The Player of Games - Book 14 for the year

Reading these Culture books by borrowing them electronically from the library feels like the just right way to obtain and consume this series. Instantaneous electronic access is the way things work in the Culture. I have to use a clunky cell phone to get access to the system that delivers the book, there would be some kind of sentient drone ready to instantly handle my spoken request in the Culture, but avoiding the hassle of the physical book itself is the way things get done in that far, far advanced civilization. The Culture is so advanced that organisms aren't really organisms any more. They are more like biological machines than beings subject to the accidents of genetics and biological systems. Anatomy is tuned and tweaked and optimized to provide just what the person wants or needs. Gender is fluid, the endocrine system has been souped up to manufacture any combination of drugs to change mood and mind, and lost body parts can be regrown or existing body parts modified to provide superior performance. Life in the culture is one big party. Tedious and dreary jobs seem as antiquated as illness and disease. There is no money so people just do what they like. You pursue what gets you going. The Player of Games, this guy Gurgeh, spends all his time playing (and winning) at every kind of game the universe can imagine. They live on manufactured space stations built at epic scales in fully automated houses that meet every desire and whim.

This utopia is the opposite of Terminator-like visions where robots remove humans from the mix. In this instance, the robots seems to nurture and deeply care for the biological machines. It's almost like the biological machines are the pets for the drones and other self-aware mechanical beings (which all carry the moral and legal status of a person). People in the culture are as far removed from a natural environment as possible, but they are deeply invested in pursuing the physical pleasures that come with being an animal. There's plenty of sex and drugs and drinking and food. They are all genetically fixed to be in great shape and stay young and fit. They can basically do whatever they want with no fear of consequences. The Culture is communism perfected. People can't run a centrally planned economy, but nearly omniscient Minds are able to manage the required complexities with aplomb. Each person is able to give the best of their ability. Gurgeh gets manipulated into using his gifts to further the aims of the Culture.

Damn, I just realized that these books are hugely leftist. The philosophy and morality of the Culture is very much the logical extension of conventional liberal ideologies. The first book had a planet that had been totally destroyed by a war. Stupid generals killed everybody. The Player of Games was centered around a game used by an empire that tortures, oppresses,and subjugates different sexes to maintain its power and structure. And to think I was planning on giving a discourse of how separated we've become from our biological and natural roots. I'm not very liberal in my political positions. I never really challenged or questioned the idea of the good life and success when I was a kid. I very much desired achieving success and distinction within the system as it existed. Well, I'm still pretty much following that pattern with a slightly higher awareness of the absurdity that is life in a corporation. I'm definitely no rebel or extremist of any sort. I'm aware of and recognize the short comings in our system, but I don't see the point in making a big deal about it. I would rather just live my life the best I can within the bounds of the current system. I have no desire to foment change. At least not at a societal level. I'm all about change in my personal space.

Taking an idea to its logical extremes, like Banks has done with The Culture, certainly builds interest. A deep focus on one or two issues seems to be the way people get attention for their endeavor. People are far more likely to read about some crazy adventure than follow somebody's quest to read all the books that they have dropped money on over the year. Going deep into some common interest, video games, a sport, a team, any kind of hobby, gathers like minded people to you in some effort to share in or learn from your experience. People want to know what they can get from you. What secret knowledge can you share that will give me an edge? Teach me something! Show me something I didn't know! Give me access to the parties and events that my lowly social status prevents me from accessing! Isn't that what the Kardashians are all about? Opening the doors of riches and celebrity to the prying eyes of the heathen public? There are all kinds of people out there living their life differently than I live mine. Some of these people are fictional, like our friend Gurgeh, the Player of Games, some of them are real people showing a curated and largely fictional depiction of their life, and others are sharing something real about their experience. The more extreme your little life experiment, the more attention you will garner.

This little project could be about helping people find books to read. It could be about helping people build a reading habit. It could be about me and what I think (using whatever book I'm currently reading as a starting point for some maybe slightly related diatribe), or it could just be me recording my reading activities just for the hell of it. I'm thinking I may just do it for the hell of it.

