lucis

Get your towels ready. The first teaser for the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is now online!

Waiting eagerly for 2005!

Dont Panic.

Speaker for the Dead is the second book of the Ender’s Game series (though it is also an excellent stand-alone book). Many people regard it as Orson Scott Card’s best ever. What follows might have SPOILERS…

The book is very different from Ender’s Game. It is slower, more thought provoking, even somewhat religious (in fact I found the book in the theology library). The book raises some interesting philosophical questions about human interaction with an intelligent alien lifeform more intelligent, but far less developed than us. How much information should we share with such an alien when its intentions are unknown. At first I thought the “dont teach them anything, but learn everything about them” policy of interaction shown in the book sounded absurd and would never work (well, it never does really work in the book anyways). But the more I think about it the more plausible this sounds, even if it might not be the best thing to do in the long run. You cant expect anyone to trust you if you dont trust him first!

I think there are a few flaws in the book. Humans dont seem to have advanced all that much in the 3000 years since the bugger wars. I would also have expected the Starways Congress to have better security valves against a rebellion in Lusitania. The great distances from any other planet (over twenty light years) would have to force much stricter control over the functioning of the xenologers.

Overall I really liked the book, and have already started with Xenocide.

This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe, and those we never think to question.

I also read Ender’s Shadow, which is a parallel shadow to Ender’s Game. It is basically the same story, told from the eyes from a different child, Bean. There are some interesting incidents, but for most part, it is just more of Ender’s Game. It would have been a great novel on its own, but now it is simply a shadow of the original.

With quals done, I finally have some time to catch up on my reading. Ender’s Game is a sci-fi classic by Orson Scott Card. The book is about a genius kid who is being trained to become the commander of Earth’s fleet against alien (Buggers) invasion.

The story is fast paced and interesting. I particularly liked the Battle School training. And then there is a very interesting and thought provoking twist in the end. I am now trying to lay my hands on the other books of The Ender Series.

The most noble title any child can have is Third.

Individual human beings are all tools, that the others use to help us all survive.

Human beings didn’t evolve brains in order to lie around on lakes. Killing is the first thing we learned. And a good thing we did, or we’d be dead, and the tigers would rule the earth.

There is no teacher but the enemy.

After a very gripping and explosive start, the book meanders sluggishly till about the half way mark. It got so slow at places that I almost stopped reading it a couple of times. But once it changes gears, it is a completely different book! Each chapter in the second half of the book is full of surprises. The story perfectly unfolds amidst tonnes of action, and politics. More characters die than I could care to count. I dont think I can do justice to the second half of the book here. It is practically perfect, and I seriously doubt the second half could have been made any better.

If the second book was all about characters, the third is more about the story and history. We learn quite a bit about the history of the land, the Targaryens, and the Lannisters. The book gives very interesting answeres to some of the questions that were raised in the first book, and raises many new questions. Several chapters are written from the point of view (pov) of Jaime Lannister (the second Lannister pov). As usual, Martin wonderfully brings out both the good and evil sides out of him. The fourth book is supposed to have Cersie Lannister as a pov - now that would be very interesting (Cersie is almost your perfect evil queen, and only her bad side has been explored so far)!

On the whole, I think the book equals or surpasses the second book. This inspite of the rather disappointing first half. The fast paced, action packed second half has left me hungry for more. Cant wait for the fourth book, “A Feast for Crows” to be released…

For anyone interested, here is an amazing gallery of artwork related to the series. Simply brilliant. Most characters are exactly how I picture them while reading the book. Also check out this really cool forum for discussions about the book (including spoilers for the unreleased fourth book).

Inspite of being extremely busy over the past few weeks (paper deadline, finals week, etc.), I’ve managed to find enough time go through atleast a couple of chapters a day of A Clash of Kings, Book 2 of A Song of Ice and Fire by George R R Martin (my mini-review of A Game of Thrones (Book 1) is here). I am generally of the opinion that squels rarely live up to the original, but A Clash of Kings proves me wrong! While the first book laid the basic framework and introduced the numerous characters, this book really fleshes out the characters until they almost seem alive!

