Book: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore By Robin Sloan (2013)

"The Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon away from life as a San Francisco web-design drone and into the aisles of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, but after a few days on the job, Clay discovers that the store is more curious than either its name or its gnomic owner might suggest. The customers are few, and they never seem to buy anything; instead, they "check out" large, obscure volumes from strange corners of the store. Suspicious, Clay engineers an analysis of the clientele's behavior, seeking help from his variously talented friends, but when they bring their findings to Mr. Penumbra, they discover the bookstore's secrets extend far beyond its walls."

Robin Sloan’s Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore is one of those high concepts narrative ideas that is currently popular in all forms of media. It has a mystery at its core and a sense of adventures hinted in the umbra, the dark central part of the stores bookshelves. But you also can’t escape the feeling that we’ve seen this all before. I mean take all the 80’s references and sci-fi trapping of Ready Player One out and you’ll find Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore.  So yeah, it is not very original concept and the whole secret society -the mystery and the intrigue they generate- has been done countless times before and have been generally executed better.

Still, the book has a likable main character and it is a swift, easy read (it’s not as dense with nostalgia as Ready Player One). There is some quick-witted humor and enough of the “mystery” to keep me reading –though I knew I was going to be a bit disappointed with the ending. Again, sometimes the danger of these high concept ideas is that while they come at you fast, unloading one mystery after another, when it comes to wrapping them up, the plot sort of just fizzles out. And while I got the coda of the book, and the idea that both physical books and e-books can live together in harmony, Sloan’s endless name dropping of Google and Amazon’s Kindle became tedious. They essentially became supporting characters in the story, and that sort of blatant advertising became tedious.

Books: Little By Edward Carey (2018)

"In 1761, a tiny, odd-looking girl named Marie is born in a village in Switzerland. After the death of her parents, she is apprenticed to an eccentric wax sculptor and whisked off to the seamy streets of Paris, where they meet a domineering widow and her quiet, pale son. Together, they convert an abandoned monkey house into an exhibition hall for wax heads, and the spectacle becomes a sensation. As word of her artistic talent spreads, Marie is called to Versailles, where she tutors a princess and saves Marie Antoinette in childbirth. But outside the palace walls, Paris is roiling: The revolutionary mob is demanding heads, and . . . at the wax museum, heads are what they do."

In essence, Little is Edward Carey’s novelization of Anna Maria "Marie" Tussaud (née Grosholtz) life (though he used her autobiography as a template, along with other references, some are very unreliable), which offers a more fictional take on the legendary sculptress. This narrative device gives us a less dry look into real history, and can concentrate more on Marie than times she lived, which encompasses the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. The book is often macabre, darkly humorous, and sometimes too Dickens-like (there is even a sly comment towards the end of the book where Marie is ruminating on the coming end of her life and has many visitors, including Charles Dickens “A thief, of course. I tell him everything. He takes notes”).

There has been some criticism of the authors’ choices to be loose with real people like Marie Grosholt and Philip Curtius, using some untrustworthy information, especially those of Louis-Sébastien Mercier, a prolific writer of novels, plays, and essays of the era, to help the narrative along. Even her own claims are suspect: During the French Revolution, Marie asserted in her memoirs that she became employed to teach votive making to Élisabeth the sister of Louis XVI; that she was privy to private conversations with the royal family; that she lived with the family for nine years because they adored her work. But there is no evidence today that can confirm these statements.

The book does drag and I often raised an eyebrow on the Widow Picot, who was clearly molded on many Dickens characters, both male and female. Still, the prose is interesting, though it does take getting used to. But it’s an enjoyable book, even if takes a little liberty with real history.

Books: Docking Is Difficult By Gideon Defoe (2014)

"On what might be the worst planet in the universe, a young man dreams of the stars. Adventure! Lasers! Women! And the ultimate goal - to become Elite! Unfortunately, Misha has to do his chores first. And learn how to talk to Phoebe, the beautiful customs officer. And leave the planet. But the death of a famous author unexpectedly drags Misha and Phoebe into a system-wide conspiracy, complete with smuggling, international art thieves, multi-system corporations, canapés and exploding pigs. This is Misha's chance to prove he has what it takes!

"After all, surely anyone can be Elite if they dream."

