Books: Sphere By Michael Crichton (1987)

“In the middle of the South Pacific, a thousand feet below the surface of the water, a huge vessel is discovered resting on the ocean floor. It is a spaceship of phenomenal dimensions, apparently undamaged by its fall from the sky. And, most startling, it appears to be at least three hundred years old.”

Sphere gets off to a promising start, with an interesting premise and has potential, with its melding of sci-fi book and techno-thriller. But while this team investigates what the sphere is, we get pages and pages of conversations about humanities vs natural sciences and this sort makes the book a slog through as you progress. I mean, I did read it rather quick, but if only because I wanted to know what the silver sphere was and what it was doing at the bottom of the ocean. The book is filled with your typical trope of the genre, with a black man, a brilliant man, who easily takes offense with his white counterparts, a highly intelligent, but beautiful women who has to prove herself, a storm that cuts them off from the ships above (a devise Crichton would use again in Jurassic Park)…it makes you roll your eyes.

Like a lot of his books, his prose is wooden at times, and you sense you are reading a script and not a novel. Still, his idea is interesting and I get the feeling he wrote out all the speeches the characters give, ones that are really well written and precise, and then created plot out afterwards, which then makes the whole thing a bit absurd.

And that ending…I’m not sure how I feel about it. Maybe I’m just too dumb to get what the late Michael Crichton was trying to say here.

Books: Two Much By Donald E. Westlake (1975)

“Art doesn’t mean to tell Liz Kerwin that he has a twin. He’s on Fire Island, and she’s so beautiful that he’s willing to say anything for a chance at getting rid of her clothes. So when Liz mentions an identical twin sister, Art blurts out that he has a twin too. His name is Bart, he says, and describes the most boring man he can dream up. Liz thinks he would be perfect for her sister Betty. When Art meets Betty—who is, of course, just as lovely as her twin—she asks about his brother. Hoping for a chance at the family fortune, Art dons a pair of glasses, slicks back his hair, and soon has ‘Bart’ engaged to the sister. As his simple lie spins out of control, Art learns that wooing sisters is never as easy as it seems.”

While the back cover blurbs portends a “outrageously funny” and “a tumultuous, very funny book”, Two Much is a very serious, hard-boiled thriller that could’ve gone out more under Donald E. Westlake’s alter ego, Richard Stark. It’s somewhat of ingenious idea that could’ve only worked in the period it was set, the 1970s, before technology made it difficult to cover up some many things. Art Dodge starts out as your typical Westlake character, a somewhat happy-go-lucky small business owner whose said business is being held together with wire, string, and (sometimes), good intentions. But keeping creditors and others at bay, including the wife of a dear friend has made Dodge try another caper, one that eventually takes your standard womanizer and pushes him (unintentionally) towards a dark turn into ruthlessness.

What Westlake is great at is deftly spinning out this absurd concept, adding some fantastic tension, some surreal and dark comedy, along with questionable racist comments (which, again, does not offend me, but is a reminder –neither good nor bad- of how things have changed in the nearly 50 years this tale was first released) in a scenes that is uncomfortable to read in 2023, but is funny if you can set aside your modern feelings (which might be hard for someone who did not live through that era).

While the set-up, as I said, is ingenious, you get a sense that Westlake had some trouble resolving the story. Maybe the ruthlessness was there from the start, but went unnoticed by me, but the rushed last quarter of the book screams “I painted myself in a corner.” So I think of the book more as satire than out-and-out comedy (apparently there was a film version released in 1996, more below), and despite the simple premise (“Gordon Alworthy was five feet two inches tall and thin as the ice I was skating on”) the book is rather fun, and even if Westlake couldn't come up with a better conclusion, I don't know anyone who could have.

Touchstone Pictures released a much lighter version (called a “romantic screwball comedy”) of this tale in 1996, starring Antonio Banderas, Melanie Griffith, and Daryl Hannah. That version of Two Much is really a remake of the French version of book, which was just as light. An Indian-Tamil language version of the Hollywood take was released in 1998.

