Fringe

Fringe has finally ended its improbably long run. I never expected that it would make it past the first season. Each summer I would wait for the announcement that it wasn't coming back. Then it would come back and be just as good or better than the season before.
The story lines went off the rails sometimes; plot caverns cropped up; continuity was broken like a twig. The biggest violation was in the middle of season four when Peter went from avoiding Olivia to simply giving into his urges. It was like during the mid season break the characters had some rewiring. Let's also not forget how Walter supposedly wrote the book of the first people or the other book from the first two seasons. The complete rewriting of the timeline was at least telegraphed.
There was also the annoying habit the show had of never quite resolving anything. First there was the pattern, then there was the other side, and finally the future. The writers just skipped from one to the next without ever really resolving the previous. At least in the end the whole framework was put into some sort of sense. It was the Observers all along not that it really answers everything.
Despite all of the shows flaws, it was a great show. It didn't dumb things down even if it did take great liberty with science. The writing was typically sharp. The actors were typically in top form. More than any of that however, the show had great characters that I wanted to follow. They were multilayered and flawed and noble and conflicted and always aimed at doing the right thing. Walter was probably the best of the bunch. Walter was hubristic and brilliant and blind. Olivia was wounded, defensive, smart, tough, and kind. Peter was a lot like Walter. Broyles was too willing to sacrifice what he thought was right for the greater good.
As the final episode drilled home, the show, underneath all the crazy, was a story about family and friends and finding your way in the crazy world. Unlike many shows recently, Fringe went out on top with a close to perfect ending. It may have been too neat, but it was right.

Asimov's Youth

"Youth" is an early, and short, work. It tells the tale of two explorers who crash on a mission of commerce and are discovered by two children. The children cage the explorers and want to sell them to the circus.
It is an interesting piece because it hints at themes Asimov expands on in his later works. The children see the visitors as animals because they look different and they don't have a means of communication. The visitors know the children mean no harm because they are telepathic.
The children's parents represent two ends of the human spectrum: scientist and industrialist. The scientist is expecting the visitors and is eager to learn from them. The industrialist awaits the visitors with a mixture of trepidation and opportunism.
The world of the story has suffered from a cataclysmic man-made disaster. The people could not control the technology or their base instincts. The result was near annihilation. The scientist thinks that the visitors and their technology can jump start a new technological era for the world and that the visitors offer hope that a race can master technology without destroying itself. The industrialist is not so sure. He fears their technology and it's effects on his people, while desiring to see if their technology can make him profit.
In the end, the visitors win over the industrialist. They demonstrate restraint in the use of their deadly weapons. The industrialist sees that the visitors are not too much different than he is. They have basic human kindness and want to explore and make profit.
The end of the story is an O'Henry twist. It makes the point of the story more poignant.

His Robot Girlfriend

As the title implies this book is about a man who buys a robot girlfriend. I downloaded it for free hoping that it would be a meditation on consciousness, humanity, and intelligence. At the very least, I was hoping for some commentary about how attached to our digital crutches. Sadly, it just a book about a lonely guy who buys a robot girlfriend and ends up marrying her.
The robot is smoking hot and exists solely to make the protagonist happy. There are a few glimmers of her having a personality when they visit a Star Trek exhibit the has "anti robot" sentiments. Sadly, it bothers her only because she fears it will make him uncomfortable.
While, the protagonist's life steadily improves over the course of the book, it made me sad. His life gets better partially because the robot girlfriend feeds him the right foods and forces him to exercise. Most of his improvement must be attributed to his escape from loneliness. His robot girlfriend provides him with companionship and sex and a reason to get up in the morning - things that he couldn't find another human being to provide for him.
Color me old fashioned, but I cannot fathom how a mash-up between an iPhone and a blow-up doll can replace human companionship. Relationships between humans can be messy and hard, but that is part of what makes them special. At the end of the day, I don't want my partner to have no desires or interests beyond making me happy. I'd shoot myself.
On a positive note, the book is short, free, and easy to read.

