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Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer – Not My Cup of Tea

abjvAnnihilation takes a little while to sink its teeth into you, but once it does it won’t let go.The good news is that it’s a beautifully written, compelling novel. The bad news is that the compulsion is to experience dread, dissonance and distrust.

In Annihilation, part one of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, we follow the twelfth expedition into the region described as Area X, with a quartet of women we only know by their functional labels, the psychologist, the surveyor, the  anthropologist, and the biologist, who is also our narrator.

We are assured that horrible, or inexplicable, or banal things happened to the members of the first eleven expeditions, from mass suicide to turning up mysteriously back home with unreasonably placid demeanors.

Except that trying to ignore a region like this is about as easy as ignoring a sore tooth, you’d really wonder why they chose to make it an even dozen misadventures.

There are many genres within science fiction and fantasy, and weird is a perfectly legitimate one. Just not my cup of tea, when it’s all the story offers.

I embarked on the expedition into Annihilation hopeful to find some sort of lost world adventure, but about a quarter of the way through the book, about the place where the biologist, infected with spores from the tower/tunnel and the surveyor are descending into its depths while the psychologist “guards” the entrance, I decided it just wasn’t my thing. Then I realized it wasn’t going to let me go without reading to the end.

The writing is in the “found journal” style that leaves the author open to killing off the narrator, and were it not for the occasional mention of cell phones and other trinkets of modernity, it could have been dated from the time of Arne Saknussemm, on his journey into the bowels of the earth.  Clearly it’s Verne, whose sensibilities were such that he wrote stories that fostered a sense of adventure and discovery, rather than the aim of this narrative, which left me both the narrator and myself with a general sense of unease and ennui.

Now, I know I’m not in good company on this, and I respect that. The worthies (and I say this with some measure of sincerity) at Amazon deemed to make it an Amazon Best Book of the Month when it came out. The New York Times Booklist (magazine) designated it a starred review. Slate adored it. iO9 doted upon it, offering up; “In the best tradition of weird fiction, VanderMeer is evoking the sense of awe and terror that nature brings out in us.” Well, yes. that’s pretty spot on, but I’m more of a sense of wonder type, but I’m pretty flexible in my wonders.

And of course, it’s a Nebula Award nominee, which is why I picked it up in the first place. Unfortunately, it’s more weird than science fictional, which is why it bothers me. Annoyingly, I’m aware that bothering me counts as a win for the book.

Not that I don’t like a certain amount of weirdness. Really, most of my best friends are weird. The problem with tales like this is that weird is all you get, and it’s just not enough for me. Clearly this book has an audience, or it wouldn’t have made it to be a Nebula nominee, so congrats to VanderMeer. If it should win, I won’t feel that an injustice has been served on my literary sensibilities, because there’s room in the genre for more than one sort. In fact, I’m pretty sure I get the attraction here. I just don’t have the desire to unsettle myself sufficiently to appreciate the author’s talent.

I think I’ll go read some Verne.

Links / References

Departure by A.G. Riddle

Departure by A.G. RriddleThis review originally appeared in SFRevu April 1 2015:

Flight 305 took off for London on time, but it’s going to arrive late. Don’t bother waiting up, because it won’t get there until 2147. Actually, it won’t get there at all, because the space-time warp that plucks it out of the present drops it back onto the English countryside in pieces. And that’s where the fun begins.

If you don’t know who A.G. Riddle is, then you’ve missed the meteoric rise of this sci-fi/pulp/romance author on Amazon’s best-selling eBook lists. You aren’t among the twenty-odd million readers of his Origin Mystery trilogy: The Atlantis Gene, The Atlantis Plague, and The Atlantis World. Maybe you’re allergic to books with Atlantis in the title. I know I am, at least to some degree. Fortunately, Departure isn’t about the lost continent, though he can’t resist using the name somewhere in the book, if to good purpose.

