Book Description
In this collection, Pope John Paul II contemplates the great questions of our lives-the mystery of creation, the invisibility of beginnings, the end of existence, and eternity that follows.
Customer Reviews:
A beautiful book . . . .......2007-02-06
. . . showing the deep thoughts of one of the spiritual giants of our time.
Both poetry and spiritual meditation, this book is a gift of love to the world from Pope John Paul II (The Great) as he contemplated the approaching end of his long life. The reader will want to take time with this volume; it is not designed for "speed-reading". Rather, it is to be savored slowly and prayerfully.
A powerful book from a mystical perspective. I can't speak highly enough about it.
Looking Back - You Will Be Grateful For Buying This Book.......2006-03-30
Yes, it is a slim volume of poetry. And yes, poetry is not usually at the top-of-the-charts in popularity. But this was no ordinary poet. This was Our Great Holy Father, John Paul II. And while some said he could have done more for the faithful, in my opinion he did everything possible - if you truly believe in God's will. And most respectfully, this was (again, in my opinion only) John Paul II's only way of conveying the dire times in which we live and prophesying as well via the poetry genre - always subject to differing interpretations. One can feel his heart on every single word of each poem. Thank goodness we live in a country that offers us the most precious Freedom of Speech & Press - so that all we need do is "click" and purchase such a treasure for a song.
A Poet-Pope's Enigmatic Finale.......2005-11-02
The handsome little volume comes with drawings by Michelangelo for illustrations and an afterward by Cardinal Ratzinger. The work itself takes up about twenty pages, and directly references the coming conclave at the pope-author's death, but does not name names. Nor does it explicitly discuss church parties and issues. The three parts of the poem are first, a meditation while walking on a mountain stream, next reflections in the Sistine Chapel including the musings on conclave, and finally a casting of the Abraham and Isaac story. The language is plain and the verse entirely free; it has little to put off a reader uncomfortable with poetry. The observations and thoughts are also broadly stated and, on the surface, reassuringly mainstream. The book was cast in about as straightforward a form and universal a language as possible. One becomes aware, as it slowly unfurls, that it is consciously aimed on one level at a very broad audience. Thus one slowly begins to confront the seriousness of its intent. And it then becomes clear that this is a fully intentioned closer to the entire poetic career, and arguably to much more.
The earlier Wojtyla as a poet was no modernist in the theological sense but he certainly shared the coded, existential approach one finds in Iron Curtain poets such as Milosz or in Solzhenitsyn's prose poems. There is often in such writers a double disguise -- religious message largely hidden, the language and context of Marxist intellectuals often adopted. The local cultural commissar would have let it all pass. Thus the future pope was able to sharpen a useful underground strategy as a creative writer. That should not be ignored here, however superficially it might seem that this strong pope was able to say just about anything he wanted.
In Triptych's first section, "The Stream," a man is hiking along clear mountain streams, and considers its clear course downhill over stone. In that direction lies an easy trek home. The meditation turns to water itself, as a sort of mystery to be unlocked in itself:
"What do you say to me, mountain stream?
Where do you encounter me?"
The enquiry thus at least opens toward pure metaphysical speculation. One cannot help but recall young Wojtylas's virtual immersion in the modern philosopher Husseryl and the very odd philosophy of phenomenology, which held that things are what use we put them to, how they stand in relation to other things -- not absolutes -- a viewpoint fundamentally different from the Thomism one might have expected. This is the direction of the walker's question, as he quite literally in his wanderings follows the meandering path cut by the stream. The stream is thus asked questions only it can answer. We are quite clearly and quickly, then, in a realm where the entire issue of belief is wide open. But what a yawning gulf this seems! And we have a pope here on this precipice of doubt and unbelief, and at age 83 no less? It may not necessarily shake your faith but, for a moment, it may well make you shake your head. Certainly no pope in history has ever spoken in the first person in these terms, even implicitly or under the mask of art. But the plain surface clarity, like the cold water, is at least for once refreshing. John Paul II was certainly a modern through and through, at least on an artistic level, and obviously could not escape such a root formation in the society from which he came. He candidly reveals how at home he was with that here, near his end. Yet we must also keep in mind the strategy of appearing to be a secular man, learned under Communism's fist, and consider what might be coded underneath a modernist mask.
Our mountaineer quickly realizes that "the rushing stream cannot wonder . . . but man can wonder!" And just as quickly turns uphill -- the more difficult trek to "the source," against the current.. For in this direction only lie the answers to his restless questioning. It is good at least to have decision -- in the vocabulary of phenomenology and Wojtyla's graduate thesis, an act of an "acting person." Whether action must precede faith the audience will leave for another day, but only because we have no choice: this is the last word from this quester, after all, the closer. There will soon be no more such days for him. And he is revealing both that an analytical faith has always been his way and that, to all intents and purposes, at least in this most personal voice, he knew no other.
