"NOS4A2", Joe Hill, 2013

"NOS4A2", Joe Hill, 2013

The book starts off with the childhood of Victoria McQueen, who can manifest a magical but startlingly detailed, corporeal bridge to any lost object she’s seeking. Hill describes her as a “strong creative,” someone whose inner world is powerful enough to affect the physical world, and he takes his time in revealing what this means, how it affects her life, and the painful price her power exacts on her. But eventually, the bridge leads her into contact with Charlie Manx, another strong creative with his own powers and a horrifying agenda. Their initial encounter sparks an enmity that extends into Vic’s adulthood, when she’s built a shaky life for herself in spite of the damage done by the profound traumas of her youth. As information revealed in her childhood suggests, she may be the only person capable of stopping Manx.

Manx is a profoundly Stephen King villain—not the simple, implacable evil of Heart-Shaped Box or the secretive mystery of Horns, but a thoroughly playful evil with an elaborate philosophy, a fondness for chattering about it, and a gleeful, almost childish personality. He comes across as a blend of It’s Pennywise and Needful Things’ Leland Gaunt, with some Randall Flagg thrown in. (The book’s title comes from the vanity plate on his powerful, malicious car, which recalls the title character of King’s Christine; in a typical bit of whimsy, Manx acquired the plate to echo the words of someone who pointed out that he’s akin to a vampire.) Vic is a King-esque protagonist, characterized in a flurry of tiny, closely realized details and a strong personality, and disintegrating from her own internal stresses even as she’s fighting her external battles. And the other point-of-view characters, including Vic’s overweight, good-hearted, nerdy husband and her valiant young son, echo familiar King types as well.

But none of the familiarity in any way gets in the way of NOS4A2’s profoundly satisfying narrative. At his best, King has always been about grounding fantasy and horror in a level of detail that makes it feel real. Hill accomplishes the same thing here. He dives deep into his characters and his startling imaginary world, then explores them at length. NOS4A2 is less stylish than his past novels, and more playful. It’s funnier than his previous books without letting up on the tension. The humor, particularly found in Manx and his crazed, deluded servant Bing (the Trashcan Man parallel, though there’s a good deal of Renfield in him as well), is wry and poisonous, without being casual or contrary; it ramps up the stakes when the antagonists are not just unjustly powerful and savage, but also never stop grinning mirthfully. The book’s only significant misstep is in falling back too often on mundane, toxic misogyny to instantly demonize bad guys. Compared to their unsettling humor, their sexism just seems petty and crude.

The most gratifying part of NOS4A2 is its scale: It’s a big, meaty, 700-page steak of a book that tells many distinct stories while weaving them all into a fabulous larger picture. Hill captures Vic’s internal voice at different stages of her life, making her into a series of memorable characters without losing the throughline that connects them. And for all Manx’s tonal familiarity, he’s a distinctive, mesmerizing villain. The book is imaginative to the point of mania, particularly in the outsized climactic confrontation. But it’s also warmly human in a way that again recalls King at his best. Where Heart-Shaped Box was about scares and Horns was about big, strange ideas, NOS4A2 at its heart is about people. It isn’t a King copycat or pastiche so much as an acknowledgement of all the things King does best, incorporated into an entirely new story. It’s a song played with familiar instruments, but following its own tune.

Easter eggs of every shape and color are scattered throughout the novel. Amanda Palmer gets name-dropped, as do Firefly, Batman, and Supergirl. The Keyhouse, Maxwell’s silver hammer, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, and Pennywise the Clown, among others, are there if you know where to look. But the best part of NOS4A2 aren’t the inside jokes, the deeply disturbing plot, or even his literary eloquence. The characters take a really good book and kick it into awesome. Hill has the enviable talent of creating characters that don’t just feel real but are real. Reading his books is like watching these people’s lives unfold, as if the action and plot are determined by their personalities and experiences rather than authorial dictation. You can almost see their lives outside what we see in the book. I can easily visualize Lou Carmody dropping Wayne off at school, Vic guilt-tripping her way through AA meetings, and Bing doing unspeakable things to his victims, and not because Hill describes those things but because he’s so deftly shaded out his characters. I feel like I know them in a way that goes beyond the fictional construct.

I savored and hung on every word to the very end.

My rating: ★★★★★ (5 out of 5 stars) - I loved it!

The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson, 1948

The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson, 1948

This a lottery you don't want to win.

The story describes a fictional small town which observes an annual ritual known as "the lottery", which results in the killing of one individual in the town.

"The Lottery" has been described as "one of the most famous short stories in the history of American literature"

My rating: ★★★☆☆ (3 out of 5 stars) - I liked it.

You can read the short story here:

http://fullreads.com/literature/the-lottery/

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers #1), by Becky Chambers, 2014

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers #1), by Becky Chambers, 2014

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is a story set in the far future. Rosemary Harper is running from her past, so she joins the crew of the Wayfarer, a ship that tunnels wormholes across the galaxy with its diverse crew of aliens. The crew is offered the chance of a lifetime: a new race is joining the Galactic Commons and the wormhole that needs to be tunneled will make them very wealthy, even if the job takes longer than usual. En route to the planet, the crew encounters a series of mishaps and hazards that bring them closer together. But the denizens of the planet might not be as keen to join the Commons as they initially seemed...

If plot's your thing, this may not be the book for you. This book is all about the journey and very much not about the destination. The book is more a series of vignettes focusing on each character, loosely threaded together by the fact that all the vignettes occur while en route to this planet to tunnel a wormhole. 

