Nonviolent Orwellian sci-fi, somewhat prosaically told but asking good questions.
In Dober’s (Ultimatus, a Gaming Corporation, 2014) novel, threats of alien attack from deep space unite humanity under a high-tech, American-led one-world government—but what if the hostile aliens are, in fact, a hoax?
In the year 2045, the planet is under siege, according to authorities. Aliens from distant Kepler 3763 contacted Earth via radio transmissions in the 1980s, but a paranoid President Ronald Reagan reacted with a barrage of long-range missiles. Because of the nearly 24-light-year distance, the 21st-century world can expect long-delayed deadly retaliation. Thus the nations of the world are persuaded to combine and cooperate under the U.S.–led “AmEarth” umbrella, sharing in the construction of a giant “honeycomb” shield above the stratosphere while putting aside old enmities. Only holdouts Bolivia and New Zealand challenge the new world order, denouncing it as imperialistic propaganda. One AmEarth citizen listening to the skeptics is Scott Johansen, the teenage son of well-liked politician Peter Johansen. Peter starts to share Scott’s doubts when AmEarth’s first president, Neil Chen Tyson, taps him as his successor in a rigged election and explains to him that AmEarth is secretly run by a superintelligent artificial intelligence of terrestrial origin. Dober isn’t the first author to imagine a sham alien-invasion scare as a self-serving con—there was a similar payoff in Alan Moore’s 1987 graphic novel Watchmen (which referenced a 1963 episode of The Outer Limits). But he thinks through the details well and tells his yarn in a measured voice that will appeal to adult sci-fi newcomers and YA genre fans who want to read about dystopias in which upholding the status quo is a defensible idea. Readers expecting chases and action-packed battles, though, may have their hopes deflated by the staff discussions, committee votes, and dinner-table dialogue. That said, Dober nicely presents the philosophical problem of a functioning, utopian-level society built on a lie. Characterizations tend to be lean, but there are cute cameos by Donald Trump, Sasha Obama, and New Zealander filmmaker Peter Jackson. The open ending points inevitably to a sequel.
Nonviolent Orwellian sci-fi, somewhat prosaically told but asking good questions.Pub Date: July 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9965491-1-0
Page Count: 362
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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