The Scar, a book review

“A scar is a healing. After injury, a scar is what makes you whole” (Chapter 12, p. 171)

“Scars are memory.” (Coda, p. 635)

China Miéville’s fertile imagination soars in The Scar. Like his first Bas-Lag novel (Perdidio Street Station), it took me a while to settle into the narrative of The Scar; as the novel begins, the language is overwrought and manipulative, but I think this serves to draw the reader into a different experience, a world where possibilities are unlimited. After about three chapters the novel settles into a wonderful groove. It is the concept of ‘possibilities’ that may urge me to reread the novel in a few years, to see what I missed the first time around.

There are several significant characters in the book: the Lovers, an identically scarred man and woman (each referred to as the Lover); Johannes Tearfly (a scientist); Tanner Sack (a genetically remade criminal); Shekel (Tanner’s young friend); Silas Fennec (a spy); Brucolac, the ‘vampir’ (victim of a bacteriological disease, photophobic haemophagy); and others. However, I’d like to focus on two of the main characters: Bellis Coldwine, a linguist and the first-person narrator for parts of the story (and the main character in the novel), and Uther Doul, a scholar and master of martial techniques.

To me, Uther Doul is the most interesting character in the book. He is a master manipulator, a character who subtly nudges ‘possibilities’ to achieve his goals. By the end of the novel I was sure that Doul had manipulated many of the events that appeared to be mere chance at the time. But Miéville has also made Doul somewhat insipid: with his skill, and his ‘possible sword’, he is unbeatable (even against unbelievable odds); hence, he will always win a battle. He almost seems as if he is a character who belongs outside the tale, manipulating the plot, a scientist who studies his experiment through a microscope, but cannot help but prod the experiment to arrive at a desired result (metaphysically, the experimenter is always a part of the experiment). Is Uther Doul Miéville’s alter-ego? Doul certainly manipulates Bellis Coldwine…

It is through the narration of Bellis and her actions and reactions that the story of The Scar unfolds; particularly in her long letter to an unknown recipient, written throughout the course of the novel’s action: the document becomes a ‘Possible Letter’, with its possibilities dependent on who the letter is ultimately addressed to. Bellis is bitter and withdrawn due to her forced escape from New Crobuzon and subsequent kidnapping by the pirates of Armada, the floating city made up of thousands of ships (Armada is an astounding place, though not as Gothically stunning as New Crobuzon in Perdido Street Station).

Scars are, of course, a recurring theme (a minor quibble: almost too many times the concept of scars came up, along with the word puissant), but The Scar of the title is the granddaddy scar of them all.

The Scar, like Perdido Street Station, is, in Miéville’s own words, weird fiction: a mixture of steam-punk science fiction, thaumaturgic-fantasy, Gothic-horror, and the kitchen sink: the reader encounters all kinds of beings on Miéville’s world, Bas Lag: humans, humanoid-animal mixtures (women with scarab-beetles for heads, men with crayfish bodies, mosquito-people, et cetera), alien beings (among others: cacti-beings, eel-beings that swim through the air, a monstrous fish from another dimension, porcupine-beings, and nightmarish creatures that cannot be looked at if you are to survive with your intellect intact), and all manner of creatures and possibilities that are explained (or not) in passing.

I’ve typed a lot, but explained little…

If you read and enjoyed Perdido Street Station, I’d highly recommend you read The Scar, which I found to have a more linear and robust plot, if not quite as much mind-numbing weirdness. Both novels are stand-alone creations, but in The Scar there are references to people and events from Perdido Street Station (a warning: both novels are well over six-hundred pages long).

If you didn’t particularly enjoy Perdido Street Station, or if the concept of weird fiction turns you off, but you’d like to sample China Miéville’s oeuvre, I’d recommend The City & The City, which is an urban science fiction/metaphysical police procedural (apparently Miéville wrote it as a gift for his terminally-ill mother who was a fan of the police procedural). The City & The City is, I think, Miéville’s most accomplished novel, but it is not as hyper-imaginative as his Bas-Lag creations, Perdido Street Station and The Scar.

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Such a beautiful evening

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The setting sun casts

Elongated shadows;

Luminous prints

Dapple the path.

