At times, this read more like a Neil Gaiman than an Adrian Tchaikovsky novel: a child, Liff, living on one of the terraformed worlds in Avrana Kern's At times, this read more like a Neil Gaiman than an Adrian Tchaikovsky novel: a child, Liff, living on one of the terraformed worlds in Avrana Kern's universe encounters a group of strangers who capture her attention. Are they from one of the outer farms? Why do they seem different from the other settlers of her world? Why is her teacher, Miranda, who is one of these strangers, so compelling? Why does she have memories of meeting them before, and horrific memories of them dying sometime ago? It is a story with talking birds and a witch on the borderlands of childhood memory...
Tchaikovsky confuses us, the readers, much like the characters in the book get confused. Liff fondly remembers her grandfather who founded the settlement with his fellow terraformers. She has a memory, or is it a vision, of him embarking on an important search from which he never returned. Was he seeking the witch? But Captain Holt died generations before Liff was born. But she remembers him as her grandfather.
Don't worry that you are losing the thread of Tchaikovsky's narrative as he weaves through time, as he does in this entire series, and the stories of the different groups. I thought I had missed something important, but apparently, so did all the characters in the story. As we learn the tale of Miranda's group, an exploration team made up from the Portiid, capital-H Human, Octopus, and parasitic bacterial hybrid civilization we met in the earlier books, Tchaikovsky ultimately clarifies the confusion. To explain it in this review would be a huge spoiler. It was indeed something tricky to get your mind around, and the characters themselves had some trouble accepting it too.
That said, this third book of the Children of Time series again makes us think about what the far-future might hold for our civilization. What would we be like if we could download our consciousness into artificial media? What if we could generate new organic bodies at will? What if we could merge the memories or "understandings" of other species into our own?
"What if...?"-- is the essence of all good science fiction, and Tchaikovsky serves that up in style. I think this series will make the Asimov of our generation, if he isn't already!...more
It definitely appears that Adrian Tchaikovsky is our generation's Arthur C. Clarke or Isaac Asimov. I really must get around to his other works of ficIt definitely appears that Adrian Tchaikovsky is our generation's Arthur C. Clarke or Isaac Asimov. I really must get around to his other works of fiction, but right now, I'm really enjoying his world (or should I say worlds) of the remnants of humanity and their portiid spider allies!
At first, this sequel to Children of Time (#1) seemed to follow the same formula as the original: a terra-forming team from the late stages of "imperial earth" has found a promising system, just like Avrana Kern's team did. When the final war erupts back home and they realize they cannot go back, they do their best to set about their job, this time using the same Rus-Califi Virus to help evolve octopuses brought from earth to help create human-habitable worlds on the planets of Damascus and Nod. Once again, complications ensue, and things don't go according to plan. However, in this book, the Old-Empire team's story is told as historical flash backs interspersed between the story of a current mission of Kern's World Portiids and Humans seeking out other survivors of the Old Empire. This latter group, with the latest familiar Portia/Bianca/Fabian generation and Human descendants of the Gilgamesh, come across the Octopus civilization of Damascus and something else amongst these cephalopods that is strange and dangerous. This is where the book takes on a somewhat different aspect.
The clever spiders and humans have a lot of trouble communicating clearly with their newly found Octopus cousins, so they are not sure if they are friend or foe, especially with the dark menace lurking in the background. The challenge of figuring all this out is the essential conflict in the story. Meanwhile, Tchaikovsky continues to pile on extensions to his numerous wild ideas started in book one. As readers, we marvel at the weirdness created when consciousness can be stored electro-mechanically (or via a network of ants in Kern's case) and how such stored consciousnesses can interact with one another. We begin to ponder upon the possible communication challenges between species that evolved in wildly different contexts of cognition and environment. And then...we are introduced to an entirely alien microscopic species that can store information and consciousness at the atomic level.