I’m not exactly sure how much of Docking Is Difficult follows the computer game ELITE: DANGEROUS (though, apparently, it’s lacking in that regard a lot, if I go by some information I pulled up), but I don’t think that is required to enjoy this short novel. As pointed out in the advertising, there was several novels released to tie in with the game during its 2014 launch and all were “subtly” linked to it. But as noted a few sentences ago, this novel is seemingly only tenuously connected to the game.

Gideon Defoe is a British author who wrote some very funny novels, five to be exact, set in his Pirates! Universe (and one was turned into a animated movie, 2012’s The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!, though it was released in North America, along with Australia and New Zealand, as The Pirates! Band of Misfits). Much like those Pirate! books, Docking Is Difficult features the same mix of referential humor, a few in-jokes, and just plain silliness. I’ve often compared Defoe to Monty Python, but with this book, he comes closest to being compared to the late, great Douglas Adams. Here is a companion style novel all fans of The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy can enjoy. 

So the book is a parody of science fiction, but it also takes aim at fan culture. There are some delirious head-on take downs of fans who “ship” characters (which created a “shipping war” that lead to many deaths) and those who are critical of certain aspects of long-running shows (“There was some grumbling about pacing, and about some glaring continuity issues, and about how Phoebe had pronounced the name of the planet “Treambilis”).

Defoe also takes on publishing, offering some real truths: “To be honest, ‘being alive’ isn’t very high up on desirable traits an author can have. These days it’s more of a nuisance than anything. I mean, look at Robert Ludlum. The man has been dead for a millennium, but that hasn’t seemed to get in the way of him knocking out a new book every year.”

To be honest, a lot of Docking Is Difficult just seems to be about Defoe taking hilarious pot-shots at science fiction than anything to do with a science fiction based video game. I think this book is a worthy follow-up to Adams and his brilliant world.

 

Books: Phases of Gravity By Dan Simmons (1989)

"Richard Baedecker, a divorced former astronaut who walked on the moon, has hit a professional and personal low by the late ’80s. He still mourns the Challenger disaster, hates his mediocre civilian job, and can’t connect with his grown son. When he visits his son in India, Baedecker falls in love with his son’s friend Maggie, who shows him around the country and later meets him while climbing a mountain in Colorado. His travels, which take him to his Illinois birthplace and a colleague’s funeral in rural Oregon, are interspersed with flashbacks to his days at NASA. It's a story about a man's search: for love, for friendship, for family. Along the way, he'll solve a mystery."

 I find Dan Simmons’ Phases of Gravity hard to categorize. It’s not fantasy, horror, or science fiction –genre the author is well known for (Simmons is not known to stay in one lane, which I think makes him unique in a world that forces writers into one genre, book after book).  It borders on philosophy, with doses of speculative fiction and some element of magic as well. But ultimately, it may be just a novel about a former astronaut who walked on the moon who now is facing middle age and is sort of bored with his world, his life. His travels through this book show a man desperate for deeper connection in his life, but seems unsure who to turn to, the free-spirit Maggie, his son, or his two former astronauts –one who has turned to God and the other who has become a congressman. But all give him something to cling to. Since the book is set after the Challenger disaster, Simmons’ does comment on the differences between old NASA days when everyone was excited to land on the moon, and the days of the space shuttle, which now (until January 1986) was ever hardly noticed. Though, those ideals began to wane even in the Apollo days, along with Richard Nixon’s less than enthusiastic love for space travel.  

Some will find Simmons narrative style a bit difficult to get used to, as he jumbles the chronology of the book so that it can be confusing if he’s in the present (1988) or somewhere else along Richard’s timeline. There were parts that I liked, like when he returned to his small Illinois town of Glen Oak (which is probably near the town Elm Haven, which will appear in his later horror novels), but his time spent with Tom Gavin (one of his fellow astronauts) gets weird and while Simmons paints these Born Again Christians respectively, you also sense (like Maggie’s mantra, “I believe in the richness and mystery of the universe; and I don’t believe in the supernatural”) Simmons’ is making a statement about religion in an off-handed and sometimes mean way.

Phases of Gravity was released in 1989, the same year as his Hugo Award winning sci-fi novel Hyperion was published, so I can see where this book got lost in the shuffle. Still, even as an early work by this author, it well written -even if not everyone of his fans will like it.