Salisbury.Fake book review

Light by M. John Harrison

All right, first book review of the year! In all fairness, I finished this a while ago, I just haven’t taken the time to photograph it. This book is one I read on the recommendation of a former friend, and I have to say I’m not overly thrilled by it. I was excited to read it because Neil Gaiman’s got a positive review on the front cover. I have to say the ending was my favorite part. Not because it meant the book was over, but it was some of the best writing I’ve ever read. Spoilers ahead, but this book’s been out since 2002.

To be honest, I don’t know if I fully understood this book until the end. Maybe that’s how it was supposed to go, but it was very aware of itself for most of it, and I found that off-putting. It followed the trend I see in a lot of science fiction where sex is a major aspect of the book, and that is also something I find puts me off a book. I’m in no way a woman who disapproves of sex in books. I’ve written a few spicy scenes myself. But in my opinion, sex in sci-fi usually distracts from the story more than it helps. Space and science are already such vast subjects to try and condense into a workable fiction that adding in copious amounts of often violent, unnecessary scenes of lust tend to take away from the richness of the world presented.

One could argue that this kind of environment is suited for the desolate character of Ed Chianese, He’s a drifter, addicted to alternate reality tanks where he can avoid his own life. He doesn’t even have a life. He goes from place to place, witnessing murders and participating in some. He eventually joins a circus type crew and becomes a sort of fortune teller, or someone who sees the future. While his time is spent finding places to exist and having sex with people he shouldn’t, his story for me was far more compelling than that of the “main character,” Michael Kearney. Kearney is a serial killer who found a way to travel through time/space in order to do his killing. While this sounds like it should be interesting, I found myself incredibly bored with his sections of the story. He jumped from place to place, meeting up with his scientist friend, Sprake, or reuniting with his estranged wife for some uncomfortable sex in an even more uncomfortable setting. He’s forever chased by a creature called the Shrander that always seems to find him no matter where he runs. The story wraps around Kearney and Chianese, but there is one more character, Seria Mau, who comes into play. She is someone who ran away and got transformed into a ship. That is, her conscious mind did. She is forever linked to her spaceship, and throughout the course of the story, she starts to remember more and more about her life before she became who she is by the end of the story. Through each of these three main characters, the story opens up and constricts around you in such a way you don’t know it’s happening until you get devoured by it.

The way it all connects at the end is probably some of the best writing I’ve ever read, and that honestly saved this book for me. There is something intense when you realize what’s happening, and it propels you onward even though you don’t really want to stop reading because you want to stay in the decadence of the world Harrison created. There’s still no clear answer as to what the universe is about, but the way it’s all tied together makes it easy to forget you don’t get an answer.

I think if someone asked me to recommend a book, I probably would choose other sci-fi before I went with this one. It’s not bad, but it’s not my cup of coffee.

I give this book a 6.5/10.

********I read the 2007 Bantam Mass Market Paperback edition********

Salisbury.Fake Life

What It Means To Be Human

I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

As a citizen of the US, I’ve usually had today off, the day honoring the life and message of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. When I was a kid, it usually just meant I had an extra day on weekends to play outside in the snow. As a college student, a day off from classes to do more classwork, and as an adult, depending on the job, an extra day to the weekend. The significance of the day was always at the back of my mind, but it was never at the forefront.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to post about this topic, the topic of humanity and being decent in terms of racial issues, but that came from an apathy I’ve had most of my life. What can I do as a single white person in a mostly red state where microaggressions of racism happen daily and I’ve sometimes inadvertently participated in? Last year, in some of the strongest moments of the Black Lives Matter movement, I sat back and let everyone else speak. I fully believe in the movement, and I fully believe in the anger of black people tired of being treated the way they do. It is a righteous fury, and I am here to support and lift in any way I can. I don’t have much to offer, but I do have my voice.

We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls “enemy,” for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I know that I’m using his quotes today in this post, and that a lot of white people will post his words today in a show of solidarity with his message and his legacy, but what are we doing after we post these quotes? You can use your words all you want, but if your actions don’t follow through with those words, they become less.

The words I’m posting come from his speech about the Vietnam War, a turbulent time for our country, one of the first times people exercised their right to free speech with such a ferocity against the government. He spoke with passion about how it was a contradiction that he was protesting for peace for his own movement when the entire country was at war, and how he had to somehow convince the people who followed his example not to use violence to spread the message. He had an enormous task on his shoulders. His words then are just as important now. Especially after last year’s growth in activism and the attack on the capitol earlier this month.

We are not at peace. We have not been at peace for a very long time. I believe it was exacerbated by the last four years of government in my country, but it didn’t start with the leaving presidency. It was there, waiting to be ignited. We cannot ignore the inciting and inflammatory words of someone who is elected to lead us because he had financial policies or other policies that may have worked. Policy is nothing without humanity behind it. The acts of people against their own capitol building because of a disapproval of the loss of a favored candidate feels childish. It feels immature and lacks the strength of a purpose. I could understand the protests last year. I could understand that because people were and are still dying because of their skin color. I can’t understand this.

I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Have we truly heard? Have we learned enough? Will there ever be a time when it is enough?

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy’s point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Those who perpetuated the events at the capitol, those who consistently promote messages of hate for whatever reason they do, it’s difficult not to call them enemies. I don’t know that they are enemies, or if they’re simply going along with whatever is trending in their area. The mob effect is pretty powerful, even if it’s a mob of stupidity. Sometimes especially then. I’m not saying their beliefs are stupid, by the way, but their methods of going about expressing their beliefs lacks a certain level of intelligence.

I don’t know what the answers are because I honestly don’t know enough. But that’s changing this year. This year, I will be more informed, and be more conscious of my own shortcomings in the knowledge of how others live. I will do what I can, and so must we all, because the only way we’ll ever make it out of any bad situation–whether it’s pandemic or otherwise–is by pulling together and seeing each other for the people we are. We must hear each other, actively hear each other.

It’ll be difficult. Tackling institutions of ways of life, going against “it’s how we’ve always done it,” is always going to feel impossible. But it is possible. It is probably going to take more time than we’d like to think it will, but it is possible to change. It is possible to regain what we’ve lost of our humanity, and I believe we will do so incandescently.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.