Posts Tagged ‘religion’
Particle Horizon, by Selso Xisto
Posted on: June 30, 2012
Particle Horizon, by Selso Xisto
published in 2012
where I got it: received copy from the author
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How deep into the foundations of the universe can we truly observe? What will we see when we get there? Famous researcher Dr. Baghdarasian has made learning those secrets his life’s work. The phrase “particle horizon” refers to how far we can see with a microscope.
As the story opens, we get some minimal background about the current state of humanity. With Earth as the center of our civilization, we’ve colonized planets and moons all over the place, even hollowed out a handful of asteroids and very small moons. Once outside the solar system, humanity is generally split into two psuedo Empires: the Union which follows a strictly atheistic culture and has no room for any type of religious faith; and the Alliance, a very religious culture with no room for any kind of doubt in their deity and priests. The two cultures are polar opposites with no space for anything inbetween, so of course there is a lot of tension between them, not to mention the pressures their citizens are under to conform.
The space navies of both cultures have converged on the hollowed out asteroid of Angelhaven, where a battalion of Alliance Lightbringer troops have attacked the main city. Angelhaven is also the home of Dr. Baghdrasarian and his android daughter Una. Una was designed with what amounts to a quantum computer for a brain, and until now she’s never really paid attention to the numbers she’s been crunching. Her father has discovered something amazing. Something that could change the course of humanity’s future, and both the Alliance priesthood and the Union governments desperately want to get their hands on it, or on Una, who stores the secret deep in her mind.
She Nailed A Stake through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror, edited by Tim Lieder
published in 2010
where I got it: Interlibrary loan
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It being Passover/Easter week, what could be more appropriate reading than something biblical? I recently came across Tim Lieder’s blog, and he struck me as a swearing scholar (my favorite kind. of both). There was mention of an anthology that included old testament allegories and demons, and as I was already in a Haggadah frame of mind, so off to the library I went.
with a title like She Nailed a Stake Through his Head: Tales of Biblical Terror, it’s easy to think this is a one dimensional collection, that’s nothing but bible story retellings. You’d be wrong. While there were bible story retellings (which I admit, were my favorites) that don’t quite parallel what I’ve taught at Sunday school, but there were also vampires and Cthulhu monsters, and a Gilgamesh prequel and a parallel future where King David is a druggie rock star, and a few more vampires, and people, this is horrifically wonderful bizarro non-traditional stuff.
Mostly very short stories, this anthology was nice and easy to swallow, the whole thing is barely 150 pages long. I read the entire thing in two sittings. And you don’t need a biblical education of any kind to enjoy these. There are no inside jokes for you to figure out, no parables to puzzle over. Just deliciously creepy and sometimes heavily sexualized fiction. That word “Terror” in the title? yeah, there for a reason. And if you have any kind of Judeo-Christian education, you’ll be even more creeped out, which for me, made it all the better.
Here are some of my thoughts on a few of the entries:
Whither thou Goest, by Gerri Leen – With the death of their husbands, Naomi and her daughter-in-law Ruth head back to Naomi’s homeland. In this version, it isn’t that Ruth doesn’t want to follow, it’s that she’s bound to follow. Not bound by anything Naomi has done, but bound, beautifully and powerfully, by her own words “Wherever you will go, I will go”. This Ruth survivies and lives off Naomi’s lifeforce. Naomi is trapped forever, for Ruth will never let her escape. And when they reach Naomi’s hometown, Ruth sets her sights on a new patron, someone new from whom she can steal lifeforce and energy.
Swallowed! by Stephen M. Wilson – told in reverse order, at first it’s easy to be disgusted by the man’s actions. He follows the voice in his head and does the horrible things it commands. He kills a few people, violently, needlessly, and viciously. But then we get an inkling of who he might be. that he was on a ship, fleeing something, and was thrown overboard by Cthulhu worshipping sailors, and was swallowed into warm darkness, where he didn’t die. The absolute creepiest retelling of the Jonah story I have ever had the pleasure of reading, this Jonah is deformed and mangled, possessed by something hungrier and more murderous than even himself.
Babylon’s Burning, by Daniel Kayson – taking place right here, right now, nerdy Daniel gets dragged to a corporate company party by his brother. Daniel is disgusted by the kind of money this company throws around, their parties populated by high end call girls, their filthy government contracts that land them headlines about civilian deaths. And then he arrives at the party, and oh, the girls, the beautiful girls! A translator by training, Daniel witnesses something at the party that changes his life forever. He knows what those words mean, and he knows they will eventually point right at him. When you are the prophet, the translator, the high priest, there is no escape.
Psalm of the Second Body, by Catherynne Valente – Ya’ll know I love me some Valente. Although this anthology was published in 2010, this short story was originally published in 2005, it was Valente’s first. An almost prequel to the epic of Gilgamesh, it had me running to Wikipedia for a refresher course. I haven’t read Gilgamesh since high school. This is the story of Shamhat, the harlot who was instructed to seduce Enkidu, and took seven days to complete her mission. The story is from Shamhat’s point of view, and she is very good at what she does. I get the impression she’s offended to forever be known as the harlot, the prostitute, that the pains she took to help Enkidu become just slightly more human would never be acknowledged as important. I do love me some Valente, so it kills me that this story did nothing for me. The whole thing felt overwrought and overly ornamented just for the purpose of being overdone. Is she perhaps telling me that a harlot covered in the gaudiest golden jewelry will still always be seen by history as nothing but a woman who spreads her legs for money? The only story in the collection that I read twice, and the only one that didn’t do it for me.
Throne of the Crescent Moon, by Saladin Ahmed
published in Feburary 2011
where I got it: the Library*
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I’ve been trying to write this review for two days now, and it just hasn’t been happening.
The only important part of this review is: Read this book now. really. I adored it. Ask my husband, I’ve been talking of nothing else for the last few days.
There is nothing I can say that will do this book justice.
But you know I’ll try.
If Ellen Kushner showed me what effortless writing looked like, then Saladin Ahmed has shown me what truly fully developed characters read like. These characters are so real and so true that I didn’t feel like I was reading them so much as spending a few precious days with them. I feel like I could tell you what Adoulla’s bookshelves look like (cluttered but organized?), like I could describe the look on Raseed’s face when he instantly regrets something he’s said, the sound of Zamia sleeping while in her lion shape. I want to have tea at Yehyeh’s, I want to follow Adoulla through the city as his conflicted feelings force his actions.
Beyond the exquisite characterization, Throne of the Crescent Moon is so deliciously atypical of so much of the fantasy that’s currently available. Yes, it’s a fantasy adventure in a secondary world, and yes there is some magic. But show me another recently written fantasy novel where the hero is a middle aged fat man whose magic stems from phrases and quotations out of a religious prayerbook. Show me a recently written fantasy adventure where the endgame is all about ending up with the person you love, the person who waited for you.
The Folded World by Catherynne Valente (Book two of A Dirge for Prester John)
Published by Night Shade Books, Nov 1, 2011
Where I got it: purchased new
Why I read it: I loved the first book, The Habitation of the Blessed
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The truth has teeth and claws that bite and tear. We turn the truth into stories to hide the scars and soften the blows, and help us forget where the bodies are buried.
Except when the story is true. Those are the ones that bleed the longest.
How is it that a retelling of an obscure myth can carry so much truth as to be unbearable? How is it that I can look to nearly any passage in The Folded World and say “ah yes, that’s exactly how the world really is”?
Picking up immediately where The Habitation of Blessed left off, at the beginning of The Folded World Brother Alaric is given the opportunity to pluck more books off the tree. He randomly chooses three books, and he and the other monks begin copying; trying not to pay attention to what they are reading, endeavoring not to succumb to the power of memory, as Brother Hiob did. They have to copy fast, these books are living things and have already begun to rot.
Put together in a similar style as Habitation of the Blessed (and you really must read these novels in order), we learn the stories in each of the three books as Alaric is copying them, but unlike Alaric, we are free to be seduced by them. The three narratives twist and tumble around one another, leaving hints here and there of things that happened, or perhaps things that are to come. Valente’s prose is as always, so beautiful you want to cry, filled with metaphors that at first blush seem like they shouldn’t work, but with laughter on the lips you find they work perfectly. I need to open the monster Thesaurus I just bought, so I can find the word that means “more incredible that I could have ever thought possible”, and use it to describe The Folded World. I wanted to read this entire book out loud, just to see if the words sounded as beautiful as they looked (for the record, even though I only read portions out loud, they did).
