Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino

Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino was a major Italian writer (actually, he was born in Cuba but moved to Italy when he was very young) from the 1950s until his death in 1985. His writings were often witty, often humorous, and nearly always filled with the remarkable and the fantastic. He is often compared to Borges, Kafka, and Garcia Marquez, but some of his works – especially some of his shorter works – also can be compared to those of Stanislaw Lem when Lem is at his most witty and humorous (the Lem of The Cyberiad rather than the Lem of Solaris).

Cosmicomics is a collection of short stories about this history of the universe – and, of course, about us. All are told from the point of view of Qfwfq, a being who has existed since before the big bang (when he and all other beings shared the same point in space). Calvino picks various points in the history of the universe – all starting with what seem like quotes from a book on astronomy or astrophysics – and from there Qfwfq tells a story. Qfwfq is eccentric, egotistical, and, in the end, likeable (perhaps because this immortal being is very human).

“The Distance of the Moon,” the first story in the collection is in some ways the most atypical, reading more like a fantasy out of Baron Munchausen than anything else. Calvino starts with the fact that the moon used to be closer to the earth, and from it creates a love story set in a time when the moon was close enough that people could reach it via a ladder.

Other stories in the book take bits of cosmology (Calvino seems to cheerfully use both big bang and steady state theories), cosmic evolution, the geometry of space time, and the evolutions of life on earth. Some stories reflect on the universe and our place in it, others look at our own vanity. In “Light-Years,” for example, the narrator (presumably Qfwfq , though not named in this story) sees someone in a galaxy a hundred million light years away hold up a sign saying “I saw you.” He looks back in his diary and finds that, two hundred million years earlier (the time of the event that the being in the distant galaxy saw), he had done something he wasn’t proud of. He then spends many hundreds of millions of years worrying about who he is viewed by others and hoping that they saw what good he did at other times.

“The Spiral” is probably the best story in the book. The narrator is a mollusk, who starts before shells had evolved, perfectly at peace to simply eat and feel. But then his is attracted to a female, and this sets off a pattern of love, jealousy, and caring that eventually causes him to evolve a shell, so that she can tell him from all other mollusks. The shell is described in beautiful detail. But of course all the primitive mollusks are connected, so that the narrator’s creation of a shell causes all to create shells. As the years pass, other creates evolve sight, so they can see the shells of t he mollusks, which ironically the mollusks themselves cannot see.

All of the stories are delightful and entertaining as well as insightful. If you haven’t yet read Calvino, do give him a try. This collection of shorts is a good starting point, but you can’t go wrong with pretty any of his works, including his great novel The Castle of Crossed Destinies or the wonderful novellas “The Nonexistent Knight” and “The Cloven Viscount.”

Lord Byrons Novel -- The Evening Land by John Crowley

Lord Byron’s Novel – The Evening Land by John Crowley

John Crowley is one of the most accomplished stylists writing today – not just in the fantasy field, but anywhere. His works are exquisitely written, the prose in perfect control, the imagery memorable. His latest work, Lord Byron’s Novel – The Evening Land, is another remarkable work. In some ways it’s hard to know exactly what to say about it, or even to say what makes it so engrossing, but it’s something to experience, especially by those who love language, who appreciate style, and aren’t just reading to get as quickly as possible from start to finish.

The book is made up of three intertwined threads. The longest thread is the Byron’s (Crowley’s, of course) novel. Crowley perfectly captures the style we could image Lord Byron would have used had we truly had a surviving novel by him. It alone is wonderful – at once a gothic, an adventure story, a romance, a tragedy – told in the style of such early 19th century fiction. But more than that, it’s an examination of the character of Byron, since it’s also an autobiographical novel of sorts. Reading it has made me want to go out and read more of Byron’s poetry (though I confess of the trio of Byron, Keats, and Shelly, Byron was the one I’d always liked least).