I imagine that this review itself must be hard to understand if you are unfamiliar with the "Children or Time" universe, as I am simply throwing out to you these wild yet difficult concepts that Tchaikovsky uses as his underlying plot structures. Perhaps that is actually the one weakness in these books: the underlying ideas are so very different, even for science fiction (or at least the sci-fi I grew up with), that it can sometimes be hard to fully understand and appreciate what's actually happening in the narrative, especially as it first unfolds. Like every good author, Tchaikovsky doesn't just tell you. He shows you. When the ideas are this wild and complex, though, it's difficult to catch the plot turns right away.
Even with the weirdness and complexity, there is something reassuring about these stories. I think Tchaikovsky never loses sight of universal human truths and patterns of history, and we see those as touchstones within his worlds of wonder and strangeness....more
This is the science fiction I've been waiting for! If you like pondering the possibilities of space travel, deep-space hibernation, terra-forming, nonThis is the science fiction I've been waiting for! If you like pondering the possibilities of space travel, deep-space hibernation, terra-forming, non-human intelligence, all of which makes you re-examine our present, human condition, Adrian Tchaikovksy's "Children of Time" books are for you.
The book opens as human civilization seems to have just passed its peak. It is off terraforming far-flung planets with amazing technology, but at home, things are falling apart politically as the earth has reached its social and environmental limits. In a terraforming experiment gone slightly awry, one mission has found a suitable, green-blue, earth-like world for future habitation, but the virus that was to speed up the evolution of intelligent life on the planet gets mis-targeted due to an insurrection on the mission. In the meantime, a civilization-ending war breaks out on Earth. Fast forward a few thousand years to when the revamped humans come along, once again fleeing the chaos of the rebuilt Earth, to find a care-taker Artificial Intelligence orbiting the green planet wich is now inhabited by sentient spiders who benefited from the terraform virus.
The story goes back and forth cleverly between the latest human survivors struggling on their ark ship to the portiid spiders on the green planet, ever evolving, learning and developing not only technical skills but a keen morality. This point-counterpoint between familiar humans and the seemingly alien arachnids is very thought-provoking. The reader is torn between wanting the humans to come to a safe haven without destroying this incredible spider-society their ancestors unintentionally created. The ending does not disappoint.
Tchaikovksy uses some interesting techniques here, given the back-and-forth between the two civilizations. I enjoyed how, because the spider lifetimes are still much shorter than the human, he recycles the same character names of the spiders over the succeeding generations. On the human side, we have the convenience of going into hibernation to pass the centuries in between points of their voyage. It was interesting to think about how the characters' lives spanned centuries and even millenia, but their actual lives were all in short bursts of activity in between hibernations cycles of centuries. It gives one an interesting perspective of the meaning of "a lifetime".
Perhaps one disappointing aspect was the lack of character development in some individuals. I couldn't quite understand the love-affair between Lain, the female engineer of the ark ship, and Holsten Mason, its cultural historian. I guess things get confusing when the age difference between the characters gets distorted through their "on-again/off-again" relationship, so to speak.
That said, this was an incredible, thought-provoking work that does what good science fiction should: make us think about our humanity....more
I find this a difficult book to rate, mostly because it debates key social science issues which were a scant part of my academic experience. EssentialI find this a difficult book to rate, mostly because it debates key social science issues which were a scant part of my academic experience. Essentially, Graeber and co-author David Wengrow begin the book by examining the question of the historical/anthropological roots of inequality, starting with the old academic chestnut of Rousseau's "noble savage" concept of a world where our ancient ancestors had much more equalitarian systems due to the simplicity of their lifestyles that were eventually overwhelmed by hierarchies imposed by growing complexities adapted to the technology of agriculture and war.
They quickly begin to look at various anthropological case studies, really going back to the "Dawn of Everything", in which it appears that mankind did not necessarily need to follow a set, expected evolutionary path from goddesses and gardens to farms, guns, germs and steel that most historians seem to focus on. In fact, they point out that many alternatives arrangements seem to have possibly existed and could still exist for the ways in which we politically organize ourselves.
A highlight of the book for me were the counter-cases of how much the "noble savages" of North America may have encouraged the European enlightenment throughout the 16th to 18th centuries. I had never heard of the Baron of Lahontan's travels and his records of the indigenous sage Kondarionk's wisdom. Interesting stuff there!