Each indrawn breath; a lifetime,

Such a beautiful evening.

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Blindsight; a book review

Blindsight is ‘hard’ science fiction with an edge; it is well written and styled after the qualities of the book’s fictional narrator, Siri Keeton.

The novel guides the reader through a de-humanized society where gene manipulation and machine interfacing is the norm. This future society is well represented by the novel’s main set of characters: half of Siri’s brain was removed and replaced with circuitry; another character split her consciousness — purposely — into an additional three distinct personalities; two characters are loaded with computer/prosthetic enhancements; and the leader of the group is a genetically reconstructed vampire (I’m not convinced a vampire was required in the story (no doubt influenced by my prejudice against vampire stories), but the author made this character interesting and included an intriguing appendix regarding the biology of Homo sapiens vampiris). As if the humans in the story aren’t weird enough, there are intelligent, extraterrestrial beings as well; and they are truly alien, having followed a different evolutionary pathway than humanity.

Among the many interesting ideas within the book is an analysis of the individual as a concept; what is consciousness, and is it a good thing? The depiction of a computer-substrate ‘afterlife’ (and the visits from next-of-kin) was also remarkable, albeit disturbing.

I enjoyed the book’s action sequences, and Peter Watts‘ imagination, but was left wanting more out of the characters. The protagonist’s personality developed through the course of the novel, but the story is driven by plot and science, and I prefer a novel propelled by character. I do, however, recommend this book to anybody who enjoys hard science fiction.

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a morning walk

I have a delightful twenty-minute walk to work every day near the edge of a large university campus, beside a forested park. This morning’s was particularly revitalizing. It was cool, around the freezing point, and I could feel the pricks of winter’s final needles in my face, ears and fingers. My hair was slightly wet from my morning ablutions; I could feel the air attempting to freeze the ever-thinning follicles, and my moustache was damp from condensed nostril-exhaust.

All in all it was a lovely morning; I realized that all these sensations were signs that I was alive, vibrant.

Birds sang their morning arias, echoing within dark trees silhouetted against the morning sky.

The sky was surreal; sunrise was imminent. The eastern sky was a luminous indigo; overhead, deep cobalt. Several stars were visible, but they would soon vanish behind dawn’s blush.

The sun was reflected as a crescent moon, but the rest of the moon’s disk was barely darker than the firmament. The crescent hung dreamlike: I could almost detect the string that held it from above — it couldn’t possibly sit there, quiet and still, without spectral support from the heavens.

The morning walk set the tone for the day and my worries and insecurities vanished; like hallucinations, like phantasms born in a dream.

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May the path be flat before your weary feet.

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M’arz’ahn

Rain was a chimera; a hallucinatory anecdote, a cruel dream.

The pervasive wind had finally stilled so I tried to work up enough saliva to spit out the accumulated grit of the morning’s travel, but couldn’t achieve enough moisture to notice the difference and only succeded in scraping my sandpaper tongue across chafed mouthparts.

I looked down from the crest of the hill.

A lazy river curled around the western edge of a mist-coloured city. While waiting patiently for Dauphene or Sandorsen to enlighten me regarding the sight below, I imagined the cool chill of the river-water and the ecstasy of sinking to the bottom of a pool, away from the ubiquitous dust of the prairie.

Emotive emanations passed between the two Sages, but they sat on the baldanders in silence. The sun slowly climbed the sky.

My patience — which had lasted for over an hour — finally ran out. With as much aplomb as I could manage, I asked: “What city lies below?”

Sandorsen replied with a query of his own: “What is it that you see?”

“A city many times larger than my home.”

“Describe it fully, if you would.”

I looked carefully and said, “Imposing walls surround a city of many buildings. A monolith-tower rises out of the city’s hub and thrusts high above the other structures. Radiating out from the tower are eight concentric rings of interconnected buildings.”

Sandorsen gazed downhill and said, “Do you see people?”

A moment later, I replied: “No. No signs of movement. Perhaps it is deserted.”

Sandorsen nodded and said, “It is M’arz’ahn, the ghost-city.”

