With the exception of scifi, short stories are a genre I haven't ventured very far into, and this book reminded me why I've always preferred that variety. (Well, not including Twain's short stories, they're a whole new class of awesome) There's something so tantalizing about scifi short stories; they present myriads of possibilities and scenarios, without getting bogged down by too much plot and character development. Not that there's anything wrong with plot and character development, I'm a big fan, but sometimes the concept is the best part of scifi--just enough to tickle the imagination.
Overview
Across the Sea of Stars is an omnibus of three collections of short stories and two short novels: Childhood's End, and Earthlight. This review will only cover the short stories, partially because the recording I found didn't include the novels for some reason, and partially because Childhood's End is one of Clarke's masterpieces--it deserves a review all its own if I re-read it.
(Disclaimer: it's been a few weeks since I read Sea, so I used a cheat sheet :-p It's a good overview of all the stories, with a brief summary of each. I don't plan to go over each and every story here, mostly because it's already been done.)
The three collections of short stories are only distinguishable because the middle one, Tales from the White Hart, take the form of pub stories--still scifi, but slightly more grounded. (Not necessarily that they are less far fetched, but that there are no spaceships or aliens involved) The other two collections, Expedition to Earth and Reach for Tomorrow aren't really distinguishable except that Reach for Tomorrow has somewhat longer stories.
Recommended for: Scifi and short story fans
Parental Worries: None that I can remember.
Audiobook Comments: Read by Dan Lazar (I think). It's an old recording, from back when audiobooks were a relatively new format, and his reading isn't particularly impressive. It's not bad enough to detract from the book, however, but even if the reader had been wonderful, I wouldn't recommend this book on audio. Audiobooks don't work very well for these stories; it's better to read them one at a time and digest each before moving on to the next. That's possible on audio, but not the rhythm I prefer.
Ramblings
As I mentioned before, I wasn't particularly impressed by the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, although I loved the book. I'm similarly unimpressed by the short story "The Sentinel", which was the original 'teaser' for the movie and book, and the first story in this collection. Maybe I was prejudiced going in, maybe the idea was less fantastic since it's become culturally ingrained, or maybe it's just that nothing happens in the story. Riding around on the moon, find an obviously unnatural structure, oh no we're not the only ones out there. Luckily, this story is probably the weakest of the collection, so you only go up from there.
One of the things I particularly love about Clarke is that unlike Asimov, who scorned anything spiritual and created future worlds where religion had been completely abandoned, Clarke's stories do not neglect the human spirit, or rather, human spirituality. He himself was an atheist and expressly ordered that no religious representation or rituals would appear at his funeral, but he obviously recognized that there was more in the universe than could necessarily be explained by science. (Well, that might not be the way he'd put it, but close enough) For example, his story "Inheritance" involves a nicely ironic incidence of prophetic dreams, and "The Nine Billion Names of God" (not in this collection, but one of his best stories) portrays a pair of scornful religious skeptics as blind fools. It's not just the supernatural either. The story "If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth" brought me to tears, and two others in the collection involved advanced technology leading to defeat instead of victory. It's this emphasis on hope, on human ingenuity and tenacity that speaks more deeply to me than Asimov's calculating psychohistory and galactic empires. (Not that I didn't thoroughly enjoy the Foundation series, but his scorn of religion and spirituality really gets under my skin sometimes)
As I saw with Fall of Moondust, Clarke's stories set in the near-future are less effective and enduring than those set in the far future (or occasionally, far past :-p ). That's no fault of Clarke's, no man can perfectly predict the courses that technology and science can take in the next hundred years. Happily, only about four of the stories in this collection are of that variety, and even they have a charm of their own, a kind of naivete. The risk is highest in the Tales from the White Hart, because they stand as stories told in a pub that could have existed anywhere within the last hundred years and (hopefully) the next hundred. Surprisingly, therefore, only one of them is anachronistic; it involves a special effects artist on the run from Hollywood because in the race to make more and more impressive fake weapons, he accidentally made one that was less fake than it should have been. These days, luckily, everything is added in with computers and we don't have to worry about accidentally creating a cold fusion reactor in an attempt to make pretty lights. ^_~
Labels: scifi, short stories
I guess it’s about time I started reviewing Terry Pratchett books on here, least any Discworld fans lured in by the blog’s title accuse me of false advertising. Not that I need an excuse to re-read any of them for the fifth or six time, I’d do it eventually anyway ^_^
For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett is a series of fantasy comedy/satire--Douglas Adams meets Tolkien, Mark Twain with a more whimsical twist, Monty Python in novel form. They're not only hilarious and fun, but full of little truths and big truths that make you stop and think.
Discworld books tend to follow several different sets of characters; the most closely followed are the wizarding faculty of Unseen University, a trio of witches in the small mountain kingdom of Lancre, and the city watch of Ankh-Morpork, Discworld's largest city. Several minor sets of characters also feature in multiple books, and a few books stand alone, with no more than cameo appearances by the more well-known faces. It's basically huge jumbled mess, and that's part of the charm.
