Martin's Booklog

Learning the World — Ken MacLeod

Published on September 3, 2007Leave a comment

Cover of Learning the World

Learning the World
Ken MacLeod
398 pages
published in 2005

It only occurred to me after I finished this novel, that this was in fact Ken MacLeod’s version of Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky. Like that, Learning the World is a novel of first contact between a planetbound alien civilisation and a human interstellar trading expedition. That realisation only dawned so late because despite the simular premise, the novels do not resemble each other all that much. MacLeod’s version is much more straightforward than Vinge’s book was.

Nevertheless, if you read these novels back to back MacLeod’s novel does start to look like a cheap knockoff, especially in synopsis. Both have a species of planetbound aliens, operating at a more or less early twentieth century level of technology, divided into several nations in a political situation that resembles that of pre-World War I Europe. For both the arrival of the humans represent both an opportunity and a threat, with their presence accelerating the political tension already present. In both the humans are also divided amongst themselves about how to handle first contact.

Battle for Empire — Tom Pocock

Published on September 2, 2007Leave a comment

Cover of Battle for Empire

Battle for Empire
Tom Pocock
272 pages including index
published in 1998

It was described by Winston Churchill as the very first world war, with war raging between France and Britain for supremacy not just in Europe, but worldwide. Fighting between the two sides took place in Europe, North America and the Caribbean, India and even the Philippines. It was the Seven Years’ War. And even though it was one of the wars that is at the root of the modern world, according to Tom Pocock, it’s largely a forgotten war, especially those parts of the war that took place outside Europe. To rectify this Pocock wrote this book, Battle for Empire; he may have had somewhat of an ulterior motive, as one of his ancestors, vice-admiral Sir George Pocock, was one of the major participants in these events…

This then is not a history of the Seven Years’ War as a whole, but strictly the story of several of the major campaigns in the war outside Europe: the battles between Britain and France in India, the English invasion of Quebec and New France in America, as well as the expeditions against Spanish held Havanna and Manilla. Together they show how wide the war raged and how bold the British waged it. Little context is given to the wider war in which these campaigns took place, even less of the reasons for the war.

Blair’s Wars — John Kampfner

Published on September 2, 2007Leave a comment

Cover of Blair's Wars

Blair’s Wars
John Kampfner
401 pages including index
published in 2004

Tony Blair is the first UK prime minister to take his country to war five times in six years. It’s this for which he will be remembered, especially for the last war he started, the War on Iraq. Yet, ccording to John Kampfner in Blair’s Wars, Blair was never that much interested in foreign policy until well after he became prime minister. It’s this seeming contradiction that forms the heart of this book, an examination of what drove Blair to go to war so often and how he managed his wars.

John Kampfner is the current editor of the New Statesman and before that was a longtime foreign correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, chief political correspondent for the Financial Times, as well as political commentator for the Today programme at the BBC. In all a fairly typical representative of the political media elite, who describes himself as leftist and whose opinions, as showcased on his website, are firmly in the mainstream of British politics, even if not necessarily shared by the British voter.

This background is echoed in Blair’s Wars: this is a book about the politics behind the wars, not the wars themselves. So there’s plenty of material about how Blair tried to get UN approval for the War on Iraq, how he succeeded or failed to persuaded the Americans to do something or to not do something, all from an insider’s point of view, with various senior advisors describing their roles in these processes. Kampfner is very good at describing the mechanics of this, but it is all treated somewhat like a ballgame, in that who wins these behind the scenes political struggles and the struggle itself is given more attention than what the outcome of such a struggle means.

Looking for Jake and Other Stories — China Miéville

Published on August 30, 2007Leave a comment

Cover of Looking for Jake and Other Stories

Looking for Jake and Other Stories
China Miéville
303 pages
published in 2005

Because of their birth in the pulp magazines of the mid-1920s, science fiction and fantasy used to be dominated by the short story and the novella, long after these story formats had become largely irrelevant in other genres. It was only in the early to mid seventies that the novel finally gained the upper hand on them, but even then there was a place for the short story and the sf magazines as a nursery for new talent. Not any longer, as this China Miéville collection shows. Looking for Jake is his first; it came out seven years after his first novel and five years after the book that made his name, Perdido Street Station. Even more telling, it seems to contain all the short fiction he has written in that time… Clearly, to Miéville at least, writing short stories is not a priority.

The stories seem to reinforce this feeling. Many of them feel slight, little amusements, enjoyed when read but easily forgotten by the next day, as if Miéville wrote them as exercises, scribbles inbetween more important work. Not that this makes them bad stories as such, but they mostly miss the power he packs in his novels. Most of the stories are either horror or “weird fiction”, in the tradition of M. R. James, E. F. Benson, Sheridan LeFanu and the like: not quite horror, not quite fantasy, but stories about strange happenings and all. Not quite my genre to be honest, as these stories always seem to run on rails towards set destinations in my experience.

A Game of Thrones — George R. R. Martin

Published on August 25, 2007Leave a comment

Cover of A Game of Thrones

A Game of Thrones
George R. R. Martin
835 pages
published in 1996

I’ve always had a weakness for epic fantasy, not so much Tolkien as his imitators, happily reading my way through long, long series of books as thick as my fist: Donaldson, Feist, Eddings, Jordan, I’ve read and enjoyed them all. They may not have been very good, but as long as there was even a hint of a sufficiently epic story, I read them. As long as I could get my kick I was happy. Fortunately, not all epic fantasy is crap these days, as several excellent writers have turned their hand to it. George R. R. Martin is one of them. Until he started his A Song of Ice and Fire series, he was better known as somewhat of a cult science fiction writer, having written some excellent novels (Tuf Voyaging comes to mind) as well as short stories (Sandkings, The way of Cross and Dragon). With this series however Martin moved from being a well respected science fiction and fantasy writer to being a still respected but bestselling science fiction
and fantasy writer. He deserves it, as this is easily the best post-Tolkien epic fantasy series I’ve ever read.

There is a downside however. Writing good fantasy takes time, which means the wait inbetween novels has been long and getting longer. The first one, A Game of Throne came out in 1996, when the idea was that this would be a proper trilogy, three books, no more. Instead the series has become a proper fantasy trilogy: four books and counting. Currently it seems the whole series will eventually be seven books long, but who knows if that remains the case.