We are of peace...always

If giant alien ships randomly showed up in 29 major cities across the globe bearing this message, would you believe them? That's the catchphrase for Anna, the Visitor high commander in the new ABC series V.
What makes the show great is that there are mixed reactions to the Visitors (as the aliens like to be called). People don't just bow down and worship the V's (well, some do), and they don't let them just take control of everything (like in Childhood's End). Most people in the show are pro-V, because they don't seem to do anything bad, and actually promise universal health care and all kinds of cool alien technologies. Others, like Father Jack Landry are skeptical of the V's. Father Jack is a member of the Fifth Column, a resistance group that knows the true nature of the V's: they are actually reptilian underneath a "human skin." Even though the V's plan isn't revealed (they have some vague and scary plan the whole time), it is clear to the viewer that they are evil. In the beginning, they lied about their true nature when Anna said their scientists can explain why they look exactly like humans, and then FBI agent Erica Evans found out someone she thought she knew and trusted was actually a V. It shows that they have infiltrated all walks of life and that anyone could be a V.
That's half the fun of the show: trying to figure out who is a V. After their true nature is revealed, Father Jack cautions people against jumping on the V bandwagon in his homilies, much to the chagrin of the other priest at the church. That priest is so blindly pro-V that I'm convinced he is one of them. The other half of the fun of the show is all the big reveals and twists that they have. The show is so quick and action packed, and then at the end of every episode someone says something like "We have to tell Tyler the truth about his parents" and it leaves me begging for more. Many times while watching the preview, they'll say "Next week, on V:" and at the end of the preview I shout "I CAN'T WAIT THAT LONG!"
Aside from cheap tricks like plot twists at the end of every episode, the show doesn't drag it's feet in the middle. There are a lot of characters, and there is a lot going on in each episode. The Fifth Column members are always looking for ways to help them fight the V's and convince the rest of humanity that they are being lied to, and there are many scenes with Anna and Marcus (her second in command) plotting and scheming up on the ship. What I like about the scenes where Anna and Marcus is that they have a special camera angle they use just for when they are plotting something.
The show is also very character-driven. Erica leads the Fifth Column, while her son Tyler gets closer to a Visitor named Lisa. Lisa frequently brings him to Anna (the high commander), and Tyler becomes very pro-V. Obviously, this leads to some tensions between him and his mother, but they manage to have some kind of relationship just the same. This is just one example of the character driven nature of the show, but suffice to say that none of the characters are the same at the end of the season.
I could go on and on and on about how great V is, but I might end up ruining the whole show by just giving a synopsis of it. You'll just have to buy the DVD on Tuesday when it comes out.

V on amazon.com

the difference between Ursula LeGuin and Kurt Vonnegut

Recently, I've tried reading two different books: a Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin, and Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut. One of these books was easy to read and enjoyable, the other was really boring. Which one is which? Knowing me, the easy one was Kurt Vonnegut (if you've been reading this blog, you know that I want to name my firstborn son "Kurt").

I got to thinking, why is Vonnegut so much easier to read than LeGuin? Because of how their books are written. LeGuin wrote the basic framework for a story: she has characters, and the characters do things and things happen to them. There is very little dialogue, and little character development. Essentially, the characters are just doing things.

Vonnegut, however, doesn't really tell much of a story. That is, it's not something you can summarize or explain in anything less than what Vonnegut already did it in. You can't summarize the story in a paragraph, you explain what the book is about. Player Piano is about the effects of a world where manual labor is completely replaced by machines, and the effect that has on one Dr. Paul Proteus. Why do we care? Because Vonnegut makes you care. The reader learns so much about Paul that Paul seems more like an old friend than a character Vonnegut made up. Things happen to him, but you get to see inside his mind and see all of his reactions and thoughts. You learn a lot about the place that he lives in, the life he leads, and what causes his world to change. It's a thrill ride of a book.

Obviously, these are two different people we are talking about here, so they'll have different writing styles. I just happen to like Kurt Vonnegut a lot more. Not all of Ursula LeGuin's books are just like a Wizard of Earthsea, either. I also read the Left Hand of Darkness (a book anyone interested in gender studies should read), and that book is more like Kurt Vonnegut's style in that we get to know the characters and the place, and there is dialogue. I wouldn't say it's exactly like Kurt Vonnegut's style, since nobody else writes like him, but it's closer to him because we get to know the characters.

Both are good writers who come up with really original stories, but if you asked me who you should read first, the answer will always be Kurt Vonnegut.

A Canticle for Leibowitz

I don't think I "got" this book. It's supposed to be a cult classic, but I'm obviously not in the cult. It has several motifs I've found in other sci-fi: it is several stories that tell one complete story (like The Martian Chronicles and I, Robot), and it deals with a society that has abandoned books and decided to be illiterate morons (like Fahrenheit 451 and the film Idiocracy).

The premise of the book is that there was a huge flame deluge (nuclear war, see the ending of Terminator 3 if you want an idea of what I imagined it to be like), and the people that were left rebelled against the smart people and burned all the books in a global "simplification." What follows is a United States that is divided into several countries, and the rise of Catholocism as a major power in the world once again.

