18 - Ubik

One of my principal motivations for setting myself this challenge was assaulting the ever-growing pile of books - physical and electronic - accumulating in my limited living space. This was particularly true in terms of my collection of science fiction: the combination of very reasonable pricing on the Kindle store for the SF Masterworks collection and my desire to get through more of the fundamental works of my favourite genre had led to me amassing quite a collection, most of which was embarrassingly unread.

Philip K. Dick is one author who features prominently. Partly because he seems to have written ten times as many books as pretty much anyone else, and partly because the majority of said books are considered classics in their own right and essential reading for any sci fi fan. But personally I had yet to even graze the surface of his back catalogue, having only got through Time Out of Joint (excellent, a lesson in how to drip-feed the reader with information at the same rate as the characters understand it) and a collection of his short stories (quite hit and miss, but Beyond Lies the Wub is a masterpiece of the genre).

And so to Ubik. This novel is from Dick's golden era spanning the 60s and 70s, and is generally considered one of his very best, lying right in the middle of the likes of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, A Scanner Darkly and Valis. Published in 1969 and set in the distant future of 1992, it is one of a number of Dick's works to deal with themes of psychic powers, potential future divisions in humanity, and wider philosophical and religious themes. I chose it because of its relatively short length and the fact that it predates his mental breakdown and the truly bizarre work that followed - after all, I am getting to the tail end here.

Dick's speciality is to drop the reader right into the world of his novel and then have them catch up with its rules as they go along, and this is no exception. Having established that mind-reading is commonplace in this future, and introducing the characters in a flurry of encounters, the plot then hinges on a group of agents who specialise in negating the powers of psychics being dispatched to investigate a rival organisation, but instead being ambushed by a terrorist bomb. The action proceeds to unfold in an unravelling manner similar to that of Time Out of Joint, as the protagonist Joe Chip tries to make sense of what has actually happened to his team, who begin to find themselves seemingly drifting back in time.

His conclusion - saved until the final pages of the book and then turned on its head again even after that - is a tragic one, and it allows Dick to delve into the concepts of our perception of life, death and the afterlife. I'm not sure I understood all of what he was trying to say, and nor did I expect to on the first read through - this is high concept science fiction, using its action to reflect on human thought and experience in a way that only the very best works of the genre can do.

What I also found interesting, and which ultimately left me appreciating the universal application of Dick's philosophy all the more, was the author's vision of the future. Ubik's world is one where business trips to the moon, personal rocket ships and the ability to preserve the dead at the moment of death and then communicate with their minds are routine. Yet the characters still complete their various transactions with small change - indeed Joe Chip is prevented from leaving his apartment because he can't find a nickel to put in a slot in his door - and their daily news is provided by a mechanical device that reads newspaper articles out loud. Chip's boss tracks his employees by getting their location from a psychic and then sticking pins in a paper map. It's a strange effect that dates the book hugely, and made me realise just how much the planet has changed in less than fifty years.

4.5/5

Dick's influence on other forms of culture has been substantial. I was initially going to claim that no other author I have read this year has had their work turned into an opera, but it actually turns out that Micromegas and one of the Tintin books both were. Anyway, here's some weird avant-garde futurist-minimalist electro-opera about a Philip K. Dick book that isn't this one. I quite like it.

17 - Micromegas

I'm not sure whether it's really possible to feel an affinity with a time before you were alive. People often lament not having been around in the swinging sixties or roaring twenties, but ultimately it's not as if they could truly know what it was like to be alive at that time because, simply put, they weren't.

That being said, I would have to say I feel less affinity with the 18th century than pretty much any other period in history since the Dark Ages. With not much of note occurring in British history compared to the centuries before and after, my basic knowledge of the time is somewhat lacking. And while I am aware that the Age of Enlightenment laid the foundation for the vast majority of Western culture, I've always seen as just that - the foundation. The art and music created at the time, in my humble opinion, just isn't as developed or refined as what came later.

