The mote in God's eye

Probably my favourite book, of my favourite genre, hard science fiction.

What I really love about this book, is the number of subplots it has, including the famous rescue mission of the coffee maker.

I really enjoy the slow pace at which this book is written, lasting five or six chapters to show the main plot. Before that, the author tells us the situation of his universe just when the action has already finished. It does explain the stories of two not so important characters although the first encounter which the protagonist, Lord Rod Blaine, has to face against his bosses in the navy.

I want to put special emphasis on the protagonist, he is not the usual hero. I see them very real in the sense that this kind of protagonist would occur in real life, hard science fiction.

The first time I read the book, I didn’t give too much importance, I thought it was a quite normal protagonist.

This second time I saw that he is a poor miserable man, he always messes up in all his missions, he’s not a good professional. Starting at the first one in New Chicago, where he does a risky move and, according to his superior, he interposes his own interests, ore royal interests, before to the navy. If he was another person, he would have already been fired.

Clearly is due his “Lord” title. He has a lot of lucky situations, for example, the real captain has to give the ship away. He was intended to have the ship for a few months, but, he encounters the probe and has to lead the expedition to the Mote.

He does an appalling job filling his ship with strange alien creatures and he casually forgets to tell to the Lenin, violating a direct order. Losing the best navy’s starship due his fault. When they return, besides that, they treat them as a hero. "Everybody can lose a ship in hell", like nothing happened. The captain of the Lenin was a better professional, in the same situation, he made exceptions and errors, but he did a better job than Rod, the protagonist. 

Another subplot is the story around the Lenin’s captain, everybody treat him like a devil for destroying an entire planet. But he could destroy McArthur ship to ensure the future of the humanity and he didn’t, he was reluctant to destroy it at the end, while Rod surely wanted to destroy it. So the bad guy was not so bad after all, and the protagonist could be far worst in the Lenin’s captain skin.

Returning to Lord Blaine, he basically saves himself for being part of the royal family, even Sally marries him for that reason. This character is like the politicians, no matter how much they screw up, his bosses end up saving his ass.

His counterpart is Renner. He, being a nobody, keeps escalating positions and doing perfectly, all the dirty jobs. In fact, he saves humanity. It is him who managed to ensure that Rod and Sally ended up together. Rod is a little bit useless, but it is the Lord who has all the medals around his neck.

Jerry Prounelle, the coauthor of the book, worked with something related to military technology, he is an expert on it. I had never read a book which treated these kinds of details so well.

I think that it is a good decision to send an expedition of scientific/mediatos while in the back, they had an entirely navy military ship, allowed to destroy the first ship if the aliens discover too much about human technology.

If this kind of situation occurs in real life, with all the corruption and ineptitude, it would be impossible to make a cork in the Mote’s world.

The aliens would end up conquering our worlds and exterminating us.

Or, what I consider more plausible seeing the history of humanity…

Eventually we would end up exterminating the Mote race.

Fahrenheit 451

I want to talk about Beatty. I have seen that this book is read in some schools, and I can't say nothing against it. But because of that, I found some resumes (I read a twice of them), critics and explanations arround the web. Also my personal copy which my mother boughth me, was an school edition and it had a critic. My surprise came when this critics talked about the Beatty character, it reflects him as a the bad guy, or the representation of the society, despite being a culte person. I don't think I am the only one who's thinking that but I think Beatty is a good person.

My point of view is, I can't believe that someone who knows so much about literature (he knows way much than me and the high majority of the commun people nowadays), wanted that society. He made a good point when he said that a society without books/infromation/freedom is a happy place, but if he truly believed that, why he knows so much about literature. He admits that he were interested, but someone who talked a pair of full pages referencing writers that I didn't know, is far away than just "interested". He knows that the society are secure without freedom, "Relay a TV show with the songs that the public knows to fool them thinking they are intelligent". 

He knows perfectly the two sides of the coin, and he's an important person of one of them. So my point of view is; He wants to change the world, but he's afraid to do it, he's so confortable no matter if he's stuck in the wrong side. When he knew that Morag is taking the same steps, he showed them these two parts of the coin without filters. Beatty didn't let Morag extinguish his fire inside them. Beatty give him no chances besides to revolutionize, to choose the right side of the coin. Beatty was Morag's master who showed them the way, obligating him to kill a fireman boss and being trapped in the right side of the coin. Beatty was the catalyst that Beatty himself didn't had.

