Book Review: "Dawn" by Octavia Butler

This is the kind of story that I think succeeds and fails. It's the kind of story that has such great ideas and questions if it would only shut up and keep its darn plot out of the way. There's a lot to like about this story, but one has to wonder if it's the same stuff Butler intended us to like. In any case, here is my review for Dawn.

Setting

The story takes place after the end. America and the Soviet Union (this was first published in 1987) have bombed the crap out of each other, and most of humanity has bitten the dust. The planet is covered in nuclear fallout, and there isn't much hope for what remains of the human race. That is, until the Oankali arrive. The Oankali are a star-faring race of aliens whose name translates roughly into "traders" or "geneticists." I never said it was subtle... In any case, they helpfully decide to rescue as many of the humans as they deem necessary and put them in cold storage for 250 years. (Well, not cold storage. They're actually giant Venus flytraps. You get the picture.) Lilith is one such human, and she Awakens to learn all of this and interact with the Oankali.

This right here is the story's biggest draw. The Oankali are such strange, unique creatures that they immediately call your attention. I wanted to learn everything there was to learn about the Oankali and how their civilization works. They're also the focus of the major philosophical question in this novel: is it okay to manipulate the genetic makeup of things to make them "better?" That's the Oankali's raison d'être, after all. And if that were all there was to the story, then it'd be great. But, well...

Plot

I'll admit, I haven't read the next two stories in the series. It may be that the Oankali get a larger stake in the rest of the series. But where Dawn is concerned, the Oankali only take up the first half of the story. After that, Lilith is charged with Awakening more humans in order to begin colonization. The Oankali are still around (though mostly the "ooloi," the Oankali "third sex" that controls all reproduction), but in a much smaller scope. All of that just feels less interesting compared to learning about the Oankali and their interesting society. The human section is also a little too heavy on the rape and the murder, although that might be the point. If age-of-civilization human drama is what you're into, then it might keep you enthralled, but I was too busy shouting at my pages, "Go back to the part with the aliens!"

Characters

Our main character, as I've said, is Lilith, an anthropologist (convenient!) who is chosen by the Oankali to reestablish humanity now that the radioactivity has died down a bit on Earth. Why choose her? She's strong, smart, perceptive, and persistent. These are some of the things that personify Oankali, by the way. She also surprised them because she had a genetic disposition towards cancer, which the Oankali ate right up (possibly literally. Yuck). Through the story, we follow her as she tries to fit into the Oankali's plan. It isn't easy, and she finds herself almost at the point of losing herself, but in the end, she manages to survive. Though whether it's the same her (from a lost and scared woman trapped in a cell to a preternaturally strong, smart leader) is a guiding question of the story.

Along the way, she is paired up with an adolescent ooloi by the name of Nikanj (full name Kaalnikanj oo Jdahyatediinkahguyaht aj Dinso: in order, the clan name, Kaal; his personal name, Nikanj; his age, oo; his father, Jdahya; his mother, Tediin; his ooloi parent, Kahguyaht; and his purpose on the ship, Dinso. I think.) who guides her and helps her acclimate. Unfortunately, at times he is just as manipulative as every other ooloi on the ship, so perhaps he should be lumped in with the other ooloi. They're not exactly Lilith's allies, but she doesn't have much choice. They believe they can manipulate her into any choice they desire based on the genetic data they have on her. They are mostly right. This has to do with Octavia Butler's beliefs on genetic determinism, and at times it gets a bit ridiculous. In general, though, it makes them seem suspicious and powerful, not impossible.

There are some human characters of note in the second half, particularly Joseph, her lover, but like I said, it's not terribly interesting. Most of them just fall into one-note stereotypes: the jock bully one, the wispy quiet one, the sneaky two-faced one, the idiot rebel one, etc.

Conclusion

It's quite a good book, although the second half tends to drag a bit. Definitely worth reading if you're into science fiction with a message. If you like aliens, genetics, and the question what makes you human, you'll really like this book. If you like survival, human drama, and controversial aspects, you might like this book as well.

