jnzllwgr's reviews
238 reviews

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

5.0

Ubik by Philip K. Dick

5.0

Last PKD for a wee bit. Moving on to some Jeff VanderMeer. But it was great! Loved this tale. It needs to be a movie. Set in 1992, the world is full of people with special psychic abilities and business and governments have take advantage of this for psi-op espionage. Additionally, folks are cryonically frozen after death where they can spend their “half-life” semi-conscious and capable of speaking through technology to the living. Like ‘The 3 Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch’ that I read several weeks back, this one kind of has you wondering what is reality, who’s alive and who’s dead. :::: My favorite short story of all time is the 6-pager ‘The Circular Ruins’ by Jorge Luis Borges. Like the shocking turn that happens to our main character in that short, the ending in Ubik does not disappoint!

The Strange Bird: A Borne Story by Jeff VanderMeer

4.0

This was a novella between the first Borne and Dead Astronauts. It partially felt like a thread that was removed from the first novel that the editors recommended VanderMeer cut because it was too big of a branch from the central story. But it also feels a bit too flimsy to have been a standalone work. I’m glad I read it. It gave me some background to Rachel, Wick and the Magician that gives them some additional dimension (mostly the Magician with a bit of backstory). And there’s a smidge of a reference to the content in Dead Astronauts, although it really does not not benefit one to know it before or after. It fills out the universe of beasts a bit more and gives you more about the apocalypse beyond what was occurring in the the City in the novels. Most importantly, I think I have a better handle on Vandermeer’s writing and I can more deeply appreciate the nuances of the Southern Trilogy that I read a couple years back. This makes me want to try those on for size again soon.

The Wilds by Julia Elliott

4.0

Found this collection of short stories looking for similar things that I have been reading. While I was disappointed at how different it was in terms of subject matter, it was a nice change of pace and a worthwhile discovery of an southern writer in my own backyard (Elliott is a professor at USC, in Columbia. SC). I went to undergrad at Clemson, and spent 12 months living in and around Columbia, so I was highly motivated to feel the vibes! While the psychogeography of Cackalacky doesn’t dominate the narratives, they do play a small role in building some atmosphere. I’d say Nick Cave’s work like When the Ass Saw the Angel is more Southern Gothic than this; perhaps even as a caricature. Elliott however mixes Southern lit themes with a bit of speculative fiction along with really good fictional narratives. What I really came away with was laughter. Elliott’s offers a wry turns of phrase and on-point cultural footnotes folded in with some real tenderness of the human condition. Knowing she completed her MFA at Penn State in 1996 only confirms she’s a generational peer and I appreciated the Gen X sensibilities that wash pleasantly over each of these stories. Not sure which one was my favorite, but I think I would pick the one called ‘Organisms’ which is about the outbreak that hospitalizes series of teens in comas, possibly due the leaping of a rat/cat pathogen. Believe it or not, it’s a humorous take through the eyes of some colorful characters while feeling very current affairs-ish.

A Peculiar Peril by Jeff VanderMeer

4.0

Ok…holy hell. FINALLY done with this brick. I’m putting my foot down on books of a certain length. I am not inclined to exceed a 300 to 350 page length. It’s just a barrier to entry for me. That said, this is technically 2 books bound together in just over 640 pages. Further, this was Jeff VanderMeer and I really wanted to see what he could do with his unique interests in mankind’s relationship with Ecology channeled into something more for my (soon to be) teenage son. First off, the humor in word play and reshuffling of history is fun and entertaining. I found the absurdity of it well-aligned with the absurdity of a parallel ‘universe’ (dimension?) in which all things Earth have a discombobulated double. This may test a young readers appreciation without a bit of knowledge of “European Experiment” (isn’t life an experiment?), but its enjoyable to find Aleister Crowley trying to take over the continent in massively bumbling, comical (and equally horrific) ways. I don’t know if this was *my* cup of tea in the end as I really don’t do magic and fantasy quite with this blend, but it was incredibly well crafted and with the built-in capacity to expand the tale into future volumes . So, if speaking marmots, Celestial Beasts, mechanical elephants powered by magical salamanders and a Chateau Peppermint Blonkers sounds up yer alley, grab yourself a copy!
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#JeffVanderMeer #aPeculiarPeril #youngadult #fantasy #marmots #Aurora

Spacecraft by Timothy Morton

5.0

Just wrapped up reading this wee book…twice! I am not a Timothy Morton completist, but after reading portions of a few of their books and “Being Ecological” in its entirety (also twice) and listened to podcasts and read interviews, I think I can admit I enjoy their work; especially these brief, almost stream-of-consciousness essays. Here, Morton has been given the opportunity to focus their unique blend of romantic futurism on spacecraft. That’s spaceCRAFT. Not spaceSHIPS. There is a difference as you will learn. And while 2001 and Star Trek are mentioned, Morton spends the lion’s share of their effort using Star Wars’ Millennium Falcon (with frequent pairings or diversions about Dr. Who’s TARDIS) to touch on the traditional Greek chorus in film and house music, patriarchal and capitalist society, hyperspace as Saturday-on-a-Monday lounge space, object-oriented ontology, William Blake, American democracy as innovative junk recycling of past societies, feminist circulsion and the Muppets. I’m serious. It’s brilliant. It’s a romp. Don’t expect a complete explication or an itemized defense either. Think of this as a “what if?…” Or an inventory every vector of thought between Morton’s ears…(aka, what might serve as a forward to a developed 400-page take-down with proper citations for the academy). Treat it lightly. Have fun with it. Take in what you can, come back and reread later! Morton has said in interviews that they like to think that their writing is from the future, a future self they call “Future Tim”. This is a tiny book with a high weight-to-potential ratio. Let it plant some seeds for you.

