Advance Booking

SO IT GOES

I love science fiction, so it is a little embarrassing that it’s taken me this long to read a Kurt Vonnegut book.

Slaughterhouse Five is the story of Billy Pilgrim, a time-travelling American soldier who is captured by the Germans. The novel jumps between different types in his life, from his imprisonment at Dresden to his post-war life as an optometrist to his abduction by aliens.

You know what I say to people when I hear they're writing anti-war books?'
'No. What do you say, Harrison Starr?' 
'I say, "Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?"'
 What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that too. 
And, even if wars didn't keep coming like glaciers, there would still be plain old death.

Initially, I had some trouble understanding the book as I couldn’t figure out what was going on. Then I decided to stop analyzing and let the story flow, and then I enjoyed it more. It’s a war novel and a science fiction novel, but there are no memorable characters, no striking events, no fighting against all odds. It just goes on, much like an ordinary person’s life would. But amidst that ordinariness, Vonnegut manages to capture the true horror of war, the despondency which it brings and how it has the ability to make a sufferer indifferent to life. The book is apparently based on Vonnegut’s experience as a prisoner at Dresden, and he conveys the feelings of a war-weary soldier very effectively.

It wasn't safe to come out of the shelter until noon the next day. When the Americans and their guards did come out, the sky was black with smoke. The sun was an angry little pinhead. Dresden was like the moon now nothing but minerals. The stones were hot. Everybody else in the neighborhood was dead.
So it goes.
The guards drew together instinctively, rolled their eyes. They experimented with one expression and then another, said nothing, though their mouths were often open. They looked like a silent film of a barbershop quartet.

There is quite a bit of humour in this book, black humour that reinforces the suffering of the story. Vonnegut lampoons our society by showing it through the eyes of the Trafalmadorians. This book reminded me a lot of Catch-22. Though both books are widely different in genre and story, they both use acerbic wit and imagination to condemn war. Slaughterhouse Five is not conventional science fiction, and you should read it to figure out what it’s all about.

SPACE, THE FINAL FRONTIER

This is the novelization of the first Star Trek movie, and the only one written by the series’ creator Gene Roddenberry. I don’t think I will have the opportunity to watch the movie anytime in the near future, so I thought, why not read the book?

After the series’ five-year mission came to an end, Kirk was made an Admiral and Spock returned to Vulcan to erase his human self. But when a strange cloud with a consciousness appears to be headed towards Earth, Kirk assumes command of the spaceship and is joined by the whole team: Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Sulu, Chekov and Uhura. They race against time to find how to destroy the cloud and save Earth in the process.

This book would be a little pointless to read if you don’t have any idea of the Star Trek Universe, so I suggest you either watch the series or the latest movie before reading this. I'll anyways tell you the basic background. Enterprise is a ship whose mission is "to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life forms and new civilizations, to boldly go where no-one has gone before". Its crew comprises Captain James T. Kirk, his half-Vulcan half-human first officer Mr Spock, chief medical officer Leonard McCoy, chief engineer Montgomery Scott, weapons officer Pavel Chekov, helmsman Hikaru Sulu and communications officer Uhura. There is a lot of techno-babble in the book, all warp speeds and thrusters and controls and all, a little disconcerting to non-geeks. But it didn’t hinder my reading, but that could probably because I’ve been watching random episodes of Star Trek. I was a little worried that the book would read like an extended script, but it didn’t. In a movie, we see more action, but in the novel you see what the people undergo, their hopes and fears, and how they react to the hostile conditions. The book concentrates more on Kirk, while Spock is my favorite character and I wanted to know more about him. But there was something superficial about the book I couldn’t really put my finger on, something that kept me from being absorbed in the story completely. An interesting book, nevertheless.

GLIMPSE OF THE FUTURE

The Times called it " The Matrix crossed over with Oliver Twist". It's not very far off the mark. This futuristic novel was a pretty good read, and the open ending has me waiting for the next one, which is supposedly in the works.

Supernaturalist's hero Cosmo Hill is an orphan, used as a lab rat for dangerous products, in the Clarissa Frayne Institute for Parentally Challenged Boys, in the heart of Satellite City. He is always looking out for a way to escape, and his chance is presented by a glitch in the satellite which controls the city. He nearly loses his life escaping from a Squeers-like guard, but is saved by a trio of outcasts calling themselves Supernaturalists. His near-death experience gives him the ability to see supernatural creatures called Parasites, who supposedly suck the life-force out of injured or dying people. Cosmo teams up with the motley crew of kids to fight the Parasites, which consists of eluding weapon-toting lawyers, blasting invisble blue monsters, taking space walks and making friends for life.

Colfer takes Dotheboys Hall and throws it into a dystopian future, kicking off one cool teen sci-fi novel. The tech stuff mentioned throughout the book are imaginative, the writing action-packed, with a sarcastic vein running through. One thing I liked about the hero was that he was quite perceptive, unlike other books where I have been like, "Oh my God, you idiot! Isn't that thing like blindingly obvious?" My vote: go read it.