recursion

Recursion is a novel by Blake Crouch that seems to be a riff on a time-loop theme that we've all seen before in movies like Terminator, Edge of Tomorrow, Looper, and even Dr. Strange. There are piles of movies, and even more books. A search of 'time loop books' actually brought back another book by Blake Crouch called Dark Matter. its promoted on the of this book! see! its right there.

Anyway, I got distracted. Its Sunday and dinner won't be ready for hours, so pre-dinner drinks and a quick visit from the in-laws have taken a small toll on my train of thought... read: ability to for coherent thoughts I'm pretty sure that what I was trying to say is that Crouch has taken a shot at a well worn trope, but he has managed to build a story that surprisingly has an interesting new twist. You'd think that ground this well plowed would have little fruitful crop to be harvested how's that for a tortured metaphor? or is it a simile? gulp

Recursion follows the exploits of New York City detective Barry Sutton, who is driven to understand the suicide of a random jumper with a wild story of false memories; and Helena Smith, the creator of a new scientific breakthrough she has been working on to try and record, retrieve, or recreate her dementia-ridden mother's memories. You can perhaps see how these two might meet in the Big Apple, but where their story leads is not what I was expecting. There was even a small taste of Freaky Friday on this one, altho I expect that anyone else who has read this may find that a stretch. i said there were drinks! But maybe we'll just agree that it was freaky, and leave it at that. There was a small amount of repetitiveness, that repeated itself a little, but only a few times over again, before we got to the climax, but it was only a little bit, and then it was over, and we got to the climax.

Crouch is apparently pretty well know for Dark Matter, and maybe I'll take a look if I run across it. This one was pretty good.

machines like me

I don't think I'm giving too much away when I say that Ian McEwan's Machines Like Me is an alternate history soft-SciFi story that takes place in the 1980s. This is an interesting take in that it isn't set in a what-if future, rather its set in a possible past which may have been different for all of us if just a few things had played out a little differently. That premise, al by itself, is a fun thing to think about and is a little brain-bendy.

The main protagonist, Charlie Friend, tells the story first person, which is where the 'like me' comparative phrase in the title comes from. Mr. Friend sounds made up (scoff) is a little insecure, has some vague experience writing, and maybe some office-type work in his past but has given it up for self-employment. A venture he is not always successful at, but keeps at it nonetheless. Mr. Friend admits that he hasn't always made sound monetary decisions, but that doesn't keep him from pushing on. 

Just upstairs lives Miranda, Charlie's friend, who is also a graduate student and mid-twenties to his early thirties. Charlie's insecurity extends to his feelings for Miranda, which complicates their friendship, if only because Charlie is in his head too much and not really living. Into this complicated dynamic, Charlie brings a machine, and what he (and we) thought was complicated before, gets even more complex.

McEwan has spun an intriguing story here that reminds me of Asimov's I, Robot series in its examination of what it means when thinking machines become part of our lives, both for us, and for them.

knife

Harry Hole is a recurring character in a series of books written by Jo Nesbø, a Norwegian writer, and there have been a bunch of them. Knife was published in 2019, and translated into English by Neil Smith the same year, which is what I read. I'm pretty sure I've read at least one other Jo Nesbø book, and I'm also pretty sure it was a Harry Hole story, but I guess I didn't write about it here on the blog. Maybe it was during that blackout period in the latter part of 2019 and a large portion of 2020. looking at the Harry Hole list, it may have been The Devil's Star, I'm not sure

Knife is a murder mystery, and Harry Hole isn't approaching this the way he normally would, I assume, as a detective with the Oslo Police Department, as he doesn't have the resources of the department to back him up on this one.

The story arc is varied and kept me guessing as the story progressed, always with a nagging concern in the background about this one would end up. Nesbø has done a fine job of knitting together a fine story in the tradition of Hercule Poirot and other old timey mysteries where there are many possibilities, and one is not sure until the very end who may have done it.

ship breaker

I've had a few books tucked away in my public library account read list; Ship Breaker, a young adult novel by Paolo Bacigalupi, is not one of them. Drowned Cities by the same author is, but it wasn't until after I read that one that I discovered that its part of a series, and this current read is the first in that series. Good news is, it doesn't seem to matter much in what order these were read, at least that is my impression after reading two of the three in the series.

Ship Breaker definitely takes place in the same dystopian future Earth as the The Drowned Cities, after what I assume is run away global warming has led to massive ocean level rise and the breakdown of organized governments in favor of a few massive corporations and the rest of humanity living hand-to-mouth in a kind of Mad Max lawlessness, which pockets of semi-civilized population centers that are just mentioned as remote and inaccessible to the poor protagonists that inhabit this series.

One of the characters from The Drowned Cities features in this story as well, so I predict that it may be that character that ties these stories together. I guess we'll see. The third in the series is called Tool of War so I've made my bet already and I'm feeling pretty good about the odds.

thousand autumns

I put the novel The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet on my read list because of other books I've read by the author David Mitchell. Mitchell writes on that wobbly line between--or maybe its the smeary overlap in the Venn diagram--of science fiction, speculative fiction, and fantasy. Maybe David Mitchell would hate that description, I don't know. I guess he could describe it better himself, and perhaps has, elsewhere. What I do know is that Mitchell seems to have a fascination with time, and how we, as humans (and perhaps other human-adjacent creatures) move through it.

This novel seems to fall more squarely into the historical fiction genre, but I wasn't too far in before I began to get a sense of time as a character in this story. de Zoet is a carefully told story, of Europeans in c. 1800 Japan, where they were not welcome, and were mostly segregated from the populace to prevent European influence in the general culture. The pacing of the story recalls that attachment to history, tradition, and sameness the leaders of Japan held dear tat the time. Jacob de Zoet himself is a classic reluctant hero, in the form of a mid-level clerk who see himself as an uphold of what is righteous and true, which is mostly expressed in his manners and dignity, until he is called upon to uphold those ideals in a more taxing sense.

Mitchell thumbs his nose at the demand for fast paced, action drama and paints a picture of 'modern' Europeans, doing their best to take advantage of the closed Japanese culture, while the Japanese did the same from their point of view, all the while both looking at the other as the barbarian. Mitchell uses this backdrop to explore the relationships between the very few people on either side of this cultural divide who saw one another as human, with similar feelings, thoughts, and goals, and who reached across this divide toward one another, while early geopolitics tried to hold them back.

There is a whole chapter where Mitchell gives himself up to the poetry of what he is doing. Its like a treasure or a hidden message for us in the midst of of this love letter to an earlier time, which tries to express how different we are, and how much the same.

drowned cities

Apparently, The Drowned Cities is part of a trilogy, and as luck would have it, this is book two. The front matter in this book indicates that it is a 'companion book' to Ship Breaker, and it doesn't talk about a trilogy. But maybe this is one of those things where the third book just grew out of the success of the first two. Ship Breaker won a couple of awards; Drowned Cities was nominated for a few as well. The Ship Breaker Trilogy is rounded out by Tool of War. So, I guess I'll stick that on the list as well.

The Drowned Cities is listed as teen or young adult science fiction, so it is a little simpler in its overall story arc than either The Water Knife or The Windup Girl, which I have to say, I enjoyed more. That said, I did enjoy this, and it was a welcome break from the crime/spy novels I've been reading.

A quick look at the cover art will tell you that this story takes place in a time in the not too distant future when society has broken down. That post-apocalyptic world is Paolo Bacigalupi's playground, based on the stories I've read thus far. I assume the stories share the same universe, and therefor the same apocalypse, but that isn't touched on specifically in this book. The world does seem hotter however, so... there is no such thing as global warming. note: this sarcastic remark is posted in the color of smog. see, that's art

This story goes together like a kit of parts. Its fast moving, not overly complicated, has some compelling characters, and an interesting backstory that seems to drive the background narrative. Easy, right? I burned through this pretty quickly, and not just because its written in an easy-to-read manner, but because its engaging. I have ordered book 1 (Ship Breaker) from the library; our local library is doing self-service holds, so I can just put them on hold on the interwebs, and then trot down and pick them up.

An interesting aside from our local library. When I picked this book up, along with the Charles Yu book, about 3 weeks ago, a sign on the door read "Masks Welcome." Now the sign on the library door says "Masks Required." My city went to masks required in all public buildings in the middle of August, sometime. I assume its in advance of school starting up, and the Commonwealth's DESE (Department of Elementary and Secondary Education) decision to not allow remote learning in public schools this year.

science fictional universe

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu was pretty popular when it came out in 2010 if I remember correctly. I added to my reading list then, but I haven't gotten around to it until now. I get a kick out of the cover art, which appears to be a study in old school ray gun design, along with a Star Trek font for the text. A closer look at the ray guns shows that they aren't all different--which is slightly disappointing--and one of them isn't a ray gun at all.

