Blindsight by Peter Watts

Rating - 3: worth reading once (borrow it from a library)

"On the Mohs scale of sci-fi hardness, Blindsight is aggregated diamond nanorod." - AngryParsley

The aliens made First Contact via thousands of probes that photographed Earth down to a one-meter resolution. The human response was tiny, specialized, and fast-moving in pursuit. Everyone in the crew of five was something more than human, super-charged by genetics, surgery, and technology. Our protagonist is their Synthesist, a generalist who can explain the specialists to everyone back home; he explains the unusual well because he had to re-learn humans from the ground up after half his brain was removed.

...that distance—-that chronic sense of being an alien among your own kind—-it's not entirely a bad thing. It came in especially handy when the real aliens came calling.

The book has a collaboration rather than a tension between plot and ideas. Pondering philsophical, psychological, and scientific concepts is a part of understanding the action, not a distraction from it. It is a great sign for the writing when a discussion of human consciousness can be woven into the climax and add to it.

The book deals heavily with human brains and minds and the alteration thereof. No one in the main cast is an unaltered human; all have varying advantages and disadvantages from their alterations. The linguist is the most notable, constituting half the crew because she has surgically induced multiple personalities that work as a team; it is an upgrade, not a disorder. There is not discussion of what it means to be human so much as laying out some near- or transhuman minds and offering them for your inspection.

There is a progression in the book from humans to aliens to all minds. The beginning focuses on what has happened to humanity over the years, a conglomeration of technical advances that are mostly considered briefly. Humans can be refitted or upgraded, although many have retired and let the computers do all the work. Many uploaded permanently to their own virtual worlds.

The crew makes First Contact with the aliens, which gives us a chance for exploration. They are alien, not humans with rubber foreheads or in monster suits. I will not spoil it.

The interaction of the two lead to consideration of all minds. What does it mean to be human, particularly in a trans-human world? What does it mean to think, to be intelligent or conscious? And does it matter?

The book takes seriously the notion of the Cartesian theater. Do we see things directly, or is there some sort of little man in our heads viewing it all on a television? And then is there a little man in his head, and in his, and so on? The Cartesian theater sounds a lot like nonsense, but broken brains give us evidence that the brain might be processing things that way. The cast exhibits some of the evidence, and other cases are discussed. The titular "blindsight" is the case of receiving input that your conscious brain is not processing but might be available to subconscious or reflexive parts of your brain; your eyes and brain are still seeing but "you" are not.

Does there need to be any sort of "little man" or "I" at all? If you can have intelligence without consciousness, why have consciousness? A universe of computers that do not know they exist would be so much more efficient. (The book also takes seriously the notion of philosophical zombies. Yes, that is an actual academic term in theory of mind.)

Blindsight flirts with theories of consciousness early then backs away until they come to the fore of the plot. If you are reading gradually, you will have time for the information to sink in (or to be forgotten). I will leave it to the book, rather than carrying on. As I said, the philosophical lines grow with the plot, rather than infesting or displacing it, and you will enjoy their emergence.

I like the way that the speech is presented as having been translated. The characters speak in multiple languages, communicate with gestures and syllables, use computer assists, and are otherwise more efficient than baseline human conversation. Our narrator translates this into normal speech for us. The hidden fact of this succeeds better than Asimov's presentation of discussion within the Second Foundation or Scazi's under-use of digital telepathy. Surprisingly, it does not lead to mid-action info dumps, instead keeping things succinct.

The science fiction is very hard. There are 22 pages of notes and references explaining the science behind it. Kudos for putting that at the end rather than trying to shoehorn it into the plot. I saw nothing obviously wrong, although I am not qualified to comment on most of it, and it would take me a good deal of research just to pick out which parts are completely made up rather than based in a live theory.

The character development is foundational to the book. We spend most of our time with five characters, plus a few more in flashbacks. This gives plenty of time to develop them, some more than others. They interact with each other and display their differing views without necessarily sitting down for the info dump formal speech/debate. They are all likable in various ways. It is helpful to have a narrator who professionally sees what people mean, bringing our third person limited narrator slightly closer to an unreliable third person omniscient.

