The Short Review: Zendegi by Greg Egan

I've picked up the habit of reading a book when I go on my long walks about twice a week. The first book to have been read pretty much completely while doing this was Greg Egan's Zendegi, which I finished reading today. It's a short novel by a rather good scifi author, and it tells its story succinctly, but its length and focus prevent it from exploring some very fascinating plot threads within the book's world satisfactorily. Primarily, though, it is a story about a man who is dying as a new world is rising. Regimes have fallen, and a new VR game called Zendegi is beginning to gain traction, and the main character sees in this world a means by which he, or a version of him, may live on to raise his young son.

The book is more content to explore the emotional questions that it raises while eschewing some of the political and moral ones, but it does spur one to much thought about the future of consciousness. The ending is heartfelt and satisfying, and the final words of the book may be the most indelible of any SF novel I've read in recent memory.

Recommended.

Stuff I'm reading, and "Rise of the Planet of the Apes"

So I finished A Clash of Kings about a week ago, and I don't quite know what I could possibly say about it that wouldn't spoil it besides that I liked it, and I'll probably wind up reading the next book. However, these books don't seem to build toward climaxes in themselves, the reader just seems dragged along to the next step or twist. It's still an enjoyable ride, though.

Current reading is Greg Egan's Zendegi. This is the first Egan novel that I've read. A while ago I read a story of his in a hard SF compilation, and have ever since been keen to check out more of his work. I just reached a turning point in the story about halfway through, and am completely invested in it. If you like heady Sci Fi with a beating heart to back up the ideas, you'll want to check this one out. Be warned, though, the first half moves pretty slowly, and the hook doesn't really come until half way through. By that point, though, you'll be completely invested in the very human scale that this book establishes.

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of seeing Rise of the Planet of the Apes. It's a very good movie, probably the best of the summer films in that it has spectacle, but story and respect for its audience to back it up. I'd recommend seeing it if you've been on the fence.

One thing I've seen in a lot of reviews (one of NPR's critics levied this criticism, for example) is the lamentation that the film trades in the commentary on race from the original films in the franchise for a pat message about animal testing. I don't think that this is fair, since the animal testing angle is obviously on the surface level of the plot, and the film has many things going on underneath that surface. Spoilers to follow.

In the film we follow Caesar, who will go on to basically found the ape culture seen in the original classic. Here, Caesar is a chimp born in captivity. His mother has been treated with an experimental Alzheimer's cure. The mother, in a fit of maternal rage, goes berserk in the testing facility and is put down. Caesar is taken home by Will Rodman, where he becomes attached to Rodman's father, who, just as it happens, is afflicted with Alzheimer's. Rodman eventually brings home the "cure" to try on his father, and it works, but he eventually regresses. This regression gets the father into some trouble with a neighbor, who gets aggressive and starts pushing the old man with Alzheimer's around. Because the neighbor's being such a nice guy, Caesar leaps into action and pummels the crap out of him. Caesar is rewarded by having animal control show up and take him to what basically amounts to a pound for unruly apes.

Here is where the film gets really interesting, and where I think the film really explores some of its themes, and where it proves those who say that it's too shallow really, really wrong. Lucky, or maybe not so lucky, for Caesar, his exposure to the experimental Alzheimer's cure has basically made him a genius, and the film has gone to great lengths by this point to demonstrate that Caesar feels and thinks about things in a way very similar to any human audience member. What Caesar sees while in his prison is a collection of brutal hierarchies. There are three that are immediately perceptible: 1) The hierarchy of ape over ape, 2) The hierarchy of human over ape, and 3) the hierarchy of human over human.

In the first, we see the ape Rocket as the alpha male in the ape pen. He throws his weight around big time, brutalizing the other chimps, and Caesar, too. In the second, we see the brutal son of the pen's owner treating the apes under his care rather cruelly. In the third, the same son asserts himself over his stuttering partner, the beta male in this situation.

This is where the film goes from being about animal cruelty to being about class, and the results are pretty thrilling.

Unfortunately, it has been far too long since I've seen this film to give it the exegesis it deserves, but I did want to take a few minutes to articulate why I think that this movie has something to say and is worth seeing. I also just wanted to get this blog off the ground after letting this post sit for about three weeks. Once home video rolls around, I'm definitely going to be revisiting this movie, and hopefully I can flesh out this interpretation a bit.

Soon, we'll be talking a bit about the first few books Rousseau's The Confessions. Hopefully, anyway.

The Purpose

I read a lot, watch a lot, play a lot, eat a lot.

In fact, most of my life i concerned with stuffing myself with new content, and then reflecting on that content. This blog will essentially be a place where I can gather some thoughts on the books I read, the films and shows that I watch, and maybe sometimes the games that I play or the food that I eat.

These will likely start short, and then get longer the more that I write. The goal is to get in the habit of critique, and hopefully to spur some discussion along the way. If you've somehow stumbled across this, I hope that this blog is not too irksome.

Coming soon: Thoughts on "A Clash of Kings" (yes, I'm drinking that Kool Aid), the memoirs of Cabeza de Vaca, and some Roman poetry.