Eating Muffins in an Agitated Manner

Tauko

Posted by jukkahoo

On ollut. Taukoa. Ho-hum.

Ei etteikö olisi ollut kirjoitettavaa. Kaikkihan lukevat mielleään kertomuksia hammaslääkärillä käynnistä. Sitten viime 'näkemän' olen vieraillut moisella viisi kertaa. Ensiksi halkesi takahammas ja sitten etu. Hitto soikoon.

Kirjojakin on luettu. Jopa sähköisiä. Ostin nimittäin iPadin. Mahtava lelu! Aivan paras leikkikalu konsaan.

Ann ja Jeff kävivät vierasilla. Kierreltiin hieman maita ja mantuja. Juteltiin mukavia ja suunniteltiin isosti. Toivon mukaan siementen itäminen on hyvällä mallilla ja satoa saadaan korjata ennen pitkään. Hyvää toki kannattaaa odottaa.

Kävin kuukausi sitten Tukholmassa kunniavierailemassa. Suosittelen kaikille, harva asia on itse asiassa aivan yhtä hauskaa kuin kunniavieraana oleminen. Ehkä jääkiekon maailmanmestaruus on aika lähellä, muttei ihan. Suomen mestaruus on tosin ihan siinä rinnalla. GO REDS! Euroconista olen koettanut kirjoittaa raportin tynkää, mutta jokin tökkii. Jos tässä loman aikana vielä saisi jotain valmiiksi, niin ehkä sen tännekin törkkäisisin.

Finncon oli Turussa. Siitä olisi myös sanansa sanottavana. Olen kuitenkin yrittänyt välttää julkista kommenttointia, koska en ole vieläkään oikein osannut saada aikaan koherenttia kokonaisuuttaa siitä, mikä minusta olisi soveliasta kritiikkiä ja mikä aiheetonta ränttiä. Sanotaanko nyt näin, että aika moni ihminen on nähnyt asian kohtuullisen paljon samalla lailla kuin minäkin: Finncon 2011 ei ollut maailman onnistunein Finncon. Itse asiassa, minusta se oli käymistäni (kaikki miinus 1986 ja 2001) Finnconeista heikoin. Jonkinlaisen kuvan saanee, jos lukee vaikkapa seuraavat palaute-ketjut:

Aniki

RIsingshadow

Babek Nabel

Henkilökohtaisia näkemyksiä löytyy myös erilaisista blogeista, anime-henkisiä kannattaa etsiä vaikka täältä. Vanhojen ja väsyneiden partasetien sanallisen arkun avautumista odotellaan vielä. Omalta kohdalta isompi raportointi saattaa jäädä väliin, sen verran epätasapainoon viime viikonloppu meikäläisen Con-shuin saattoi. Kun yllekirjoittanut hukkaa Finnconin aikana con-fiiliksen ja arpoo ankarasti lauantai-aamuna sen välillä, jäädäkö hotellihuoneeseen pelailemaan Vihaisia lintuja vai mennäkö conpaikalle pitämään ohjelmanumeroitaan, niin minusta homma ei mene ihan niin kuin Strömsössä.

Loppupeleissä minulle jäi tapahtumasta haalea fiilis, jos kohta plussa-merkkinen sellainen. On enemmän kuin hauska ta-va-ta vanhoja kamuja (mahtava nähdä Eevaliisa Tenhunen ja Ronnin Tapsa!) ja ylipäänsä smoffata. Viikonlopun anti tulevaisuudelle oli toivon mukaan kohtuullisen antoisa, sen verta monta hyvää ideaa ja ajatusta sen aikana syntyi ja jalostui.

Kaikesta huolimatta haluan sanoa järjestäville tahoille voimalliset kannustuksen sanat: kaikesta oppii. Eikä tämä nyt kokonaisvaltainen katastrofi ollut. Kävijäpalautteesta voi lukea, että suurimmalla osalla vierailijoista oli ihan hauskaa, ohjelmista pidettiin ja vaikka kritiikkiä annettiinkin ihan kunnolla, niin myös kiitoksia on tullut ihan mukavasti. Kiitokset kaikille niille, jotka tämän saivat aikaan!