The book considers the borderline between created and "natural," machines and organisms. It considers the edges of consciousness and intelligence. It explicitly references Chinese Boxes and the question of non-intelligent parts in intelligent systems. In addressing intelligent systems, it does not then go on to conscious systems, where Gödel, Escher, Bach ponders whether a hive could be collectively conscious (the way our brain cells are). Pursuing that question may or may not make the ending more cheerful.

The book is often a downer, but there is great enjoyment to be had in the details and in the telling. I will leave you to them.

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Google notes this book as the only instance in existence of the phrase "treacly invaginations."

Death Note Volume 6: Give-and-Take by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata

Rating - 3: worth reading once (borrow it from a library)

I am really enjoying reviewing volumes of a completed series one-by-one, without having read the entire thing. It lets me note items as they arise, rather than trying to view the whole thing in hindsight. I imagine one of my friends who has read/seen the whole series reading these and laughing with the knowledge of what lies ahead. (Just kidding; like anyone reads this.) I must remember to take that "whole series" view at the end.

L's forces split over what path to take in pursuing the new Kira. Misa precipitates a final confrontation.

Is Misa only momentarily effectual, or is this enough of a reunion with Rem to make her an interesting character again? I fear that she will remain a one-note character after a strong introduction.

This volume has similarities to her introduction, bringing a bit of action into the series. It is done more effectively this time, both in terms of characters' competence and the writing for the action sequences.

It is a strong conclusion that brings back elements dropped earlier in the series. It shows that more is going on behind the scenes than the point-of-view characters know (or let on). Good. If L gets to be more of a child, the adults can act more like grown-ups.

It is nice to see plans flawlessly executed despite being spelled out in advance. It is nice to see mistakes being made, to greater or lesser detriment. It is nice to see unexpected elements arising to save the day (or just make it easier). The writing mixes cynicism, optimism, and realism in a refreshing way. We have a series about serial killers that remains remarkably bright and upbeat.

This is perhaps the reason for the injection of comic relief in the previous volume. Before The Eight, no major characters were completely unsympathetic. There is some reason to like even the minor characters. Sure, most of them are trying to kill or imprison each other, but they are upbeat, self-assured, and not needlessly cruel.

Except maybe Light. Two entire volumes stepping away from what a complete psycho he is could be a bit much. It does give us two contrasts, to take my usual theme. This other Kira is not an idealist and has no noble motives. This is the black to Light's gray. Meanwhile, we have white Light, what Light would have been like before crashing into Lord Acton's maxim. He does not see acceptable casualties. That makes Light a more sympathetic character, because he is fundamentally a good person, and it makes his mass murder and self-declared divinity more tragic.

No, the volume does not ponder that. It moves swiftly through The Eight's arc. But given the pace at which I am reading the series, I have time to reflect.

My only visual note is that Wedy gets shiny leather pants. Those pants are her characterization, in case you were hoping for more. Did anything with Misa and Rem or with Light's mother and sister meet Bechdel's Rule? It is probably not a good sign that I cannot remember his sisters name and that I am not sure his mother had a name. Maybe they will come back. You'd think that someone in his household must share some of his potential along with half his genetic code.

The story arc is briefly interesting but not particularly likable. It is a common problem in series that the first part is the best known, and so naturally everything gets compared to Light vs. L. Misa was briefly up to playing on the same field with our main characters, but The Eight were both less interesting and out of place. The entire structure of the story had to change to accommodate them, in return for which the main plot gets a few points of advancement. It ends well, but it was not the best conceivable way to spend two volumes.

collected edition
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Midnight at the Well of Souls by Jack Chalker

Rating - 2: not worth reading (skip it)

It starts slowly despite spectacle, picks up in the middle, gets weird, and ends on an extended anti-climax.

Well World is the central control computer for the universe. Hexes across its surface contain microcosms of many worlds, with differing climates and dominant races. Come to Well World and you will be assigned to a new hex in a new body. When dangerous researchers stumble through the Well Gate and seek ultimate control, a motley crew follows them and learns much about themselves.

The introduction is too long. We have a twenty-page prologue before meeting the protagonist, forty pages before reaching the planet where the story takes place, and another thirty pages of exposition before really entering Well World. If this is your first time reading an author, are you willing to give him ninety pages of leeway before getting on with it? Luckily, I am a giving soul.

