Waking Gods

Waking Gods / Sylvain Neuvel
New York: Del Rey, c2017.
324 p.

A decade after the events of Sleeping Giants, scientist Rose Franklin and Themis operators Vincent & Kara are still together, called into action when another giant robot suddenly appears in a park in central London. 

Now working for EDC (Earth Defense Corps), they are still just as eager to avoid causing any human deaths as they were 10 years ago. Unfortunately, the British government disregards their advice and precipitates a crisis with millions dead worldwide. 

Finding out who the robots are and why they've come, and what their purpose is, fills this book. All the voices from the last book are here; Rose, Vincent & Kara, as well as our anonymous narrator, with a few new ones, including a young girl in Puerto Rico with psychic visions - who turns out to be an important character indeed. 

The book is told in the same fashion as the first one, in reports, interviews, files and so on, It gives the same urgency and presence as the first, though feels a bit different here as they are facing a "disaster movie" kind of scenario, while in the first book it was more about scientific discovery itself. I found the disaster bits somewhat distressing, especially near the end -- the orgy of deaths in these kinds of tales is always disturbing. 

But this was still a solid second book in a very fresh and vibrant new series that takes on hard science with the same eagerness as human relationships. Definitely worth reading. And, though I haven't tried it myself, I hear that the audio versions of both books are excellent productions as well if you prefer that format.

All Our Wrong Todays

Great cover, though! Love the Toronto skyline

All Our Wrong Todays / Elan Mastai
Toronto: Doubleday Canada, c2017.
384 p.

This book has been getting a lot of buzz, so when it was my turn to take it home from the library I was really excited. 

And I read it very quickly, and enjoyed it. It features a young man who is a bit of schlump; he uses his father's time machine to try to go back to witness the moment that sparked the technological marvel that is his utopian 2016. But of course things go badly wrong, and he ends up in *our* 2016, having destroyed his own timeline. And ours is a poor copy. Now he has to decide if he should stay put in a 2016 in which his family loves him and he has a girlfriend, or restore his own timeline in which he personally doesn't come off so well.

It's lively and entertaining, with lots of sciencey bits on the elements of time travel that the author carefully researched for veracity. The back and forth of time travel and its effects is essential to the story; but unfortunately the ethical dilemma he faces is kind of undercut in the last part of the book when it becomes clear that his original timeline is gone and not restorable no matter what he does. And in the last pages it's revealed that a disastrous dystopia was another timeline option that he narrowly avoids bringing into reality, so it's all evenses, I guess. 

If I don't delve too deeply into the logic, and don't think too hard about how much I disliked the bro-ish main character (and for that matter, many of the male characters) I'd say this is a fun, light read. Tom is a bit of a sad sack in his perfect life though, having achieved nothing and working for his brilliant scientist father as a pity hire. The way he mopes about and feels sorry for himself I assumed he was 20 at most, but later in the story he's revealed as being in his early 30s. What? There's really no character to this character and despite the huge events he causes later, he doesn't really seem to grow up very much through his experiences. 

Anyhow, I do like a good time travel story, with all its emphasis on technology and the difficulties inherent in changes to the timeline and what that means for individual lives. So I mostly liked this one but it's probably not going to find a permanent home on my own bookshelves, even if I do live in Tom's miserable 2016 in which real paper books still have a useful existence. 

If you like fast-moving stories that depend on technological gadgets and sciencey interludes for excitement, you might also find this one a mostly engaging read, however.

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Readalikes:

Two other books I'm most strongly reminded of by this novel are:

Charles Yu's How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, in which a young man (also with issues in his relationship to his father) travels in time, as a time travel technician. With added philosophizing.

Robert Charles Wilson's Last Year, for its focus on futuristic tech which allows for time travel, even though neither the present nor the past is too hot in regard to social conditions.

Last Year

Last Year / Robert Charles Wilson
Tor, c2016
352 p.

I love a good time travel book. And I also love history. And this is a great read in light of both those things. 

It's late 19th century Ohio, and Jesse Cullum is hard at work in the city of the future. Literally. A group of individuals from the near-future have come back to this part of this past to set up a modern resort for future tourists to come and sight-see. For a price, of course.

Wilson sets up a time travel plot that seems realistic: people in the future have discovered The Mirror, a portal to limited parts of the past -- they can stay for a few years, but this is their Last Year, before the portal will close. Between now and the due date for the closure, the owner of the City will try to get as much as he can out of this world. The time travel paradox is explained by the multiple universes idea: this is one version of the past but may not result in the future that these people are coming from, especially because of their influence on historical developments on things like technology and medicine. 

