Bones of the Earth

When I picked up Michael Swanwick's novel Bones of the Earth from the library, my wife asked me what it was about. I said "it's about time travel! and dinosaurs!" To this, her reply was "...And? What's the hook?" She didn't seem to get that time travel and dinosaurs WAS the hook. What else do you need? You have time travel granted to scientists so that they can go back in time to the Mesozoic and see real living and breathing dinosaurs. This, by itself, is a can't-fail set up. Throw in a dash of atheism vs. creationism and you're off and running. Seriously, you can't screw this up.

Somehow, Swanwick screwed it up. Not just a little, but a LOT.

There are a lot of things wrong with this book. There are too many characters that aren't fleshed out well enough to differentiate them from other characters. There's the constant appearing of characters "future selves" in the present to mess with your head. The amazing resistance to the idea of "keep it simple, stupid" just astounded me. An event that could be told in a straight forward manner was always told as if there were sixteen different angles from which to approach it. Sure, there's some cool dinosaur stuff, especially in the last third of the book and for that I'm thankful that I persevered even after the "throw the book across the room" moment that was the orgy.

Yeah, they lost me at the orgy. A Maastrichtian Age orgy - with people, not dinosaurs just in case you were confused, which I was through quite a bit of this book. Plot lines are started and then forgotten, only to be quickly wrapped up as if Swanwick suddenly remembered that he had started an arc way back on page 78 and now here we are 10 pages from the end of the book and it's still unresolved. The characters are not particularly likeable, especially Gertrude Salley, a conniving and ruthless paleontologist who seems to enjoy deliberately messing with the time-space continuum, to the detriment of her fellow scientists. The fact that I could not see her as anything other than Sue Sylvester from Glee made her character simultaneously more disturbing and more comical.

The book is decidedly less-than-kind to religious fundamentalists generally and creationists specifically. A crucial event that would have lent credence to creationists' theories of the origin of the species is dangled in front of us early in the book and then never mentioned again. A plot involving domestic terrorism on the part of the creationists dominates the first half of the novel and forces the events of the second half - including the orgy.

As I mentioned, the dinosaurs they see are pretty cool. Despite its cheesiness, I do love the Jurassic Park trilogy of movies. Again, it's lifelike dinosaurs on the screen, how can you go completely wrong? Maybe it's just me, but hot dinosaur action does not translate as well in the written word as it does in CGI on the movie screen. Still, they posit some interesting theories on dino communication and behavior. Not being a paleontologist, I have no idea if any of it holds any water.

But back to this orgy thing. Stranded in the Maastrichtian Age by the creationist-inspired act of terrorism, the group of scientists and graduate students initially split into two camps. Much infighting and bickering ensues. What brings them back together? Spontaneous group sex. Yep, believe it. I know when I was reading it, I really couldn't believe it. It's not that I'm prudish and can't stand reading sex (far from it) but it seemed so out of place and very much like we were indulging the author's personal fantasies rather than furthering the plot of the book. And if there's any one thing I've learned from reading Heidi's m/m books, the sex always has to further the plot.

I can't really recommend Bones of the Earth- it's probably about a 2 and a half star book. Despite a promising start and a strong premise, the material was wasted and the story really didn't do it for me. I'd say you'd be better off reading Jurassic Park again or, better yet, go watch Jurassic Park 3. It's the best movie in the series because it's the one with the least to lose, had flying dinosaurs and most importantly did not star Jeff Goldblum.

Year of 25 Books: #12 - The Day of the Triffids

I picked up this book entirely because of Brendan - a guy whose blog I read and book reviews I enjoy on GoodReads. He reads at about 100 times the rate I do. I haven't counted, but I'm pretty sure he's already read at least 50 books in the time its taken me to get to twelve. But anyway, he read and reviewed John Wyndham's sci-fi classic The Day of the Triffids and I'll be damned but I didn't even know it was a book. I figured it was just a bad 60's monster movie that probably ran on late night TV a hundred times a year when I was a kid - back in the days before late night TV was sold to the highest bidder.

The Day of the Triffids is, as Brendan said, a good post-apocalyptic thriller. The book opens with the protagonist, Bill Masen, in the hospital with his eyes bandaged. He tells the story of how triffids - 8 foot mobile plants that display semi-sentience and also carry a dangerously poisonous sting - came to be. While the origin of triffids is deliberately vague, the theory that Masen (who happens to be a biologist who specializes in triffid behavior) puts forth is that they were genetically engineered by the Soviets, with their seeds inadvertently released into the world. Eventually through the pruning of the triffids' stings and the creation of triffid nurseries, mankind and triffids learn to occupy the same space, but it always seems an uneasy peace. In fact, the reason for Masen's hospitalization is a triffid sting to the eyes.

He also explains how the night before, a brilliant green meteor shower lit up the night sky, which has now led to the blinding of anyone who witnessed it. Fortunately for Masen, he is left unaffected due to the fact that his eyes were bandaged. The hospital is eerily quiet, as are the London streets surrounding the hospital. He eventually removes his bandages himself and heads out. While the vast majority of the population has been blinded by the meteor shower, there remain a handful of sighted people left to pick up the pieces of civilization.

Brendan points out several commonalities between this novel and the zombie/infected movie 28 Days Later (which I am due to rewatch at some point - my favorite part being the scrawl on the side of the church wall THE END IS INCREDIBLY FUCKING NIGH.) Nowhere is this more evident than in his initial venture into the all-but deserted London streets, save the blinded people trying to make their way around. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the similarities between the two were intentional.

Those expecting a traditional sci-fi yarn with the evil plant-monsters deliberately bent on world domination will be sorely disappointed. Triffids, rather than intentionally bringing about the end of human civilization, appear to just be taking advantage of the tragic blindness to befall the human population of the planet. Without the human caretakers to cut out the stings and tether the mobile triffids in place, they simply fill in the gaps that are naturally left for them. While they are malevolent, they are, as I said, not deliberately so. Because of this, they seemed a little bit neutered to me and not as effective as sci-fi monsters as they otherwise might have been.

Instead, what we get is what amounts to a character study in how people would respond to an apocalyptic event and how civilization would persist. Much of the human interaction proves that even in the face of a world-changing event with deadly moving plants on the loose, our worst enemy is still us. I found this an interesting take in what would otherwise have been a by-the-numbers monster novel, but I also found myself longing for a little bit of nasty monster vs. human action. I didn't feel like the book ever truly gave me that - rather, as I said, it just showed the triffids naturally taking advantage of our disadvantage, turning violent only when they had to.

I realized while I was reading this book that the 1981 BBC miniseries of The Day of the Triffids is streamable on Netflix. From everything I've read, it's a faithful adaptation of the book. I'll be streaming this very soon and may even report back on how it compares to the book. From everything I've read, the 1963 film adaptation that I was familiar with is apparently a bastardization of the book and one best avoided.

As an aside, this was the first book that I purchased as a Kindle edition from Amazon. I don't have a Kindle, but read this book about 50% on the iPad and 50% on my Droid phone, both of which have free Kindle apps. I enjoyed the Kindle eBook reading experience. However, publishers and Amazon need to get their shit together and not charge MORE for the Kindle version than the print version. The Day of the Triffids was something like 4 bucks, but I noticed that MANY Kindle versions are at least 2-3 dollars more expensive than their print counterparts. Amazing.