The plot is not terribly unified. There is the thread that the characters are headed towards reunion and conflict, but the story events are just things that happen to them along the way. They pass through various hexes, discover and face the associated hazards, then move on, usually transformed in some way. Most of the characters do not even know where they are going, except that it is bad.

There is some small amount of character development, but it comes in fits and starts rather than showing growth over time. People change in mind as quickly as in body, and this is a planet where people get transformed whenever the author is bored.

There is some playing with karmic transformations, where what is inside is brought out, penance is imposed on a sinner, or the virtuous are rewarded. Other times the external change precedes the internal, so the change in body provides a change in perspective that leads to a change of mind. (Given that teleportation can accompany transformation, it might also be just the related change in setting that changes minds.) And sometimes the transformation is arbitrary, because hey, centaurs and mermaids!

The scattered plot creates difficulties for character development because we are following too many paths. The characters get scattered to their new bodies, and we spend a chapter or two with each character before unifying them into a smaller number of plot threads. It feels like a series of vignettes, and it was not clear that anything was going to come back together until it became clear that absolutely everything was destined to come together at the same time.

One character gets a turn as the point of view character then has no meaningful role again beyond "mount." Another has a huge character change that is explicitly announced at the end to have had no bearing on events whatsoever. Two theoretically plot-critical characters spend most of the book at center stage without character development, important lines, or much impact on the plot.

When the bad guys get their comeuppance at the end, it is hard to care much. They did some bad things before the main story (or perhaps the entire book) started, but they commit few sins on-page despite being repeatedly described as horrible people. Vengeance against...that guy who has been standing next to the main cast not doing anything for the entire book. Yay?

It does not help to have the protagonist lording his knowledge over everyone else for the last third of the book without explaining anything. It is like a mystery story where the detective finds half the clues "off-camera," then spends most of the book laughing about how no one else can figure it all out. It's not mysterious; it's irritating. Hiding all the explanations until the ending did not improve them.

The ending manages to be an anti-climax despite an appearance by God Himself to explain His creation. We get to the end only to discover that absolutely none of it mattered except for having a couple of people learn that striving is better than sameness. The ending is neither plot- nor character-driven. God takes over at midnight at the Well of Souls, and then we have bonus exposition as denouement. It is perhaps mollifying that you do not care much about the characters by that point anyway.

Before reading this book, I never needed to wonder whether the phrase "antelope-centaur sex" would be interpreted as a centaur having sex with an antelope, as someone having sex with a centaur whose lower body was an antelope rather than a horse, as two of those antelope-centaurs having sex with each other, or as sex involving a centaur who has been turned into an antelope (or vice versa). There are more permutations possible, so you can guess which ones the book chose to explore.

On a visual note, my edition's cover makes the centaur white, despite her being described as chocolate brown. Maybe no one told the illustrator. Maybe they decided that having a black girl on the cover would reduce sales. Maybe they thought interracial romance would offend people reading a book with interspecies romance. They did, however, make sure she was topless.

This book has not been compelling enough to have me read more Well World novels, especially when I'm told that the author descends into depicting his assorted transformation fetishes at the expense of writing quality. I am, however, interested in how someone might play with transformation themes in writing, and Downtiming the Night Side is reportedly his best work, so I should pursue that sometime.

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Death Note Volume 5: Whiteout by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata

Rating - 2: not worth reading (skip it)

This is the weakest volume so far. It has some value for setting up future events, but you probably would not lose much skipping it. There is enough context and repetition in the series to do so, since the original publication expected you to read it across a span of months not hours.

Light and Misa have been arrested. Light and L are working together to find Kira. Light and L are working together to find a new Kira. I'm not even trying to have this make sense without the context of previous volumes.

This volume is a change in direction, likely just a detour. That is less then thrilling when the main plot is sitting there in the same room, watching the detour happen.

We have an entire issue of Light sitting in a cell and not confessing to being Kira. It is not exciting reading.

We have more comedy added with increasing character development for Matsuda. It is fine as far as it goes, but I appreciate shorter bits of comic relief. We already have Misa, who has been reduced to a one-joke character. This is not the best mix of cerebral plotting and slapstick.

L, in the art and with some good characterization, is becoming more child-like and less creepy. He eats a lot of sweets and has an innocent if tired look. It is an enjoyable approach to a master detective.