Books: This Other Eden By Ben Elton (1993)

"The Earth is being devastated by mankind's continued exploitation, and it seems obvious that the environment will collapse sometime in the near future. Rather than adopt a more eco-friendly approach to life, most people have instead invested in a "claustrosphere", a dome-shaped habitat in which all water, food and air is endlessly recycled in a completely closed environment. A person can therefore survive indefinitely within a claustrosphere no matter what ecological horrors may happen outside. British writer, Nathan, who is attempting to sell an idea for a claustrosphere commercial to Plastic Tolstoy, owner and chief marketer of the company which builds them. The commercial represents a change in emphasis for the advertising campaign; up to now claustropheres have been sold as a kind of fall-back insurance, just in case the environment collapses. However, now that virtually everybody owns at least a basic model, sales are falling and the company is having to try and sell upgrade and improvement packages instead. The new advertising, therefore, attempts to convince people for the first time that the environment truly is doomed and they are inevitably going to have to live in their claustrospheres."

Despite the heaviness to the plot, comedian Ben Elton’s (The Young Ones, Blackadder) third novel, This Other Eden, also takes a satirical approach to environmentalism. So despite some the serious themes, there is enough humor to make this a fun (if overlong) tale about the fact the planet is dying and no one really sees anyway to solve it because, as always, it’s costs money and there is no profit in the end. Fear, however, has always been and will always be, is what drives media corporations, politicians, and even environmentalists to make gobs of money and never solve any of the planets problems.

The book takes place in different parts of the world, including Los Angele and Ireland, and other European cities and we never get an actual date of when this takes place, beyond it being set “in the near future.” But Elton appeared to be prescient on a few things, like gender,  

“Judy was a man, even though he had a woman’s name. He was called Judy because he had been unfortunate enough to be born during the time of the great gender realignment. A period when it was commonly held belief in the University commons-rooms of the world that all single sex imagery was oppressive. This was a time when men were strongly encouraged not to grow beards, which were seen as a visual assertions of gender, whereas it became fashionable for women to be as hairy as possible, in order to blur the margins. The idea was that if everyone could pretend to be exactly the same then no one could be held back by being different and hence, it was argued, the individual would be in a position to prosper”

Also mobile phones, and daytime TV that focuses on how easy it is to exploit people’s problems for profit. He is also able to capture the insanity of how sometimes doing good can be bad, and how one person can convince the mass audience that they are the best person to save the world.

While released thirty years ago, the books themes are pretty relevant today as it probably was when it was published. While wild and unbelievable in some aspects, back in 1993, many would say it was science fiction and no one would let the Earth die for profit.

“The fact was, the cynics in Mother Earth have been naïve as everyone else in the world about the nature of government. The basic perception of modern society is that ‘they’ (that big, catch-all term for the powers that be) are at least attempting to look after our best interest. That there is a logical and at least partially benign force which watches over us, and for which we pay our taxes. Certainly, we think that ‘they’ are, in the main, a bunch of hypocritical bastards on the make, but deep down we presume that at heart they want what’s best for us. “Surely ‘they’ wouldn’t let us drink polluted water?” we say to ourselves. “Surely ‘they’ would tell us if the food was poisonous. Surely they would never stitch people up for crimes those people did not commit and put them away for 20 years without appeal?”

In the end, I found I like the book and highly recommend it. Yes, it can be depressing sometimes, but there is always a good joke around the corner (something comedians are great at). And maybe that’s why anyone who does read, understand that the truths written in a novel thirty years ago are still going on today. Because the book does not give any real solutions, ironically, but does offer some thoughts on if we work together, instead being opposing forces, Earth may recover from the destruction humans have done to it over (honestly) a very short time period.

Books: In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune (2023)

“In a secluded forest in some far-future Oregon, in a strange little home built into the branches of a grove of trees live three robots. There is fatherly inventor android Giovanni Lawson, Nurse Ratched, a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine (short for “Nurse Registered Automaton to Care, Heal, Educate, and Drill”), and a small vacuum named Rambo, who is desperate for love and attention. Victor Lawson, a human, lives there too. He came to Gio as a baby, but at age 21 now, Vic is trying to help his android father, who has a failing power source of a heart. Once again, Vic and his robot friends venture to the nearby Scrap Yard, which is filled with all sorts of discarded junk left by the mysterious Old Ones, in hopes finding something to help Gio. Then, one day, they stumble upon a damaged, yet semi-“alive” android. Hap, as the trio comes to call him, quickly imprints on Victor, who repairs the android’s body with wood and powers him with a carved heart containing a drop of Victor’s own blood. Hap is an angry, yet powerful android with a wiped memory. But when Hap unwittingly alerts other robots from Gio’s former life to their whereabouts, he is taken back to his old laboratory in the City of Electric Dreams. So together, Vic’s assembled family and dangerous new friend, must journey across an unforgiving and otherworldly country to rescue Gio from decommission, or worse, reprogramming.”