Sideshow, by Sheri S Tepper
published in 1992
where I got it: purchased used
why I read it: This is my favorite Tepper, and one of my all time favorite SF novels.
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Sheri Tepper’s Sideshow is one of my all time favorite science fiction novels. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve read this book. Technically, it is the third book in her loosely related trilogy that starts with Grass and Raising the Stones. I’ve read all three, and I believe they can easily be read as stand alones, or even better, in backwards order for a different, yet very satisfying experience.
Taking place many many generations after Raising the Stones (reviewed here), the remnants of humanity have fled to the hidden planet of Elsewhere, the only planet in the galaxy that is free of the Hobbs Land Gods. On Elsewhere, diversity is prized above everything else, all cultures are respected and allowed to live their lives as they wish, and the two Arbai doors are guarded day and night. The citizens of Elsewhere may all belong to different cultures and tribes, but everyone celebrates on Great Question Day, when they celebrate the founding of Elsewhere and jokingly attempt to answer the great question of the age old galactic university: what is the ultimate destiny of man?
Meanwhile, back on Earth, in our time, a very important set of siamese twins are born. Nela and Bertan are as loved by their doting parents as any children could hope to be. And then, well, things go very badly with their parents and the twins quite literally end up joining the circus. Actually, it couldn’t have worked out better. If they’d never joined the circus, they would have never met the alien, and our story would never have happened.
If I got much more into the plot you’d be reading for ages, and even worse I know I’d inadvertently give away some great spoilers. The plot is subtle, engrossing, at times hilarious and at times truly tragic. Strong characters abound, along side aliens, orphans, ghosts, and names you might recognize from other Tepper novels.
Raising the Stones, by Sheri S Tepper
published in 1990
Where I got it: have owned it for a while
A sprawling story that covers multiple planets and their satellites, a varity of religions and cultures, and even non-human races, both native and non-native to the planets, Raising the Stones perfectly balances epicness with intimacy. While Raising the Stones is considered the middle book in Tepper’s Marjorie Westriding series (the first book is Grass, and the third is Sideshow), I consider all of them to be stand alones. Yes, they take place in the same universe, but the characters and situations are very different. Occasionally characters or places are referred to, but I feel you can read some of the trilogy, or all of it, in any order you want.
The planet Hobbs Land (so named because it is owned by Hobbs Transworld Systems) is a pastoral agricultural planet. The company allows the colonists to live as they will, so long as the agricultural quotas are met. When humans first landed on Hobbs Land, the native race was dying. After sitting with a few translators, the oldest of the natives attempted to explain a few religious matters, and then died. The colonists have developed a matrelinial semi-communist society and never have a problem meeting quotes on this near-Eden like planet.
Hobbs Landers may not subscribe to a specific religion per se, unlike other ethnic groups that populate the rest of the star system, such as the Voorstoders, an over-the-top mysogynistic and violent culture; the Baidee who eschew coersion of any kind, the Gharm, a humanoid race that have been enslaved by the Voorstoders; and the bureaucratic and militaristic arms of the the local governments who are mainly interested in trade relations, quotas, and safety of the population. To say the least, this is an ensemble peice, and there is a lot of keep track of. Only a few characters are fully developed, but this is where Tepper successfully pulls an interesting stunt: it’s not the massive cast of characters that is important, it is the clashing cultures and religions that are of the utmost importance.
The Damned Busters, by Matthew Hughes
Release dates- US: May 31st 2011, UK May 5th 2011
Where I got it: Received Review copy from the friendly folks at Angry Robot Books
why I read it: Interesting premise + totally cool cover art = sign me up.
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Meet Chesney Arnstruther, diagnosed in childhood as a high functioning autistic, his social skills are limited to the occasional game of low stakes poker, reading comic books, ogling over women who jog in the park, and speaking on the phone to his televangelist obsessed Mother, Letitia. Employed at an insurance company, Chesney gets to spend his days doing what he loves: working with numbers. Averages, graphs, predictions, statistics, those are the things that sing in Chesney’s heart. Logical and practical, he respects his mother’s religious leanings, but Chesney’s personal faith lies in numbers, percentages, and algorithms.
