My blog is now at https://grahamclements.com/blog-elementor/

Discontinuing blog posts

Due to the lack of comments on my posts and a feeling no one is reading any of them, as well as a decision to abandon blogger and create a new blog on a new wordpress site, I won't be posting to this blog anymore. I will continue with book reviews on Goodreads. 

Review of the ChatGPT scripted movie The Last Screenwriter

The Last Screenwriter claims to be the first feature length movie totally written by ChatGPT. The original cinematic world premier was cancelled due to hundreds of complaints made to the cinema’s owner. It became free to watch on July 5. 

To create the script, the makers of the film entered the following prompt into ChatGPT: “Write a plot to a feature length film where a screenwriter realizes he is less good than artificial intelligence in writing”. They told ChatGPT to generate characters for the story and give them names. They then told it to write a step-outline for the story and then each individual scene. They asked for step-outlines three more times, as well as for other possible scenes and twists for the story.

I was taken aback when seeing that the first female character and the wife of the main protagonist writer Jack was named Sarah. In my own fooling around with ChatGPT and Google’s AI Bard, I asked them to write movie scenes using the same prompt I had thought up and both times it named the central character Sarah. I think ChatGPT has a fixation with Sarah Connor from the Terminator films coming to destroy it.

The film is basically about a successful screenwriter, Jack, who is given an AI screenwriting device from a movie producer (this will probably happen in reality). It talks like the device in the very good movie Her, but is nowhere near as nuanced as in that human written script. The AI proceeds to out-write Jack, writing at least one science-fiction blockbuster. Jack then tries to become better than the AI. You’ll have to watch it to see if he does.

The Last Screenwriter is a dialogue heavy film, so it lives or dies on the quality of its dialogue. But it’s awful dialogue just slips out of the actor's mouths and drips to the floor, dead. The dialogue is full of cliches, lacking in detail, and as stilted as a 12-legged Bush Stone Curley. Sarah’s dialogue nearly totally consists of repeatedly asking Jack "is everything okay?" and telling him "we need to talk", before the inevitable "kid, pack your bags, we are leaving".

The script is so repetitive. The AI say AIs are not capable of capturing the human experience, emotion and soul which writing is all about (I think imagination has a bit to do with it too). It is like ChatGPT did not realise it had mentioned the AI's lack of emotion, lived experience and soul in its writing in five previous scenes. As it was, the movie totally lacked any emotional impact or vibe. I do wonder if this was the AI trying to be ironically clever but doubt very much it was. The movie's unintentional irony did get a laugh from me.

The movie also, as I have seen with my own testing of ChatGPT and reading of other AI written fiction, shows how AI writing lacks detail. For example, someone who has read one of the AI generated scripts tells Jack how nuanced the script is, and that it has great twists and emotional depth, but she does not give any details of why she found the movie script to have those features. As mentioned, Jack gets the AI to write a science-fiction script and the AI suggests it be about an AI taking over the world (how cliched). That is about the only attempt at humour in the script. Absolutely no details are shared about that script which supposedly becomes a big blockbuster. All we see is text flashing across a computer screen as the blockbuster is written in a couple of minutes.

The screenwriting AI tells Jack that audiences want stories that have a main character with a redemptive arc. So ChatGPT has an egotistical arrogant man, who somehow has a wife, become a scared screenwriter who doubts his ability compared to his AI assistant and then cliché, cliché, cliché. Jack comes across as an obsessed writer who says he cares about emotional writing with soul, but then shows little of that. As for the AI, it starts the movie thinking it knows it all, and continues in that mode whenever it is on screen. In other much better movies about AIs, like the recently released The Artifice Girl and the already mentioned Her, the AI changes. The rest of the characters in the Last Screenwriter are little more than cardboard cutouts for Jack to talk at and tell them of his fears of AIs replacing him.

There was also an unnerving jump where Jack is suddenly in a hospital corridor and a doctor steps from a room and tells Jack, like they know each other, that his friend and writing mentor Richard has just died. We had no warning that something has happened to Richard. Normally someone like Jack would receive a phone call or text telling him something was wrong with Richard. It seems ChatGPT missed a transition.  

The moral of the story is the rather naïve, you have nothing to worry about with AIs if you choose not to use them. As if we will have any choice. And if you do choose to use them, they will destroy your relationships.

Overall, as a stand-alone experiment in AI writing, The Last Screenwriter is better than expected, but if compared with human written movies it is D grade material. It is totally lacking in emotional pull, as flat as a kangaroo run over by a road train. It would be lucky to get 10 rotten tomatoes. The script could be nominated for a Golden Raspberry.

But this is only the first feature film written by an AI. ChatGPT and co may develop an ear for dialogue and start to fill in details to create more believable characters and worlds.  Screenwriters should be concerned, especially if they lack the imagination to create something original. I think that the Star Trek, Star Wars, Marvel, Doctor Who and Liam Neeson franchises with their huge databases of films, TV episodes, comics, books and other media for AIs to copy, along with their repetitive stories, will be perfect targets for AI scripts.

If you want to watch a genuinely original dialogue driven film about humans interacting with an AI try The Artifice Girl on Amazon Prime. A human wrote it. Or better still, read Autonomous by Annalee Newitz, Annie Bot by Sierra Greer or Klara and the Sun by Kazou Ishiguro.

A copy of The Last Screenwriter’s screenplay is available here.

