J by Howard Jacobson

First published in Great Britain in 2014; published by Hogarth on October 14, 2014

J is accurately marketed as a "philosophical work of fiction." It is, unfortunately, strong on philosophy and weak on fiction. To his credit, Howard Jacobson raises important questions and avoids glib answers. He just doesn't do a very good job of storytelling.

The novel's beginning sets a promising scene. J takes place in a future of shared conventional thinking. Spontaneity and unpredictability are scorned. Jazz, wit, and other forms of improvisation have fallen out of favor. Art is a "primordial celebration of the natural world." It is meant to provoke feelings of tranquility and harmony, not anxiety or despair.

Prevailing sentiment in Jacobson's future is that we must forget the past. Conversations about the seminal event of the relatively recent past begin with "what happened, if it happened." The "twin itches" of recollection and penance are no longer scratched. People apologize without reference to any offense for which an apology might be due because random apologies eradicate and anesthetize guilt. Walls and monuments that commemorate war and suffering are gone, the "recriminatory past" replaced with an "unimpeachable future." Access to books (and therefore ideas) is restricted. Even "hoarding heirlooms" is an offense, although one the authorities will overlook if it is not carried to excess.

It is against this wonderfully detailed background that a plot fails to emerge. Instead, Jacobson gives the reader a jumble of loosely connected storylines. It is as if Jacobson put all of his effort into creating the story's background and failed to find a story that would fit within it.

One plot thread involves a romance between Kevern "Coco" Cohen, the child of parents who hid their past from him while they are still alive, and his lover Ailinn, who thinks that memories are best forgotten since memories are mostly bad. Kevern slowly uncovers his past as the story slowly moves forward. The path he travels is full of dull digressions.

Another thread is something like a murder mystery as a detective investigates a series of deaths. That story goes nowhere. Another involves a woman who had an affair with her teacher who seems to have been added to the story only because someone needed to provide an explanation of what happened, if it happened. Then there's an art historian who exists to reinforce the book's central conceit while adding little of substance to the novel.

While I was unimpressed with Jacobson's story (or failure to tell a story), I found the novel worth reading for its thoughtful exploration of ideas. One set of characters, for example, wars over the dichotomy of "never forget" and "don't live in the past." Having conquered oppression, a character suggests, "there is no need for all the morbid remembering and re-remembering. I don't say we should forget, I say we have been given the chance to progress and we should take it." Through its characters, the novel allows competing philosophies to spar: acknowledging that the past is past should not bring "automatic absolution" for past atrocities versus the sense that people of the present should not be made to bear the burden of guilt for things done by earlier generations. Jacobson also has some insightful things to say about cultural identity as a "shapely, long-ingested, cultural antagonism, in which everything, from who we worship to what we eat, is accounted for and made clear. We are who we are because we are not them."

Jacobson is a clever prose stylist -- sometimes too clever, he conveys the sense of a writer being clever for the sake of being clever -- but the cleverness kept me reading even when I had doubts about the content. There are some lengthy dead spots, including a woman in a coma whose search for words might have made a strong creative writing essay but added little to Jacobson's effort. The characters are haphazard constructs of beautiful prose; I wish Jacobson had made them worthy of the language he expended on them. For ideas and style, I would recommend J; for plot and storytelling, I cannot. My Recommended With Reservations is a compromise verdict.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Ring Around the Sun by Clifford D. Simak

First published in 1953

First published in 1953 after being serialized in a science fiction magazine, Ring Around the Sun continues to hold profound meaning for the modern reader. Simak's early take on the multiverse theory (which he describes as a series of worlds, each traveling a second behind the last) anticipates a theme that would later become commonplace in science fiction. The novel also addresses evolution in the guise of mutants who have abilities that are unavailable to most people. They aren't super-powered, but they have a strong intuitive sense that helps them understand people and situations, causing them to gravitate to positions of leadership.

None of these themes are known to Jay Vickers as the novel begins. He knows only that new products are appearing -- razor blades that never grow dull, affordable cars that will last forever, houses that are freely available to people with low incomes, artificial carbohydrates that promise to end famine. The value of these remarkable achievements is disputed by those who view them as a challenge to an economy that depends on new product sales for continuing employment of factory workers. Simak doesn't use the phrase "planned obsolescence" (the phrase was not popularized until 1954) but, always a cutting edge thinker, Simak's novel illustrates both the benefit and harms of deliberately manufacturing products that will require replacement.

As Vickers becomes aware of rumblings about a conspiracy to destroy the American economy (given the time frame, communists are the natural suspects), he is approached by a man who blames mutants for the products. Vickers eventually learns the truth, and learns some surprising things about his true nature -- surprising to the reader, not just to Vickers.

The novel's themes -- the tension between business and consumers, suspicion of and discrimination against those who are labeled as "different," enslavement to technology and commerce, the advantages of a simple lifestyle rooted in self-sufficiency, the desire to escape mundane reality by living an invented "second life," the nature of evolution and the purpose of life -- are enduring. Although decades have passed since its publication, nothing about Ring Around the Sun feels dated. It is a classic work of sf from one of the genre's strongest thinkers.

RECOMMENDED

Happy Thanksgiving!

Cosmocopia by Paul Di Filippo

First published in 2008; published digitally by Open Road Media on September 2, 2014

If Camus wrote science fiction, something like Cosmocopia might have been the result. Absurdist in approach, inventive in style, and imaginative in content, Cosmocopia is an offbeat novel that introduces the reader to a world that is recognizable for all its absurdity. It is, in fact, just as arbitrarily cruel and rewarding as the world we inhabit.

