Slant, by Greg Bear

Today I'm looking at another book which was foisted upon me by a friend, Slant by Greg Bear. And as much as I hate to say it, I felt confused more than anything else by this book. I'm aware it may have been a product of my reading this book over the course of a month, along with several other books, but there are definitely several plot threads that start off independent of each other and end up being wound together into the climax of the book. In some ways, this feels a lot like a Philip K. Dick novel, and not just because of the cyberpunk themes and setting. There are a lot of different plot threads and references to a richly complex world Bear has created, any one of which could have consumed an entire novel on its own. However Bear, much like Dick, includes some of these complex ideas merely as window dressing which has the benefit of making the world feel deep and realistic, while also making the book a little confusing to read.

There are three main plots within the book, which I call main because they're important enough to get mentioned on the plot blurb of the book jacket. First there's Jack Giffey, who is attempting to break into the Omphalos, an enormous pyramid constructed in the semi-autonomous state of Green Idaho which is said to house the incredibly wealthy near-dead, waiting for revivification while entombed with their treasures.Second we have Public Defender Mary Choy who is called into Seattle for the investigation of some particularly heinous and terrifying crimes which eventually lead to a reclusive billionaire. And third there's Jill, the very first true Artificial Intelligence created by Mind Design and the template for all thinkers currently in existence. However, Jill receives communication from another AI calling himself Roddy, who is completely unfamiliar to her and not based on her own patterns. In theory, Roddy shouldn't exist.

On top of that we have Dr. Martin Burke, the psychologist who created implants used by a significant number of the population to treat an entire spectrum of mental disorders. But when these implants start mysteriously failing it could mean the collapse of modern society. Then there is Alice Grale, a sex-care industry worker who is finding her career on the downslope and suddenly gets much more complicated after a call-in with a mysterious gentleman. And finally there's Chloe and Jonathan, an upper-middle-class family whose domestic life is beginning to creak under the strain.

All of these plotlines, eventually being connected together, would be ambitious for a doorstopper novel. For an average-length 350 page novel? It feels almost like Bear is trying to accomplish too much in too little space and the result is the story suffers. This could have easily, easily been a longer-burning plotline-driven narrative and I think with more space to write Bear could have developed this book a lot more. I don't know why that decision was made, but I think it leaves the book lacking.

As I said, there are a lot of elements with this book that make the world feel much more complex but don't get as developed as I might have hoped. Some of these may have been dealt with in more detail in earlier books. (I found out after starting this, and much to my friend's surprise as well, that this was actually the fourth in a series.) A significant portion of the American population is undergoing or has gone through some form of therapy, making society far more ''normal'' than in previous eras. In addition, there are portions of the population called the disAffected, who live entirely on a government stipend and do nothing but consume entertainment, unable or unwilling to participate in the larger system. Plus there's the aforementioned Green Idaho, an enclave which is semi-autonomous within the United States and fought a war over this point. Any one of these could be the subject of a book alone, but Bear seems to use them merely as background for the narrative he chooses to tell.

Overall, I think I was left befuddled by this book more than anything else. I don't think there was anything bad about this book, I just think it may have been a little too ambitious. It's not a bad read, and maybe it gets better if you read it again or if you've read the other books preceding this one, but I honestly found myself confused.

- Kalpar

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

So this week I've decided to finally read Philip K. Dick's classic novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? If any of you have seen the classic 1982 sci-fi film Blade Runner, this is the book that the novel is based off of. I have read that although Philip K. Dick died before the film was released, the work that he did get to see impressed him incredibly and he even said the film was better than his book. This was enough to pique my curiosity and I figured it was about time for me to actually start reading books from one of the giants of science fiction. I definitely have mixed feelings about this book and I hope I can give this book its full credit. However, I think I agree with the author in saying that this is one of the rare instances where the film adaptation is actually better than the novel.

To provide a general plot summary of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? sometime in the 20th century the world experienced a third, final, devastating nuclear war that killed of much of the population. Faced with a planet slowly dying from nuclear fallout, the UN pushes for extensive off-world colonization, including Mars, and to help motivate citizens to leave earth each colonist is given an android "servant". Really, no better than electronic slaves. As the androids become better and more complicated it becomes harder to tell androids and humans apart aside from a couple of specific tests. Because androids occasionally kill their human masters and escape police departments employ bounty hunters like Rick Deckard to "retire" androids. Overall it raises a bunch of good questions such as what sort of value artificial life has and what makes someone human.

The book raises a lot of good questions, but I haven't even talked about half of what Dick manages to cram into this novel. And really I think that this is a weakness of his work and I've heard that this is a tendency of Dick's books and stories in general. Dick introduces all of these really interesting ideas such as a device that lets you control what emotions you feel, a religion based on holding all life, from humans down to the smallest bug as sacred, and an extensive market in pet animals that cost as much as cars and come with payment plans. Dick introduces all of these really interesting ideas that you could make a whole book out of just one of these ideas. (And no, so I don't get accused of plagiarism, this isn't really my idea, this is from the foreword to the edition that I read but I found myself agreeing with the foreword's author as I continued with this novel.)

So really, I think this is where the movie adaptation has a benefit well over the book. Blade Runner has cut out all of the superfluous elements of the novel like the electric sheep and Mercerism, which allows the story to be much better-paced and focus on the important element. I feel that because the book has all these various threads, many of which never really get developed, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? loses a lot of its focus and you kind of lose the urgency of the narrative. I will say that the movie has your more expected Hollywood ending while the book just sort of ends, which I feel is kind of an appropriate ending for this story.

If you're interested in this story, I'd actually recommend that you watch Blade Runner, especially the director's cut which is widely considered to be better than the original theatrical release. The book's all right but it definitely lacks the focus and direction of the movie.

- Kalpar