The next section, "Meditations on the Book of Genesis at the Threshold of the Sistine Chapel," lands us firmly in the Sistine Chapel, guided specifically by the art of Michelangelo's Last Judgment on the ceiling above. The mystery of the Creation toward which the climber in "The Stream" mounted his steps against the current is now made manifest:
". . . the Book awaits its illustration. -- And rightly.
it awaits its Michelangelo."
Great praise for the artist, indeed, but the artist is also the art -- Michelangelo also stands for man, as a created being. And a subtle change in atmosphere has occurred, as the anonymous pilgrim has melded into the strictly personal: "I stand at the entrance of the Sistine Chapel." Yet "this threshold" too has a general meaning, it is metaphor for the eternal Word, also named as a threshold. As for the content of this lesson, "Michelangelo penned it." And it is all about:
"the Judgment, the Last Judgment.
This is the road that all of us walk --
each one of us."
Thus begins a long meditation on the end and the beginning, both "invisible" but knowable, it is asserted, by careful meditation on the ceiling as it explicates the story of the garden alongside the story of the Judgment. Michelangelo, as man, thus takes us back to the first man, who is also, before his fall, an unimaginable paradigm of the heavenly perfection promised to the just. The pope-poet insists we grasp this difficult mystery of perfection "pre-sacrament," as also explicated in words he passed under every day for eight years, "as I entered the gate of the gymnasium in Wadowice":
"Heaven is pleased with what is pure; come with pure robes
and with unsullied hands drink from the source"
This, then, is the dead center of the poem, the source of the mountaineer's stream. And the pope also insists that this perfection which God saw, and upon which He proclaimed "it was good" -- in His image and likeness as embodied in "the richness of a riot of colors" in Michelangelo's vision -- remains the Truth, the Word, against the argument of history which denies it -- "Even our own twentieth century!" For "no century can obscure this truth."
Here then, too, seems to lie a pointed reply to the criticism of a whole party in the present day Church, and perhaps an explanation for aspects of his papal program that it found scandalous -- particularly in the realm of ecumenism. Simply, John Paul II had made a prudential judgment as pope: that a reply to the monstrous argument of materialist "history" was a more paramount task for himself as pontiff, at this particular human "threshold," than tipping the balance in favor of this party or that party in Roman Catholic affairs. He tacitly acknowledges any argument against his judgment in this respect; say what you will, on whatever side, he knew somebody had already said it. But if I have been wrong, he almost seems to plead for himself, it was not for want of prayer and meditation on my responsibility -- much of which prayer occurred before the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, the same place that the conclave would take place. This meditation quickly dovetails back to 1978 where his papacy began and ahead, to its end:
" . . . in August, and again in October
in the memorable year of the two Conclaves
and so it will be once more, when the time comes,
after my death."
The pope's only expressed hope, regarding this coming event, was that those cardinals there assembled would meditate on these same frescoes of Judgment, and "see themselves in the midst of the Beginning and the End." It was an urgent desire:
"Michelangelo's vision must speak to them . . . .
During the conclave Michelangelo must teach them --
Do not forget . . .
All is laid bare and revealed before His eyes."
Of one fact concerning his successor the poet-pope was confident: "He will point him out."
This drama faced, the third section begins, "A Hill in the Land of Moriah," the story of Abraham and Isaac cast in classic exegesis as a prefigurement of the sacrifice of Cavalry. A climb up a mountain for a second time in the poem, a formal repetition of motif, prefiguring the third mountain which does not explicitly appear in the text. The pope's questioning mode renews, and mystery remains but is unfolded formally, slowly. And again it is act -- in this case obedience to the will of God -- that is explicated as the key, indeed:
"For God revealed to Abraham
what it means for a father to sacrifice his own son --
a sacrificial death."
The dialogue of son with father, and the invisible force that stays the dagger are seen as prefigurement of another set of three, the Trinity. This is another parallel to the original setting, "The Stream": the harder way, against the current. To give ourselves in love, true, but in this case a very specific act of love -- total sacrifice, of everything loved, of everything knowable by solely human knowledge. Finally, God's directive to Abraham in the poem's last lines:
"Remember this place once you go forth from here,
this place will await its day . . . ."
