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juushikaTitle: The Exile Waiting
Author: Vonda N. McIntyre
Published: Tor Books, 1985 (1975)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 250
Total Page Count: 319,050
Text Number: 1117
Read Because: fan of the author, used (and signed!) paperback purchased from Powells but I read it through OpenLibrary because ebooks are easier on my eyes
Review: A girl struggles to escape her life in the underground city which one of the last habitable places on Earth. This is a very loose companion to Dreamsnake—shared universe, different setting, no particular relation. Where the books overlap and differ is an unfair comparison because Dreamsnake is so very good, but it's also telling: They share a similar approach to worldbuilding, backgrounding it into a mystery that's revealed over the course of the plot, which I love. They're both crapsack settings and both have an eye towards reform, but where the solutions in Dreamsnake are flawed, local, cathartic things tightly tied to the protagonist's journey, the cast in The Exile Waiting aren't able to change the world and struggle just to change themselves—which makes the larger solutions feel disjointed and borderline unearned. But the characters in both books are great, and two here have conflicts which are closely tied to speculative/worldbuilding elements, which is one of my favorite things in SF. I can see the potential in Exile that lead to Dreamsnake, and I'm glad I finally read it, but I would say I'm more fond that impressed—it doesn't coalesce.
Title: Pennterra
Author: Judith Moffett
Published: Random House Publishing Group, 1993 (1987)
Rating: 4.5 of 5
Page Count: 310
Total Page Count: 319,360
Text Number: 1118
Read Because: on James Davis Nicoll's 100 SF/F Books You Should Consider Reading in the New Year, borrowed from OpenLibrary
Review: Quaker settlers on an alien planet struggle against native restrictions on population growth and machine use. Moffett's voice is assured, particularly for a debut, but the sectioned narrative makes for disjointed, disappointing shifts in focus and therefore tone—the abrupt switch from a xenoanthropological study to a coming of age narrative within a settler city is the most marked of these. Yet the sections themselves are phenomenal. I annotated this on my TBR as "alien/human sex book!" and it delivers—delivers abundantly, which is the book's trademark. In each section Moffett hones in on the most interesting element, making it the center of the character arc/plot and thus of the reader's focus; she builds an exquisite, desperate fascination such that each hurdle is meaningful and each development is captivating. And the cumulative effect of those disparate sections builds an unusual, controversial character arc—and I agree criticisms of it are warranted, but I also appreciate the determination to push the premise as far as it can go.
But I wish it went further. There's a thread of biological determinism in the xenobiology which isn't reflected in the human characters, who are progressively diverse albeit not flawless, despite/including the controversial elements. In a book focused on free will—or rather, the way a sapient mind is influenced and created by infinite and infinitely strange experiences—the limits to the alien culture, and thus the way humans are influenced by that culture, rankle. It's a delightfully weird book and world, compelling and thoughtful and provoking, and I loved it, but I want more.
Title: The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games
Author: Ebony Elizabeth Thomas
Published: New York University Press, 2019
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 240
Total Page Count: 319,600
Text Number: 1119
Read Because: reviewed bymrissa, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The overarching argument—and the body of work this stands on—is unassailable: the role of the Black characters, bodies, and audiences in speculative fiction is marked by exclusion and objectification, but also undergoing meaningful transformation. The specific cycle that Thomas proposes (of spectacle, hesitation, violence, haunting, and emancipation) feels a little like a horoscope: it's broad but resonant, so it can support any close reading, but it feels more like a personal tool than the one true formula. (The arbitrary nature of some of the examples & imagery reinforces this.)
But boy howdy is academic writing bad. It's bad in general, and in many of the quoted works; but it's especially bad in this particular. The incredible amount of repetition—incessant introductions and summaries, repeated jargon, and long quoted passages which are immediately rephrased in close readings—bloats an already-slim text. This badly wants refinement, certainly to dump style for richer content, maybe to excise or lean into the personal anecdotes. It's an elucidating and valuable effort, but frustrating.