In fact, the character diversity in this book is stunning. It's a frequent, if disappointing, trope in science fiction that alien races are simply re-skinned humans. They're not actually alien. But Chambers handles her alien races with a deft hand. Each race is distinctly different, with its own culture, language and variant physiology. We get everything from a feathered reptilian species to a species with two sets of vocal chords that changes gender mid-life to a sloth-like species with a willingly contracted virus that shortens their lifespans but grants them enhanced perception and mathematical abilities. And I've only scratched the surface here. The meticulous attention to species creation would set this book apart on its own.

Yet on top of that, Chambers juggles a large cast of main characters, managing to draw a compelling, three-dimensional picture of each one. As I said above, the story is told in vignettes, with each vignette focusing in on a particular character. None of them are skipped, and each one gets a chance to shine (even the curmudgeonly algaeist). Rosemary is technically our main character, but she really only feels that way in the early portions of the book as introductions are made; afterward, it's one of the best ensemble casts I've ever seen.

The worldbuilding too is well-executed. Chambers' future has weight and history, but also a fleshed-out set of cultures that permeate everything the characters do. It would've been easy to go thin on the worldbuilding since most of the book takes place on a ship, but instead the world enhances the emotional journeys of the characters.

In the end, the pacing is rather uneven as a result of the vignette style. But I'd still recommend this book as a shining example of character work and for its core message that family doesn't have to be who we're born with - we can choose our family too.

My rating: ★★★☆☆ (3 out of 5 stars) - I liked it.

"Replay", Ken Grimwood, 1986

"Replay", Ken Grimwood, 1986

The book’s plot is reasonably simple, if fantastic — a 43 year old man dies in the first chapter of a heart attack after a lackluster life. But then he wakes up and he’s age 18 again, just starting college with everything identical to how it had been during his first life. More important, he remembers everything about his life from age 18 to 43 (anyone interested in buying some Apple stock this time around?).

He uses that prior knowledge of his own life as well as his knowledge of history to live his life differently the second time around. But when he gets to be the same age as before, he dies again. He wakes up again … rinse and repeat with a different life strategy each time. But there is one complication he doesn’t notice at first — each time he wakes up after a death, it is a later point in his life. So each life is shorter than the one before. What is going to happen when his replay-date finally catches up to his death-date?

I not only enjoyed the writing style but also the author’s imagination. How many things would you change if you had the opportunity to live your life again? We make decisions, we begin or end or avoid relationships, we commit (or not) to various activities and people, we decide how important money, family and friends are to us. But in the end, the only important resource we really have in our life is time, and the only meaningful decisions we make are how to spend that time in the best way to have a life that is rewarding in our own value system.

Unfortunately Ken Grimwood died at only 59 of (ironically) a heart attack as he was writing the sequel to Replay.

My rating: ★★★★☆ (4 out of 5 stars) - I really liked it.

_________________________________________

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replay_(Grimwood_novel)

Characters and story[edit]

Replay is the account of 43-year-old radio journalist Jeff Winston, who dies of a heart attack in 1988 and awakens back in 1963 in his 18-year-old body as a student at Atlanta's Emory University. He then begins to relive his life with intact memories of the next 25 years, until, despite his best efforts at cardiac health, he dies of a heart attack, again, in 1988. He immediately returns to 1963, but several hours later than the last "replay". This happens repeatedly with different events in each cycle, each time beginning from increasingly later dates (first days, then weeks, then years, then ultimately decades). Jeff soon realizes that he cannot prevent his death in 1988, but he can change the events that occur before it, both for him, and for others.

During one subsequent replay, Jeff takes notice of a highly acclaimed film, Starsea, that has become a huge success at the box office in 1974. The film is written and produced by an unknown filmmaker, Pamela Phillips, who has recruited Steven Spielberg to direct and George Lucas, as a special effects supervisor, before the two shot to stardom with their own projects. Because the film did not exist in previous replays, Jeff suspects that Pamela is also experiencing the same phenomenon. He locates her and asks her questions about future films which only a fellow replayer would know, confirming his suspicions.

Pamela and Jeff eventually fall in love and become convinced that they are soulmates. Complications arise when they notice that their replays are getting shorter and shorter, with Pamela not beginning her next replay until well after Jeff. Eventually, the two decide to try to find other replayers by placing cryptic messages in newspapers. The messages, which seem very vague to anyone who is not a replayer, generate a fair amount of dead-end responses until the pair receives a letter from a man who is clearly knowledgeable about future events. Jeff and Pamela decide to visit the stranger, only to discover that he is confined to a psychiatric hospital. Surprisingly, the staff does not pay attention to his discussion on the future, but it soon becomes clear why the man is institutionalized when he calmly states that he thinks aliens are forcing him to murder people for their own entertainment.

In a later replay, the two decide to take their experiences public, giving press conferences announcing future events in explicit detail. The government eventually takes notice and forces Pamela and Jeff to provide continued updates on foreign activities. Although the government denies responsibility, major political events begin to transpire differently, and Jeff attempts to break off the relationship. The government refuses, and the pair are imprisoned and forced to continue providing information.