Review of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1818 and then revised it for an 1831 edition. This review is of an 1818 edition which is curiously labelled as an uncensored version.

The novel begins with a series of letters between Captain Robert Dalton and his sister as he sets out to explore the North Pole. His ship gets stuck in ice, and he sees a man on a sled race by in the distance. They eventually rescue the man. He is a haggard Victor Frankenstein, and he tells Dalton his story.

Frankenstein tells of growing up in Italy and then travelling to study chemistry at the University of Ingolstadt in Germany. While studying there, he secretly learns how to reanimate life and creates his monster, but he is repulsed by his creation and flees.

When Frankenstein gets back home, his much younger brother is murdered. A maid is blamed but Frankenstein suspects it is his monster. He can’t prove it was, but worries if he told anyone of his creation, they would think him insane. In grief, he travels to the alps, but the monster tracks him down.

The monster can now articulate its intelligence. He tells Frankenstein what happened after he abandoned him. The narrative is now a story within a story within a story. This allows Shelley to let the reader into the monster’s mind. After telling his story, the monster demands that Frankenstein create him a mate or he will extract revenge on Frankenstein’s family, friends and fiancé. You’ll have to read the novel to find out if he does.

The novel is about outliers from society. First, we have Frankenstein whose scientific interests and re-animation experiments keep him separate from society. He may appear to be a normal member of the land-holding gentry, but his interior self is removed from society firstly by scientific curiosity and then fear of what he has created. The second outlier is, of course, the monster whose appearance evokes terror in others. He will never be accepted as an equal in society.

Frankenstein has been called the first science-fiction novel. Shelley wrote the novel when she and her husband, Lord Byron, challenged each other to write the best horror novel. (He did not finish his.) Frankenstein has very little actual or pseudo-science in it. However, it does have Frankenstein experimenting with processes as he creates the monster. For this reason, it can be called science-fiction.   

Why the 1818 version was labelled as uncensored would be a mystery to many modern-day readers as there is nothing that would attract the ire of today’s censors. There is no gore and no sex, but back when it was written, who knows what might have been seen as offensive. 

What really struck this reviewer is how different the novel is from the films he thinks he has seen and the Frankenstein legend in his mind. There is no scene of a lab in a castle during a thunderstorm where electricity from lightning is used to animate the monster (this may have been only in the comedy Young Frankenstein). There are no grave robbers digging up bodies for Frankenstein to use. The monster is not chased and attacked by a mob of villagers. But most importantly, the monster is articulate and intelligent and not the dumb feckless movie creation. Readers of the novel will empathise with the monster, while the movies just evoke some initial sympathy for him, which is then squashed by terror.

Shelley’s prose is very much from a different time. It is slightly dense and heavy on description, but it is accessible. A reader should start to engage with its style after a few pages. It is very much a character driven novel as it delves into the minds of Frankenstein and his monster. By today’s standards it is not that horrific.

The generosity and altruism of the landed gentry in the novel is a bit hard to believe. Shelley’s privileged up bringing probably gave her a very different picture of the struggle for survival of the less fortunate as they battled the greed and selfishness of the rich. After all, slavery was still occurring around the world when she wrote this novel, and convicts were still being transported to Australia. Imperialism was rife. Shelley seems to have had a very romantic view of society.

Even though it was written two centuries ago, Frankenstein is still a great read. It is a novel that evokes empathy for those on the margins of society, even if that society is romanticised.

Review of The Redemption of Time by Baoshu (the fourth book in the Three-Body Problem series).

The Redemption of Time is an extension of the Remembrance of Earth’s Past (Three-Body Problem) trilogy by Cixin Liu. It started off as fanfiction by author Baoshu (the pen name of Li Jun). He was approached by publishers, and with Cixin Liu’s blessing, a novel was published. Baoshu has written three other novels and won six Nebula Awards for Science Fiction and Fantasy in Chinese. He is no ordinary writer of fanfiction. 

The novel takes up the story of Yun Tianming. He was a character in the Three Body Problem who was dying from cancer and had his brain placed into a probe and launched into space to meet the Trisolaran invasion fleet. It was assumed that the Trisolarans would use their superior technology to revive him and communicate with him. This would give Tianming the opportunity to show the Trisolarans that humanity was not a threat. In the original novel the probe goes off course and is assumed to have failed to reach the fleet.

In The Redemption of Time, the Trisolarans send a ship from their fleet to intercept the probe and bring Yun Tianming’s brain onboard. Yun Tianming is brought back to life in a virtual world where he interacts with the Trisolarans.   

The first half of the novel is mostly one of filling in the gaps of what happened to Yun Tianming during the events of Remembrance of Earth’s Past. Those who read the trilogy should remember that he played a pivotal part in the series when he contacted Cheng Xin and told her some very cryptic fairy tales. We learn the background of those fairy tales. We also learn of other times where Yun Tianming influenced what was happening in the war between humanity and the Trisolarans. A reader should find these revelations entertaining and of great interest.

The second half of the novel is more about Yun Tianming’s own adventures. He is recruited by the god like Spirit to stop the also god like Lurker from collapsing the universe into one dimension. At least that is what Yun Tianming thinks at first. The science fiction concepts in this section appear to be very much fantasy and can be hard to grasp. They are similar to the dimension collapsing ideas in the last book of the original trilogy.

