MADreads

In the company of immortals

Sadly, J.D. Salinger wasn’t the only author who died last week.  Kage Baker didn’t write an iconic coming-of-age novel like Salinger, but she did write a witty and captivating science fiction series that started with In the Garden of Iden.

In Baker’s Garden, twenty-fourth century corporation Dr. Zeus, Inc. has figured out how to accomplish both time travel and immortality.  You’d think that would be enough of a market niche to dominate, but the Company has other ideas.  They use their knowledge to place undercover operatives throughout history to rescue artifacts–both natural and man-made–that would otherwise have been lost in the mists of time.  These operatives are immortal cyborgs: orphans whom the Company has rescued from grim circumstances, modified to Company specs, trained in a specialty, and sent off to work in the shadows of history for their benevolent overlords.  Depending on how you look at it, this is either a noble or a nefarious undertaking.

Botanist Mendoza is assigned to 16th-century England, tasked with gathering samples of extinct plants–extinct in the 24th century, that is–that will yield big pharmaceutical profits, once they are sent forward into the future to be “discovered.”  While grubbing around amongst the flora of the English countryside, she breaks a major Company taboo by falling in love with a mortal.  Naturally, complications ensue.

Don’t let the immortal cyborg thing put you off.  Watching Mendoza and her fellow technologically advanced immortals living among and blending in with the locals is hugely entertaining and often laugh-out-loud funny.  Baker’s take on time travel is a bit different from the norm, and her descriptions of Tudor-era life and language are lush and richly detailed.  History, science fiction, romance, and wicked humor blend together to provide a little something for almost everyone.

There’s a lot more to the Company’s story than Mendoza’s troubles, though. In the Garden of Iden spawned several sequels, as well as short stories and novellas set in the Company universe, all careening forward through history toward a mysterious Big Thing that’s supposed to happen in 2355.  Not the kind of stuff that defines a generation, but a cracking good read nonetheless.  R.I.P., Kage.

Add comment February 5th, 2010 Kathy - Meadowridge

Are you watching closely?

If you thought there were a lot of twists and turns in the movie The Prestige, wait until you read the book upon which the movie was based. You’ll be scratching and shaking your head at least as much as you were when you walked out of the theater.

Both book and movie tell the story of two stage magicians in Victorian England, engaged in an obsessive rivalry to possess each other’s secrets. That’s about where the similarities end, though, and that’s the main reason I enjoyed reading the book so much. If I wanted a rehash, I’d just see the movie again. (OK, I did that, too.)

The plot is too intricate to summarize here, and it would give away too much anyway. The book is a little creepier than the movie, and while it illuminates some mysteries, it also introduces others not even hinted at in the film.

Did anyone read the book before seeing the movie? What did you think of the screen adaptation?

Add comment March 26th, 2007 Kathy - Meadowridge

The second time around

Unlike Robin and Molly, I’m not much of a rereader. Too many books, too little time.  It’s an occupational hazard.  I don’t want to spend precious reading time on stuff I’ve already read.

So I’m not sure why I picked up Rereadings, a volume of essays edited by Anne Fadiman, that explores what happens when we revisit books we loved in our younger days. The essayists discuss works and authors as varied as Rimbaud, the Sue Barton nurse series books, and the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover. As you might imagine, some found their old favorites a bit thin while others discovered ideas that sailed right over their heads the first time around–for better or for worse.

Not every essay resonates. Some I just skimmed for lack of any personal reference points, not having been enamored of D.H. Lawrence in my youth. But you don’t have to have read Pride and Prejudice to nod along with Allegra Goodman when she writes,

“I think unfolding is what rereading is all about.  Like pleated fabric, the text reveals different parts of its pattern at different times. And yet every time the text unfolds, in the library, or in bed, or upon the grass, the reader adds new wrinkles.  Memory and experience press themselves into each reading so that each encounter informs the next.”

Obvious, maybe, but well said.  Guess I should dust off my copy of Little Women and see what wrinkles I can add to it now.

Add comment February 17th, 2007 Kathy - Meadowridge