One aspect of the book that folks may nitpick about is how the authors criticize past historians' and anthropologists' assumptions and cherry picking of facts to reach their conclusions about the inevitability of our current social hierarchies while they themselves may be doing a bit of this with their own counterpoints. Again, I don't have the background in anthropology to be able to criticize this myself.
All in all, this was an enjoyable, yet somewhat lengthy book about how humankind's social inequalities and social structures may have evolved from, while pointing out possibilities that they were not inevitable. One is left pondering why we can't creativity rethink our way out of many of our current messes given the apparent flexibility and adaptability of our ancestors. Perhaps we can, and there is hope!...more
This is a book that is a little hard to describe. In one sense, it is almost like non-fiction history paradoxically about the future. In another senseThis is a book that is a little hard to describe. In one sense, it is almost like non-fiction history paradoxically about the future. In another sense, it is a science fiction novel. Kim Stanley Robinson tries to craft something in between these two, and it probably works for some people and not for others.
Robinson's attempt is noble. He throws viable solution after viable solution at the problem of climate change into his story, which is the actual purpose of the UN-backed "Ministry of the Future" reflected in the book title. These solutions are quite good and well-researched; however, I think many people find, as I did at first, that it makes the storyline of the multiple characters somewhat difficult to follow. It helped to focus my reading in longer and more frequent sessions. If you are like me, with multiple books on the go, it gets difficult coming in and out of the story of such a large work. The book also seems to span about 10-20 years, although this is only inferred, and it tells the extensive chronology from the point of view from multiple characters, some of whom we are only introduced to briefly for a chapter and may play the role of inanimate objects such as stars or carbon atoms! On the whole, the story is mostly told from the point of view of the chairperson of the Min of F, Mary Murphy and the lone survivor of a terrible heat wave, Frank May.
If the plot and character development can be a bit hard to follow, I found that the scientific and technical explanations of the solutions used to abate climate change were brilliant. I believe that many of these ideas come out of actual current scientific papers on possible geo-engineering. Perhaps even more impressive is Robinson's focus on the societal and economic changes that need to take place. As is becoming more and more obvious, the planet's ecological stability, and hence human society's sustainability, can no longer continue on a path of unbridled capitalism when there is no adherence to a social contract.
This is definitely not a book that presents an entertaining plot populated with complex characters. It definitely is a book that makes us stop, ponder our future, consider new ways of doing things, and ask ourselves: what if we tried this!?...more
I'm probably being a little stingy with just three stars. While deciding to avoid the long holds queue at my local library by buying this famous work I'm probably being a little stingy with just three stars. While deciding to avoid the long holds queue at my local library by buying this famous work outright, I decided to read some of Cixin Liu's short stories from To Hold Up the Sky and was quite impressed. In these short stories, Liu quickly sets up amazingly imaginative sci-fi scenarios and creates a neat and tidy story arc in as little as 20 pages. There were a few quirky cultural things that I found slightly odd, but the stories themselves were refreshingly brilliant.
The Three-Body Problem is also remarkably imaginative and somewhat different from the typical bread-and-butter western sci-fi that most of us are used to. Liu mixes aspects of 20th century Chinese history (the Cultural Revolution), the search for extraterrestrial life, multi-dimensional physics and unique cast of characters into a tale that unfolds more like a mystery novel than a sci-fi epic. Perhaps this is where I had a bit of trouble coping: the story flips back and forth between the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath to modern China, and although it is clear which timeframe you're in, you sometimes aren't sure what you are being told to pay attention to in the flipping. There may be an element of Chinese cultural differences that also just may not quite seem to translate naturally, as I found the motivations and actions of some of the characters hard to understand at times.
That said, the premise of an alien civilization, Trisolaris, whose triple-sun, unstable solar system keeps disrupting their civilization's development, is quite thought-provoking. When a somewhat embittered Earth scientist makes contact with them through the radio telescope at her secret government facility and essentially invites them to take over our troubled planet, all sorts of interesting things start to happen.
