The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

 The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

A beautiful woman, chef on a container ship, falls overboard. This novel is a flashback as her life passes before her eyes during her final minutes. Before shipping out, she was the innocent trophy wife of a disgraced financier whose crimes resemble the real-life story of Bernie Madoff. And she met that man while working as a bartender at a hotel owned by that financier. Glass in the hotel's lobby was vandalized by her brother. Everything ties together. Economically- and beautifully-written, Mandel's style of storytelling is a pleasure to read. However, I suggest you start with her earlier book, Station Eleven. If you like that one, continue to this book to explore this talented author's work.

Space Operas Used to Be So Entertaining

When I was younger, I avidly consumed space operas in both written form and television/movies. In my retirement, I've returned to some of those. Either I've become more sophisticated or they have not aged well. Or it could be both. One of my favorite authors was Robert A. Heinlein. Now I cannot understand how it was that I found anything interesting in his work; it just seems so sophomoric. Similarly, a portion of Isaac Asimov's work including the Foundation trilogy is definitely space opera, but Asimov's writing and plotting is so straightforward that it bores me.  I have a similar feeling when viewing various entries in the Star Trek , Star Wars, or Babylon 5 franchises. I enjoyed most of them (An exception is that odd-numbered Star Trek movies were always dreadful and remain dreadful to this day.) when they first came out. For perspective, realize that Star Trek: The Original Series was first broadcast when I was still in elementary school.  But today, I find it hard to believe that I once liked much of that stuff. There are exceptions: a few Start Trek episodes still pack a punch: "The City on the Edge of Forever" and "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" are both still worth watching. Others might be too but I'm not going to endure so many juvenile programs hoping for a couple more that have enduring value.

On the other hand, The Expanse (a fairly recently-published series of space operas available in both written and television miniseries forms) gives me something to talk about with my older grandson, and it is worth reading for that alone. 

Bottom line: I used to enjoy space opera a lot, but it doesn't do all that much for me anymore.

 Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

I cannot shake the feeling that I've misread this book. To me, it's a horror story involving human clones fated to spend and ultimately end their lives as organ donors. The way in which they passively await their destiny ("completion") alarmed me.  This was my second book by Ishiguro. Previously, I had read Klara and the Sun. Both books are written in first person with a narrator who seems to have an incomplete understanding of the world. Both books are set in an alternate timeline that varies slightly from our own. Klara seems to be in a near future, and Never Let Me Go is in an alternate past from just after world war 2 to the late 1990s. The narration is set in the 1990s, looks back over the previous couple of decades, and focuses on the relationship among three "donors" (Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy) as they grow up and become adults.

I feel as if I was missing something. Why did Kathy (the narrator) and her friends passively accept their roles? Why didn't they run? Initially, they misunderstood their situation, but even as understanding came they still didn't react. They were created to be organ donors, but there was never any exposition explaining why their choices were constrained. They were not confined. They were free to come and go and travel. What am I missing?

I found such films (and by the way, Never Let Me Go came out as a movie in 2010) as Parts: The Clonus Horror -- wonderfully adapted in the eighth season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 -- or its higher-budget remake The Island easier to understand. In these latter stories, a clone flees upon learning their purpose. I feel as if Ishiguro must have put in something that is escaping me.

Ishiguro is a master of the English language. Even as I was frustrated with the plot, I kept reading because I enjoyed consuming the fruit of his ability as a writer. If you want to sample the output of this Nobel Prize winner, consider reading Klara and the Sun or one of his other books. 

 Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Emily Mandel is an excellent writer. I just finished reading her 2022 book Sea of Tranquility, and I cannot stop thinking about it.  Having read her 2014 novel Station Eleven a couple months ago, I was looking for another book by the same author. I am glad to have found Sea of Tranquility and to have now read the latter book second. The two books are not part of a series, and yet they are tangentially-related. A major character in Sea of Tranquility is an author who wrote a highly successful book that is a lot like Station Eleven. 

I think both books are considered to be science fiction, yet Station Eleven doesn't contain any sort of fictional technology. On the other hand, Sea of Tranquility features time travel, air ships, lunar colonies, and colonies in the stars. Therefore, it is definitely in the science fiction category.  But definitely not a space opera. The plot moves from 1912 to 2020 to 2203 to 2401 and then swings back. Action takes place on earth, the moon, and A seemingly minor character keeps appearing and becomes more important. Similarly, unimportant events turn out to be important later in the novel and later in time; people's lives loop through time and intersect again; a passage in a novel becomes an event that happens in real life; a musical performance from the future is heard by someone in the past. I find myself reflecting on the interactions between different parts of the novel and between characters from different times.

Ultimately, this is all in service of the metaphysical idea that our universe is actually a simulation in some computer. But if it is, how would we tell and does it matter? 

I enjoyed both of these books so much that I intend to reread them both and also to look for more books by this very talented writer. There are six so far, and I hope she produces more.

 Blogs to Look At

There are certain places on the web I return to again and again. Some are blogs like this one, but others are regularly-posted comics and essays. Besides this web-log, take a look at these:

• https://www.cringely.com/

            A former columnist from InfoWorld, Robert X. Cringely continues to put out his thoughts on the world of silicon valley, startups, and information technology. He has been at it for nearly 40 years, using his many contacts in those worlds to continue to bring bold predictions and fresh insights. 

