Good thing I decided to take a photo of my "literature" shelf and not my sci-fi shelf.  Camus, Steinbeck, Dante and Kafka look so much more impressive than Philip Jose Farmer and Larry Niven.  

View and download a higher resolution copy here - Books, Reading the Classics

Under the Dome is a 1,100 page tome about a small Maine town (there are no extraterrestrial vampire clowns or little bald doctors) and a situation where the powers-that-be make all the wrong moves.  

Plot Introduction

The small Maine town of Chester’s Mill has its share of problems, but these are nothing compared to the day a transparent and seemingly-impenetrable barrier appears and separates the town from the outside world.  Cars crash and pile up at the invisible wall.  A private plane explodes.  A woman’s hand is severed instantly as the “Dome” comes down.  Grisly chaos (as only King can describe) ensues all across the city limits of Chester’s Mill.  

The origin and purpose of the Dome is a complete mystery to town residents, to local politicians and even to the US Military.  But Dale Barbara, an ex-Army captain that was trapped inside the city, is forced out of retirement and commissioned by the Federal government to put the town in order and discover the source of the Dome.  Dale faces opposition from Big Jim Rennie, a local politician and used car-salesman (what a wonderful combo).  Power-hungry Big Jim has his own plans for the future of the now-isolated city, and he does not waste any time putting Chester’s Mill under his iron fist.  

In the meantime, attempts by the military to breach the Dome fail.  Cut off from the outside world, with no end to the crisis in sight, events come to a head in the Maine town.  Dale and his friends must face off against Big Jim and his puppets in the local police department.  

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The cities of Beszel and Ul Qoma occupy much the same physical space (somewhere in Eastern Europe) and to an uninitiated outsider seem like a single city.  The same buildings, streets, sidewalks and alleyways exist in both cities.  But through the Orwellian machinations of the Breach police and the willing participation of the inhabitants, the area is treated like two separate and distinct cities. 

The citizens of Beszel and Ul Qoma must constantly and dutifully “unsee” and ignore each other and the goings-on in the other city.  And if anyone commits the crime of breach, or interacting with the other city, the offender is quickly dragged away by a goon squad of Breach police. 

The City & The City is a tough nut to crack.  The book is officially classified under “weird fiction”, and the setting certainly lives up to that name.  The plot, however, takes the form of a mostly ho-hum police investigation whodunit. 

A young woman is murdered, and Inspector Tyador Borlu of the Extreme Crime Squad must track down the killer.  His investigation brings him from one city to the next and eventually to the gaps in between.  Many ideas are briefly hit upon, such as the existence of a hidden third city - Orciny - but the plot is mainly made interesting by the oddities that arise from dealing with two “cities” segregated solely by voluntary human inhibition and a vague threat of punishment. 

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A remote island off the North Atlantic coast.  A gothic, looming mental institution.  Hysteric and criminally-insane patients.  Domineering doctors and indifferent, sometimes-brutal staff.  Throw in a hurricane, a missing patient and two US marshals and you have Shutter Island.  

Sure, the setting may seem a little too familiar.  We’ve probably seen enough of mental institutions in popular culture to ever find them truly foreboding.  And remote islands?  We’ve been lost on them far too many times.  But none of this stops Shutter Island from being a good read.  

With a hurricane imminent, two US Marshals, Ted Daniels and Chuck Aule, arrive from the mainland to investigate the disappearance of the murderous Rachel Solando.  The sleuthing duo interviews the hospital staff and uncovers several  leads, but nothing about the vanishing of Rachel Solando makes sense.  Rachel has disappeared into thin air from a locked cell, and the attendants and other patients did not notice her leave.  

Waves and wind batter the island as the hurricane makes landfall.  Cut off from the mainland, Teddy and Chuck have no choice but to continue their investigation.  From their very arrival at the institution, there has been an aura of the conspiratorial, but the situation becomes less and less clear as the marshals pursue clues across the island.   

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When the world descends into chaos and most of the human race is transformed into flesh-eating zombies, the task of cataloging the mayhem falls to Max Brooks.  World War Z is another take on the ever-so-popular story of worldwide undead outbreak. 

The genre was popularized by George Romero in Dawn of the Dead (1978), and continues most recently in the movie Zombieland (2009).  But instead of the satire of Dawn of the Dead or the comedy of Zombieland, World War Z is a dead-serious look at what might actually happen during a zombie plague and how governments and the populace would react. 

From the introduction to the very last page, WWZ treats itself as an historical document, or "oral history".  The book is broken up into sections that detail each phase of the crisis, from the initial warnings, to isolated outbreaks, to total global war against the zombie menace.  Each section contains short stories or interviews that vignette the various stages of the conflict. 

Some of the more memorable stories include a doctor's first encounter with the plague after performing an organ transplant in Rio de Janeiro, the account of Palestinian refugees entering Tel Aviv during the first days of Israel's voluntary self-quarantine, and the heroic final charge of General Raj-Singh to seal a mountain pass in the Himalayas against the undead hordes.  Also standing out are the disastrous battle for New York, the development of the Redeker Plan in South Africa, and the tale of a Chinese submarine that goes rogue to save crewmembers' families. 