Näiden sanojen jälkeen on hyvä muistaa, että tässä saa itse kukin lähteä rakentamaan tulevia coneja hattu kourassa ja avoimin mielin. Ensi vuonna olisi tarjolla Åcon 5 ja 2013 Helsinki olisi tarjoilemassa oman versionsa Finnconista. Leopardihattu pyrkii tekemään parhaansa, että homma pelittäisi perinteitä kunnioittaen ja uutta luoden.

Ensi kertaan. Nyt pakenen suomalaiskansallisesti maalle viikoksi.

And some more books

Posted by Sari

J.G. Farrell: The Siege of Krishnapur

Farrell won the lost Booker last year with his novel The Troubles, making him a sort of a double winner. His first winner, The Siege of Krishnapur was also on the short-list of Best of Booker's, and though the award went to Salman Rushdie's masterful Midnight's Children, this novel would also have been a worthy winner. It is always wonderful and regrettably rare to find a book that really connects, and this truly was one of them.

Siege of Krishnapur is a novel about the Raj and the Indian rebellion of 1857. In the fictional town of Krishnapur the British elite hunkers down to a four month siege against the rebelling sepoys, and the novel is a depiction of their break-down, disillusionment and for many, death. It is insightful, witty, graphic, sad, grotesque and hilarious. It exposes the folly of victorian jingoism, but manages to do it so that reader retains her sympathy for the characters. It brings up a myriad of ideas and debates from evolution to colonialism, and is written so well, that most reviewers on the net have felt compelled to spice up their reviews with copious quotations. It is a bloody brilliant novel.

Sherwood Smith: Inda

Smith's Inda series is a first fat fantasy series I have finished in a long time. It is set in the same universe as her earlier novels, but much further back in the history. Inda is a second son of a noble with a future all set up according to the traditions of his people. His future wife has been fostered with him from childhood, and he is to be the caretaker of his father's castle and lands for his elder brother. Inda series begins as a school novel, transforms itself into a pirate adventure and again to a novel about political struggles and war when Inda is exiled and becomes a pirate while his friends and family continue to navigate the murky politics of their nation.

There is lots to like In Inda books, especially if you like your fantasy long and world-building detailed. Smith has been developing this world for a very long time and her familiarity with it makes the long and at times convoluted series worth while. We are not talking about Tolkien-level detail, but I found that the novels had a similar feel of background to them: the author does not need to infodump all she knows of the world into the narrative and that makes for a fuller reading experience.

The characters are sympathetic and their difficult relationships well realised. There are some interesting reflections on desire, beauty and gender roles, interesting magical system and some quite detailed action sequences. I do think, though, that stretching the story to four big volumes was unnecessary. This may be just because a) I really have been off fat fantasy for years and don't seem to be able to get into its groove and b) I really don't much care for pirates. Even so, a good series.

Molly Gloss: The Dazzle of Day

If you are not reading Jo Walton at Tor.com you should be. She writes interestingly and intelligently about books she is interested in, and luckily for me, her taste and mine coincide almost perfectly. Thus if she talks about a book I have not yet read, chaches are I try to get it. Which I did with The Dazzle of Day.

The Dazzle of Day is a story of generation starship Dusty Miller, filled with quakers on their way to a new world. Honestly. And it is an intriguing novel. There are multiple point of view characters, mainly from the same extended family, whose life and feelings Gloss depicts at the point of Miller's joyrney when they are breaking and approching slowly their destination.

Gloss writers quintessentially literary science fiction, the kind Margaret Attwood and Rachel Cusk propably would bend over backwards to call something else. This is a very low-tech science fiction novel. The science from solar sails to relativity is present, but it isin't what is important to the characters or to the novelist. Some of them have exciting jobs like mending the solar sails or exploring the new planet, some of them are farmers or maintenance workers. Some of them are active in the meetings where the future of the community is debated, some are not.

Actually, The Dazzle of the Day is a novel about every day life. We get a slice of the life of these characters, their relationships, lives hopes and loves. The fact that they work and live on a generation starship does not define their lives. They do every-day things and have every-day discussions, They go to toilet, have bad sex, work, sing, mourn and die. Even the hopes and fears generated by the approaching end of their journey and the complications rising from their new home planet being barely life-sustaining are handled in a very low-key manner.

We never even find out what happens to our main characters. The book begins with a chapter on earth and ends generations later on the new planet. In the middle we peak into a moment in these characters lives and are left without closure. This is space travel made ordinary, and that is way it was a book I appreciated but did not connect with. This foregrounding of the every day is a default mode of Finnish writing, and it is one I don't much care about. However, it is a mode very rarely succesfully used in SF, and so makes for an interesting reading experience.

 

Hyllyntyhjennystä

Posted by jukkahoo

Elämme muutoksen aikoja. Hyllyt liikkuvat, niin myös niiden sisältö. Hyviin koteihin on tarjolla proosaa, lyriikkaa, muistelmia, pakinoita, kuvakirjoja, tietoa, taitoa ja Jyväskylän kaupungin historia osat I ja II. Ja genrehyllyjä ei vielä edes ole alettu katsella sillä silmällä...

 

 

 

 

Book backlog

Posted by Sari

David Leavitt: Indian Clerk

I don't know if it really is a recent phenomenon, but I have a sort of gut feeling literary historicals fictionalising the lives of real people might be in vogue. (Wolf Hall, Arthur and George, True Story of the Kelly Gang...) In these novels the authors seem to be adhering to historical facts as we know them, and imagining the interior lives of the subjects based on what sources and research there is. It is a strange balancing act for an author, and for a reader – especially one interested in the history behind the characters – it is a reading experience full of caveats.

Leavitt's Indian Clerk is firmly in this category. It tells the stories of a Cambridge mathematician G.H. Hardy and his colleague Srinivasa Ramanujan, the Indian clerk of the title. In early 1900s Ramanujan writes to Hardy from Madras telling he is very near of solving Riemann-hypothesis and when Hardy and his colleague Littlewood bring him to England, he becomes an instant sensation, ”a hindoo calculator”. Unfortunately, the devout Ramanujan is trapped in England by the First World War and his health deteriorates badly, partly because of misdiagnosis and the difficulties of maintaining a nourishing vegetarian diet in war-time England, and he dies shortly after returning to India.

Unlike many other american novelists Leavitt has an understanding of the meaning of class in British society and Indian clerk is both a sensitive and insightful portrait of Hardy, and an examination of class and race in early 20^th century Cambridge. Hardy and Ramanujan have very little in common beyond mathematics, and Hardy almost wholly fails to understand his colleague, even though he – both fictional and historical Hardy – describes meeting him as the one romantic incident in his life. That disconnect and - on the other hand - the connect the men share when talking about mathematics works well, espcially when viewed in contrast to the larger societal questions the novel examines. Leavitt isn't quite as succesful with the structure and plot of the novel which does leave a reader feeling little aimless.

 

Megan Whalen Turner: The Thief, Queen of Attolia, King of Attolia, Conspiracy of Kings

Turner's series of YA fantasy novels have for quite a while been among my favourites, the kind of books I reread every now and again as comfort fic because they feed my id. The Thief and Queen of Attolia were published some time a go, and in the past few years Turner has returned to her world with two new novels. The Thief turns on a narrative sleight of hands which is either clever or irritating depending on what sort of reader you are, and even stating this is a bit of a spoiler. Queen of Attolia is a very strange romance mixed with war maybe war mixed with strange romance, and King of Attolia a straight sequel to that. Conspiracy of Kings is a parallel novel to King of Attolia where another character from the Thief gets mixed up in a coup in a neighbouring kingdom.

Turner's fantasy world is refreshingly not a pseudomedieval one, but one riffing off from ancient Greece and its city states. The world is well-imagined, though I am not a great fan of the ”folk tales” she frequently inserts to her novels to created depth and further a point. The plots move nicely and there is plenty of conspiracies, war and action but also engaging characters and human relationships.

My absolute favourite, and the one I return to quite regularily, is King of Attolia because it utilizes one of my favourite tropes in all fiction: looking at familiar characters through the eyes of a new one. Here the Queen of Attolia and her newly crowned King are seen through the originally quite hostile eyes of a member of the Queens guard who slowly begins to understand his monarchs and their difficult relationship.