As future replays become shorter and shorter, the two are left to wonder how things will eventually unfold—whether or not the replays will ultimately end, and the pair will pass into the afterlife—or if the current replay is, in fact, the last. Eventually, the replays become so short, Jeff and Pamela relive their original deaths repeatedly in succession—until Jeff finally has a heart attack which he manages to survive. While he calls Pamela soon afterward, she lets him know that she has also survived, and that their replaying wasn't a dream. While it seems ambiguous whether or not they will meet again, Jeff eagerly awaits entering an unpredictable future with endless possibilities.

Awards and nominations[edit]

Replay won the 1988 World Fantasy Award^[2] and was on the shortlist for the 1988 Arthur C. Clarke Award.

The novel has been included in several lists of recommended reading: Modern Fantasy: The Hundred Best Novels (1988), Locus Reader's Poll: Best Science Fiction Novel (1988), Aurel Guillemette's The Best in Science Fiction (1993) and David Pringle's Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction (1995).

Sequel and possible film adaptations[edit]

Ken Grimwood was working on a sequel to Replay when he died from a heart attack in 2003 at the age of 59.^[3] In 2010 Warner Bros. reported that it was planning on a film version starring Ben Affleck. The screenplay for this adaptation has been written by Jason Smilovic.^[4] In 2011 Robert Zemeckis was in talks to direct,^[5] but as of 2017 no movement seems to have been made on the project.

"Patternmaster (Patternmaster #4)", Octavia Butler, 1976

 "Patternmaster (Patternmaster #4)", Octavia Butler, 1976

Patternmaster introduces us to a future in which humanity, through selective breeding, has produced a race of telepaths. (The origins of this future are detailed in the grim and compelling Mind of My Mind.) Far from creating a blissful paradise on Earth, this has led to a tense society in which the most powerful telepaths control those less powerful, as well as non-telepathic humans they call "mutes," through a link called the Pattern. Humanity, by evolving this direction, has reverted to many purely animal instincts. Patternist leaders, called Housemasters, usually have no choice but to kill outright anyone of comparable ability that might challenge their authority. Though strict laws are in place forbidding wanton abuse of power, especially towards mutes, these are commonly flouted. Nations and governments as we know them no longer exist. The law of the jungle has returned full force.

Underscoring the metaphorical link to animal instincts is Butler's use of the Clayarks, grossly mutated (they look like sphinxes) posthumans of no telepathic ability, the descendants of an aborted attempt by mutes to flee Earth in a starship. Now the Clayarks wander the landscape in loose tribal groups, sometimes alone, preying upon Patternists, who in turn live in terror of infection by the "Clayark disease," the genetic anomaly that mutated Clayarks in the first place.

The plot concerns a young Patternist named Teray, one of the many sons of Rayal, the current Patternmaster. Teray finds himself under the rule of Coransee, a powerful Housemaster who appears to be first in line to succeed the ailing Rayal. Coransee fears that Teray has the power to challenge his succession, and demands that Teray allow himself to be controlled, preventing his power from ever growing to dangerous degrees. Coransee even promises Teray his own House. Teray refuses and vows to escape Coransee — which he soon does, in the company of a healer, a woman named Amber — to seek sanctuary with Rayal. But Coransee isn't about to take that lying down.

The premise doesn't bear close logical scrutiny. If Coransee were really concerned about Teray's

power, he could have killed or controlled the young man with little effort right at the novel's opening. Why even ask? (Well, we wouldn't have gotten a book out of it, then.) Butler's characterizations are good. But in the end Patternmaster seems little more than a grim anti-superhero story. The narrative becomes an exercise in waiting for the foregone conclusion, the inevitable duel to the death between Coransee and Teray. This problem even hampered Mind of My Mind, but in that book, Butler had a much better grasp of both her themes and of how to write suspense. Here, her themes get confused. For a while, it looks as though Butler is telling a metaphorical odyssey about the evils of slavery. But all that dissipates when you realize Teray doesn't want to unravel Patternist society and free everyone from mental tyranny. He'd just rather see himself as Patternmaster instead of Coransee. And Teray doesn't hesitate to use his powers to control others when he gets the chance.

Also, there's just lots of killing going on in this book, of the grisliest sort. Ironically I found myself sympathizing the most with the dreaded Clayarks, whom Butler depicts as a mass of mindless animals bent on wiping out Patternists for reasons she never adequately explores. The book loses a lot of depth because Butler never explains the Clayarks' actions. In fact, she makes a big mistake in having Teray encounter and actually speak to one early in the book. There's an entire missed plot opportunity here Butler never follows through, and this one instance of humanizing the Clayarks, far from making them more fearsome, actually allows the reader a bit of empathy. Which doesn't go down well when you see how our supposed heroes deal with the Clayarks later on.

Butler's Patternist novels get much better than this one, and there's nothing surprising about the earliest work of a fine writer not being among their best. Though Patternmaster can probably be overlooked, Octavia Butler is a novelist you shouldn't.

My rating: ★★★☆☆ (3 out of 5 stars) - I liked it.

"Clay's Ark (Patternmaster #3)", Octavia Butler, 1984

"Clay's Ark (Patternmaster #3)", Octavia Butler, 1984

Clay’s Ark (1984) was written last in Octavia Butler’s 4-book PATTERNIST series, but comes third in chronology. It takes place after Wild Seed (1980) and Mind of My Mind (1977), in the post-apocalyptic California desert. Society has collapsed into armed enclaves, marauding ‘car families’, organ hunters, and isolated towns. It’s along the lines of Mad Max, with fuel sources depleted and social infrastructure nonexistent, violent death lurking at any moment, and little room for anything more than survival.