But Jesse's a great character, introspective and heroic in the strong, silent manner. His partner/boss from the future, Elizabeth, is pretty badass and it's a race toward the portal's closing for them as they begin to develop a relationship. 

It's a fun read with elements of thriller, political drama, time travel, Western and more. I liked the way he dealt with the paradox of time travel and the encounters between past and future people (I just wish he'd have lightened up on the "humourous" mention of Jesse's having lost his pair of future-made Oakley sunglasses in the opening pages -- I was getting tired of reading "Oakleys" pretty quickly!)

Anyway, a fun, engaging, accessible read that brings up concerns about colonialism, 'first contact', social constructs of behaviour, politics and money, and more. I enjoyed the fast moving plot that seemed a little bit loosey-goosey at times but was so enjoyable to read that I didn't mind the few reservations I had about it. For example, there are no Native characters in the story, just a quick mention of their existence, and the women of the past are primarily prostitutes, apparently.

And the blurb for this book has the story wrong -- it says "Jesse Cullum is a native. And he knows the passageway will be closing soon. He's fallen in love with a woman from our time, and he means to follow her back--no matter whose secrets he has to expose in order to do it." But Jesse does not intend to follow Elizabeth back -- in fact, they discuss the implications of just such ideas, as well having part of their job being  trying to locate "runners" -- those who've come to the Past and run from the tourist city to live in their ideal of the past. 

But despite that, this is a good read that might be a fun, unusual pick for a book club: there are many ideas to discuss. If you are a time travel fan, and can take a bit of thrillerish violence & some f-bombs, you will probably like this one too.

A Near-Future Company Town

Company Town / Madeleine Ashby
New York: Tor, c2016.
285 p.

This book was an impulse read; I saw it at work and impulsively brought it home. It's a near-future, noir science-fictiony serial killer novel with time travellers, a bit of romance and one badass heroine. It also has quite a lot of strong language & violence if that bothers you, fyi. 

But it is a fresh and fast-paced story, and I really liked it. Set on an oil rig turned big city off Newfoundland, a setting that gives it an isolation similar to more traditional science fiction settings, it opens with an introduction to our heroine Go Jung-Hwa. She's one of the only "organics" left in the city; she has no tech augmentations like everyone else has. But this isn't a philosophical decision - it's because her self-absorbed mother was too cheap to pay for anything at all for a daughter she didn't want. Hwa also has a real disorder, Sturge-Weber Syndrome, which means she has a port wine stain on her face that makes it the perfect natural dazzle pattern  -- no one can see her true face through their tech.

Hwa starts out as a bodyguard for the city's legal escort service, and is part of the sex workers union. But the town is changing: after an explosion a few years before (in which Hwa's brother was killed) their economy is shaky and the entire rig has been bought by a family company, the Lynches. Hwa gets pulled into a situation that ends with her being offered a role as bodyguard to the teenage son of the Lynch family, a boy who has been receiving death threats regularly. This means she starts to build a relationship with the hated new Company and to gain access to their secrets - and to her immediate boss, Daniel, who becomes more than just her boss. 

It's a convoluted, complex, inventive, engaging and rapid read. Are there flaws? Sure. But Hwa herself, and all the cyperpunky bits and pieces that Ashby throws in to the story, are so interesting that I didn't really care that much. I liked the character and the world of the rig - it was dense in detail and made me think of the town in Blade Runner with the mix of inhabitants, and lots of rain and dark and threats. This was a great new discovery, with an unusual setting and some great characters. Overlook the minor plot holes and enjoy the ride. 
 

Crosstalk

Crosstalk / Connie Willis
New York: Del Rey, c2016
498 p.

This was one of my favourite reads of this year -- I've already read it 3 times! Yes, twice in pre-pub and once immediately after it was released this October. It's so much fun.

I really like Connie Willis' work so was looking forward to this one anyhow...but wasn't expecting to like it so much that I'd read it twice in one week ;)

It's an entertaining story with lots of great banter, a clever idea driving it, and two fun leads. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that it has a great scene in a library - it's the heart of the book, in my opinion. Willis takes the idea of constant connectivity, the modern fear of being alone, FOMO, and our dependence on technology to their extremes here, as the drive for 24 hour availability turns into telepathic connection...which isn't as great as it might seem.

