by Doris Lessing ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 5, 1980
After a digression into sexual politics (The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five), Lessing's science-fiction cycle returns to the broad sociological preoccupations of Shikasta (1979)—in which we learned of the Canopean Empire's benevolent, triumphant, yet doomed experiments with primates on Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta. Now the focus is on the very un-benevolent experiments carried out by the Canopeans' rival Empire-builders—the Sirians, who control Shikasta's southern hemisphere. And Lessing's Sirian narrator is Ambien II, a crisply efficient bureaucrat/scientist who will gradually come to realize that the Sirians' obsessive, envious fears of Canopus are unfounded, that the Canopean guiding-principle of "Necessity" is valid, that the Canopeans are "altogether finer and higher." But before this awakening, Ambien II masterminds some dreadful experiments: the kidnapping of thousands of "Lombis" from Planet 24 for training as slaves (kept in a social vacuum to prevent upward mobility, this easygoing race becomes nervous and paranoid); pathetic stabs at simulating the miraculous Canopean rapid-evolution experiments; doomed attempts to alleviate the existential malaise of Sirians ("enfeebled by soft living") via Shikastan work camps. And this experimental era ends only when the entire planet falls under the disastrous influence of planet Shammat, evil incarnate; Sirius gives up on Shikasta completely. Canopus never loses interest, however, and millenia later, altruistic Klorathy of Canopus guides Ambien II back to Shikasta, now dotted with assorted cross-bred civilizations: Utopian Adalantaland, which vanishes beneath the sea when Shikasta suddenly tilts on its axis; the decadent city of Koshi, where Ambien II engages in a good-vs.-evil duel and begins doubting all her Sirian principles; the theocratic slave-state of Grakconkranplatl, where she's taken prisoner; the lovely democracy of Lelanos, which (like all good things, apparently) is doomed to fall away into despair. (Ambien II herself temporarily descends into "Shammat-nature" and leads the spoiling of Lelanos.) And finally, after joining Klorathy in a scheme to avert total Shammat devastation on Shikasta's moon, Ambien II starts denouncing her own Sirian government (a dictatorship in disguise) and winds up "under planet arrest". . . As narrative, Ambien's report is largely unsatisfying—episodic, shapeless, choppy. As a crammed forum of ideas, it's sometimes provocative, more often murky, with distracting, conflicting signals along the way (e.g., Canopus seems to be part Marxism, part God, part Britain). Still, the notion of intellectual awakening—a delicate transformation sometimes illuminated here with dazzling sharpness—is strong enough to pull the whole, challenging, disorganized piece together. Demanding and uningratiating, then, but—like previous Canopus volumes—worth the effort of readers attuned to the very biggest questions.
Pub Date: Jan. 5, 1980
ISBN: 0394751957
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1980
Categories: GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | SCIENCE FICTION | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION
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by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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by Ta-Nehisi Coates ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 24, 2019
The celebrated author of Between the World and Me (2015) and We Were Eight Years in Power (2017) merges magic, adventure, and antebellum intrigue in his first novel.
In pre–Civil War Virginia, people who are white, whatever their degree of refinement, are considered “the Quality” while those who are black, whatever their degree of dignity, are regarded as “the Tasked.” Whether such euphemisms for slavery actually existed in the 19th century, they are evocatively deployed in this account of the Underground Railroad and one of its conductors: Hiram Walker, one of the Tasked who’s barely out of his teens when he’s recruited to help guide escapees from bondage in the South to freedom in the North. “Conduction” has more than one meaning for Hiram. It's also the name for a mysterious force that transports certain gifted individuals from one place to another by way of a blue light that lifts and carries them along or across bodies of water. Hiram knows he has this gift after it saves him from drowning in a carriage mishap that kills his master’s oafish son (who’s Hiram’s biological brother). Whatever the source of this power, it galvanizes Hiram to leave behind not only his chains, but also the two Tasked people he loves most: Thena, a truculent older woman who practically raised him as a surrogate mother, and Sophia, a vivacious young friend from childhood whose attempt to accompany Hiram on his escape is thwarted practically at the start when they’re caught and jailed by slave catchers. Hiram directly confronts the most pernicious abuses of slavery before he is once again conducted away from danger and into sanctuary with the Underground, whose members convey him to the freer, if funkier environs of Philadelphia, where he continues to test his power and prepare to return to Virginia to emancipate the women he left behind—and to confront the mysteries of his past. Coates’ imaginative spin on the Underground Railroad’s history is as audacious as Colson Whitehead’s, if less intensely realized. Coates’ narrative flourishes and magic-powered protagonist are reminiscent of his work on Marvel’s Black Panther superhero comic book, but even his most melodramatic effects are deepened by historical facts and contemporary urgency.
An almost-but-not-quite-great slavery novel.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-399-59059-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Categories: GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | HISTORICAL FICTION | FANTASY | HISTORICAL FANTASY
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by Ta-Nehisi Coates ; illustrated by Jackie Aher
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SEEN & HEARD
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