I guess I'll need to read book #2 just to see how Liu handles all the moving pieces he's put in motion!...more
Unlike the previous book that tended to skip about thematically, this book was a more detailed chronology of Douglas' all-t0-brief life. It sadly concludes with his untimely death under odd circumstances in Hawaii, where he was said to have fallen into an animal trap and mauled by a bullock.
David Douglas grew up interested in gardening and plants in Scotland, and learned from some fairly influential gardeners and botanists of that age until their bright and energetic student caught the attention of the London Horticultural Society. The society first funded and arranged a trip for Douglas to the state of New York, where he was whisked around not only various nurseries and natural areas of study, but also to various upstate cities with the blessings and friendship of Governor Clinton. This seemed to set a foundation for him as an avid traveler and energetic and well-organized naturalist collector. The society was so pleased with his collecting successes, they quickly sponsored another voyage, this time to the newly opened region of the Pacific Northwest and the Columbia River on the other side of the continent.
Having been born in southern British Columbia, the area's history, geology, flora and fauna have always been of great interest to me. Any well-written narrative, as Jack Nisbet's truly is, can capture my imagination, taking me back to what it must have been like for those early explorers and wanderers that came through the mostly empty region, sparsely populated by the various indigenous peoples that were present. David Douglas was essentially based in Fort Vancouver, now a suburb of Portland, OR, but he traveled extensively up and down the Columbia River, from Astoria to Spokane and beyond, collecting and cataloging hundreds of species that were all new to the British. Perhaps the most well-known is the pine tree that now carries his name, the Douglas Fir, which the British navy had a keen interest in as a natural resource. In a second later trip to the Pacific Northwest, again sponsored by the London Horticultural Society, Douglas even turned northward from the Columbia and came through the Okanagan on his was to the fur-trading regions of New Caledonia, the early name of British Columbia given by all of the Scottish fur trade personnel stationed there.
Jack Nisbet has brought David Douglas and his historical acquaintances to life, along with the sights and sounds of what this beautiful part of the earth was like nearly two hundred years ago. When you squint past the skyscrapers of Seattle and the freeways crisscrossing Washington, Oregon and Idaho, you still can see and feel the Pacific coastal rainforest giving way to the arid plains of the interior. All these species cataloged so long ago can still be found for those who have the patience to wander and look just slightly off the beaten path....more
I9This was a beautiful book filled with gorgeous color illustrations, maps, and a handy chronological timeline of the life milestones of the exploringI9This was a beautiful book filled with gorgeous color illustrations, maps, and a handy chronological timeline of the life milestones of the exploring botanist, David Douglas. Jack Nisbet's prose is good, and I like the way he visits the same areas his 19th-century subject explored in the Pacific Northwest. in order to give a modern perspective.
My biggest complaint--and reason for knocking off a star or two--is the logical structure and flow of the book. It was indeed useful to have the chronology in the back of the book because Nisbet's chapters seemed odd to me. I would have preferred a more chronological flow to the book, but Nisbet instead presented the explorations of Douglas in themed chapters, which described, for example: the Columbia River's challenging entrance from the Pacific Ocean, the mixed-blood families of the fur trade, fire management of forests, and other aspects of David Douglas's explorations. Each chapter naturally contains a lot of descriptions of the plant and animal life noted by the explorer; however, this often didn't quite fit with a chapter's focus. It also felt jarring to basically get an overall outline of Douglas' two visits to the Pacific Northwest within just the first chapter or two, that ostensibly described the Columbia River Bar and the native inhabitants, and then come back in each subsequent chapter with more details of the flora and fauna collecting aspects thrown in to fill some context of the other themes. This may have worked if there was a great deal more material to cover, and you wanted to dive deeper into these themes, but for me the chapters seemed somewhat artificial and contrived in a book of around 150 pages.
Nonetheless, I enjoyed learning about David Douglas, who was indeed an important contributor to understanding the natural environment of the Pacfic Northwest coast from Oregon to British Columbia, my homeland. He had a remarkable career for a labourer's son with no formal science education in a time where the ideas of the enlightenment, science, and opening of the North American frontier all came together....more
It was a nice change for me to read something I could complete easily in about a week, and this short novel (or novella?) by Emily St. John Mandel fitIt was a nice change for me to read something I could complete easily in about a week, and this short novel (or novella?) by Emily St. John Mandel fit the bill nicely. Fulfilling my recent hunger for science fiction, this is a nice, non-technical exploration of what may happen in a world where time travel is not only possible, but a tool used by specially-trained agents of an overtly named "Time Institute" to ensure that no one screws up history in a really bad way.