One of the unique features of this series is the style in which the story is told. Each chapter is through the eyes of a particular character. Martin exploits this beautifully, and literally transforms the reader into the character. I’ve never felt so intimate with the characters of a book! I was almost able to predict how someone would react to a situation before reading about it. The richness of each character is also amazing. No one is simply good or bad, but a shade of gray instead. The reader knows all the characters so well that it becomes extremely hard to take sides in a battle.

The book starts off a little slow, but quickly builds up. The book isnt big on action (other than the big battle towards the end), and Martin has been criticized for this often. But I think I really like the way he tells the story. The medieval politics, alliances being formed and broken, betrayal and backstabbing, ravaging and looting, courage, guilt, love, friendship, and a light sprinkling of magic and dragons makes recipe for a great read!

The thing I did not like much were the chapters on Bran, and Daenerys. Bran and his wolf dreams, were, well, boring. And Daenerys’ story is basically at the same place it was at the end of Book 1. I wish there were more chapters on Tyrion (the most amusing villains ever), Arya, Jon, and Robb instead.

Just one last thing… It turns out that the author, George R R Martin did his BS and MS in Journalism from Northwestern University (I am a graduate student there)!

Update: I just finished reading the Prologue of A Storm of Swords (Book 3 of the series), and all I can say is WOW! Easily one of the best starts to a book I’ve read! This keeps getting better and better.

I read Animal Farm a while back, but never got around to post an entry on it. There is very little I can say about this that hasnt been said about a million times already. But I do want to make a couple of points.

I found the Preface specially interesting. Orwell talks about the difficulties in getting this book published, thanks to the Ministry of Information and the self-censorship imposed by British publishers. What this really shows is how capitalism can be no better than socialism if the government (or any one entity) gets too strong. Thats what is happening in the US today (think Microsoft, RIAA, DMCA, etc.).

The other really interesting thing was how the Seven Commandments of the Animal Farm change over time. For example, “No animal shall sleep in a bed” becomes “No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets“, “No animal shall dring alcohol” becomes “No animal shall drink alcohol in excess“, and the classic “All animals are equal” becomes “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others“.

This reminds me of something that was pointed out to me recently. Moses’ commandment “Thou shalt not kill” got changed to “Thou shalt not kill another human being” over time to make eating meat okay. Changes like these happen all the time, and are forgotten by the society in a couple of generations. This is not something specific to socialism, or the type of governance.

The book gives a very vivid description of what was going on in USSR under Stalin, but I feel that a talented author can write a similar book on all the bad things going on in the western world today. With China advancing at the rate it is, one thing that is pretty clear is that democracy is not a necissity for efficient functioning of a country, and that socialism is not necessarily an evil.

Both capitalism and socialism have their perils. Its all a matter of perspective and either can be made to look worse than the other.

All animals are equal, But some animals are more equal than others.

I will work harder.

I detest what you say; I will defend to death your right to say it. - Voltaire

I first came across the name Hubert Selby, Jr. on the DVD inlay of the movie Requiem for a Dream, which is based on a novel by him. The director of the movie, Darren Aronofsky was deeply influenced and impressed by Hubert Selby. This is what the DVD inlay said:

I was a public school kid from Brooklyn facing my first exams freshman year of college (Harvard), and I was terrified. I hit the library and tried to learn. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the word ‘Brooklyn’ Now, when you’re from Brooklyn and you see anything related to Brooklyn, you’re immediately interested. I pulled a worn copy of “Last Exit to Brooklyn” off the shelf. This was before the movie, and I had no clue what I holding. From sentence one, I was done, and so were my finals. I blew them off and I read. I read and I read and I screamed and I connected and I recited and I rejoiced. This was storytelling. This was understanding. This was a deep yet simple examination of what makes us human. I now knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to tell stories. -Darren Aronofsky

Last Exit to Brooklyn is easily one of the most gross, terrifying, intense and brutal books I’ve ever read. It is also perhaps the best and most powerful. The book is set in the 1950s, and is about the lives of people in Brooklyn. Full of violence, drugs, sex, and the most hideous crimes imaginable, the book examines the other side of the American Dream. The book actually has a bunch of short stories, each of which ends in the most horrible way for the main character possible. No one dies, but most would wish to rather die than go through all that they did.

