Accidental Summer on Mars! Icehenge

Icehenge by Kim Stanley Robinson
Science Fiction (1984 - 262 pp.)

Kim Stanley Robinson's Icehenge has what might be the catchiest premise in science fiction history: scientists discover a mysterious Stonehenge-like structure on the North Pole of Pluto,* and then become obsessed with understanding why it is there. It is the second of his books I have discussed on the blog after 2002's The Years of Rice and Salt.

Icehenge's three protagonists exist centuries apart: Emma Weil narrates Part 1 from the year 2248AD, on a spaceship near Mars. Hjalmar Nederland narrates Part 2 from the year 2547AD, primarily on or near Mars. Edmond Doya narrates Part 3 from the year 2610AD, on Pluto. Weil foreshadows some of the events in Parts 2 and 3, and Nederland foreshadows some of the events in Part 3, creating a matryoshka doll-like sequence in which the reader knows key details before some of the narrators do but in a completely plausible way. For example, Doya's discovery of the Sanskrit inscription on one of Icehenge's faces is old news to the reader, who has the benefit of seeing Nederland discover it in the previous part.

Icehenge's problem is how much of it occurs on Mars. The entirety of Part 1 is on Mars and most of Part 2 is on Mars. This Martian-centricness continues until the word "Pluto" and the concept of Icehenge are finally mentioned forty pages into Part 2 (109), and the word "Icehenge" is finally used a few pages later. (114) Icehenge was one of Robinson's early releases (he was 32 when it was published); while he would not publish his Mars trilogy until the 1990s, it is possible the Martian focus is simply what the publisher expected science fiction fans would buy. 

Amidst the Martian Revolution** that forms a historical curiosity later in the book but does not concern Icehenge, Part 1's main point of interest is the level of technological development aboard the Rust Eagle. Weil runs in a low-gravity gym, has access to stereotypical raygun-esque weaponry, and consumes space-grown food:***

The foods grown on ship--salads, vegetable drinks, fish or scallops or chicken or rabbit, goat cheese, milk, yoghurt--were supplemented by non-renewable supplies: coffee, tea, bread, beef... They would run out of those things pretty fast. (21)

Robinson selects the renewable and non-renewable food seemingly at random. The greatest example is that there are goat pens onboard, (29) requiring a substantial agricultural area, but there is an apparent shortage of coffee and tea plants, both of which can be grown in a standard balcony planter. Why a 23rd-century interplanetary spaceship capable of launching a war on Mars cannot produce a modest quantity of coffee or tea for the crew is never explained.

When the story takes off at the beginning of Part 2, Nederland emerges as the book's de facto protagonist. He narrates 100 of the book's 262 pages, establishes a deep connection with Weil through discovering her diary, and also talks to Doya near the end of Part 3.****

Nederland is the vehicle for most of Robinson's beautiful, contemplative prose. Nederland's opening monologue, starting with the line "Memory is the weak link", (67) ending with the line "What we feel most, we remember best", (68) sets up a story of exploration from Mars to Pluto, discovery (of Icehenge itself), and longing for a past Nederland can never visit, when he can fall in love with a young Weil. Nederland's twin obsessions with the future (Pluto/Icehenge) and the past (Mars/Weil) lead him to the brink of insanity, which he reflects on by noting, "I have always feared insanity. It seems to me the most horrifying of illnesses, and the Achilles heel of modern medicine." (136) This prediction of Robinson's, hidden in an observation of Nederland's, may be prescient; mental health is already a major focus area in modern medicine. These COVID-19 pandemic times, complete with social distancing and self-isolation, may actually be the forerunner of how mentally devastating it must be on a spaceship. 

Nederland finishes Part 2 with a sigh, noting that although he still has not seen Icehenge up close yet, and he will likely never know Weil's fate, he has to live with the reality that the past is gone and the present is our only reality: "Our lives are plants, creating leaves and flowers that fall away and are lost forever." (166)

Part 3 shows Doya arrive on Pluto and investigate Icehenge. It is the most setting-driven, with speculative descriptions of what seasons on Pluto must be like: "It was spring in the northern hemisphere---coldest, longest spring under the sun--and the sun stayed just over the horizon all the time." (248) Icehenge's memorial inscription follows. In a final sightseeing before they return, Doya and his shipmate Jones spot Pluto's Pole Star, leading the reader to imagine what constellations might be visible from Pluto. (253) What happened at Icehenge, whenever it happened (2248, 2547, or sometime in between?), Doya and his shipmate Jones finally admit they will never know. (261)

Icehenge is truly three stories in one. The first shows Weil in a traditional science fiction plot, the Martian Revolution, complete with a technical diagram of the ship's farm. (29) The second shows Nederland dig through the remnants of his past. The third shows Doya, and, to those of us who bought the book in part because of its title, Icehenge, provide Pluto's vast starscape that should capture the imagination of any reader. Robinson's versatility would follow him later in his career - ironically, in The Years of Rice and Salt, set on a very different Earth. For Robinson's first novel, though, the exotic by science fiction standards setting of Pluto is the end and the beginning.

