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Finally got to read this again after 20 years. Franquin's dark thoughts probably works best if you're familiar with his other work, especially Gaston, whose humour it strips down to the darkest, grimiest despair. This is a comedian who, for the most part, is sick of telling jokes. The satire in Idées is blunt as fuck, and the punchlines don't offer any release; instead Franquin settles for describing a black-and-white cynical world where the only way anybody wins is that the people he doesn't like (hunters, politicians, military, businessmen, etc) may occasionally get a taste of their own medicine. This is a world in which the government's solution to a plague is to order more hearses, where solar flares are explained as the sun throwing up in embarrassment of us, where the welcoming lights of a faraway village turn out to be the eyes of wolves, and where the last two survivors after a nuclear war try to start a fire by smashing two handgrenades together.

No, subtle it ain't. But damn, it's good.

Not sure why I put this one off after buying it. Maybe the cover, which screams "kids' book" rather than "ambitious young adult"; maybe the Lyn Pratchett co-credit, maybe simply the fact that it's not Discworld. When I do pick it up, it sticks to my hands.

Nation is a delightful book, but not one of delights. No points for guessing the event that inspired it in 2004, I guess: it begins with a tsunami raging across the ocean, laying waste to the tiny islands of the ... Well, not the South Pacific, because the world is ever so slightly different here, but it might as well be. At first, there only seems to be two survivors: A young native boy, who only survived because he was away on his initiation rite to become a man and now never can, and a young English girl whose ship is smashed on his island, and as far as they know they're the only people alive within thousands of miles. So basically Robinson Crusoe/Blue Lagoon with funny footnotes about tree-dwelling octopodes, right?

Except Pratchett(s) wants to do more. The real starting point is this: Mau, just returned to the island that's the only home he's ever known to find his village smashed, his family gone, corpses strewn in the treetops, the gods he's always been taught watch over his island scattered... and once he's buried them all, when he sits in his ruined civilization with only the ghosts of his ancestors screaming at him to fix things, he starts asking WHY? WHAT THE HELL? HOW? WHERE? Basically, if Pratchett didn't seem like such a nice guy, I'd say this was him telling Philip Pullman that anything you can do, I can do better, and doing it effortlessly.

Nation is both one of the emotionally rawest - the first three chapters are nothing short of horrifying, and nothing gets healed easily - and intellectually ambitious Pratchett books I've read. From a shattered world, he gives his young protagonists a chance to build a world anew, question aspects of faith, class, gender, science, language... and he does it well. Sure, it gets a little preachy towards the end, and he necessarily oversimplifies some aspects, but for the most part it's a beautiful melding of love story, creation myth, and call for sanity. A novel about questions that refuses to accept simple answers.

“I recall no arrangement, Mau, no bargain, covenant, agreement or promise. There is what happens, and what does not happen. There is no 'should.'”
"Does NOT happen!"

Feed asks you to bring a few things and forget a few things. Got your love for zombie lore and pop culture, enabling you to grin from ear to ear every time the story references Romero or Whedon? Good. Got your willingness to cheer for tech-savvy characters who may be a bit single-minded when it comes to uncovering The TruthTM no matter what the price? Good. Got your love for complex politics and intelligent villains? ...Might want to leave that at the security booth at the entrance. I promise you'll get it back unharmed at the end of the novel, which will come sooner than you expect.

Because this is one hell of a thriller, that hits the ground running and barely lets up for a second for almost 600 pages. McGuire paints a detailed picture of a society where the zombie virus has been endemic for 25 years - the only thing the George Romero movies got wrong was that the dead rising would be an apocalypse; instead, it's turned the entire world into a low-intensity war zone where an outbreak can happen anywhere at any time and you need to be constantly on your toes, with everyday life turned into a never-ending parade of blood tests, airlocks and security checks. She gives us a team of heroic news bloggers to cheer for (named Georgia, Shaun and Buffy, because what else would you name your kids when they'll have to spend their lives surviving zombies), who get to cover the presidential election and find themselves uncovering things the people in power want to hide at any cost. The occasional clunky narration (some of the actual blog posts we get to read, oh dear) aside, it's both fun and enthralling. And the only thing that keeps me from loving it unreservedly is the nagging feeling that I'm watching a Scooby Doo episode, where the villains are easily identified, their motivations ludicrously one-dimensional, and their underestimation of our heroes verges on the suicidal. I have enough trouble believing that news blogs will still be seen as something edgy and new in the year 2040; that career politicians would not even understand how the web works is just a liiiittle too convenient.

But hey, Buffy wasn't The Wire in terms of politics either, and I can overlook that as long as I get my daily dose of brains and the sort of storytelling that makes me want to overlook its flaws.

