Mare Somniorum

“Luminous” is a short story collection which also includes the title story.  There will be a small blurb about each story, as the stories are diverse both in quality and content.  Also, some are more interesting than others.  There are threads to be seen, the “I” or “self” is the major one.  Anyway, the stories are written from 1993 to 1998 and are served in chronological order.  To some extent, Egan shows his growth as a writer over this half-decade through the work itself.  And now, on with the show.

“Chaff” starts the collection and essentially asks what we’d change, if we could, about ourselves.  We manipulate our bodies, we always have, but we like to believe we possess a solid “self” that has an immutable core — that which is truly “us”.  Not satisfied with questioning the idea itself, Egan open-endedly asks the question what we’d do to this “self” if we could choose, at will, to change it.  “Chaff” takes its time getting much of anywhere but it is fairly distinctly written and is benchmark Egan in the technical sense.

“Mitochondrial Eve” asks where we come from, and how that defines who we are.  Both with regards to kinship and how we flock to “similar” people.  It’s quite well done and interesting to read, but never quite manages to grip and grab on.  Person-based stories aren’t Egan’s great strength, his ideas always seem to outshine the people they employ.

“Luminous” is, for the lack of a better word, informational.  It never hooked me, but this time the idea didn’t hook me much at all.  It’s interesting, but the sinker didn’t really catch me.  I suppose I should reread it and see if can get the premise better the second time around.  It all felt a bit void to me.

“Mister Volition” takes us deep into the realm of the self, building on Dennet and others view with regards to how the self works and functions.  It’s well written, well paced and the people / story relation sits very well.

“Cocoon”.  Ouch.  There are stories that touch deep things inside us and ask us to what extent we, as a species, actually accept — and why.  What would we change about the world outside of ourselves if we had the choice?   How would parents design their children if they were given the choice?  What would we filter out?  What do we genuinely find acceptable, if given a real choice?  The story is well woven, well written and less than pretty.

“Transitional Dreams”… This is of the most enjoyable short stories I’ve read in a long while.  It’s vintage Egan.  It’s as introspective as you can get while still having a physical story to tell.  What’s more is that it’s well told, very well told.  It is the type of story Egan does probably better than anyone.  A nod to “Permutation City”, awesome stuff.

“Silver Fire” is our first detective story, a trailblazing ride to find the carrier of a virus entombing people into a world of silver fire.   It doesn’t dwell to deeply on the people involved, which is probably good, and it does have its moments, but all in all it leaves me a bit unsatisfied.  It could do with some more polish, probably with less exposition. The “science” versus “faith” (or “spirituality”) angle isn’t new, but I’m not sure Egan is the man to tell just that story.

“Reasons to be Cheerful”.  Heh.  “I like it here”.  Yeah, I do.  It’s a different take on “what about your self would you change” that Egan likes to play with.  It’s a good story with a good arc, with a reflection upon the “normal” life we live that solidifies the deal.  Yummy.

“Our Lady of Chernobyl” is, for all I can figure, a take on man’s fallibility.  I must admit to being left a bit in the dark throughout the story, it just never gripped me the way Egan can when he runs with an idea.  The people again fall a bit short, even if the protagonist works decently well.

“The Plank Dive” nods to “Diaspora”.  It’s like watching a seedling and the blossom in many ways. But, the shocker of “The Plank Dive” isn’t that the story is good.  The shocker isn’t that the idea is mesmerising.  The shocker isn’t that the last story takes you beyond space and time.  The shocker isn’t even that the language is better than usual.  No, the shocker of “The Plank Dive” is that the core cast is… great.  The main three cast members take their stages and run with it.  Egan proves he can do people and do them well.  I loved “The Plank Dive”, just remember to bring your crash helmet.

The selection of stories is a good take on Egan, and it’s well worth reading.  The format also leaves it up to the reader to portion out time as required, which helps making Egan more accessible.  Shorter stories contain less data in total — even if the density of “The Plank Dive” can be daunting.  “Luminous” might serve very well as an introduction to Egan for newcomers, and it’ll illuminate his work for those who already know him.  So, go pick it up!

Down the rabbit hole we go again.  “Blindsight” is another book that deals as much with the observer as the observed.  Its story, a first encounter tale, is very well done, even if you just look at the aliens and the traditional bits of the story.

“Blindsight” doesn’t really deal with the first encounter of aliens though.  It deals with our first encounter with ourselves.  Yes, it does indeed mirror bits of “Neuropath” in that respect — or rather the other way around. That being said the works are different in their approch.  “Blindsight”, being set where it is, uses its tools to be more vivid, more direct than “Neuropath”.  The works do however share a few things, they’re dark, they’re gritty and they’re unrelenting.  “Blindsight” probably even more overtly so than “Neuropath”.

The characters here are… Something else.  They are the backbone of the story and our understanding of them leads us to understand the aliens, and then to shine that light onto ourselves as readers.  And even with their defined roles, the characters leap to life as individuals with great success. The storytelling is just as amazing, plot points are shuffled in like how you’d work a deck of cards.  And the writing…   Oh the writing.  It is verbose, technical, and mesmerizing.  And full of doublespeak.  I caught myself snickering and laughing at the pure brilliance of it all.