Slaughterhouse Five

I missed this book when I was working my way through Vonnegut's works a few years ago. I'm not really sure how or why I skipped his signature novel, but I did. Anyway, I saw that it was available at the library and I checked it out burning with anticipation.
I expected to be blown away by Vonnegut's satirical wit as he commented on the petty horrors of the Dresden Firebombing. When I was finished I felt underwhelmed by the book. It has all of Vonnegut's hallmarks, but it felt flat. Billy Pilgrim was not just feckless, but also bland. I couldn't like hime, dislike him, or even pitty him. He was just a blank. Maybe that was the whole point of him. He is an everyman, but I'd like to at least feel something for everyman.
The time traveling didn't really work for me either. I get that Billy is fractured and I get that his time traveling is supposed to also offer some lesson to us stuck in time folk. Don't be too concerned about things because time is meaningless.
Maybe I'm just simply in a bad mood about time travel lately. It has been overdone. I could also be down on symbolism. Or I could just be tired lately. So it goes.
Anyway, I didn't think that Slaughterhouse Five was Vonnegut's best work. I preferred Cat's Cradle, Hocus Pocus, Breakfast of Champions, and Player Piano more. The later works have more coherence to them. Vonnegut seems to have worked out his mythology a little better. Or maybe the Dresden Bombing was just too much to write about.
So it goes.

We Can Build You

"We Can Build You" by Philip K. Dick is an odd duck of a book. (I know a Dick book that is odd is perfectly normal.) Like most of Dick's books it deals with identity and what make a person human. It starts off with a piano salesman being thrown off of his game when his partner makes simulacra of Edwin Stanton and Abraham Lincoln. It twists through a decent into a twisted love triangle, a decent into madness, and finally a recovery of the self through the reassertion of personal will.
The novel is full of doubles.
There is the fact that the Rosen piano company is in two parts: the manufacturing arm and the sales arm. They make two products: a spinet that is popular and an electric organ that is not. They make two simulacra: Stanton and Lincoln. There becomes two teams: the Rosen team and the Barrows team. There seem to be only two mental states: sane and crazy. The story even has two distinct parts: the simulacra story and the Rosen and Pris story.
The simulacra story focuses more on the question of what make a person a human. On the one side you have the simulacra: Stanton is cold and efficient, Lincoln is melancholy and insightful. Both are morally upstanding and loyal. On the other side you have Pris and Sam K. Barrows. Pris is cold and introverted and schizophrenic. Barrows is a charming slumlord. Both are willing to betray people to achieve their ends. Who is more human in this equation? The simulacra are at least as human as anyone else in the story.
The Rosen and Pris story deals with Rosen's descent and recovery from insanity. His love for the cold, crazy Pris drives him to the brink. His actions become less rational and his eventually lands in the care of a mental institution. (I find the test used to determine mental illness pleasingly insane.) To cure Rosen's insanity, the doctor pumps Rosen full of hallucinogenic drugs. Durring these fugue states Rosen lives a fantasy life with Pris. It is not until the real Pris tells Rosen to assert his own will power that Rosen is recovered. (This is the only warm thing Pris does for Rosen). In the end we are left to wonder if Rosen was every really crazy.
I didn't find "We Can Build You" to be the best work Dick did. It was, however, an above average book. Dick's prose and plotting is controlled. His subject matter is deep and handled well. The only off putting bit was the lack of resolution for the simulacra story line. I sort of want to know what becomes of Stanton and Lincoln.