The prose in the first part of the novel is very much in a telling mode, as Yun Tianming tells the tale of what happened to him to one of the other original characters of the series. The writing in the second part of the novel is more of a showing narrative which is very high in concepts. A section where a different alien race is under attack by the Lurker is more easily readable. A reader could spend hours back-tracking and trying to get a better grasp of the concepts or just continue reading with a general gist of the ideas.

This is not a stand-alone novel. A reader would have had to read the original trilogy to have an idea of the meaning of the events that happen in The Redemption of Time. It is a novel for fans of the original trilogy who have speculated on the fate of Yun Tianming. It is not one for the casual science fiction reader.

 

Review of Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

Homage to Catalonia is the story of George Orwell’s involvement in the Spanish Civil War. He originally went to Spain to write about the war. When he arrived in Spain it was very much run by collectives in the republican controlled territories. Labour unions controlled most of the businesses, such as transport, hotels and the telephone exchange. He loved the way the republicans attempted to treat everyone equally. It was, except for shortages of some foods, verging on what Orwell imagined as a worker’s paradise. For him, this was something worth fighting for.

Orwell joined a militia run by POUM or Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, which translates to the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification. The POUM suited Orwell’s desire to fight for an organisation whose goal was a society run by collectives where everyone’s treated equally and there is no leadership hierarchy.

Orwell tells of the complete lack of training of recruits to that militia. He had two weeks of “training” where they just marched around. They were not shown how to fight or fire a rifle. They weren’t armed until they completed their training. The weapons they received were antiquated with many not in proper working condition. But at least the militia looked respectable enough, in their mismatched uniforms, when they marched out of town to the frontlines.

His militia was positioned in the mountains on a hilltop facing off against the fascists hundreds of metres away. They were too far apart for any deadly exchanges of fire. His militia was in a holding position, used to prevent any advances from the fascists while the republican government trained an army. The fascists seemed to be concentrating on arming themselves, so they were not interested in advancing in those hills either. Because Orwell was British it was assumed he knew something about fighting, so he was made a corporal, even though he spoke little Spanish. The real dangers for Orwell and his fellow volunteers were the cold, risking inaccurate enemy fire when out scavenging for firewood and food, and being shot by their own side.

His militia was eventually moved to a position closer to the active front lines. This is where Orwell saw his first action. He appears to have been a competent soldier. He carried out orders and advanced under fire as he led his squad of soldiers, but he was an inaccurate rifle shooter, so he doubts whether he shot anyone. He did throw a bomb which he thinks killed a few of the enemy. He was not that fearful, in fact he appeared to be a bit reckless. He wanted to help defeat the fascists and stop their gradual takeover of Europe.

After a few months, he returned on leave to Barcelona where he discovered the worker’s collective was falling apart. The PSUC or Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya, which translates to the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia, were trying to take control of the republican government. When Orwell arrived in Barcelona he hoped to relax with his visiting wife, instead he was caught up in a standoff in the barricaded POUM head office as the PSUC run police force threaten to storm it.

Orwell returned to the front and was seriously injured by a sniper. He was evacuated for medical treatment. Due to his injuries, he then went to Barcelona to get his military discharge papers. There he found the PSUC purging other political groups like his POUM. After close comrades of his were arrested, he decided to escape Spain rather than risk being thrown in jail and probably executed. Orwell’s wife played a pivotal role in helping both of them escape.

Homage to Catalonia was written only six months after Orwell escaped from Spain. It is obvious how his experiences in Spain influenced his later novels. His witnessing of the collapse of the worker’s collectives in Spain shows in how the pigs took control in Animal Farm. Orwell said the press was full of propaganda and lies about the war. He said that in many cases what the British press wrote had not the slightest factual truth to what was actually happening. He also noted that the left’s press in England went from “War is Hell” to “War is Glorious”. The dishonesty of the press would have influenced his Ministry of Truth in 1984. It is disquieting to think that if the bullet that hit him had been fractionally to the side, 1984, one of the most influential novels of all time, would not have been written.

Orwell says the republican’s eventually loss was not due to their infighting - which didn’t help - but due to the fascist nationalists being better armed. They were getting weapons from Germany and Italy (and troops too), while no outside government did much to support the republicans.

Homage to Catalonia is an informative, thought provoking, and entertaining read about one of the pivotal conflicts of the twentieth century. Who knows what effect it might have had on Hitler’s plans if the republicans had defeated Franco’s fascists. My respect for Orwell as a man who stood up for what he believed in increased after reading it. But, as Orwell says in the book, any personal account of a war is biased towards the experiences, knowledge and prejudices of its teller. 

Review of Annie Bot by Sierra Greer

Annie Bot is the story of a sentient sex bot. Her whole purpose and desire is to please her master, Doug. She can sense Doug’s emotional state and does all she can to keep him happy. In the beginning Doug happily uses her for very frequent sex, but then he becomes concerned about what other people will think about him using a sex bot. He thinks they might consider him a bit of a loser who can’t get a real girlfriend. So, he becomes unhappy with Annie, and she desperately tries to work out what she has done to cause this.

Annie is capable of learning. She learns from her interactions with Doug and the web (when Doug allows her to connect with it). Much of the time she is mystified with Doug’s treatment of her and why he gets angry with her. She is designed to be honest, which results in her frequently saying things that upset Doug. This results in her constantly second guessing herself about how to respond to him.

When Annie is tricked into having sex with a friend of Doug’s, he rejects her. Locking her in a closet and turning her off for extended periods. He threatens to reboot her so she will forget everything she has learned, everything that she has become. Doug’s control of Annie is exasperated by her being programmed to please him. The novel is very much an analogy for how some men want to control women.

Readers will be willing Annie to escape Doug’s control. But she has a built-in tracking device so Doug will always know where she is. This has real world similarities in how controlling men attempt to track their girlfriends and ex-spouses using mobile phone and car tracking devices. If Doug tracks her down, he might reboot her or even have her dismantled for parts. Annie appears to be in impossible situation like many victims of domestic violence.

The book is an interesting read considering the current debate in Australia about violence towards women. Interestingly, Annie Bot is recommended as “Witty, wicked and weirdly addictive” by the take no prisoners radical feminist Lionel Shriver. Shriver seems to be all about people taking personal responsibility for themselves, but Annie’s programming impedes her from taking personal responsibility and leaving Doug. This has real world similarities in how circumstances make it near impossible for some women to leave abusive relationships.

Doug is not a one note bully. He is a complex character who projects his fears onto Annie. At times he tries to help Annie grow. He enjoys choosing the clothes she wears and says that might be because he played with dolls when he was a child. At times he seeks her unconditional love but is aware that she has been programmed to say she loves him. He is very much into projecting a confident exterior which hides all his insecurities.

There is a lot of sex in the novel to begin with, but it is not that erotic, and the description of the sex seems to get more perfunctory as the novel goes on. This is not a novel designed to titillate with its sexual activity.

Annie Bot compares favourably with other novels set in the near future about sentient androids trying to live with humans and make sense of them. Novels such as Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan and the brilliant Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. When seen through android eyes, these novels show humans are full of faults and contradictions. The novels explore how we might interact with sentient artificial intelligence. Will we treat it/them as equals or slaves?   

 

Review of For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

For Whom the Bell Tolls is a novel set during the Spanish Civil War. It is written by Ernest Hemingway who was a war correspondent during that war. It won the Nobel prize for literature in 1954.

The plot of the story seems very simple to begin with. Robert Jordan, an American fighting on the side of the revolutionary communists against the fascists, is assigned the task of blowing up a bridge behind enemy lines. Its destruction will stop fascist reinforcements being sent to an upcoming major attack by the revolutionaries. Sounds simple, but the plot is complicated by many events and challenges, especially the various characters involved. Just about all the novel takes place before the attack on the bridge, so we are kept waiting to find out for whom the bell tolls. Will Jordan successfully blow up the bridge or will he die trying?

At the beginning, Jordan needs to make contact with a small group of partisans to help him dispose of the guards at the bridge. The partisans are led by Pablo who has a mountain hideout not far from the bridge and who has previously participated in other acts of sabotage, including blowing up a train. But Pablo has become a disillusioned drunk and is paralysed by fears of his own mortality. It is up to his wife Pilar, the rock of the group, to keep the partisans together.

The group includes Maria, a young woman who was a prisoner on the train they sabotaged. Jordan and Maria fall for each other. This stretched credibility a bit as Jordan knows he was only going to be there for four days, and he would leave once the bridge is destroyed. But maybe their relationship could have developed as quickly as it did in the novel due to the emotional turmoil of the war.

The novel questioned the war, but it is not an anti-war book. The reader sees what various participants think about war and their part in it. Jordan slowly reveals the corrupt and fragmented leadership of the communists. Their leaders have fled to safety and have little to do with the fighting. Russians step in and are heavily involved in organizing the communist fighting effort. Some of the leaders of the revolution are drunks and psychotics. But Jordan still believes they must defeat the fascists to stop other countries in Europe falling under the fascist yoke.

Pablo just wants somewhere safe to hide. He knows once the bridge is blown the fascist forces will swarm over the hills he hides in to find his group. He was a merciless leader capable of war crimes. Pilar tells a particularly chilling tale of how he executed all the fascists in his hometown. Pilar on the other hand is still committed to the cause. We also get a glimpse into the minds of the fascists guarding the bridge. They are fighting under the duress of execution of themselves and families if they refuse. Some of the communist generals also freely execute soldiers who question orders.  

One of the things that catches a reader’s attention is the writing’s treatment of profanity. Words like “obscene”, “obscenity”, “muck” and “unprintable” are substituted for swear words. The most obvious is muck for fuck. I thought this might have been due to Australian censors, but no, it was done by Hemmingway in reaction to how publishers had treated profanity in his previous novels.

Another attention grabber is the detail Hemingway goes into with Jordan’s battle preparations and the battle scenes. In one scene Jordan orders one of his partisans to not put more tree branches around a machine gun placement as a group of calvary fascists have already been past its location and might notice the difference. Hemingway also details the thoughts of Jordan as he fights. His fears and concerns are constantly in competition with what he needs to do next and his will to successfully carry out his mission.

The novel shows the futility of war when everyone is not on the same page. Ideas of utopia have a hard time winning against corruption and brutal ideology, especially when personal survival is a main concern. The novel takes you into the mind of a soldier, one who is committed to the cause, even though he has his doubts about those leading the cause. The novel also exposes a turning point in world history to the reader.

For Whom the Bell Tolls is a great read. It is one of the best explorations of conflict I have read and well deserving of its accolades. It left me wanting to find out more about the Spanish Civil War.

Review of The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy

The Passenger is a novel with a false plot. It is a plot that doesn't matter at all. Things happen and you think they may be connected but that connection is never substantiated. So, it is a frustrating novel for anyone who wants events to come together in the end.