This is also the case for the literature of the time: I have very little knowledge of it, have studied it even less, and the works I have come across didn't make much of an impression. I maintain that Goethe's Faust is the most impenetrable thing I will ever read in any language, and Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is the most impenetrable thing I won't ever read (beyond the agonisingly dense first page).

But as with every rule there is an exception, and it comes in the form of the enfant terrible of the Enlightenment - François-Marie Arouet, better known by his prison nickname (yes, really) Voltaire. In a moment of madness during French A-Level I decided to take on his Candide, ou l'optimisme, and not only managed it but thoroughly enjoyed it. It blew me away how modern the prose was, and the ideas behind it. This coming-of-age tale of disillusionment with the failings of society, of learning that the further one travels, the less one knows, and of the overblown silliness of the romance and adventure novels of the time felt like something from the counter culture movement of the 1960s. It's literally 200 years ahead of its time, and I honestly can't think of any other work in any medium that can make that claim.

And so to Micromegas. I had always thought it was the general belief that science fiction was brought to the mainstream by the likes of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells in the 19th century, but with this wonderfully bizarre little novella Voltaire undercuts the trend by over a century again. And sure, the likes of Gulliver's Travels and Kepler's Somnium may have come even earlier, but as far as I'm concerned this story of giant aliens trekking across the galaxy is the first work to be in line with what we would think of as sci-fi today.

It starts off lightheartedly enough as Voltaire describes the adventures of an alien from Sirius who, by virtue of being hundreds of thousands of feet tall, is able to travel from star to star with ease, gaining all the knowledge the galaxy has to offer as he does so. He eventually reaches our solar system, and alights on Saturn where he meets a scientist who, standing at only 6,000 feet tall, is a dwarf by his standards. After a brief cultural exchange on the differences between their planets, in which the author again lays on the comic hyperbole in spades, the Saturnian's wife (a "pretty, petite brunette" - Voltaire coming across like 1752's Kurt Vonnegut) gets fed up and tells them to go elsewhere.

They arrive at Earth, and this is where the book goes from silly to profound in no time at all. After initially believing the planet to be uninhabited because they can find no forms of life big enough to make an impact on it, they soon come across a ship full of philosophers that has run aground in the Baltic. It is here that Voltaire delivers a stream of brutal social satire that again feels more like it belongs in something by some 60s beat poet. The pointlessness of the distinctions the philosophers draw between their different schools of thought, the futility of wars over lands of no real value in the name of rulers who will never see the lands by soldiers who will never meet their rulers, the belief that Earth is the centre of the universe and the universe was created for it - 250 years on and it seems we still have a lot to learn. And he makes the solution to it all seem so obvious.

Voltaire ends on what is essentially a punchline, and that felt right too. The shortest book I've read this year, and it has produced what I believe is my longest post. I can't recommend it enough.

5/5

And this is what music will sound like 250 years from now.

16 - Wake

I mentioned in a previous post that I once spent a large portion of my free time reading a collection of amateur horror stories gathered together in a mobile app. I imagine that few people who did the same would have avoided being inspired to write a story of their own in that vein, given the general come-and-have-a-go-if-you-think-you're-scary-enough attitude of the internet horror community. And I was no exception as early on in my endeavour the makings of a novel (or possibly a film script) began to come to me.

The setting was minimalist in scope - following a vaguely defined apocalyptic event, a group of survivors gathers in a remote corner of the English countryside and does their best to survive. They soon find themselves being stalked by a mysterious entity but then realise that that is the least of their problems as, in Sartre-esque fashion, their incompatibility as people begins to tear the group apart as they try to escape their predicament. I'm not sure how it would have finished, or indeed how the plot would have progressed, because I have always been better at writing about other people's writing than composing any of my own, and the work remained nothing more than a collection of thoughts. And now it turns out, somewhat creepily, that Elizabeth Knox beat me to it anyway. Having stumbled on Wake by chance in an article where literary critics recommended books they thought no one else would have read, I knew that I had to see how a proper writer would tackle the idea.