The focus of the stories is on an abbey in the southwestern desert. The abbey is dedicated to a St. Leibowitz, who founded an order of monks who preserve the written word for the time when Man is ready for it again. Why he is so venerated by the monks (other than being their founder) is unclear. It seems like they only want him to be venerated as a saint for their own personal pride. The back cover of the book also implies that a grocery list written by Leibowitz will be an important object in the book, when really it isn't (remember how hyped Darth Maul was before the Phantom Menace cam out? same thing here).

The stories themselves don't really connect that well. All they really have in common is that they take place at the same abbey, in chronological order over a period of roughly one thousand years. They don't really tell a complete story though, and I think that's because there are too few individual stories to tell a whole. I, Robot does a better job telling a story out of several, and it has nine. the Martian Chronicles has over a dozen short stories put together, and that's the most natural progression of all three books. What this tells me is that the more stories you have, the better the book will flow. A Canticle for Leibowitz doesn't flow from one story to another as naturally because there are hundreds of years in between each one, as opposed to a decade at most. The stories are tied together at the very end, when the most recent main character finds the remains of characters we had learned to know and love (or hate) in the last two stories.

Overall, this was an enjoyable read, and it was interesting, but it could have been done a lot better. It needs more stories to add a better flow to the overall story.

Isaac Asimov on immigration

Recently, I read the Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov. This book takes place thousands of years before the Foundation series, but in the same galaxy. The setting is a galaxy where humans have colonized several other worlds, and enough time has passed that the outworlders are called "spacers" and people on Earth generally don't trust them. The spacers want Earthicans to integrate with robots, (the way the sapcers have), and the earthicans simply don't want to.

I don't know if Asimov intended the book to be an allegory for illegal immigration in the United States, but it sort of works on that level. Humans don't want robots around because robots will take jobs from humans. There is almost a riot at one point because a woman refused to be served by a robot in a shoe store. Asimov makes the point that nobody wants to work in a shoe store, and eventually the woman consents to be served by the robot.

This earth is different from ours in that there is also an elaborate classification system (something I'm finding more and more in what I read) where the main character has some prestige that can be lost if he's found associating with robots. He's in luck, because he ends up being partnered with a robot to solve the mystery of who killed a spacer. This robot is different from the rest, however, in that it looks human, and fooled most humans for most of the book about what it truly is.

While reading this book, I realized that a lot of good sci-fi is just a mystery novel that takes place in space, the future or an alternate reality. This one specifically is in the future, where we have space travel and all kinds of neat technology. One aspect of the main character (who I called Deckard and imagined to look just like Harrison Ford, I forgot his name now) that I didn't like was how he jumped to conclusions quickly while trying to solve the case. He would go to his suspect, build a story that made sense, and then accuse them. His suspect then presented a logical alibi, and he had to start all over.

I think it says a lot about Isaac Asimov's writing that his books are relevant to a specific issue decades after they were written. Illegal immigration was not the problem in 1954 that it is today, and because of this, readers in the 1950's and 60 years later will get a totally different reading experience from it.

That is why Asimov is a Grandmaster of Science Fiction.

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Yes, it's another Kurt Vonnegut post. As of this writing, I'm reading Player Piano, his first novel, and have read over half of his books. I really enjoy his writing, because the style is so original. I'll talk more about his style later, since this post is specifically about the book that earned him his masters degree: 1963's Cat's Cradle. Now, I don't remember every detail about this book, since I did read it about five months ago, but I remember that it really was a masterpiece.

A little backstory on it, before I begin: Vonnegut was working on his masters degree in Anthropology at the University of Chicago, and they originally rejected his thesis. He left UChicago, wrote Cat's Cradle, and years later UChicago accepted it as a masters thesis. That was what drew me to this book specifically. I wanted to see what UChicago saw in it.

The book follows a writer who wants to write a book about what many people of note were doing on August 6, 1945, the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. He finds the family of Dr. Felix Hoenniker, one of the scientists that worked on the bomb. He finds Newt, a midget, and his sister Emily, who plays the clarinet. They all have samples of another weapon their father had developed, Ice-nine, which is a substance that turns all water it comes into contact with into a solid. Many people inadvertently come into contact with Ice-nine in the book and die. Their older brother, Frank, became the Major General of the island of San Lorenzo in the Caribbean sea. The writer goes there to find him and ask for any stories about his father, specifically from August 6, 1945.

What he finds on the island of San Lorenzo is a religion called "Bokononism." Bokonon was a man, and he said many wise things that united the people of the island. Officially, Bokononism is illegal on San Lorenzo, and nobody will admit to practicing it, but everyone follows the teachings of Bokonon. Bokonon talks about the groups of people that exist, and how people organize themselves. The most common way people organize themselves is into "granfalloons," an artificial karass that is not really destined to accomplish anything or do God's will. A karass, then, is a group of people who work together to do God's will, whether they know it or not. There is also a duprass, which is a karass with only two people. Michelle and I are a duprass, and we belong to a granfalloon called the human race.

