Martin's Booklog

The Broken World – Tim Etchells

Published on June 5, 2009

Cover of The Broken World

The Broken World
Tim Etchells
420 pages
published in 2008

Long live the public library. If it wasn’t for the fact that Night of Knives caught my eye having, I never would’ve seen The Broken World lurking nearby on the shelve, with a cover that looked like it could be something sufficiently science fictional as well. It turned out not to be, but I’m not complaining. Instead this is a novel that would appeal to any geek at least on a surface level, as it’s the story of a twentysomething slacker putting his considerable intelligence in playing through The Broken World, his favourite game while writing a walkthrough for it. In the process
the game and his real life start melding together, his friends popping up in the game while developments there mirror what’s happening to him outside of it and vice versa.

I started out hoping this would be a mindfuck novel, ala the Illuminantus trilogy or certain Philip K. Dick novels where the boundaries between fiction and reality are deliberately underminded until the novel seeps through in your own life, but alas. Instead, this is Microserfs for a generation to which playing computer games is as interesting and important as computer programming, an examination of modern life through a shared metaphor rather than an undermining of it.

Killing Hope – William Blum

Published on May 28, 2009

Cover of Killing Hope

Killing Hope
William Blum
469 pages including index
published in 2003

William Blum is a veteran leftwing journalist, active since the 1960ties, who made his name leaking the name and addresses of 200 CIA employees back in 1969. Since then he has been working in relative obscurity until around the turn of the millennium when he wrote a bestselling book about the US’s foreign police: Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower. It came at the right time to find its audience, just as interest in the subject soared due to the September 11 attacks. This succes is probably what got Killing Hope published, as it’s an updated version of one of Blum’s older books, originally published in 1986 as The CIA: A Forgotten History. It certainly has some of the hallmarks of a cash-in book, with the updating only going as far as the mid-nineties and the bulk of the book not noticably updated from the first edition. Many of the earlier chapters do not show much awareness of events and new revelations after 1986, if you see what I mean.

Killing Hope is the history of US military and covert interventions since World War II, with each chapter detailing a specific case. The chapters are in order of chronology, with several countries with a long history of US intervention having multiple chapters devoted to them. As Blum shows again and again in these chapters, the US talks a great deal about democracy and freedom, but the reality of its foreign policy at least since World War II is far different. With the excuse of “fighting communism” (or these days, “terrorism”) again and again the US has interfered on the side of dictatorships, nobbled democracies or fought liberation movements in order to safeguard its interests, be they strategic geopolitical ones or commercial ones. And Killing Hope is far from exhaustive, even in its original timeframe of 1945-1985 with Vietnam e.g. only having one short chapter devoted to it and little attention paid to other Asian countries like Taiwan, Japan or South Korea or even the UK.

The City and the City

Published on May 17, 2009

China Miéville talks about his latest novel, in which he carefully explains the central conciet of The City and the City without spoiling what makes it unique.

The State of the Universe – Pedro G. Ferreira

Published on May 7, 2009

Cover of The State of the Universe

The State of the Universe
Pedro G. Ferreira
320 pages including index
published in 2006

I felt the need to reacquaint myself with modern astrophysics as it has been far too long since I’ve read anything about it. Sure, I do watch The History Channel’s Universe series whever I catch it, but that doesn’t tell me much I don’t know already, while following the vast array of astronomy blogs out there is no real substitute, as they do assume a certain familiarity with the current state of the art. Long live the public library therefore, for providing quick access to what looks like exactly the book I need: The State of the Universe: a Cosmic Primer. Written by Pedro Ferreira, a lecturer in Astrophysics at Oxford, it’s meant as a layperson’s introduction to what astrophysics thinks the universe looks like and what makes it tick.

The State of the Universe is built up logically from first principles. Ferreira starts with a short overview of classical Ptolemaic cosmology, with the Sun revolving around the Earth and how it was succeeded by the heliocentric cosmology of Copernicus and Gallileo. Over several chapters he then shows how our knowledge of the size and complexity of the universe expanded, from what was once thought to be no bigger than our Solar System, through an understanding of how big our Galaxy actually and finally to an appreciation of the idea that all those galaxy shaped nebulas are actually galaxies as well. Then he goes on to the other end of the scale and explains the physics of the universe: the fundamental forces that shape it (gravity, electromagnetism, the strong and weak force), a quick sketch of the whole zoo of the particles that make up the matter and energy in it and how it all sits together. From the classic Big Bang idea of the evolution of the universe he finally moves on to the cutting edge of current physics, where it all gets a lot less clear what’s real and what’s just clever theorising.

People of the Talisman – Leigh Brackett

Published on May 4, 2009

Cover of The People of the Talisman

The People of the Talisman
Leigh Brackett
126 pages
published in 1964

This is the flipside of the same Ace Double that also had The Secret of Sinharat, again starring Leigh Brackett’s greatest hero, Eric John Stark. It’s the longest of the two novels, a whole 126 pages long and a reworking of an earlier story Brackett wrote for the pulp magazine Planet Stories as Black Amazon of Mars. I found it to be slightly less immediately engaging as The Secret of Sinharat, but that’s only a minor quibble.

Interestingly enough, the opening of the story is the same as in the other tale: Eric John Stark is on the run from his enemies, but this time he’s with a friend, the thief Camar. They’re riding through the northern polar wastes of Mars attempting to reach Camar’s home city Kushat before he dies of his wounds. When it becomes clear he isn’t going to make it, he tells Stark of his secret shame, having stolen the Talisman that kept his city safe from the barbarian tribes roaming the wastelands and forces Stark to swear to return this talisman, which is hidden in Camar’s belt. Holding this belt to his head, Stark hears strange voices coming from it.