In other words, Cavalry. The pope's career as a poet ends with an ellipsis, but the direction to the third mountain, amazingly unnamed throughout the poem, is obvious. Indeed, one is more astonished to realize that the name of Jesus Christ has also been entirely absent throughout, although the poem is all about
His Church and following His cross.
One is thus left with the startling and somewhat unsettling impression of a dialogue that began on the edge of modern relativistic philosophy, and ended with something very unusual in major Catholic art -- the cross not as joy but as warning. So here, the re-examination of this so plain, apparently non-controversial, and even simple stretch of free verse must begin. There is no way this can now even be undertaken, for in the manner of the poet-pope, the enquiry will quickly be seen to be shot through with perhaps unanswerable questions. Was Triptych after all subversive? To whom was this warning directed? Why a warning at all? What great dear thing needed be sacrificed? Why was obscure poetry enlisted for such a major purpose?
Any answers will be seen to open up to major issues concerning this whole long pontificate. That sort of "judgment" awaits the sort of history that is not instant, that will take terribly long if it is ever even possible. But one thing is certain: this pope knew all the criticism from all sides, and expected to be shortly facing an awesome judge. Determinedly, he did not go into that place signing off on a religion of despair. As for those who told him he was dead wrong, a reasonable guess is that many of them -- to his view -- would soon be standing under those frescoes in conclave. They like Abraham, his faith told him, would be provided with a voice of direction. A large part of this poem's burden was to pray, publicly, that they follow it.
A Wonderful Book.......2005-04-21
If you want to know why so many gathered and cheered at his funeral, just read this book.
Not the Originals.......2005-04-14
Bear in mind that this book is a TRANSLATION into English. A translation is never exactly the same as the original.
Book Description
In this full-color Designer's Notebook, eight expert French photographers reveal their secrets in using Photoshop and a collection of dedicated applications to create extraordinary panoramic photos--including some amazing 360-degree images. For anyone involved with digital imagery or animation, this groundbreaking volume demonstrates a new way of thinking about what's possible and what's required to produce these images. Originally published in France, Assembling Panoramic Photos: A Designer's Notebook is available in English for the first time. Part art book, part how-to guide, this stunning work takes you right into the studio and sits you down next to renowned digital artists as they advance step-by-step toward their final images. The showcased pieces are inspiring and avant-garde, and the techniques are instructive for a wide range of amateur and professional photographers, graphic designers, and digital artists. The artists featured in this Designer's Notebook show how they use Photoshop, Stitcher, PanaVue ImageAssembler, and other specialized tools to create high-quality panoramas and wide-angle images from a series of photos. They also show how to create virtual reality scenes with Apple's QuickTime VR in conjunction with leading-edge technologies that support 360-degree one-shot photos, cubic images, and 3D views of objects. The results are interactive, often startling, and bear the hallmark of each artist's original vision and skill. Reflecting the very best of French photography, graphic design and digital artistry, Assembling Panoramic Photos: A Designer's Notebook offers advanced Photoshop instruction that goes beyond opening this menu, or clicking that palette. You receive expert aesthetic guidance, from start to finish, with notes and views that reveal every step of the process. This book is a goldmine for any digital artist who wants to learn new Photoshop techniques and exploit them for maximum effect. At home on either your coffee table or desktop, the book itself is dazzling in concept and design. There's nothing else quite like this Designer's Notebook available in the U.S.
Customer Reviews:
I found this book to be a great book on artistically making PANORMIC Photos, and More..........2007-10-06
I found this book to be a great book on artistically making PANORMIC Photos, and More...
It is an excellent book in showing different techniques as well as the art of "Assembling" Panoramic pictures. But it is also a work of art in helping you get an idea of the artistic and somewhat abstract way of doing this.
I followed the techniques, for example taking multiple shot of the same subject and then assembling that together, as another example I used the planning that is pointed out in this book, and multiple shots from the same view to make it super high resolution.
I used PhtotoShop for the "Stitching" and I got the same outstanding results.
This is a Great book for photographers.
Bruce Razban
Silicon Valley, CA, USA
Small but really useful.......2007-02-11
This book is small but really comprehensive. Through specific examples people that knows the secret of panoramic photography, gives tips & tricks for a good panoramic photo using normal cameras and lenses.
In the beginning i read it very quick but then i discover more more than even in the smallest paragraph there is a nice tip.
The only "bad" is that most of the writers use realviz stitcher as main stitching program. Why this is "bad"? Because the program costs more than 400 euro. There is also a express release around 100 euro but with limited use.
But the tips and tricks are still there. I personally use PTGui with Pano2cube software and i can use most of this books advices. it is highly recommended for the photographer he wants to involved in panoramic photography.
