Synopsis:

My Take: While I’m not much of a science fiction fan (relative to its real adherents), as a general principle I do try to give the seminal authors of all genres the benefit of the doubt. Most of the time, if you’re the best of breed in one genre, you probably have something to offer people outside of your niche. As a result, H. P. Lovecraft has always been on my list of authors to give a try.

His work, most of which was released in the mid-1920s has been deeply influential both within the Sci-Fi community (frequent references to his work on Boing Boing is a testament to this) and a broader fraternity of artists who take a darker perspective on the progress of human civilisation (including Stephen King, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Guillermo Del Toro, and Jorge Luis Borges). Writing before the Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror genres were even recognised (they were collectively referred to as simply weird fiction at the start of the 20^th Century) Lovecraft has subsequently become a canonical writer in all three.

So with this in mind, thanks to my trusty Kindle, copyright expiry and Project Gutenberg, I recently sat down with Lovecraft’s most famous work “The Call of the Cthulhu”.  TCOTC tells the story of a young man who stumbles across a pre-historic blood cult that worships extra-terrestrial beings who look like a cross between a squid, a dragon and a man and inhabited the earth before mankind. In the abstract, it all sounds more than a little absurd, but Lovecraft is a dab hand at the art of story-telling and “The Call of the Cthulhu” unfolds with impressive suspense through three independent, documentary style narratives. While each narrative largely stands alone, as each develops, the narrator reveals a bigger, horrifying picture to the reader.

Lovecraft’s admiration of Edgar Allan Poe and the influence that the great author had on his work is obvious in TCOTC. Despite its globe-wide setting, the book’s first person retrospective format gives the story a dark and claustrophobic feel. Overall, it’s first class horror. Amusingly enough, despite its fame and cultural influence Lovecraft himself was not particularly enamoured with TCOTC describing it as:

“rather middling—not as bad as the worst, but full of cheap and cumbrous touches.”

I think Lovecraft is being a bit hard on himself here. Yes, it’s a bit absurd – but it’s well told and atmospheric – more than enough for a good ‘weird fiction’ tale.

Highlight:

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.” Lovecraft’s protagonists are nevertheless driven to this “piecing together,” which becomes a primary plot device in many of his works.

My Take: You know you’ve written a story that has really had an impact on popular culture when it forms the basis of not one, but two episodes of The Simpsons. Throw in an Academy Award winning movie adaptation, a Hugo Award for Best Short Story and a Nebula Award for Best Novel and you’ve got a real cultural icon.

“Flowers for Algernon” (first published as a short story in 1959 and as a novelisation in 1966) tells the story of Charlie Gordon, a middle aged intellectually disabled man, and Algernon, a laboratory mouse, who both undergo experimental surgery to triple their IQ.  Told in the first person via contemporaneous entries in Charlie’s personal journal (an ‘epistolary novel’ for the pedants), Keyes’ story explores a number of complex moral and philosophical questions through his protagonist’s intellectual awakening. Given that “Flowers for Algernon” tackles subjects as significant as the meaning of happiness, the relationship between the intellectual and the emotional and the proper role of science in an engaging and accessible way, it’s easy to see why it has had such an impact.

The central dramatic engine of “Flowers for Algernon” is provided by Charlie’s growing understanding of the world around him. This knowledge opens up new worlds and opportunities for Charlie – both intellectual and emotional, but it also destroys many of his simpler pleasures as well as the naïve illusions that have protected him from hurt in the past. Most challengingly, his ever increasing IQ allows Charlie to understand both what has been done to him in the past – by family, friends and his doctors – as well as what lies in his future. In light of Charlie’s tormented sentience, the reader is left to ask whether he would have been better off remaining in blissful ignorance. Thought-provoking and engaging reading.

Highlight:

“Now I understand that one of the important reasons for going to college and getting an education is to learn that the things you’ve believed in all your life aren’t true, and that nothing is what it appears to be.”