You can get the gist of how things get started by following the genius cover art: Man stubs hand with hammer in presence of an inadvertent pentagram. Demon is summoned, offers man his hearts desire in exchange for his soul. Man says “No thanks!”, and before long, all Hell breaks loose. Well, not so much “break loose”, as goes on strike. Yes, the Demons of hell are organized. And Chesney suddenly finds himself smack dab in the middle of their union negotiations. He never sold his soul or signed a deal with the Devil, so what are they do with him? He’s a special case, so he gets a special deal, one named Xaphon. With the looks, sound, and personality of a prohibition era gangster, the demon Xaphon is Chesney’s to command for two hours out of every 24.
The planet Umayma was colonized milennia ago, but it’s still an awful place to live. No amount of terraforming could cure the biological agents that crawl the land and poison the water, or downsize the mutant flesh eating bugs that are now used as weapons. Nowhere and nothing is safe on Umayma, and it’s people are still fighting the religious wars of eons past.
Nyxnissa isn’t all that different from the rest of the women she knows. She spent her best years at the war front with the men, came home in pieces, and later joined up with the government assassins. Then she made a very expensive mistake. one year in prison later, she’s still running from the government and makes ends meet as a streetwise bounty hunter.
Make no mistake, Umayma is not a pretty place, and God’s War is not a pretty book. Nyx still lives the life of a soldier, she drinks, she gambles, she tumbles into bed with whoever strikes her fancy, she gets into street brawls with people who don’t strike her fancy. But like I said, she’s not much different from the rest of the women she knows. There is language, and inferred and overt violence. Welcome to life in the country of Nasheen.
I’ve been reading a lot of what I tend to call “boy-books” lately. You know, books with very few female characters, books that wouldn’t even dream of the Bechdel test? Hurley takes my idea of a “boy book” and 100% flips it on it’s head. God’s War is an intense action packed high speed ride, and in Nasheen, men are seen as the weaker sex, if they are seen at all. In Nasheen, if you’re a man you’re either at the war front or there is something so wrong with you that even the military doesn’t want you. For the first 50 pages I had to keep reminding myself that most of these characters are women. I’m just not used to that. It was pretty damn cool.
Read the rest of this entry »
The Habitation of the Blessed, by Catherynne Valente
Published:Nov 2010
where I got it: library, but I’ll be purchasing a copy shortly
why I read it: heard it was very good, although I admit, at first I was apprehensive.
Two Vignettes, to set the scene.
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During mystical conversations with friends and lovers, I used to quip that I’d like, one day, to be reincarnated as a tree. To me, a tree has always been a thing of beauty. Home and resource to birds and animals, immortal via its seeds that are carried far and wide. After reading Catherynne M. Valente’s The Habitation of the Blessed, I will still joke around that I’d very much like to one day be reincarnated as a tree, but to me the punchline will taste heavier with meaning.
Everyone knows the story of the Garden of Eden. but do you remember the end? where Adam and Eve are told if they leave the garden “they shall surely die”? Would they have been immortal, had they stayed?
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I don’t feel qualified to review this book. I don’t have the education, the experience with religious history, or the vocabulary. I come at The Habitation of the Blessed as an innocent. In the words of a shy emo pop singer who has gone on to better things – “these words are all I have so I write them, so you need them just to get by. . . “ No words I say can do this book justice, but I’ll do the best I can.
Catherynne Valente’s The Habitation of the Blessed is in a word, sublime. I have never read anything like this before. Intimate and evocative and powerful, the price paid to experience it is that one can never again come to it with innocence, never again read it for the first time.
Published in 1996, The Lions of Al-Rassan is not a new book, but it is easily the most moving book I have read this year. If the end of this book doesn’t bring you to tears or compel you to find your loved ones and hold them close, there may be something very wrong with you. That’s a fuzzy photo of my copy. See the bent cover? The stressed spine? I felt it was important to show the how loved this little book has been in my household.
The Peninsula of Al-Rassan isn’t that unusual. In every square, tavern and temple the poets, singers, and clerics tell anyone who will listen of the romance of the battlefield. Of how the gods smile on warriors, of the honor, glory, and spoils of war. But the two most famous warriors of Al-Rassan know better. They know that war provides none of these things. All war does is take.
I better say it early on, this is not a book about war. This is not an action story, it is not epic fight scene after epic fight scene. This is a book about what strained loyalties can force men and women to do. The war is just the backdrop, The Lions of Al-Rassan is a love story. Read the rest of this entry »
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