Jul. 5th, 2008

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Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro

This is the second of Ishiguro’s novels that I’ve read, and I continue to be amazed by his gift for telling a story exclusively from the viewpoint of his protagonist, which at the same time, shows the reader all that the protagonist does not know, or will not see, and lets the reader consider issues that the protagonist can not, or will not, examine for himself.

It’s an amazing technique, and it parallels human experience so fully – we all see more than we know, are shown and told more than we can, or choose to, understand – that to read such a novel almost forces one to turn around and ask oneself, “What are the realities of my life that I have ignored, set aside, denied? What are the things I’ve refused to think about, to question, to unveil, lest they unsettle my view of the world? What should I know about myself and the world around me that I’ve been afraid to see?”

One striking issue that is common to both novels I’ve read – Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go – is how Ishiguro slowly but completely and, to the reader, devastatingly, reveals the ways in which his protagonists are exploited and oppressed, and taught to be proud of their willing and enthusiastic participation in their own oppression.

The Remains of the Day is many things, depending on how you look at it: it is the story of a man who sacrifices love for duty, it is an insightful exploration of the British class system, it is a caution against the ease with which fascism can creep into the heart of any democracy, it is a textbook on how to subvert the instinct to rebel among an oppressed class. And it is brilliant.

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Voyage from Yesteryear, James P. Hogan

First, let’s just agree that this is not a particularly well written book. There are infodumps everywhere – including a multi-page physics lecture on the state of research into the nature of the quark at the time the book was written which, while interesting, could have been boiled down into two paragraphs that would have served the story just as well, if not better. The characterisation is rather limited, and the style is a kind of ultra Campbellian “gee-whiz, look at the cool gadgets, now lets have some manly action” breathlessness that one associates with writers who had never even heard of the New Wave.

I read this a good many years ago, and what made me remember it and decide to read it again is its ambitious attempt to describe an anarchistic society (one that’s more in the libertarian than the socialist or syndicalist traditions) from the ground up, and to imagine the kind of dysfunctional society that could result from an extreme extension of a number of trends in late 20th century American culture. A classic comparison of a utopic and a dystopic vision.

The premise of the story is that a group of scientists and other forward thinkers, worried that the political situation on earth is such that human civilisation may not survive the possibilities of war, decide to try to save some part of humanity. Unfortunately, they don’t have the time or the resources to build a generational ship. What they do have is a ship crewed by robots that’s being readied to be sent on an unmanned exploration of Chiron, an Earth-like planet that was discovered in a neighbouring star system. Their solution? Stock the ship with thousands of fertilised embryos and reprogram the robots to first produce a planetary population using the embryos, and then to protect and nurture the children and help them create a new civilisation. Many years later, after the crisis on Earth is passed, the society that evolved out of the crisis sends a ship to check up on the Chironians and, naturally, exploit the colony for the good of the folks back home.

What I love about this book, for all its flaws, is the total lack of comprehension among the Earth contingent when basic concepts of an anarchist are explained to them. The culture clash between a rigid, hierarchical, status-obsessed, imperialistic and capitalist culture and a flexible, heterarchical, classless, non-exploitative, non-monetary culture is priceless.

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