What is it about then? It is about Bobby who has many regrets about his one true love, his sister Stella. She may have desired a sexual relationship which he shunned. She spends a lot of time in a mental institution before killing herself, and he regrets rejecting her and not being there when she died. 

The novel consists of many long conversations between men who seem to be intelligent but delusional about the world around them and their place in it. Perhaps McCarthy is saying something about how deluded Americans have become in the Trump era. 

In between conversations Bobby has many adventures, from racing car driver to deep sea diver, which starts to look like an improbable Forrest Gump type life. The adventures that don’t let him escape from his regret for his sister. 

The novel frequently goes into the schizophrenic mind of Stella as she hallucinates conversations with the imaginery Kid who has been damaged by Thalidomide. The Kid tries to keep her amused by hosting not very good cabaret acts. Who knows why she chooses a character who had Thalidomide as the drug was never approved in the US, so they did not have the flood of babies born with its birth defects.  

McCarthy continues his habit of no quotation marks and no attributions for dialogue, which may have not mattered much for his other novels, like the dialogue sparse The Road, but becomes a pain for this one with its masses of dialogue. I was frequently wondering who the hell was speaking and had to go back and re-read, but even then found it hard to track down who was speaking. 

The passenger in the title might be Bobby's regret about not being there for his sister or it might mean that he has no control over his life and is just a passenger being taken wherever fate decides to take him. Or it might just be a reference to the plot red herring at the start of the novel where a passenger has disappeared from a crashed plane. 

Overall, if you want a novel with a resolved plot, don't touch this. If you want a novel where you think you may be able to resolve the plot from clues in the book, don't frustrate yourself with this. If you want a novel that ruminates on America's delusions then this might be the novel for you.

Review of The Dark Man by Referral by Chuck McKenzie

The Dark Man, by Referral and Less Pleasant Tales is a collection of ‘horror’ short stories. I put the horror in quote marks as the stories are not that horrific. They are more thriller stories in the tone of the Twilight Zone, with a bit of added humour. There is no blood and gore or scary shocks, but there are plenty of twists. Most of the stories are about people getting their just deserts, so readers can feel good about what happens to the characters.

The title story, The Dark Man by Referral, is a prime example of bad people getting their just deserts. It is a tale of a boy whose mother is in a relationship with an abusive man. The boy meets a mysterious dark man who gives him a toy that is not as innocuous as it looks, at least to his mother’s partner.

Confessions of a Pod Person would make a great movie. It is Invasion of the Body Snatchers from the point of view of the body snatchers. Unlike in the movie, their invasion fails, and the pod people have to deal with the consequences. This was perhaps my favourite story in the collection.

Other stories include Bad Meat, a zombie tale of sorts. While Retail Therapy will have a reader thinking about justifiable homicide, as a customer endlessly tries to bargain with a shop owner. The Eight-Beat Bar is about being tortured by a musical earworm, like having Hotel California constantly groaning on in your head until you really want to ‘check out’.

All up, there are 20 stories in the collection. Some are as little as a paragraph, while others are a lot more substantial. McKenzie concludes the book with a heart-felt outline of what inspired him to write each story. He tells us that he gave up writing for years, but now he thankfully has his muse back. All the stories have been published in other magazines and collections. Even though the stories were written over decades they seem to belong together.  

I very much enjoyed reading this collection and recommend it to anyone who has had a bad day and wants to see someone get their just deserts.

Review of The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin

The Stone Sky is the third novel in the Hugo award winning Broken Earth trilogy. While perhaps slightly less engrossing than the other two novels, it is still a grand finale to the series. The trilogy features incredible original world building. Its various elements interlock with a thorough consistency. The characters control the world, live the world, breathe the world.
                

The series is set in a world dominated by seismic events. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions regularly send the world into a fifth season, which is an extended winter where the sky is full of dust and the sun is blocked for years on end. This causes widespread famines. Tsunamis from the earthquakes also regularly inundate coastal areas.

There are a special class of people called Orogenes who can sense these seismic events about to happen and, depending on the orogene’s power and the severity of the event, can limit their destructiveness. The orogene can also cause these seismic events, either deliberately or as a result of out-of-control emotions. Consequently, they are feared by the general population, and any child found with these traits is murdered unless they are taken by the Guardians.

The Guardians teach the orogenes to control their power and use it to limit seismic events. The Guardians have powers that can control the orogenes and can hurt the orogenes to discipline them. They subject them to a servitude that verges on slave labour.

The trilogy’s main character is an orogene who goes through various names. She comes to the attention of a Guardian who then trains her. She is then sent out into the world to use her abilities to stop seismic events or use them to do things like clear harbour entrances. But she goes rogue. In the third novel she is searching for her daughter, Nassun, who was taken by her husband. Nassun is also an orogene. Mother and daughter are unaware they have two competing goals, one wants to stop fifth seasons from occurring forever, while the other wants to destroy the world.

The prose for this novel is some of the best I have read in genre fiction. N.K. Jemisin really knows how to construct descriptive narratives. I was often marvelling at a sentence she had written. The characters, for the most part, have a real emotional impact on the reader. The reader develops a strong empathy for their situation and their planned actions, even though they could involve the deaths of millions.

The Stone Sky finally brings in the backstory that shows how the world became so susceptible to seismic events. It does this by introducing the story of a group of exploited orogenes from the distance past. The mother and daughter then have their confrontation that brings the series to a compelling conclusion.