Book Review: "The Windup Girl" by Paolo Bacigalupi

The Windup Girl is a fascinating story about the energy crisis, genetic engineering, post-human development, and political maneuvering in a futuristic (yet all-too-close) Thailand. While this is a story with a lot of futuristic details and effects, the characters retain a modern sense of behavior and ethics, from the traitorous Anderson Lake and the conniving Hock Seng to the heroic Jaidee and the idealistic Emiko. This last character is the eponymous Windup Girl, a genetically modified servant who, though she may appear to be insignificant to the overarching plot, ends up with her own stake in the changes taking place in Thailand. Let's get started!

Setting

This story is set in Thailand, though a Thailand with some very surprising changes. In this Thailand, peak oil has come and gone, and society has been forced to come up with new alternative sources of energy. This leads to some really cool devices that these people use; the ones that stuck in my mind were the computer that's powered with a foot pedal like a sewing machine, the spring guns, and the clockwork style air conditioning. With this reliance on springs comes the natural question of how these things are wound. The answer in the small scale is human power (necessitating the control of food calories the same way gasoline is controlled), and the answer in the large scale is megodonts (scientifically revived mammoth-like creatures). This is what I love most about good science fiction: lots of small details making the world feel real and lived-in.

This does, however, come with the caveat that the language in the book can be a bit dense. Okay, I'll admit it. There's a lot of Thai used throughout the story (again, to make it feel like a real place), and at times, I wasn't always sure what each word meant. In fact, for a while, I thought farang (foreigner) meant "upper-level business executive." (Those were the only people they ever used it for!) I'm still not totally sure what khun means, to be honest. It's probably like "sir," near as I can tell. But for all that, I think the Thai code switching actually works really well. Like I said, it sounds like how Anderson and Jaidee would talk in this world. The Thai (and other languages) is mostly reserved for when no other word would quite be appropriate.

I'd love to bring up the food corporations and the New People here, but I think those are better reserved in the plot and character sections, respectively.

Characters

This story mainly revolves around four characters: Anderson Lake, a food corporation leader who is undercover as a businessman in charge of a spring factory; Hock Seng, Lake's scheming second-in-command who is trying to overcome prejudice and gain his lost business; Emiko, a New Person who dreams of a village outside of Thailand that is entirely populated by New People; and Jaidee and his team of government officials, called "white shirts." Each of these characters has their own backstory, motivations, and goals, but they all get tangled up in the end into a perfect catastrophe. Watching each character succeed or fail, rise to glory or crash and burn, is what makes this story shine.

Anderson Lake is a character I don't think I've ever seen equal to in a story before. I'll try to keep the spoilers down to a minimum, but it's kind of a shock when you realize that he's totally the villain of this story. Maybe it's because he's the first character introduced, or maybe it's the fact that his behavior is so sympathetic, but he seems like such a nice guy until you think for an extended period of time about anything he ever does. It's... odd, I guess, to follow around the villain and have it seem like he's a hero just like the others. Maybe he is. That's what makes Bacigalupi such a talented writer.

Hock Seng, by contrast, is a scheming, weasely traitor, but at the same time, when you learn about who he was and how he has fallen so far, it's hard to be so tough on him. He is a yellow card, a displaced Chinese businessman whose only goal is to get back his old life. He's... not really heroic, but he is sympathetic. And I mean, it's not like Anderson Lake really wanted those blueprints anyway. So while he may not be using the best methods to get what he wants, Bacigalupi makes it clear that this is the only method he's got. Can you fault him for that?

Emiko. Emiko is quite the character. She's what's called a New Person, though you won't hear that term used much in the story. Instead, she's called a "windup girl," a "heechy-keechy," and various other derogatory terms to mock her creation. You see, New People are genetic constructs, created by the Japanese to act as servants and caretakers for the aging population. You may notice that this is the exact same reason as to why the Japanese have been working on making robots. You may also notice that the "advantages" Emiko has been given (stuttering motion, smooth skin, an ingrained need to follow commands, a tendency to overheat under exertion) are all things commonly associated with robots. I highly doubt this is a coincidence. Though she's made of flesh and bone, Emiko is a robot made to serve. Her place in this society is a major focal point of the setting, as well as whether or not she truly has a soul.

