book raises some interesting ideas to think about. Actually I’d recommend just reading the dispatches and skipping the journal entries. The journal entries are in italics so that is easy to do. The plot involving the personal life of the journalist seems rather weak and can only really go in one direction. Will Weston fall in love? Will he stay in Ecotopia? If Ecotopia is all it seems to be, there can only be one reasonable decision.

The Host by Stephenie Meyer

Stephenie Meyer is widely known for her young adult Twilight series. I enjoyed her 4-book saga about vampires, werewolves, and teenage love. I appreciated that it was set on the rainy Olympic peninsula in Washington State. All that rain has to be good for something, even if it just allows vampires to be out during the day. I look forward to eventually seeing the movie Twilight, if our library gets it in.

The Host is technically classified as an adult novel. After reading it I really wonder what makes it an adult as opposed to a young adult book. The Host definitely has less sex and violence than the Twilight series. I wonder if it is a marketing decision, but then plenty of adults read the Twilight books. Is it because the book is science fiction rather than fantasy? Are vampires and werewolves more acceptable reading for teens than aliens?

Regardless of how it is classified, The Host is an interesting read, and I’m not usually too interested in stories about aliens. In the book a species from another planet has taken over most of the humans on earth. This species cannot live outside of a host body and is termed a soul. The soul is inserted into the human and controls the human body. Not all humans can be completely assimilated, which leads, in some cases, to the soul and the human cohabitating the same body. However, the soul is in complete control of all physical actions. Of course, this is a love story as is the Twilight series. Here the problem is that the soul may be in love with one person and the human with another. And, obviously the remaining humans are less than thrilled with the souls’ takeover.

For the pre-teen (and older) reader in your life

The Harry Potter series of books by J. K. Rowling are said to have influenced the current generation to read much more than otherwise. My generation had The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis and The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. There is tremendous age gap between those last two, and only recently did I realize there are many well-written books that can entertain kids who are not quite ready for The Lord of the Rings or even the later, and darker, books in the Harry Potter series.

Tamora Pierce has written a number of books, most notably the Song of the Lioness, Protector of the Small, and the Immortals series. These are science fiction books set in a realm where otherworldly powers are common. The protagonists are generally strong, female characters. Also, each series usually has four books in it giving readers lots of engaging material. Another author who puts girls at the center of his books is Phillip Pullman, most known now for science fiction series His Dark Materials, which includes The Golden Compass. Less well known is his Sally Lockhart trilogy, set in Victorian England. Although, this series may not be for younger readers as it does include an opium addict.

Other adventuresome fantasy/science fiction series for kids include the Inheritance series by Christopher Paolini with book number 3 still on the way. Dragons play a major role in these books. Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising series is still timely even though it was published many years ago. These books are set in Wales, which adds an interesting dimension. The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander are another good series if you missed them. These are for younger readers and often found in the children’s section of the library as opposed to the young adult section.

For a non-science fiction adventure series try The Tillerman Series by Cynthia Voigt. Four siblings try to stick together after their mother can not take care of them any longer.

My kids are just starting The Chronicles of Narnia. It is so fun to finally be reading literature with them that takes more than a single sitting to get through and has a complicated plot. I can’t wait to introduce them to the books mentioned here.

The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas

The End of Mr. Y begins with a very vivid and accurate depiction of a poor graduate student. Ariel Manto is obsessed with many things, including theoretical physics and obscure writers. At a conference she meets a professor who shares her fixation on the author Lumas and decides to undertake graduate studies with him. At the start of this book Burlem, the professor, has been gone for months; he’s vanished. By a series of unexpected happenings, including a building collapsing into a tunnel, Ariel stumbles upon the last book by Lumas, which has the same title: The End of Mr. Y. The book is very rare with only one known copy. It is also rumored to be cursed.

Following the book’s instructions Ariel ventures into homeopathic remedies that lead her into the troposphere. The troposphere is Lumas’s term for the world of the mind. It is possible to move from mind to mind in this space. The book becomes a thriller with former agents from America trying to retrieve the book so they can make more of the remedy to enter the troposphere. The agents are after Ariel physically and in her mind. They employ KIDS to try and hurt her mind. She is saved by a mouse god named Apollo Smintheus. Ariel is helped in her endeavors to escape the agents by Adam, a former priest.

This book has some really great descriptive writing in it. The intertwining descriptions of quantum theory and religion are interesting to read, especially the multi verse versus the godverse theory. This is rare to find in a novel. I personally found the story much more interesting when it stayed in the physical world than in the troposphere. Ariel’s interactions with her lover, Patrick, are complex and seem to not correlate with the actions of an intelligent person. She keeps referring to what’s happening as only happening to her body so it doesn’t really matter. She would prefer to live a life in books, “Real life is physical. Give me books instead: Give me the invisibility of the contents of books, the thoughts, the ideas, the images. Let me become part of the book; I’d give anything for that.” (pg 117)

I’d highly recommend reading this book if you’re interested in science or religion or simply in how other people’s minds might work. As I mentioned earlier, I was not thrilled with the troposphere part of the book. I also was disturbed at the idea of the KIDS being autistic kids who were sent out to perform missions. However, the descriptions in some parts were intensely real with Ariel being able to feel the pain of the mind she was inhabiting. Here she is in her housemate’s mind, “I was facing the door; I’d placed myself there like a little welcome mat ( ) waiting for him to wipe his feet on me. So he sat there sipping his coffee, looking beyond me to the wall, covered in postcards from Paris, and I just watched people leave like bacteria looking for a new host to infect.” (pg 176)

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

Imagine a world where crazed fans battle over whether Shakespeare really wrote those plays or where the removal of a minor character from a classic book is a national crisis. Thursday Next is a Literary Tech in England in 1985 and her job is to protect books. She faces some complex personal issues such as whether she should forgive the man she loves, Landen Parke-Laine, for telling the truth about her brother during the war. This is the ongoing war, in its 131st year, between England and Russia over the Crimean Peninsula. She faces some incredible issues in hunting down Acheron Hades and battling the Goliath Corporation. Here she has told Landen that she is too busy to go out with him.
“I could see he didn’t believe me. I couldn’t really tell him I was on the trail of a master criminal who could steal thoughts and project images at will; who was invisible on film and could murder and laugh as he did so.” (pg 118)

This book is a crazy mix of fiction, science fiction, action thriller, and a whole new genre where books are at the center of life. The science fiction part is well done and interesting. For example, Thursday’s uncle invents a car that can change color and even become invisible using liquid crystal technology. This is just one of many of his inventions and another, the Prose Portal, becomes important to Acheron as well as the Goliath Corporation, and potentially devastating to literature everywhere. The Eyre mentioned in the title refers to the book Jane Eyre. The characters in Jane Eyre become endangered characters in this book.

This is the first in a series of books with Thursday Next as the protagonist. I enjoyed reading this book with its many convolutions and look forward to the second in the series, Lost in a Good Book. I wonder if the author can continue to invent such outrageous scenarios. I did think that some of the characters in this book spoke in clichés, especially Acheron, and whether this was on purpose by the author or not, it did not help develop them as characters. The action also slowed down dramatically at the end of the book.