The Inner Ring by C.S. Lewis

The Inner Ring by C.S. Lewis. A marvelous description of a social phenomena that is as apt today as it was when Lewis wrote it.

Pandora's Star : Peter Hamilton

Pandora's Star
By Peter Hamilton

Overall, I liked this.  Despite introducing two major imagined technologies, worm-holes and virtualization of people's memories, Hamilton goes into almost obsessive detail of the effects of imagined technology to the point where they come across as mundane, similar to how any new technology, which once was amazing, becomes accepted and implicit in one's lifestyle going forward (think of how amazing smart phones would appear to someone just 20 years ago vs today).

For example, with the ability to virtualize their memories, humans are able to live forever by re-downloading their memories into a new body.  He covers the technology's effect on people's thoughts on children, on legal handling of murder, fugitive activity, on risk-tolerance for dangerous activities, etc.  He does a good job of thinking this through, which generally is my sticking point with sci fi.

The novel is structured nonlinearly, with many characters following different storylines in a really expansive manner.  At the end, the different storylines are starting to converge and show a common thread, but they do not relate to each other in too simply unrealistic of a fashion (like say the movies Go or Crash).

One of my main issues with the book were that Hamilton was overly obsessive on details, to the point where I skimmed through swaths of text to get to the main gist.  Perhaps in another author's hands, some of these details would come across as beautifully descriptive of the environment; but here the details come across as a descriptionary chore:

The train started moving, pulling away from the platform and out into the spring sunshine. All Dudley could see through his window was the industrial landscape of the station yard, where hundreds of tracks snaked across the ground, crossing and recrossing like some vast abstract maze. Single wagons and carriages were being moved about by small shunting engines that coughed out thick plumes of diesel exhaust. The only visible horizon seemed to be made from warehouses and lading bays, where a spidery gridwork of gantry cranes and container stackers wove through every section of the big open structures.  Flatbed carriages and fat tankers were being readied or unloaded within the mechanical systems that almost engulfed them. Engineering crews and maintenancebots crawled along several tracks performing repairs.  

This guy needs a much more dedicated editor.  Honestly, there's really was no need for this to have been 760 pages, when half of that would have done just as well.  (Although if one was cynical, perhaps locking in a sequel book might have something to do with this.)

The second issue I took was that Hamilton is not that skilled at capturing character's emotions.  As such, many of the characters (man or woman) feel like the same hyper-rational, smart, and capable protagonists that are so common in sci-fi.

Despite my complaints though, the positives did outweigh the negatives and I will pick up the sequel to see how this ends.

The Great Bridge : David McCullough

The Great Bridge
By David McCullough

A fantastic read and impressive in its thoroughness in covering the technical, political, historical and personal aspects in the creation of the Brooklyn Bridge.

It largely follows the two Roeblings who were the main drivers in the Brooklyn Bridge being built: John Roebling, the man who drew up the main designs of the Brooklyn and his son, Washington Roebling, who spent 14 exhausting years as the chief engineer during its construction, after his father died of tetanus.  The book tracks the personal backgrounds of both characters: John Roebling's emigration from Germany and establishment of a town in New Jersey, his building of other bridges, his engineering philosophy, etc. and Washington Roebling's role in the Civil War, his education of caissons in Europe, his meeting and relationship with his wife Emily Roebling, etc.

This more personal perspective into the bridge engineers really helped anchor this reader, especially when later, the Bridge Company was beleaguered by issues of fraud, politics and public perception.  

There is really detailed technical coverage of the bridge itself, which got fairly dense at times (the illustrations helped immensely), but it certainly gave a wonderful portrait of how giant the scale of the project was and the uncertainty of new 'technology' at the time (ex. the caissons were extremely new and men working in these high-pressure environments encountered the bends for the first time.)

Of particular interest to me was reading about how politics and media butted into the project, which I think would be familiar to any engineer who has worked at a sufficiently large organization

All in all, this was a wonderful book, which now makes me wish I could visit the Brooklyn Bridge in the near future.

Blood, Bones and Butter : Gabrielle Hamilton

Blood, Bones and Butter
By Gabrielle Hamilton

Really liked this.