The book is playful. It starts with a mystery that spans different eras--the early 20th century, the 21st century, 23rd and 25th--in which various characters have a bizarre experience with an anomaly based in a Vancouver Island forest grove. To solve this mystery, Gaspery-Jacques Roberts is specially trained as a time-traveler with the aforementioned Time Institute, and sent to interview those who have had experiences with the anomaly. He then wreaks havoc.
Although the whole-idea of causation in time travel fiction gets a bit confusing, the book treats this playfully, not asking the reader to think too deeply on relativistic effects but instead on how lives, events, and relationships can be different when timelines gain some fluidity. St. John Mandel's writing is beautiful to boot.
Unless I have missed something, the book isn't overly deep, but more of a romp into the surprising and clever possibilities found in closing loops through the ever revolving door of time. ESJM wrote this during the Covid-19 pandemic and pandemics are reflected throughout the book. Some reviewers, more astute than me, have posited that perhaps the author just wants us to chill out a bit, and realize that we don't really have too much control over history (even as time travelers). It all tends to just come out in the wash on its own accord....more
My three stars probably don't fairly reflect the thought and scholarship that Niall Ferguson put into this work. It was good, but I essentially felt tMy three stars probably don't fairly reflect the thought and scholarship that Niall Ferguson put into this work. It was good, but I essentially felt that he throws so many facts, figures and historical examples, his thesis tends to be somewhat clouded.
As far as I can tell, this was basically a book that says: life is complicated, we are not that great at predicting the future because it is complicated, and societal solutions to these complex disasters suck because they themselves are complicated. No arguments on the thesis (if I'm reflecting it accurately), but Ferguson doesn't really give us much new to chew upon.
Indeed, history is full of examples where some sort of disaster comes along and sets human civilization back a step of so. Some, like the black death of the middle ages, have large-scale, long-term and wide-ranging effects, while others, like a localized earthquake, are somewhat contained and practically forgotten in a generation. Ferguson gives us many historical examples and classifications of various disaster scenarios, and does readily show us how our human responses, i.e. political responses, can either mitigate and exacerbate outcomes.
Many reviewers have criticized Ferguson for trying to write a book that uses the Covid-19 pandemic as a prime example. Since he was writing mostly in 2020, they argue it was a bit too early to draw any valid conclusions. I don't really see this as a fair criticism, as, although he uses the recent pandemic as a key example, he uses it because it is timely and not necessarily because we had learned the results of our approaches. He was comparing the response to past responses of the body politic, and the trends are indeed similar. If anything, I think Ferguson was relatively far-sighted with his analysis of the political response and its shortcomings in some areas and its strengths in others. He also glimpsed some of the fallout that we are now encountering with rampant inflation and the ratched-up intensity of global politics, especially between the West and China and Russia.
In short, this is a decent book but perhaps targeted at the more academic reader. For magnitude of footnoted facts tends to obscure the message for the rest of us....more
This was a most enjoyable book, somewhat surprisingly more so than All the Light We Cannot See, which was right up my alley being a WWII historical fiThis was a most enjoyable book, somewhat surprisingly more so than All the Light We Cannot See, which was right up my alley being a WWII historical fiction piece.
It's hard for me to put my finger on what I found so compelling in this Anthony Doerr book. Perhaps it was the eclectic group of characters, each of whom seemed endearing in their own quirky way: Seymour, the young autistic eco-terrorist living in modern day Idaho; Zeno Nenis, the gay erstwhile translator of Greek who has struggled to find his place in life; Omeir, a cleft-palate farm boy living in 15th century Bulgaria and drafted with his oxen into the siege of Constantinople; Anna, an orphan girl resident within Constantinople in the same period, who has a penchant for stealing ancient books; and finally, Konstance, a teenage voyager on a starship bound for a new world who is looking for answers in the ship's library.
