Goran Lowie
“Time, time and the jungle. The jungle does not recognise time. They are like two alienated siblings who will have nothing to do with each other, who communicate, if at all, only in the form of contempt.”
It's Herzog and jungles, so you know it's going to be at the very least interesting. I had actually seen the 2021 movie on Onoda, “Onoda - 10,000 nuits dans la jungle” (unfortunately not directed by Herzog!). At three hours, it's an immersive behemoth of a film, focusing on the story of Onoda, in an almost documentarian manner.
THE TWILIGHT WORLD is the opposite of this: it's an extremely breezy read, not a word wasted, shining lights on specific aspects and knowledge Herzog has of the events. Of course, it's typical Herzog– a person on the edge of society, an intriguing life story, and the tragedy of it all. It's not a straightforward account of what happened, like the Harari movie, instead a somewhat dreamlike account, non-fiction yet fiction, prose yet poetry.
The story of Hiroo Onoda remains absolutely fascinating. I would like to call this a somewhat nuanced take on his character, though not entirely. Both the film and this book have clearly alluded to his messed-up mental state, but I've seen very few honest discussions of his actions.
To many, the story of Onoda's persistance in his twilight world is a beautiful example of unfaltering commitment and dedication. But I don't see it that way. To me, it's a warning against such extreme devotion. Onoda had many, many opportunities to realize and accept the reality of the war being over. He killed many innocent civilians, terrorised countless people, and wasted over 30 years of his life... and for what?
He was ultimately regarded as a hero upon his return to Japan. Sure, he was a “bad-ass” in the way that he persisted all that time, managing to hide and survive despite the many military sweeps, police attacks and other attempts by the Japanese government to hunt him down. It's a celebration of mental illness and murder, glorification of someone who was clearly mentally unwell.
Anyway- I reecommend this novella for all fans of Herzog. 3.5, rounded up to a 4.
Disclaimer: I received an advanced reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thanks to Bloomsbury and NetGalley for the ARC!
Onto the actual book... What on earth was this? I wanted to abandon it halfway through, which is sadly impressive for a book of this short length, but ended up powering through. I was expecting a fairly surface-level exploration of spacecraft in fiction and popular culture, and got... a book focusing for the most part on the Millenium Falcon from Star Wars (which the author seems to be in love with), with lots of rambly thoughts- all over the place.
This book mostly attempts to explain why the Millenium Falcon is such an amazing spacecraft and the tens of special meanings it has which has made it so adored by people all over the world! It goes from analysis of Star Wars to weird Freudian sexual comparisons (describing the way the Falcon enters hyperspace as being swallowed by a vagina or anal sphincter, and there's a whole part about the “vulva of hyperspace” too), philosophical ramblings and lots of ideas on life, American culture, economy, ecology, feminism, stream of consciousness, Gaussian geometry, how spacecraft are penises penetrating hyperspace (yes, it never stops with the weird sexual analogies), left-wing cynicism, but most of all, Star Wars.
Much of this book is just about how great Star Wars/the Millenium Falcon is, how it is even philosophically and politically more sophisticated than any Kubrick or Tarkovsky film.
It's a baffling book, almost feels like false advertising, and definitely made me go “what is this guy even going on about” multiple times throughout reading it. Hard pass.
A fantastic and enthralling tale of biology, genetics, pharmaceutics and personal responsibility vs collective responsibility. Even better in the age of COVID!
Reviews/ratings for the individual stories. Going to start keeping this so I have a nice overview of which stories I liked for the hugos/nebulas/... :
The story isn't the story - 3.5
A gentle story that reminded me of some of Octavia Butler's work. Felt like more could've been done with, but still a decent story.
For want of milk - 3
Quick and fun one that feels like a fairytale turned into modern day story.
The stop after the last station - 4
A typical mid-20s something protagonist who's seemingly lost in life wants to travel to “the stop after the last station” in an attempt to regain a sense of purpose in life. Captivating.
Inas spark - 4
Haven't been the biggest fan of Kowals unfortunately but this was more than solid. A girl mage has to go on a quest with an unconventional companion. Will she pass the test and become one of the king's mages?
For all those who sheltered here - 4.5
Fantastic! We see the world through the eyes of a tree. Human rituals and actions are recontexualised from a new perspective. Great prose.
White rose, red rose - 3
Basically a man reflecting on fighting undead people. Not bad, I suppose, but didn't really do it for me.
The north pole workshops -3
Transcript of a north pole customer support call. Certainly didn't go where I was expecting it to.
Loving the old wounds -3.5
Funny and interesting essay on the failed Disney film The Black Cauldron.
Scenes from the apocalypse - 3.5
A sadly all too common tale of the increased racism towards Asians in the US since the pandemic.