What is great about this story is that it reads a little like an autobiography (written in first person, and the protagonist's name is Charles Yu) and a little like the diary of an emotionally damaged man, and a little like the service manual for a futuristic device that isn't really well explained, and a little like a letter to one's future self about how to be better, and a little like wholly metaphoric construct created to path to reckoning with regret and time wasted.

I think that amorphous quality of the story may be what makes it so popular. It has the ability, like a good fortune teller does, to spin a tale charged enough to latch onto our shared experiences, and vague enough to allow us to bring more of ourselves to the story as readers. In the end, it looks like Yu has told us a story of himself, and ourselves, and maybe hasn't told a science fiction story at all.

Read this book.

book of treasures

was scrolling through LinkedIn today, as I normally do not do, and I found a video post from the American Library Association which offered a glimpse at the Book of Treasures, or in the original old French "Li livres dou tresor," a medieval illuminated manuscript by Brunetto Latini, politician, historian, poet, philosopher, and teacher (and friend) of Dante Alighieri. Ooo, I thought, a glimpse at a great old tome from the National Library of Russia, count me in.

My first thoughts when the video starts: Wow, that book looks great for its age. Wow, that's not the book that's a box. A box? Wow, that book looks great for its age. Why does that guy opening it have his bare hands on it? Wow (now looking inside at the illustrated manuscript pages on vellum) that book looks great for its age. Well... [spoiler] its a copy. Limited? sure. Less than a thousand copies? yep. Handmade? no doubt. For sale, and this is the glam video for all those patrons of book porn? you got it. The LinkedIn poster: Victor Moliero. The Company: M. Moliero. to be fair, Vic is proly a member of the ALA. whatever.

Its a nice copy, I'm sure. I would have preferred to ogle the original however.*

Also known as Tesoro or Trésor (the treasure) the encyclopedia was written in French during Latini's exile to France between 1260 and 1267. There is a copy of the manuscript in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence, where it is labeled as Ashburnham 125, which may or may not be the very volume from his old teacher that Dante read. The encyclopedia contains three books: biblical, Troy, troyian? Roman, and Middle Ages histories, and natural history, including astronomy, geography and animalia, the second book is about ethics, vices, and virtues, and the third book concerns political science as seen, and in the opinion of, the author. 

The National Library of Russia manuscript is rife with decorated initials, borders, and miniature illustrations including many "arabesques and drolleries" according to the Moliero video, which is why they chose this version to reproduce. Arabesques are ornate designs of interwoven geometric, floral, foliate figures. Drolleries are comedic images, designed to be oddly amusing, whimsical, or jesting. Examples of drolleries in this book include: deer-riding arrow-shooting monkeys, children jousting while riding piggyback on their parents, and a sword swallower. Many of the illuminations are gilded. Other versions are not as illuminated.

More about M. Moliero and what they do can be found on their website if you're interested in, what I assume, is an expensive copy of an awesome old book.

* I tried to find images of the original the Moliero folks copied on line so I could check it out--and share it here--but no luck. If you find it let me know in a comment.

english assassin

Gabriel Allon book two, The English Assassin, was a good installment in the series and a fun read. Given what our man Allon has had to go through its surprising he stays in the game. I guess that is maybe what makes the difference between a storybook hero and a real one; storybook heroes are what we expect heroes to be, real heroes aren't. They are just folks doing their job, doing what's right, doing what needs to be done. 

When folks call other folks heroes, it usually pisses them off. Being compared to something dreamed up, isn't always flattering I guess, when viewed from the receiving end. Calling someone a hero, is like saying "you aren't real, your accomplishments are imaginary, fanciful." I guess I may not like it either, but then, we all do these tiny thought experiments in our heads; ask others "what would you do if..." questions, but none of us really knows how to answer truthfully. Or maybe accurately is a better term. When we think about these hypothetical situations, how we would react is just how we hope we'd react. None of us really knows, I'm sure. We're just guessing. 

Thought experiments like this, strung together into a narrative, is what a story is. Silva has created a character in Allon that he uses to test these thought experiments, and create a dreamworld where Israel works secretly through their clandestine services to right the wrongs done to the Jews for centuries, and we we cheer yearning for justice as we follow along. Justice is what heroes do after all.

What does all that have to do with an English assassin, or Switzerland, or Venice? You'll have to catch up and read this thing! I'll give you some time, I have another few books I'll be reading in the meantime, and I'm sure I'll get back to Gabriel Allon at some point.