Week Two

After reading Neal Wyatt's article on appeal factors, I found that I most enjoyed Joyce Saricks' approach, focusing on adrenaline, intellect, emotion, and landscape as the four major appeal areas. I was surprised to find, after writing these three book reviews, that in each case my enjoyment of the book was rooted in the intellect - now that I know which group appeals to me, it's time to become more conscious of the others!

Anyway, here are my three book-talks...

Steal Across the Sky by Nancy Kress

I first encountered Nancy Kress through her short story "Pathways," published in the 2014 Year's Best Science Fiction. Centering on a young woman with a rare degenerative brain disease, I enjoyed the story for its effective blending of biomedical technobabble and human interest. Wanting to read more from this author, I turned to Steal Across the Sky, which had the most captivating tagline of all of Kress's works: "The aliens appeared one day, built a base on the moon, and put an ad on the internet." These aliens, who call themselves the Atoners, claim to have done humanity a grievous wrong and ask for 21 volunteers to act as their "witnesses." Three of these volunteers - Cam, Lucca, and Soledad - visit the twin planets Kular A and Kular B and attempt to tease out what the Atoners meant for them to see as they interact with the local populations.

Although this book features rich and varied characters and several exotic extraterrestrial cultures, the driving force behind this book is really the mystery of what the Atoners are atoning for. Fast-paced and engaging, clues come fast and quick once the witnesses touch down that help unravel this burning question, but unlike a traditional mystery the big reveal, when it comes, doesn't bring satisfaction and closure. Instead, the action returns to Earth for an emotionally-charged second act that focuses more on the human than the alien, as the witnesses and the rest of the planet respond to the revelation. Overall, this book is a genre-bending mystery-turned-social commentary wrapped in science fiction that is engrossing, easy to read, and over too soon.

Shylock is My Name by Howard Jacobson

As soon as I heard about the new Hogarth series of Shakespeare stories re-imagined by modern authors I knew I would have to read them all, and so far I have not been disappointed. This book (and its predecessor The Gap of Time by Jeannette Winterson) beautifully tread the line between Shakespeare's timeless tales and the developments of the modern world. Both Winterson and Jacobson manage to shed new light on the characters Shakespeare created without going too far afield; their stories are firmly their own, but there are definitely "a-ha" moments where the lights come on and you realize exactly where you are standing in the original play.

Jacobson makes this push-and-pull between the historic source material and the modern world all too evident by transporting the character of Shylock from the pages of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice and making him a house guest of his main character, Simon Strulovich. That the impossibility of this feat is never addressed perhaps speaks to a fantastical strain in the novel, but the serious and lengthy conversations that ensue between these 17th century and 21st century Jewish fathers spare nothing for profundity, plumbing the depths of what it means to be Jewish, what it means to be a father, and what it means to be human. Jacobson's masterful (and often darkly humorous) dialogue reveals Shylock as more than just the stereotype he is often in danger of becoming, and instead paints him as a man of incisive wit and passion.

While this masterful adaptation of The Merchant of Venice doesn't attempt (naively) to tie up all the unanswered questions of the original play, it does offer new insights into the characters and their stories that will delight avid Shakespeare-readers. However, the book would appeal equally to readers who are strangers to the Bard; its raw portrayal of complex and flawed characters is perfect for readers who like character-driven existential dramas and who can stay afloat in a heavily literary writing style.

Lucifer's Hammer by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven

A mailman who manages to survive the end of the world with his career intact...a scientist who preserves human knowledge in the most surprising of ways...a preacher who uses disaster as a springboard for a new gospel message...in these and many other personalized stories, it is the individual experiences that intertwine in this sci-fi novel to create a compelling picture of life after the sky has fallen, and a believable world after armageddon.

Unlike many apocalyptic stories, which place the moment of total destruction as either the opening scene or the finale, Lucifer's Hammer makes armageddon (here brought on by a comet which collides with the Earth) the centerpiece of the book, which gives it a very distinctive pacing. Beginning with a slow, plodding exposition that becomes incrementally more frenetic as the chances of collision grow larger, the pace of the story mirrors the reality of life for the characters, which then shifts into high gear with the comet's impact, nearly dead-center in the book. Once "the Hammer" falls, events unfold in rapid succession, yet the author's maintain a startling standard of realism, following the repercussions and consequences of choices made mere days after "Hammerfall" as they play out over weeks and months in the new post-apocalyptic civilization.

The large cast of characters that populate this story might make one worry about getting quantity over quality in terms of characterization, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that no character seemed to exist only to serve a purpose in the plot. Shifting perspectives frequently among a dozen or so characters whose personalities become more familiar and nuanced over time, the authors allow us to see into characters' minds and hearts through introspective moments which make the story more relatable and believable.

If I might dare to borrow terminology from the fantasy sub-genres, I would say that Lucifer's Hammer is very firmly a work of "low" science fiction - not in the sense that it is unsophisticated or sub-par, but because it takes place in a recognizable modern world, instead of "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." Its projection of a classic sci-fi trope - the end of the world coming via collision - into a very detailed and realistic world make it a supremely believable work that would appeal even to non-sci-fi readers for its depth of characterization and complexity of plot.