Neuromancer by William Gibson

Imagine a world where computer hackers can directly link their consciousness to the Internet through wires.  Henry Case is such a hacker, or used to be.  Case, addicted to cocaine and uppers, embezzled money from his criminal employers to finance his addiction.  They repaid him by damaging his nervous system so he could never hack again.  On the brink of suicide, Case is made an offer too good to refuse: a benefactor will pay to have his nervous system repaired through radical surgery if, in return, Case pulls off a very dangerous and illegal assignment.  He can't even begin to suspect the trouble he is about to experience.

Gibson's tale is told in the best noir fiction style, but with a twist.  The seedy hotels and the even seedier characters that inhabit them exist in an indeterminate future of bionic implants and orbiting space colonies. The action takes place in the dark urban underbellies of Japan and America and moves, seemingly naturally, to outer space and back again.  There is death, deception and double-crosses as the plot unfolds and mysteries are revealed.

Some novels are of their time, some are timeless.  Neuromancer belongs to the former category.  It was new and startling when it appeared in 1984, winning both the Hugo and Nebula awards for that year.  In many ways it was visionary, anticipating the rise of the Internet and popularising the term 'cyberspace'.  Thirty years on, it seems quite dated.  The Internet and cyberspace are old hat now, and it is hard for the 21st century reader to get excited about the idea of an extra 3MBs of RAM (back in the 80s we would have been selling our grannies for that).

Neuromancer can be enjoyed in its own right as an action thriller, and quite a solid and engaging one at that.  It is certainly an interesting historical document in the annals of speculative fiction.

Galápagos by Kurt Vonnegut

Look out!  Kurt's on one of his downers again.  What is it this time? I hear you ask.  Well, it's quite bizarre.

Vonnegut asks: why there is so much evil in the world?  His answer: because human brains are too big; otherwise, the world is 'a very innocent planet'.  This is not an original thought.  Remember when Hamlet said:

        ...for there is nothing either good or bad,
        but thinking makes it so...
           - Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2.

What is original and bizarre is Vonnegut's solution to the problem of evil.  But what that solution is, I am not going to tell you. No spoilers here.

Galápagos was first published in 1985, and much of its action takes place in 1986. For one reason or another, a group of disparate people assemble in Ecuador to take 'the cruise of a lifetime' to the Galápagos Islands.  However, a world-wide financial crisis turns fiat currency into useless bits of coloured paper, and then things get nasty.

Vonnegut started his literary career by writing science fiction stories.  Later in his life, he took pains to distance himself from the tag of being a Sci-fi writer; yet Galápagos can be construed as a work of speculative fiction with fantasy elements.  The story is narrated by a ghost a million years in the future.  A personal hand-held device called Mandarax is spookily prescient of smartphones and search engines. There is fallout from the Hiroshima atom bomb, but not in the way you think, and it has enormous ramifications for the future of humankind; likewise, a metaphorical toss of the coin determines the future sanity of our race.

Galápagos is written in Vonnegut's seemingly effortless style.  The characters are well-drawn but oh-so-flawed, as we all are.  Each has opportunities for salvation, damnation or meek acquiescence to fate.  These elements are the strength of this novel.  One can but wonder at the overall outcome of the story.  We may well say: 'Kurt! Really?'

If you have read this book, or if you ever read it, then you may understand the applicability of another quote from Hamlet:

O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams. - Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2.

 Galápagos could well be Vonnegut's bad dream.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

A is for Atwood, and welcome to 2015.

The Handmaid's Tale - is it a rewrite of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four?  That was the question I started asking myself with increasing frequency as I worked my way through this book.  It is a question I still haven't satisfactorily answered.

Where Orwell explored how power, violence, surveillance, collaboration and language can be used by a minority to subjugate a majority, Atwood explores how the same methods can be used to subjugate women.  These can be either overt or subtle.  It is of interest to observe how some individuals will relinquish personal freedoms, such as the freedom of speech or expression, for the guarantee of food, shelter, warmth and work, or to be free from punishment or social opprobrium.  How is it that aspects of a society work in such a way to make some women work against the interests of women in general?  These are some of the matters Atwood explores in this book.   

The Handmaid's Tale is a first-person account of a young woman who identifies herself as Offred.  She lives in the near future in the Republic of Gilead, a fundamentalist Christian state that replaced the United States of America after some unspecified ecological and military upheavals.  Political and administrative power has been placed in the hands of a minority of men.  Women have been relegated to the roles of wives for both the elite and the workers, invigilators of social orthodoxy, prostitutes or child-bearers.  There have been demographic upheavals too:  human populations have crashed, and there has been an epidemic of sterility  Offred is a handmaid, a woman who has yet to be proven barren (Atwood's word) and must compulsorily attempt to bear children for the Republic.

Is it better to die on your feet than to live on your knees?  If history is any guide, the probable answer is "no" for most people for most of the time. If we are to look for an answer in the behaviour of the characters in The Handmaid's Tale, we may discover the simple and complex reasons why this may be the case.

The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G.K. Chesterton

"Every man is dangerous," said the old man without moving, "who cares only for one thing.  I was once dangerous myself."

London: eighty years in the future.  Nothing has changed much, and people have grown so apathetic about their government that democracy has been replaced with an absolute monarchy; however, in this new regime the monarch is chosen by popular election.  

It works fine, and the land is governed in a suitably grey fashion until the people elect a practical joker as their new king, Auberon Quin.  Quin is intent on stirring things up.  He appoints a provost to each suburb in London, orders them to dress in brightly coloured medieval garb and that each of them is to be preceded wherever they go by five trumpet-wielding heralds.  Needless to say, the very single-minded and vain provosts hate their new king.

But then the king makes a miscalculation.  He appoints as Provost of Notting Hill a young man who believes the king's farcical system is actually virtuous and chivalric, and he takes every step he can to uphold each and every lunatic law.  

He had that rational and deliberate preference which will always to the end trouble the peace of the world, the rational and deliberate preference for a short life and a merry one.

So it is.  Tensions mount and a series of civil wars ensue.  There are deaths

Well, this is one of the kookiest stories I have read, but I enjoyed it immensely.  Chesterton is a thinker, and there is a lot of philosophical and moral meat on the bones of this tale.  What are the consequences of political apathy in a democracy?  What happens when the ability to compromise is lost?  What happens when we under-estimate those to whom we are opposed?

The Napoleon of Notting Hill is a short novel.  The style is beautiful although a bit wordy by today's standards.  Its themes are worthy and serious, but Chesterton is able to offset the seriousness with liberal doses of humour.  Well worth reading if you have a spare afternoon and evening.

N.B.  Chesterton published this book in 1904, so that means the action in it takes place in 1984.