Någonstans djupt in i en skog i det lapptäcke av småriken som en gång kallades ”Ryssland” står tre statyer (för naturligtvis måste det alltid finnas statyer efter stora män). Han med mustaschen, som störtade Tsarryssland via revolution; han med födelsemärket, som störtade Sovjet via demokratisering; och han utan haka som en gång för alla gjorde slut på eländet. Dit åker enstaka gamla anti-nostalgiker för att nostalgiskt lägga ner en krans och tacka. Den här bilden dyker upp i tre av berättelserna i Tellurien. Eller rättare sagt, det är samma berättelse berättad ur tre olika vinklar, vilket ju gör den till tre helt olika berättelser. Eller?

Vi börjar om. Tellurien är en gränsvarelse, någonstans mellan roman och novellsamling; femtio kapitel, eller noveller, eller utdrag ur längre berättelser som sällan uttryckligen hänger ihop, som blandar science fiction, diskbänksrealism och pjäsfragment om vartannat. Det de har gemensamt är tiden (någonstans i bortre halvan av 2000-talet) och platsen (Europa, med fokus på det som en gång var Ryssland), men precis som Ryssland rymmer många länder är även tiden flexibel, utan tydliga gränser. Kriget mot ISIS-eller-vad-de-kallar-sig-den-här-veckan har kommit och gått, Europa har återfallit i en förnapoleonsk surv av småstater, furstendömen och fristäder, och Ryssland självt har inte klarat sig bättre.

Någonstans bland alla dessa småstater – från moderna storstäder till neostalinistiska nöjesparker – ligger det lilla riket Tellurien, undangömt i bergen som ett nytt Samarkand, och som bara har en enda exportvara: spikar av ämnet tellur, som om de slås rakt in i din skalle på rätt sätt, av en expert med rätt insikt i gamla ahuramazdanska riter, ger dig det absolut bästa ruset som kan tänkas. Telluret låter dig se precis vilken värld du vill, samtidigt som du är fullt vaken. Du kan träffa vem som helst från hela historien, åberopa dig på dem, dra nytta av deras visdom och veta det de vet. Eller åtminstone bli övertygad om att du gör det, vilket väl är samma sak?

Och just det ja, det finns genmanipulerade människor i alla storlekar och designer, från jättar som kan lyfta hus till intelligenta löskukar som tröttnat på sitt jobb. Och korsriddare som anfaller Istanbul med jetpacks på ryggen. Och hemliga revolutionära sekter. Etc, etc, etc. Det är den sortens bok… eller rättare sagt, det är alla de sorternas bok.

Nej, Tellurien låter sig inte summeras, och alla försök att blurba den med någon enkel jämförelse, vare sig det är med Tolkien eller Tolstoj (eller Calvino eller Pynchon, för den delen) faller ganska platt. Sorokin är inget fan av Putin, se bara på käftsmällen I det heliga Rysslands tjänst, men även om Vlad får sig sina törnar här (i den mån någon minns honom) är siktet inställt högre. Tellurien utspelar sig i en värld som backat tillbaka till en nymedeltida syn på makten, där de komplexa resonemangen och stora ideologierna och berättelserna slutligen dött eller förvandlats till meningslös underhållning, och det enda som återstår är Därför. Därför att jag har råd med det, Därför att de står i vägen för oss, Därför att vi måste skylla på någon, Därför att vi måste sätta oss själva främst, Därför att vår makt bygger på det.

Den logiska slutpunkten för den sortens naket maktutövande som Putin är långtifrån ensam om att ägna sig åt, som alltid handlar i egenintresse och talar i den stora massans namn… och gör den inte det får man väl minska massan den talar för. Det snackas mycket om ekokammare; varje novell här, varje land som skildras, utspelar sig i en egen ekokammare, med sin egen jargong och historia som går långt bortom det vi läsare får uttalat för oss. Det är inte det att det inte finns någon röd tråd, det finns för många, alla så slitna att de knappt ens räcker från från en sida till nästa, långa och starka nog att binda folk i, men inte att förbinda dem.

Vid något tillfälle kommer jag att tänka på Neal Stephensons gamla The Diamond Age, där teknologin gått så långt att materiellt överflöd är ett mått på fattigdom medan kunskap och klass är hårdvaluta och makt. (Orealistiskt, visst, men science fiction, vet ni.) Sorokins framtidsvision är inte alls så välordnad och lättbetvingad, här kan ett schyst samurajsvärd bara dela upp världen i ännu fler fragment. Tellurien är så fantastiskt uppfinningsrik, där en kastas fram och tillbaka mellan olika berättelser som en knappt hinner greppa förrän en annan dyker upp, skrivna av en författare som kan ta till sig vilken stil som helst och är precis lika bekväm med höglitterära utläggningar, trashig action och bitsk satir… men hur förbannat kul det än är att läsa får helheten det att krypa efter ryggen på mig.