The story moves quickly to the crash of Flight 305 from New York to London, alternating chapters between the viewpoints of the two main characters, Harper Lane and Nick Stone. She’s a journalist-biographer who’d really like to quit ghosting through other people’s lives and write an action character she’s toyed with for years. He’s a dot com lottery winner that needs to find something worth doing before he goes crazy. As they stumble out onto an English countryside one hundred and thirty-three years into their future, little things like what to do with your life become easier to resolve.

Nick discovers that he’s really good in a crisis, something he’d managed to miss until now. While the rest of his fellow first class survivors are content to wander around in circles watching the rear section of the plane sink into a lake, Nick finds himself whipping them into an ad-hoc rescue team, despite the freezing water and danger of being sucked down with the plane. Harper finds herself doing things she never imagined she would, or could, struggling to free passengers from their seats before the cabin slips under the water. In doing her bit, she gets trapped in the plane, and Nick barely pulls her out.

And the expected rescue teams keep not coming.

Gradually they piece together clues that they’re not in 2014 anymore. Clues like the total lack of radio or cellular communications, the bright ring in the sky, and more subtle clues like the holographic Stonehenge museum site they run across. Then about half the survivors start keeling over from a mysterious aliment and the crash site is suddenly overrun with beings in suits that shoot everyone on sight.

Fortunately they’re shooting tranquilizers, and even more fortunately, the late-arriving rescue team has brought advanced medical technology with them to heal the remaining survivors. Unfortunately another group shows up and future war breaks out. Nick and Harper manage to escape with two others, Sabrina the personality deficient doctor, and Yul Tan, the spooky quantum physicist.  Earlier, Harper heard the two talking about knowing a lot more about what was going on than they were letting on, and when Nick confronts them in an abandoned farmhouse, they begin to put things together.

Things in the future are not going well. Almost all of humanity died off shortly after a few wealthy idealists created a cabal of really well-intentioned folks that were going to live forever and help mankind. Modestly, they called themselves the Titans. Now they’ve grabbed a handful of critical people from the past to help save the future. The only problem is that the Titans have split into two factions, one who wants what the Flight 305 survivors can offer them, and the other which wants to do a reset on the whole thing, preventing the flight from ever arriving. When gods fight, mortals should keep their heads down, but Nick, Harper, Sabrina and Yul don’t have any choice. One way or another, they’re at the center of everything that’s happened, and humanity’s only hope.

Of course, if they save humanity, Nick and Harper will probably wind up forgetting their new found feelings for each other. Wait, did I forget to mention that part?

Departure is a quick read and if you like your pulp sf mixed with romance, you’ll find it right up your alley. It’s even got some assorted bits of science thrown in, but I had a hard time getting past the notion of ultra-wealthy do-gooders thinking a cabal of 100 immortals was going to work out for anyone in the long run. Seems like we’ve seen that movie before and it never ends well. Unlike Departure.

Links / References

Kindle Voyage – Amazon’s Best Ever E-ink Reader, But by How Much?

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Amazon’s latest and greatist E-ink Kindle has sharper text, weighs less, and lights up better than the Paperwhite, but is it a must have upgrade?

The Voyage, Amazon’s latest addition to the Kindle line proves that they’re not abandoning e-ink in favor of their Fire LCD tablets, and that’s a good thing for the many readers who like their reading experience isolated from all the distractions the web is heir to, and who like the reduced eye-strain and wide range of lighting conditons that that e-ink can handle.

The Voyage has a host of features that Amazon touts as new or improved, but the most notable upgrad is the resolution. At 300 DPI it’s got 35% more pixels than the 221 Kindle Paperwhite, which will still be available, by the way. It’s also got “more contrast,” though as far as I could tell what that really means is that the backlight is brighter, maybe 20% or so. Comparing the Voyage and a Paperwhite side by side with the light turned off I’m unable to tell any difference in contrast, only the crispness granted by the higher resolution display. That crispness may actually be take down a miniscule amount by the specially etched glass on the Voyage, which provides effective anti-glare.