Ease of Reading: 8

Educational Content: 2

*In Icehenge, Pluto is referred to as a planet, because in 1984, it still was. I have speculated before that 1930-2006 will be known as "The Pluto Era".

**The existence of the Washington-Lenin Alliance between the United States and the USSR means that Icehenge falls into a frequent Cold War-era science fiction trap: the continuation of the USSR into future centuries. This also occurs in other contemporary works, notably William Gibson's Burning Chrome. It does not make the writing any worse, especially in Icehenge, as the characters never go to Earth, making the name of the United States's collaborator in space travel irrelevant. It remains a point of jocularity, though.

***The idea of growing food in space presages Andy Weir's The Martian (2012), which I read earlier this summer. The Martian contains more technical language, making the decision to adapt it into a movie an obvious one. Whereas The Martian's potato-filled hydroponic farm is beautifully explained, Icehenge is an easier read because of the bald assumption that interplanetary agriculture could exist.

****Characters live to be very old in the world of Icehenge, although they only tend to remember their most recent eighty years.

Fall into My Summer Reading List

Happy First Day of Fall!

Due in part to the pandemic-induced lockdown, due also in part to the lack of public transit leading me to read more paperbacks at home, I read more books this summer than in any summer since 2012.

Here's the list, with links where there are entries on here:

Eight of the books I read this summer. The other three are at my parents' house right now.

Shogun by James Clavell (F) - June 28, 2020

The Martian by Andy Weir (F) - July 2020

Red Planet by Robert A. Heinlein (F) - July 2020

I Can't Make This Up by Kevin Hart - July 2020

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (F) - July 2020

The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky (F) - July 30, 2020 is when I actually finished it

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans de Waal - August 23, 2020

The Mindful Day by Laurie Cameron - August 26, 2020

Quiet by Susan Cain - August 2020

The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling (F) - September 20, 2020

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson - September 21, 2020

Of these eleven books:

• Six are fiction; the other five are non-fiction. I've put an (F) beside the fiction entries.
• I only own five out of the eleven. The other six are books I've borrowed. Of the five I own, one was a Christmas present, and another one came from a Little Free Library. Of the three I purchased, I paid under $4 for each of them. This has been a remarkably cheap reading summer.
• All eleven are paper books. My e-reading has fallen by the wayside now that I'm at home more often.

With colder weather will come more books, more blankets, and surely some books that cost me more than a falafel wrap.

Bonus Book! The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson

Self-Help (2016 - 204 pp.)

After eight years of not posting entries on self-help books, I'm doing two in a month. 

In The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Mark Manson sets out why we should all focus on what's actually important, allocating the fucks we give (his terminology) toward our goals and our families rather than the millions of distractions available to us every day. He warns against indifference, noting that to not give a fuck about anything is, ironically, a decision one makes regarding the giving of fucks.

This message was relevant in 2016, but it's even more relevant now that the world is overtaken by the COVID-19 pandemic. With families separated by social distancing measures, and cultural landmarks shuttered, relatively few sources of love or entertainment remain. There's no point in caring how nice your suit looks when your work meetings are all by phone. There's no point in caring what other people think of you when you're stuck at home by yourself. There's no point in caring which restaurants you can be seen at when they're all relegated to takeout. Perhaps 2020 is the year when The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, already a bestseller, becomes a mantra. Compared to a lethal virus, why care about your cancelled wedding?

The section entitled "Emotions are overrated" (33) goes against a lot of the modern literature, but I'm inclined to side with Mark, who states that emotions are impulse-driven incentives for us to seek out certain activities and avoid others. Contrary to the recent popular narrative than talking about one's emotions takes courage, or is difficult, I'd argue that talking about your own emotions is actually the easiest thing you can do. They're your emotions, so you, by definition, are the world's leading expert. They're emotions, so you can't be wrong about them. If you tell me King Charles XII of Sweden died in what's now Ukraine, or that a hydrogen atom has a valence of 2, I can tell you you're wrong. If you tell me you're happy or sad or angry, no one can tell you you're wrong. Imagine being an expert on something that can never be proven wrong. Easy.

I'm three years younger than Mark. We're clearly of the same generation. I smiled when Mark mentioned his oversized Pantera T-shirt;* (48) the comparison of Dave Mustaine to Pete Best (78-79) is also a fun one, in part because I have such positive memories of listening to both Metallica and Megadeth. I think Mustaine is more satisfied with his career than Mark admits, but still, "not as successful as Metallica" is a tough metric to live by.