There are a few key differences: Knox sets her action in a small town in New Zealand, the supernatural element is given much more significance and, perhaps most importantly, she actually managed to write her story. But otherwise, Wake manages to very effectively put onto paper the concept that I thought would make such a great story.

The novel's opening makes for some of the most hair-raising reading I have ever come across, as a police officer on routine patrol finds herself in the middle of the unfolding action. Knox's writing is absolutely breathless as the town's citizens turn on each other, and the officer, Theresa, does her best to defend herself.

But once this is over with and all but thirteen of the town's residents have killed each other or themselves, Knox really steps up in terms of portraying the tedium of routine that becomes the survivors' reality. And it is here that the characters start to clash - from the brash American William, to the alcoholic Warren and former military man Bub by way of single-minded conservationist Belle and world-weary filmmaker Curtis. While it was initially confusing trying to keep track of such a large central cast, all of the characters are allowed time to settle into their roles, and as we learn more about their backgrounds Knox does not hesitate to dive into the darkest reaches of human nature.

The result is a read that is often uncomfortable and difficult, and that isn't helped by the aforementioned supernatural element which is frustratingly vaguely defined, but not vague enough that it doesn't encroach on the novel's realism. The passage in which Knox reveals the true nature of the apparent dual personality of the Maori girl Sam was certainly the most confusing plot building I have read all year.

But putting these flaws aside, Wake is a compelling and surprisingly emotional book. It is also a very Kiwi one, delving into the nation's past and present issues. And on reading the afterword I learned that the whole thing was inspired by Knox's mother's battle with Motor Neurone Disease, which added another dimension to it all that I hadn't even considered.

4/5

New Zealand is very much on my list of countries to visit, but until I do I shall be forced to assume it's just like this all the time.

15 - Rushing to Paradise

With all of the books I have read this year, I haven't found it particularly hard to find something to say about them. Each time I enter the final third, be it of a novel or a non-fiction work, the direction my following blog post will take is already becoming clear.

J. G. Ballard's Rushing to Paradise has been the first exception - a book so truly bizarre and confusing that I realised the only way I would be able to write about it would be to discuss how I couldn't work out how to write about it.

The premise is simple enough. While attempting a sabotage mission on a French nuclear testing island in the Pacific with environmentalist acquaintance Dr. Barbara Rafferty, a young British chap named Neil is shot in the foot by soldiers. The incident is caught on camera and subsequently becomes a global news story, meaning that the pair are able to return to the island with a team in an attempt to claim it fully from the French. In doing so one of their team is killed - again on camera - and this immortalises their campaign. They decide to turn the island into a wildlife reserve for any and all endangered species on the planet, and donations from around the world start flooding in.

So far, so satirical critique of the flawed idealism of the environmentalist movement and the callousness of national governments in trying to suppress it in favour of profits. But it is after this that the book descends into chaos. Having initially been portrayed as someone who just really cares about the environment, man, Dr. Rafferty quickly develops into a sinister cult leader, transforming her team into a fanatical army willing to die to defend their newly-created sanctuary. Except that they don't need to - the world loses interest in their plight fairly quickly. Nor do they seem to want to, becoming instead more devoted to the menial tasks they first took up upon arrival: repairing the island's radio tower, documenting its many plant species, destroying the endless supply of gifts that have been sent from around the world. And in the end it's not even a sanctuary, as the animals are killed for food and the inhabitants end up at war with each other.

My main issue with all of this was that the book struggles to settle on making any particular point. It starts out well enough as a commentary on environmentalism, but that thread is dropped well before the halfway point. It could be seen as an insight into the formation of cults and the motivations of people who join them, except it doesn't really explain this beyond saying "they just... do". Perhaps Ballard was aiming for a Lord of the Flies style microcosm of society and human nature, but his characters are so bizarre and exaggerated that it's hardly a realistic one. And speaking of characters, we are left questioning the motives of pretty much everyone at the end, meaning it doesn't work as an examination of madness, cultism or anything much else.