New photographer.......2005-12-17
I came to Moab Utah to take photos of the great national parks and the state park (Dead Horse SP). After two weeks I bought the Really Right Stuff equipment for making horizontal and vertical panoramas. The photoshop CS2 books and the internet suggested that joining them would be easy to do. Hoever, this great book, shows that much more skill is needed in taking the photographs and using the software. The book gives an outline of the steps needed to compose the 8 digital panoramas but does not give exact details because considerable experiment is needed. In the first chapter where 3 images are joined to form an ice fall in an ice cave the photographer took 200 images. In the panoramic beach scene the waves were coninuously moving during the shooting so that an incredible amount of editing was needed to form a great image. This book shows what can be done if skill is used at every step Now I realise how much incredible work Max Lyons had to do to compose his terabyte image of Bryce Canyon. "The Photoshop CS2book for Digital Photographers" has a small chapter on panorams.
For some reason "Assembling Panoramic Photos" is well hidden in the Amazon search terms.
Howard McPherson, Cleveland, Ohio (Moab, Utah)
An essential reference which should be a part of any solid photography book collection.......2005-12-05
Few books on photograph go into much detail or depth on handling panorama format photos, which makes the advice of Assembling Panoramic Photos: A Designer's Notebook important. Another feature which lends unique value: leading French photographers and artists present their techniques, translated by William Rodarmor for English readers, with step-by-step examples of technique beginning with initial shots and progressing to specific panoramic techniques. The end result is an essential reference which should be a part of any solid photography book collection.
Short on details.......2005-11-16
A picture may well be worth a thousand words, but 8 pictures doesn't add up to a a book. This book takes the reader through 8 photographs by 8 different photographers who outline the techniques they used to generate them. Although some of the pictures are impressive, this book is a bit short on detail. If you are looking to get started with Panoramic pictures, you'd best start with some other books.
Customer Reviews:
Great suspense!!.......2007-10-08
This novel was the first I read of Karin Slaughter, and I have to say I was quite impressed. I really liked how the book introduced each character and went into detail about them and made me actually feel like I knew the people. There wasn't a chapter that didn't have me wanting to read on.
Every single chapter had me thinking on what will happen next, if it involved detective Ormwood dealing w/ his personal problems at home, or the recently paroled sex-offender John Shelley trying to make an honest living, or the many other characters in the novel. I highly recommend this novel to any reader that enjoys books that involve murder mysteries or just suspense books.
Good Read!.......2007-10-02
Except for the title and its obscure inferences, I thought the book was quite well done. I do believe I was misled into thinking the first detective was a 'good guy' by some (now seen) cheap ploys, but I can forgive that because the rest of the material made up for it.
I loved the twists and surprises and the insights given to one who has severe dyslexia.
I think using that many swear words was a cop out (sic) and the author should try to broaden her dialogue vocabulary so the reader won't feel like he's listening to teenagers on the after-school bus.
All that none-with-standing, I would definitely buy another of Ms Slaughter's books.
YUCK - horrid .......2007-09-21
I read about the first 30 pages of this mess and give up. It starts with a crime, then goes into a long, BORING chunk of backstory - talk about info dump! If this had been written by a first time author, it never would have gotten by the first reader at a publishing house. It's just aweful. I've never read her before and would never bother again, but was AMAZED that she's a best-selling author! Boy, the reading public's standards have sure taken a nose dive.
Breaks the Author/Reader Bond.......2007-08-28
Though the story is well written with rich characters and gritty realism, there is a major flaw in the writing style. Using the omniscient POV should give the reader access to the true emotions and inner-feelings of the characters, revealing things about them that are not otherwise revealed externally, but Slaugher breaks the author/reader bond by giving us insight into a main character, expressed as genuine feelings, that just aren't true. There is nothing wrong with using the perspective of a second character to misinterpret the reactions of the first (i.e. the killer wouldn't really be sickened by the sight of the crime scene, but someone else can note the 'perceived' disgust in his face) in order to create some red herrings for the reader to mull over. But to betray a characters true emotions solely for the purpose of fooling the reader is a cheap gimmick.
Also, there are too many coincidences in this book. I know Slaugher is used to writing about sleepy little towns, but Atlanta is a big city. The random interweaving of the major characters is way too convenient in many cases and significantly impacts the believability factor.
Overall, I enjoyed the novel, but I felt there were too many instances when the author was more concerned with shocking the reader than telling a coherent story -- resulting in too many unanswered questions.