Occasionally, Mark attributes problems to "shitty values" when the question of what is causing those problems is far from answered. On relationships, he says:

A friend of mine recently got engaged to be married. The guy who proposed to her is pretty solid. He doesn't drink. He doesn't hit her or mistreat her. He's friendly and has a good job. (135)

Let's break down this paragraph. Mark mentions three things this guy doesn't do,** an adjective so generic as to be meaningless (who isn't "friendly" at least some of the time?), and then makes a vague statement that could describe anyone from an accountant to a pro athlete. (What is "a good job"? What if this guy ever gets fired?) I don't know a thing about this guy from this paragraph. What if, instead, the paragraph read, "He's an amateur craft beer expert. He's great at hitting a tennis ball and he always holds her hand. He's constantly making new friends through his volunteer work. He's passionate about his career."? For all Mark attacks his friend's brother, who apparently (I don't know them) projects his own fears onto his sister's engagement, Mark thought this man justified a feature in his book but couldn't name one good thing about him. Similarly, Mark mentions having gone to fifty-five countries, but sees no need to name them or to say what he gained from going. A lack of good things to say about a person, place or experience speaks far louder than the presence of bad things.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck ends with Mark's trip to the Cape of Good Hope.^ (194) As someone who is captivated by geographical extreme points, and has written on them on this blog before, I thought it was the perfect way to end the book. Being in Africa but with your eyes set on Antarctica, thirty feet above a sheer drop to the confluence of two major oceans, contemplating a jump^^ before walking back to Cape Town. Although international travel is more difficult these days than it has been in a long time, I hope to get there someday too.

Ease of Reading: 10

Educational Content: 1

*My oversized Pantera T-shirt is the one with the snake in fire on it.

**You know who else doesn't do bad things? Dead people, butterflies and houseplants. "I'm marrying the wisteria!" just doesn't have a ring to it.

^This may or may not violate my "no spoilers" rule, but really, I don't think it's possible to spoil a self-help book.

^^Thirty feet actually isn't that far to jump, provided you jump with proper technique. The key is to have a motorboat ready to pick you up after you submerge.

September's Book: The Difference Engine

The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling

Historical Fiction / Science Fiction (1990 - 492 pp.)

In The Difference Engine, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling create a science fiction world set in an alternate universe 1855 London. Inventors run rampant with new steampunk gadgets. The United States of America is split into four parts, including a proto-Confederacy, the Republic of Texas, and the Republic of California. France and Mexico support the exiled Sam Houston in a planned invasion of the Republic of Texas, while England, ruled by scientists and poets, looks on in horror.

The book bounces between Sybil Gerard, an anti-government activist opposed to the era’s rapid technological advances; Edward Mallory, a paleontologist who has discovered numerous new dinosaur fossils; and Laurence Oliphant, a journalist who is close to Mallory and who takes down the story of the book’s improbable events. Mallory is the default protagonist, starring in three of the book’s five parts. The action centres on his uncanny victory in a race between steampunk-ish machines in “Derby Day” (see below), concomitant with his reception of a mysterious rosewood box that leads a criminal gang to pursue him. When London rapidly turns lawless, Mallory and his brothers realize they have no traditional police protection, so they and an undercover detective seek out the gang’s ringleader.

The First Iteration, “The Angel of Goliad”, introduces characters who will either never be seen again or who will only be seen again much later, making it feel like the main action while reading it but like an extended prologue for the rest of the book. Mick Radley, who stars alongside Gerard in “The Angel of Goliad”, explains what many of us in 2020 still think: that technological progress, not activism, is what propels the world forward. In a world where Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace (Byron) are nobles, Radley tells Gerard that “Lord Charles Babbage made blueprints while we made pamphlets. And his blueprints built this world.” (27) The action peaks in “Derby Day”, when Mallory’s character is introduced at a race of what appear to be horse-drawn steam gurneys; (111) a diagram would have been helpful. At the urging of his friend Mr. Godwin, Mallory makes the rash but lucky decision to bet a considerable sum.* Mallory’s Ted Mosby-stylelecturing would come later in the book; in “Derby Day”, he is a high-stakes gambler. The juxtaposition of Mallory receiving a rosewood box from Lady Byron and being accosted by a shadowy criminal while the race is raging is the high point of the plot. (112)

Mallory’s discovery of the “Land Leviathan”, among other dinosaur species, is central to his character. His discussions of (in this philosopher king-ruled universe) Lord Charles Darwin and Lord Francis Galton** tie into the inquisitive, and ultimately long-winded, nature of everything he does. The recounts of his paleontological expeditions took me back to my summer 2019 trip to London, when people could travel internationally without quarantining themselves for 14 days. One of London’s unheralded finds is the first dinosaur statues, located in and around a series of lagoons at Crystal Palace, dating from the mid-1850s.