Light falls off the map. Much of it is justified, but his character has been gutted for this volume. Even given the justified gutting, I expected him to be more active, less Wesley Crusher. Light's shadow is hanging about the plot, literally chained to L.

The development of the rest of the police cast is good. It took a while for them to be meaningfully distinguishable, and by the end of this volume they are all established characters, even Mogi. This is the most worthwhile part of the volume.

The side story itself is the main problem. It is a long digression from the main plot, with the main plot put on hold and left in plain sight. It is not as good as the main plot. While it is interesting and potentially worthwhile to consider what someone else would do with a death note, I don't know how much I should care about The Eight. It is a clever approach, making a new Kira a (bounded) mystery to the reader and to his associates. It gives us, however, eight people to try to learn and maybe care about in a short period of time, with the expectation that most or all of them are going away very soon. Mix in their exposition, give them time to do anything interesting, and we are running out of pages while still very much aware the main plot is on hold. Collectively, they are an interesting character, but The Eight is eight flat characters, and adding more of those to what had been a tight game of psychological fencing does not enrich the matter.

Aiber is immediately appealing, and his art is enjoyably different from the rest of the cast. We might someday reach a dozen non-Japanese characters. That is the great lesson of The Eight, right? The fate of the world is not always in the hands of gifted Japanese students; sometimes it is in the hands of corrupt Japanese businessmen.

Wedy is yet another disappointing female character. I know this is a boy's manga, but is Rem really as close as we get to a strong female character? Even Misa plus Rem were only mildly competitive in the intellectual games.

The physical moments with Light and L are enjoyable as well. There are a few good plot moments, particularly with the use of Misa and Matsuda. There is some set-up but no pay-off for long plots, so we are stuck with quick tricks.

Blanks do not work that way. The boy is now horribly scarred if not dead. For comedy value, imagine that for the rest of the series.


collected edition
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Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks

Rating - 2: not worth reading (skip it)

This is the first Culture novel. The Culture is one of the acclaimed sci fi series of our time, but most people recommend skipping this one and starting with The Player of Games. Most people are absolutely right. The main plot is interesting, but there is a long side trek and the protagonist is neither likable nor compelling.

A galactic war rages between technologically supreme space hippies (The Culture) and a race of biologically immortal religious warriors (the Idirans). Horza is a shape-shifting spy and assassin in the service of the Idirans, fighting for messy biology over computed perfection. He is called upon when a young Culture Mind falls onto a Planet of the Dead where Horza's race are caretakers but Culture and Idirans alike are forbidden to go.

At least, that is what the book should eventually be about. The first hundred pages feature Horza narrowly surviving four disastrous situations through luck. However much agency our protagonist may be trying to show, he is entirely swept along by events outside his control and saved by outside parties. His shape-shifting abilities are mentioned but irrelevant throughout this, and they only affect a couple of plot points that could be written around. His backstory talks about spying and assassination, but he is not doing that here.

Horza himself is not likable. As his career implies, he is an anti-hero, except for showing no heroism. The closest he comes is not wanting to kill someone; not that he lets the kid live, just that he does not want him dead. His personal interests include brute survival at any cost and discriminating against non-carbon-based lifeforms.

The book and series do not get into it this early, but if you know The Culture, you know that Horza is on the wrong side of this war both morally and practically. The Culture is like a model of how everything could work out right with a society hovering around the technological Singularity. They really would like everyone to live happily and safely with good nutrition and education and a chance to fully explore what life can bring. They are also willing to annihilate entire solar systems that are hostile to them, although they are polite enough to offer evacuation before unleashing the anti-matter. (This book is set while the space hippies are learning how to do that "annihilation" bit, before "never get involved in a land war in Asia" is replaced with "do not fuck with The Culture.")

I usually give a book 20% of its length to prove itself, which was the point where I was going to quit, but a promising bit at 20% and Iain Banks's reputation bought enough trust to get to 30% and then skimming the rest. There are some good scenes later on. An editor who cut 200 or 300 pages from the book could make it worthwhile. If you have good skimming skills, you may be able to extract value from this book efficiently enough to make it a 2.5. While Horza and his human-ish companions are unappealing, it gets good when we have Yalson or a representative from the Idirans or The Culture "on-screen." They interact well with everyone, especially Horza.

