Myths, whether in written or visual form, serve a vital role of asking unanswerable questions and providing unquestionable answers. Most of us, most of the time, have a low tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty. We want to reduce the cognitive dissonance of not knowing by filling the gaps with answers. Traditionally, religious myths have served that role, but today — the age of science — science fiction is our mythology. - Michael Shermer

As the year comes to a close, I have been reflecting on how much I have enjoyed science fiction this year, and how prominently it has become in my entertainment choices. Not only because it entertains, but also because it enlightens. It challenges me to think, to imagine and to create, which so little else in the world of mass-market entertainment does.

I found the quote above in the Great Geek Manual’s Geek Quote of the Day, and it seems particularly apt as I reflect on the science fiction that I truly enjoyed in 2009.

A few of my favorite things this year:

Cover of Earth Abides

Between the movie 2012 and the actual year 2012 looming on the horizon, global warming summits and Viggo Mortensen heading down The Road, the apocalypse has been on a lot of minds lately. But if you’re one of the (un)lucky ones to survive the actual big event, then what should you do? As usual, we turn to science fiction writers for the answer. The following books were all selected because they focus on what comes after the end, rather than the end itself. They attempt to answer the all-important question: Now what?

(Note that books that depict supernatural events following the apocalypse, such as showdowns with the Devil or legions of zombies, have been omitted. We’re interested in practical survival guides.)

1. Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse, edited by John Joseph Adams — This collection of short stories is a retrospective of possible post-apocalyptic scenarios, ranging from the immediate aftermath to far, far in the future. While a few horror and dark fantasy stories have been thrown in the mix, most of these excellent selections are straightforward science fiction depicting various ways of coping with the end of everything.
2. The Road by Cormac McCarthy – In what is probably the bleakest of our selections, a man and his son wander through a desolated landscape of ashes, eking out their survival from the little that’s left remaining, while trying to get… well, nowhere in particular, really.
3. The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler – Society has completely collapsed, and a young woman is driven from her home after her neighborhood is burned and her family murdered. Despite the violence and hopelessness that surrounds her, she is determined to spread her spiritual message.
4. Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle – A comet has slammed into the Earth, destroying all governing structures, and within weeks all of the survivors have reverted to feudalism, cannibalism and worse. Fun times.
5. Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank – The residents of a small Florida town, having been alerted just prior to an all-out nuclear war, must struggle with the vagaries of small-town politics after the apocalypse.
6. The Postman by David Brin – When the end of America comes, what is the one thing that can bring us back from the brink of complete anarchy? That’s right: the U.S. Postal Service.
7. A Gift Upon the Shore by M.K. Wren – Once the apocalypse is over with, two women survive on a farm on the Oregon coast while trying to preserve the remainder of mankind’s knowledge and sparring with the ultra-Christian religious cult down the beach.
8. The Folk of the Fringe by Orson Scott Card - Following World War III, a community of Mormons is one of the few pockets of order remaining in the U.S., trying to rebuild society on the shores of a flooded Salt Lake City.
9. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. – Six hundred years after the Simplification — total nuclear annihilation — a cloister of monks in Utah preserve the little that remains of the world’s knowledge, and wonder whether mankind is perpetually doomed to destroy itself.
10. Earth Abides by George R. Stewart – One of the few survivors of a plague attempts to rebuild society but instead must watch it erode to a primitive state.
11. Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin – It is the far, far future, and the only remnants of the past are a network of computers. This book collects the stories, poetry and rituals of the Kesh, who have built a primitive utopia on the ashes of civilization.

Image via Wikipedia

Here are a bunch of writerly links I’ve rounded up from the Interwebs:

• Cormac McCarthy shares his wisdom in this interview with the Wall Street Journal. My favorite quote: “Anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.”
• Umberto Eco tells Spiegel why writers like to make lists and categorize things.
• Kim Stanley Robinson explains why it’s harder and more important to be writing utopian fiction rather than dystopian fiction. I’m not sure if I entirely agree with him, but it’s an interesting discussion. (io9)
• Here’s an opposing view on the utopia story. (Tor.com)
• John Scalzi elucidates the importance of being paid a fair wage and defines “aspiring writer Stockholm Syndrome” on his blog.
• In another elegant rant, Scalzi comes down on Harlequin for starting a vanity press.
• This Metafilter post links to many more writers-on-writing sites for your perusing pleasure.

Cover of Under the Dome: A Novel

It was a low-volume reading month — in terms of number of books read, if not number of pages, as you will see — and I wasn’t crazy about either book I finished last month. But I have already read two better books in December that won’t show up until next month’s roundup, so things are definitely looking up.

For my book club, I read Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island, his travelogue about Great Britain. Everyone in our club was disappointed with this book, which started out with a very funny opening, but devolved from there into one dreary small town after another, one hotel indistinguishable from the next. I have read another book by Bryson that I enjoyed very much (A Short History of Nearly Everything), so I felt let down by this one.