Delisle's depiction of life as a visitor in North Korea - unable to take photographs, but obviously no one can prevent him from drawing - is unnerving in more than one way.

First, there's what he actually shows us; the empty highways, the empty hotels, the way nobody ever just strolls trough the streets of Pyongyang, the way the Great Leaders are literally everywhere, elevated to godhood status with all outside influences removed. His referencing 1984 several times is on the nose, but still fits: This is a society where Big Brother not only is watching, but has taught (or at least seems to have taught) the people to watch themselves as well.

"You're familiar with Marx? Very good."
"A little... but isn't everyone?"
"No. For a capitalist, it's very rare."
"Really...?"

Then, however, there's the fact that as a Westerner, he is completely outside this. He can afford to tell his guides exactly what he thinks, give them subversive literature that could get them in trouble, speculate on what they're actually thinking but aren't allowed to say, portray them as exactly the kind of mindless, humourless drones and tell jokes at their expense. There's an unpleasant sense of Mighty Whitey syndrome, understated but still there; it's not just that he can't get to actually know any North Koreans, but also that he doesn't seem to want to. It's all very Lost In Translation. There's a certain poetry to the fact that he's in North Korea to teach North Koreans how to animate Western cartoons - teach them how to understand how people (or fictional children's versions thereof) actually act - that I sort of wish had been developed.

I see a lot of [drawings depicting] versions of "The triumph of socialism". Always with a wide chest and a square jaw.

Good thing we don't get that over here, huh?

The Crowded Universe follows the (American) search for planets outside the solar system from 1995 to the launch of Kepler in 2009 in great detail, offering a lot of interesting facts on a topic that's endlessly fascinating, and getting into the personal and political conflicts connected with it...

So why just the two stars in a book that literally contains millions of them? Well, I'm not going to claim to be fair, and Boss obviously knows more about the subject than I ever would even if I spent the rest of my life studying it. But the fact remains, something this interesting shouldn't be this, well, dull. I don't really mind that he occasionally goes off-topic to rant about politics (noting that the only way to get the GWB administration to pay for the budget they needed would have been to let the P in Terrestrial Planet Finder stand for Petroleum), because at least then he sounds like he's actually invested in it. The US-centricism is a bit annoying as well, but I guess the book is basically intended as a letter to Obama asking for more cash before the Europeans beat NASA to, I dunno, landing on a comet or something. (And yes, the endless harping on about NASA budget processes gets tiring.) It's written exclusively from an astrophysicist's point of view - it's about the search for a way to find habitable worlds, more than the question of what might be on the actual planets - which is also fine. But I think the book's major problem is that he's chosen to write it as a journal, going through findings and theories day by day, returning to the same arguments over and over every time someone publishes a new article, rather than trying to summarize what was known when the book was written. How we learn something is always important to teach, but for most of the time in this book, I find myself waiting for the other shoe to drop. Instead, the book spends so much time mired in minutiae you never get an overview of just why this topic is so important.

Milhouse: Do any of these boxes contain candy?
Factory owner: No. We only make boxes to ship nails. Any other questions?
Martin: When will we see a finished box, sir?
Factory owner{chuckles}: We do not do that here. That is done in Flint, Michigan.
Bart: Has anyone lost their hand in the machinery?
Factory owner: No, that has never happened.
Bart: And then the disembodied hand suck out and starting strangling people?
Factory owner: I do not know what factory you are talking about! We only make boxes.

In the words of Bob Dylan: "Fuck fuck fuck, dig dig dig." I'm not sure if Abe's excavation of life, freedom and relationships actually goes anywhere, but that may be the point - just one person, captured in a trap and gradually adapting to it, while the world is immutably mutating. Doesn't quite work as a thriller - possibly due to the translation, it's obviously hard to tell how much of the detached, academic tone is Abe's doing and how much is the translator's - but as a post-Kafka thing, it's sometimes absolutely beautiful in its terribleness.

Still think I prefer the film version, though.

More complete review to come, possibly. Reading Codrescu is a headfuck, not without its annoyances (the fact that he pretty much anticipates them doesn't diminish them) but nevertheless endlessly fascinating. I want to quote half the book here; luckily I read it in Swedish so I won't bother with a re-translation, which means that those quotes will be left in the book. Which will probably please the old bugger, unless it doesn't.