But as dissatisfying as the plot was, Ballard still manages to create a wonderfully dark, brooding atmosphere for its many twists and turns. His prose lurches between the whimsical and the grotesque, often within the same sentence, and he ramps up the weirdness and tension to an almost unbearable level as the truth about what is happening on the island is gradually revealed.

Certainly, it has left me wanting to read more of his work. But Rushing to Paradise feels like something of a missed opportunity, somehow both overdeveloped and underdeveloped all at once.

3/5

I've never seen or experienced the Pacific Ocean, and I think I may have been missing out on some commentary on how it can change people. But musically it sounds significantly more relaxing than in this book.

14 - The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds

A tenet often espoused - usually on "humorous" fridge magnets - is that if you open your mind too much your brain will fall out.

On the other end of the spectrum, the internet is full of people who claim to have conclusive proof that the world is being controlled by a sinister cabal of the global elite who have already brainwashed the masses - the Illuminati.

In 1994, Bill Drummond and Jim Cauty, at the time the two halves of electronic music duo The KLF, took one million pounds in cash to a Scottish island and proceeded to burn it on camera. As they departed, they suddenly realised that neither could quite remember or understand why they had just done what they did. In The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds, biographer John Higgs examines events before and after and suggests that the two viewpoints above may in fact be equally valid.

As far as the Illuminati are concerned, they were very much a real group. However, they existed in Germany in the 18th Century and were in fact opposed to the machinations of the establishment - principally organised religion and governments - that sought to oppress the expansion of human thought. The more modern image of the Illuminati as shady global overlords stems mainly from a group who sent letters to Playboy magazine in the 1970s claiming a wide range of conspiracy theories in their name, and the Illuminatus! series of novels by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, a bizarre work of post-modernist rambling that nonetheless laid the foundation for most of the myths propagated today.

Drummond and Cauty were part of that first group of pranksters, and were acquaintances of Wilson, and so sceptics would be quick to suggest that their actions were simply a result of overactive imaginations; their increasingly outlandish fabrications becoming an obsession and eventually manifesting as real beliefs. Yet there is also evidence that things go further than that: from an extra who appeared in one of their films insisting that he had been stalked by an agent of some unknown organisation to a wide range of admittedly surprising coincidences without which none of the events in the book could have come about.

But while Higgs devotes some space to the questions surrounding the pair's crowning performance, the book serves more as an account of the weirder side of British punk culture from the 1970s to 1990s. This incorporates some amusing anecdotes, such as how Bill Nighy, of all people, upon reading Illuminatus!, suddenly starting seeing Illuminati imagery everywhere when watching TV. Unnerved, he decided to go to the pub, taking the book with him, only to run into director Ken Campbell, who was putting together a stage production of the work at the time. Nighy joined the cast and appeared in the play in London, where the sets were designed by none other than Bill Drummond. It is also interesting to note that The KLF were successful in their ultimate aim of erasing themselves from music history. I consider myself reasonably knowledgeable in the area and was vaguely familiar with a few of their other projects, most notably The Timelords and The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, but had never heard of The KLF and found their music comparatively hard to track down online. Not a bad achievement for a band who were going multi-platinum at the time.

The book also serves as a neat summary of some of the more left-field schools of philosophy through the ages, from Daoism to Dadaism to Discordianism. It also deals with much older ideas, such as magic, paganism and collective consciousness. Higgs allows all of these equal merit, suggesting that they too may have influenced Drummond and Cauty to burn their remaining cash. He also introduces an interesting concept of his own, which suggests that the period 1991-1995 is something of a wasteland in time - after the major geopolitical events of the 20th century but before Windows 95 and widespread internet, after the old norms of empire and the Cold War had died but before the new ones of worldwide communication and commerce had begun. It was a time that produced a huge amount of music that was both hugely successful and popular, and yet never seen as part of mainstream culture, and The KLF's art film is portrayed as the culmination of this. Any earlier and it would have been accepted as surrealist or anti-establishment art. Any later and it would be a protest against capitalism and the reckless practices of the investment banks that were about to bring about global economic collapse. Instead, the duo were left with uncertainty about why they had done it, despite being so sure that it was what they had to do.