Vonnegut's books are generally very well written, but this book surpasses all of them. There isn't much of a story to recollect, but Vonnegut keeps it very interesting and engaging throughout. He makes you really want to know what happens to the characters, and there is a really emotional climax at the end. It should be obvious to most people that developing weapons hurts a lot of people, but Vonnegut shows how it hurts people.

Overall, this is in the top three best Kurt Vonnegut books. I highly recommend it to anybody who wants to start reading Vonnegut.

Ray Bradbury on Colonization

About a year ago, I was supposed to read the Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury for a class I was taking. Well, I didn't read it, but I learned enough about it from Google to get credit for reading it. Last summer, I actually read it, and it was actually really good.

One aspect I liked is that it's a collection of short stories about Mars that Bradbury wrote, and when put together, tell a complete story .It's the same style as I, Robot by Isaac Asimov, which is one of the greatest books ever written. I like that style because the book moves faster, although it does have the drawback of not getting acquainted with a character and cheering for them through their struggles.

The story itself (or stories, rather) are an allegory for European colonization of the New World. Humans arrive on Mars, and can talk to the native Martians, but there is another barrier to their communication: the Martians think all the humans are crazy (the second expedition from Earth ends up in a mental institution full of Martians who also say they are from Earth). The Martians think the Humans are crazy because the Martians are masters at illusion and mind reading. Later on in the book, an American small town is discovered by a group of humans, and they find all their dead relatives living in it. What they really found was an illusion created by Martians based on the humans' memories.

The small town was one of the final battles for the Martians, as a few chapters later, a group of humans finds the ruins of a Martian city, and one of them explores it and goes rogue from the rest of the group. He is the first person to really appreciate Mars and the Martians. The change from native Martians being the dominant creatures on Mars to a family from Minnesota being the dominant creatures is so subtle and natural. It was very violent in between, but it made perfect sense in the end. I really enjoyed this book, and want to read it again, even though I only read it about two months ago.

V: The Original Miniseries/Final Battle

I think the authors/writers of V were just as disappointed in Childhood's End that they had to rewrite it. The premise is very similar: 50 alien ships randomly show up and hover over 50 of the biggest cities on Earth. The difference between V and Childhood's End is that humanity bends over and does everything the Overlords tell them to do, whereas V is an allegory for the Holocaust. Now, if it were up to me to rewrite Childhood's End, I would keep it the same up to the point where Karellan finally shows himself to humanity. As he walks down the ramp with a child on each shoulder, he looks to his right, his jaw unhinges and he bites the child's head off! How horrifying! The rest of the book would naturally write itself.

Anyway, V is really good. There are a ton of characters, but it is really easy to like the good guys, and exceptionally easy to loathe the bad guys. Donovan reminds me so much of Han Solo, except that he is a camera man for the news. Elias is the gangster that joins the cause when his brother is killed by the V's.

What exactly is the cause? Early on, the V's frame many of Earth's scientists for forming a secret resistance movement against them. Donovan finds out they have some kind of "conversion" process that makes them able to control people. They convert some scientists to help them build up evidence against other scientists. The end result of all this is that the non-converted scientists actually do form a resistance. The original V is told in five parts: The original miniseries (two one hour, 40 minute episodes or one 300 page book), and the Final Battle (three one hour episodes). Each part is action packed and thrilling. Like Star Wars, it doesn't show every single battle of the war, it just shows the main battles,the turning points, and plenty of lizardmen.

I found this series much easier to watch after reading the book. I picked up the book because I couldn't tell if it was a novelization of the show or if the show was based on the book, since the back cover uses words like "the original novel is finally back in print!" There are only two parts in the book that are not included in the show, one is a cool scene at the end where their cry for help is heard by a third set of aliens, and the second would spoil the show for you so I won't go into details. Suffice to say that Robin is a stupid name for a person and she's a whiny teenager.

I also might have enjoyed this a lot more because of what I expected it to be. I expected it to be a really corny 80's sci fi show with silly rubber suits. Well, it delivered on the corny special effects and rubber suits, but the story is so compelling, the acting is so good that you barely even notice. I also expected the plot to be very similar to the New V show that is on ABC (which is fantastic), but each version of the show is really it's own story. All they have in common is spaceships hovering over cities, lizardmen and the Fifth Column (the name for the resistance group).

The main theme of the show is that it is an allegory for the Holocaust, and the angle it goes to is the way the media portrays the group committing the holocaust. The V's always maintain a positive image in the media, and many people buy it. When scientists apparently have a resistance group against the V's, the general public assumes that what is on TV is true and that the V's are the victims of the scientists. It's a good message to tell, since I often find myself arguing with the news on TV when I think they are sensationalizing something. I like to think critically about what TV or the newspaper are saying, because if nobody does, then the society the V's put together is too easy to create.
Obviously, a society like Nazi Germany or the one the V's put together is an extreme example of how the media can be misused, but science fiction often uses the most extreme cases to prove its points. I think Stanley summarized the purpose of the story very well at the end of the novel (which is at the end of the original miniseries): "We have to help [fight the Visitors], or we haven't learned a thing."