Manifold: Time

This book has some interesting ideas, but lacks for good characters. I liked how Baxter played with the idea of time being a stream and that the the future can reach back to change itself. I also like the ideas about how to get to space by making short trips to resource rich near earth objects and then spread from there and so on. The idea of creating more mind by creating a bigger bang is also sort of cool. The characters all sort of sucked. I felt the most for Emma because I could understand her motivation. I also like Malefant because his obsession was well drawn. The rest of the characters were blah. The book dragged on too long and had too many side plots. In fact, the plots were manifold. The manifold nature was cute, but made for a poor novel. Any one of the three story lines would have made a good novel, but all three was too much.
The scary children story has a rich history. Done properly, the Blue children's saga could have been poignant. The Tybee's were a perfect entry into that world. The way the father adored his child served as an eloquent counter point to the how the rest of the world viewed them. The world packing them away in concentration camps would have made logical sense without the Carter prediction or Malefant's visions from the future.
The Malefant story with it Carter prediction and the crazy blue circle could have been a great story of societal decline in the face of knowing the future. Flash Forward did a good job of it. There is plenty of material.
The story of the squid expanding into the galaxy had plenty of room to run. I could imagine a tale of eventual warfare between humans and the alien race they created. A little bit a Battlestar Galatica.
Any one of the three would have worked with the upstream time story. It all could have blossomed into a better way to make black holes.
Instead, they all muddle each other up and became a third of the book any one could have been separately.

Makers by C. Doctorow

I just finished reading Makers, the latest from Cory Doctorow. I had previously read Eastern Standard Tribe and enjoyed it immensely, so I had big hopes for Makers. Sadly, I was disappointed. It is not a terrible novel, but it gets dragged down by the anchor of its messages.
Doctorow clearly has a lot to say about the worth of making things, open source, community, the dangers of engineering our bodies, over-consumption, and the evilness of corporations that he tries to cram it all into a buddy story about two misfit hackers trying to make good things. They make good works and eventually start a movement. When the movement threatens the fortunes of the status quo, the status quo tries to destroy them, eventually co-ops them, and then after along period of darkness they relearn the joy of hacking.
If you cut out a few steps, the contrived period of darkness, the ridiculous run up to the buy out, the fatkins, the perfunctory Yoko, and the bits of marital trouble, you have the makings of a good story.  With it all, the story is a dogs breakfast. The characters and the plot wobbles under the weight of it all.
Even with all the extra weight, the book was still decent until the Epilogue. It was plausible that Lester would be miserable working for a huge company and that the fatkins modifications would end badly. But what becomes of Perry does not make sense given his actions and thought throughout the novel. He would never end up as a wandering factory worker. He is too much of an organizer and a home body.
The book needed an editor with a sharp knife and the will to use it.

Ender's Game

Ender is an interesting character. He is not an Everyman, but his plight is the human condition - he has free will, but it is constrained by the reality built for him. His superiority dramatizes the conflict. If Ender can be manipulated, how can a regular schlep avoid manipulation. As Valentine says at the end, all one can do is accept that one is always being used and choose to be used in a positive manner. The flip side is that as Ender is being manipulated, he is also manipulating others. He, and his siblings, are masters of manipulation. Ender controls his squadron leaders; Valentine and Peter manipulate the world. The book is also about the power of fear. Fear of the Buggers unite the people of Earth. Fear of the Buggers drives humanity to wipe out an intelligent species without remorse. It is us or them. Fear of defeat pushes the military to warp Ender into a killing machine. Fear pushes Peter to let Ender leave. Fear is the ultimate manipulator. The final pages make an attempt to get beyond fear and manipulation, but does not succeed. It does not have the time to expand the idea that through remembering the lessons of the past can humanity hope to grow beyond its fear.

Red Mars

A little bit long and the jumping around between characters is a little annoying. Robison does not manage the characters interior voices as well as Joyce or Faulkner. While he does convey the essential differences between the character's personalities, he gives them all essentially the same narrative voice. The book would have been better served by a purely exterior narrator.
The sweeping scope of the book makes for an excellent opportunity for social commentary and good story arcs. Unfortunately, the author chooses to focus on the most cynical and traditional of the characters. That things will eventually devolve is a given because the more radical voices are hardly heard. I would have preferred more time with Arkaday and Hiroko.

Mars Girl

The book is fluffy and silly, but it has surprising depth. I initially picked it up for something easy to read in the moments between being busy. As I read it I was delighted at the social commentary that lies within the winks and quick pacing.
It takes the crazy newstainment business to task. I found the pervasive advertising to be very well done. The crazy government conspiracy adds to the fun.