 

Cartoon Character Match-Making, Part I

My database is woefully small, but I’m considering starting a cartoon version of Plenty of Fish:

My daughter was watching TV, and I caught a small sample of Turtle Princess (from a bizarre cartoon called  Adventure Time); I instantly thought of Touché Turtle, and I think the two are a perfect match…

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The Razor’s Edge, a book review

Of Human Bondage is generally considered W. Somerset Maugham’s masterpiece, but The Razor’s Edge was his most successful novel (economically). Maugham is a character in the story — the first-person narrator — and he assures the reader that it is a true story, with nothing embellished (surely, at the very least, an over-simplification: even assuming this is a true story, Maugham has undoubtedly embellished it). Whether the novel is based on real events has been a topic of debate since the novel’s publication, but I find it difficult to believe it is a true-life story. Similar plots occur in at least three other works of his (The Hero (1901), The Fall of Edward Barnard (1921), and The Road Uphill (1924)). I suspect that the plot intrigued him and, after his visit to India in 1938 when he met Ramana Maharshi (the inspiration for Shri Ganesha in the novel), he finally got it the way he wanted in The Razor’s Edge. Of course, as all authors do, he populated the novel with characters that had similar characteristics to those that he met in real life.

He undoubtedly wrote the novel in the five years during WW II that he lived in Beaufort County, on Bonny Hall Plantation, which was owned by Nelson Doubleday, who just happened to have been in charge of Doubleday, which published the novel in 1944.

It is probable that Gray Maturin’s character was based on  Doubleday, a very tall, soft-spoken businessman. And it is almost certain that Elliot Templeton was inspired by Sir Henry ‘Chips’ Channon. It becomes less clear, however, whether Larry Darrell (who took The Road Not Taken) was modeled on a real person; some have suggested Guy Hague, others Christopher Isherwood (who wanted nothing to do with the connection), but neither real-life person fits the story well if we are to believe Maugham’s assertion that nothing in the novel was embellished. It is quite conceivable that Larry is based on a type of person; an amalgam of Maugham’s imagination and the people the he had met (there is an interesting site devoted to the identification of Darrell).

Whatever the inspiration for the novel was, it is a good read, particularly the way Maugham juxtaposes the upper-class, the poor, and the saintly Larry Darrell. As usual, Maugham’s characterizations are brilliant, and the descriptions of the different strata of society are wonderful period pieces. Maugham’s female characters are generally not as likeable as their male counterparts, and I found that to be the case in this novel as well. The male characters, although flawed, are presented in a much more sympathetic manner.

Recommended.

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Zira Island

While wandering through the digital world, I came across an interesting architectural project by a Denmark firm, Bjarke Ingles Group (BIG). The architectural design is based on the seven peaks of Azerbaijan and the project was imagined by Avrositi Holding, based in Baku, Azerbaijan, with the goal being to set a new standard for luxury and sustainable living by creating a carbon-neutral eco-island with low-end resource usage that is independent of external resources.

http://flash.big.dk/projects/zir/

Zira Island (aka Nargin) is the largest island in the Baku Archipelago, which separates the Bay of Baku from the Caspian Sea. The surrounding region is highly dependent on oil, but the projected development on the island will use alternate, renewable resources. Heat pumps, submerged in the Caspian Sea, will heat and cool buildings; Solar Hot Water Collectors, integrated into the buildings’ design, will provide hot water; photovoltaic cells, installed on facades and rooftops, will generate electricity; and off-shore wind farms,  positioned on existing oil platforms, will provide additional, sustainable electrical power. Desalination plants will provide potable water, and waste water will be collected, treated, and recycled for irrigation. Solid waste will be composted and recycled as fertilizer.

I’m not a proponent of luxury complexes, but at least this development is environmentally viable. I think the Zira Island project is a step in the right direction.

For more information:

Bjarke Ingles Group

Avrositi Holding

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What is Time?

So, what is time? It strikes me as an elusive, nebulous concept.

Einstein’s theory states that space-time is malleable; it can be manipulated, bent and twisted. Is there any possibility that time could be distorted in such a way that paradoxes would not occur and we could travel into the past? Most physicists say no, but they have found no mathematical proofs that rule out the possibility.

Travel into the future is certainly possible; we’re relentless time-travelers, but is it possible to accelerate (or decelerate) the process?

