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juushikaTitle: The Book of Imaginary Beings
Author: Jorge Luis Borges
Translator: Andrew Hurley
Illustrator: Peter Sís
Published: Viking, 2006 (1957)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 235
Total Page Count: 335,680
Text Number: 1185
Read Because: on this list of speculative evolution texts, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: Diverse but limited, esoterically researched and glaringly incomplete, and this all feels as it should be: this approach to the subject could never be perfected; it's the biased, perforce limited, but awesomely expansive product of one man's knowledge. The voice is suitably erudite, skeptical, and playful; Borges is as present in the text as the beasts. It makes for fun browsing, but it's not especially my style—I prefer something more exhaustively researched or more atmospheric/creative. But as the author's presence and selections are the real selling point, perhaps my opinion would differ were I more familiar with Borges.
Title: Blame!
Author: Tsutomu Nihei
Published: 1998-2003
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 2190 (256+219+235+212+200+192+210+216+192+256)
Total Page Count: 338,140
Text Number: 1187-1196
Read Because: played NaissancE before watching Jacob Geller's video essay Gaming's Harshest Architecture: NaissanceE and Alienation & loved it, so then went to read the manga that inspired it, which I was familiar with because of the movie adaption, which I also love, and the anime adaptation of the author's Knights of Sidonia
Review: A man searches for the possibly-extinct gene that should allow humans to regain control of an endless megastructure and the artificial life that polices it. This is Nihei's first manga and it shows: the faces are dodgy in early volumes (particularly the ridiculous eye spacing) and it leans incomprehensible, often in action sequences but also in the plot, which is—intentionally, effectively, but sometimes still adversely—sparse and obscure.
It's difficult to convey absence, to convey massive, unoccupied space. Sometimes this struggles; it's hard to track movement through the world, or populations feel unrealistically cluttered. But sometimes, the protagonist's impossible gun destroys forty miles of city and stair and walkway and it doesn't matter. In this impossibly massive context, forty miles of devastation is inconsequential. Nihei's architectural art is phenomenal, and the plot and characters echo this sense of alienating scale; it's a vast, hostile loneliness which is captivating and which overwhelms flaws elsewhere.
Title: Gnomes
Author: Wil Huygen
Illustrator: Rien Poortvliet
Published: Harry N. Abrams, 1977 (1976)
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 210
Total Page Count: 338,350
Text Number: 1197
Read Because: reread, hardback from my personal library
Review: This was a childhood favorite and it's a lovely autumn reread. It's so dang cozy, especially the details of the home—also earthy, magical, charming, domestic, picturesque, even quaint; there's an inherent humor in taxonomizing the fantastic. It doesn't just hold up to but indeed benefits from my haze of nostalgia. That said, the suck fairy has paid a brief visit since my childhood, particularly to touch on the strict gender roles and the praise for a lost "traditional" way of life which is linked to inherent moral purity, beauty, and the great man theory. The longer stories at the end contradict and complicate some of these elements, but the general trend remains and it rankles.
Author: Jorge Luis Borges
Translator: Andrew Hurley
Illustrator: Peter Sís
Published: Viking, 2006 (1957)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 235
Total Page Count: 335,680
Text Number: 1185
Read Because: on this list of speculative evolution texts, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: Diverse but limited, esoterically researched and glaringly incomplete, and this all feels as it should be: this approach to the subject could never be perfected; it's the biased, perforce limited, but awesomely expansive product of one man's knowledge. The voice is suitably erudite, skeptical, and playful; Borges is as present in the text as the beasts. It makes for fun browsing, but it's not especially my style—I prefer something more exhaustively researched or more atmospheric/creative. But as the author's presence and selections are the real selling point, perhaps my opinion would differ were I more familiar with Borges.
Title: Blame!
Author: Tsutomu Nihei
Published: 1998-2003
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 2190 (256+219+235+212+200+192+210+216+192+256)
Total Page Count: 338,140
Text Number: 1187-1196
Read Because: played NaissancE before watching Jacob Geller's video essay Gaming's Harshest Architecture: NaissanceE and Alienation & loved it, so then went to read the manga that inspired it, which I was familiar with because of the movie adaption, which I also love, and the anime adaptation of the author's Knights of Sidonia
Review: A man searches for the possibly-extinct gene that should allow humans to regain control of an endless megastructure and the artificial life that polices it. This is Nihei's first manga and it shows: the faces are dodgy in early volumes (particularly the ridiculous eye spacing) and it leans incomprehensible, often in action sequences but also in the plot, which is—intentionally, effectively, but sometimes still adversely—sparse and obscure.
It's difficult to convey absence, to convey massive, unoccupied space. Sometimes this struggles; it's hard to track movement through the world, or populations feel unrealistically cluttered. But sometimes, the protagonist's impossible gun destroys forty miles of city and stair and walkway and it doesn't matter. In this impossibly massive context, forty miles of devastation is inconsequential. Nihei's architectural art is phenomenal, and the plot and characters echo this sense of alienating scale; it's a vast, hostile loneliness which is captivating and which overwhelms flaws elsewhere.
Title: Gnomes
Author: Wil Huygen
Illustrator: Rien Poortvliet
Published: Harry N. Abrams, 1977 (1976)
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 210
Total Page Count: 338,350
Text Number: 1197
Read Because: reread, hardback from my personal library
Review: This was a childhood favorite and it's a lovely autumn reread. It's so dang cozy, especially the details of the home—also earthy, magical, charming, domestic, picturesque, even quaint; there's an inherent humor in taxonomizing the fantastic. It doesn't just hold up to but indeed benefits from my haze of nostalgia. That said, the suck fairy has paid a brief visit since my childhood, particularly to touch on the strict gender roles and the praise for a lost "traditional" way of life which is linked to inherent moral purity, beauty, and the great man theory. The longer stories at the end contradict and complicate some of these elements, but the general trend remains and it rankles.