Sometimes these books, with multiple characters whose stories crisscross over centuries, can get muddled and confusing, but this didn't happen to me (this time)--perhaps as I made a point to focus on this book more carefully rather than to engage in my bad habit of reading multiple books at once. Doerr uses the idea of an ancient Greek fable, a story where an idiotic shepherd, Aethon, struggles on a journey-quest to find a paradisical land in the sky, "Cloud Cuckoo Land", a place that will tie everything together in ultimate truth and understanding. Each of Doerr's chapters starts with a snippet from Aethon's tale and then beautifully intersects with the characters' stories--their journeys, their quests, their searches for meaning.
Without getting into details of the plot, which would be too difficult in a short review, I can only say that Aethon's quest for a magical "city in the clouds", where all truth will be revealed, is a metaphor for each character's own personal story. And like Aethon ultimately finds, once our idealized vision of the truth is just within our grasp, maybe a return to our very roots of being is all we truly need in the end....more
Catriona Silvey weaves a tale that explores many interesting themes: life choices, romance, platonic love, science, parallel worlds, reincarnation andCatriona Silvey weaves a tale that explores many interesting themes: life choices, romance, platonic love, science, parallel worlds, reincarnation and even the good ol' "brain-in-vat" meme. The story premise is a little similar to Kate Atkinson's Life After Life, but unlike those British WWII protagonists, Silvey's Thora and Santi are a modern couple who start to have serious deja vu after several rounds of meeting each other in different life incarnations.
There are commonalities in each lifetime. Each life iteration, they end up in Cologne, Germany and within each other's personal sphere. Sometimes they are the same age and other times vastly different. Sometimes they are lovers and other times student and teacher. What unites them in every case, though, is the love of the stars. After several "lives", they actually recognize each other more and more quickly and begin to retain the memory of the past lives.
The book is part life drama and part mystery, wrapped in a sort of scientific riddle that each of Thora and Santi approaches differently given the relative constancy of their contrasting characteristics even over lifetimes.
To explain more would give away the mystery. If any element of what I've described appeals to you, I highly recommend checking it out. Catriona Silvey has done well with her debut novel, and I hope she has plenty more coming....more
Peter Wohlleben covers a very important subject here: our latest understanding of how trees actually operate, which has grown in leaps and bounds overPeter Wohlleben covers a very important subject here: our latest understanding of how trees actually operate, which has grown in leaps and bounds over the last 30 years and has led to some big surprises given the seemingly ubiquitous subjects.
I would have dearly loved to give this book four or five stars, but I just couldn't. Although Wohlleben covers the science fairly well, and with a well-deserved sense of awe as to how little humans understand about these important fellow-travelers on our planet, something just didn't click for me. The chapters are somewhat short, and just as I felt I was gaining a deeper understanding of an arboreal mechanism, we were off to the next teasingly light chapter. Perhaps it was the translation from German, or the tricky line that science authors must maneuver between solid scientific accuracy and entertainment, but I was slightly disappointed in the book, especially given all its hype.
Don't get me wrong-- the book is definitely worth reading and has a valuable message that should help modern society gain a better understanding and appreciation of the natural world, but if you are already somewhat well read in natural science, you could come away hoping for just a little more....more
Accessible, clear, with a sometimes wry sense of humour. Carl Sagan's writing is all of these and more, making it no surprise that he was one of the mAccessible, clear, with a sometimes wry sense of humour. Carl Sagan's writing is all of these and more, making it no surprise that he was one of the most popular science writers of the 20th century.
In this book, Sagan expounds how important it is for science to be accessible and explainable--at least to some degree--to a popular audience. If it is not, we risk descending back to the dark ages of ignorance where myth, superstition, rumour, and dogmatism rule the day. Unfortunately, we have seen quite a slip backwards over the last 5-10 years, and Sagan's book is as timely now (perhaps moreso) as it was in the mid-1990s when first published.