My Take: I’m not usually a fan of Science Fiction (and I’m NEVER a fan of fantasy. Yes that includes The Lord of the Rings – don’t even get me started). In my (admittedly limited) experience science fiction novelists too often submit to the temptation to invest too much of their imaginative skills in creating a fictional alternative world and not enough in creating depth and complexity in their characters. Similarly, to my mind, the ability to ‘make the rules’ in the fictional universe allows authors to imagine their way through some pretty improbable plot arcs. It’s a bit weak I know, but I just can’t see it as ‘real’ literature.

However, I make an exception for the Foundation series. It may be because I came upon him at a tender age, before I was overcome by my current insufferable pretentiousness, but for some reason I can forgive Isaac Asimov of the sins of science fiction writing. I can still see all of the usual shortcomings, but for some reason they don’t seem to irritate me. Go figure.

While Asimov wrote more than 500 books, and managed to get an entry into 9/10 of the Dewy Decimal System categories (striking out in the 100s; philosophy and psychology), the Foundation series are considered his best work. Will Smith and Robin Williams might have popularised Asimov’s ‘Robot Series’ in recent times, but for the Sci-Fi geeks, Foundation still reigns supreme. In fact, it was awarded the Hugo Award in Science Fiction for “Best All-Time Series”

The series tells a 500 year story arc beginning with the development of psychohistory, a branch of mathematics that could be used to predict the future at the macro-level (essentially it is like a kind of econometrics but with less grand claims). Interestingly, ‘Foundation’ has long had an appeal to economists and inspired the careers of Paul Krugman and Hal Varian, Chief Economist at Google.

Using psychohistory, Seldon predicts the collapse of the current Galactic Empire (groan, I know) and the descent of man into a 30,000 year long dark-age. In an effort to reduce the time spent in decline to a mere millennia, Seldon establishes two ‘Foundations’ isolated and secluded planets tasked with preserving human progress to date and re-establishing civilisation.

How can this possibly be interesting reading if Seldon could see the future and therefore eliminate any prospect of failure for the Foundations? Well firstly, psychohistory only works at the macro-scale – it can’t predict the behaviour of small, isolated groups of people, which is exactly what is left after the collapse of the empire. Secondly, the citizens of the Foundations are not themselves aware of Seldon’s macro-predictions – such knowledge would affect the accuracy of his predictions. So the success of the Foundations in re-establishing civilisation is always in the balance – you’ll just have to read all seven volumes if you want to know whether the Galactic Empire is restored.

Highlights:

The Three Theorems of Psychohistorical Quantitivity:

1. The population under scrutiny is oblivious to the existence of the science of Psychohistory.
2. The time periods dealt with are in the region of 3 generations.
3. The population must be in the billions (±75 billions) for a statistical probability to have a psychohistorical validity.

Synopsis: Set in a dystopian 1980s cold war alternative reality in which superheros help America win the Vietnam war and Richard Nixon stay in the White House well beyond constitutional term limits, a group of out of favour and long retired superheros investigate a series of attacks on ‘masked adventurers’.

My Take: I can’t say I’ve ever had much of a desire to read comic books ( ‘Graphic Novels’ for the sophisticates). However, I decided to dip into the medium for the first time after The Watchment was given a big wrap in Slate’s excellent Culture Gabfest.

The general consensus was that while the recent CGI-fest blockbuster movie adaptation of the book was a disappointment, the 1986 original was a classic of the genre. In fact, The Watchmen is listed as one of Time Magazine’s 100 Greatest English Language Novels since 1923 (don’t ask me how they chose the parameters for this list).

So, ever keen to broaden my horizons, I prized open my mind, cast off my preconceptions and dived into the unfamiliar. I really did give this book a chance.

Unfortunately, while the world created by The Watchmen was engaging, the storyline and characterisation really were a bit childish. Maybe the concept of flawed superheros was innovative enough in itself in the mid-eighties to carry the book, but really, the flawed heroes weren’t THAT interesting. And the plot, while creating a decent build up of tension, ended with a twist that was positively absurd and unbelievable even in the context of a comic book fantasy world. While not wanting to spoil the conclusion for those still intrested in picking it up, suffice it to say that it involved the end of the cold war and the teleportation of a giant squid infused with negative mental vibes.

A deeply unsatisfying ending.

Highlight: There certainly wasn’t any writing in this book worthy of highlighting. Rorschach’s mask was pretty cool though I guess…