It helps immensely that Higgs is a good writer, approaching the topic with a healthy dose of scepticism and no shortage of humour. "They had been asked to appear the previous year, but negotiations had broken down following their plans to fill a stage with angels and Zulus and arrive on the back of elephants. The deal breaker, with hindsight, was probably their plan to chainsaw the legs off one of the elephants" could well be the best passage I will read all year. And ultimately I had to agree with Higgs' conclusion that the burning of a million pounds was the result of a pair of artists too caught up in their own hype and desperate to outdo their peers.

But the book is wide-reaching and engaging enough to make me think, and question my world view, and it isn't often that that can be said of a biography.

4.5/5

Drummond and Cauty recorded under a wide variety of aliases, and nearly all of their music is disappointingly mediocre: a classic case of the idea behind the music being more interesting than the music itself. However, nothing will convince me that this song is anything other than an absolute masterpiece:

13 - The Road to Little Dribbling

When it comes to patriotism, I've always had mixed feelings. On the one hand, I find it somewhat pointless to take pride in something so arbitrary as the patch of land on which you happened to be birthed. And yet I also think it is very much justified to praise the achievements of your forefathers and the culture and environment that have helped shape you as a person. Convert that to the form of sporting success - something that is becoming increasingly common for the UK, in fact - and I feel ready to tattoo a bulldog onto my chest while singing Rule Britannia and saluting a picture of the Queen.

So it was with these mixed emotions that I read Bill Bryson's latest collection of writing, The Road to Little Dribbling. Essentially a sequel to his original analysis of the UK, Notes from a Small Island, the author travels the country from bottom to top, revealing the history of the places he sees as compared to the present day; and all with his trademark accessible writing style and wit.

There is a lot in this book that paints my country in a less than positive light. Whether revisiting places from Notes from a Small Island or exploring (in a lot of cases relatively unknown) new locations, there is a clear common theme. As an American who has lived for a large portion of his life in England, Bryson is able to offer a different perspective, one that is unhindered by any misguided loyalty an English writer might have when trying to be objective about the state of their own country.

In short, Bryson is not happy with what he sees. The book portrays a country in neglect and disrepair, of slowing dying towns and unloved rural areas. It must be said that nearly all of this can be traced back to some truly awful decision-making at the level of public administration, and Bryson is merciless in tearing down the officials and bureaucrats who have allowed this to happen. Thanks to profit-first governments huge portions of our nation's heritage have been lost or wasted, and living conditions in a lot of places have become a lot worse than you might expect.

This makes for a surprisingly powerful book, because this is clearly a country that Bryson is very fond of. He sees the state of affairs as a true shame, and to his credit appears to be very active in campaigning for the stopping or reversal of the problems he describes. So while he does lament the mistakes that have been made, his outlook is ultimately optimistic.

And it's not all bad, either. In some cases - the occasional museum or park, mostly - things have been done very well, and the writer's enjoyment is clear to see. His conclusion, too, on how despite all its faults the UK still has a lot going for it - arguably the best education system in the world, more heritage than it would ever be possible to see in a lifetime and a unique culture - is enough stir up the kind of feelings I described above.

I absolutely devoured this book: we're talking a single-figure number of sittings. Bryson's sense of humour has become slightly gentler with age, but his writing is as light as ever and there are more than a few passages that are very, very funny. It's not quite up there with his "classic" works, but this still serves as a solid analysis of modern Britain and all of its quirks, problems and triumphs.

4/5

It could only really be this:

12 - Hard To Be A God

In the wake of Trump's election at the end of last year, it was reported that the sale of dystopian fiction increased dramatically in America. Most notably, George Orwell's 1984 jumped roughly 80 places up the fiction chart to become the best-selling book on Amazon, 70 years after its publication. My criticisms of that work are numerous, and I won't go into them here, but I was more struck by the fact that it doesn't actually relate particularly closely to the situation in America.

