Review/Musings on Harry Potter

I used to view the entire Harry Potter phenomenon with a bit of bemusement. I had already been reading fantasy books for years when Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was released, and while I enjoyed it, I never imagined that it would turn into the international phenomenon it has become. From my perspective, J.K. Rowling was simply following in the footsteps of Diane Duane's So You Want to Be a Wizard?, Diana Wynne Jones's Witch Week, among many others. I couldn't understand why people were going nuts over Harry Potter when these other books had been largely ignored, by comparison.

There is no denying that Harry Potter satisfies all of what I think are the requirements for good fantasy (not necessarily an exhaustive list):

• An engaging, original, well-realized fantasy world


• Simple yet evocative writing which can be understood after one reading


• Plenty of action


• A high "that would be so cool" factor


• A well-defined objective to be accomplished by the hero

On the other hand, so do both of the titles I mentioned above, as well as thousands of other fantasy novels, for adults and children, none of which have become anywhere near as popular as Harry Potter, and for a long time, I couldn't understand why.

However, after reading all seven of the Harry Potter books in rapid succession this month, I've realized that the Harry Potter books do indeed have something that many fantasy novels lack: compelling characters. Although she frequently defines them with melodrama and outrageous emotional outbursts, Rowling's characters are undeniably human. Harry and his cohorts suffer all (and then some) of the uncertainty, pain, anger and fright that people fighting ultimate evil while simultaneously going through puberty might be expected to feel. By contrast, many fantasy heroes, after being plucked from their humble beginnings, stoically put real life on hold and forge ahead with whatever Herculean task the author has set them without bothering with pesky emotions too much.

The requirements I outlined above make for great escapist writing. If you want to take a mental holiday for a while, then any book satisfying those requirements will do the trick. However, to get people really worked up about something, an author needs to do more than create a world that people care about, he or she needs to create characters that people can laugh with, cry with, yell at when they're being stupid, and fall in love with, and Rowling does this well. Not with very much finesse, but well.

That's not to say that Rowling has a monopoly on inspiring empathy; the success of the Harry Potter series undoubtedly involved a certain amount of luck as well as talent. However, the books certainly had the potential to become wildly popular, not to mention the widest possible target audience, so in hindsight, it shouldn't have been a surprise that they did.


Grade: A-


For adult-oriented fantasy that features emotions, check out George R.R. Martin, Robin Hobb, and Terry Goodkind.

Review of “Hothouse” novel by Brian Aldiss

Overview:

Hundreds of millions of years in the future mankind, indeed animalkind, is in the decline. Humanity is evermore eclipsed by vegetable life, which thrives in the endless sunlight of an earth that has long since stopped revolving.

Written in 1962 as a series of five short stories and later republished as a contiguous novel.

Plot Summary:

Lily-yo is the leader of a matriarchal band of feral humans struggling to survive a merciless existence in the mid-canopy of a distant-future jungle where the entire sunlit surface of the earth is covered in interconnected Banyan trees. She soon abolishes the tribe sending the children off on their own and leading the adults on a ritual/journey/suicide in seedpods bourn into space.

Meanwhile, the children led by the in-fighting Toy and Gren head on a journey to establish a new colony. They are in for far more then they expected and soon encounter the various predatory vegetables writhing throughout the jungle, an intelligent morel (fungus) with an agenda of its own, several disparate animals competing for an ever-diminishing number of ecological niches and much more. To spoil the intriguing locals visited along the journey would ruin much of the fun, but suffice it to say that Aldiss adequately explores the possibilities of his influential, compelling landscape.

Review:

Aldiss has a powerful propensity for imagining and developing environmental extremes and his greatest strength lies in his imperturbable ability to evoke a sense of wonder and otherworldliness. In the first segment of the book Aldiss appears to explore and exhaust so much of his initial premise that the reader might begin to panic and worry that no material (or purely redundant material) will be left for the rest of the book. Fortunately, the author’s imagination is up to the task of generating original and interesting new niches for life to blossom.

That being said, the later sections aren’t quite as powerful and evocative as the early locals and the serialized, episodic nature is conspicuously choppy in terms of narrative flow.

Aldiss succeeds best at evoking grand imagery, but he doesn’t seem to have the patience for clear and expressive descriptions. The result is quick-sketched moments of beauty and wonder that lack specificity and atmosphere. (see Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness for an example of vividly realizing a jungle setting). For instance, aural and olfactory qualities are rarely mentioned. There are few visceral description of the heat or textures nor is there much mention of the complicated dappled lighting that must inevitably have made life in the mid-canopy a perpetual twilight. The physiological reaction of the characters to their environment fails to make the reader feel physically present. In a particularly sloppy twist about a third of the way into the book, Aldiss gets around to mentioning that humans have shrunk to a fifth their original size, but never mentions whether the measurements he uses in his descriptions are relative to the characters’ size or the reader’s size (inches, feet and yards were all based on length of bodyparts). He seems to switch between the two scales inadvertently throughout the book.

This fits with the general style of the novel which clearly lays out a pattern of soft science. I think more rigorous thought and technical acumen could have only improved the novel, but it is first and foremost and globe-trotting survivalist adventure and not a scientifically grounded planetary survey. In fairness, Aldiss can often reasonably fall back on the built-in defense of his characters primitiveness and logically limited knowledge to explain away the lack of technical detail and the speckling of unplugged plot holes.

On the other hand, the author tends to use the prehistoric (or posthistoric in this case) savagery of his protagonists as too easy an excuse to avoid character development, dialogue and realistic reactions.

If I seem to be rather harsh, I should mention that taken as a whole, Hothouse is a remarkable and awe-inspiring novel with an exciting adventure at its heart. I found it to be a condensed, if less matured, alternative to Aldiss’s Hellconia series from the 1980’s which revisits similar themes but with a sluggishness that often overwhelms the scenes that should fill us with wonder.

Grade: B

Review of “The Stars My Destination” novel by Alfred Bester

Overview:
Alfred Bester opens his novel with a chapter describing the history of jaunting: the ability to teleport oneself soling with thought. In the distant future of the 25th century, this ability has long since changed the way society works, eventually leading to a war between the IP (inner planets) and the OS (outer satellites). Set within this richly conceived universe is a seemingly average spaceman, Gulliver Foyle, who wakes up in the wreck of a spacecraft desperately trying to shore up his remaining supplies of air and food. After being passed by the Vorga, a ship that could have rescued him, Foyle is driven to inhuman strength by the wish for revenge. What follows is a fast-pace adaptation of “The Count of Monte Cristo” that is shorter to read than it is to summarize.

The Good:
Like Bester’s other key work, “The Demolished Man,” completed five year earlier, “The Stars My Destination” is first and foremost a supernova of ideas. This time around they come faster than before, nearly at the rate of one inspiration every two pages. Not just the quantity has increased, however, and Bester’s research really shows in his ability to generate truly thought-provoking gems that all feel fitting and exciting even at their most outrageous extremes. The narrative is unashamedly science-adventure with a dark, witty and often maniacal tone that must have been shocking to casual readers in the 1950’s. The plotting, propped up by the new ideas at every turn, is a racing, rocketing, ever-escalating series of action sequences, jaggedly sketched set-pieces and bizarre twists. The end result is infinitely sugary and addictive, making a short fast read with enough of an afterglow to reward hours of contemplation.

Despite the many possible strikes against it (see below), the book remains a rightful classic of the 1950’s.

The Bad:
The main problem with “The Stars My Destination” is essentially identical to my complaints about “The Demolished Man”: there is no development of the ideas or their wider implications. This book does a better job, not the least because the lightning pace leaves little room to think out the details, but one still feels the weight of contradictions, plot holes and loose ends building up in the wake the adventure. Still, compared to his previous novel, the ideas are sewn together better, the society rendered more deftly, the ending more satisfactorily wrapped. Unfortunately the sense of a seamless reality never quite materializes.

Interestingly, it struck me that although Norman Spinrad considers this novel to be one of the most important in the genre, it is clear that it falls victims to the issues satirized by Spinrad’s “The Iron Dream,” so much so that I suspect that “The Stars My Destination” might be one of his highest profile targets. These problems include a progressively more ominously ruthless hero myth, disturbing amounts of violent sexual undertones (and overtones) and a sexist streak a mile wide. Though there are three strong female characters, their strength is depicted as essential evil (more so even than the merciless anti-hero) and they function narratively as tools for the hero to use and dispose. Many of the women in Bester's future are kept in windowless locked rooms to avoid the risks that jaunting poses to their chastity.

Grade: A

Review of “The Iron Dream” novel by Norman Spinrad

Overview:
In an alternate universe, Adolf Hitler never becomes chancellor of Germany and instead, writes popular science fiction, winning the 1953 Hugo award for his “Lord of the Swastika.” This work, Hitler’s final before dying, is reproduced in full with an afterwards to the second edition by a fictional professor. “Lord of the Swastika” is a science-fantasy adventure in which Feric Jagger rises to become a world leader and sets out to purify the world of the mutants spawned by an ancient nuclear war.

The Good:
Spinrad wisely chooses not to make fun of Hitler or popular fiction in a petulant manner, but instead crafts a work which is at times rousing and compelling, while at the same time frequently reprehensible and underscored by subtext that is troubling both psychologically and ideologically. Such a juggling act is nothing short of brilliant, and it succeeds in being a major work of social criticism (aimed as much at male-marketed popular fiction as a whole than just science-fiction). The achievement is all the more impressive because of the believability that it really could gain a cult following. The scary part is that many of its elements such as hyper-masculinity, gratuitous violence, gross-out shock tactics and the absence of a female voice of any type, have been frighteningly predictive of modern trends. The detached academic analysis at the end of the book is the perfect conclusion, with several touches of well-placed dark humor.

The Bad:
There is a certain amount of paradox in reading a book where enjoying it makes you feel guilty and complicit and not enjoying it is, well… not much fun. Spinrad has too perfect of a shield to hide behind since anything bad about the book is “intentional,” but that being said, the repetition and formulaic-ness of the story gets to be a little much to trek through at times.

Grade: B+

Review of “The Final Programme” novel by Michael Moorcock

Overview:
Although Moorcock’s most popular sci-fi novel, “The Final Programme” comes off as steadfastly average and nearly instantly forgettable. With 1/3 heist thriller, 1/3 cross-country adventure and 1/3 doomsday chronicle all the groundwork potential seems to be there for a stirring, gripping vision of a near future but nothing really comes together like it should. Definitely a skip for all but Moorcock fans.

The Good:
Interesting story framework with hints of buried insight. Early example of a bisexual protagonist.

The Bad:
Each of the three sections in the book fails to capture the interest they should. Handfuls of tangents to the main plot are tentatively mentioned but none of the best ideas are explored or brought to life. Subplots involving a technological maze security system, a vast secret abandoned underground Nazi bunker, a psychologically troubling incestual romance, an underground network of criminals and revolutionaries with a world-changing agenda, a censored copy of an astronaut’s final log and many other intriguing lines dead-end or get abandoned by the author with little explanation. Instead, the majority of the pages are expended on standard plodding chapters of well-worn sci-fi territory and a dated “ultimate party” final act. The ending, which is clearly meant to seem shocking and progressive, also feels dated and plagued by a total sense of underdevelopment and randomness.

Grade: C-

Review of “The Demolished Man” novel by Alfred Bester

Overview:
Ben Reich wakes up each day after terrifying dreams of “The Man with No Face” and is finally driven by them to kill his business rival and arch nemesis. However, it isn’t quite so easy in a world policed by Espers, telepaths who can sense murderous intention before the crime and guilt afterwards. The book presents the story from both sides: Reich’s planning, implementation and consequences and the police’s investigation, lead by 1st class Esper Powell.

The Good:
Bester’s key strength is the way he brims with ideas and keeps a steady stream of interesting concepts rolling out, providing plenty to moll over throughout the book. The pacing is fairly taut with only occasional lags and since the book is short it reads lightning fast. The gripping pace is shown off best in the film’s best chapter (8), a two-layer battle of wits as the police are thwarted by Reich’s enormous organization at every turn. The chapter operates like cross-cutting montage in film and was likely inspired by Fritz Lang’s “M”.

The Bad:
Much like mid-level Philip K Dick, Bester goes for quantity of ideas and not thorough development. Not enough care has gone into answering the reader’s inevitable questions about Espers and society with them and in general no really solid believable image of the novel’s universe ever forms. Having failed to flesh out the details of telepathy and mind-reading early in the novel, Bester continues to introduce new elements only as it suits the plot and one constantly feels like he is cheating the reader and introducing inconsistencies.
These problems are symptomatic of poor plotting on a wider scope and this is really my major complaint. Inconsistencies and plot holes litter every other page (a particularly obvious one is the fact that we are told repeatedly that no success premeditated murder has occurred in over 70 years but later in the book, when murders are taking place surprisingly frequently we learn that there is an organization of professional assassins…).
After a strong first act, the book heads steadily downhill, culmination in a long, pretentious final act with several predictable revelations. Especially hampering the final 80 pages or so is a mounting level of Freudian psychobabble with dates the book as 1950’s (as does the sub-standard dialogue) even as it delivers a pair of twists that, while probably original and clever at the time this book was written in 1952, happen to be the two of the most cliché twists known to modern readers/film-goers.

Grade: C