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When the cover of a book includes review quotes like "absolutely gosh wow" and "super colossal", you know the book is either just going to be that good, or it's taken a turn through the mega hype machine.  In the case of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, we have the former.  The book really is that good.

Plot Introduction - The Amazing Adventures is the tale of two Jewish cousins in the days leading up to, during and after World War II.  Young Josef Kavalier must leave his parents and brothers behind and flee Nazi-occupied Prague.  Josef is a trained artist and illusionist and has also learned a knack for escaping from tough situations.  He eventually winds up in America, more specifically Brooklyn, where he stays with his 17-year old cousin Sammy Clay. 

Sammy shares an aptitude for art and writing.  Together the two cousins hatch a plan to break into the incipient comic book business.  Josef's apparent illusionist skills and some fire escape acrobatics serve as inspiration, and the idea for their first comic book hero is born.  Their new hero, the Escapist, is picked up for a full run.  The character is a huge success, and the issues sell out quickly. 

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Accelerando is a challenging read and techno-geek cool on overload.  Even for a self-proclaimed geek like myself, I sometimes found it hard to keep up with all the technological and computer programming jargon.  In fact, for non-geeks and people that have never written a line of computer code, Accelerando might not make any sense at all.  But for the technology-conscious crowd, this book is about as good as it gets.

Imagine putting William Gibson, Contact, the Matrix and some Star Trek into a mixer.  The end result will be something much like Accelerando.  This isn't to say that the book rips off these movies or authors, but Stross certainly does use and build upon many of the concepts established by the likes of Gibson and Stephenson and Carl Sagan. 

We get healthy doses of virtual reality, computer hacking, space travel, the fate of religious traditions, a technological singularity and first contact with alien life.  Stross takes all these concepts and adds his own unique spin - economics.  In Accelerando, the future is ruled by hyper intelligent, self-aware corporations and pyramid schemes.  These fast-thinking corporations and constructs exists inside and outside of cyberspace.  And if you mess with them, you may quickly find yourself bankrupt and without a physical body. 

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Gateway is a science fiction novel published in 1977.  The story is mainly set on the remains of an alien space station (the titular Gateway) that has been discovered orbiting at a high inclination outside the normal plane of the solar system.  The aliens, called the Heechee, built the station out of an asteroid several hundred thousand years ago when humans were still lumbering around the African savanna.  Impressive, right?  Turns out the Heechee got bored after a while, or were destroyed (we never find out), and ended up abandoning Gateway.  And they left a bunch of ships and other junk around when they disappeared. 

Most of what the aliens left behind is indeed junk, but the ships are still mostly functional.  The downside is that each Heechee ship can only go to a single destination, the destination that was programmed by the alien pilot hundreds of thousands of years ago. 

I didn't exist in 1977 when this book was published, so I just got around to reading it now in 2010.  I was looking forward to reading it, since Pohl is a well known author and the book won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards.  Unfortunately, this book is a steaming pile of crap.  And there are three reasons why it's a steaming pile of crap. 

1) The Premise - Nobody understands how the Heechee ships work.  The drive mechanisms and the navigation systems are a complete mystery to human science.  But instead of trying to figure out how the ships function and reverse engineer the technology, the combined governments of earth have decided that the best way to exploit the alien spaceships left on Gateway is to send ill-trained and emotionally unstable volunteers out into the galaxy on suicide missions.  These volunteers are called prospectors.  They are supposed to be "prospecting" and bringing back more alien technology (that no one understands), but many of the prospectors and their irreplaceable ships disappear and are never seen again.  Others fly out a little way and explode.  In the off chance that a prospector does bring back something of value, an alien gadget or weapon, he or she is paid a great sum of money. 

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(yeah, I know it came out over ten years ago) Naked is a collection of essays and short stories from the life of David Sedaris.  Each story or essay stands independently and varies in length from several pages to around 40 pages maximum.  Topics range from David's experiences growing up in Raleigh, North Carolina, to his adventures hitchhiking across America, to his visit to a nudist colony as an adult. 

Looking at the back cover, you'll see quotes from critics like "humorous" and "hilarious", but I should warn you that your take on Sedaris's writing will depend very much on your sense of humor.  The author's writing style is dry, so dry that many times you'll have to re-read something just to make sure you took his meaning correctly. 

If you revel in sarcastic wit and dry humor, then you should (mostly) enjoy this book.  But if your sense of humor fits anywhere between puns and slapstick, then you might want to pass on Naked.

The book begins like most Sedaris books, with several hilarious and raucous stories back to back.  The story relating the author's obsessive-compulsive "tics" and the chapter about his grandmother, Ya Ya, are two of my favorites.  These stories will have you eagerly turning the pages to see what's next.  And if you start reading the book on an airplane (as I did) or in a public place, you'll have to stifle laugh after laugh to avoid looking like a crazy person.  And speaking of crazy people, there are a lot of those in this book.  I'm not sure how Sedaris manages to meet such a large number of off-the-wall individuals in his travels.  For example, there is a guy that makes hundreds of jade clocks in the shape of the state of Oregon.  Another one takes pride in his wall-mounted dildo collection.  But I suppose this is what you get when you spend a lot of time hitchhiking. 

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