This is not an easy book to read. Paragraphs extend to pages, and sentences go on for miles. Very wierd punctuation. No quotes. Its one of the most unusual styles of writing. And add to that the detail the stories are presented in. (WOW!) Hubert Selby has an amazing eye for observing what is going on around him. He presents such an honest, ruthless and brutal account of the stories that at times it becomes painful to read. But putting down the book is simply impossible. The writing style varies with the character that is being discussed. While talking about an educated and intelligent character, the narration is grammatically correct, while for others it becomes exclusively slang with no sense of grammar or spelling. There are some pages completely in uppercase (for a very loud and raucous character)! Also the tone varies according to what the main character is going through. When someone the main character is extremely drunk, for example, there are pages of completely incoherent text. In fact it becomes impossible to tell when the author is using first person and when he is using third person. This is art, and this is what makes the book a real master piece. Absolutely brilliant!

That said, this is not a book for everyone. That this book was banned in England and several other countries when it first came out gives an indication of this. However, it was later made into a movie by german director Uli Edel. This has become a major cult movie, just like the book. However, I am not sure if I am brave enough to be able to watch it…

A couple of really amazing short stories by Arthur C. Clarke.

The first is titled The Nine Billion Names of God. I read this one a long time back, but immediately remembered it when I recently read another similar story by the same author.

Which brings us to the second short story. This is titled The Star (Thanks to arnab for the link).

Clark brings religion and science together beautifully. Both are extremely well written, and have surprise ending. There isnt much I can say about either that you wont get from simply reading them, so do that!

Another example of this religion-science-fiction literature is Contact by Carl Sagan. Though the movie was great, the book goes much deeper into the philosophy of everything. There is this scene in the book where a believer is proving his faith by standing in front of a giant pendulum. Science says that the pendulum should obey conservation of energy, and attain a certain height before it swings back. The argument here is that if this person stands closer than this distance to the pendulum, would God make it stop before it hits his face? And it so happens that just before the pendulum is about to be swung, the curator comes in and stops the “nonsense”. Thus something intervenes!

There are sure to be other such interesting books/stories. I havent really read many others (I can think of another couple, but am too tired to look for references atm - maybe later).

A Game of Thrones. This is the first book of the series titled A Song of Ice and Fire by George R R Martin. The series is supposed to have six(!) books of which three have been released.

While the book reminded me a bit of Tolkein’s LOTR, it is so perhaps because LOTR is the only other fantasy novel that I’ve read. This is very different from LOTR in almost every possible way!

Instead of trying to describe it myself, here is an amazing summary:

“Imagine a feudal kingdom on a massive continent in a world filled with many cultures and half-legendary lands and an ancient history. Imagine a time where dragons once lived but magic is now dwindling, yet the seasons can be long or short, bringing glorious summers or terrible winters that last years at a time. Imagine a massive iron throne from which seven kingdoms are ruled, with false knights and true all gathered about it in hopes of blood or glory or profit, and shadows behind it pushing the pieces that make up the game of thrones.” - westeros.org

One thing that makes this series different from the rest in fantasy genre (and the reason why I like it so much) is the dark and heavy story line. There are no happy endings, fun times, amusing magic etc. Characters that you think would be central to the story die all of a sudden. Martin breaks away from the trite fantasy stereotype, and creates a masterpiece as a result.

Another great aspect of the book is that the characters are neither good nor bad. The story is told from the point of view of several characters. In one chapter a character seems “bad”, while in the next we understand the story from his POV, and see the reason behind his actions. This is so unlike most other fantasy stuff, particularly Tolkein.

I have started with the second volume in this series, A Clash of Kings, and cant stop thinking about this amazingly detailed world MArtin has created for us to enjoy.

Read it!