Chronopolis

The peculiarities of not being able to drive can sometimes mean a long wait at a bus stop.  5 minutes in a charity shop can usually render a science-fiction paperback for about 50p to help pass the time, and it was in this way that I picked up Isaac Asimov's The Naked Sun, which has one of those weird, sexually suggestive covers that has nothing to do with the story.  One of the most interesting things about that story is its perspective.  It's set on a planet that is fairly similar to ours, but it's told from the point of view of a person who's spent his whole life living in cramped quarters underground.  Things that would be normal for the reader, like going outside into the open air and coming into contact with sunshine, are told to us as frightening experiences, with the main character longing for close walls and familiar stale air.  I quite enjoyed it as a trick, and Chronopolis does a similar thing.

Précis:  Guy in a world with no clocks becomes fascinated with time management, and ends up on the wrong side of the law trying to make devices to accurately measure time.

Taking a step back from our increasing obsession with cramming as much as possible into every waking hour, we see the burnt out shell of this kind of society from the perspective of one where there is no measurement of time.  JGB gives us a look at two different worlds at the same time, exposing the flaws of both.  Before clocks and watches were outlawed, the entire city population ran like clockwork, with staggered travelling times, working hours and lunch breaks to ease the strain on services and businesses.  It's the logical extension of alternate day driving, which helped a great deal to reduce smog in Beijing (filthy dirty city) during the Olympics, and a solution to the Half-Time Kettle Effect.

Amongst all the philosophical explication flying around, there is one snippet that I found very thought-provoking.  It comes from a conversation between an English teacher (it's always an English teacher) and the young hero, who doesn't understand how you could hurt anybody with a clock:

"Isn't it obvious?  You can time him, know exactly how long it takes him to do something."
"Well?"
"Then you can make him do it faster."

Anybody with a job will recognise this as time-management, 'doing more for less' and the dreaded 'efficiency gains'.

Now here's a thing, since reading The Naked Sun, I've learnt to drive and got a car.  Now that I can get home faster, will I ever have to nip into charity shops in search of paperbacks again?

The Waiting Grounds

Just dug out the tea set and had some seriously fine long-jing.  On the back of that, time to catch up with some blogging.

Continuing the science-fictioney theme of Track 12, this longer story is set in a familiar trope:  the remote mining colony in space with only a handful of people and the discovery of ancient bits and stuff.  It's the setting for so many stories I can think of, and probably has its roots in jingoistic colonial adventure stories in which missionaries hack through remote jungles and happen upon Thuggee cults and Hindus spelt 'Hindoo'.

Interestingly enough, the missionary thing gets flagged up in The Waiting Grounds, when a box of religious texts, including bibles, the quran and the talmud among others, turns up in the inventory of stuff left behind by two missing explorers.  It's not explored or explained in any detail, but it was an interesting thing to notice.

In short, strange carved monoliths are found, listing a couple of millennia of dynasties in various star systems in five different languages, including English.  Cue cosmic trip across space-time to the end of the universe.  It's quite a bit like 2001:  A Space Odyssey in that respect, although the protagonist gets plopped back where he was, left to contemplate his place in the universe.

The general consensus seems to be that this story is uncharacteristic of his writing, in that it's not set on Earth and are written fairly straight, with little irony.  One of the things I did notice about The Waiting Grounds in particular is the setup of the characters.  It's fairly standard science-fiction stuff: the hero arrives, there's been some kind of mysterious event, there's a character who knows more than they let on, the mystery is investigated, horrors ensue, minds are blown but the hero lives to recount the story.  Amongst the novels I've read, Super-Cannes, Cocaine Nights and Kingdom Come all follow this pattern.  This is not lost on others who are familiar with Lovecraft.

Venus Smiles

Twitting about on the Internet alongside reading these stories, I've found that this one has the distinction of requiring its own Wikipedia page. Details of why this is will be found there, but it's interesting to see that the story is included here in 1957, rather than later in 1971.

We're in Vermilion Sands again, and it's only on my second visit that I notice something from Prima Belladonna. The fusion of plant life and music is almost synaethesia, and here we have a similar thing going on with a metal sculpture that moves and grows.  It also sings as well.

There's also another enigmatic female artistic type who made the statue. Could be another theme developing there, but I won't find out until I get to Studio 5, The Stars, which is the next story from the collection.

Writing in the preface to the collection, JGB defends the criticism that Vermilion Sands is not science fiction because it's not an 'invented future'. He suggests it's a 'visionary present', based on a real future that he could see approaching.  This explains everything I've already read of his, and it's also what I think science fiction is all about; our present hopes and fears.  The best example of this is how Peter Parker's radioactive spider in 1962 became a genetically modified spider for the Sam Raimi film in 2002. In the case of Venus Smiles, there's this wonderful exchange between the mayor and his secretary:

"The Medicis probably felt like this about Michaelangelo.  Who are we to judge?"
"You are," she said "You were on the committee, weren't you?"
"Darling," I explained patiently "Sonic sculpture is the thing.  You're trying to fight a battle the public lost thirty years ago"

There's so much in those three lines of dialogue that's familiar...

Escapement

It's one of those inevitabilities with any science fiction series; sooner or later the Time Loop episode turns up. JGB is no exception, as here it is with Escapement.

In short, a man finds himself living the same 15 minutes over and over, it's fairly familiar stuff, but there's one thing that sets this slightly apart from every other Time Loop we've seen: the problem sorts itself out without the protagonist doing anything. He thinks of some good ideas to try, one of which (getting drunk) reminded me of Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, but he either dissuades himself or runs out of time.

It's a good take on a familiar story, and there's a good sense of initial disorientation. The twist at the end is already familiar from JGB's novels that I've read. Disorientation, powerlessness and uncertain, shifting situations in place of dynamic, problem-solving resolution. Nice.