Marvelous writing that shows great insight into someone who truly loves  food but also touches upon:

• Being a chef / owner of a restaurant
• Being a successful chef who just happens to be female 
• Having started loving cooking and food, before all the money and marketing came into the picture
• Having a problematic relationship with your mother, who instilled your love of food 
• Having a problematic relationship with an Italian husband, yet being completely in love with her mother-in-law's spirit and cooking prowess

Hamilton believes in the necessity of getting her hands dirty.  For example, the restaurant space that she eventually set up her own restaurant in had been abandoned years ago by a restaurant that had gone bankrupt.  When she first opened the doors, she described having to dispose of all the remaining ingredients that had been abandoned, having to clean up the rat shit that had accumulated and patch all of the holes that the rats came through and having to clean up human feces on the stoop of the restaurant.   As such, the memoir not only gives a realistic look at working in the industry (unlike say the food shows that edit only the flashy parts), but also this philosophy spills over to providing (one would think) a fairly realistic self-portrait of herself, splaying details of her personality that are both positive and negative.  

As a final note on the ending, I suspect those expecting a redemption or a feel-good story will be disappointed.  However, for those who recognize that Hamilton is trying to get as close to the truth as she can,  it's in line with her philosophy and the rest of the memoir.  I will say, that I would like to try out restaurant next time I am in New York.

The Watsons : Jane Austen

The Watsons
By Jane Austen

I've never read any of Jane Austen's works and was curious to see why they are considered classics.

The Watsons was an unfinished fragment and was published postumously along with the other two pieces in this book.  Emma Watson returns to her home and poor family, after living with her more well-off aunt, who has just passed away.  After attending a ball, she attracts the attention of the well-off Lord Osborne, as well as the ladies' man, Tom Musgrave.  However,  she finds herself attracted to the more modest, Mr. Howard.

I certainly understand now, why Austen was so respected.  She has a knack for describing the nuances of a person and a situation.  For example, though he is well-off, Lord Osborne is clumsy and insensitive with his remarks to the poor Watson family:

  'Ladies should ride in dirty weather. - Do you ride?'
  'No my lord'
  'I wonder every lady does not. - A woman never looks better than on horseback. -'
  'But every woman may not have the inclination, or the means.'
  'If they knew how much it became them, they would all have the inclination, and I fancy Miss Watson - when once they had the inclination, the means would soon follow.'
   'Your lordship thinks we always have our own way. - That is a point on which ladies and gentlemen have long disagreed. - But without pretending to decide it, I may say that there are some circumstances which even women cannot control. - Female economy will do a great deal my Lord, but it cannot turn a small income into a large one.'
  Lord Osborne was silenced. Her manner had been neither sententious nor sarcastic, but there was a something in its mild seriousness, as well as in the words themselves, which made his lordship think; - and when he addressed again, it was with a degree of considerate propriety, totally unlike the half-awkward, half-fearless style of his former remarks. - It was a new thing with him to wish to please a woman; it was the first time that he had ever felt what was due to a woman, in Emma's situation. - But as he wanted neither sense nor a good disposition, he did not feel it without effect. 

I also started to read a bit of Sandition, but did not find myself as interested in it as The Watsons.

I will note that with this particular edition, the introduction and notes were interesting and educational, providing the meta-context around the unpublished nature of the works, as well as providing historical context for the characters in the works and modern interpretation of some vocabulary/phrases.

The Inverted World : Christopher Priest

The Inverted World
By Christopher Priest

I liked this enough that I'll probably pick up more of Christopher Priest's works.

Helward Mann was born into a city that is governed by a guild whose purposes and actions are secret.  Helward joins the guild and along with the reader, slowly learns the the whats and the whys.

The good:

• The question of whether the actions of the guild should remain secret is well-written and certainly remains quite relevant today with government actions.
• Science and mathematics have a way of getting into mind-bending areas, challenging common sense and intuition.  Priest touches upon one of these areas - I mean, what other sci-fi book  depends on hyperbolas and mathematics for its explanation of oddness.
• The slow reveal of information is very realistic in how people become very adamant about their beliefs.
• Switches between 1st-person/3rd-person.  Not sure whether I should put this in the Good or a nit-pick.  The parts alternate between written in 1st person and 3rd-person  (Part 1 in 1st person, Part 2 was in 3rd person, Part 3 in 1st, etc). I understand the switch for Part 4, where it focuses on a different character, hence the need to switch to 3rd person, but Part 2, it was a little jarring and since we were still following Helward, struck me as a bit strange.

