Liam's write-only LJ

It's time for my every-few-years reread of Stan Robinson's masterwork, and lo, there is a Reddit thread about it. It's full of people whining that it's too long and they couldn't finish it.

I may have got a bit carried away in my reply...

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Having RTTEOTT, I am *appalled* by the amount of negative comments. As it happens, a few days ago, I started rereading the trilogy. I reread them every few years and have done since they came out. This will be my 5th or 6th time through - I lose count. I downloaded ebooks of them because my original paperbacks are starting to become tattered and frayed from all the rereadings.

Every time, they are fresh and new. Every time, I discover new things in them. Many of the characters feel like personal friends now, from Sax Russel, Nadia Chernyshevski, Arkady Bodganov, Nirgal and Michel Duval; or people that I might not get on with, but know well, such as Anne Clayborne; or people I might dislike but admire for their work, like John Boone and Frank Chalmers; or people I think I would dislike or just couldn't deal with, such as Maya Toitovna or Phyllis Boyle.

I almost feel like I know Underhill and Burroughs and Echus Overlook and Sheffield. It feels like I've been there. It feels like *I've* driven through Noctis Labyrinthus into Marineris, gone down into Hellas and Argyre, driven a rover up Olympus to crater Pt or gazed at the great marching barchan dunes of the vastitas borealis. When I study maps of Mars, I look at it in terms of the places I know - Elysium, Cairo, Vishniac, Low Point. I always come away disappointed that they are not there.

The only stuff I've reread more than R/G/B Mars is Douglas Adams and some early Terry Pratchett (notably the pre-Discworld SF).

R/G/B Mars is possibly *the* defining SF masterpiece of the 1990s - an era which also saw the bulk of Iain M Banks' SF work, saw the début of Ken Macleod, arguably the finest works of Ian McDonald and many other truly great works.

They are perhaps not the most accessible novels. They are long and dense. I wish I could believe that the 3 redditors who called it "dry" were punning on Mars' aridity but I don't think they were.

It's also one of the best-structured trilogies I've ever read. The colours set the themes: the first book is about technology, about learning to live on the red planet, building to a crescendo of suffering, pain and destruction.

The second book is about bringing the planet to life, about the turmoil and torment and damage and disruption that this would inevitably cause, about the revolutions and the struggle for independence.

But then, when you've done that, when you've explored Mars from pole to pole, made it real, filled it with people drawn in such detail that I could pick them out of an identity parade, and then painted it: thawed it, filled it with life, embodied Hiroko Ai's /viriditas/ and performed the great ecopoesis and brought the Red Planet to life, gone through the areophany, then where?

And that is the triumphant conclusion: because whereas Red to Green is the obvious step, it's what a hundred SF writers have done before, Stan Robinson comes up with the astonishing hat trick. When Mars is alive, a living world, when Sax' great dream has come true, then what?

Well, it's a world. It's a whole planet, and even when it has seas and an ocean - and a canal at last, of course, Schiaparelli and more to the point Lowell vindicated at last! - /then/ Robinson comes back and asks: OK. What now? This is not a bit of set-dressing. This is a world, a planet, filled with millions of people. It has factions, it has parties, it has politics. Book 1 has interpersonal dynamics, and what readers still in their 20s might not realise yet, it has the pacing of real life. You look away and suddenly a decade has passed and the whole world has changed around you. People die. People make mistakes, they fuck up, and they get back up and they go on. So /yes/ the story jumps but life jumps like that too once you're not a kid any more.

Book 2 is about growth.

And then comes Blue Mars. OK, so, they did it, it's alive now. So what?

Well, so what is that now, Mars has to mature, like a person: it has to break away from its parent, leave home. It has to shake off the shackles of UNOMA and UNTA and stand alone, be its own place. And that means a government, a constitution, a system of politics.

I hate politics. You know how you can tell when a politician is lying? Their lips move.

But it's a necessary evil. If you have lots of people, you need to have it. It happens, like death. It is part of the group dynamics of being human beings. And Book 3 doesn't shy away from that, it rubs your face in it and it makes you care. The great conference in Dorsa Brevia is the best-written political scene that SF has ever had, and I daresay, that literature has ever had. It is dull, it goes on too long, but that is *real*, that is how it is, it is representational. And it is made real, with Art Randolph running around trying to record it all and Nadia reluctantly taking on the /really/ big construction job of her life, that of making a world into a nation, a state, a land.

And the wonderful conclusion - the round-Mars runners, the swimmers, the sailboats, *sailboats!* On the *ocean* on *Mars*! /Nobody/ has ever had the guts to do that, but Stan Robinson did.

Screw Bradbury and his Chronicles, dull spacey hippy druggie stuff that they were. Bugger Burroughs and his red-skinned big-boobed princesses. I'm sorry, but even the great Ian McDonald and his /Desolation Road/ with its Astounding Tatterdemalion Air Bazaar don't compare to this. They are mere vignettes, snapshots. Robinson paints the big picture, the birth of a whole world, the biggest picture it is possible to see, and he paints it warts and all and it's beautiful.