Theseus carried no regular crew — no navigators or engieneers, no one to swab the decks, no meat wasted on tasks that machinery orders of mag smaller could preform orders of mag better.  Let superfluous deckhands weigh down other ships, if the non-Ascendant hordes needed to attach some pretense of usefulness to their lives.  Let them infest vessels driven only by commercial priorities.  The only reason we were here was because nobody had yet optimized software for First Contact.  Bound past the edge of the solar system, already freighted with the fate of the world, Theseus wasted no mass on self-esteem.

“Blindsight”, Tor Books paperback, p. 53

The book is told from the view of Siri Keeton, and his take on the world is all you get.  His world, his rules, his view.  We’re just company along for the ride and, heh, it’s quite some ride he’s on.  As Keeton observes the aliens, and their intelligence, we’re taken on a tour of the way intellect may, or may not, work.  The questions are troublesome, and the reality Keeton embodies doesn’t make it any easier.

“Blindsight” is good.  I had high hopes, I’ll admit that, but man, Watts delivers.  Highly recommended reading.

I’ve been asked more than once why I read works like Permutation City or Neuropath, and it’s been hard giving a simple answer.  I’ll usually say that I like to be challenged, that I like my mind to be pressured into seeing things it previously hadn’t seen, touching something beyond…  It’s all very melodramatic and it doesn’t really get the point across.  This, however, just might.

Reading is like working a jigsaw puzzle. When reading works that challenge you, you assemble pieces into a whole far greater than each piece on its own.  The real message isn’t the pieces themselves, it’s the painting they display when the puzzle completes.  Some pieces might elude you, some might be very key to the whole picture, but for each piece, there is something greater than its shape and its placement.  The really important information happens on a different level than the pattern matching that’s being done to work the puzzle, it’s above it, raised somehow into a different realm.  And in the end, that’s the realm that really makes it all worthwhile.

Any less obtuse?  Maybe not, but a lot more accurate, at least for me.  Anyway, onwards to another puzzle, “Blindsight” by Peter Watts!

Reynolds dazzled me with how good Chasm City was, and I was recommended “Pushing Ice” as “something I might like” from an employee at the bookstore I frequent.  It was…  interesting.

Let me put it like this… Have you read “Rendezvous with Rama”?  How about not just the first one, but the following trilogy?  Did you ever read them and think “I’d like to read this again, but written by a different author?”  No?  Well, neither have I.  And if you did, well, uhm, okay.

As much as I wanted to like “Pushing Ice” it just falls a bit short.  The interpersonal matters are decent, but Reynolds strength when it comes to people is to make them come alive through the worlds he dreams up. When you essentially try to take on a previous classic written by Clarke you will have your work cut out for you.  Clarke, at least for me, was never about the science, nor the fiction.  He wrote about us, the people and our relation to his science and his fiction.  And, sadly, Reynolds doesn’t come close to pulling that off.

There was a reason we got four books about Rama (well, six if you want to admit the last two into the fold).  Thing is, stories about groups of people moving through alien worlds meeting all sorts of weird things takes, well, space.  Add to this the preamble, the people and a wrapper and it gets tricky to frame it into a single volume, even by todays standards.  And “Pushing Ice” doesn’t quite pass 600 pages.  If your goal was to just the first (and in my opinion best by far) work, you should have skipped the last half of the book and concentrated on the earlier matters.  If the goal was to rewrite the four famous volumes of Rama in a single 600-page paperback, I’m not sure if it’s hybris or, well, something else.

Anyway, the first third of the book is quite good.  The pacing hits and that allows characters to work the way Reynolds does best.  It’s tight and scripted to the bone which is nice.  The second half is mostly okay, but it felt to me as if Reynolds just doesn’t do human interaction well unless it’s precipitated by fairly strong emotions.  This, combined with the content density of the book, leaves pretty much nothing but people displayed as stubborn and fixed.  The few acts we see that are aimed to be balanced almost feel like they’re cut from a different work.

The third part?  Well, meh.  I will admit to loving the character Chromis and her influence in the work.  But, well, it saddens me that looking back on the book I would have considered dropping it if she wasn’t present in the last section of the work.  Throughout “Pushing Ice” she’s the only character that really leaves you guessing, the only one that really brings a nod and a smile to your face — at least if you’re me.

Oh, and honestly, conversations down the line of “I’m sorry things went how they did, but considering you’re you and I’m me, I don’t see how else they could have gone” is going to fall very flat unless your character work is extremely stellar (hello Neuropath).  Following it up with an unemotional agreement from the other party isn’t helping.  There were times when I felt like throwing the book across the room in the hope that it might make a few of the characters show some semblance of reflection — and thus make the book at least somewhat interesting to read.

It’s a safe conclusion to guess that I’ve read better books recently.  What’s more worrysome is that “Chasm City” is looking more and more like a one-off thing.  “Pushing Ice” isn’t a horrid book, I’ve read worse.  But if you want to read a book about the “first encounter with a big space thingy”, read “Rendezvous with Rama”.  And if you want “meeting many aliens in a weird realm”, read the rest of the Rama saga.   I didn’t particularly like Rama II to IV, but it is a more rewarding read than “Pushing Ice”.