He spends a significant part of the book debunking some powerful cultural myths such as alien abductions (very 1990s/X-Files) and witchcraft (very 1500s, Spanish Inquisition). These are important examples, and Sagan explains how the scientific method tries to deal with these phenomena, correctly stating how it cannot really explain them completely (or definitely support them) due to the lack of empirical evidence.
Perhaps what was most eerily prescient about this book, especially to us in the time of lying presidents, vaccination conspiracies, and flat-earthers, are some of Sagan's comments about where society seemed to be going in the 1990s. He knew things did not bode well for the MTV generation, with its entertaining videos and short sound bites. News flash: science is hard! Sloppy thinking is easy! He quotes John Stuart Mill, "If society lets any considerable number of its members grow up as mere children, incapable of being acted on by rational consideration of distant motives, society has itself to blame."
While I was reading the book, a Facebook meme about Carl Sagan was making the rounds with a quote from the text that sums things up nicely:
I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.
I started this book thinking it would be primarily a book of scientific insights about plants and the natural world, probably with a smattering of indI started this book thinking it would be primarily a book of scientific insights about plants and the natural world, probably with a smattering of indigenous wisdom mixed in for color; however, it was actually more the other way around, and that is ultimately what makes the book so powerful.
Robin Wall Kimmerer is a native American botanist and professor at SUNY. At first, I was a bit at a loss with her long and detailed accounts of native American legends and poetic descriptions of nature. Where was the scientific analysis of bio-diversity and species loss and....well, all those "sciency" things I had expected?
A few times, I almost lost patience with the book, but it grew on me. The science comes up here and there, but it is definitely not the focus of the book. Kimmerer really has a gift for words, and her descriptions and metaphors are truly beautiful and poetic. This kept me reading. I soon realized the deep wisdom the First Nations people had for this land, its plants and its animals. There are so many unique, yet common-sense, ways that these people had in looking at their natural environment as not just resources to be exploited, but as actual extended family. The salmon, the buffalo, the trees, the grasses, the berries, the three-sisters (corn, peas, squash) are all fellow beings with us, providing us with their gifts whilst relying on us to use them responsibly in order that they may also survive and floursish. This works when the people consume with gratitude and a mind for the bigger picture that ties us all together as living beings. It doesn't work when we act like hungry ghosts, always looking for more to fill the emptiness inside us.
Ultimately, I realized how my early impatience with the author's narrative was somewhat a symptom of my western-European cultural background. As we learn new perspectives, our patience grows with understanding. And I learned a few things about sweet-grass, wetlands, trees, and eco-system restoration along the way.
In Canada, our nation is currently struggling with our past relationship with the first peoples. Past authorities in the government and the church treated them so badly, thinking to somehow "improve" these people by destroying their languages and culture: assimilate or die. There is now a desire to make amends that is slowly growing, as we stumble forward with reconciliation. I think there is an opportunity here! Kimmerer's book is a treasure; it could lead the way for the indigenous peoples to teach us about being different in the world, treating nature with respect, and giving us a broader perspective that is so needed in our society right now. ...more
It turns out the Pollan had Huxley's experiment with mescaline covered quite well. It wasn't really necessary for me to read the original.
That said, it was interesting to read something about the psychedelic experience written in the middle of the 20th century by an author like Huxley, who I find has a writing style more in line with the 19th century—somewhat ironic as I think about it, as Huxley always seemed to take on groundbreaking or futuristic topics....more
I hesitated a little when clicking the five stars rating for this one. Why? Good question. The writing is very good, and the storyline is truly epic. I hesitated a little when clicking the five stars rating for this one. Why? Good question. The writing is very good, and the storyline is truly epic. The characters are well-rounded and complex; very good examples of humans living in a complicated world in terrible times. The book contains many messages at many levels, and I often shuddered in how eerily prescient Octavia Butler was in predicting future trends as the US was just starting to contemplate (barely) the possible consequences of climate change, global pandemics, libertarian culture, American right-wing evangelism, societal breakdown converging in the near future from when this was written. Perhaps I've just hit the nail on the head: Butler wrote something 25 years ago that so frighteningly compares to the reality of our current trajectory, that I don't want to admire this book as much as I do. I wish I could laugh off her dystopian view, just accept it as a cool piece of sci-fi, but I can't.