 

More indian movies

Posted by Sari

Kaminey

Vishal Bhardwaj is famous at least in the west mainly for his Shakespeare adaptations Maqbool and Omkara. In Kaminey he takes the ever popular Bollywood trope of identical twins, adds a surprisingly modern take to the love story, some bad ass ganstas and a lot of influences from Guy Ritchie films. In the film, the good twin Shahid Kapoor, who works for AIDS prevention non-profit, finds out that girlfriend Priyanka Chopra is pregnant. After his sadly very true to life caddish first reaction (abortion is murder, I am not going to be responsible, is it even mine) he decides to marry Priyanka. Unfortunately Pryanka’s brother is bhai in both meanings of the word – brother and gangster - and as ultra national maharastrian is less than happy to see his sister marrying a man from Uttar Pradesh. The Bad twin Shahid Kapoor is a bookie and small time criminal who accidentally ends up with a guitar case full of cocaine, and gets chased by police and the drug dealers both. The plot twists and turns bringing the brothers together in a great climactic shoot-out at Bhope bhais compound. I loved Kaminey. It was carelessly violent in the way Indian movies often are, but the plot was satisfyingly twisty, the dialogue was great, the love story was true, and Dhan Te Nan is a great song, nevermind the Misirlou influences. Definitely on my top ten Indian movies list, this.

 Love Aaj Kal

In Love Aaj Kal we meet Saif Ali Khan and Deepika Padukone, young desis living the modern life in London. When work separates them, they decide to break up instead of having a long distance relationship, but during the film they find out they really can’t get the other out of their mind. Parallel to the modern story Rishi Kapoor tells Saif Ali how he romanced a beautiful Indian girl in the 1950s India. I wonder if this would be a good portal movie, at least for romance-reading westerners. The movie has very much a feel of a straight up romance with some misunderstandings, angst and also some typically Indian concerns about tradition versus modern life thrown in. I found it nice but forgettable. The most memorable thing was the Brazilian model Giselli Monteiro as Rishi Kapoors love interest, she was adorable as the quiet demure Harleen.

 Eklavya

Eklavya was again one of the non-masala movies. It is still very indian in the sense that it goes for big drama, but there is only one song and its length is comparable to western films. The genre is nearer Shakespeare than anything else, though there is a Mahabharata story in the background. Eklavya is a story of an rajasthani princely family, living their lives pretty much untouched by the modern world. When the queen dies, the son of the family (Shaif Ali Khan) returns from the west and ends up in the middle of both a family tragedy and the tension between modern and historical way of life. In the course of the film both he and the faithful captain of the guard Eklavya (Amitabh Bachchan) have to make difficult choices that will force them to choose between love and duty. Eklavya is a film that is wholly carried on the formidable shoulders of Amitabh Bachchan, and he delivers a powerful and restrained performance which must rank among his best. Shaif Ali - whose career’s stand out performance was as the Indian version of Shakespeare’s greatest villain, Iago – also delivers, and the scenes he shares with Bachchan are pure gold. My only quibble was that if you cast Sharmila Tagore and Shaif Ali Khan as mother and son (as they are in real life), it would have been nice to see them together.

 Dil Bole Hadippa

Dil Bole Hadippa had two things going for it. Firstly the male lead was the adorable Shahid Kapoor, and secondly Rani was going to dress up as a man. See, Rani is a small-town girl working in his uncle’s dance theatre near Amritsar. She is also a hell of a cricket player, “left and right batsman”. When the town’s team looses for the umpteenth time to a team from Lahore in a friendly, team’s sponsor Anupam Kher sends for his son Shahid who is a pro in England. Shahid begins to put together a team, but as a girl Rani does not get past the gates of the cricket ground on the try out day. So she dresses up as a boy and gets in. Shahid, of course falls for his new player’s “sister”, and understands the ruse only when the crucial game is already being played. Again, we are in the full masala territory: “Dil Bole Hadippa… is set, in a mythical Punjab where fields are always swaying in the wind, colourfully dressed men and women are always waiting to break out into a vigorous dance, and everyone cheerfully chomps on sugar cane and drinks lassi.” This is big, colourful, a bit patriotic and fun sporty romance with a message about women’s equality. Shahid was great, Anupam Kher wonderful and Rani actually managed to pull off the drag most of the time. Also she and Shahid were a much better jodi than I would have ever imagined. Also, unlike in Lagaan I actually managed to understand something of the cricket. Me liked.