In that vein, I quickly switched to this book Fates and Furies after finishing The Player of Games. It's another ebook from the library. It was the Kindle Daily Deal last week. I would have just bought it a couple of years ago, but seeing that to be read number go up cancels out the small joy I get from buying books. Getting it from the library feels like I'm cheating the system somehow. It's also free, easy, and requires no commitment. I read a few pages to see what all the fuss was about, it was highly lauded when it came out a couple of years ago, and was instantly hooked. I'm racing through this one. I would be going even faster but I'm making sure I keep making progress on The Confessions of Nat Turner as well. I think I see where this Fates and Furies book is headed. I really hope I'm wrong. I guess I'll know soon enough.

Virginia at War, 1862 finished, 154 to go

I won this battle. Well, it was really more of a skirmish. I didn't need to use many resources to take care of this one. No matter the scale (it wasn't hard at all, it was a very pleasant experience), the final result is one less book on my to be read pile. I also picked up a bit more of the atmosphere and experience of the Civil War. This series of books does a nice job of getting behind the battle fronts to recount the experience of the people not engaged in combat. The Civil War evolved into a total war. The people involved didn't realize that victory would require the complete dedication of each nation's industrial output, part of this book tracks how early efforts to supply soldiers were strained by the Army's failure to procure the total output of Virginia's limited fabric manufacturing capabilities. The level of cohesion and commitment war demands from the population is so easy to overlook in the flood of detailed accounts of battles and military strategy. It takes the resources of a nation to enable those military maneuvers.The people had to believe in the cause and justice of the war. An indifferent population will not carry a nation to victory.

The essentially total breakdown of mass culture and the sense of a national identity has probably made total war a near impossibility for us now. We are slowly creeping into such highly curated and customized cultural niches that a shared sense of anything is gradually eroding. The sense of our individual importance dwarfs anything the nation may need. Even the fixation on Trump derives more from the perceived threat he presents to the continued evolution of particular cultural trends than any sense that he is altering the fundamental tenets or principles of our shared notion of The United States. The simple desire to bring back the sense of the United States as a unified nation with its central role of spreading democracy and freedom to the rest of the world is a threat to numerous sects and niches groups that fill people with purpose and meaning. Progressive politic's excessive focus on the individual and all the superficial traits that make us different, and how those differences have been used to exploit and oppress, has been a central driver in breaking all of us up into distinct, and rival, mini-cultures. A nation of rival mini-cultures will never coalesce to support total war.

My newest front in the war that is Book Shelf Zero is The Confessions of Nat Turner. I have the 25th anniversary edition of the novel. The book was written over 50 years ago. (Translation, I've had this book for a long time.) I was wise to read the afterword before plunging into the novel itself. The origins and history of the novel with its many years of controversy was good to know before I started the story. I could say that the story definitely feels like a white man putting himself in the place of a black slave, but that could just be the influence of that afterword. Any book written now would be an imagined experience of slavery. Nat's arc and descent into rebellion feels very contrived. The overwhelming power of the writing pushes these concerns very much to the margin though. Styron creates powerful images and scenes. He puts you right into the Tidewater plantation. The book is moving along smoothly enough. I've been splitting my reading time between Nat's story and another book (which I recently finished) so the going is a bit on the slow side. I would like to have this done by the end of the month but I'm not sure that's going to happen.

Dragonflight - Book 12 of the year

I've had my fill of Anne McCaffery. The book was average at best. I have read some excellent books that were much lower on that NPR list. This one was a solid dud. The principle components of the story are solid, but the execution was just so impatient and poorly developed. Events just happen. There is very little build-up or suspense. The big reveal of why so many of the other places are empty is satisfying, but the payoff is less than it could have been. It's all stiff and impatient and just poorly crafted. At least it was short.

Dragonflight marks the 42 NPR Sci Fi/Fantasy book that I've read from the list. That's the same number of Modern Library Top 100 that I have read. I've read 7 of the NPR books this year. I've read 1 of the Modern Library books. I would guess that I have a better chance of finishing the Modern Library list first. There are still 215 books on the NPR list for me to read (lots of series in that list). Side note, I already own 1 of those books. Just 1. Dragonflight aside, I've been pleased with the books on both of the lists so I have no reservations to keep using them as a source of solid reading material.

I should finish Virginia at War, 1862 by the end of the week. A family trip to DC for some baseball and museums may interfere a bit with my reading, but that's not a bad thing. Some desperately needed sleep may cut into my reading time tonight, and my kids being home with me in the morning could slow down my before work reading progress. I guess that leaves Tuesday night as the only real chunk of reading time before the trip. Well, maybe I will be able to read a bit in the hotel room.