In any case, Emiko's character entirely revolves around suffering. It is heartbreaking to watch her be forced into decision after decision without her desires coming into play. She is bound to this world, and she has no way of fighting back.

Lastly, Jaidee. There's so much to his character that can't be said without spoilers, but one thing I can say is that he is one of the few characters who is almost entirely heroic. He's part swashbuckler, part only good cop in a town of crooked ones, part hero to the masses. He's the story's moral center, really, the one who seems to be pointing Thailand in the right direction. Although he may be too daring for his own good, you can't help but love him.

Plot

The plot of this story is really well-organized. It starts with each character fitting into the puzzle alone (with the exception of Hock Seng), then slowly the stories begin to come together. I'll try to summarize the character's starting motivations here just to get the idea of the complexity set up. Anderson Lake wants to find where the Thai kingdom is hiding its stockpile of plant seeds so that his company can make more effective crop breeds that can withstand both the natural diseases and the competitor's bioterrorism strains that ravage crop fields and profit margins alike. He's trying to run a spring company as cover, but Hock Seng wants to steal the factory's blueprints in order to sell them to the highest bidder and start a new company from the ashes of his old business in China. The spring company, however, is sabotaged by Jaidee's attacks on the corrupt Trade Ministry, leaving Lake and Hock Seng more desperate than ever. And during all of that, Lake runs into Emiko and falls hopelessly in love with her.

Okay, I lied. Though it might seem like these characters are having isolated stories, it turns out they're woven together practically from page 1. There are twists and turns and all sorts of surprises, but they deserve to go behind spoilers. If you don't want to see them, skip ahead to the conclusion section below.

Spoilers

 Man, I never expected where this story was going to go. Bacigalupi takes every expectation you have about this world and these characters and turns them on their head. Jaidee gets sent away from his family and exiled to a monastery. You expect him to break out and lead a rousing revenge mission... and he does. Then you expect him to slice and dice his way through the guards... and he does. You expect him to make it to Akkarat, the guy who pinned him... but he doesn't; he gets caught. Then you expect him to make a daring escape... but he doesn't. Then you expect him to dodge the bullet-disks... but he doesn't. Then you expect him to survive the fall, do the classic "regroup before the next big attack..." but he doesn't. He dies, and suddenly his entire arc falls apart. The hopelessness and moral gray of the other characters seeps into his story, as Kanya takes over and reveals she was a mole and helped in his downfall. It's such a shocker that I almost cried right there.

So much of the story is like that. Emiko, the battered pseudo-robot, suddenly turns into a death machine and slaughters the most powerful man in Thailand. Anderson Lake makes a deal with Akkarat to plunge Thailand into war. Hock Seng covers up a pandemic, only for Lake to stick his arm into the contaminated water baths and die spitting up blood. The white shirts crack down on the populace after Jaidee dies, leading to all-out civil war. Believe me, this story is a rollercoaster, and it will keep you hooked until the last page. I mean, within the last twenty or so pages, Kanya makes a huge U-turn power play and undoes the wrapped-up-in-a-bow ending that everything had been leading up to.

Conclusion

This story absolutely deserves all the awards it's won. This is a complex, detailed world inhabited by real, three-dimensional characters acting through a multi-faceted, dramatic story. Running through it all is a cutting opinion on the way our society is headed. Are we doomed to lose our oil-powered utopia? Will we create windup beings, and will they be so maligned? Will the future of the food business turn to bioterrorism and a genetic arms race? If these sorts of questions intrigue you, keep you up at night, then definitely give this book a shot. On the other hand, if all of the complexity and terminology woven through this book sounds challenging to you, then this may not be the book for you. For what it's worth, I could hardly put it down.