I also read Stephen King’s latest, Under the Dome (my longer review is here), and its 1000+ pages occupied the bulk of my reading time this month. I had mixed feelings about it. While it held my interest and kept me turning pages late into the night, it still felt like King was recycling material from previous books, and the end was more than a little dispiriting. Still, King’s books are always fun reads, and I’m looking forward to a promised HBO miniseries (possibly in partnership with Steven Speilberg).

So far in December, I’ve finished Wastelands and A Gift Upon the Shore, both post-apocalyptic in theme. Talk about depressing. I’m reading a ghost story now, In the Country of the Young, and looking forward to all the new books I am sure Santa will leave under the tree.

Roundup: 2 books read (click the titles for my full review or reading notes)

Notes from a Small Island, Under the Dome

My rating scale:

• 1 star: Abandoned before finishing. Don’t waste your time.
• 2 stars: Poor. Avoid with extreme prejudice.
• 3 stars: Average. Read it, have a good time and move on. Or not.
• 4 stars: Great. Push it on your friends and family.
• 5 stars: Excellent. Keep it, treasure it, reread it.

Disclaimer: My ratings are very personal and may have little to do with the book’s artistic or commercial merit, or its place in the literary canon. Rather, the rating reflects how the story, characters and writing spoke to me and augmented my understanding of the world.

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• Reading Stephen King may be hazardous to your health (tor.com)

Image via Wikipedia

Flashlight Worthy Book Recommendations has published a timely list of the best reading selections for book clubs, selected among books published as hardcovers or trade paperbacks in 2009. I’m pleased to say that my recommendation, The Year of the Flood, is on the list. Since a diverse group of book bloggers was polled, this is a very eclectic and interesting list, ranging from science fiction to historical fiction to nonfiction. Each book was specifically selected because it’s likely to spark lively discussions. I know I found some new ideas for my own book club — maybe you will too. Check it out!

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• What I Read This Month: October 2009 (readmorebooks.wordpress.com)
• I recommend some great reads about immortality (shannonturlington.com)

Cover of Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse

Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse, edited by John Joseph Adams (2008)

For a retrospective of the post-apocalyptic story — and of the best contemporary science fiction and horror authors dabbling in the sub-genre — you can’t do much better than this collection. In most anthologies, you might expect to find a couple of excellent stories, a couple of clunkers and many just middling. But Wastelands contains more than a fair number of excellent stores, and not a clunker among them. The story styles range from hard SF to haunted-house horror, from meta-fiction to urban fantasy. These authors examine post-apocalyptic surviving from every angle, from the religious to the post-human to the mundane.

While some selections may be familiar to many readers — such as Stephen King’s “The End of the Whole Mess” and Orson Scott Card’s “Salvage”, which open the volume — Wastelands also may introduce you to many new authors. Stand-outs include “The People of Sand and Slag” by Paolo Bacigalupi, a chilling portrayal of post-humanism; “The Last of the O-Forms” by James Van Pelt, a story of genetic mutation in the style of Ray Bradbury; “Speech Sounds” by Octavia Butler, which posits the loss of human language; “Killers” by Carol Emshwiller, a dark tale of survival following an endless war; and probably my favorite, “The End of the World as We Know It,” a slyly metafictional piece that pays homage to the sub-genre as a whole. But as I said, there is not a clunker here — every story in Wastelands is definitely worth reading.

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• Two New Anthologies from John Joseph Adams (tor.com)

Cover of Under the Dome: A Novel

Under the Dome, Stephen King (2009)

If you read Under the Dome literally, the premise gets a bit silly and has some fairly big holes. If you read it metaphorically, it becomes a bleak commentary on human existence. Spoilers follow!

The novel opens when a mysterious, impenetrable force field abruptly encloses the small town of Chester’s Mill, Maine. While the origins of the Dome, as it comes to be called, are unknown, its effects are instantaneous. No one gets in or out.

Immediately, the local demagogue seizes the opportunity to effect a coup and put in place a private army of young thugs. Without threat of consequences, the new police start abusing their power right away, committing rapes, murder and worse (yes, worse). Townspeople start falling like flies from stress, accidents, murder and suicide. The air inside the Dome quickly gets dirty and stale, and the temperature goes up in a clear reference to global warming. In a very short time (perhaps too short), all the rules of civilized society are thrown out the window in Chester’s Mill.

In some ways, the novel follows the typical Stephen King pattern when it comes to his “small town in jeopardy” stories (see also It, The Tommyknockers, Desperation, etc.). Children have strange visions that foretell a horrific event, a typical King trope. King provides plenty of information about what this event will be, puncturing some of the suspense he might have built in anticipating it. But when it comes, it is indeed horrific — apocalyptic, even.

