• Main
  • Fiction
    • Going Back
      • One Hour Before
      • One week before
      • June 1978 – an extract from Going Back
    • Shore Leave
      • Shore Leave – an extract
    • A Little Bird Told Me
    • The Tip Run
    • Damnation’s Cellar
    • Tender Blue
    • The Flyer
    • Middletown Dreams
    • Morningside Crescent – an extract
  • Non Fiction
    • Dear Friends
    • 50 Musical Memories
    • Rediscovering Rush Intro
      • Rediscovering Rush
    • Left-handed under the Iron Curtain
    • Let’s do the show right here…
    • Home away from home – Alba
  • About
  • Blog
  • The 60at60 index
  • Mastodon
Richard Watt

Tag Archives: bookreviews

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Climate Emergency

What’s an author to do? The vocal elements of the Neal Stephenson fan club (by which, I naturally mean the NS subreddit) are fans of works like Anathem, and would really prefer that he just do high-concept Science Fiction. The inevitable risk of that approach, of course, is an author feeling hemmed in and at the mercy of a format they may feel they have nothing more to say about.

Stephenson has never constrained himself to one format – although I won’t deny he has themes – and is as comfortable, it appears in alternative (perhaps I should say enhanced) history as he is in cyberpunk, steampunk, high concept SF or – as here – rip-roaring, fast-paced techno-thrillers.

Approaching this book requires of me a discussion of a previous couple of Stephenson books. REAMDE (sic) is the natural comparison to this one – a globe-trotting wild ride of a thing, with a cast of thousands and various mysterious machinations confounding our many protagonists. It’s fair to say it divides fans, and – as it followed the polished and enigmatic Anathem, is probably still seen as something of a lesser work. The immediate predecessor to Termination Shock was the sprawling and (to these eyes) somewhat unfocussed Fall: or Dodge in Hell, which I think I found unsatisfying precisely because I had enjoyed REAMDE so much – the next chapter in the story of ‘Dodge’ Forthrast was set in two entirely different universes, and perhaps would have been better served as two entirely different books.

So it is with some relief that I can report that this book takes the REAMDE template and applies it to the ongoing and probably too late to fix climate emergency. It does this by stripping things back to a more manageable cast of protagonists, and keeping its eyes – more or less – firmly on the problem in front of them all. It rattles along satisfyingly, and addresses my issues with Fall by keeping the two parts of the story on a clearly predetermined collision course, while obscuring the connection until the last possible moment. The enormous set-piece at the end is therefore almost entirely satisfying as a payoff to both strands, and is much more realistic and under control than the end of REAMDE, which is, frankly, exhausting to read.

There’s an ‘almost’ in that last paragraph, though. I have no idea if this is true, but it seems to me that a lot of the second half of the book was worked back from the finale, with the result that some threads just fade out – on character in particular, who has been a key part of the action so far, simply says “no” when asked if he’s going to the scene of the finale, and that’s the last we hear of him – we’ve just spent a significant amount of time extricating him from danger and setting up the antagonists to his story, and then – well, he’d have complicated things, so we just stop worrying about him.

Abrupt endings are, of course, one of the things Stephenson is famous for, and while the last few books suggest he’s taken that particular criticism on board, he’s still not averse to just chucking things overboard when they stop working. He also cannot help himself from inserting every single piece of research he’s done into the text, whether we want it or not, which does lead to an excess of telling when he could be showing, but that’s what a Neal Stephenson novel looks like, so there’s no point getting upset about that.

So, it’s a bit flabby, with several characters ushered off stage at the end without proper resolutions, and suffers from the usual amounts of tell don’t show. Why does it get such a high score, then?

Mainly because it’s enormous fun. I think sometimes we (and I’m definitely guilty of this) try to peer too hard behind the scenes, and forget to just let go and enjoy the ride. Just like REAMDE, this is a book which doesn’t repay close analysis; it’s intended to entertain you while making its point – in this case that governments will never do anything about the climate emergency, and anyone who tries may well just make things worse. It starts with the Queen of the Netherlands crashing her private jet into a stampede of wild pigs, and builds from there.

Sure, there are parts where the plot flaps around a bit, but it pulls everything together at the end and delivers a proper ending.

I’m probably biased because Neal Stephenson is one of my favourite authors, but there’s a lot to enjoy here, and I can cheerfully overlook any number of Stephenson tropes as long as the ride is fun. I put Fall down with a sense of mild disappointment; there was no danger of that here.

Leave a comment |

He Reads Books, You Know

Posted on December 31, 2022 by Richard
    The best book I read in 2022, probably

    I think I may have done the music thing to death. For now, anyway.

    One of the many joys of ploughing through the #60at60 project was the way it required me to sit down at least once a week and just write. Since finishing that, I’ve missed the process, but I know I could do without the weekly rigours and the deadlines, however self-imposed. Therefore, with due apologies to the Technical Difficulties team for appropriating the title, I’m going to have a go at that bloggers’ standby – reviewing books.

    I suspect this will involve far fewer deep dives into my personal history (but don’t rule it out), and a lot more pontificating about things I may only half understand; that’s kind of the point, I think.