Guards! Guards! is the first book in the Watch sequence, and a very good place to start if you're new to Discworld. (I would, in fact, not recommend starting with the earliest published books: The Color of Magic, The Light Fantastic, and Equal Rites. They're still very good books, but not Pratchett's best, and Discworld's fractured character lines mean that you aren't missing anything)
Overview
It's very hard to summarize a Discworld book; the bits I really want to talk about aren't necessarily related to the main plot. That's because plot is only a small measure of what a Discworld book is actually about. The plot of Guards! Guards! is that a giant dragon is terrorizing the city, and since the ruling tyrant has no daughter or half-kingdom to offer as a reward for killing it, it's up to Ankh-Morpork's Night Watch to save the day. Unfortunately, Ankh-Morpork's Finest are a pack of dysfunctional misfits, and that's also what it's about: underdogs, whether they be down-on-their-luck policemen or evolutionarily challenged swamp dragons (smaller cousins of the one terrorizing the city). And to top it all off, Pratchett manages to fit in a general grab bag of satire and irony along the way. (kings and magical swords, proper dungeon upkeep, and the mysterious workings of statistics all come to mind)
Recommended for: Anyone and everyone.
Parental worries: The books are written for an adult audience, so there might be a few jokes that fly over younglings' heads, but there's not much to actually educate in those areas. (okay, make that a lot of jokes, including a city Guild of Seamstresses who aren't very good with needlework, if you know what I mean) Also some mild language, if memory serves me correctly.
Audiobook comments: Read by Nigel Planer, who does a truly wonderful job. The colorful characters of Discworld require some real vocal acrobatics, and he's spot on for all of them.
Ramblings (Spoiler Threat: Low)
The Watch is my favorite set of Discworld characters, so here's a quick run-down on them:
First of all, there's Captain Sam Vimes, who we first come across lying drunk in a gutter, mumbling about his love/hate relationship with the city. Vimes develops into one of the coolest, most bad-ass characters in Discworld and probably all fiction, so don't let this unpreposessing introduction fool you. He's a copper's copper, with a scorching disdain for the upper classes and no illusions about the lower ones.
Next up is Carrot Ironfoundersson, who was informed by his parents at the tender age of 18ish (and height of 6 feet) that he was not, as he had always assumed, a dwarf. Turns out he's a human who had been adopted by dwarves and raised in a mine. The fact that he had to be informed of this tells you quite a bit about Carrot. His family decides that he needs to be near his own kind, so they arrange for him to join the Ankh-Morpork Night Watch. Before he leaves, however, his father gives him a sword that was found not too far from the spot where they'd discovered the infant Carrot. So, we've got a young man, born in mysterious circumstances, heading off to the big city to seek his fortune, carrying an ancient sword. Oh, and he has a birthmark shaped like a crown. I'll let you do the math.
Next up in the ranks is Sergeant Fred Colon, who is "one of nature's sergeants". Fred is the Watch's Everyman, in a way that Vimes and (especially) Carrot fall a bit short of. He's also great comic relief, particularly when paired up with Nobby Nobbs.
Years ago, Corporal Nobbs was Ankh-Morpork's Artful Dodger, but now he's all grown up and learned that he can get away with multiple minor malfeaseances much easier from the enforcement side of things. He's still a cheeky, lovable urchin on many levels, but it's slightly less cute from an adult. And by slightly less cute, I mean that Nobby is the only person in Ankh-Morpork with a certificate signed by the Patrician affirming that he is indeed a member of the human race. Otherwise, there might be (and still is, occasionally) some confusion.
One of the coolest things about the Discworld books is that at some point, all the humor and slapstick fall away, and what you're left with is a wonderful story, with a beautifully cinematic climax. That's what sets Discworld above and beyond Douglas Adams, Monte Python and the rest of the comedy and satire world. Pratchett not only knows how to make us laugh, he's also mastered true narrative--he can make us feel, and make us think.
And here's the part where I get to put in some of my favorite quotes from the book ^_^ Have fun!
"People who are rather more than six feet tall and nearly as broad across the shoulders often have uneventful journeys. People jump out at them from behind rocks then say things like, "Oh.Sorry. I thought you were someone else." --Carrot's voyage to Ankh-Morpork
"It's a metaphor of human bloody existence, a dragon. And if that wasn't bad enough, it's also a bloody great hot flying thing."--Vimes
"Never trust a ruler who puts his faith in tunnels and bunkers and escape routes. The chances are that his heart isn't in the job."--Vetinari (Patrician of Ankh-Morpork)
"There was a thoughtful pause in the conversation as the assembled Brethren mentally divided the universe into the deserving and the undeserving, and put themselves on the appropriate side."-- The Elucidated Brethren see the light