Along with the first book in this couplet, Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler's narrative reflects a little too close for comfort on our North American 21st century society. I always think of a five-star book that is one I would treasure in my library and want to return to over and over again. I truly believe everyone should read this series, but I hope that once is enough to make one ponder carefully and take to heart the human calamities that could be just around the corner.
In Parable of the Talents, we return to the main character's life story told through the eyes of her "estranged" daughter and find what happens after Lauren Olamina settles with her Earthseed followers in the small community of Acorn in northern California. The group formed almost by miracle in Parable of the Sower on a consensual model of community members helping each other stay alive and work towards a better future from the current American chaos. Without giving away too much, disaster eventually strikes the community via an out of control Christian cult called the "Crusaders" who ostensibly are following their great, God-given gift of a president in "making America great again" by forcing warped fundamentalist Christian values on others, especially folks living a weird commune lifestyle. Butler's description of the hypocritical "evangelist" president is eerily familiar for those who live through the actual presidency of 2016-2020.
With the scattering of Acorn's members, Lauren remains driven to promote her quasi-religious ideas of Earthseed, perhaps to the expense of searching for the infant daughter who was taken from her by the "Crusaders". Or so it would seem...
I had never really understood the New Testament Parable of the Talents. This is the one in which Jesus explains how the wealthy man goes away on business, leaving a small amount of money (talents) with three of his key workers. Two of the workers use the "talents" and re-invest them, making good returns. The third worker simply buries his "talents" for safe keeping until his masters' return. I had always thought the wealthy man was a bit harsh on the guy who just ensured he maintained what he was given, rather than using it to increase the wealth. Now I see that we are all born with various "talents", things that we can do in this life to make things better, both for ourselves and for others. It can be risky to do so, but it is indeed better than hiding your talents away in the fear of losing everything and ultimately accomplishing nothing.
As I started Kindred, it felt a bit like an young-adult novel. Very clear descriptions and dialog. Not very flowery, imaginative prose, which was veryAs I started Kindred, it felt a bit like an young-adult novel. Very clear descriptions and dialog. Not very flowery, imaginative prose, which was very different from my recent reading of Fugitive Pieces by Ann Michaels.
However, as you get a bit further into the book, you realize this is just Butler's writing style: clear, direct and to the point. Her contextual setting provides all the imagination and inventiveness and mood you need. Kindred is a book that is hard to classify. Is it science-fiction? Is it historical-fiction? Is it feminist lit? It fits a little bit into each one of these categories.
Butler tells us the story of Dana and Kevin, a mixed-race couple (she's Black, he's White), living rather ordinary young-aspiring author lives in LA in the mid 1970s. Dana begins to have strange fainting spells in which she is transported to early 19th century Maryland, to the slave plantation of her ancestors. We are never told exactly how this works, but it is tied into the saving of the young master, Rufus, son of the plantation owner who keeps getting into life-threatening scrapes. Dana and her husband quickly realize that the life of Rufus is tied into the very existence of Dana's slave ancestors. She is left in a terrible, uncontrollable situation in which she is not sure how best to proceed. Dana, being black, obviously finds life in the antebellum South rather tricky, regardless of her tenuous friendship eith Rufus. Luckily, every time her life is seriously threatened (similarly to Rufus) she pops back to her own time.
At first, Rufus as a boy seems likeable enough. Yes- he's somewhat racist, but that is due to the times in which he lives. He has a fairly open mind, and is quite thankful for Dana's opportune appearances to save him from trouble. At some points, it seems that the story may turn into a "how Dana changed the mind of one young plantation owner"; however, it is not to be. We find that the terrible treatment of black slaves is totally baked-into the system. Although Rufus can sometimes relate to Dana on a human to human level, there is just something too entrenched in his character that he ultimately cannot escape. His level of confused, conflicted wickedness seems to go up a notch on each of Dana's visits.
Although the writing style was a bit stark to my tastes, the story telling and thematic content Butler evokes is amazing. It is not surprising why she occupies a special niche of Black American, feminist science-fiction writers!...more
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