Author: Vonda N. McIntyre
Published: Tor Books, 1985 (1975)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 250
Total Page Count: 319,050
Text Number: 1117
Read Because: fan of the author, used (and signed!) paperback purchased from Powells but I read it through OpenLibrary because ebooks are easier on my eyes
Review: A girl struggles to escape her life in the underground city which one of the last habitable places on Earth. This is a very loose companion to Dreamsnake—shared universe, different setting, no particular relation. Where the books overlap and differ is an unfair comparison because Dreamsnake is so very good, but it's also telling: They share a similar approach to worldbuilding, backgrounding it into a mystery that's revealed over the course of the plot, which I love. They're both crapsack settings and both have an eye towards reform, but where the solutions in Dreamsnake are flawed, local, cathartic things tightly tied to the protagonist's journey, the cast in The Exile Waiting aren't able to change the world and struggle just to change themselves—which makes the larger solutions feel disjointed and borderline unearned. But the characters in both books are great, and two here have conflicts which are closely tied to speculative/worldbuilding elements, which is one of my favorite things in SF. I can see the potential in Exile that lead to Dreamsnake, and I'm glad I finally read it, but I would say I'm more fond that impressed—it doesn't coalesce.
Title: Pennterra
Author: Judith Moffett
Published: Random House Publishing Group, 1993 (1987)
Rating: 4.5 of 5
Page Count: 310
Total Page Count: 319,360
Text Number: 1118
Read Because: on James Davis Nicoll's 100 SF/F Books You Should Consider Reading in the New Year, borrowed from OpenLibrary
Review: Quaker settlers on an alien planet struggle against native restrictions on population growth and machine use. Moffett's voice is assured, particularly for a debut, but the sectioned narrative makes for disjointed, disappointing shifts in focus and therefore tone—the abrupt switch from a xenoanthropological study to a coming of age narrative within a settler city is the most marked of these. Yet the sections themselves are phenomenal. I annotated this on my TBR as "alien/human sex book!" and it delivers—delivers abundantly, which is the book's trademark. In each section Moffett hones in on the most interesting element, making it the center of the character arc/plot and thus of the reader's focus; she builds an exquisite, desperate fascination such that each hurdle is meaningful and each development is captivating. And the cumulative effect of those disparate sections builds an unusual, controversial character arc—and I agree criticisms of it are warranted, but I also appreciate the determination to push the premise as far as it can go.
But I wish it went further. There's a thread of biological determinism in the xenobiology which isn't reflected in the human characters, who are progressively diverse albeit not flawless, despite/including the controversial elements. In a book focused on free will—or rather, the way a sapient mind is influenced and created by infinite and infinitely strange experiences—the limits to the alien culture, and thus the way humans are influenced by that culture, rankle. It's a delightfully weird book and world, compelling and thoughtful and provoking, and I loved it, but I want more.
Title: The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games
Author: Ebony Elizabeth Thomas
Published: New York University Press, 2019
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 240
Total Page Count: 319,600
Text Number: 1119
Read Because: reviewed by
mrissa, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County LibraryReview: The overarching argument—and the body of work this stands on—is unassailable: the role of the Black characters, bodies, and audiences in speculative fiction is marked by exclusion and objectification, but also undergoing meaningful transformation. The specific cycle that Thomas proposes (of spectacle, hesitation, violence, haunting, and emancipation) feels a little like a horoscope: it's broad but resonant, so it can support any close reading, but it feels more like a personal tool than the one true formula. (The arbitrary nature of some of the examples & imagery reinforces this.)
But boy howdy is academic writing bad. It's bad in general, and in many of the quoted works; but it's especially bad in this particular. The incredible amount of repetition—incessant introductions and summaries, repeated jargon, and long quoted passages which are immediately rephrased in close readings—bloats an already-slim text. This badly wants refinement, certainly to dump style for richer content, maybe to excise or lean into the personal anecdotes. It's an elucidating and valuable effort, but frustrating.