Nit-picks

• Part 1, where Helward joins the guild and partakes in his first mission (winching) was overly long.  I'm not sure if Priest was trying to really put the reader into Helward's shoes, where he gets lost into the minutia of his new job, but midway through the first part, I had questions that don't get addressed until well into Part 2.
• The ending was a bit of a letdown.  With a flick of a switch, everything is back to the normal perspective.  

The Lifecycle of Software Objects : Ted Chiang

The Lifecycle of Software Objects
By Ted Chiang

I've really enjoyed all of Ted Chiang's short stories that I've read.  They've featured wonderful writing and well-thought out ideas and structures.

But I was not as much of a fan of this novel.  The novel is set in the near future, where software and hardware have matured the idea of Tamagotchi to a much fuller extent: people can have virtual pets, who have their own personality and intelligence.  They initially exist in the equivalent of MMORPG's, but later on can be downloaded to robot hardware, so also exist in the real world.

His prose is crisp as usual and clearly, Chiang knows his stuff about the software development process, which is referenced throughout the book.  However, my main issues are that:

1. The setting is not that far-off.  AI creatures in video games now, while not as advanced as what Chiang has in the book, do exhibit behaviors that people interpret now as personalities.  There are pretty sophisticated robots being developed.  As a result, this reads pretty realisitically, almost like a magazine article covering people, who are into a particular niche, like MMORPG's.  Which isn't bad by itself, but combined with the following points:
   
2. Surface exploration of the conflicts.  Chiang's asks a good (albeit not-new) question:  if we've developed AI that has consciousness and is self-aware and sentient, what rights does it have and how do we interact with it for its best interest?  But he just doesn't go deep enough into the two areas he does cover: should we educate the virtual beings?  Is it ethical to give virtual sexual desires to satisfy human sexual needs?   To go into this, Chiang really needed to plumb and elucidate the human psyche more: why do people have pets, what's the result of education of a bot, what goes into people's sexuality?  And he doesn't touch this at all.  As a result, the issues seem quite superficial.  Particularly, the sex one comes across as: Is it okay to use the bots as sex toys?
   
3. Character development -  There really is none.  Which is much needed.  The story itself references that the main characters care about something niche (virtual pets), so insight into their personality would help the reader to understand the niche.

Valentine : Lucius Shepard

Valentine
By Lucius Shepard

Really liked this.

The narrator, Russell, and his former lover, Kay, by coincidence, happen to stay in adjoining rooms in a hotel in a small town in Florida.  They get trapped by a hurricane and rekindle their relationship.

The narrator, is a writer and the story is a letter, a valentine of sorts, to his lover (addressed to as 'you').

Shepard uses mouthfuls, to describe the environment, the setting, the protagonist's lover and their love, with prose that is beautiful and lyrical.

   You were nibbling a slice of pineapple.  The breeze handled your hair, lifted the collar of your blouse, and your left hand was posed in a mudra against the lap of your tan slacks.  I had a sense I had caught you in a private mood, one I had not seen before, that perhaps no one had seen.  There was a calmness collected in your eyes, in the sculpture of your mouth, that seemed altogether unfamiliar, of such magnitude and concentration I didn't believe it would manifest if you were distracted by the presence of a companion.  It was though you had floated away from me, and I was spying on you from cover...I remembered watching a jaguar come down to drink at the margin of a jungle lake in Guatemala, watching a drunk young girl dancing by herself to a jukebox romance in a Guayaquil bar, and other glimpses of the kind, those sudden, secret observances that stay in our minds and somehow connect and sustain the rest of life, as if life were a fabric and they were pins it was stretched between.  It was like that watching you as I sipped my coffee, on the bench besides you, hidden from your sight.

The story is set within a span of a few days and the characters spend most of the time, making love, talking and occasionally going out to see the sights of the small town: mini-golf, etc.

Interestingly, towards the end, Shepard injects a sliver of doubt into the entire story and on the reliability of the narrator.  Is this entire valentine an elaborate love story that the narrator has created?  Or did this really happen and because it's a story of love, it has details that are one in a million odds?