I had hoped that something would make me pause and start reading normally. After those first hundred pages, I read as far as the next disaster our protagonist survived through more luck. That one spun into another, and then there were cannibals. A sentient shuttlecraft offered him no-questions-asked rescue, so he murdered the Mind running it and took the shuttle to go murder someone else and take his ship. Then there was a card game where lives were gambled. Taking us to the half-way point, our protagonist killed a bunch of other innocents in an escape, including wrestling for a ship's controls so that he could steer it through a crowd of people between him and the exit. This is a spaceship, recall, so the lucky ones were killed by the impact, with the rest caught in the blast from the ship's fusion drives.

It's nice to have the main plot return about half-way through the book, but why would I want to follow this protagonist? It is not as though he is charismatic or audacious enough to call what he is doing "exploits" or "antics." Most of it is low-grade thuggery, sometimes upgrading to thuggery amidst spectacle. We digress for half the book so that he can connect with a band of even less appealing thug redshirts (think "Krull" only less so). Horza is on a moral crusade against people who want to bring health and prosperity to the universe because they use super-intelligent computers and can be condescending. The murder of the sentient shuttle is a microcosm of the entire thing: in the face of a potentially optimistic and friendly setting, some people want to make it a crapsack world for themselves and everyone in their reach, out of sheer bloody-mindedness.

If I want that, I can go find some rich kids who cut themselves.

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Death Note Volume 4: Love by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata

Rating - 4: worth reading multiple times (buy it)

I don't see a way to summarize this volume without spoiling the previous one, so let's skip that and comment on the style.

This is the first volume that I am giving a 4 because so many pieces come together well here. In previous volumes, too much time was spent on exposition that did not bear repeating, or the best part of the plot was the twist at the end rather than seeing it happen. Lots of explanation. We get a bit of that with our new character, but it is more indirect characterization. Light and L are already in their elements and performing well, and we get both big plots and little twists. The series has found its stride fully.

Misa is a fun wild card to throw in, especially with Rem as a less "fun" heavy. Given the weakness of the female cast so far, in which the one potentially strong female mostly had the role of "fiancée," I was hoping for something a little more feminist. Maybe later. She is not manipulative enough to hold her own with Light and L, but she makes things both sunnier and more chaotic. I hope she keeps the odd mix of images and character traits; her arc already threatens to make her an entirely flat character.

The art note comes early this time. Misa's visuals are not quite as consistent as they could be (her age seems to shift a bit based on how childish (or not) she needs to be for a scene), but they create a nice counterpoint to Light and L. Misa in disguise is adorable. Her counterpart is Takada, an equal but opposite visual archetype, although the blonde gets the goth visuals that would go usually go with the brunette in American imagery.

Light's eyes again do a great deal of work, particularly when he wonders how horribly Misa is going to destroy him or how he can use her to destroy L. His outraged near-panic is beautiful to behold. His scheming face is just over the top enough to be perfect.

Gelus was too short-lived. I loved his look. Rem, unlike Gelus or Ryuk, actually looks threatening and predatory rather than silly, which is probably a good thing considering his role. Ryuk is just in it for the lulz, Gelus was a puppy, and Rem is an attack dog.

The plots remain excellent, particularly the way that L manages to thrust himself boldly but completely safely into harm's way and disrupt Light's plans. We get to see Misa have her own plans and some others go awry. We see both long games and sudden turns, good stuff.

Since we end mid-scheme, I will end. We know that the scheme must circle around, we just don't know what Light has put in place to make it happen. This whole thing must have been much more suspenseful in the original, when you never knew if there was going to be a "next volume." On the other hand, while the existence of a known end point leaves us with only the question of how we get there, we know that the author cannot string the story out indefinitely in hopes of Dickensian payment-by-volume, and we know that no outside event will come along and ruin the whole affair. Surely good things lie ahead.

collected edition
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House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski

Rating - 2.5: parts of it are worth reading once (borrow it from a library)

Interesting and multi-layered, but of uneven quality as there are multiple stories running at once, and sometimes more gimmicky than good. I recommend The Navidson Record, the film within the book, but not the surrounding stories.