What King has done in Under the Dome is put our society under a magnifying glass. He has sped up time and exaggerated the effects, but it is not difficult to find parallels. “Under the Dome” no one considers the long term. They don’t band together to solve their looming problems — food, clean air and energy will not last long under these circumstances — but rather focus on immediate gains. Or they turn into the frightened mob, willing to believe any ridiculous lie in exchange for a little comfort and security. I was not alone in finding parallels with our current political climate; the New York Times’ review also zeroed in on them. The end result is that friends and neighbors turn on one another, toss away their compassion and humanity, and eventually annihilate themselves. And they do it very quickly.

King often brings religion into his books, and his conception of a benevolent spiritual force — which he usually refers to as “the White” — that inspires ordinary people to stand up, be true and do extraordinary things in combating evil is a strong theme in such novels as The Stand, Desperation and The Talisman. But in Under the Dome, King’s depiction of God is much different: a dispassionate, distance, remorseless being, child-like in its wanton cruelty, playing with human beings as if they were ants or flies. This is not a comforting image to leave readers with, and I closed the book feeling more than a little disturbed.

Under the Dome has its problems, of course. It is a massive book, over 1,000 pages. There is a huge cast of characters, and it sometimes becomes difficult to tell folks apart. People behave in ways that seem a little too pat; these characters don’t have a lot of nuance to them. Long-time King readers will recognize recycled characters and plot devices. The language gets a bit purple at times.

But it is all in service of King’s overarching message. Trouble is, I don’t think that’s a message many of us will want to hear.

Sorry I haven’t posted any reviews lately. I am tearing through the 1,000+ page Under the Dome, but that still is a lot of pages. So in the meantime, I offer some wonderful time wasters for book lovers. These sites will help you spend hours — time you could have spent, well, reading – cataloging and organizing your book collection and shopping for even more time buying more books. You may know some of these sites, but possibly not all, so enjoy.

• Amazon.com: I only mention this behemoth because it’s got the best wishlist feature. Sorry, but until someone comes up with a better-working one, this is where I will be keeping track of all those books I want to buy.
• IndieBound: The wishlist feature here is not nearly as good as Amazon’s, but here is where you can actually buy those books you want from an independent, preferably local bookstore. You can also track your favorite indie bookstores here.
• BookMooch: If you don’t want to buy books, you may be able to mooch them. This is one of the best book-exchange communities I know.
• The Internet Speculative Fiction Database: A fantastic database of genre fiction. I come here to find info on authors and their bibliographies.
• AwardAnnals: A literary award wiki. This is a good place to find books that have won awards and may therefore be worth reading.
• LibraryThing: The best of all the book-cataloging sites, in my opinion. Organize your books by collection, tag ‘em, review ‘em and catalog any bit of trivia about ‘em that you like.
• Lists of Bests: This is a great place for finding and creating book lists. You can also track your reading on the companion site All Consuming.
• Book Blogs: A social network of book bloggers. This is a nice place to showcase your blog and meet fellow bloggers.

I want to know what book sites you use regularly. Please add your favorites to the comments.

Stephen King via last.fm

I am still eagerly waiting for my copy of Under the Dome, otherwise known as the door stopper, to arrive from Amazon.com (purchased for only $9.00 in their stupid under-bidding war with Wal-Mart). In the meantime, here are some juicy Stephen King links to keep us all busy.

• “The Bone Church,” a pretty wonderful King poem that was published in Playboy this month.
• “Premium Harmony,” a new King story published in The New Yorker this month.
• Neil Gaiman says that Under the Dome is one of his favorite novels of the year. (Neil Gaiman’s Journal)
• I think this is bizarre: rumors of another Dark Tower novel, set between Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla. Not sure if this is necessary, but we’ll see. (Suvudu)
• J.J. Abrams says he will not be filming The Dark Tower. This may be good news. I don’t know if they can make a good movie out of the series, and I’d rather they didn’t even try than to muck it up. (DarkUFO)
• Along the same lines, King has written a script for Cell, and he says that Under the Dome may become an HBO series. That’s certainly promising! (Quiet Earth)
• Here are 16 ways to survive a Stephen King story. (The A/V Club)

Cover of Under the Dome: A Novel

I have a ton of links saved up, so let’s get right to them!

• Have you tried Twitter’s new lists feature yet? I have created lists of authors and book news sites, which you may choose to follow (but they are biased toward genre fiction and my favorites). P.S. Let me know if you are on Twitter, because I’d like to follow you.
• It’s November, so Stephen King must have a new book out. Here’s the trailer and some early reviews for Under the Dome. He also has a new poem in Playboy and a new story in the New Yorker. And he’s writing a comic book.
• Ayn Rand is not my favorite author (to say the least), but two new biographies shed some light on her perplexing continued appeal. Here’s a review at Slate.
• Love to read about the apocalypse? I know I do! One writer shares why he likes to write about it. Here’s a nifty graph showing how the nature of the apocalypse has changed over time in post-apocalyptic fiction. Another graph by the same author categorizes apocalypses (apocalypi?) into various groupings, something we organization-nerds always love to see.
• Finally, don’t forget that November 18 is International Science Fiction Reshelving Day.