Feeling I had missed a classic of English literature and curious to see Forster’s views on colonial India, I started this book on a plane to India and finished it before I returned. The writing style is excellent, the characters are complex and, for the most multifaceted, the setting is inspired by Forster’s visits to India and hence realistic, the story timeline is well-set, for the most (ie except for the last part), and the scenario is engaging and realistic, but, obviously, what makes the book a masterpiece is its depiction of the British Raj from many perspectives, from British enforcers of its colonialism to British critics of said colonialism, to Indians trained in Britain, to completely local Indians, with the clash of multiple cultures and religions. Victorian prudery mixes with racial prejudices, resentment against discriminations leads to early (?) germs of fighting for independence, and the characteristic reaction of such a discriminatory and racist society to a claim of sexual impropriety on a British woman from a native man. This central event of the book is brought in both very subtly and unexpectedly (for those like me who had no initial idea of the story), with an equally subtle uncertainty about what really happened that remains till the end. If anything, the book may be delivering a pessimistic message on the impossible friendship between individuals from the ruling and oppressed groups, despite it being scandalous at the time for even suggesting such a friendship was conceivable. (The attached cover of the Penguin Classic edition is amazingly close to the excursion episode!)
Archive for Victorian society
a passage to India [book review]
Posted in Books, Mountains, pictures, Travel with tags book review, Britain, British Raj, Chennai, Chennai Mathematical Institute, E.M. Forster, imperialism, India, Indian independence, Penguin Classics, religions, systemic racism, tea, Victorian society, Walt Whitman on July 16, 2025 by xi'anStories of your life and Others [book review]
Posted in Books, Kids, University life with tags 1950's, AI, alien intelligence, alternative reality, Amazing Stories, Babel tower, book review, calliagnosia, CHANCE, cover, eugenism, evolutionary biology, Genetics, golem, Kurt Gödel, linguistics, Nature, Pascal's wager, Philosophy of religions, steampunk, Ted Chiang, Victorian society on March 18, 2025 by xi'an
Just finished the book Stories of your life and Others by Ted Chiang, which like the later Exhalation I deeply enjoyed. The book was published in 2001, with some of its stories appearing as early as 1990, hence this book review is of little relevance when many reviews and commentaries have been published, including academic reviews. (No chance for CHANCE, then!)
“Perhaps you have not noticed that the lower classes are reproducing at a rate exceeding that of the nobility and gentry (…) Consequently, our nation would eventually drown in coarse dullards.” (p.186)
While the original cover seems to cater to old-fashion science-fictions books and magazine of the 1950’s, like Amazing Stories, the contents are much more philosophical than science-fiction-al, even when the universe (or the physical laws that) Chiang creates relies on elaborate construction based on science. (Same thing happens with Exhalation.) With a take on religions and their logical loopholes that I particularly enjoy, like Hell is the Absence of God, where the central character is no given the choice of Pascal’s wager. And the nonsense of attributing handicaps and hardships to dog’s testing impacted individuals, as well as the involuntary humour in the innocent casualties resulting from angels visiting Earth. Some stories I liked less, like Understand, about a superhuman emerging from drug tests since the end cannot keep up with the premises. But others I really appreciated, from Babel, set in a naïve (very medieval) version of the World, with a flat Earth and a solid sky. To Division by Zero, where a Gödelian mathematician pushes the impossibility theorem to ruin all of mathematics, and to the superb Seventy Two Letters, that mixes cybernetics, Kabbalists’ golem, genetics and eugenics, in a Victorian setting that could make it pass for a steampunk story, but I disagree with this label since the novella somewhat runs backwards by returning to a freedom of choice that trumps eugenic goals, while aligned with the Victorian perception of science. The same with Story of Your Life, about constructing communication channels with a perplexing if peaceful alien race, whose purpose for this attempt is never clear, which is not an issue with enjoying the built-up of an understanding, as well as the disrupted time-frame of the narration. Or even the short (Nature) story, The Evolution of Human Science, which reflects the very real concern that AI could take over research, into directions that would escape human understanding (not a good signal for i!). Leaving hermeneutics (of AI research) to humans. And the final Liking what you see, a clever variation on the issues of “lookism”, the “burden” of beauty, and an imagined condition called calliagnosia that makes people insensitive to beauty or lack thereof in a person.
Exhalation [book review]
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures with tags AI, AI for good, Arecibo, Bible, book review, Hugo Awards, Joyce Carol Oates, Melbourne, Nature, Nicolas Copernicus, novella, science fiction, short stories, social media, St Kilda, steampunk, The New Yorker, tramways, upgrade, Victorian society on January 18, 2024 by xi'an
Exhalation is a diverse and original collection of (more or less) short stories by Ted Chiang, published between 2007 and 2015 in different journals including Nature at the time Nature had a weekly one-page short story (of varying quality). This is science fiction in a sense, given that all stories involve impossible situations and a connection with science at a low technical level (no space opera). However, it is much closer to philosophy in my opinion in that the author builds upon an alternate reality to question ours, sometimes with remarkable prescience and a remarkable kindness towards his characters.