This world is gradually revealed via two storylines, one set in the past and the other in the present. The past story arc is centered on an astronaut named Eli, the only survivor of a spaceship called Clay’s Ark that went on an exploratory mission to Proxima Centauri. The mission encountered an alien microbe that affected and transformed their DNA for its own purposes. Eli survives the return to Earth, but is infected with this microbe, which imparts on its host increased strength, endurance, healing ability, and appetite.

However, it also enslaves humans by forcing them to spread the disease. Namely, the men feel an overwhelming urge to infect unaffected females and mate with them, and infected women also feel the same compulsion. Infected men also feel intense aggression towards other males, which leads to a lion’s pride type of social structure, with the strongest males taking as many females as possible and fighting off competing males. The most disturbing aspect of this book is that infected people are fully aware of these compulsions and rebel against them, but cannot resist. So they are both slaves and puppets to this alien microbe that drives them to animal-like behavior.

In the current timeline we meet Blake, a physician who still remembers pre-collapse society, and his

twin daughters Rane and Keira. Rane is healthy and confident, while Keira suffers from an incurable form of leukemia. The story wastes no time in throwing them into trouble, as their car is stopped by two men who force them at gunpoint to return with them to a remote enclave in the desert. As the story progresses, we learn that this community is led by former astronaut Eli and consists of people infected by the sinister alien microbe brought back from Proxima Centauri.

The classic Butler themes of domination, enslavement, power, and strange sexual relations are on full display in Clay’s Ark. It’s not an easy reading experience, and I’m sure that’s one reason that Butler’s books are not more widely read, but they are certainly challenging and force the reader outside their comfort zone. We have no choice but to go along with the difficult decisions the characters face in whether to submit to an alien virus that will transform them.

Butler seems fixated on the idea of humans being transformed into something alien, both more and less than human. The process of transformation is always difficult, painful and invasive, and people often don’t survive. Butler seems to revel in throwing readers and her characters into uncomfortable situations. This was also the case in the previous books Wild Seed and Mind of My Mind, though the transformation was psychic in nature. So thematically Clay’s Ark delves into the same territory, but does not feature any of the telepaths from the previous books.

My rating: ★★★★★ (5 out of 5 stars) - I loved it!

"Mind of My Mind (Patternmaster #2)", Octavia Butler, 1977

"Mind of My Mind (Patternmaster #2)", Octavia Butler, 1977

Mind of My Mind takes place about a century after the events of Wild Seed. Doro, the immortal being from the first book, has continued to cultivate a huge number of active telepaths throughout the U.S. Anyanwu, the centuries-old shape-shifting healer, now goes by Emma and occupies a much smaller role in this book. Instead, the story is centered on a young teenaged girl named Mary. Doro recognizes great potential in her, and though she has a troubled upbringing like many other latent telepaths, he brings her through the difficult transition to active psionic abilities.

At this point Doro and Mary realize that she has a unique ability to link together other telepaths under her control in a Pattern of psychic bonds. The story follows a number of psychics who find themselves drawn to Forsyth, California, not understanding why. When they are gathered under one roof with Mary, it is revealed that Doro wants them to submit to Mary’s control in the hopes of forming a telepathic bond among them. They are extremely resistant to this proposal, and consider trying to kill Mary to avoid this outcome. However, Doro is an ever-present threat, and they are afraid to cross him. However, when they do link their minds, it is Doro who questions whether this outcome is truly the goal of his psychic breeding program over millennia, or whether Mary and the others in her Pattern represent a greater threat to him than anyone before.

What carries the novel over the obvious course of its plotting is Butler's attention to character, as well as her intriguing notion of how those with psychic abilities might function in a world mostly populated by people who haven't got them. Doro, an utterly loathsome bastard from the get-go, is a ruthless, psychopathic tyrant; devoid of empathy, he kills those not useful to him as casually as one might crumple up a paper cup and throw it away. Mary becomes the first of the Pattern to develop anything like a moral compass, but even her most beneficent deeds involve taking over the minds of others, compelling them to follow her will, all the while believing they are choosing their actions. Mary understands the moral quandary, but doesn't choose to avoid it. The result is that even this novel's most sympathetic characters are never 100% likable. But Butler's theme — that the moral precepts all of us live by in order to get along might not even occur to someone who possesses powers nearly godlike to us — is startling and provocative.

My rating: ★★★★★ (5 out of 5 stars) - I loved it!

"Wild Seed (Patternmaster #1)", Octavia Butler, 1980

"Wild Seed (Patternmaster #1)", Octavia Butler, 1980

Anyanwu and Doro are two immortal beings. Doro is more of a spirit than a man. He lives through millennial by possessing other’s bodies, killing the original owners in the process. Anyanwu is a shape shifter who can constantly rejuvenate her body so that she stays young forever. Doro kills, Anyanwu heals. They are as opposite as they can be, and yet each is the only immortal the other knows. Wild Seed begins with the two coming into contact for the first time, when Doro happens upon the African village where Anyanwu’s living in the late 1600s and shows the relationship between them up until the late 1800s.

Wild Seed is easy to read, but there’s a lot going on underneath the surface. There’s so many different topics at play here – race, slavery, gender, sexuality. Basically, if it’s a topic relating to power structures, Wild Seed deals with it. It doesn’t deal much with LGBTQ themes, but I’m still listing it under the tag since Anyanwu has a wife at one point (happens between chapters) and could probably be considered bisexual.