• https://aclownswifeabroad.wordpress.com/

            One of my daughters is now an ex-pat, living with her family in a small city in mountains east of Mexico City. Having moved out of the US during the summer of 2022, he shares her thoughts and observations concerning this new life.

• https://xkcd.com/

            This is a great online comic. You need to be a science nerd or else willing to do some research to get some of the jokes. He (Randall Munroe) generally puts out about three new comics a week. His books are worth purchasing as well.

• https://phdcomics.com/

            Another great online comic. So much of what it has to say about doctoral programs rings true to me. New comics come out about as frequently as new posts to this blog. That is to say: hardly ever.

• https://www.peopleiwanttopunchinthethroat.com/

            Imagine Erma Bombeck updated to our times, with a few F-bombs thrown in, and still very funny. That's Jenn Mann. Also, she writes funny books that make great gifts for people who don't mind occasional raunchy words. She lives in the Kansas City area, and she makes public appearances from time to time. She changed platforms not too long ago -- look for her on substack in the future.

 Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Having lived through a recent global pandemic (is it over?), we might want to think about how things might have gone had the virus been more contagious and more virulent. Or maybe not. But we don't have to imagine it, because Emily St. John Mandel did the work for us with Station Eleven published in 2014. I became aware of this award-winning book because HBO put out an adaptation at the end of 2021. Our house is out of space for more books. If I buy a book, I need to find one to discard or give away. So, I've had a hold on the book with my public library for some months.

So....Is this a book about a pandemic? Not really, but the story begins with the start of one, shifts to fourteen years earlier, and then shifts to twenty years after. The pandemic is serious enough that year zero resets to the year it began. If you're exposed to the Georgia Flu, you get sick in a few hours and you're dead in a day or two. The only survivors are people who escape exposure. Civilization collapses. Twenty years later, there is a museum (Museum of Civilization) displaying such curiosities as electric lights, laptop computers, and mobile phones. The pandemic provides a setting and background, The central characters are famous actor Arthur Leander and child actress Kirsten. The action is mostly around the great lakes.

So....Is this a post-apocalyptic science fiction story? The book isn't science fiction; there's no technology in the book that doesn't exist today. The only major fictional device is an extrapolation of a flu pandemic that spreads rapidly around the world thanks to globalization. And there's not enough time for a miracle mRNA vaccine to be developed. So, it is definitely post-apocalypse. 

The story follows several people who have some associations with each other and with a famous actor (Arthur) who died of a heart attack on stage coincidently as the Georgia Flu was arriving in Toronto. One character (Kirsten) is a little girl in the production who saw him die. Another character is a paramedic in training who jumps on stage to try to save him. Other characters include Arthur's three wives and his child. Kirsten joins a nomadic group of performing artists. The action goes into Arthur's past and into the future of some people who knew him.

You might wonder where the title comes from. Station Eleven is an eponymous graphic novel in two volumes within the book created over many years by Arthur's first wife. Some of the scenes she drew were inspired by her own-life events. Arthur gives a copy of the graphic novel to Kirsten. Near the end of the novel, she gives it to the Museum of Civilization for their collection.

I recommend this book. The writing is excellent. And it gives cause to reflect on how things might have gone for us had Covid19 been more deadly.

 Academic Novels

I enjoy reading novels which contain something I recognize. An example would be Search: A Novel by Michelle Huneven in which I enjoy reading a plot and characters within the familiar ground of a Unitarian Universalist congregation even though I am a lapsed UU.

And now that I've been retired since 2018, I'm also a lapsed academic. As such, I enjoy reading fiction in which the story unfolds in an academic setting. The best two academic novels I've found so far are Moo by Jane Smiley and Straight Man by Richard Russo. The porting of Straight Man into an eight-episode television mini-series on AMC called Lucky Hank inspired me to reread Straight Man. 

A second reading of Straight Man was even more enjoyable than the first. Now having watched the miniseries had an impact on my reading. For example, both the show and the book are narrated by the title character, named William Henry Devereaux, Jr, played in the show by Bob Odenkirk. During the second reading, my mind kept hearing the narrator's words in Odenkirk's voice.

Another impact of having watched the show just before my second reading of the novel was that I spent a lot of time thinking about what was added and subtracted for the show. Hank's wife has a much bigger role in the show. The show devotes an episode to a highly cringe-worthy faculty supper which did not appear in the book. Grabbing a goose by the neck in the novel changed to shadow boxing the bird. An alcoholic faculty member changed gender. The time scale was different in that the book's events took place over a few days, and the show took place over a number of months.

But the heart of the book and the show remains examination of a man's midlife crisis, that same man's never-resolved issues with his father, the overimportance many academics place upon their scholastic niche and their own work within that niche, and the mediocrity which pervades much of academia. And a quote variously attributed to Kissinger, Parkinson, Sayre and others, "The politics of the university are so intense because the stakes are so low," came to mind repeatedly as I experienced both the book and the show. 

Never in my career did I battle a goose. Nor was I burdened with Daddy issues. Other than that, the book and the show brought back memories of many incidents from my academic career. I think many academics would recognize themselves or their colleagues should they either read the book or watch the show.