The eventual importance of the Land Leviathan to the plot is, of course, not to be spoiled for the upcoming reader of The Difference Engine.

At times, the reader is overly immersed into the book’s setting. Just like That ‘70s Show was more ‘70s than the ‘70s in its constant rehashing of the era’s tropes, The Difference Engine sometimes plays up 1855 to the point that it distracts from the plot. Nearly every country in the world is mentioned. Slang from the era is wedged into the characters’ speech. I believed it was 1855 even before Brian Mallory, Edward’s brother, explains who Sepoys were. Mallory’s occupation as a paleontologist, and Brian’s occupation as a military officer, explains why they travel so far, but not all of the available information needs to find its way to the page.

Gibson and Sterling’s short, clipped writing style is a boon in a genre that frequently lends itself to interminable expositions. Pages of dialogue fly by, with a paragraph break every second line. As someone who has struggled through run-on paragraphs*** more times than I can count, reading such a fast-paced book in such a world-building-rich genre is an experience I would be thrilled to repeat. 

One of my traditions on this blog is giving credit to authors who introduce me to new words, a task that I assure you gets increasingly difficult as the years wear on. Gibson and Sterling introduced me to three: decoction, the resultant flavoured water after boiling a plant (195); batrachian, of or relating to a frog or toad; (201) and harridan, “a scolding, vicious woman”. (434) Next time I make tea, I suppose I will call it a “decoction”, which will hopefully not be so irritable it turns anyone in my vicinity into a batrachian harridan.

My copy is the 20^th anniversary edition, which is fitting, because it’s The Difference Engine’s 30^th anniversary this year. As with any forward-looking sciencefiction novel, The Difference Engine’s 1855 contains similarities to 2020. Due to London’s air pollution, the characters have to wear masks, (304) reminiscent of the world’s current COVID-19-induced experience. Lack of meaningful police presence in parts of London causes disgruntled local residents to enforce the peace themselves, (357-358) reminiscent of the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle, Washington earlier this year. Finally, there is a character unluckily named Andrew Wakefield, the same name as the doctor who wrote the since-debunked report inspiring legions of anti-vaccination activists the world over.

Sadly, The Difference Engine doesn’t contain a table of contents. It is split into six large parts, rather than traditional chapters, each containing a number of scenes. Whether Gibson and Sterling decided on the lack of table of contents, or the publisher did, I have rectified the problem by creating a table of contents as follows: 

o   First Iteration: The Angel of Goliad (3)

o   Second Iteration: Derby Day (84)

o   Third Iteration: Dark-Lanterns (115)

o   Fourth Iteration: Seven Curses (247)

o   Fifth Iteration: The All-Seeing Eye**** (368)

o   Modus: The Images Tabled (451)

o   Afterword (487)

I wouldn’t usually emphasize an afterword this much, but Gibson’s commentary is so interesting I have a couple things to say about it. One is that Gibson reveals that there is a narrator in what was ostensibly a third-person omniscient novel, the “Narratron”, a sentient computer that somehow witnesses all these events, (488) including Mallory’s visit to a prostitute. (257-270) At no point in The Difference Engine did I ever get a whiff of the Narratron or anything like it, even if, as Gibson says, its identity is ever so sort of revealed on the book’s last page. The Narratron’s failure to exist does not subtract from The Difference Engine, so why Gibson bothered to mention it, I have no clue.

The final page of Gibson’s afterword includes an epigram that, although Gibson meant it to apply to literature, I think applies equally well to those who lionize cherry-picked details of their favourite historical figures: “When you raise the dead, they bring their baggage.” (492) Or maybe it just describes a zombie movie that takes place in an airport.

Ease of Reading: 8
Educational Content: 3

*Mallory bets 50 pounds, which was equal to 2,369.05 in 1990, when The Difference Engine came out; Mallory wins 400 pounds, equal to 18,952.38 in 1990.

**Francis Galton was, among other things, one of the fathers of modern statistics. He was also an ardent eugenicist, which the book mentions despite not mentioning anything about Galton’s advancements in statistics. It’s a “Solingen is where Adolf Eichmann was from, but we won’t even bother mentioning its centuries-long metalworkingtraditions” moment, I suppose.

***A cousin of the better-known run-on sentence, the run-on paragraph is: a paragraph that includes so many thoughts it would have been better broken up into multiple paragraphs.

****Despite this iteration title and the abundance of secrecy in The Difference Engine, the book makes no mention of Freemasonry. I was surprised by that.