 

 

Mitä Martti teki kesällä (ja syksyllä ja talvella...), osa 2

Posted by Sari

Paitsi että Martti reissasi kesällä kunnolla näyttelyissä ja leireillä, olemme myös kokeilleet kaikenlaista jännää. Ensinnäkin olimme jo keväällä koirakoulu Heiluvan Hännän puuhaklubin kanssa kokeilemassa makkaran jäljittämistä metsästä. Eli ulkoilutimme HK:n sinistä narussa metsässä, jätettiin makkara jäljen päähän, annettiin sen vanheta ja sitten annettiin koiran jäljittää. Tässä Martti osoittautui aika taitavaksi. Jälki oli suora ja vain kolmenkymmenen metrin pituinen, mutta Martz tajusi heti mistä oli kyse, kuono maahan ja suoraan jälkeä pitkin makkarakätkölle. Tästä innostuneena hain Starkista pari lukkoa ja ohutta muovinarua ja hienosti valmistin Martille jäljitykseen sopivan taluttimen. Kesällä kokeiltiin sitten useamman kerran mökillä ihan omin voimin. Pidensin jäljen odotusaikaa puolesta tunnista tuntiin ja pidensin ja monimutkaistin matkaa. Pari kertaa Martti hukkasi jäljen, mutta tajusi palata taaksepäin ja aloittaa uudestaan. Joka kertaa nakit löytyi, joskin täytyy myöntää että vaikka kuinka kovasti itse yrittää olla narunpäässä neutraali, niin aina voi olla niin että viestittää koiralle mistä kannattaa etsiä.

Elokuussa olimme sitten MyHeelsporukoiden kanssa Kaisa Hilskan luona kokeilemassa paimennusta. Ensin tutustuttiin lampaisiin ja kokeiltiin niiden kanssa kulkemista isommassa aitauksessa ja iltapäivällä lähdettiin pyörötarhasta hakemaan kaaria. Paimennus ei osoittautunut ihan Martin lajiksi, sen sijaan että se olisi paimentanut lampaita, se jäljitti niitä. Lammaslauma kulki siis pari hassua metriä metriä koiran edessä ja tämä kulki vaan kuono maassa selkeästi viestittäen että joku lammas oli tästä ihan vähän aikaa sitten liikkunut. Pyörötarhassa Martti pääsi sitten tutustumaan lampaisiin todella läheltä! Vaikka Martti ei erityisiä lahjoja paimeneksi osoittanutkaan (mallioppilaat taisivat olla Siiri ja Nelson), oli kokemus valtavan kiinnostava. Ne kiksit koiraharrastuksessa tulevat siitä kun saa kommunikoitua koiralle mitä siltä odotetaan ja osaa itse tulkita sen viestejä takaisin. Oli aivan mieletöntä katsella kuinka Kaisa ja hänen australiankelpiensä Heili siirsivät lampaita.

Kolmas uusi laji jota ollaan kokeiltu on sitten ihmisten etsiminen. Olimme Canis-lehden päätoimittajan Eija Valtarin  luona Vihdissä yhden sunnuntain. Ensin kuunneltiin luentoa lajin perusteista ja sitten mentiin metsään niin että kukin koira vuorollaan pääsi kahdesti etsimään  piiloon paikalleen polvistuneita kohdehenkilöitä. Etsiminen metsästä tai raunioista on vaativaa puuhaa, siinä täytyy opettaa monta eri palikkaa koiralle ja sitten vielä ketjuttaa ne yhteen. Tässä lajissa porukoista loisti selvästi Piisku, joka iloisesti heti tajusi että metsässä kykkiviltä ihmisiltä sai nameja. Martin ongelmaksi muodostui paitsi läheisriippuvuus emännästä myös sen epäluulo maastoa kohtaan. Englantilaiset herrasmiehet kun eivät polulta poikkea kuin aivan hätätapauksissa. Tätäkin ollaan kokeiltu Jukan kanssa uudestaan niin että olen ollut polun varressa piilossa kun he tulevat lenkiltä. Se on pari kertaa katsonut minua ihan suoraan kohti, jatkanut ohi kunnes on tuulen alapuolella ja haistaa. Sitten äkkikäännös ja luokse. Eli aika lailla voidaan todea Martin lahjojen keskittyvän nenän käyttöön :-)