The light isn’t just brighter, it’s more even than on the Paperwhite, though it had never bothered me on the Paperwhite. The battery has a longer life, the screen is flush with its bezel, and it sports a 1 GHz 512 KB RAM processor, another slight improvement over the Paperwhite, which had 256 KB RAM. Not that I could tell any difference in speed of the two devices in casual inspection. The Voyage does seem to flip pages a bit faster than the Paperwhite, but as with most things on the device I wasn’t unhappy with the predecessor.

Now, it’s important to note that I’m comparing the Voyage to the second generation Paperwhite, release in September 2013. This device had some substantial upgrades in processor and memory over the original Paperwhite, most of which have been carried along to the new Kindle.

Besides the screen there are some significant design elements that set the Voyage apart from its predecessor. It’s slightly smaller and thinner, and about half an ounce lighter than the Paperwhite, thanks to a new magnesium body. That body has a more angular form factor than the rounded back of the Paperwhite, which Amazon no doubt thinks is a distinctive bit of design, but strikes me as less comfortable to hold than the Paperwhite, and the only area I give the device a serious downcheck.

Though the Voyage, like all Kindles now in production, has a touch screen, it’s been rezoned to better control, and the bezel sports actual pressure sensitive regions that provide page turning with haptic feedback, which you can dial up or down or turn off. I found myself accidentally skipping pages, or flipping in the wrong direction using the side switches and preffered just using the touch screen, but I’m confident that it’s just a matter of getting used to the interface.

Besides not being thrilled with the feel of the case, which is still not bad by any means, the only thing you can really ding the Voyage for is its price. Starting at $199 for the version that comes with ads when on the home screen when you’re not reading, you can crank the price all the way up to $269 if you want it with free 3G connectivity as well as WiFi. I settled for the middle of the road at $219 with just WiFi and no advertising. If you pick up the “Oragami” folding case, which is pretty clever, I’ll admit, and acts as a a useful stand for hands free reading at a desk or table, you’ll wind up shelling out another $44.99. The cover adheres magnetically, like an iPad’s. In fact it’s so clever-cool it’s hard to believe it didn’t come out of Apple’s design studio.

On average, the Voyage will set you back about $100 more than the Paperwhite, but is it worth it? It’s a tough call. If you don’t have a Kindle and are a heavy reader, which seems like an unlikely combination, then I’d say go for it. On the other hand, if you’ve got a 2nd generation Paperwhite and don’t suffer from gadget lust, you might consider staying with your device for another generation or two. E-ink has gotten better, thanks to increased resolution, but it’s still not paper-white, and 300 DPI is only half what most laser printers consider basic resolution.

Amazon is willing to tempt you with a generous 30-day trial period, but I think you’ll find it pretty hard to send the Voyage back. Speaking of sending them back, though you can’t sell your old Kindle on Amazon, you may be able to trade it in, if only for a few books worth of credit.

Links:

Amazon Voyage Homepage: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GDQDRPK

Five Photos in Black & White

Photog friend Larry Rood tagged me in a challenge to post 5 BW pics.

Photog friend Larry Rood tagged me in a challenge to post 5 BW pics.

Larry Rood tagged me on facebook to put up Five B&W pics and to tag another five photographers with the challenge. . I was supposed to do this in 5 photos, but I decided to do a set instead.

Now I just have to figure out what 5 photogs to bug with this. Okay, this is a bit presumptuous of me but…

I tried not to hit too many people that would already be in each other’s pic list in case they continued the thread. So, we’ll see. I’ll update this post (maybe) with links to their work if they follow suit.

 

This theme probably originated over at USA Today’s Your Take site, where you can see some great examples. http://www.usatoday.com/yourtake/topics/563531/

World Fantasy 2014 Opening Ceremony

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World Fantasy kicked off this evening with a tribute to WWI and a tasteful Ice Cream Social afterwards. I didn’t get to any of the other panels, but the one immedeatly after the social, about the intersection of law enforcement and fantasy (or any) writing was interesting and SRO.