Starfish, Peter Watts
I was challenged to explain why I like Watts’ work the other day, and the question made it dawn on me exactly why I do indeed like his work. Watts does to humans what Egan does to identity.
It’s about deconstruction. Peel apart layers until you’re left with some semblance of a core, or a core question. Definitions become leaky, bleeding into Watts’ work until it’s unclear who we are. It’s a riveting tale symbolized by the deconstruction and reconstruction of a starfish.
However, this insight doesn’t come without a heavy cost. Watts’ works are dystopian and do not seek absolution for their storylines. What happens, happens and it’s all there to shine the light onto humanity. The main characters of “Starfish” are “bad” people. Criminals and flawed humans, obeying behavior that’s brutal and painful to watch play out, but the odd thing is that they do grow on you. Not as much in spite of their flaws, but due to their life and in certain situations, struggle, with those flaws.
Watts’ work is also available for free at his website, so checking out http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm is well worth it.
The Big Short, Michael Lewis
“The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine” takes us back to the economic collapse we visited in “All the devils are here”. But, instead of looking at the long history of the how and why, we’re being shown a much more vivid picture from those who couldn’t understand why they were the only ones realizing we were going to fail — and fail big.
We follow Steve Eisman from Front Point Partners, Michael Burry of Scion Capital, as well as Jamie Mai and Charlie Ledley of Cornwall Capital. They’re very different people, but they shared one common thought. This economic boom was going to burst and no one else seemed to believe them. Wall Street was busy pushing CDOs, lenders were busy creating the fundamentals for the CDOs and everyone seemed to think this was going to work out just fine.
Lewis writes with wit, humor and a lot of style. He brings people alive and through quotes and descriptions of his subjects bring out every little facet of their personality. You can almost taste the frustration as our main characters attempt to find people willing to take their bet upon failures (mostly based on credit default swaps) even though you’d think Wall Street would jump at what they saw as fools money.
The problems were many, our prophets are too small, to stubborn, to unknown, to well-known, to socially off-putting to get to participate in the system, and they’re also telling everyone that’ll listen that they’re all wrong about their assumptions. When Eisman spends an evening with a CDO manager, the conversation tells both him and us everything we needed to know about why things would fail. It was somebody else’s problem. It wasn’t our risk.
At the same time, we see how even these investors started asking two fundamental questions:
- How is what’s going on legal, and
- Is it ethical to bet that the economy will collapse?
For the first one, “The Big Short” is more emotional than “All the Devils are here”. It’s more about how bad something feels rather than asking if it’s technically illegal. The second question is quite interesting and causes some of our subjects quite a lot of concern.
It’s a great book, a very quick read, and a great “human counterpoint” to “All the Devils are here”.
The Quantum Thief, Hannu Rajaniemi
“The Quantum Thief” has been hailed as a masterpiece of modern science fiction storytelling. Comparisons to Reynolds, Chiang and even Egans take on science fiction have become common praise for Rajaniemis debut and it’s not *that* surprising.
However, it’s also misses the point. ”The Quantum Thief” can very well be compared to Reynolds in the sense of storytelling and character work, but the comparison to Egan seems odd. Yeah, there’s technology, but there’s no “concept” that’s being illuminated. No “idea” that defines the story in the same way. The thing is, that doesn’t matter if the question is “is this a book worth reading?”, because if you like science fiction, it probably is.
First off, bits of the story are so superbly written that it’s obvious the author loved to write them. Combat scenes are painted with brush strokes Van Gogh would have been proud of. There’s a sensation of texture to the scenes as they rise from the paper and grip you. Not everything is this well-done in the work as a whole, but in a sense, that’s a good thing — even the reader needs reprieve after some of these lovingly crafted pieces. None the less, the book really is a page turner.
The characters are amazingly fun to follow as they’re all truly alive, complex and full of identity. They’re also very human and represent some of the best work done in the genre. As a comparison, Reynolds “Chasm City” is close. These clearly distinct characters work well to retain different paces and move the readers focus around as the story unfolds and the slightly unconventional chapter setup, with their charming “Interludes”, also does wonders for the story. It really is a masterly piece of writing.
One can argue that Rajaniemi does, eventually, bite off more than he can comfortably chew. There are ideas that might have been better suited to another work, not because they’re badly written or feel very out of place, but because there’s already enough to keep us occupied. There were enough gears, and after the second overdrive kicks in, well, the reader is already fairly saturated.
Either way, “The Quantum Thief” is a stellar work. It’s pleasingly brief, it’s not a full opera, it’s not aiming to redefine good and bad, it’s not the story about the end of the universe. It’s a great story about a whole lot of human nature and it’s combat scenes will rock your boat.