Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire (novel)

When I stumbled across a copy of Out of Oz and saw it called the fourth and final book of Gregory Maguires The Wicked Years series, I was motivated to read Son of a Witch and A Lion Among Men. As you'll see in my reviews of Son and Lion, I was unclear on how to evaluate them. As standalone novels, they were not particularly impressive. But if taken together as book two of a trilogy that began with Wicked and concludes with Out of Oz, their flaws might actually be virtues. Until reading Out of Oz, I just can't tell.

I first read Wicked before there was any hint of a series, and I loved it. I also swore that I'd never read it again. But when reading Son and Lion, it was pretty clear there were plot points and nuances referring back to Wicked that needed to be understood to fully appreciate those two and Out of Oz. So with some trepidation, I decided to re-read Wicked.

At this point it's almost impossible for anyone to have not at least heard of this book and have a sense of what it's about. But in case you haven't . . . here's a mostly spoiler-free description.

This is what the subtitle proclaims, a biography of Elphaba Thropp, better known as the Wicked Witch of the West. But it's not the Witch you know from the Oz books or the film, and it's not even the Oz you know. Maguire keeps the broad outline the same, but overall this is a dark story set in a dark Oz.

Elphaba, born with green skin and sharp teeth, grows up largely alone except for her younger sister and her parents. They send her off to college (there are colleges in Oz? Yes indeed) where chance pairs her with Galinda Arguenna. Yes, the Wicked Witch of the West and the Good Witch of the South were roommates in college. Who'd have thought it? In college, Elphaba is radicalized by the increasing oppression of the talking Animals, and ultimately becomes a revolutionary and a terrorist. But all her efforts lead to more harm than good, with Elphaba having an amazing talent for doing things at the perfect time for them to explode in her face. She attempts to withdraw from the fray, but always gets sucked back in when it's too late to do good but not too late to make the situation worse. The end is inevitable, the only question is how she'll get there. Maguire makes that journey a fascinating ride. It's an Oz that's much more nuanced and dangerous than the original, but one that on the whole is far more realistic.

It's a brilliant, brilliant book. It's also an unrelenting and depressing tragedy. No-one comes out better than they went in, only a few manage to hold their ground. Most are ground down, humiliated, and ultimately broken. The lucky are dead, the unlucky are cast aside to live with their fates. The most tragic of them is Elphaba herself, whose attempts to do well fail in a manner that results in her becoming almost everything she's striven against. In short, it ends with no hope, no forgiveness, and no redemption.

By contrast, Son and Lion (for all their flaws) seem to offer a chance that things are turning around. While reading them it was clear there were nuances I'd forgotten from Wicked, and I wanted to approach Out of Oz ready to pick up on them.  The re-read did indeed freshen those nuances; there are parts of both that are now more significant - or at least less mysterious. Nonetheless, Wicked itself remains unrelenting tragedy. Next up: Out of Oz. Wish me luck.

A Trio of Wild Cards (short stories, mosaic novel)

There was a relatively brief fad in science fiction and fantasy for shared world books. A number of writers would get together, define a setting, and all write stories in the shared settings. These had varying degrees of success, and most are gone and forgotten.

One notable exception is the Wild Cards series, originally led by George R. R. Martin but eventually spread around to a number of other folks. The first volume came out in 1987. Since then they've moved from publisher to publisher, still holding to the same theme and exploring it in mostly interesting ways. Volume 22 is expected shortly.

These books were an attempt to show superpowers and their use in the real world. That's a common trope these days, but at the time it was pretty new. The background they developed for this involved an alien race called the Takisans, a hereditary tyranny by a small group with psychic powers. In looking for a method to extend and improve those powers, they developed a mutagenic virus that became known as the wild card. The virus was too dangerous to turn loose on their home world so they tested it on a lost Takisian colony - us - shortly after World War II. The virus was deployed by spraying it over New York City, but the deployment wound up being relatively small. Nor was it particularly virulent. If you didn't get it in the initial deployment, you probably didn't get it. If you did, your chances weren't good. 90% of those infected died, usually of some horrible deformity caused by the virus. 9% got the deformity but didn't die. 1% survived with some sort of power. The stories were set from shortly before deployment and moved forward to the then-current date.

The first few sets of books were written as triplets. There would be two books of short to mid-length stories written by various people, then a 'mosaic novel' that would tie together the threads introduced in the short pieces. This pattern has been followed for most of the books since then.

I was and am a huge fan of George R. R. Martin, so bought read the  series as the books came out. They were enjoyable, but by volume eight or nine the quality seemed to be falling off and I stopped reading them.

Recently I read a volume of NESFA Press' collection of Roger Zelazny's short works. It included several stories he wrote for the first Wild Card series and were quite enjoyable. A few days later we were heading out on vacation, so I dug out the first three Wild Card books for airplane reading - Wild Cards, Aces High, and Jokers Wild. They're not large books, and by our first night back home I'd finished them.

The verdict? They're airplane reading. The series as a whole is mostly fluff, with a few exceptions here and there. The short stories are uneven, running from the very good (Zelazny, Martin) to the mediocre to the downright bad. The mosaic novel Jokers Wild is better, and does a good job of tying together the threads of the first two books. It provides a satisfying conclusion to the first arc, but unfortunately doesn't make the poor threads any better. The re-read matched my memory of them, and reminded me that the writers I liked best got less involved as the series went on. They were a fine way to pass time in airports and lines, but I've probably got much better things sitting in the to-be-read pile at home. I'll neither be re-reading the rest nor seeking out the ones I don't have.

