11-05-14:A. S. King Foresees 'Glory O'Brien's History of the Future'
Halls of Mirror
We're not, each of us, singular. We are the sum of many selves, stretching from our birth to our death. A. S. King gets right to that vision when Glory O'Brien and her best friend Ellie Hefner drink a bat (not recommended!). Both are on the verge of life, about to graduate from high school. 'Glory O'Brien's History of the Future' is not the same as Ellie Hefner's, but neither is her past. King's novel explores identity and politics from an entertaining perspective.
All the charm, insight and narrative propulsion in this book come from Glory's well, glorious voice. It's a pleasure to read about a teenager who is not perfect, and has serious issues; her mother for one, and with more reason than most girls. King's vision of both the other teenagers in the book and the adults is nicely layered and textured. Nobody fades into a Peanuts babble. These are characters who are enjoyable no matter what the scenario might be.
But King's fantastic notion is fantastically well thought-out. Bat-drinking, as any other drug, affects the two of then quite differently, and Glory's visions of the future are not so beneficent as are Ellie's. 'Glory O'Brien's History of the Future' is not for the faint of heart and is distinctly, but appropriately to the character, political. Glory makes up her mind that she must record her visions, in order to prevent them from coming to pass. In older days, this was called the Cassandra complex. In glory's case, it's pure pragmatism, and deeply tied with her past and present.
The present is where most of the action unfolds, or, as it were, interaction. King's characters feel real, their visions are compelling and their predicaments, past, present and future, are well crafted even if they do include bat-drinking. The novel is interesting for its use of a supernatural trope to unspool science-fictional world building; the latter of course is simply a vision of the present as seen by a teenager. This is a point not without import. Teenagers, more than most, have a reason to live in the future; they're old enough to have an idea of what is ahead, but young enough that said idea is usually deeply flawed. 'Glory O'Brien's History of the Future' offers readers a rather hopeful vision, one of teenagers who know enough to care about how it all salts out.
11-04-14:Paolo Bacigalupi Believes In 'The Doubt Factory'
Thrills Matter
It's one thing to find some interesting, even compelling ideas; they're hard to avoid in a world of interesting times. But to make those ideas interesting and to bring them to life in a reader's mind, story matters; thrills matter. Engage your reader with great characters, find a way to test their mettle and put them through a wringer that is in thrall to those great ideas, and they'll not be easily forgotten.
Paolo Bacigalupi offers readers a perfect example in his superb thriller, 'The Doubt Factory.' Alix Banks is not a normal teenager, exactly. She's pretty damn far to the right-hand side of that income gap. She attends a costly private school and lives in a wealthy neighborhood with her noisy but engaging family. Her father, however ...
Alix meets a man who tells her that her father is not the nice man he has always seemed to be. She learns that his job may have the unfortunate side effect of death, by virtue of his ability to sow doubt about scientific research. From the first page on, 'The Doubt Factory' is a hot ride in a fast car, hard to put down for the intense tension and hard to forget for the compelling ideas.
Bacigalupi is a smart writer who knows that he has to capture us, and a brief prologue does just that and then takes us into Alix's life. Here, Bacigalupi shows his expertise writing about teens and not just for them. Readers hesitant to pick up a book that might, but shouldn't, be found in the YA section, can cast aside their internal doubt factory now. Even though the protagonist here is a teenaged girl, the approach is thoroughly adult, smart and sensible without the sensationalism.
Bacigalupi's entire cast of characters is compelling, because he brings them whole to the readers, so that antagonists may be likable while protagonists have flaws. This also lends to the tension, since everything and everyone is balanced on a very real knife-edge. Once Alix gets involved, the plot takes on a sort of con-game feel, with lots of intricate and engaging twists, all of them intrinsically externalizing Bacigalupi's perceptions of how we shape our own facts and realities, and what happens when external reality bumps up against the advertised alternative.
Expect to find an ingeniously conceived protest group and equally ingenious, but also insidious corporate shenanigans. Bacigalupi, who has written a lot of science fiction, brings much of the toolkit used in the genre to lend his real world, present day story, the sense of wonder one expects to find in the future. The problem is that we are currently living in that future, and we have only a dim understanding of how it is being steered and where we are going.
If you feel like you're part of that legendary orchestra on the deck of the Titanic, 'The Doubt Factory' is only going to exacerbate your anxiety. But Bacigalupi also uses a pulse-pounding, page turning ripping yarn to make a few tips of the iceberg clearer, to let us know that there's a lot going on underneath the surface that needs attention. Chances are that after reading this book, and buying his others, you're more likely to pay attention to that science piece about endocrine disruptors. Inconvenient truths will seem more present.
New to the Agony Column
09-18-15: Commentary : William T. Vollman Amidst 'The Dying Grass' : An Epic Exploration of Simultaneity
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with William T. Vollman : "...a lot of long words that in our language are sentences..."
09-05-15: Commentary : Susan Casey Listens to 'Voices in the Ocean' : Science, Empathy and Self
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Susan Casey : "...the reporting for this book was emotionally difficult at times..."
08-21-15: Agony Column Podcast News Report : Senator Claire McCaskill is 'Plenty Ladylike' : Internalizing Determination to Overcome Sexism [Incudes Time to Read EP 211: Claire McCaskill, Plenty Ladylike, plus A 2015 Interview with Senator Claire McCaskill]
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Emily Schultz Unleashes 'The Blondes' : A Cure by Color [Incudes Time to Read EP 210: Emily Schultz, The Blondes, plus A 2015 Interview with Emily Schultz]
07-05-15: Commentary : Dr. Michael Gazzaniga Tells Tales from Both Sides of the Brain : A Life in Neuroscience Reveals the Life of Science
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Michael Gazzaniga : "We made the first observation and BAM there was the disconnection effect..."
04-21-15: Commentary : Kazuo Ishiguro Unearths 'The Buried Giant' : The Mist of Myth and Memory
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Kazuo Ishiguro : ".... by the time I was writing this novel, the lines between what was fantasy and what was real had blurred for me..."
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Marc Goodman : "...every physical object around us is being transformed, one way or another, into an information technology..."
Agony Column Podcast News Report UPDATE: Time to Read Episode 199: Marc Goodman : Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It