Each chapter of Byron’s novel is followed by notes by his daughter, Ada Lovelace, friend of Charles Babbage and inventor of the concept of programming languages (and for whom the programming language Ada is named). In the world of Crowley’s novel, Ada has found her father’s novel and is annotating (and, it turns out, hiding it from her mother, who wants it destroyed). Her notes explain some parts of the novel, but they do more than that. They are her searching for the father she never really knew, reaching out to him in the only way she now could (since of course he was long dead by that point).

Intertwined with all of this is the story of the finding of the novel, told in emails and a few letters. Alexandra Novak has gone to London to help pull together some recently found papers of Ada Lovelace for www.strongwomanstory.org, a site collecting information about women in the sciences (unfortunately, the site is fictional; I checked). Amongst the papers, she finds a one page of the supposedly destroyed novel, Ada’s notes, and many pages of numbers, thought to be a program written by Ada. She send some of the information to her lover in New York, who determines it’s really code – Ada’s way of hiding the novel from her mother. Alexandra also takes a big step: she contacts her long estranged father (who when she was very young had fled America after having an affair with an underage girl at a celebrity party). Her father is an expert on Byron, so she engages his help in putting everything together. The technical details are fascinating, but it’s Alexandra’s relationship with her father, and his with her, that is particularly compelling. Both – though especially Alexandra – start out tentative, but it’s clear that she wants to know him and he to know her.

Each of the three strands is linked to the others, therefore, not only by its surface story – the story of Lord Byron’s novel – but by the underlying idea of the relationship between father and daughter, by fathers and daughters separated but still straining in a way to know something of the other.

Overall, this is a beautiful work. As I noted above, it won’t be to everyone’s taste, but for those who do like this sort of thing, it will stay with them for a long time.

The Poison Master by Liz Williams

The Poison Master by Liz Williams

Liz Williams’s The Poison Master, like works by China Mieville, Jack Vance, and Gene Wolfe, inhabits that area between science fiction and fantasy (sometimes called science fantasy, though that term seems more fitting to the works of Leigh Brackett and Ray Bradbury). The universe obeys scientific rules, but they aren’t our scientific rules in all ways. The fantasy elements in many ways feel like SF, while some aspects of the aliens society feel like fantasy. But whatever term one uses to describe it, the universe she creates is an interesting and detailed one, and the setting of a good, if not completely successfully novel.

Most of the novel follows Alivet Dee, a young woman who is an apothecary on the planet Latent Emanation. A small group of humans had come there several hundred years earlier, led by strange alien beings called Lords of Night, who now rule the world in a rather capricious and cruel way. Alivet’s twin sister has been taken by them as a servant and Alivet hopes to free her someday. But Alivet is accused of murder, and, as she flees, is befriended – perhaps; she has her doubts – by Ari Ghairan, a poison master from the planet Hathes. Ghairan wants to kill or drive out the Lords of Night, and he needs Alivet’s help.

Much of the book takes place on the planet Hathes, a strange society that seems like something Jack Vance would have created. It’s a structured society, where assassination – by poison – is common, populated by strange grouping of people and some strange aliens. It has a rigid social structure and strange customs (though many make sense, given the fear of poisoning). On Hathes, Alivet works to develop what’s needed to kill the Lords of Night and save her sister while at the same time trying to determine what Ghairan’s real intentions are for her. She alternately – or perhaps even simultaneously – fears him, distrusts him, and likes him, so she doesn’t know quite what to do.

Likewise, Latent Emanation, its geography (or what we see of it), its society, and its inhabitants are well drawn and imaginative. The Lords of Night and their capricious servants the Unpriests rule. Their Night Palaces are located in the medieval city of Levenah. The Night Palaces themselves seem to be a cross between something out of Gormenghast crossed with part of Stargate Many humans live in Levenah, but often retreat to the swamps as part of the search – a drug-induced ritual in which people try to remember their origins.