Before the old, blind man died, he wrote (in many fragments) a critical analysis of a documentary that never existed. This is that analysis, decorated with the story of the broken fellow collecting it into a book. And a couple more levels.

The center-most level, The Navidson Record is a great haunted house story. I don't know to what extent that benefits from the pacing created by interspersing the other stories, but it works. It includes the most gimmicky formatting, including a labyrinth of footnotes and some other post-modern fun, but The Navidson Record is good.

I recommend reading it through the first ending or two. The story has several points where it could end, and it would have benefited from picking one of the earlier ones. If you get to the half-way point of the book, at least in my paperback "Remastered Full-Color Edition," you have extracted pretty much all the value from the book. Stop. After that point, there will be no fewer than three breather digressions before the final ending, and the last arc does not add much (except for the really fun post-modern moment of having a character in the movie in the book read and burn the book that contains him).

The manipulation of the page works nicely, as does the story it illustrates. Film it.

The Zampanò commentary level of the story is mixed and often tedious. Where it lays out character motivation and background in narrative form, it adds to the book. Other times it descends into academic nonsense, needless pretentiousness, or lengthy digressions that neither contribute to the story nor provide much interest on their own. To some extent, this is intentional and mocked within the book. That does not make it better or more interesting, although maybe you have read enough film school commentary to enjoy a send-up.

As pointed out in the book, a real commentary would not have this much detail about the film being critiqued. You get the entire Navidson Record, almost down to a shooting script. I expected to see more excised and left completely mysterious to the reader; it is to the story's benefit that it did not, but it makes the Zampanò level more irrelevant. Read the Zampanò parts that add background, skimm past the lengthy digressions (such as on echoes and labyrinths). Yes, that means skip anything in this typeface.

The Johnny Truant level is not good. At times it can be entertainingly salacious, but many of the early bits are annoying stream of consciousness rants. It picks up much later, but not enough to justify reading it all; just read Chapter 21, although that may not work as well without context. Your mileage may vary. If you have a horribly broken life and might sympathize with him, try a bit. He starts broken and gets far worse.

On the other hand, Johnny's story in the footnotes includes some great examples of going through panic attacks, told in the first person. If you loved Philip K. Dick's examples, you will enjoy Johnny's as well.

Courier is just not a fun font to read at length.

We have levels of unreliable narrators. Zampanò was blind, so he never saw The Navidson Record, and he might have been insane. The Navidson Record does not exist, even in the fictional setting; Johnny tells us it does not exist, the quoted books (mostly) do not exist, the quoted people never said that (when they exist). Johnny himself is variously a drunk, drug addict, habitual liar, and mental case, when noting having panic attacks and delusions. He also admits that he is not the most competent compiler of Zampanò's work and that he is not above changing it in a momentary fit of pique. Then there is a question of to what extent the documentary is a documentary, rather than in-world fiction, and how much manipulation the photojournalist might have done (either through framing or image manipulation).

And then, of course, the whole thing is a work of fiction that someone made up. At some point in the post-modern dance of many levels, one wonders whether it still matters. Does having that many levels make us stop caring, because it is a lie even within the fiction, or does it free us from caring about what is fiction or true and let us just enjoy it as a story? Fiction does not become less true for being meta-fiction. I wondered if Johnny was going to tell us at some point that he made the whole thing up, that there never was a Zampanò either; that might have been disappointing in a St. Elsewhere sense, but it's still a story either way. So don't worry about whether or not that happens.

The book elegantly finds another solution to Hofstadter's question of ending a book suddenly/surprisingly when the number of remaining pages is clearly visible. First, there are at least three levels of story going on throughout the book, so you can end two of those without warning. Second, the book also uses Hofstadter's idea of carrying on in the same vein after an ending. Post-modern books with odd formatting make that easy, and it gets easier when you start throwing in appendices and an overly long index.

There is another novella at the end. If an epistolary novel from a women in an asylum sounds good, feel free. By that point, I was not interested in another side tale that did not contribute to the core, so I skimmed in increasingly large jumps (except for the explicit puzzle letter; there are less explicit puzzles hidden). It is available separately.

The dedication page is great. Read at least that far. The index is notionally entertaining but not worth actually reading.

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Haunted, the quasi-official soundtrack