It is, overall, the most astoundingly beautiful book I have ever read, or, I think, that I ever will read. Many have moved me, from /Eon/ to /Ringworld/, or what-might-have-beens such as /The Difference Engine/, or excited me such as /Snow Crash/ or /The Diamond Age, or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer./

But they are all small things indeed next to the sweep, the majesty, the awe, of Mars and the great areophany.

And I understand that many people don't get it. But that's OK. Some people just are poor sad crippled little souls, unable to appreciate beauty and great art. That's how life is. It's OK, there are lots of good books with rayguns and rocket ships in for them.

This is not one of my lists, I promise!

A friend of mine, Iain Thompson, co-wrote this piece for the American arm of what used to be VNU:
V3's top 10 science fiction writers (Handy single-long-page printable link here.)

I have no real argument with the list, myself. I am not sure Roddenbery should be on there, no matter how influential, as he wasn't really an author per se.

But it's the comments after the article which are, I think, most interesting and amusing.

For starters there are all the risible idiots who pan the piece's writers for omitting authors who actually are on the list. Perhaps they only read page 1, but if so, they're still bloody fools if they didn't spot a Top Ten list with only two entries on it. Morons, the lot of them.

But then come the comments about who should be on the list as well. Most of them don't seem to consider that there are, by definition, only 10 spots on a Top Ten list, and they want an extra half a dozen or more names add.

Some question Douglas Adams. Well, perhaps fair enough; he didn't write much, and not all of it was SF. However, for his towering influence over a generation of people and of books, I think he merits it, myself.

Jules Verne. Well, one could indeed argue that much of his output wasn't SF, either. But the SF he did write is absolutely seminal. I think he merits his inclusion.

Dick. Ah, now, Dick. I always thought PKD vastly overrated, myself. The books are frequently very confused and somewhat impenetrable. A lot of it seems to me to be the drug-addled ramblings of a deranged mind. I found them hard to read, hard to follow and generally very unrewarding.

(I'd say much the same about Kurt Vonnegut, as well, for what it's worth. Barry Malzberg wasn't much better, either.)

Bradbury: yeah, big name, but it's badly dated, trippy stuff, not hardcore SF. Almost more fantasy, or magical-realism or something, than SF. I think he is one for the wannabe literati, myself, just as Dick is. And the same goes for Delaney, Disch, Lem, Spinrad & so on: loved more by the critics and poseurs than by the readers and fans.

Crichton did write SF but was mainly known as a non-SF writer, as is Dan Simmons, so I'd argue they're thus excluded, or at least excludable.

Norton, Zelazny, even arguably Le Guin: equally known as fantasy writers (possibly even juvenile fantasy) which the writers specifically excluded - and rightly so.

OK, now, some megastars arguably did belong on there. Niven is a master, and his stuff with Pournelle is too, although I'm not sure about Jerry on his own. I liked his solo work better as a BYTE columnist.

Frank Herbert... hmmm. Tricky. I loved Dune and even really liked the sequels. Most of the rest of his stuff was fairly forgettable. I remember vague details and outlines, which is more than I can say for a lot of writers, but that's hardly a glowing recommendation. I don't think that for Dune et seq alone he counts as one of the all-time greats.

Pete Hamilton's stuff is wonderful and I love it to bits, but it's light entertainment, mostly, not a big heavy contribution to the genre. Except in terms of number of pages, anyway. I fear the same might be said of someone else I much admire, Al Reynolds.

Silverberg is wonderful, as is Anderson. Haldeman is damned good. Both did a lot of turkeys as well as golden eggs, though.

Aldiss I adore, but he might be a little specialist, I'm not sure.

Haldeman I see as workmanlike, not a megastar. I love some of the books but he's not in the pantheon for me.

Asher I covered in a previous blogpost. Morgan - only read a few, and they were great, very original, very visceral, but again, he's not yet earned a place in the all-time top 10. Stephen Baxter and Adam Roberts definitely haven't.

I could go on... but who would you folks see in the top ten, or see excluded therefrom?

(This is floating around as an image file on Facebook but I thought I'd knock up a text version...)

Star Wars: A New Hope Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone – synopsis

Luke Skywalker Harry Potter is an orphan living with his uncle and aunt on the remote wilderness of Tattooine suburbia.

He is rescued from aliens muggles by wise, bearded Ben Kenobi Hagrid, who turns out to be a Jedi knight wizard.

Ben Hagrid reveals to Luke Harry that Luke's Harry's father was also a Jedi knight wizard, and was the best pilot quidditch player he had ever seen.

Luke Harry is also instructed in how to use the Jedi light sabre a magic wand as he too trains to become a Jedi wizard.

Luke Harry has many adventures in the galaxy Hogwart's and makes new friends such as Han Solo Ron and Princess Leia Hermione.

In the course of these adventures he distinguishes himself as a top X-Wing pilot quidditch seeker in the battle against the Death Star quidditch match, making the direct hit catch that secures the Rebels' Gryffindor's victory against the forces of evil. Slytherin.

Luke Harry also sees off the threat of Darth Vader Lord Voldemort, who we know murdered his uncle and aunt parents.

In the finale, Luke Harry and his new friends receive medals of valour win the House Cup.

All of this will be set to an orchestral score by John Williams.

Spooky, huh? ;¬)

Perhaps this explains why I thought both of them were a bit pants... :¬)