An Anathem for Neal Stephenson's Anathem (novel)

I enjoyed Neal Stephenson’s Anathem hugely the first time I read it. In some ways it was typical Stephenson, but the science-fictional setting and the more speculative ideas made for a more fanciful and more interesting story. On finishing the book, I mentally marked it for a re-read and put it away. Late last year I re-read his The Diamond Age, and that led to a re-reading of Anathem. Going into those re-reads my opinion was that those two are his best novels, and the re-reads did nothing to change that. If you’ve not read Stephenson and want something both enjoyable and representative of his work, Anathem and The Diamond Age are the places to start.

The second readings of both books were more leisurely and more attentive than the first ones. As such, they revealed more about the strengths and weaknesses of the story and of Stephenson in general. I’ll have more to say in a later essay about Stephenson in general; here I’m going to focus on Anathem.

Plot and background synopsis: On Arbre, mathematics and philosophy are the domain of the ‘avout’, the cloistered brothers and sisters of the Maths. There they preserve and extend knowledge of mathematics and philosophy, with few direct applications to the outside use of ‘praxis’ (technology). Fraa (brother) Erasmus is a young man in one the oldest ‘concents’, approaching adulthood and considering which specialty he will choose when the time arrives. He is a Tenner, one of a group that meets with the ‘extramuros’ (outside world) only a few days every ten years. Shortly after that ‘apert’, events occur which literally change the world, forcing the Avout and the the ‘Saecular Powers’ to work together to deal with the extraordinary circumstances that are arising. To say more would be spoilers, but this should give you a feel for where Stephenson is going both with the language and the background. The story itself hangs on both.

Like all Stephenson, Anathem is a novel of ideas. Unlike most other Stephenson, the ideas here are more speculative and more subversive. That subversion is improved and made more subtle by the vocabulary Stephenson uses. Aubre is not Earth, past or present. Its concepts and organizations have names that may lead you to think they are direct analogs to something in our world, but they are not. The title is a good example. On Aubre, the word is ‘anathem’ is a synonym both for ‘anathema’ and for ‘anthem.’ Stephenson doesn’t merge the two without reason, but saying more would push into the realm of spoilers. As such, the reader is never sure about the casual usage of a number of words which at first seem to be simple analogs for things we are familiar with, but underneath have distinct and often critical differences. The book comes with a glossary, but the meanings shouldn’t be taken any more literally than the rest of the book. Look for the context, listen to what Erasmus tells you, and bear in mind that he is very young and usually quite naive.

In Anathem the primary ideas presented are in mathematics, geometry, and philosophy. Stephenson present them in interesting but discursive discussions, and lectures. That makes Anathem a very talky book. There is scene after scene where two to many characters talk things over and argue about how the events may be related to the theories. Erasmus is a good viewpoint for this, as everyone seems to want to educate or persuade him in one way or another. If you find the topics interesting (and I did), you’ll enjoy these moments. If not, you might be tempted to skip over them looking for the plot. My advice - skim, but don’t skip. Anathem is typical Stephenson on this point. Some of the discursions are simply that, Stephenson teaching you a bit about geometry, mathematics and philosophy. He does that very well, and even the most discursive discussions are well-presented and interesting. But sometimes he actually laying groundwork for your understanding of critical points later in the book. If you skip them completely, you’ll find yourself completely lost about critical plot points. And boy, there are some big and fun plot points in there. The re-read made them clearer, and the novel hung together better the second time around.

But I won’t be reading it again, because the re-read also pointed up just how weak Stephenson is on some things. Erasmus is acted upon far more than he acts, and those actions often take place off-stage. In fact, many hugely important things take place off-stage, with Erasmus being told about them after the fact. Other things seem to have no purpose whatever except for Erasmus to wander around looking at interesting things. And yes, they are interesting things to look at, but could we get there in a less contrived fashion?

Finally, the characters are just flat. This is forgivable in that Anathem is a novel of ideas, but it’s downright painful at times. It’s a good thing that most characters have very distinctive names, because you’re not going to remember much about their personalities.

Scissors Cut Paper Wrap Stone by Ian McDonald (novel)

I bought Ian McDonald's Scissors Cut Paper Wrap Stone because of the cover. Usually this results in disaster; this time was a happy exception. I picked it up in paperback in 1994, and that's the cover you see below. The story has been sticking in my head for years, and after the clunker that was my previous read, something quick and tasty was called for. This was a good choice.

Scissors is a very short novel, only 136 pages.  Loosely, its the story of a man on a pilgrimage to a variety of sites in Japan, with looks back at why he is making the pilgrimage and how those events still follow him.

In someone elses hands this might have been an action-story brick of a book. Instead McDonald pares the past events to their bare essentials and focuses on their meanings. It's a pretty chilling backstory, and reading it in linear order would have made for an entirely different book.

The good parts? There are interesting characters, well-done parallels and non-parallels between past and present events, and some wonderful prose. The story carries you along quite nicely, with enough foreshadowing to keep you digging for the next nugget and with rewarding reveals when you do.

On the other hand, parts of this story have not aged well. The resolution was as plausible as the premise in '94. In 2013 the premise is a bit harder to swallow, and some of the more important parts of the resolution simply wouldn't work. If this had been my first exposure, those plot issues might have overshadowed the books virtues. But if McDonald were writing this today, he'd probably have chosen different mechanisms to reach the same resolution. I am glad to have re-read it, and still appreciate it as quality prose and construction. If those qualities are high on your list, you should forgive what time has done to the plot and enjoy it as what it is.

Helluva cover, too.