While inspired by Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio, In the Lives of Puppets includes a bit of everything, like the Wizard of Oz, Star Wars, The Terminator, Stephen King’s The Stand, and The Brave Little Toaster. It’s this mish-mash of those other works that makes the book shine in many places. How far in the future this tale is set is never fully explained, but it’s clear that human let the AI’s get out of hand, and like all science fiction that let the robots take over, the first thing those sentient blobs of wire, plastic, and central processing chips do is eliminate the weak and fragile humans.

This is where we get some commentary on humanity, what it means to be human in a world where humanity has been deemed worthless –all because machines have no concept on what humans can and should do for each other. So, yes, the book can be a bit sentimental, tugging at the heart strings. But it’s also bittersweet and funny –especially the excitable Roomba like vacuum, Rambo and Nurse Ratched, who are literal machines with no filters (like the constant need to talk about how Victor has to “evacuate his bowels"). Still, I adore Ratched so much –she's blunt and deadpan, who could also be a bit psychotic when needed. Meanwhile, the weak link is Victor himself. While I felt for him and his plight, I never felt he rose above being a victim of circumstances. He never shined, even though his love for his Dad made him relatable to me.

And then the irony of the last human on the planet who happens to like boys – it would’ve been awkward had the run into a real female.

A bit overlong, a bit raunchy in places, a bit out-loud funny in others, In the Lives of Puppets is not a homerun, but still worth a read.

Books: The Great Troll War by Jasper Fforde (2021)

"Sixteen-year-old Jennifer Strange and her sidekick and fellow Orphan Tiger Prawns have been driven to the tip of the UnUnited Kingdoms - Cornwall - by the invasion of the Trolls. Their one defense is a six-foot-wide trench full of buttons, something which the Trolls find unaccountably terrifying (it's their clickiness). Worse than being eaten by Trolls is the prospect of the Mighty Shandar requisitioning the Quarkbeast and using him to achieve supreme power and domination - an ambition that has been four hundred years in the planning and which will ultimately leave the Earth a cold cinder, devoid of all life. Nothing has ever looked so bleak, but Jennifer, assisted by a renegade vegan Troll, a bunch of misfit sorcerers, the Princess (or is she now the ruler?) of the UnUnited (or are they now United?) Kingdoms, and Tiger, must find a way to vanquish the most powerful wizard the world has ever seen, and along the way discover the truth about her parents, herself, and what is in the locked glovebox of her VW Beetle." 

The Great Troll War is the concluding book in The Last Dragonslayer book series –released in hardcover in September 2021 in the UK, August of 2022 here, and finally in paperback only a few weeks ago- took seven years to appear, but overall, it’s worth the wait –though for me, since I started to read this series earlier this year, the wait for this last book was only a couple weeks. Jasper Fforde does try hard to give some backstory to the earlier books via footnotes at the bottom of the page, which was probably designed for some fans who did not want to re-read the three previous books –though there some other humorous ones. The scope of this book is grander than the previous three, but the themes are similar. Friendship, the fight for justice, and the defeat of evil. We also finally get an explanation of how import the Quarkbeast’s truly are.

Overall, this whole series has been fun, though it does borrow one big plot point from the Harry Potter novels. Fforde has a rich imagination and a love for satire and much like his adult tales, The Last Troll War is filled with many in-jokes, puns, but also some serious themes such as government corruption and the exploitation of marginalized communities; it’s a reflection of the issues and conflicts that exist in the real world, and it encourages readers to think critically about power dynamics and the importance of standing up for what is right.

And taking a page from Stephen King, the author makes a very amusing, sort of anonymous, cameo appearance. And it gets a bit meta…“Well," said the author, “I made George Formby (a British comedian) president-for-life of Great Britain.” “A book about Humpty Dumpty as a police procedural.” “A social order based wholly on the strength of your colour vision” “Is there a sequel?” “Don’t start.” All of this are part of the rich tapestry that Jasper Fforde once described as being "impossible worlds made real".

Overall, another fun book by Fforde, with a fitting conclusion to the series, plus an ending I did not see.