Play Review: Sam Shepard's "Buried Child" (w/ comments on "La Turista")

I don't know a lot about Sam Shepard. I could probably go look up something about him, but I'm not going to. I'm of the opinion that a work should be able to stand on its own. I have a collection of plays of his called, aptly, "Seven Plays," one of which is his Pulitzer Prize-winning piece, "Buried Child." It certainly sounds intriguing, especially when I accidentally turned to the last page and found out that there actually is a physical buried child. In any case, I hope this review is interesting to you. Along the way, I'll also be making some comments and comparisons to another of the plays in my compilation, "La Turista." I was hoping it'd be an interesting play about a (female) tourist in a Spanish-speaking country, but... well. I'll let that come up when it's pertinent. For now, the review of "Buried Child."

Setting

The setting of this play is a single living room in a Midwestern farmhouse. Seriously, that's it. Not every play needs to be a sweeping epic set across an entire nation or some fancy or exotic locale. It's enough to just have an old man in a reclining couch, a set of stairs, and a couple of doors. Believe me, you'll get accustomed to this location, especially once you start to realize that it's the only location you can be 100% sure exists. Tilden might be somewhere in New Mexico... or is he? There might be an attic... or is there? There might be a huge cornfield just offstage... maybe. The indecisiveness of the outside really does emphasize that this setting, this room, is the only thing that matters (at least, to Dodge that's all that matters). It's almost as though anything that's not currently onstage can be teleported on from anywhere and anyplace. Did Tilden get the corn from the cornfield outside, or did he steal it as Dodge claims, or did he just magically pull it out of the ether? Come to think of it, how is Tilden getting here at all? He's supposed to be in New Mexico. ...Is he even here? Get used to the disorientation, folks, because it's not going away. Truth be told, while it is a bit tricky to get a hold of at first, I actually think it works pretty well. You're never quite sure what to expect.

Characters

These characters are a lot of fun. Dodge is our main character, and it's actually quite refreshing to get a character who isn't a rich, young 20-something for once. This is an old man, a man who has seen everything in life and is now just waiting to die. He's crotchety, bitter, forgetful, distrustful, and downright unlikeable, but darn it if you don't like him anyway. He elicits sympathy to me because it's clear he's been through a lot. He never really treats anyone the way they deserve, but he's not really all there anyway. Remember that phrase: "not all there anyway." I'm gonna come back to that.

We've got a host of other characters, mostly members of Dodge's family. There's Tilden, the dutiful oldest son who doesn't get the recognition he deserves (certainly sounds familiar); Bradley, the crippled son who is treated more like an animal than a person; Halie, Dodge's wife who thinks she's the voice of reason (when really she's just as forgetful and distempered as he is); Vince, Tilden's son and Dodge's grandson, who stops by on his trip to visit his father with his girlfriend, Shelly; and Ansel, the youngest son, who, though he never shows up on stage, still makes important appearances in the dialogue here and there. He's the golden child, the one who could do no wrong. Each of these characters has their own little arc throughout the story, complete with quirks, foibles, and other notable details. If there's something Sam Shepard does well, it's write quirky, weird characters.

On the other hand, this sort of formula doesn't always work very well. Case in point: "La Turista." This isn't going to be a complete review of "La Turista;" I'm only bringing it up because I want to make the contrast between the two plays clear. "La Turista's" characters are completely insane. When their dialogue isn't long dumps of exposition that feel only tangentially related to the current plot, it's non sequiturs and wacky nonsense. On more than one occasion, characters are literally defined in the stage directions as being unaware of everything around them and saying whatever comes to mind. I found this sort of character design very distracting.

There's a bit of this in "Buried Child" as well, but there's a reason this play has a Pulitzer and not "La Turista." Dodge and Shelly are probably the guiltiest parties to this sort of randomness. Dodge, however, is an old man who almost certainly has memory issues, so it's reasonable for him to have trouble keeping track of what's going on. Shelly's a bit tougher to rationalize. If I had to make a stab at it (and I do, I'm a reviewer), I'd say she's way out of her element, so she's trying to fit into the environment of the house however she can. So the unusual mood swings and cruelty to Bradley at the end only makes it clear that she's confused and uncertain.

Oh, and there's also a priest. He doesn't do a whole lot in the story. Mostly just say that everyone in the house is terrible.