Pro wrestling is fake - 3.5
Pro wrestler talks about why they think it's important for people to know it's all fake, and how masculine invincibility is slowly but finally dying off in the pro wrestling world. I'd never thought about this, I guess, so it's interesting enough juist because of that.
What you might have missed - 3
An essay on why inclusivity matters in fiction, as well as reading works from marginalised people, and different perspectives than your own.
The precarious now - 2
Not sure what to think of this. Basically a writer lamenting how hard it is to predict the near-future.
The matter of cloud -
A very in-depth interview with a mostly forgotten writer who has now luckily been brought to my attention. Very eloquent and fascinating. I skimmed some of it since it went in detail about some of the books, but this sounds like a writer worth checking out for sure.
Post massacre psyche evaluation
tl;dr ACAB! Appreciate the message but didn't like the execution.
The burning river
Cute!
Confessions of a spaceport ai - 4
Funny little poem. Always love Mary Soon Lee, her stuff is always simple yet never feels like Kaur-esque platitudes.
Between childroid + mother - 3
Decent!
Interview John wiswell
THE WITNESS FOR THE DEAD marks a pretty good return to the world of our dearly beloved goblin emperor. It's a similar type of story, essentially a slice-of-life story about a murder investigator, but just like THE GOBLIN EMPEROR, it's a much more thrilling read than it sounds!
Reads more like historical fiction with some slight magical tendencies, it's inspired by Pre-Columbian America and it has a lot of naval content (always a plus). Haven't read too many books with a pre-Columbian setting so this is nice!
Had a bit of a middle slog and the ending didn't really feel like an ending but more of a “okay, part of the setup for book 2/3 is over with now”... Really didn't satisfy me on that end.
Has lots of casual LGBT representation, especially transgender & non-binary, which somehow works in the setting! Really well done.
I might read the sequels, but I'll probably wait until the series is done. This one felt a bit too much like setting up a sequel, to the detriment of the book on its own.
Feels like erotic fanfiction-turned-novel as you so often see these days, although I'd be struggling to think what it would be fanfiction for. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell seems the obvious pick, but it's a completely different book besides the setting. This is a very light read, very heavy on the romance & sex, with a smaller focus on the story and everything else.
While it was a fun read, it didn't really do much for me.
A banger. I think I liked all stories in this, which is a first, even if I didn't have a stand-out wow-er.
Really loved “Black Box of the Terraworms”, might be my favorite short story of the year so far. “The Eight Thousanders” was also quite good. Overall, a very strong issue.
A typical Le Guin novella. It grew on me. The symbolism is sometimes subtle, sometimes less so. It's a clear parallel to the English establishing a penal colony in Australia. This is not a story of action, more so of thoughts: most interestingly, it explores pacifism in a way we all recognize and love from her other works, and shows us the honour in non-violent resistance to oppression.
This had a lot of great quotes in it. It reminded me a bit of The Word for World is Forest, although that one felt much clumsier than this. They both aren't exactly subtle in their metaphors, but at least this one feels more natural.
3.5
Hints of McKillip in this often feminist, character-focused collection of stories. I'd read the first Monstress book some time ago and it wasn't really my cup of tea, so I'm glad to find that this was much more type of thing. Highlight was definitely the title novella, The Tangleroot Palace, but none of the stories really disappointed me.
They have lots of strong female characters, beautiful prose (not flowery or anything, just... imaginative, I suppose). The stories are often inspired by fairytales and, for some reason, frequently set near or around forests.
Most of them are bite-sized explorations of love, storytelling, magic and independence. Solid debut!
It feels kind of crazy to read “new”, never-before-translated works by one of the greats like Lem. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect going in since this is mostly a collection of unconnected short stories, but what I got in the end is the typical thought-provoking, creative and a delight for any Lem fans.
Some of these are quite heavy reads, and I had to re-read some parts multiple times. Interestingly, as much as there is no main theme, you can expect many of the themes Lem always returned to in his career, perhaps most notably in this collection the exploration of what alien intelligence would look like. Because these stories were all written independently over the span of multiple decades, you can see a clear evolution/change in his writing style and habits.
Feels like classic SF, and classic Lem!
I would like to thank NetGalley and MIT Press for this ARC.
Not my favorite type of fairytale retelling... Just a bit too many pop culture references and meta-ness. Feels like the type of stuff you'd read on Wattpad. It's a pass for me.
A muddled plot with a style that wasn't for me at all (I don't care for too modern language in my fantasy to begin with, but when mixed with all the internet and meme humor... just no) and worldbuilding that felt interesting at best and terribly inconsistent at most.
I always see people praising this for being original but I just see all the stuff that feels heavily borrowed and a lot of vagueries in terms of characters and plot.