Throughout, Williams’s details are well worked out. The underpinnings of the universe are strange – a combination of numerology, science, the occult, and, most of all, alchemy. Alivet, while described as an apothecary, really is more of an alchemist (which in many ways is the “science” of this science fiction novel), and Williams weaves the underlying concepts of alchemy involving transformation into the fabric of her novel. Williams’s use of drugs in the story, not only in their uses (ranging from poisons to ways to knowledge), but to the way Alivet talks to them – and, in some cases, the answer – is fascinating in and of itself and adds to the sense of strangeness that permeates much of the book

The novel also has a frame of sorts. I say of sorts because the novel has multiple “parts,” each of which has multiple chapters. The first chapter of each part is set in the past, in an alternate version of our earth, and centers around the alchemist John Dee. Bit by bit, Williams unfolds some of the back story this way, putting together the story of how humans came to travel elsewhere in the universe, including to Latent Emanation. It’s an interesting device, especially in the early chapters, but it doesn’t entirely work. After a few such chapters, we know enough of the story to figure out the rest of the back story and the chapters set in our past become more distraction than illumination. Williams seems to realize this also, since these chapters become shorter later in the book. This way of telling the back story was an interesting experiment, but it may have worked better as a simple prelude or even as a flashback of some sort later in the book.

But in any case, this is a minor distraction in an otherwise well done book. I’ve now read two books by Williams – this and Banner of Souls – and have enjoyed both. I have two other books by her on my to-be-read shelf and hope to get to them sometime soon (though truth be told, my too-be-read shelf has hundreds of books on it; the only hope I have of making a major dent in it is early retirement and long life).

A few gripes about this year’s Academy Award nominations

A few gripes about this year’s Academy Award nominations

One problem with the Oscars is that Oscar voters at times ignore the merits of a film -- that it might deserve some so-called minor awards, even if it doesn’t deserve to be considered for Best Picture – either because they didn’t like other aspects of the film or because they don’t like the film’s creator. Several Oscar oversights this year, I think, are the results of one or both of these reasons.

In the case of Revenge of the Sith, I get the feeling that some voters are so annoyed at Lucas and what he did with the prequels that they ignore areas where the film excelled. I liked Sith quite a bit, though I wouldn’t argue that it deserves consideration for the major film or acting awards (though I think Ewan McGregor’s performances as Obi-Wan Kenobi are undervalued). But there are at least two awards for which Sith should have been in the running but for which it wasn’t nominated.

John Williams’s score for Revenge of the Sith was wonderful. His new themes – especially those for the final duel and for the betrayal of the Jedi – were well done. It was at times moving, at other times thrilling, and at yet other times haunting. It perfectly meshed with the film to create the effect Lucas and Williams were going for. They weren’t looking for simple, understated background music (something Williams did in parts of War of the Worlds), but in an operatic approach, similar to what Williams did on earlier Star Wars films or what his great predecessor Bernard Hermann did on so many films. I thought it was the best score of the year and was disappointed that the Academy didn’t nominate it (though they nominated two other Williams scores).

Sith also deserved a nomination for its effects (though in this case I’d probably give the award to the effects in War of the Worlds, which was nominated). One may argue – as my wife, Laurie, does – that there were too many effects in the film, but that’s not the point for this award. The effects were brilliant. From the initial space battle, through the scenes on Coursecant to the various planets around the galaxy (including the great battle on the Wookie homeworld) to the final duel, we were immersed in a total visual environment.

Likewise, the understated effects in Serenity deserved more attention than they got. The movie got nowhere near as much attention as it deserved, but at the very least the Academy should have acknowledged the realistic effects – done in a very different way and in a very different style – from those in Sith but as good in their own way.

In both of these cases, it seems to me, the Academy overlooked the virtues of these films because the overall film wasn’t what they cared for. And in the case of Sith, I think many really are still annoyed at Lucas for a number of reasons. It’s a shame, though, since both of these films should have been nominated for more awards.