Wild Seed deals with the difficulties of being immortal and the inherent loneliness of watching everyone you know die. This is the focal point of the relationship between Anyanwu and Doro. Anyanwu may not be able to condone what Doro does, but he’s the only person who will remain constant as the families she builds for herself die around her.

Doro is dislikable, but I think you’re supposed to hate him. He’s spent his extraordinary long life on a eugenics project, creating a race of people with special powers. He’s controlling and manipulative and thinks nothing of killing others. He wants people to be under his control, to respect and obey him in all things. But Anyanwu cannot respect him, and she does not always obey him. She’s wild seed – a talented person born outside his breeding programs.

Book 1 . Covenant 1690:
Anyanwu lives as a god among her power, an immortal shape-shifter whose control over living material allows her to heal others. Doro too is an immortal with a keen interest in people like Anyanwu. In fact he has been collecting people like her – telekinetics, doomed telepaths, and so on - for millennia. Anyanwu is unique in that she is the only other immortal he has ever encountered; when he stumbles over Anyanwu’s existence Doro is eager to add her to his collection. He is seductive enough that Anyanwu agrees to accompany him through the hellscape of an Africa subject to repeated slaver raids and off to the New World, not the most ideal place for an African at this time.

Alas, Doro is an obligate psychic predator forced to hop from body to body to sustain himself and his interest in people with special gifts is because their minds taste best when consumed. He is no Charles Xavier or even Magneto gathering allies but a nomadic herder engaged in an extremely long duration breeding program and any empathy he might seem to have for his food is almost purely an illusion.

After the penny drops, she sticks around because she has fallen in love with Isaac, one of Doro’s subjects. Isaac convinces Anyanwu to stick around with a telling argument that the author carefully keeps hidden from the reader much as I am doing now.

Book II . Lot’s Children 1741:

Anyanwu doesn’t have a lot of cards in her hand when it comes to bargaining with Doro but she has a few (she can, for example, run away in the form of an animal whose mind Doro cannot perceive) but his powers and willingness to use her loved ones as hostages mean that the balance of power is very much on his side. Her love for Isaac is enough that she puts up with Doro’s use of both of them in his breeding programs, and Doro’s casually murderous customs. Her persistence is paid most poorly.

Book III . Canaan 1840
Anyanwu builds a new life for herself, one with a community of gifted who she nurtures rather than exploits. Doro of course ruins all this by tracking her down and while he tries to convince her they can reach a tolerable accommodation, not only do his misjudgments provoke terrible tragedies but he cannot change his predatory ways or his profound empathetic deficits. In the end, Anyanwu comes to the conclusion there are only two paths: submit to Doro in the knowledge that even when he tries very hard to be less than a total monster for the sake of the only person who shares his immortality he will still be a horrible person, or escape into death. Doro is the only one in a position to argue out of this and of course this is one game where he is the one stuck with terrible cards.

My rating: ★★★★★ (5 out of 5 stars) - I loved it!

Head On (Lock In #2) by John Scalzi, 2018

Head On (Lock In #2) by John Scalzi, 2018

While Head On is a sequel to Scalzi’s earlier science fiction novel, Lock In , it’s a stand alone mystery story. Still, I would suggest starting with Lock In so you can get to know the world and characters before diving into Head On.

FBI Agent Chris Shane is watching a live game of hilketa, where players operating robotic bodies (“threeps”) attempt to behead each other on the playing field. The game is a showcase for potential investors in the league, so the stakes are high. Then, one of the players dies in the middle of the game, a first for hilketa. Is it simply an accident or is more at work? As Chris and Leslie investigate, coincidences pile up and more dead bodies soon appear.

With Lock In and Head On, Scalzi imagines a near future where one percent of the population has Hayden’s syndrome, which lives them conscious but locked into their non-responsive bodies. Through a series of tech and research initiatives, Hadens now interact with the world through neural interfaces, either digitally online or with robotic bodies to navigate the physical world.

The premise is fascinating, combining interesting science fiction concepts with themes relating to disability rights. Many people tend to look on the Hadens as less than human, overtly or subtly mistreating them for it. This is clear in Chris’s everyday interactions. Chris has been a Haden since birth and tends to find gender insiginicant to life; subsequently, Scalzi writes the books without ever gendering Chris. For the audio book, there are two different versions with male and female narrators, respectively.

Although Head On is largely a stand alone with an independent mystery, the world has changed from book one to book two. Laws have been passed slashing or eliminating government benefits to Hadens, leaving many struggling as a result. While Chris’s wealth provides some insulation, Chris is more than aware (and unhappy with) the suffering of the larger Haden community.

Obviously, fictional sports is the name of the game in Head On. Hilketa is an interesting concept seeming sort of like a cross between a traditional team game like football or hurling and those robotic fights I’m always seeing footage of. Only, in this world, those robots are directly linked into and piloted by people’s consciousnesses. I’m not super into sports. 

Like anything else by Scalzi, Head On is fast paced and fun, full of snarky dialog. Sometimes I find his writing style a bit tiring or too much on the snark, but that isn’t the case for either Lock In or Head On. 

My rating: ★★★☆☆ (3 out of 5 stars) - I liked it.

"Parasite (Parasitology #1)" by Mira Grant, 2013

"Parasite (Parasitology #1)" by Mira Grant, 2013

In Parasite, Mira Grant imagines a near future in which genetically modified tapeworms are a universal health-care solution. Once implanted, the worm provides immune-system support, making its human host healthy for the duration of its life — though like any good piece of commodified progress, the worms have planned obsolescence and need to be replaced regularly.