Plot

The plot of this play is... um. You are getting the idea from the last two sections that this play is a little all over the place? I don't mean that in a bad way, just that there's a lot going on. Dodge is drinking himself to death, and Halie is badgering him about it. Vince shows up to see his grandparents before he visits his father in New Mexico, but his father is actually here, only maybe he isn't, since only Dodge ever actually sees him, although he leaves incriminating evidence in the form of corn husks from a non-existent cornfield. Then Vince leaves and presumably phases out of existence, leaving Shelly to fend for herself in a house she hates, no wait, now she likes it because... just because, and Dodge forgets who she is (or maybe he's just being ornery), so nobody has any idea why she's there. There's a terrible secret floating around about a dead baby, who I think might be Ansel and everyone in the family just makes up his exploits, only the pastor guy confirms that he's real, so maybe not. In fact it's possible the family makes up most of what has happened to them, except the dead baby, that's totally real, Tilden digs it up at the end of the play. ...Unless Tilden's not actually there.

Following along?

In any case, while the plot is certainly intriguing just to see where it'll go and how the characters will react to the next weird thing, it's really not the centerpiece of the story. It's the characters interacting which makes the story worth reading. Watching Shelly fall apart, watching Bradley try to live despite his family's abuse, watching Dodge flip out every time the buried child is mentioned; all of those things make the story run. It's also the contradictory situation, in a sense. You want to know whether Tilden is actually just outside or if he's some kind of hallucination or something. You want to figure out whether is actually corn in the back field or not. You want to know why every character acts the way they act. It's all a huge mystery, and it doesn't really resolve by the end. It just sort of... ends. Again, that's not a problem, just a fact. You may have the answers, but not all of them. It leaves you wanting more, even though it's clear by the end that there won't be any more story.

Theme

If I had to pick three pithy topics to summarize the entire story, I'd probably choose these three words: death, value, and family.

Death is pretty obvious, considering the title. Dodge represents this theme. Throughout the play, he states that he is, in fact, already dead, a corpse waiting to be buried. He's the one who killed the eponymous buried child, and he seems the most willing to consider his sons "dead" to him.

Value will be represented by the three siblings, Tilden, Bradley, and Ansel. (And the buried child, to an extent.) Each of them were very well-appreciated in their prime: Tilden was a football player, Bradley served in the military, and Ansel was just gosh-darn all-around perfect. Unfortunately, each of them made a bad choice, and they lost their value in the eyes of society and of their parents. The entire play is about these characters coming to terms with this lost potential. Not that I'm saying they're all successful.

Finally, family will be represented by Vince (and, from a certain angle, Shelly). The only reason Vince even decided to stop by Dodge's house was to reconnect with his family. Rather than be accepted like the prodigal son returned, nobody recognizes him. He is immediately turned off by the bizarre creatures that are his family. Eventually, he leaves, but Shelly remains. She, on the other hand, finds herself strangely drawn to the domestic life. Even though she is not related to them, she becomes more of a loving figure than any of the other characters. In other words, the play ultimately decides that family is not blood, but love. Love: something that's in short supply in Dodge's family.

Subjective

I liked this play a lot. It was certainly better than "La Turista." It's the sort of play that doesn't quite make sense at first, but you can tell that there's something under the surface that has a lot of meaning. I'll admit, my book has some underlines from the last owner, but I would have picked up those purposes without their help. I also like it because it's so dark and powerful. I mentioned that I liked that Dodge was older, but I also like that he's so terribly self-destructive. As much as it sounds like I rag on Tilden, I actually liked him. I really liked the baby subplot.

Now for things I disliked. I didn't find Halie, Bradley, or the priest very compelling. (Shoot, I can't even remember his name off-hand. Dewis, in case you were wondering.) Some of the exposition seemed a little too long for my taste. Lastly, I don't quite get Sam Shepard's humor. He's just a bit too off-the-wall for me.

Final Recommendations

Definitely a good play. Worth your time to check it out. Just don't go into it expecting it to make sense all of the time. It gets a little weird.