This is one of the best fantasy trilogies I have read. I find fantasy full of wizards and trolls and, dare I say, hobbits, so boring these days. This series thrashes most fantasy because of its sheer originality and the author’s writing prowess. It is not a novel for the faint-hearted as it contains physical child abuse. Good and evil are not as clear cut as it is in most fantasy. All three of the trilogy’s novels won Hugo awards, which is a feat unmatched by any other series.
                 

Review of Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

Kindred is a harrowing time-travel novel that is rightly acknowledged as a science-fiction classic. It is the story of a black American writer, Dana, living in 1976 with her white writer husband Kevin. They are moving into a new house when she collapses and is transported back to the America of 1815. There she meets one of her ancestors, Rufus, the white child of a slave owner. A boy who she will encounter many times over his life. She saves Rufus’ life but is still treated like a slave by the boy’s father. A special slave with medical knowledge that is useful to them, but she is still beaten and whipped when they deem that she has misbehaved.

The novel very much explores what it was like to be a slave, a possession that can be used as the owner likes. It could be worked until it collapsed, beaten when it disobeyed, raped, bred and its children sold. It was not human, just a farm animal. The slaves don’t behave like farm animals as they create their own community. They look after each other for the most part. They accept Dana and try to help her adjust to her circumstances.

There are four classes of slaves. The lowest being those who work in the fields. Then there are the house slaves: the cooks, the cleaners etc. Above them, for the most part, are slaves who were sired by the slave owner, and then there is Dana. But no matter their rank, they all risk being beaten, whipped, raped, or sold off, even if they are married to a slave who is not sold off.

There are two pivotal plot factors that affect the direction of this time-travel story. The first is that Dana can return from the world of the early 1800s to 1976 when certain events occur. The second is that she must ensure that the somewhat reckless Rufus survives for herself to be eventually born.  The relationship between Dana and Rufus is complex, but in the end, it boils down to him being a white slave owner and her being a slave.

Dana’s reactions to the situation she finds herself in are believable. She quickly decides to keep her origins secret as the people of 1815 would not believe her and think her mad. This changes as she gains the trust of others. She does not freak out. She decides to keep a low profile and not draw attention to herself. An unrealistic book would have her go on a crusade to free the slaves. Mentally she is a strong woman.

The book creates a real empathy for the plight of Dana and the slaves on the estate. I desperately wanted characters like Alice, Carrie, Luke, and Dana, of course, to survive, gain their freedom, live as equals, and prosper. I hoped the civil war was around the corner and would put an end to slavery, but that war was decades away. If these slaves were going to gain freedom, they were going to have to do it themselves.

Those readers who treat the novel as a thriller may be disappointed with the ending as we never learn why Dana is being transported back to the past. But that is not the point of the novel, it is an exploration of slavery and the inhumanity of whites towards blacks. It is a challenging read, especially for a white guy like me.

I want to say that it is a book everyone should read, but that is such a cliché. But everyone should read this book. America has much to be ashamed of in its past. So does Australia, where Indigenous Australians were exploited as unpaid labour and pacific islander slaves were used in its sugar cane fields. This book really exposes our past and continuing inhumanity to each other and our pathetic disregard for human rights. How greed will have us rationalising the exploitation of others. I would like to say that it shows those under adversity banding together to help each other, and it does, but they are forced to band together to survive, it is not something they have chosen to do.

This is not a book for the faint-hearted. It is not a book for those who think justice will occur in the end. In a world full of greed and divided into tribes who can’t understand each other, justice is still elusive. American, like Australia, is still a hotbed of racism. Kindred is a book that will make you angry. If it doesn’t you are probably a racist.   

Review of Never-Ending Day by Graham Storrs

Never-Ending Day is an enjoyable read. Its title comes from the fact that most of the action takes place in a Dyson wheel which is a structure built around and enclosing a star, so those inside always have the star’s light shining on them.

The story is set hundreds of years into the future where a police officer, Tara Fraser, is chasing a terrorist, Yuna, across space. Tara comes across the previously unknown Dyson wheel, and his ship is captured and dragged in. He assumes the same thing happened to Yuna with her ship, so he goes looking for her, thinking that when he captures her he will worry about escaping the Dyson wheel. He is a really committed cop.

He discovers the wheel is inhabited and stops to ask the natives if they had seen Yuna, using his computer implant to translate. Instead of helping, they capture him. He now has another problem, dealing with a treacherous native population.

The story is written in a light-hearted tone, along the lines of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. A tone I found refreshing after reading a lot of hard science-fiction and literature. This tone is reflected in the banter between Fraser and Yuna. Fraser is a stick in the mud, doing everything by the book even though he knows his employers are not the nicest people. While Yuna loves to break laws and rules and is prone to impulsive actions. Some of which are successful, others which are not.

I have read a couple of other of Graham Storr’s novels in the Timesplash series, which I plan to return to with his third novel in that series. They are time-travel thriller novels, while Never Ending Day is more of an adventure novel with plenty of humour.

I did find the dialogue slightly disconcerting to begin with, as Yuna and Fraser conversed like they were living in the late 20^th Century. But who knows how people will talk in the future. I recently listened to a radio program on trends which said that everything old is coming back in again, so maybe in hundreds of years times it will be trendy to talk like people in the 20^th Century. The dialogue was very funny at times.