Briddey Flannigan is an exec at a phone company that is trying to come up with something that will outdo Apple's next release. Her office is both frenetic and weirdly underpopulated, but like other Willis books, corporate life is bonkers and part of the chaos of the heroine's life. Her family of women is also a bit frenetic; she gets constant calls and texts from her sisters, aunt, and 9 year old niece Maeve. She has definite issues with boundaries; she takes all the calls, she lets her family show up in her office and at her home whenever they feel like it, and now her new boyfriend Trent (a coworker) has asked her to get an EED -- a new technology implanted into the brain to help you sense your partner's emotions better -- and she just says yes without much concern about the effects. Her family and another coworker, the basement dwelling genius/nerd CB Schwartz, both think it's a terrible idea. 

She goes ahead with it, and the effects are not quite what she expected... and that's just in the first few chapters! I loved the story around Briddey, her family and her love interest. I thought the romance was engaging and entertaining, and I was swept off my readerly feet by CB. Some of her coworkers and the corporate plot are a bit sketchy, in both senses...up to no good and also pretty thinly drawn. But the main characters were fun.

Willis' habit of having characters miss their connections, run around madly, miscommunicate, and more, is in full flower in this book. Briddey can't seem to slow down long enough to look at her situation and figure out how to solve it, instead she bounces around like a pinball, reacting instead of acting. I did find her a bit annoying at the start and the chaos a little bit over the top -- but I quickly adjusted to the story and ended up enjoying it despite Briddey's flaws -- ie: she is apparently a gorgeous red-head but feels awkward to herself - quite Bridget Jones-like, actually. I read that some people felt Briddey was too 'dumb' or clueless, but I thought she was fine; she was preoccupied and distracted a lot, and didn't figure things out as quickly as the reader, but it works for the book. Besides, I have a real-life friend who can come across as what some might think of as ditzy like Briddey, but despite the whirlwind that follows her around, she is extremely intelligent and superbly capable -- so Briddey was easy for me to believe in. The most annoying thing about Briddey is her name: I pronounce it Bride-y in my head as that's the Irish name I know, but the spelling here seems to indicate Bridd-y -- which is a terrible name -- though there's no standard spelling I prefer a more readable one. 

Anyhow, this book was a romp. Despite some inconsistencies in the plot and a tendency to go on a bit at times, it's a nice light read from one of my favourite authors. There's no dark twist or heartbreak in it, just light, sparkling, amusing storytelling. The use of the library in the middle of the story is really special and is a part I went back to - imagining that beautiful space and the peace that Briddey finally finds there.

If you like classic romantic comedy that is a bit speculative & a lot about the characters, you will probably like this one too. For any Willis fan, it echoes both plot points from Bellwether and the light humour of To Say Nothing of the Dog. A must-read/reread for me!

Speculative Shorts by Hopkinson & Taylor

To end my recent streak of short story reading, I have two collections of speculative/Science Fiction stories to share, both with a strong thread of diversity informing them. Though they're very different from one another, I enjoyed both.

Falling In Love With Hominids / Nalo Hopkinson
San Francisco: Tachyon, c2016. 
222 p.

I really loved Hopkinson's now classic novel Brown Girl in a Ring, and have read some of her short stories before, here and there. So when this collection came into my library, I knew I had to read it. 

It's a trippy experience. Hopkinson's imagination is vast, her references to Caribbean culture infuse her stories with myths and lore that are not common in fantastical stories, and her method of simply throwing the reader into her created worlds and expecting you to catch up makes the reading experience both rush by you and grab you simultaneously. 

I felt as if I should stop and take a breather now and again. But I just couldn't put it down. That said, some of the very short (ie: 2 page) stories didn't work as well for me, as they felt like ideas just being doodled on the page for now -- still immensely imaginative ideas but not fleshed out. 

Nonetheless there are some pretty wonderful and terror-ful pieces here! I both loved and was completely creeped out by "The Easthound". It starts so simply, with a group of children together around a campfire; then you discover that anyone old enough to hit puberty "sprouts" -- and becomes the terror that hunts them all. It was a terrifying story, with intimacy and betrayal and unfathomable changes that Hopkinson doesn't waste time explaining -- it's just the way it is.
 
