Realty Check by Piers Anthony

So, uh…how about those tesseracts, eh?

Piers Anthony has written a lot of books. Like, obscene amounts of books. Seriously, the dude’s just prolific. Chances are if you like fantasy and science fiction, you’ve heard of him and probably read him. His books are creative and interesting and you always know there will be more like it, because he has written so many friggin’ books.

Additionally Piers Anthony seems eminently approachable. Most of his books feature Author’s Notes at the end that are at least as long as a chapter, and he is known for addressing his readers directly within these sections. That’s admirable.

All of this is to say: Piers Anthony, to all appearances, is a cool dude with a ton of great ideas and a deep love for writing. Anyone that prolific is bound to pump out a few books that aren’t at their highest caliber of writing.

Realty Check is just such a book. Though it’s a light, highly readable novel, there’s nothing here you haven’t seen before. Penn and Chandelle are an apparently retired couple looking for a new home. They luck onto the deal of a lifetime: A free month’s rent with no lease, and no requirements.

The house seems to know what they like; the fridge is fully stocked, and the closets are pre-stocked with clothes that fit them perfectly. The back door opens onto a forest that isn’t really there (what?) and the front door can apparently take them to any major city in the world. By this point in time, if I'm Penn or Chandelle, I'm out the door. Strangely, they don’t seem that bothered. It’s just a mystery to them, and they recruit Lynn and Lloyd, their grandchildren, to help them solve it.

I want to mention again: This was an entertaining read. I enjoyed reading about the discoveries they’d make, how the house kept score, and about the fantastic inventions they found in the attic (or hell, how they found the attic in the first place). But at the end of my read I found myself disappointed. The characters felt flat. Things happened simply for the sake of convenience. A surprisingly large amount of typos made their way past the copy editors, which I wouldn’t ordinarily point out if there hadn’t been so many of them.

At some point a character suddenly has a fake credit card. The only explanation give is as follows, and this is a direct quote: “getting that had been a neat trick.”

Really? If it was so neat, I’d probably like to read about it!

It’s these kinds of things that make this book one of my least favorite Piers Anthony novels. Fun to read, certainly a nice distraction…but certainly not one of his best. I’d skip this one.

My favorite (just try to imagine your grandfather saying this to you while the guy is standing right there) bit:

“He finds you appealing. Do you object, Lynn?”

Complicity by Iain Banks

Who’s the victim?

Iain Banks gained quite a bit of acclaim with his debut novel, The Wasp Factory. A dirty, violent book full of twists and dark humor, The Wasp Factory also happens to be completely fantastic. Banks wrote Complicity later in his career, a novel that parallels a reporter’s investigations into some bizarre murders and a serial killer’s escalating cycle of violence.

Complicity is smart. The book features a definition of the word complicity on the back, but as far as I can recall never uses the word within the text itself. The novel is told for the most part from the perspective of Cameron Colley, a journalist who tries to emulate Hunter S. Thompson in his writing style. He frequently says ‘Saint Hunter would understand’ when he is disappointed in himself; when he falls short of his own ideals.

Cameron’s narrative is told in first person, but there are several second person narratives describing the serial killings occurring in the background. While the second person is usually awkward and gimmicky, Banks's use of it in this particular work serves to further the theme. At some point in his career Cameron wrote an editorial about justice. He writes about a tv show he’d like to see, a show about the kind of justice he doesn’t get to experience in the real world. Instead of drug dealers, he wants to see arms smugglers taken down. He wants to see billionaires who profit from the misery of others being made miserable. He names names.

And wouldn’t you know it, the serial killer has exacted exactly this kind of justice on exactly the people he listed.

The question proffered by the book (never quite asked, never quite answered) is this: Who’s responsible? The reporter? The serial killer? You? Are you responsible if you buy the newspaper? Are you responsible if you watch the shows?

Are we responsible because we bought the book?

The murders are grisly, full of torture. Sometimes the killer doesn’t even kill, he just forces his victim to experience what he has done to others and then leaves. In one memorable scene, he’s sucking down helium while wearing a gorilla mask, and doing horrible horrible things on camera.

We’ve seen this before. Se7en, in particular, explores the notion of a serial killer who kills for an obscene sense of justice, for a misplaced sense of right and wrong, tailoring the punishment to the sin.

But Complicity actually came first.

According to Wikipedia, Iain Banks said Complicity is "[a] bit like The Wasp Factory except without the happy ending and redeeming air of cheerfulness." It’s true. This novel is dark, dark, dark. But there’s a lot to like here, and the novel has a lot to say. The copious, vivid descriptions of drug use, sex, and grisly murder make this a book that will not appeal to everyone.

But if you’re not easily offended, this book is well worth reading. You’ll have plenty to think about by the time you’re through.



My favorite part:

Cameron in the interrogation room, unable to sleep and feeling worse and worse by the minute. Everything about that scene, bouncing back and forth between his memories and the present, was incredibly awesome.

Our Friends From Frolix 8 by Philip K. Dick

When the future comes, will we know it’s here?

Philip K. Dick was incredibly prolific. His body of work includes such notables as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (which would become Blade Runner on the big screen), Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (one of my favorite novels of all time), and Ubik, one of Time Magazine’s top 100 novels.

