The Nomad and the Olive Branch

I can't believe it has been ten years since I first started this website, and a lot has changed since then. My newfound apathy to everything economical and, these days, political can only go so far when I see something like "Daraprim prices soar to new heights" and "Volkswagen caught with its pants down modifying diesel fuel emission statistics from its automobiles". Dystopian literature has always conceived a future where every aspect of life, from body parts to the pollutants we breathe in, undergoes extensive commodification. Even Marx himself stated that capitalism in its current form would eventually be its own undoing, where the wealthy elite will consolidate power to the extent that the masses will have no viable alternative to living a life constantly in debt to their superiors other than to revolt against them. One can argue that what Martin Shkreli, the smug-faced CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, did was immoral albeit not illegal [ 1 ]: he was withi...

  While most of modern science fiction is associated with the latest in Hollywood spectacles (*cough* Star Wars *cough*), it's easy to forget about the roots of science fiction as a whole, which goes back as far as the late 19th Century. One of the most prolific writers in this genre was a Frenchman named Jules Verne, and his books 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Journey to the Center of the Earth are the epitome of his storytelling expertise. This review will focus on the latter book as I have yet to read the former (though it is on my backlog of books). The book is split into many chapters, so it makes for an easy read without dragging on and on until you reach a part you're sure you can place a bookmark on. While archaic, the style is simple and easy to follow without delving into big vocabulary and monologues. The characters, as few as they may be, are quirky and memorable, in particular Professor Otto Lidenbrock. The pace is just as intense and exciting from start...

Critical reception for the titular novel has been fairly mixed. Although the book has been dubbed "the most famous science fiction novel" ever and has received the Hugo Award for best novel, the book was panned by many critics, such as NYT writer Orville Prescott, as a "disastrous mishmash of science fiction, laborious humor, dreary social satire and cheap eroticism", so bad that "when a non-stop orgy is combined with a lot of preposterous chatter, it becomes unendurable, an affront to the patience and intelligence of readers". Despite the vitriol poured at the novel, it has become a cult classic. Named as one of the 88 books that "shaped America" by the Library of Congress, " Stranger..." has inspired much of the hippie subculture of the 60's and 70's. Robert Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" , an allegory to the prophet Abraham, is about the "Man from Mars", Valentine Michael Smith...

  Also dubbed the "Cyberspace" or "Matrix" trilogy, William Gibson's triad of far future dystopian techno-nightmare novels gave birth to the cyberpunk genre. The first title, Neuromancer, takes most of the credit, while the other two titles, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive flesh out the world and characters introduced in the first book and brings the trilogy to a close. In following with my previous reviews, my critiques will focus on style, content, and an overall "feel" of the story. Similar to my other novel series reviews, I will go over each novel one by one. However, for this review, I will begin with a sort of treatise on the man behind the books, American-Canadian (how about I just stick with North American?) author William Gibson, as well as an overall review with a summary. To start off, William Gibson, the author, is one of the few writers to whom the word "prophetic" is a fitting description. Like Ray Bradbury, George ...

  1984. Brave New World. These two literary works have re-defined the term "dystopia" at the turn of the 20th Century. However, another book, just as known and reputable, Fahrenheit 451, authored by one of the most creative writers America let alone the world has ever seen, has breathed life into this otherwise dank and dreary conception. The book is titled after "the temperature at which book paper catches fire and burns." Unlike its older counterparts, it is shorter in length (about 160 pages) and is set in a world where intellectual thought is actively (and violently) suppressed and entertainment in all its forms is encouraged. The story follows Guy Montag, a "fireman" (I'll leave the word at that) who lives in this dark and gloomy future. Without spoiling too much, he gets caught in a series of events that unravel the flaws of his era. Having read 1984 and excerpts of Brave New World, I am pleased to say that Bradbury's work, despite i...

Touted as the "best-selling science fiction franchise of all time", the Dune chronicles is a space opera double-trilogy or hexology set in a future thousands of years from now, where artificial intelligence is shunned and the Imperium of all mankind in the galaxy lives by a single maxim: "Man can not be replaced." After an event known as the Butlerian Jihad ousted the alliance between man and machine (or rather the control of machines over men), humanity came under the control of feudal societies in a region of space known as the Landsraad. Three of these Houses - Atreides, Harkonnen, and Corrino - take center stage as the powers vying for control, with so-called neutral factions - the Bene Gesserit and the Spacing Guild - aligning themselves with whosoever provides them with the geriatric spice Melange, a condiment that grants prescient powers to its wielders such as foresight to the Navigators of the Spacing Guild. The hexology as a whole is brilliantly set...

Few trilogies espouse a universe so encompassing, engrossing, engaging, and breathtaking as Mass Effect, a franchise that combines the best of classic space opera and traditional science fiction elements such as cyberpunk and Lovecraftian horror into one genre-defying masterpiece that draws influence from media greats such as Blade Runner, Dune, Star Trek, Star Wars, and Deus Ex. The trilogy was an absolute blast to play, with its story of memorable characters, beautiful locales, and myriad social, political, and religious themes. It is no surprise that it is deemed as one of the greatest if not the greatest science fiction franchise of our generation . It comes to no surprise that a universe this big has other products. They already have an animated movie being released and have published several Dark Horse comics to date. While tie-in novels are considered supplementary and not stand-alones, this set of books deserves special mention for several reasons. First, the books are...

This is the first post in a series of posts that deals with books I have read or come across. The first book to receive this treatment is "A History of the Arab Peoples" by the late Lebanese scholar Albert Hourani. I finished reading this book about a year ago and I remember feeling somewhat underwhelmed by its premise. The book serves as an excellent primer to Arabs at the advent of Islam, but falls short of giving us as detailed a history as possible about Arabs prior to the coming of the world's second largest religious group. It seems to run on the hypothesis that modern Arab history started with the coming of Islam, and that the Arabs have had no history prior to this. The same has been said of the Palestinians, who are accused of having no history prior to 1948. The presence of a people and the socio-political climate that governed them in the past is just as important as the one in the present. In fact, it can be argued that much of what we see in Arab society...

Ever since man invented the wheel, technology as a whole has advanced farther than any of us can ever fathom. The wheel became the cart and the cart became the chariot and the chariot became the carriage and the carriage became the car. The glider got an engine which took it to space. The brick oven started to run on electricity and not on gas. Not long after, it also got the power to emit microwave radiation and the chance to blow up bowls of spaghetti. The pen gave way to the typewriter, and ENIAC gave way to the laptop computer. Writing on stone was later inscribed on leaves, papyrus, paper, and the Word document. Indeed, it would seem that technology has become almost synonymous with human progress. As much as some tried to use that technology to benefit the working man's daily life, much of it has been done for the sole purpose of ruining it altogether, and I'm not just talking about taxes and the mail delivery system. I'm talking about the other thing in life that...

A common yet grave fallacy is to assume that (the actions of) (part of) the infrastructure of a particular country at a particular time and place is derived from a singular cause, of which a metaphysical nature attributed to said cause would be even more so. That said, attributing (a perception of) (failed) politics as an "outflow" of a country's culture is in my honest opinion a crock of bull. I'm not denying that culture and politics are related: there clearly is a relationship between the two in the broader historical context. However, this reductionist outlook panders to more than your garden variety racism, itself being built on misinterpretations and misunderstandings. Why is that? First of all, consider that politics and culture are mutually exclusive concepts, although their definitions may not appear to be so on the surface. Politics (according to the pseudo-omniscient Wikipedia [1] ) is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The...