Other stories like "Message in a Bottle", about a man who isn't all that fond of kids but ends up befriending his friends' adopted daughter - who turns out to be a time traveller - or "Delicious Monster", with a young man having to come to terms with his divorced father's new relationship with a man who is more than he first seems - or "Left Foot, Right", in which a twin struggles with the drowning death of her sister -- all these were also fabulous and unforgettable. There do seem to be a fair number of twins in her work, a reflective concept that matches up with her habit of turning a reality inside out to show two sides of everything.  

There's one story, "Snow Day" that was written in response to a challenge from Canada Reads one year, where she was asked to write a story that included the titles of all five of the books on the Canada Reads list that year, but not using any AS a title. Although the books were listed at the end of the story, I challenged myself to see if I could pick them out before checking. I did, but came close to missing one! That was a bit of fun. (Coincidentally it was the 2005 list, the year my cousin Sherraine was defending one of the titles).

There's also a complex story that was written as part of the Bordertown series -- a shared setting which many authors contribute to. It features a lesbian love triangle of sorts, with humans and faerie all jumbled up in the strangeness of this border town. It was complex, fascinating, and had some great characters in it. I like how Hopkinson's writing incorporates her own voice so strongly with many LGBTQ+ characters who are all individual, and also not all young and beautiful, and how the multi-ethnic nature of the world is both assumed and stated directly by her in some of her intros. This collection is definitely one to search out and read.


Take Us to Your Chief and other stories / Drew Hayden Taylor   
Toronto: Douglas & McIntyre, c2016.
160 p.

I loved this idea when I first heard it: classic science fiction tropes retold from an Aboriginal perspective, from a playwright & humorist who has written in many genres before. And I love that cover! 

I just finished this collection and was unfortunately a bit underwhelmed by it. I liked it, and a couple of the stories really caught me, including "Petropaths", about a young man who discovers time travel through local petroglyphs, or "Lost in Space", a quiet, meditative story about another young man working alone out in the asteroid belt.

Out of the nine stories, though, only a handful were really strong. I did appreciate the ideas behind the stories, the classic references to science fiction from the past, and the way that he's using these frameworks to discuss and highlight current social issues in Aboriginal life. It's a great option to point out some of the similarities in "first contact" stories, and he does use that opportunity. 

In the intro, he states:

Part of my journey in this life both as a First Nations individual and as a writer is to expand the boundaries of what is considered Native literature. I have always believed that literature should reflect all the different aspects and facets of life. There is more to the Indigenous existence than negative social issues and victim narratives... Collectively, we have such broad experiences and diverse interests. Let's explore that in our literature.

He's certainly expanded boundaries in this collection, and written in a style I haven't seen much of yet in my reading of Indigenous authors (although Harold Johnson's dystopian novel The Cast Stone is another genre read that comes to mind). It's a fun read with some echoes of the equally dark/slapstick humour that he uses in his novel Motorcycles & Sweetgrass - so while not quite a five star read for me, still a satisfying, thought-provoking one.

Sleeping Giants

Sleeping Giants / Sylvain Neuvel
New York: Del Rey, c2016.
304 p.

Young Rose Franklin falls through a hole in the forest floor as she rides her bike home. She's found nestled in the palm of a giant metal hand. What is it? How did it get there? Who is responsible for its long-buried presence? These questions haunt the novel.

Seventeen years later, Rose Franklin is now an accomplished physicist (her name perhaps a nod to scientist Rosalind Franklin, denied her Nobel for the discovery of the structure of DNA?). Rose is part of the search to discover from whom, when, and how these giant metal body parts arrived on earth. When all the parts are found and assembled, they form a body, a robot of sorts which Rose's team then has to figure out. Is it a weapon? A vessel or a ship? A sentinel of peace? Nobody really knows... yet.

The story is told through the formats of interviews, memos, letters and so on -- a modern epistolary novel that is fast moving, inventive and quite cinematic (it has already been optioned for film). It's the first of a projected trilogy, but it doesn't leave the reader hanging. The conclusion is harrowing, exciting, thrillerish, and completes the storyline that has been uncertain in this novel, even while leaving space for a sequel.

It's a mix of science fiction, apocalyptic tale and a political thriller. It's like X-Files with scientists running the show, aided & restricted by the military. It is also about the bigger question: if there is something out there, something far more advanced than humanity, what do they want from us? And where does it leave us, and all our human cultural past?

Part two, Waking Gods, should be published next year, and will hopefully continue exploring these more philosophical questions along with the entertaining action and suspense. This was a very quick read, but one that I thought was rather clever and had a fresh narrative style.