Why is time linear? Why do we remember the past, but not the future? Why does the arrow of time point inexorably toward tomorrow? We take the arrow of time as a given, but what makes it so?

One way of explaining time — at least our perception of it — is through the second law of thermodynamics: entropy (disorder) increases as time passes: the universe, once very ordered, is becoming increasingly disordered with the passage of time (you can scramble an egg, but unscrambling it back into its original egg-form is much more difficult). We can perceive changes in entropy, so perhaps the passage of time is a concept that is defined by consciousness.

Time seems to be a fundamental law of the universe; but, according to physicists, the flow of time, as we perceive it, is not a fundamental law. There is even speculation that our section of the universe might be unique, and other fundamental laws might apply in another corner of the universe. Perhaps there is a place where entropy is decreasing; perhaps time runs backward to a being in this place, and they would think it was odd that we perceive it else-wise. Some physicists have posited a multiverse, like a tree that branches with each decision node; these branches occur at certain nodes of time. Perhaps this is why time, for us, travels forward: we cannot travel back through these nodes.

[I feel the need to digress…

Am I only taking my own life in hand when I make my decision to not look both ways before crossing the street? If I fail to look and other factors conspire against me, I might not get to the other side alive. But if I do look, or if there were no cars zooming along the pavement, I will get safely to the other side. There are many different possibilities: I may even decide not to cross the street. The multiverse theory postulates that the universe splits at these nodes, and all possibilities take place: there are an infinite number of universes, some of which contain me (in many different forms), and in other universes I do not exist. I think it is incumbent on me, as a custodian for my future doppelgängers in those other universes, to ensure I look both ways before crossing the street.]

The Big Bang (some 14 billion years ago) may not have been a beginning; rather, a node in the multiverse.

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Further reading/viewing…

Time’s arrow and Boltzmann’s entropy

Einstein’s Dreams, a novel by Alan Lightman

What is time?

Salvador Dali on What’s My Line?

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The Fortress of Solitude; a book review

I enjoyed The Fortress of Solitude, but the book was a bit ragged in parts; then again, that may be part of its charm. For those who don’t know, the novel borrows its title from Superman’s secret lair (and the Superman comic borrowed the Fortress of Solitude name and idea from the Doc Savage pulps of the 1930s). In Jonathan Lethem’s novel, the main character, Dylan Ebdus, grows up in North Gowanus, a neighbourhood in Brooklyn. The novel explores themes of racial tension, comic books, music, the process of maturing, neighbourhood sub-cultures, Graffiti, drug use, and gentrification. The novel’s central character, Dylan Ebdus, grows up on Dean Street (his Fortress of Solitude), within the North Gowanus neighbourhood, which undergoes gentrification, eventually changing its name to Boerum Hill.

The novel is semi-autobiographical; Jonathan Lethem grew up in the area described in the novel, and Lethem’s father, like Dylan’s fictional father in the book, is an avant-garde artist. Additionally, when Lethem was thirteen his mother passed away from a brain tumor; and, in the novel, Dylan’s mother abandons him: although the two circumstances are vastly different, the feelings felt by an awkward, teenage boy may be quite similar.

The reader is steeped in the character of Dylan Ebdus (as a child in third person, as an adult in first person) as he encounters many eccentric personalities (acquaintances, friends, and even a lifelong enemy), but it is his intermittent best friend, Mingus Rude, who is the great, unheralded hero.

The story includes a magic ring that some critics found gimmicky, but the ring is an important symbol; in the novel, it purportedly imparts the ability to fly and become invisible, but it is also a symbol of the lasting relationship between Dylan and Mingus, even when they are apart. And the ring can be viewed as a metaphor for a comic book aficionado’s imagination, and drug use. The ring may also be a device that allowed the author to step into the story, particularly as an invisible character; as Dylan, but using his own memories within the fictional construct to tell the tale. Ultimately, the ring may have a  more powerful effect than flight and invisibility: the power to extract truth.

I’ve also read Jonathan Lethem’s Gun with Occasional Music, As She Climbed Across the Table, and Motherless Brooklyn: Motherless Brooklyn is still my favourite, but The Fortress of Solitude may be a better novel, albeit with a less charismatic protagonist.

Recommended.

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