As I write this in a nation under CCTV, yes, I can admit that Orwell did get some things right. But American readers looking for literature offering some foresight into the direction their country is headed would be better off tracking down Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's Hard To Be A God.

I was first introduced to the Strugatskys' work by the excellent 1979 sci-fi film Stalker, an adaptation of their novel Roadside Picnic, which I read last year. While the film's primary merit is as a masterpiece of cinematography, the book goes several layers deeper. The premise remains the same, but the setting is developed far further, resulting in a bitter critique of the empty promises of the USSR's ruling party and the endless mazes of bureaucracy that meant the working classes had no chance of benefiting from them anyway.

I was amazed that a book so critical of the Soviet Union had been allowed to be published at the time, until I read the afterword and found that, in fact, it hadn't been. Instead, the authors had engaged in a relentless process of drafting and censorship by the state before finally conceding a heavily edited version in the 1980s. As per policy, the book's highly cynical tone was blunted, and the result must have been substantially different to the version that I read, approved by the brothers as being the intended original in the 1990s.

Somehow, it seems that Hard To Be A God suffered no such obstacles, despite, in my opinion, being a far more open critique of the direction of Soviet society at the time. This is perhaps due to its plot whereby, in a distant future, envoys are sent from Earth to a planet very similar to our own but which has yet to emerge from the Dark Ages. The result is a fantasy-style adventure story with plenty of sword fighting, castles and wizards.

Despite this, though, the novel's true purpose is clear. Our hero Anton, undercover as nobleman Don Rumata, is tasked with ensuring the planet's societal development into the Renaissance and Enlightenment; preserving art and literature and aiding the advancement of technology without intervening to too great an extent. Instead, he finds himself fighting a relentless tide of wilful ignorance, as gangs of uneducated, untrained mercenary soldiers roam the cities wiping out anything perceived as intellectual. All this under the command of prime minister Don Reba, a man intelligent enough to play the game of politics, but not intelligent enough to do anything worthwhile with his success. Reba was based on Lavrentiy Beria, state security chief under Stalin, but the parallels with Trump are plain to see - surrounded by yes-men and faceless mobs of unflinchingly loyal supporters, he builds insurmountable power over his kingdom as Anton/Rumata battles his conscience over whether to intervene.

The book's conclusion - which I can only assume was allowed to be published thanks to the reversal of Stalinist policies over the 1960s and 70s - is that intervention is essential if society is to develop, whatever the consequences. Don Reba's government is nowhere on the political spectrum, as his society has not yet reached that point, but comparisons are made, both concretely and by allusion, to both Hitler and Stalin. And while comparing Trump to that pair is definitely oversimplifying, there are general lessons to be learned about avoiding the mistakes of the past.

Ultimately, Anton appears to have done the right thing by using his powers for revolution, and that is where this book is more useful than 1984 ever would be - Winston Smith would have had a much better chance had he chosen the sword over the pen.

On a side note, my forays into Russian literature have been limited: Roadside Picnic, Dmitry Glukhovsky's Metro 2033, Mikhail Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog and a handful of (largely failed) attempts at Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn and Dostoevsky are about it. This is partly because I found in all cases that the translations were very similar - the writers' own styles were masked by the attempts to liven up Russian's grim syntactical efficiency into English with resulting empty prose styles and characters that seemed underdeveloped. Yet Hard To Be A God suffers none of those issues and the fast-paced plot created a complex world that Tolkein and George R. R. Martin would be jealous of in less than 300 pages. So, full marks to Olena Bormashenko on the translation.

5/5

Before the Strugatsky brothers were sticking it to the man with their writing, Dmitri Shostakovich was doing something similar with music. Without going too deep into music theory, his Fugue in A Major for piano appears to be perfectly in line with tradition, but subverts those rules into an increasingly bizarre sequence (under the conventions of classical composition), creating discord where there should be none and sarcastically calling out Stalin's oppressive control of his music.