captainfez's reviews
1052 reviews

I first read Cryptonomicon more than 20 years ago, when it first was released. A good friend of mine was visiting from the US – I lived in London at this point – and had a copy of the book in his satchel.

It sounded cool, and so I found a copy, read it, and while there was a lot I didn’t understand in it, I enjoyed the hell out of it, which was quite remarkable because at the time I wasn’t really into 1000-page epics.

I figured it had been long enough that I should revisit: to see a) if it was still as impressive and b) whether I understood it any better.

The intervening two decades, it turns out, had been kind. Not only had I actually been to some of the places mentioned in the book, but I recognised that my grasp on military history and geopolitics had improved somewhat in the interim.

Cryptonomicon is, essentially, an alternate history set in two time periods: the 1940s and the 1990s. (Or should that be two alternate histories? Anyway, soldiering on.) The reader is thrown between the Second World War – the Pacific part of that armour-plated stoush, particularly – and the dot-com boom. The narrative plays out through the adventures of characters separate to each timeline (though some cross generations), with plenty of real-life figures (Albert Einstein, Alan Türing and an excellent Douglas MacArthur, amongst others) to add some kind of feeling of factual truth.

To read more of this review, please visit www.captainfez.com/2023/01/22/book-review-cryptonomicon.

Cinema Speculation by Quentin Tarantino

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adventurous challenging funny informative inspiring medium-paced

4.0

Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay

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adventurous hopeful mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

When I was a kid, I got onto the Tolkien trip and read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Pretty cool, I thought.

Then I tried The Silmarillion and man, did those emergency brakes slam on. I haven’t tried that one since, and that was… about 35 years ago, now.

“Language. The process of sharing with words seemed such a futile exercise sometimes.”

This is a circuitous way to say that I was a bit dubious about Kay’s writing – he assisted in the assembly of The Silmarillion – before I began reading Tigana. Thankfully, the recommendation (and loan!) by Elizabeth (who reads a lot more fantasy than I do and is well versed in these matters) was solid: Tigana is a snappy, standalone fantasy novel that I practically inhaled.

To be a bit reductionist, the best approach to this novel is to imagine that Kay is translocating city-state medieval Italy the same way that George R.R. Martin translocates War of the Roses-era England. The settings aren’t meant to be those places, not really, but they use them as a template from which to proceed.

To read more of this review, please visit: https://captainfez.com/2023/01/05/book-review-tigana/

Solaris by Stanisław Lem

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challenging dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

Apparently this wasn’t the first time I’d read Solaris.

After I’d finished this Kindle edition – one with the Lem-approved translation, executed by Bill Johnston – I discovered an older, dog-eared copy of the work on my shelves. I must have read that version from the time in university when I had a Russian partner who was interested in getting me into Russian literature, to the extent that I wrote some essays for her. (On Goncharov, I think? I can’t quite remember.)

Anyway, being unable to remember treading those star-paths before seemed to be very in keeping with the work itself, and I assume Lem would approve.

The novel details the journey of a scientist, Kris Kelvin, as he travels to a space station orbiting the planet Solaris. His mission? To understand what the fuck’s going on up there. The other scientists he’s dropping in on have been acting strangely (to the point of

suicide

) and the plug’s about to be pulled.

Oh yeah, and the planet is home to a sentient ocean that likes to build fractal architecture and garden models in its spare time.

When I was at school, thanks to facts discovered later, Solaris was widely regarded as a planet endowed with life—but with only a single inhabitant…

It also likes to send replica versions of your most painful or dearest memory up to visit you, which is how Kelvin gets to meet his dead wife again, a sort of intergalactic RealDoll reliant on closeness to exist.

While there’s a certain element of Cold War paranoia at work – the floating in my tin can vibe of the times – the story isn’t really about space bugs or high opera. It’s about the possibility – or more appropriately, the impossibility – of communicating. Ostensibly it’s about communicating with the living ocean below the station, but really the novel looks more closely at interpersonal communications, and ultimately at the way we communicate with ourselves through memory and experience, no matter how much we distract ourselves with star-striving, exploration and achievement.

To read the rest of the review, consider visiting https://captainfez.com/2023/01/03/book-and-movie-review-solaris/

Content Warnings

The Art of the Occult: A Visual Sourcebook for the Modern Mystic by S. Elizabeth

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inspiring reflective fast-paced

2.0

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captainfez's reviews 1052 reviews

captainfez's reviews
1052 reviews