Cosmocopia is a parallel universe story. The “Cosmocopia” is, in fact, a collection of universes shaped like a horn of plenty. At the small end of the horn (or so the legend goes) resides the Conceptus, the creator of the Cosmocopia. Each new universe takes its place on the ever-expanding outer ring.

Frank Lazorg, an aging artist, has not produced any work since his stroke. He receives as a gift a package of powder from a rare beetle. He is told he can use it to produce a beautiful crimson paint. Feeling compelled to put a bit of the powder on his tongue, Lazord is instantly invigorated. After experimenting with the powder, he contacts his former model and lover, a young woman who abandoned him shortly after he lost his artistic powers. Lazorg, who wants to complete his masterpiece and needs her as his muse, does not react well when she rejects his plea. What follows can be described as an act of artistic inspiration … or desperation.

Meanwhile, Crutchsump and her pet wurzel live on a parallel world in Sidetrack City, where Crutchsump ekes out a meager living by collecting bones. The shifflet skeletons are easy to find but the monster that has recently haunted the Mudflats has deterred the other bonepickers. When Crutchsump encounters the monster … well, it isn’t what she expected.

For reasons that are only superficially explained, Lazorg comes to live in Crutchsump’s world. Crutchsump’s people are pretty much human except for a key anatomical difference. Unisexual genitals are located where a human's mouth would be.

Crutchsum's world is pretty much like Earth but for another key difference. Lazorg is frustrated to discover that he cannot paint because Crutchsump’s universe does not allow three dimensions to be represented as two. It is possible, however, to make sculptures out of a cosmic material that can be accessed with the right tool. Lazorg’s experimentation with the new art form is a transformative experience for both Lazorg and Crutchsump, but it is the transformation of Lazorg that underpins the novel.

By the end, Cosmocopia crosses the threshold from the strange to the bizarre. The point of the novel, apart from telling an amusing story, might lie in Crutchsump’s insistence, in the face of adversity, that we fashion our own destinies. In other words, it is pointless to blame Conceptus for problems that we bring about ourselves. On the other hand, a reader might find Lazorg’s point of view more convincing:  the universe is unfair and if Conceptus isn’t to blame for that, who is? Although Lazorg is confronted with a choice as the novel nears a resolution, Paul Di Filippo seems to suggest that there may be no reason to choose one philosophy over the other. Life unfolds. We influence some of it, some we can’t, and in the end, that’s life … whatever universe we happen to find ourselves in.

RECOMMENDED

Symbiont by Mira Grant

Published by Orbit on November 25, 2014

As we learned in Parasite, Sal the Tapeworm is inhabiting the body of Sally Mitchell the Dead Girl. Her identity crisis continues in Symbiont. Sal is a chimera, a genetic mixture of human and tapeworm. Most others who are being taken over by tapeworms lose their cognitive abilities as their brains are eaten, but Sal is a special case. In fact, most humans who have been taken over by tapeworms shamble, a sure sign that they are zombies, even if they are known here as "sleepwalkers." A zombie by another name ... Another clue to the zombie-like nature of sleepwalkers is their drive to gnaw on people who are not being controlled by tapeworms. Again, Sal feels no such urge.

Although a zombie apocalypse is unfolding in the background, Symbiont, like Parasite, isn't really a zombie novel. Since the world has enough zombie novels, readers should be grateful for that, although it isn't clear that the reading public's desire for zombies is satiable. Parasite was more of a medical thriller than a zombie novel while Symbiont is a compilation of chase scenes, escape scenes, and "am I human or am I a tapeworm?" scenes.

Symbiont feels like a bridge between the first and last novels. Given the novel's length, surprisingly little of significance happens. The meaningful aspects of the novel could have been distilled to 50 pages and incorporated into the last novel or the upcoming one. Mira Grant admits she intended to write a duology but ended up writing a trilogy (perhaps because book buyers like trilogies, making them easier to market). Most of Symbiont gives me the impression of filler designed to turn two books into three.

Sal spends the first part of the novel bonding with her tapeworm family and with her uninfected boyfriend while reminding the reader of her automobile phobia (a theme that recurs with tiresome regularity). The conflict that Sal feels -- she knows she's a tapeworm, sympathizes with tapeworms (to a degree), and even thinks from a tapeworm's perspective (although the perspective is informed by human intelligence) -- makes Sally a more interesting zombie than most. Later in the novel she confronts her daddy issues, daddy being a military researcher of infectious diseases who views Sally as a lab rat rather than a daughter. This leads to some weepy feeling on Sally's part and several repetitive scenes that could have been productively excised from the novel.

The evil scientist who still thinks he can profit from the zombie apocalypse (apparently failing to realize that zombies have no buying power) is too daft to take seriously. Surviving consumers will be eager have tapeworms implanted in their bodies, knowing that tapeworm-infected people wiped out San Francisco? I don't see it.

There are, however, some clever moments in Symbiont. I particularly liked the notion of crows luring sleepwalkers to their deaths as they tumble from a bridge, where waiting sharks put an end to their miserable lives. I also like Sal's divided loyalty between humans and tapeworms. Grant's writing style is fluid and she avoids the worst excesses of zombie novels. Although I was indifferent to most of the novel, I'm looking forward to the final book's resolution of the mess that Sal's creators have made.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS