Review: The Hidden Girl and Other Stories, by Ken Liu

NB: I received a copy of this book in exchange for a review. 

In this book, Ken Liu has put together a collection of truly excellent short stories. Combining science-fiction, fantasy, Chinese folklore, and speculative/futuristic concepts, this collection offers something for every kind of reader. Most startling, to me, was the accuracy of his vision in seeing not just our world as it is, but the world as it could be on our current technological trajectory and moral values. 

For example, 'The Gods Will Not Be Chained' offers a view on the melding of mind and machine, where AI companies take the brains of their most valuable workers when they are terminally ill, and upload them in order to make them make them eternal workers. 

Another story poses an interesting, existential dilemma - if you had the choice, would you upload your consciousness into a global database in which you could exist forever, albeit on a virtual platform only? Or would you choose to die with your mortal body?

Short stories seem an extremely difficult kind of writing to master, but Liu has achieved it with every story in this collection. Some of them, as you see the further you read on, are linked, but others stand out on their own. Every arc and character within each story packs a punch, whether quietly or loudly, and even within such short forms good plot twists abound. 

For all the AI jargon and futuristic concepts that Liu manages to handle so deftly and intelligently - there were a good few portions that I had to re-read to get my head around the technical concepts - he doesn't lose sight of what matters most to a lot of readers: Do I care about these characters? Or, if they're intentionally villainous, do these characters provoke strong feelings in me? The answer is yes, in every one. Try as I might, I could not find one story with a flat note or an unresolved arc or a lukewarm character. 

This collection of stories will challenge the reader and make them think about not just where we are as a world today but what it could be. Technology is racing ahead of social progression and, if left unchecked, it's not too unrealistic to think we could end up with some of the structures Liu proposes in some of these stories. 

Review: Travellers in the Third Reich, by Julia Boyd

This book is a truly exceptional piece of historical non-fiction. In painstaking, minute detail, Julia Boyd writes about a curious concept that we tend not to think about in the history of Germany post-World War One to the end of World War Two: tourists to Germany.

Beginning with the immediate aftermath of World War One, Boyd relates, using letters, diaries, and other writings from dozens of people, the trips of people who went to Germany between 1919 and 1945. Most were tourists, but some are military figures and their wives; diplomats and their families; and students from Europe and further afar. Germany's perceived crimes in the Great War matter not so much to particularly British travellers who still feel an affinity with their German brethren.

The subtitle of the book is to do with seeing creeping fascism and Nazism slowly work its way into every part of Germany. Despite the rise of authoritarianism, tourists and officials alike either close their eyes to, or embrace, the Nazi MO. Most chillingly, despite the clear rise in official anti-semitism, many of these visitors are blind to it, accept it as part of Germany's recovery, or even support it. They agree that Jews have been a problem for Germany and the Nazis are doing the right things to sort out 'the problem'. The Nazis, in their encouragement of tourism to Germany as part of a global propaganda effort, even offer excursions to labour camps as a way of showing that even with 'undesirables', the Nazis are benevolent deliverers of 'justice'.

Most surprisingly, even though tourism and students who spend time at universities in Germany slow down just before the war, they are still there. Love of Germany, either in spite of or because of the Nazis, don't stop people from flocking to its shores.

This book is really a phenomenal read. Julia Boyd uses her years of research to bring hundreds of different strands together into a coherent whole that is moving, deft, weighty, and superbly fascinating.

Review: Carbon Game, Miles Montague

NB: I was given a free copy of this book in exchange for review.

Carbon Game has a smart and intriguing premise - extreme-right activists from South Africa infiltrating extreme-left activism groups in the U.K. in order to manipulate an attack that will economically benefit the very people that the "lefties" stand against.

The novel is set towards the end of the apartheid era - India are demanding harsh sanctions on South Africa, America are considering following suit (it's an election year and they have to ride the way of public opinion), but Conservative Britain are lagging behind. They tentatively support some sanctions but don't really want to be a part of it.

The Afrikaaner Resistance Party, an extreme right-wing party in South Africa, want to figure out a way in which to guard their people against, what they see, increasing black rule. They concoct a plan to essentially start a civil war so they can fight for a whites-only land in South Africa. To do this, they need arms, and money to buy said arms.

Enter Michael Cranmer. A rebellious liberal during his youth, he swings completely politically right after an attack on his family leaves his mother and sister dead. Posing as a wildlife photographer, he infiltrates a left-wing pressure group in the UK who campaign for the end of apartheid. His true purpose is to persuade the group to blow up the Diamond Trading Corporation in London, which controls 60% of the world's diamonds. With that out of commission, he will purchase diamonds stolen a few months back and sell them to buy arms.

It's a good plan - but the left wing activists don't want to play by his rules.

Plot and pace wise, this is everything you'd want from a novel of this genre. Plenty of twists and turns, mental gymnastics by the investigating agents on the case, double and triple crossing by those involve, and the right amount of tension to pull you in and let you ride along without getting frustrated.

Some of his descriptions of women in the book, however, irked me. Whether it was a context thing - the novel is set in the 1980s, so presumably Montague was showing the casual sexism of the time - or some other writing intention, it nevertheless grated on me. A prime example was when one of the characters, Robyn, while waiting for Michael, idly wondered whether she should get a boob job for him. Other incidents were contained during dialogue, which made more sense than during the non-dialogue descriptions of female characters in the book, but still unpleasant.

Despite this, I was glad that I got to read this book - it was very different than others on my reading list and set during a time that is not too often written about, and it would be valuable seeing more of it. Montague has got the right balance between action, political machinations, and the concept of the heist in this novel. I would recommend it and will be keeping an eye out for future works from him.