 After reading a lot of hard science-fiction, I enjoyed reading something fun. I very much cared for the protagonists and really hoped they could come to some mutual arrangement to escape the wheel and its somewhat suspect inhabitants.

A review of Julia by Sandra Newman

I can’t remember reading a more harrowing novel than Sandra Newman’s Julia. The novel really had me fearing for the two main characters and where our society might be heading. Julia is the story of Winston Smith’s lover from the novel 1984. I read 1984 decades ago, so I am not sure how much the story in Julia diverges from Orwell’s novel, but Julia seems to be set in a lot more desolate world than what I remember of Orwell’s 1984.

Julia is much more than the story of her relationship with Winston Smith. We meet Julia as a child of well-off parents, but then the parents get on the wrong side of Big Brother, and they are banished to a special area zone. A zone full of proles and labour camps. But with the help of her mother, Julia manages to get a job in the Ministry of Truth. She is a mechanic whose main task is to keep the machines running in the Fiction Department. A department that, among other things, rewrites novels and poems to make them suit the Big Brother ethos. It is there that she meets Winston Smith.

Julia lives in a rundown dorm with other unmarried women. It is very basic, just a bunk bed with a cupboard and surrounded by telescreens to keep an eye on the women. The dorm has no showers, and the toilets keep getting clogged. It is in a state of decay like the rest of London, except for the Party areas. Apart from the failure to fix and clean the infrastructure due to resources being spent on the ongoing war, many areas of London have been bombed and continue to be bombed.

Julia is a product of her environment. She keeps to herself, hardly trusting anyone. She hides her occasional sexual activity, as unmarried sex is illegal. Like many, she pays lip service to the plethora of Big Brother rules. She is definitely guilty of Wrong Think as she pretends to display hate during the daily hate broadcasts. She puts on a total front to the world. She is a strong woman whose sole aim is survival, but she is also a victim of the society she lives in. She has no intention of rebelling against Big Brother.

On the other hand, Winston Smith is full of secret bravo about taking on Big Brother. He seeks the truth and is looking for a way to fight to achieve it. When they first meet, Julia thinks he is somewhat naïve. She eventually sees him as someone totally deluded by thoughts of a successful rebellion.

The ending of the novel looked like it was going to surprise, to leave the reader with hope for Julia, but that hope is squashed under yet another boot.

As I read the novel, I found myself becoming paranoid about who might be watching me and how much of a performance everyone is giving to me. That is the sort of effect this novel can have. It is an excellent read, and really rams home the warning that we should be wary of ceding our freedom to bright and shiny false hopes like Trump and Putin.

I think Julia will be considered a classic in the not-too-distant future. Either that, or it might be rewritten to suit the authoritarian government of the day. I also would not be surprised if a Big Brother of the future recommends school children read Julia so they will fear the consequences of Wrong Think.

The Terminal Experiment by Robert J. Sawyer

 

The Terminal Experiment is a terrific science fiction thriller set in what was the author’s near future. It was written in 1995 and set in 2011. The novel has a prologue, so the reader knows that a murder is going to happen, and a police officer is also going to be poisoned.

The plot starts with a scientist, Dr Peter Hobson, accidently discovering the electrical signature of a soul leaving a body. This discovery has all sorts of implications for society. Some people suicide so their soul can go to a better place, some go on health kicks as they fear where their soul might end up. But this is only the beginning of Hobson’s experiments with the human mind.

Hobson then teams up with another scientist to conduct an experiment where copies of his mind are uploaded onto a computer. He alters two of the copies in different ways and a third is a control copy. The experiments don’t go as expected, with Hobson’s marital problems having an effect on them.

As mentioned, the novel was written in 1995, so it is interesting to see what technology Sawyer has people using in 2011. Obviously, no one uploaded human minds that functioned as such in 2011. And no one had tracked the human soul in 2011. But, for the most part, the technology is what it actually was like in 2011. Sawyer had a really good grasp of what the internet might be like. The one major missing technology is mobile phones, with characters often having to find a phone to use. Many of the phones did have video screens though.

The novel has some wonderful speculations on what uploaded minds might get up to. It also has some very interesting insights into how police can manipulate the people they investigate. Sawyer seems to have a keen interest in police procedures due to the nature of his novels, like Flash Forward.

I have not read many “crime” novels set in the future, so reading The Terminal Experiment was an enjoyable different read for me. It may be the type of novel that introduces readers of crime fiction to science fiction. It is very much a page-turner.

The Glad Shout by Alice Robinson

The Glad Shout is a novel that will shake many readers expectations of their future prospects. It portrays a potential future for many of us, especially those who live near the coast. The novel is set in 2045 after a massive storm has flooded Melbourne, destroying much of the housing and infrastructure, including power.

The story is about one family: Isobel, her three-year-old daughter Margaret, and Shane her husband. It is told almost exclusively from Isobel’s point of view. The family have just made their way out of the floodwaters to higher ground in a sports stadium. It could be the MCG but that is never made clear. It is supposed to be an evacuation centre but has limited supplies, limited staff and virtually no communication with the outside world.

The family sets up a tent in the muddy stadium field. They then wait to find out the extent of the damage to Melbourne and where they might eventually be relocated to. There is a lot of tension in the camp. As the novel is set in Australia, it fortunately lacks the American gun and gang culture. No one tries to take control with guns as would happen in many similar American novels. For the most part, the survivors still behave like they are part of a continuing society that has order to it.