Figured I'd stick it out because it was still decently fun at times, but this was definitely an unpleasant surprise for me. I'd been saving it for some time now and figured fuck it, I won't wait until the entire series is out. Really wish I'd liked it more!
3.5
This sure feels like hard SF!
My first Benford. Want to thank Netgalley & Gallery Books for the ARC.
There's a lot of really cool ideas in this. I liked the concept of a world where extra-terrestial messages are so common that there's an entire library with the sole purpose of studying and exploring those messages. It's a neat idea explored competently here with some bonus AI stuff.
The concept of first contact is explored in this, in multiple ways. Different kinds of alien life and the way they may differ from humans on Earth. More than that, it also explores the Great Filter and the survival of species over vast amounts of time.
It has the usual caveats of hard SF, I suppose... Don't expect too much from the characters or some aspects of the story, but if you just want some solid hard SF adventure, you'll most likely get that!
There's this famous story of a Japanese soldier who kept fighting for decades after world war 2 ended, believing that the war hadn't ended. It took until the 70s for him to finally accept that the war is over. This story first went viral years ago and has been a fun pop fact for years, but people often like to make fun of the fact that people “forgot” to tell him the war had ended– rest assured, there were many attempts, but he was just so convinced that the war wasn't over that he never believed anyone.
The story was finally made into a movie this year, which premiered at Cannes- Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle. I encourage people to watch it, because it's a fascinating story about utter convinction, cognitive dissonance, the tragedy of foolhardy deference.
Anyway, this novella tells a similar tale, of this weird cult on a submarine where people hold the key to a doomsday weapon, and their only goal is to inevitably set it off... Helped with some great purple prose (purple enough to make for some beautiful writing, but not too purple to lose you) and a well-constructed sense of atmosphere. Like the best of novellas, it packs a lot of stuff in less than 200 pages.
A pleasant surprise.
“Daarom is een tijdelijke nederlaag van het nationaalsocialisme geen reden om het gevaar bezworen te achten; want het gevaar is in laatste instantie niet het nationaalsocialisme als ‘leer', maar het ressentiment ‘pur', dat van zijn afkomst niet meer weet en aan de frase gelooft als de zuivere waarheid van de zuivere leugen.”
- Menno Ter Braak, Nationaal-socialisme als rancuneleer, 1937
I read the brand new MIT Press translation. Very happy to see Lem's books finally getting some decent translations, after the many “Polish > shitty French translation > shitty English translations” releases we've had throughout the years. Definitely planning on picking more of them up– if you like Lem, be sure to check it out, because they've done over ten books in their initial batch I believe, with more planned.
This was my third Lem after Solaris and The Cyberiad, both excellent works. This was another really interesting one. I particularly liked its take on evolution and what that means about sentience (when is something considered “sentient”? Can or do machines evolve in the same way that humans do?). Apparently this book was one of the first to explore the idea of “necroevolution”, evolution of non-living matter.
It gets very hard SF at parts but it never went too hard for me.
I didn't think it was particularly good, more so... interesting. This is Lovecraft's attempt at a “Dying Earth” type of story (in fact– it's even listed on the Wikipedia page for the “Dying Earth” subgenre as the first example). It's interesting to see this mix of typical Lovecraftian stuff in a Dying Earth setting. Two examples:
“It cannot be described, this awesome chain of events that depopulated the whole Earth; the range is too tremendous for any to picture or encompass. Of the people of Earth's fortunate ages, billions of years before, only a few prophets and madmen could have conceived that which was to come—could have grasped visions of the still, dead lands, and long-empty sea-beds. The rest would have doubted . . . doubted alike the shadow of change upon the planet and the shadow of doom upon the race. For man has always thought himself the immortal master of natural things. . . .”
“And now at last the Earth was dead. The final, pitiful survivor had perished. All the teeming billions; the slow aeons; the empires and civilizations of mankind were summed up in this poor twisted form—and how titanically meaningless it all had been! Now indeed had come an end and climax to all the efforts of humanity—how monstrous and incredible a climax in the eyes of those poor complacent fools of the prosperous days! Not ever again would the planet know the thunderous tramping of human millions—or even the crawling of lizards and the buzz of insects, for they, too, had gone. Now was come the reign of sapless branches and endless fields of tough grasses. Earth, like its cold, imperturbable moon, was given over to silence and blackness forever.
The stars whirred on; the whole careless plan would continue for infinities unknown. This trivial end of a negligible episode mattered not to distant nebulae or to suns new-born, flourishing, and dying. The race of man, too puny and momentary to have a real function or purpose, was as if it had never existed. To such a conclusion the aeons of its farcically toilsome evolution had led.”
I quite like it! Although it's very short, it quickly manages to introduce you to Ayla, while giving glimpses of the world she inhabits. The fight scene was well-written. The only complain I can make is that it should've been longer!
