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An 80s science fiction novel which is a significant jump in quality from The Alejandra Variations. It has some major flaws but I enjoyed it a lot.
In a near-future world, everything sucks in basically the same ways it currently sucks, but more so. War is rampant, the air is often unbreathable due to pollution, and gangs have taken over large parts of Los Angeles which already extra-sucks due to an attempt at releasing pressure on the San Andreas fault making earthquakes much more frequent.
A new disease, Liu-Shan Syndrome, causes people who get emotionally caught up in music, especially if their mood is melancholy, to vanish and be transported to a dream world of their own creation based on their mental state and the mood evoked by the music. These worlds tend to sad/flawed, but not outright horrible; they’re most typically a fantasy of a better world that has some kind of nasty drawback.
Francis Lanier is a Stalker, one of the rare people who can vanish and return at will, and can also track people into their dream worlds and bring them back.
Can I just say how much I love this premise? I love this premise. I wish we saw even more of the dream worlds, but we see enough to be satisfying on that level. They’re very beautiful and/or eerie, and always vivid.
Cook also reviews classical music, and you can tell that he loves and understands it very well. That adds a lot to the story, in which music is literally transporting, and trying to protect yourself by not listening to it isn’t any kind of solution.
The plot the premise is wrapped around is pretty decent, and it does eventually address the central question the premise brings up, which is “With a world this screwed up, why would you even want to go back?”
It has much better female characters than The Alejandra Variations, which admittedly is a low bar: the first female President of the US (she’s pretty cool), Lanier’s assistant who he loved but married his best friend, and the actress he falls for who he also never actually gets anything going on with. They’re crush objects, but they’re important to the plot in their own right and have their own agendas that don’t involve fucking him, so that’s good.
I was, unfortunately, more bothered by racism than sexism in this one. It’s low-key and of the non-malicious variety but still. The prologue features a “Chinaman” (it’s otherwise unobjectionable), there’s a bit in a dreamworld with flying Shawnee that is embarrassing in multiple ways, etc.
Spoilers! ( Read more... )
At the very end, we see that the street sign that used to say Dallas Road now reads Baba Avenue. This is signposted as being an Important Sign, though of what is unclear as Baba has never been mentioned in the book before. DA DA DA DUM!
Or should I say, BA BA BA BUM!
Tintagel
In a near-future world, everything sucks in basically the same ways it currently sucks, but more so. War is rampant, the air is often unbreathable due to pollution, and gangs have taken over large parts of Los Angeles which already extra-sucks due to an attempt at releasing pressure on the San Andreas fault making earthquakes much more frequent.
A new disease, Liu-Shan Syndrome, causes people who get emotionally caught up in music, especially if their mood is melancholy, to vanish and be transported to a dream world of their own creation based on their mental state and the mood evoked by the music. These worlds tend to sad/flawed, but not outright horrible; they’re most typically a fantasy of a better world that has some kind of nasty drawback.
Francis Lanier is a Stalker, one of the rare people who can vanish and return at will, and can also track people into their dream worlds and bring them back.
Can I just say how much I love this premise? I love this premise. I wish we saw even more of the dream worlds, but we see enough to be satisfying on that level. They’re very beautiful and/or eerie, and always vivid.
Cook also reviews classical music, and you can tell that he loves and understands it very well. That adds a lot to the story, in which music is literally transporting, and trying to protect yourself by not listening to it isn’t any kind of solution.
The plot the premise is wrapped around is pretty decent, and it does eventually address the central question the premise brings up, which is “With a world this screwed up, why would you even want to go back?”
It has much better female characters than The Alejandra Variations, which admittedly is a low bar: the first female President of the US (she’s pretty cool), Lanier’s assistant who he loved but married his best friend, and the actress he falls for who he also never actually gets anything going on with. They’re crush objects, but they’re important to the plot in their own right and have their own agendas that don’t involve fucking him, so that’s good.
I was, unfortunately, more bothered by racism than sexism in this one. It’s low-key and of the non-malicious variety but still. The prologue features a “Chinaman” (it’s otherwise unobjectionable), there’s a bit in a dreamworld with flying Shawnee that is embarrassing in multiple ways, etc.
Spoilers! ( Read more... )
At the very end, we see that the street sign that used to say Dallas Road now reads Baba Avenue. This is signposted as being an Important Sign, though of what is unclear as Baba has never been mentioned in the book before. DA DA DA DUM!
Or should I say, BA BA BA BUM!
Tintagel