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

4.0

Read this as a bit of stop gap. Definitely a diversion from the theme(s) I’ve been pursuing lately. But I had it in hand and it was a quick read. The premise is that Germany, Italy and Japan have won WWII and this is what the world is like several decades later. Germany controls Europe, much of Western Asia, and the Eastern half of the US. Japan controls the Pacific States. The Rocky Mountain States remain a semi-autonomous region….oh, and Africa has been bombed into a lifeless wasteland for no apparent reason other than to reinforce how out of their heads the Nazis are. The Chinese Book of Changes (I Ching) figures large, as almost all the characters seek some use of it. I think at the heart of this are questions about what constructs meaning for oneself in life? Characters consult the oracle to feel safely tethered to a future outcome. Other characters question how historic objects carry greater value than others due to their proximity to events or famous figures in time. And the titular character writes a speculative novel that toys with idea that the outcome of WWII is, well, what it really was. So a bit meta and a bit of speculation within speculation. There is no resistance to the victorious Japanese or Germans. The characters seem to be very much accepting of their common realities in that sense. But, overall, very disjointed and never really ties together the loose, but clearly intentional, strands between the characters. Very impressed how Amazon managed to take what little to go on here and flesh it out into an entertaining series. So check that out!

Think Like a Mountain by Aldo Leopold

4.0

Quick read. Highlights/excerpts from ‘A Sand County Almanac’. My favorite takeaway ::
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“Thus always does history, whether of marsh or marketplace, end in paradox. The ultimate value in these marshes is wildness, and the crane is wildness incarnate. But all conservation of wildness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish."

Dead Astronauts by Jeff VanderMeer

5.0

"Dead Astronauts" is an absolute prize of a novel.
One does not need to read "Bourne", but
there are overlaps and in reading it first,
you get a bit of the world building out of
the way…which clears the palate for a
whole new something-something. This is a
psychedelic meditation on the living
universe. It does not conform to linear plot
developments that puny humans require to
make sense things. While still English (I.e.
you don't need a special dictionary like,
say, in Dune), the structure is mangled/
manipulated to the author's purpose. In
short: it can be difficult to keep things
straight. The book explodes with sensorial
images, both endearing and repulsive. The
language is more conversational, or
perhaps even more abstract, like thought.
There's a big emphasis on the non-verbal
aspects of communication. Or perhaps it's
better to say on the limitation of humans
senses in how we relate to other living,
non-human persons in the world. Like
Joyce's Finnegans Wake or Faulkner's The
Sound and the Fury, I believe will be
considered one of VanderMeer's greatest
work. Someone termed VanderMeer as
"the weird Thoreau". And that kind of
makes sense in the way he celebrates big
"L" LIFE. Magic realism is at play. A bit of
Bill Burroughs/Brion Gysin vibe with the
structural nature the book serving a
purpose to reorient (or reprogram,
perhaps) the reader. It's the first chapter of
Mark von Schlegell's Sundogz extended to
300+ pages. VanderMeer's interest in the
writings of Timothy Morton is in maximum
overdrive. Honestly, I'm at a loss to really
describe it other than to say, it reshapes
your understanding of the world we are
intertwined -shot-through- with.

Borne by Jeff VanderMeer

4.0

“Borne” is set sometime in the future in a nameless City, with inferences that the state of the City is not unlike the rest of the world: post-manmade catastrophe involving, in no small part, bizarre living biotech mods of all creature types running amok, mostly not helping things. However, it is a pretty straightforward, hero’s narrative-tale for our protagonist and the bad folks linked to “the Company” who was responsible for all the genetic experiments gone awry. It offers a reasonably brisk pace while forging some strong emotional connection to the characters. And it occurred to me more than once that this would be readily adapted to film, much like VanderMeer’s “Annihilation” was. As it turns out AMC may be developing it into a series, so thumbs up on my intuition. The big takeaway here is VanderMeer’s deft ability to conjure an authentic vision of the apocalypse. There is an explosion of diversity amidst the dregs of civilzation. A cornucopia of menace along with a paucity of basic resources like clean water or food. And, perhaps *not* unlike the world today, energetic, vibrant life intertwined with death. At the heart of it is the hubris of man blinding ourselves to coming destruction. And, despite the increasing horror of societal collapse, there persisits a nonsensical, maniacal, push in performing the experiments, the torture and the hybridization of creatures —even with the absence of purpose. Not so uplifting, you might say, but it’s more complex that this and a compassion and celebration life that threads its way through the novel.