    What to expect

    A glance at the 60 at 60 list will probably suggest that I read the kind of books which people who enjoy progressive rock read. And, yes, there will be a healthy dose of science fiction in there. For example, I am slowly working my way (in reverse order, naturally) through this list: The 50 Best Sci-Fi Books Of All Time and – so far, not necessarily agreeing with all the choices.

    However, there’s more to it than that. By way of illustration, here’s a list of the 49 books I read in 2022:

    1. For Whom The Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
    2. Tiamat’s Wrath, James S A Corey
    3. Sword of Destiny, Andrzej Sapkowski
    4. The Spy Who Loved Me, Ian Fleming
    5. The Spitfire Luck of Skeets Ogilvie, Keith Ogilvie
    6. Justine, Lawrence Durrell
    7. French Exit, Patrick de Witt
    8. Balthazar, Lawrence Durrell
    9. Blood of Elves, Andrzej Sapkowski
    10. Mountolive, Lawrence Durrell
    11. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Ian Fleming
    12. Clea, Lawrence Durrell
    13. How Music Works, David Byrne
    14. Memory’s Legion, James S A Corey
    15. The Every, Dave Eggers
    16. Piranesi, Susanna Clarke
    17. You Only Live Twice, Ian Fleming
    18. Inhibitor Phase, Alastair Reynolds
    19. Station Eleven, Emily St John Mandel
    20. The Echo Wife, Sarah Gailey
    21. Across the River and Into the Trees, Ernest Hemingway
    22. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
    23. The Vinyl Café Celebrates, Stuart McLean
    24. Contact, Carl Sagan
    25. The Man With The Golden Gun, Ian Fleming
    26. Time of Contempt, Andrzej Sapkowski
    27. The Sportswriter, Richard Ford
    28. Peripheral, William Gibson
    29. For Your Eyes Only, Ian Fleming
    30. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M Miller
    31. Albert Angelo, B S Johnson
    32. The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
    33. Octopussy and The Living Daylights, Ian Fleming
    34. The Observer Observed, ed. Joanna Anstey and John Silverlight
    35. Like a Fiery Elephant: The B S Johnson Story, Jonathan Coe
    36. City by the Grey North Sea, Fenton Wyness
    37. The City We Became, N. K. Jemisin
    38. Christie Malry’s Own Double-Entry, B S Johnson
    39. Shakespeare’s Restless World, Neil McGregor
    40. Pantagruel, Francois Rabelais
    41. Solaris, Stanisław Lem
    42. A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles
    43. The First Cuckoo, Kenneth Gregory, ed.
    44. Neuromancer, William Gibson
    45. The Apollo Murders, Chris Hadfield
    46. Islands in the Stream, Ernest Hemingway
    47. Blood Music, Greg Bear
    48. The Bomber Mafia, Malcolm Gladwell
    49. Idly Oddly, Paul Jennings

      I’m almost done with the complete novels of Hemingway (but I have some of his non-fiction on the ‘to read’ pile); I am, thankfully, done with the complete James Bond (if ever there was a series which illustrated the concept of ‘diminishing returns…’); on top of the Esquire list above, I’ve started working through the works of Rabelais, and I’m on the lookout for another collection to start.

      Roughly half the books I read are on Kindle, but I’m reluctant to let go of the joy of reading physical books, so there will be plenty of those, including a number I brought back form Aberdeen when clearing out my dad’s house in the summer – some of those are elderly enough that I doubt I’ll be able to add a proper link at the head of the review, like the real reviewers do. We shall see.

      Oh, also, I might not fully review everything. I’m looking forward to this being a somewhat more relaxed affair from a writing point of view.

      Also, I will get round to tidying up the typos in the #60at60 stuff. Break time is over.

      Posted in Book Reviews, Writing | Tags: bookreviews, hereadsbooks, whatnext |

      Richard Watt

      • About
      • Home page

      Archives

      • December 2022
      • November 2022
      • October 2022
      • September 2022
      • August 2022
      • July 2022
      • June 2022
      • May 2022
      • April 2022
      • March 2022
      • February 2022
      • January 2022
      • December 2021
      • November 2021
      • October 2021
      • September 2021
      • August 2021
      • December 2019
      • February 2019
      • January 2019
      • December 2018
      • February 2018
      • January 2018
      • December 2017
      • November 2017
      • September 2017
      • October 2016
      • October 2015
      • September 2015
      • March 2015
      • February 2015
      • October 2014
      • September 2014
      • December 2013
      • July 2013
      • June 2013
      • May 2013
      • April 2013
      • February 2013
      • January 2013
      • December 2012
      • October 2012
      • September 2012
      • August 2012
      • April 2012
      • March 2012
      • February 2012
      • December 2011
      • November 2011
      • March 2009
      • April 2007
      • March 2007
      • February 2007
      • January 2007
      • December 2006
      • November 2006
      • October 2006
      • September 2006
      • July 2006
      • June 2006
      • May 2006
      • April 2006
      • March 2006
      • October 2005
      • September 2005
      • August 2005

      Categories

      • 50 Musical Memories
      • 60at60
      • Beatles
      • Book Reviews
      • Dear Friends
      • Music
      • Pink Floyd
      • Rediscovering Rush
      • Shore Leave
      • Tangents
      • Work in Progress
      • Writing

      Categories

      CyberChimps WordPress Themes

      © Richard Watt