b0r1s wrote:

Finally finished Hail Mary. I’m so bad with books. I’ve been on 95% all week. Get into bed, read a couple pages and I’m asleep. It’s ok. The weakest of his three books imo. But not bad and some cool ideas.

I finished this the other day. Starts to feel like I say this for most things I read, but it really started to grow on me.

Who's Dawn?

Good man! Best series.

47.  The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke.  Childhood’s End was great, this one was good…just about.  It’s got an intriguing premise: in the far distant future the last of mankind live in a single city which is seemingly eternal and rarely changes.  The people that live there have extraordinarily long lives, and when they die their genetic information and memories are stored away and one day they will be born again to live another long life.  This has been going on for at least a billion years.  Then a child is born who has never lived before, and dreams of what lies beyond the city where no one else ever has.

It’s a tantalising setup, and there are some interesting revelations along the way, but for me they just weren’t as satisfying as the ones in Childhood’s End.  There’s adventure, but very little conflict, and as it seems is the norm in Clarke’s books, the characters are pretty weak.  So it’s left to the mystery of what’s really going on here to do all the heavy lifting, and it’s just not quite there.  Not a total disappointment, but it’s probably the weakest of the four books I’ve read by Clarke so far.  I will be reading more.

That sounds awesome, right up my street

My next read was supposed to be Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Other Stories. I got about a quarter of the way through but I just had to put it down as I wasn’t enjoying the prose style or the narrative content. I know Kafka’s very well regarded, but he’s just not my cup of tea. So instead I read this...



49. Uzumaki by Junji Ito. This is sort of half in and half out of my wheelhouse; I read quite a bit of horror, but I’ve never read manga before. Uzumaki has a reputation so I thought I’d at least have a look at what it’s about, and the gist of it really did sound intriguing. The residents of a coastal town in Japan are plagued not by monsters or ghosts or what have you, but by an obsession with a shape: the spiral. That sounded really different, and in my mind I was expecting the slow psychological breakdown of the town as the obsession deepens. But that’s not really what Ito does, I guess, so my own expectations got in the way right from the off. But, once I’d readjusted, I was enjoying it for what it is. What it is is very silly and very over the top. Fine. It’s fine, and the drawings are nice. And then it jumps the shark in the last third and all of a sudden I just wanted it to be over. And now it is. I might read Akira at some point.

51.  Occultation and Other Stories by Laird Barron.  This is a collection of weird horror stories, some of them quite substantial.  I’ve often heard good things about Laird Barron, and weird horror is my jam, so this should have worked for me.  It didn’t, unfortunately, and I’m pretty sure it’s got nothing to do with the writing or the stories.  I did this one on audiobook.  A good narrator can elevate an average book and a bad narrator can completely muck up a very good book.  I felt the narrator of Occultation was a very bad choice for these stories.  The jury’s out on whether I dig Laird Barron or not, so when I read something else by him, I’ll do it with my eyes instead of my ears.

28. Excession (Iain M Banks)
Just brilliant. Love the focus on the ships and their Minds and the idea that there's something out there in the galaxy that's both unknowable and more powerful than the Culture. The Affront were total dicks, but strangely loveable. It's weird grieving for an author thats been dead so long, with the selfish jealousy of knowing that once I've finished these books, there's no more to come. What a writer.

Is that the one with Meat Fucker in it? Love that book.

53.  What Dreams May Come by Richard Matheson.  It took me a long time to get around to this one, which is weird, really, as stories about the imagined landscape of the afterlife are my jam.  I’m an atheist, but this sort of thing comes up again and again in my own attempts at fiction.  Unfortunately What Dreams May Come really didn’t work for me, and I’m not sure to what degree seeing the film adaptation with Robin Williams factors into it.  I’m pretty sure the film isn’t all that well thought of.  At least no one I know thinks very much of it, but I really enjoyed it.  The film, I’ve now discovered, takes some fairly massive liberties with the source material, and it’s all the better for it.

I have one single gripe with Matheson’s story, but it’s a biggie.  He spends much of the book describing the mechanics of the afterlife, to the point where it feels more like a treatise on the afterlife rather than a story.  It’s an approach that succeeds not only in dragging down the thrust of the narrative, but also in removing the mystique of the afterlife.  Only in the third and final act does the author take off the stabilisers and allow the story to breathe for a while.  It’s not enough, and by the end he’s back to authorsplaing everything into oblivion.

It’s not a bad book by any stretch of the imagination, but having seen the film first I can’t help but feel a little disappointed by it.  The film makes many astute and clever changes.  For instance, early on in the film the protagonist insists on staying close to his grieving wife, but his presence, telling her again and again “I still exist”, only compounds her grief, forcing him to finally move on.  There is none of that in the novel.  The stakes are also not as high.  If I remember rightly, in the film after his wife commits suicide she is condemned to her own personal hell for all eternity.  In the novel it is just for the few years (twenty-odd) that she would have been alive on earth.  And that’s to say nothing of the creative flourishes employed in the film, rendering the world with elements of renaissance paintings, as opposed to the rather dull idealised version on America featured in the book.

This is one of those rare instances where I found the film a good deal better than the book.  It’s been a good few years since I’ve seen it.  I should watch it again.

@Raiziel - Only just seen your post about Uzumaki. I recommend the film if you want some craziness.

It's not a great film but has some fantastic effects work.

Raiziel wrote:

I watched the film What Dreams May Come last night.  It’s not without issues, but in my opinion it fixes more than it breaks.  The ending is largely honoured.  Robin Williams was perfectly cast.  What a loss he is to this day.

Watched it at the time and was blown away. Watched it recently and it still has an emotional punch. Really like it.

The irony.

54.  2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke.  I first read this in my teens after watching and falling in love with Kubrick’s masterpiece.  That’s long enough ago now for me to have fully forgotten where book and film diverge.  For a good portion they don’t really diverge at all, and it was fun picking out pieces of dialogue I recognised from the film.  It’s only really when Poole goes extravehicular to replace the AE35 unit that things start going in slightly different but significant directions.  There is no “Open the pod bay door please, HAL” line here.  Of most interest to me was the stargate journey in the book.  It’s a creatively dazzling piece, and I can’t help but wonder what might have been if Kubrick had had more modern special effects capabilities to hand.  Can’t really really complain, though, seeing as he still delivered one of (if no the) greatest final acts ever committed to film.

The novel is a masterwork of science fiction, and ably holds its own against the film.  If the film does one thing better than the book, it’s that it maintains and aura of mystery.  In the book Clarke reveals all to the reader, leaving little to the imagination.  They’re different mediums, though, and perhaps keeping too much back would have frustrated the reader.

Have now ordered 2010, 2061, and 3001.  I was always picking these books up in the nineties, but somehow I never made it to the till with any of them.  Looking forward to to reading them.  First, though, time for a rewatch of Kubrick’s masterpiece.  Any excuse.

Oh my. You should definitely start with the film. As I said, the book explains a little too much. Film first, enjoy its grandeur and mystery, and if you like it (you should!) read the book next.