Joulukuussa olin olin ihan turistina Messarissa jossa Nelson ja äitinsä Jenni saavuttivat historiallisen voiton sunnuntain Voittaja 2010 näyttelyssä. Molemmista leivottiin voittajat, Jennistä ROP ja Nelsonista VSP. Olimme kaikki aika täpinöissä! Marttikin lähettää tätä kautta onnittelut rakkaalle viholliselle ja tyttöystävälle: tervetuloa kerhoon :-)

What a piece of work is a man

Posted by Sari

 

Hamlet is my favourite of Shakespeare's great tragedies. Its poetry is unsurpassed, and its themes are so rich that there is always room for new interpretations. It is also a play that is easily reduced into a parody of itself: an oidipal mad prince spouting a potpourri of famous quotations about life, universe and everything.  It is perhaps then not surprising that none of the productions I have seen, mostly on film, really hit the mark. As a matter of fact, my favourite Hamlet on film has thus far been Iain Glen in Stoppard's film of his own play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead – partly, I suppose, because the structure of the play leaves Hamlet a mystery. Ros and Guil were never able to glean what afflicts him.

As luck would have it, Hamlet seems to be in vogue and thus there are new opportunities to meet the melancholy dane even for us living far away from the anglophone stages. BBC has adapted RSC's much lauded version with David Tennant for TV, and National Theatre streamed a live performance of their equally acclaimed version to movie theatres around the world  in December.

The RSC production is the older one and already out on DVD. It shouldn't surprise anyone that The  Tenth Doctor is a good Hamlet. Tennant has been doing RSC productions for quite a while, and his nervous, physical energy translates well to the part. I especially liked how he is  almost unrecognisable with his solemn suit and flat hair in his first scene, and how differently he plays the first monologue compared to the others, like a breakdown. It is only after the ghost's news he transforms his sleeked back hair into the more familiar unruly mop and brings his more familiar almost manic style to play. His Hamlet is clearly a young volatile man in a situation over his head, his vulnerability underlined by his bare feet. The supporting cast is good, especially Penny Downie as Gertrude and Patrick Stewart as a cool Claudius. Mariah Gale's Ophelia was probably the best I have seen, though I have to say that to make Ophelia's descent into madness credible you have rely heavily on extra-textual elements. As it is written, her character just does not make sense as anything else except a symbol.

Gregory Doran's direction has been transferred to film fairly statically, most of the action stays in the throne room, until the scene between Gertrude and Hamlet after which - maybe mirroring Hamlet's move from introspection to action – there is lots more variety in scenery.  All in all, I found the direction and staging relatively unobtrusive giving the actors room to breathe.

As interesting and succesfull as RSC Hamlet is, the National Theatre's version wins this competition hands down. There are a number of similarities between the productions. Both have a modern setting, Cornelius has been transformed into Cornelia, and as the RSC/BBC did with the cctv images marking the change of scenes, the National Theatre's version also draws attention to the act of observation, of being under scrutiny.

Hytner's direction at National Theatre takes the interpretation further. Here Denmark is a modern dictatorship masquerading as democracy, Polonius is brilliantly transformed from a bumbling fool to a sinister spymaster, and Hamlet's personal revenge is balanced with the politics of a police state. Everybody is always under surveillance in this Elsinore, everyone is maintaining a public image. Claudius' first speech is a televised address, and the whole tragic massacre seems to bring little change, as the play closes with young Fortinbras lamenting the events to his own camera crew.

The actors are almost all superb. Patrick Malahide's Claudius is a masterpiece of malevolence. ”My words fly up, my thoughts remain below./Words without thoughts never to heaven go.” made my blood run cold. Clare Higgins' psychologically astute Gertrude, corrupted by the power structures she depends on, drowns her self doubt and loathing to drink. Ruth Negga's Ophelia made more sense than most, and her death – murdered by secret police – gave more insight into Gertrude as she knowingly lies to Laertes about her fate.