In some situations, when Morag is escaping from the hound, a group of adolescents try to kill them just for fun. In another part of the book, it is told that the half of the adolescents don't arribe at the adult age, in fact is said that Blanca has been murdered by a car. They live in a society that don't appreciate people as people but as objects. Morag discovers that he's not in love with his wife neither is she. All of his friends occur the same situation, no one cares about the people next to them.

In real world you cold see the same patron, again, in the metro, nobody treat people like people, no matters if there is a grandma that needs the seat more than you. People doesn't talk to each other. A psicologist once publish an article titled "hairy balls that talk" referring to the humans sees other humans as hairy balls that could talk. He did a twice of experiments, one staying inside an elevator and saluting people, some of them didn't respond the simple gesture. Another experiment asked people who used the taxi what they remembered about the pilot, the half of them didn't remembered casual things like what colour was he wearing, only one of the asked clients know the name of this pilot. He suggested another experiment who anyone could try it, this experiment is, when you seat near someone in public transport, just say to them "Hi". Probably that unknown person would surprise because nobody talks to strangers at the bus. In the big picture, we are all humans, each one with his own problems, the autor can't understand why is so difficult to appreciate other people and don't tract them if it was a fluffly ball two metters above your phone. In addition the autor says too, after saying "Hi" to that person, we should say "How are you", that person may treat you like a weird or crazy man. maybe our society is not so different from what Bradbay writted seventy years ago.

Back to the random attacks from the adolescents in this book, I see the same connection with the paragraph before. These adolescens don't have any respect for other people, they treat other people like objects too, they don't feel any empathy for people. These people want to kill somebody just for fun, or maybe they just want to have a nice time driving and, if for a chance, their encounter a poor guy, killing that guy may complete their expectations for the rest of the week.

The conclusion there is; poor Montag, he where the wrong time at the wrong place. But this happens in real life, this year, a man stabbed another poor guy, randomly. Maybe this is happening for years and is nothing new, but I don't think so. Earlier on this year, a man stabbed another randomly, well, for being too happy. Again the poor guy in the wrong time at the wrong place. Is it not fault of this poor guy, is it the killer who is it doing the tings wrong, but the poor guy is dead. It wouldn't be dead if he stayed at home, just like in the book. What we should do now? Being afraid of walk across the street? The fault is not from the girl who's dressing with tight clothes, it is the rapist. Why then, in the metro again, every two stations the megaphone screams to be aware of thiefs?

Introduction

I always loved reading books, but I never had time for them. I preferred to invest my free time basically playing videogames, and being lazy on facebook. But in the month of August, when I go camping without videogames and Internet connection, I had time to read some books. So two years ago, I decided that I'll just top reading only in August, I'll give a try reading all moths of the year.

So I started reading mystery and non-fiction novels, I really liked, but I always wanted to go deep in science fiction. First things first, I started reading the most famous writer of science fiction, Isaac Asimov. 
I really enjoyed his books, I was already trapped. First, I read first the trilogy of foundation, I was shocked, how a book of science fiction could be so "real"? I mean, I thought that these books would be plenty of happy and unrealistic ideas, but I found that the foundation of Isaac Asimov were a way more realistic than the mystery books located in 1950s, Barcelona, that I read before. It took me months to discover that what I loved, it was the called hard science fiction.

I would never thought how I would enjoy discovering the mule, thinking how to find a lost robot with the first law modified, or just loving Elijah and Giskard talking under the tree. 

Planet of Dawn

I thought that Asimov (and the rest of writers), only had independent novels, but I saw that if I wanted to read all "canon" Asimov books, were like 14 (hey, no problem). Thinking about it, if a book costs like 10€, its a expensive hobby, like videogames. But I feel better and have more hours of fun paying for a book.
Also I discovered libraries, the library of the university where I study, it has a huge collection of science fiction. Normal libraries don't have science fiction books, you feel happy if you found some exemplar of foundation, I don't understand this neither.

So here I am, enjoying the reading, I love hard science fiction, thinking about realistic situations and environments. I prefer to watch an episode of an android explaining that he dreamed for the first time the night before, than seeing a few beep beep between family members.

"And what was your dream about?" 
"I met my father"
"Wow, and how was his aspect"
"Just like me, he created me in his own image"

A few months ago I found a book in the library that I thought his title was funny "The mote in god's eye". What a book, amazing, I discovered that Larry Niven is one of the most famous writers of hard science fiction. So here I am, Ringworld series already read, and I'm currently reading his Known Space books.

Larry Niven

I'll keep updating this blog. So long, and thanks for all the fish!

Welcome all to my blog!

I'm just starting, take it easy.