I’ve read a lot of Dick’s novels, and I keep expecting one of them to be disappointing, or at least mediocre. He’s written so many that I’m sure some of them are going to be. But I’m honestly kind of surprised to say that Our Friends From Frolix 8 is not one of them.

With a title like Our Friends From Frolix 8, it’s easy to walk into the reading experience with a bit of skepticism. And like a lot of Dick’s writing, the characters are a bit flat, some of the description a bit flavorless, and the dialogue a bit blunt.

But the ideas…if it were possible to see inside this man’s thought process, I’m not sure I would want to. There’s something I’ve discussed, the possibility that when one is writing, one is afraid to let go of all of those loose ideas for fear that there will never be another one. This is clearly not a belief that Philip K. Dick ever held. Each and every novel he wrote was filled to the brim with ideas, each page replete with fascinating topic after fascinating topic. And if he ever had anything more to say about a past idea, why, he’d simply return to it without any compunction.

Our Friends From Frolix 8 is about politics and morality and death and humanity and Yeats and choice. It’s about Nick Appleton, a tire regroover. His father was a tire regroover, as was his father before him. It’s the future, and the government is run by two separate parties: The Unusuals and the New Men. These two groups have evolved differently from the rest of the population, and mandatory tests are given to the rest of the people, the Old Men, to give them a chance to become a member of the two parties. But everyone believes the tests are rigged, and that the only way to get in to one of the two governmental parties is basically to have been born into them. And it turns out that this is true; that the tests are rigged, and that the people who give the tests decide on a whim who will pass and who will fail.

A two party system where the same families keep putting their offspring into office? Hm, sounds completely unfamiliar.

All of the Old Men believe a savior is coming, a man who left Earth long ago to find alien life that would be willing to come back and help him free the world from the tyranny of the New Men and the Unusuals. And he is coming back; they’re right to believe in him. He’s coming back, and he’s bringing with him an unfathomable alien being. And together they’ll free the Old Men, but to do so they’ll have to do something completely horrible.

It’s interesting that in a lesser novel, this would be the climactic moment of the novel. But the final confrontation between this savior and the New Men/Unusuals occurs off the page. This alien landing in Times Square and doing something truly evil is observed only on the television, and Nick Appleton only observes it and reflects upon what it means about the future, about the choices they’ll have to make, and about what it means about the nature of humanity.

I would love to talk about the ideas presented in Our Friends From Frolix 8 at length, but in the end it’s almost unnecessary. Just know that I highly recommend the book if you’ve any patience whatsoever for science fiction mixed in with your philosophy, because the metaphysical and political ideas presented in this novel are well worth exploring, and trip’s not so bad, either.



My favorite part:
The discussions of the corpse of the God-like organism found in deep space. Mostly unrelated to the plot, but fascinating and a perfect example of the bounty of ideas present in his works.

A Rabbit’s Eyes by Kenjiro Haitani, translated by Paul Sminkey

Sometimes it’s hard to see beauty when it’s covered in dirt.

I’ve always had trouble judging something that was orignally written in a different language. Should I attribute the blame for awkward phrases upon the author or the translator? Or for that matter, what about beautiful passages; are they the author or the translator?

A Rabbit’s Eyes apparently rocked Japan when it was originally released in 1974. The novel by Kenjiro Haitani sold millions of copies and opened a debate about the state of education amongst Japanese citizens. In 2005, Vertical released the novel in the States, freshly translated by Paul Sminkey.

It describes the events at Himematsu Elementary, a school located near a garbage disposal plant, which produces a great deal of pollution and is also home to several families who work at the plant. The children of these families attend the elementary school, and because of their dirtiness and their lower-class upbringing, there is a certain amount of discrimination in play at the school, even from the teachers.

The focal character of the story is Ms. Kotani, a relatively new teacher, who has a lot of heart and wants desperately to find a way to teach every kid in her class. Each page brings a new heartbreak or a new smile to your face as Ms. Kotani goes through great pains to provide an education for kids other teachers might have overlooked. I can’t count the number of times that this book made me want to cry, but its depiction of the human struggle and the importance of the educator in a child’s life rings true.

I should mention that A Rabbit’s Eyes is meant to be an all ages book. Much of the writing caters to a reader who may not be familiar with complex phrasing, though it doesn’t shy away from big words. I can’t claim to know whether it is this fact or whether the blame falls on the translators head, but the book certainly contains a number of clichés and awkward turns of phrase. But there’s an important thing to keep in mind.

It doesn’t matter.This book wasn’t meant for the elite, nor was it meant to sit on the bookshelf next to Catcher in the Rye. A Rabbit’s Eyes is a call to arms for a nation that had become goals oriented in its approach to education. It’s interesting that our view of the Japanese educational system is so different from the picture painted by this novel. Kenjiro Haitani, the author of the novel, was apparently himself a teacher for years before the release of the novel, and formed a nursery school some time after. This personal insight into the nature of the system is very valuable.

I found the novel to be very moving and engaging, and despite any awkwardness in dialogue and language, I would highly recommend it to just about anyone. Unfortunately it looks like the book may be going out of print, so until Vertical issues a second print, track down whatever copies you can, because it’s worth a read, and I promise whenever you’re finished you’ll think of a dozen people who should borrow it from you.



My favorite part: Chapters 11 through 15 deal with the student Minako. I’m pretty sure every single page within this section had something on it that made me want to cry, but in a good way. Certainly the most memorable part of the novel.