But all this would be nothing without Rory Kinnear's award-winning performance as Hamlet. He is simply blindingly good. He somehow manages to make the soliloquies sound both new and right, he deftly deleniates between Hamlet playing mad and Hamlet loosing himself, and he is able to change his register from comedy to tragedy in a heartbeat. His stage presence is hypnotic, his diction is clear and natural and the way he humanises the character makes for a coherent and extremely satisfying interpretation. The end result is the perfect Hamlet for our time.

A Very Late Booksy Post

Posted by Sari

This is more than a bit embarrasing, my reading diary is about two years out of date. There are roughly about a seventy books which I have read and not committed my opinion for the posterity to enjoy. How will they survive without my definitive and ground breaking analysis on these works?! To remedy the situation at least a bit, here are some.

Gregory Benford: Martian Race

In Benford’s Mars exploration novel, the nation states have concluded that the best way to get a manned Mars mission off the ground is to pool resources and offer a huge reward for anyone who completes the mission. Two privately funded missions are on or on their way to Mars, racing to fulfill the requirements to win the grand prize. Benford extrapolates what kind of media circus a privatly funded Mars mission could be, what kind of life could be sustained on Mars, and finally, the pros and cons of competition and co-operation in such extreme circumstances.

There is something very old school and sciency as opposed to fictiony about this book. Technologically, a manned Mars mission is within our reach, and though this novel has enough babble about trajectories and payloads, it is the social and economic aspects of a Mars mission that Benford is really interested in. The characters are rather bland - including Julia, the biologist who is the point of view character - and their relationships are rather one note affairs. Even the Martian life Julia finds is somehow subservient to the social extrapolation. It is the idea that matters, and the the end result is pretty much a fictionalised version of Zuber’s A Case for Mars. Which is not a bad thing, but because the fiction in this science fiction is rather thin, one is left with a feeling that reading Zuber would have been enough.


Lois McMasters Bujold: Diplomatic Immunity / Cryoburn (Spoilerish)

Bujold has again written a Vorkosiganverse novel to fill her contractual obligations to Baen. I am not sure if this is a good or a bad thing. Miles has already had a number of satisfying ends to his story arch, so each new novel seems to be a little forced in terms of the whole series.

I re-read Diplomatic Immunity as a quick comfort read earlier this year. In the novel Miles and Ekaterin are diverted from their belated galactic honeymoon to solve a diplomatic incident in quaddiespace and end up trying to stop a bombing at a space station and an interplanetary war with Cetaganda. It is a nice novel. It is nice to see the quaddiespace again, to find out how Bel is doing and the detective story is also quite deftly handled. But after the novels from Mirror Mirror to Civil Campaing it does feel bland, even though Miles gets himself ina fix that nearly costs him his life.

The same can be said about Cryoburn, though there Bujold's penchant to mix adventure with quite deft handling of more serious science fictional ideas is more evident than in the preceding novel. This time Miles who has evidently settled into his life as a husband, father and an imperial auditor is sent to the planet Kibou-daini to look into a cryofreeze corporation expanding their operations to Komarr. Again, as is usual for Bujold, the surface of the novel is a action/detective story, while the theme of the novel is something more fundamental to human experience: dying. And because this is science fiction, also immortality. Most of the punch of the book is at the end where the themes come together with a real bang. Unfortunately, the story itself just lacks something to make this work as well as the best books in the series.

A.M. Dellamonica: Indigo Springs

This Sunburst award winning novel is an intrusion fantasy of the same sort as some Sean Stuart’s work: magic is breaking into our world and the consequences are alarming to say the least. It is a novel told in flashbacks about how Astrid discovered magic which manifests as a  fluid callec vitagua which can imbue people and objects with power. Astrid is imprisoned and tells her story to Will, whose family has left him to join a magical cult founded by Astrid's friend and hopeless love interes Sahara.

Indigo Springs is one of those books I wanted to like more than I actually liked. Its writing is economical, the worldbuilding excellent, and the characters believable. Even so, it just did not grab me, and the ending wich is left pretty open for the sequel sort of annoyed me.

Robert Charles Wilson: Julian Comstock

For some quite inexplicable reason I have been attracted to this novel since the first time I saw a picture of it. It was just the name: Julian Comstock. For some reason I wanted to read about Julian Comstock. Jukka was not as enthused as I was so I held out investing in the hardback, even though every time I visited Akateeminen I felt compelled to lift a copy up and just look at it. This, obviously was a way to set yourself up for a disapointment. How could the book be as intriguing as the idea of it I had built up in my head for nearly a year. And it wasn’t my imaginary book, obviously, how could it be, but it was something quite as good.

Julian Comstock is a story of a post-apocalyptic America in the 22th century. Oil has run out and resulted in a collapse of the modern North America. By the events of the book, slavery is back as indentured servitude, America is ruled by a life-long president, is at war in Labrador against Europe, and religious life is regulated by Dominion which oversees different churches and controls access to the information salvaged from the ruins of the once great cities. Julian Comstock is the nephew of the current president who had Julian’s father killed as a traitor when he was getting too popular. Julian’s life story and his rise to the presidency is narrated after the fact by his friend Adam Hazzard, a naïve country boy Julian befriends while exiled to west by his uncle.

There are lots of things I liked about Julian Comstock. The story pulls you in, the worldbuilding works, the historical references to our times, to ancient Rome and to Civil War era US all mash well with the postapocalyptic America. Wilson has also made his future one where race is an unmarked feature, and – like in LeGuin’s Earthsea – the realisation that many of the characters including Adam are in not white is a much needed jolt out of complacent reading habits. I also liked the ending of the book, predicated though it was by the mapping of Julian Comstock’s life over emperor Julian the Apostate.

However, there are problems in the book. The biggest is one that is typical for  many speculative fiction writers, and it is that of focalisation. In Julian Comstock, the sole focaliser is our naïve and thus unreliable narrator Adam, as the novel is presented as his memoirs. It is a legitimate way of constructing a novel, but does not quite work here. The register slips when Wilson needs to give reader necessary pieces of information Adam should not know or, even more crucially, understand, and thus Adam's character does not remain consistent. This could be explained by the difference between a young naïve Adam to whom things happen, and old jaded Adam who is telling the story, but if that is what Wilson was aiming for, the structure fails to make it clear for the reader. For me the problem is even more annoying as this feels like a problem with craft not art – artificial as that dichotomy may be.

But even so, this, the first of this year’s Hugo nominee novels I have read, set the bar pretty high. It will be interesting to see how it stacks up with more lauded nominees, especially the co-winners Windup Girl and The City and the City.

Joulumartti toivottaa Hyvää Joulua!

Viranomaistiedotuksia:

Joulumartti liikkuu ja peuhaa. Ja syö kinkunderia.

Myndighetsmeddelande:

Julmårten vandrar och stojar. Och äter skindander.

Public service announcement:

Xmasmorty is out and about. And devouring hammy.

Let it Snow!

Posted by Sari

As you might know or, in the case of the most readers, have noticed, it has been snowing in Helsinki. Quite a lot. Apparently, we have the most snow in whole of Finland. Eat your heart out Lapland. The result has been as expected. Trains have been late, Busses have been stuck on snowbanks and traffic in general has been, well, hellish. It took Jukka one and half hour to get from Vallila to City Center, normally a trip of about twenty mintues.

And I understand that this does not a happy people make. In addition to life being more complicated  when it is cold anyway, you have all above mentioned problems with moving about. But personally, I LOVE THIS! I ABSO-FRACKING-LUTELY LOVE THIS! So there. Admittedly, our car is in a nice warm garage, and I work mostly  from home so I have been spared the worst of the traffic. But I think there just are people who love winter and people who love summer and never the twain shall meet. Snow is gorgeous, even when it gets into your shoes. Cold is just a question of right clothes. I have been enjoying every minute of walking with the dog through the snow and wind. I have actually been making longer walks just because it looks and feels wonderful outside. For the record, Martti loves this too. The smells are more intensive on the snow and he powers through the snowdrifts like a little tank if needs be to get to that particular scent.


 I spent the whole last summer complaining about the weather. The heat ruined my summer completely,  I just felt absolutely afwul only to be told how I just should enjoy a wonderful summer. So now I am going to skate, ski, walk, photograph the awesome beauty of winter, cuddle up with candles and a nice glass of red wine, and revel in my favourite time of the year. You haterz can just hate.