So, there is the time travel portal story that does not lead to paradoxes, even with temporal loops, but to a reflection on human nature. (Not my favourite but this first story got the Nebula Award, the Hugo Award, and the Seiun Award!) They are doomed universes, either because the pressure is slowly getting away, or because a lack of communication and awareness pushes one species towards extinction (with the side sad coïncidence of being associated with the soon to fall Arecibo dish!). There are social media killing free will but calling for resistance. And a novella on virtual entities (digients) turning more and more real, while the company that produced them goes bankrupt and their universe is no longer upgraded, which also brings a well-balanced discussion on whether or not they should become legal entities and be given freedom, resonating in opposition to the recent doomsaying warnings about AI taking over humanity. Plus reflecting on the hardships of parenting and teaching. There is a Victorian story of building a difference engine nanny, with terrible consequences on two successive generations. There is another story about the potential horror of having one’s entire life stored on line and accessible by sentient interfaces, negating the very notion of memory since both remembering and forgetting escape the individual. There is a pre-Copernician universe where everything literally fits the Bible creation, until it does not. And there is the case of a quantic collection of universes where alternate paths could be consulted, to the point of interacting with alternate selves, maybe a bit fuzzy in the scientific details, but again leading to deeper reflections on human nature. I read the book around my trip to Melbourne and back, which may explain for my highly positive reaction as I had plenty of free time and sunny days to enjoy reading in the planes, on the trams (where I nearly lost my wallet, rescued by the kindness of another passenger!), and in my St Kilda comfy rental, but I do very much recommend it. Especially for those with a scientific mind. Joyce Carol Oates wrote for The New Yorker a much longer and better argued analysis of Exhalation. when the book appeared.
[Disclaimer about potential self-plagiarism: this post or an edited version may eventually appear in my Books Review section in CHANCE.]
a journal of the conquest, war, famine, and death year
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags Becky Chambers, book review, books, British Columbia, COVID-19, Daniel Defoe, dark fantasy, film review, Haruki Murakami, Iceland, Journal of the Plague Year, multiverse, potatoes, prequel, Russian invasion, The Mirror Visitor, The Witcher, Thomas De Quincey, Ukraine, Victorian society on September 22, 2023 by xi'an
Read [on the way back home (and during the following jet-lagged nights)] the Ninth Rain and its sequel the Bitter Twins, by Jen Williams, for which she won twice a British Fantasy Award. I am twice as surprised given that it is quite a poor series, with a simplistic approach to its world building, a dreary time-line repeating the all-too-common pattern of a very few individuals saving the planet from a recurrent alien invasion, and bickering about mundane issues like clothes or food while facing an alien invasion. The only thing I appreciated was the character of Vintage (!), both vignerone and femme savante. But I particularly disliked the mix of fantasy (kingdoms and a mostly primitive society) and science-fiction (spaceships, magic-driven trains). The cliffhanging final chapter of the Ninth Rain was rather predictable and the inconsistency in the character psychology a major flaw. The second volume is even poorer, with new major elements of the world being suddenly revealed, more bickering/whining, and even less consistency… I had also brought west the massive Les Furtifs by Alain Damasio, which I bought in De Gaulle airport months ago. But I just could not finish it, due to both the pretentious if clever style and the charicaturesque depiction of rebels within a highly numeric capitalistic society.
Came home to solve electrical problems (by calling the right company!), harvest the very first harvest of potatoes [a small basket amounting to more than my yearly consumption], and clean the garden to try to reduce the population of mosquitoes that exploded this (wet) summer. Due to the hot weather, cooked very little, having instead all sorts of salads, including a refreshing radish marinade vaguely inspired by Murakami.
Watched the (short) second season of D.P., a Korean series on the pursuit of deserters from the Korean Army (during their military service). Rather a serialised movie since the story sketches over the six episodes, quite dark in its depiction of hazing within the troops and cover-ups by the hierarchy. Despite strongly unrealistic situations, as e.g. at the end, I rather enjoyed it, in part because of its criticism of the Korean institutions, stronger than in other series.
a journal of the conquest, war, famine, and death year
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags Becky Chambers, book review, books, COVID-19, Daniel Defoe, dark fantasy, film review, Iceland, Journal of the Plague Year, multiverse, prequel, Russian invasion, The Mirror Visitor, The Witcher, Thomas De Quincey, Ukraine, Victorian society on August 21, 2023 by xi'an
Read at last the (disappointing) last tome of Christelle Dabos’ The Mirror Visitor, The Storm of Echoes, as I find the unravelling of the story unbearably slow and poorly constructed, contrasting with the earlier volumes where the universe building was central to the appeal of the series. Here it is collapsing, literally and figuratively. Without risking spoilers, I can only point out to the vagueness of the endless hesitations of the central character between multiverses. One volume too many imho! Also read a series of two novella, Our Lady of Endless Worlds, by Lina Rather, a very light story of a Catholic nun convent travelling on a spaceship. Nothing as enticing as Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers, but enjoyable as train read! At last, went through Murder as a Fine Art, by David Morell, which botches a poor murder enquiry out of the true story behing De Quincey’s essay, featuring the writer and his daughter in a lukewarm pot of wikipediesque infodump and anachronous attitudes. (Could you imagine Victorian strangers discussing the average waist sizes of men and women?!)
Watched the third season of the Witcher, which is also the last season with Henry Cavill. This short season felt sluggish and soapy, although somehow in tune with the book(s). It seemed as if the characters had lost some of their ambiguity, esp. Yennyfer, and hence of their appeal. The final show still had some appeal thanks to its time loop construction. I also had a look at the prequel, Blood Origin, which proved a mistake, as it is terrible (apart from the Icelandic landscapes!).
Xi'an's Og 