Sal Mitchell owes her life to her parasite, which brought her out of a coma after a serious car accident. Unfortunately, her memories vanished, and her current personality is only 6 years old. She lives a life that's half lab rat and half surreal puberty, living at home, dating a doctor (though not one of hers), and relearning language and social idiosyncracies in a treading-water existence. Something's got to give — and does; people start contracting a bizarre sleepwalking sickness just as Sal starts getting cryptic messages about what she already suspects. This pandemic is no accident.

As the first of a series, Parasite often feels like groundwork: characters are dutifully introduced, horrors steadily unrolled, and ethical arguments sedately hashed out, so that even increasingly frequent zombie outbreaks can't stir up real urgency. An Everyperson can be a compelling center for a conspiracy story — but Sal's so slow on the uptake that we figure out plot twists far ahead of her. The suspense often stretches thin, and some of the most promising thematic parallels fizzle out in service of the plot. And though it's a refreshing change for a thriller heroine to have a trustworthy boyfriend, many others in the supporting cast — the awkward family, the stalwart dog, the mysterious CEO, the mysterious scientist, the quirky girl — never quite come into focus.

Parasite succeeds most in capturing the frustration and administrative dread that's part and parcel of recovering from a traumatic medical incident. Being exposed to a zombie pandemic seems less dangerous to Sal than having to undergo the subsequent poking and prodding by indifferent doctors; it's a well-grounded medical wariness that gets at the heart of what the Parasitology series is.

My rating ★★☆☆☆ (2 out of 5 stars) - It was ok.

"Imago (Xenogenesis #3)" by Octavia E. Butler, 1989

"Imago (Xenogenesis #3)" by Octavia E. Butler, 1989

Imago is the concluding volume in Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy.  Butler's trilogy is a collection of three novels which tell otherwise complete stories that while they expand on the previous novel, each novel does not depend on the other to stand.

Imago is the story of Jodahs, the latest Oankali / human hybrid child of Lilith Iyapo. An interesting thing about the Oankali child is that as a child their gender is not set, so depending on the stimulation and experiences given to the child, the child may develop into a male, female, or ooloi (a third gender). Up until this point no construct (hybrid) children have been permitted to develop into ooloi because the Oankali have had concerns about how they would develop and it was only recently that male hybrids were permitted to develop. Jodahs, of course, develops into an ooloi hybrid rather than the male he, or it, was intended to be. 

The story of Jodahs is one of isolation and dependence and the reader gets to experience the anxiety Jodahs feels and experiences from his community (an ooloi always needs to find a new home because of sensory differences with those in the home it was raised in). 

We are now at least several decades, perhaps longer, from the events of Dawn and Adulthood Rites so Butler reveals some of how the Earth has developed and how the Oankali / human project has progressed. We learn that the Mars colony that was proposed in Adulthood Rites is a success and giving humanity the only chance to survive unchanged. 

Imago is written with a strong sense of character and Butler describes the alien culture in such a way that it feels authentic and the hybrids in a way that we can see why some humans would never accept them, but also why others have accepted the Oankali.

As always, Imago and the Xenogenesis trilogy is an examination about race, differences, fear, prejudice, the future, and identity. As always, Octavia Butler does an excellent job with her storytelling. And, as is the case with the two previous Xenogenesis novels, Imago is a very strong work of fiction but somehow less outstanding than Dawn.

My rating: ★★★★★ (5 out of 5 stars) - I loved it!

"Adulthood Rites (Xenogenesis #2)" by Octavia E. Butler, 1988

Adulthood Rites (1988) is the second book in Octavia Butler’s XENOGENESIS trilogy. It continues the story of LilithDawn (1987), a human woman revived by the alien Oankali centuries after humanity has mostly destroyed itself with nuclear weapons. The Oankali offered humanity a second chance, but at a price — to merge its genes with the Oankali, who are ‘gene traders’ driven to continuously seek new species in the galaxy to combine their DNA with, transforming both sides in the process.

10 years after the events of Dawn, Lilith has given birth to a son named Akin, the first male ‘construct’ to be born to a human woman. There are number of distinct groups in this newly reborn Earth – Oankali who do not merge with humans and remain on their spaceship above the earth, Oankali sent down to the Earth to mate with humans in ‘trade villages,’ ‘construct’ children that share both human and Oankali genes, and human resisters who refuse to accept the Oankali offer and resent both Oankali and ‘traitor’ humans alike.

Akin is unique in that until now the Oankali have not allowed human males to be born to other humans, in order to avoid what they perceive as the aggressive nature of males. Of all the ‘constructs’ born to date, he is the most human. Nevertheless, his Oankali DNA imparts special traits like rapid mental development, healing ability, and sensory organs that allow him to communicate with both humans and Oankali at a more instinctual level. This is the normal mode of exchange for the Oankali, who have only adopted speech to be more accessible to humans. Akin is intended by the Oankali to be a bridge to understanding humans better and furthering the integration process.

However, when Akin is kidnapped by resisters, who have been made sterile by the Oankali and therefore yearn for the children they cannot have, he gets first-hand exposure to the human side that is opposed to the Oankalis’ plan. He learns all the faults of humanity, particularly what the Oankali call the ‘human contradiction,’ namely the inherent conflict between intelligence and hierarchical behavior, which inevitably (in the Oankalis’ minds) leads to conflict, aggression, suppression, and eventually self-destruction. This is why the Oankali do not believe that humans can be allowed to revive their society without any modification of this ‘flaw.’

Much of Adulthood Rites details just how ALIEN the Oankali really are, especially their genderless adolescence and metamorphosis into either male, female or Ooloi, the third gender that forms a triumvirate and serves as the gene manipulator to create children, a more hands-on approach than the random DNA recombination of humans. They communicate constantly by means of sensory tentacles, exchanging feelings, sensations, and thoughts between family units and larger groupings. Although they supposedly shun ‘hierarchical’ behavior, there is a clear hierarchy among the Oankali. The events that surround Akin, his Oankali siblings, the Ooloi in his ‘family’, and the humans in his life are complicated. More importantly, the biology and sexual practices of the Oankali are bizarre, unsettling, and downright creepy. Once again, Butler never shies away from making the reader uncomfortable by testing our comfort zones. I’m quite pleased by this — why read science fiction if not to be exposed to the truly alien, while also using this as a mirror to better understanding ourselves?

Just as in Dawn, humanity seems primitive, distrusting, and brutish in comparison to the Oankali. Again and again, resisters prove that they will quickly resort to violence when faced with difficult situations, attacking both Oankali and human collaborators. In return, the Oankali will subdue them but try to avoid killing other than as a last resort. After reading Dawn, my initial impression was that Butler really had a dim view of humanity and that the far more advanced and evolved Oankali were a benevolent race intent on fixing the flaws of humanity out of both biological imperative and a desire to improve their lot.

My rating: ★★★★★ (5 out of 5 stars) - I loved it!

"Dawn (Xenogenesis #1)" by Octavia E. Butler, 1987

"Dawn (Xenogenesis #1)" by Octavia E. Butler, 1987

Dawn tells a tale of mass alien abduction and colonization. The human race has perished in a worldwide conflagration, apparently of human origin. Published initially in the late 1970s, Dawn suggests that nuclear war may have been (and might still be) the cause of humanity’s (self)destruction. An alien race, the Oankali, discovers earth and has the technology to regenerate individuals from small sets of genetic material. Dawn opens with one such human, Lilith, waking up and trying to make sense of what’s happened to her. Her captors remain unseen, but she soon discovers that they are aliens who travel the galaxy in search of “trades.”  They are willing to assist humanity, helping it recover from destruction and flourish again — but at a price. The Oankali seek genetic material, and they essentially interbreed with the races they discover, adding to their gene pool some of the best characteristics and qualities of those races and imparting some of their own better qualities and abilities in exchange. For instance, we learn that Oankali have amazing self-healing abilities.

The Oankali have identified, however, a fundamental flaw in humanity: a genetic gift for intelligence coupled with a predisposition to hierarchy. Such in turn leads humanity to figure out better ways to create divisions amongst people, impose order, punish deviation from “normalcy,” and engage in war to ensure the status quo.

The “price” of interbreeding with the Oankali is that this contradiction will be bred out of the race, and humans will transform over time into human/Oankali hybrids. As one of the ooloi interbreeders tells Lilith, “Our children will be better than either of us. […] We will moderate your hierarchical problems and you will lessen our physical limitations. Our children won’t destroy themselves in a war, and if they need to regrow a limb or to change themselves in some other way they’ll be able to do it. And there will be other benefits.”  With this genetic twist, Butler dispenses with merely titillating scenes of interspecies sex in favor of grounding such intercourse in necessity. We will have to interbreed to survive.

My rating: ★★★★★ (5 out of 5 stars) - I loved it!

"Acceptance (Southern Reach, #3)" by Jeff VanderMeer, 2014

"Acceptance (Southern Reach, #3)" by Jeff VanderMeer, 2014

The concluding installment of the Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, 2014; Authority, 2014) ends where the story began: in a cloud of hallucinatory mystery. We leave knowing more about Area X than we started; we may not understand it any better, but we leave transformed, as do all travelers to that uncanny place.

"Acceptance" takes us back inside the mix of pristine wilderness and Lovecraftian madness that is Area X. The area is spreading, and all of our primary characters find themselves trapped inside. Through a mix of journal entries and other point-of-view shifts both past and present we explore the secrets that Area X still keeps. The primary PoV characters are Saul (the lighthouse keeper referenced in the other novels, who was present through the creation of Area X), the Director/the Psychologist, the Biologist and Ghost Bird, and Control. In particular we get the run-down on the Director’s previous trip into Area X (with Whitby) before the twelfth expedition took place. We finally find out more or less what Area X is and how it came to be, but it isn’t explored too thoroughly. The wrap-up of the series doesn’t take away too much of the mystery and madness that made Annihilation so special; nor does it leave too much unexplained. I found it to be just the right balance.

I think every writer has words and images that they return to. I thought it spoke to the heart of this series that the words and concepts that seem to return repeatedly are compost, colonizing, and stitching. They all work themselves neatly into the secret heart of the madness that seethes within every inch of Area X. I’m frankly surprised to see a story such as this trilogy that can maintain that Lovecraftian sense of madness and horror while also providing just enough explanation to satisfy a modern audience.

I found Saul’s story particularly interesting. Even though it’s largely a means to an end for a fascinating reveal, Vandermeer gives Saul plenty of personality and layers, as well as a connection to the modern-day story through the Director/the Psychologist.

The original Annihilation is still my favorite of the trilogy, but the story as a whole is fantastic. There’s enough detail that I think it will reward re-reading a time or two as well. In particular there are some uses of hypnosis that cast previous events in a very different light.

My rating: ★★★☆☆ (3 out of 5 stars) - I liked it.




Some interesting points from others I found on the web:

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Anyways:|

Uh, on to the "plot" of Vandermeer's. Well, semiotics aside, my best guess is that Area X is this sort of a "Noah's Ark" for a (very different) sort of extraterrestrial life that can, at its whim, transcend spacetime. Remember the flashes/visions that Saul had, of a "burning comet falling from the sky"? Something crashed in front of him, OR, he saw the crashing in a vision AFTER he was "infected" (or initiated) by the 8-petal-flower-of-brightness. Another character had such a vision, I can't recall if it was Ghost Bird, the Director or Control. The image was of total devastation by stars falling. So, basically, what happens is this (rough draft, ha ha):

1. Alien species which we will call the Brightness exists on a far away world which has similar biology and ecology to ours (remember, expedition members into Area X couldn't at first grasp they were in fact on another 'planet' (the unfamiliar night sky and the ripples in the sky), because the flora and fauna were similar - OR, Earth's flora and fauna were transported somewhere far away to preserve life).

2. An apocalyptic event wipes out most of the Brightness species.

3. Instinctively, or technologically, the Brightness somehow (this was sort of described in a passage of someone's ruminations, in Acceptance), "seek out" a fertile world for themselves to "seed" (or some sort of technology or primal organism of theirs). Having the ability to travel through space and warp time, for some reason, an amount of their "brightness" gets trapped into one of the two lighthouses, where it hibernates. (The glass of the beacon, the lens.)

4. For some reason, the S&SB are sent to investigate for paranormal phenomena in the area, and eventually, they (Henry and Suzanne) pin down the "phenomenon" - they find the anomalous 'light', something happens, it or they break the glass lens where it is 'stuck', after which the brightness (seed) falls down where then, Saul sees it, is attracted to it, touches it, and so it enters him/infects him, and starts to change him. With its ephemeral or light-based biology intertwined with his, there seems to be also some kind of 'species' memory transfer, via DNA or something else - he recalls a 'burning star' crashing in front of him, but then sees nothing. Two solutions to this: it was a memory, so it didn't happen to him (but was a racial/DNA memory of the demise of the alien species), OR, it was real, and he, getting "Brightened" attracted another "brightness seed" to his location in Area X/The Forgotten Coast. This second landing was in fact the topographical anomaly site, and the crash in fact created the Tower, which is just a camouflaged crater/impact site, on the bottom of which, as we discover in the finale of Acceptance, is a portal but ALSO ANOTHER FLOWER (so, a seed, an alien in effect), which guards or is placed near the portal. Remember, the first flower infected Saul, the second flower infected Whitby (he saw it bloom, probably touched it, no one saw this except him, but after that he changed!), and the third "visitor" is obviously kept at the bottom of the Tower, which may well have arrived by the crash Saul saw many years prior.

5. In the meantime, Southern Reach tries to make sense of this. The alien visitors function as either symbiotes or parasites to a human host - depending on the host. In Saul's case, the alien completely takes him over, internally shutting him out and externally mutating him to extreme extents, so he becomes the Crawler. Whitby is also completely taken over, or driven mad. However, those are contacts of a certain kind, where a flower of light infects them. The biologist, though, and others, are infected via a sort of spore, a second type of encounter, like the writing on the wall from the Crawler/Saul. The interesting part about this is that, once someone is infected by this second way, the spores, they become two people, a clone is formed. Then, battle commences, and usually the original is killed (remember, most of those who return from Area X, have to enter the Tower, meet and get infected by the Crawler, and exit via the portal on its bottom. Also remember - in Annihilation, the Biologist and her crewmates discover a dead body lying on the stairs, down in the tower. The body (or was it bodies?) seemed to have died without a struggle... In essence, they were the dead originals, whose clones traversed the portal and exited Area X). So basically, these Brightness alien species control a portal through which they send faux copy-humans, perhaps as sort of expendable sentries, because they lack complete memory, and they die soon (the biologist being one example, not sure why - perhaps because she was already internally disciplined and detached from her personality. Because what the Crawler's spores can clone is that which is not attached to one's semiotic mental identification - therefore, most of the other candidates end up almost wiped out when cloned by the Crawler and die soon. But the biologist, who identified herself with her profession, got cloned (or was she cloned?) more completely, because large chunks of her neuro-semiotic-identity were left intact after she got infected by the brightness? But we also meet the fully mutated "biologist". Hmmm... Confusing. Perhaps the clones are sent back to explore, and the originals, if not killed, are mutated per the rules of the Area X 'alien planet' ecology).

6. Uuuuummm. So basically, to me, it's a (first?) contact story. Although, a weird one, because the alien species are... well, very weird, incomplete (because possibly pretty much wiped out too), and very alien regarding their modes of operation and communication. There is a very strong possibility of an invasion, though.

If I get any other good guesses... I'll share. For now... this is pretty much it, barring something I've forgotten (and undoubtedly I have).

P.S. Both Ghost Bird and Control didn't get infected by the flower before the portal on their way out. The placement of this flower right before the portal may be strategic - if infected by it, another "Crawler" will go OUT of Area X and EXPAND the borders of Area X even further. And what/who expanded the borders of Area X the second time...? That's right, Whitby. How? Probably touched the flower! DAMN!