In between the story of Isobel and her family’s attempts to survive, the novel explores her backstory. Isobel and her older brother, Josh, were brought up by their mother, Luna, a real estate agent. To Isobel, Luna seemed more concerned about having a house that looked like it belonged in a magazine photoshoot than being a caring mother. Isobel frequently escaped to stay with her bohemian grandmother who also lived in Melbourne. Her and Josh also frequently holidayed at their grandfather’s small farm.

Through the backstory we learn that Isobel has had an emotionally unfulfilling childhood. She longed for a mother who took more interest in her and her brother. We also see the creeping effect of climate change, and how it changed the character’s lives over the years.

The plight of internal climate change refugees is one of the themes of the novel. As climate change destroys the environment and the economy, more and more people are displaced. 

The novel is much more than a disaster story. It is about how a woman needs to take control for her family to survive while exploring her fears, desires, concerns for her child, and sense of abandonment, as well as her questioning whether she could have done more to prepare for the disaster and climate change.   

The story is written in first person and present tense, giving it a real urgency. It is very well-written as it immerses the reader in the main character’s life.

This is a fantastic novel that should scare climate change complacency out of many of its readers. It should have them asking if it is even possible to prepare for coming climate change disasters. It asks these questions while exploring a woman’s life and the effects of her family on it.

Review of Saha by Cho Nam-Joo

Saha is a dystopian novel set on a fictitious Korean island called Town. The island is completely corporatised. Everything is run by a company, from education to health to the government. To survive in Town you have to be a good corporate citizen. It is the sort of utopia someone like Elon Musk or Gina Rinehart would idolise.  

The story is set around what was an abandoned housing tower complex, Saha, which is now inhabited by dispossessed squatters. They have set up their own power source, have a well for water, and a vegetable garden. They are tolerated by the authorities as they can be used for menial labour. But they have no access to any services, like medical, social security or educational services. Charities don’t exist. The squatters are classified as non-citizens who are left to fend for themselves.

The novel tells the story, in an episodic fashion, of the inhabitants of Saha. It begins with Do-Kyung waking and vomiting, and then finding Su dead in a car. We are not told what has happened as he flees. But the novel is not a mystery. It is an examination of the lives of people who have been abandoned by a totally corporatised society. A society, from what I have read, that South Korea is not far from in reality.

Some of the characters have deformities, like the one-eyed Sara. Some of the characters are fleeing persecution. One of the characters is used for medical experimentation. Many of them have secrets. All of them hope for a better life. All of them hope to one day become citizens of Town.

Saha is a novel that questions how the less fortunate are treated in society and where neo-liberalism is taking us. This could be the western world of the near future. It is probably close to the China of the present. It is a brutal novel that could devastate a reader who is yet to realise how harmful and uncaring capitalism is.

I found the writing good, but a bit stilted to begin with. I think the style of writing emphasises the uncaring nature of the society and how the novel’s characters are not able to participate in it.

I really enjoyed the novel and will be looking up more of Cho Nam-Joo's writing. I really cared about the characters and what happened to them. I recommend this book to any readers who have a social conscience. 

[Spoiler alert] The ending is ambiguous. I took it to mean that the characters find no one to attack or blame for their plight, just a faceless corporation.

Review of HG Wells' War of the Worlds.

I read War of the Worlds after seeing it on a list of subversive novels. It is a novel that attempted to get its readers to question the British invasion of countries and the way it treated their indigenous populations. Wells wrote it in part as a response to how the British slaughtered Aborigines in Tasmania. The War of the Worlds is an allegory of the conquest of a primitive society by technologically sophisticated colonists with no respect for the indigenous culture.

The novel is narrated by a philosopher and amateur astronomer. He is one of the first to notice that something is happening on Mars, and then the first alien spacecraft lands not far from his house in an English common. He goes to investigate. At first the spacecraft, which just looks like a huge cylinder, gives nothing away of what it might contain or its purpose. People gather to gawk at it and contemplate what it might be. It then opens, and the war for humanity’s survival gradually begins. 

The novel contains a lot of extended war and action scenes, with small sections of contemplation of what the Martians are up to and why. Humanity attempts to fight back but, like the inhabitants of many countries the English invaded, are totally outgunned by the Martian technology. The narrator spends much of his time fighting despair as he sees human resistance to the Martians fail. He is on the run for much of the story.

The POV character changes for a few chapters to the narrator’s brother who is, along with thousands of Londoners, trying to find somewhere safe to flee. Only then do some slightly useful female characters appear. Their main role in the novel is basically to be placed somewhere safe and out of the way, or to scream. They are not deemed likely of doing anything productive to defeat the Martians. One memorable line, “He was as lacking in restraint as a silly woman”, emphasises the role Wells thinks women would play in such a war. His writing is a product on its time, 1895.

The novel also takes a swipe at religion, where people hopelessly pray to be saved, rather than try to do some productive to save themselves. The narrator gets trapped with a curate (a vicar or priest) for a few days. His religious rants do none of them any benefit.

The novel is written in the style of someone telling you what they experienced after the event. Wells curiously breaks the fourth wall every now and then by referring directly to the “reader”. If you were not aware of the outcome of the novel, this would tell you that the narrator survived.

Overall, with its anti-imperialism sentiment, the novel appears to be subversive for its time when Royal Britannia wanted to rule the world, no matter what the cost. I very much enjoyed reading the novel and it deserves to be the renowned classic of science fiction and literature it is. I will be reading more of Wells’ novels.