LAMuseMent

Shadrach in the Furnace by Robert Silverberg My rating: 0 of 5 stars I came across this book completely by chance, and I decided to read it because I was intrigued by two attributes. The first was the title, and the second the fact that is a post-dated science fiction novel written in the seventies about 2012. In the book by 2012 humanity had undergone a catastrophic crisis and the remaining 2 billion people are ruled by a single dictator, the Mongolian leader Genkins II Mao IV Khan. He is incredibly old and he is kept in good health by the unceasing efforts of his personal physician Shardach Mordecai. Shadrach has a bunch of electronic implants, wirelessly linked to the Khan that provide him with real time biometric information, so he can monitor his sole patient continuously. The whole world is plagued by an infectious disease called the rot, that everyone gets sooner or later, with the exception of the ruling elite in Ulan Batar who have access to...

Perdido Street Station by China Miéville My rating: 4 of 5 stars I knew it would be difficult to find something like The City & the City but I was hoping a book from the same author would approximate it. It didn't - this is a very different book - but it has charms of its own. It is definitely a book that rewards the patient. The world described in the book a more dystopic version of Terry Pratchett's Ankh Morpork. Instead of the standard fantasy species, the inhabitants are grotesque caricatures reminiscent of the creatures in Mos Eisley from Star wars. Living in a real dystopic world myself, I find little comfort reading about fictional ones. To make things worse the original story lines in the book appear weak and trite. What kept me reading was China Mieville's masterful command of the language and his powerful imagery. After about 250 pages of nearly forced reading, a novel and unexpected story line arises and this one is grippi...

Dersu the Trapper by Vladimir Arsenyev My rating: 4 of 5 stars Years ago I watched Kurosawa's movie Dersu Uzala and it made a tremendous impression on me. It remains to this day one of my favorite movies. It was much later that I found out that the movie was based on a book and that the book is a true story. "Dersu the Trapper" is the story of a Russian military officer who befriends a native of the Taiga when he is out surveying the largely unmapped expanses of the Russian far East, around the year 1905. The adventures described in the book are quite remarkable, but the author's matter of fact style makes them believable and approachable. The author does not try to create a literary masterpiece and only allows himself a few flourishes of the pen, but he describes his experiences with feeling and authenticity. He is not afraid to talk about his shortcomings and mistakes that he made during the expedition, and how Dersu helped him ou...