Straightforward and Engaging.......2007-08-24
Triptych is not a great title, and I wish Slaughter's people would have helped her change it. The word is not one most people will recognize, and it doesn't really apply well to the character it's supposed to represent. Once that's been said, the book itself is well done. Its plot is fairly straightforward and somewhat predictable, and the cliches (the wounded detective with a dark past; he even has a disability! He can't seem to make a relationship with the equally flawed policewoman, etc.) detract a little from a violent and gripping mystery.
A naive but likable teen wakes up one morning lying in bed next to his dream girl--the only problem is, she's been brutally murdered. Evidence and emotion lead to a quick trial and conviction for this unfortunate kid. Slaughter is particularly strong as she describes the horrific existence this young man endures during his twenty years of incarceration. The boy's mother is also poignantly portrayed as she comes to terms with this family-shattering event. Ms. Slaughter did her homework, and she applies a thoughtful and rough-edged narration to this midsection of the story.
A not-quite-satisfying conclusion is also a minor detraction from the book, but Ms. Slaughter's careful characterization and strong narration skills leave you feeling very satisfied with her first stand-alone novel, Triptych.
Book Description
2065: In a world that has rediscovered harmony with nature, the village of El Modena, California, is an ecotopia in the making. Kevin Claiborne, a young builder who has grown up in this "green" world, now finds himself caught up in the struggle to preserve his community's idyllic way of life from the resurgent forces of greed and exploitation.
Customer Reviews:
Not Free SF Reader.......2007-09-03
Robinson again takes a look at his Californian setting, this time in a community that is environmentally focused, and has limited development and economic expansion.
The book's conflict come as one of the members of this community tries to get around their rules and laws for financial gain, another opposes him, and a woman is caught in the middle, being the ex-lover of the rulebreaker, and current interest of the community upholder.
Robinson's Utopia plays Softball.......2007-08-18
In this, the third of Robinson's "Three Californias" trilogy, we get a very personal story of love and life in the idyllic ecotopia of El Modena, a small California town where water is a treasured resource, the abandoned cities are being broken up for scrap, and economic development is carefully controlled by the democratically elected local government. The protagonist is Kevin, a likable conservation-minded young man who builds multi-family homes with an outdoorsy feel and complete with interior gardens. His rival for the attentions of the beautiful and athletic Ramona is Alfredo, who lusts for power and the glory of accomplishment. The love triangle between Kevin, Alfredo and Ramona takes center stage, paralleling the two men's conflicting designs on their magnificent natural resource.
The three novels in the series are completely independent of each other, and in fact exist in alternative timelines, so there's no reason to read them in any particular order. The idea is to show the various possibilities latent in California's present, but if one didn't know better, one could have read all three books and not realized they were connected. In this installment, Tom, the only character who appears in all three books, is a lonely elder statesman who enjoys a late-blooming romance with a traveling scientist, but he doesn't really have much purpose here.
The angst-ridden conclusion causes one to question the author's state of mind. While certainly realistic enough, there seems little real point to it. Perhaps Robinson felt it necessary to remind us that even in a utopia, the basic problems of love and death will still plague mankind. Unfortunately, this ending undercuts the pleasure one might have derived from reading the book, and given that it's pretty lightweight to begin with, this is a crucial failing. There's very little science fiction in this book, and not much philosphy (for a utopia novel) so the melancholy conclusion leaves this third of the triptych with nothing to especially recommend it.
fell in love in with all aspects.......2007-07-16
In all aspects of this book, I fell in love.
The descriptions of Ramona, the town beauty, left me longing for her. The realtionship between Ramona and Kevin sent my heart afluttering. I found Kevin to be as human as a character could be, hence his likablity and conveyance of the situations. Kevin is a very well-rounded and developed character whose eyes are suitable for the window into this world.
When the plot thickens, the characters thicken, as well. The reading is fluid and enjoyable. The ending seems a fitting end to all things brought to the forefront in the book. It left me smiling as I finished the last page and closed the book and set it upon my bookshelf.
Weak ending keeps it from being a great book.......2005-12-30
The theme of community that was touched on early in the first novel is fully developed here -- socially, economically, historically, politically, and even romantically. The story is primarily about a threat to the utopia of worker-owned businesses (a middle way between capitalism and socialism) and secondarily about two romances: the love triangle involving the protagonist, and the affair between two old people (which KSR dares to portray as passionate).
Considering that this book was written pre-internet (its original edition is dated 1990, a couple years BEFORE the Mars Trilogy was published), the two-way TV link-ups for global communication seem prescient. There are few other technical innovations, and the story really qualifies as speculative fiction rather than SF.
The character "played" by the personality named Tom comes into full bloom here as a global hero who was a significant force in establishing the utopia. I think KSR's greatest contribution to the utopia genre is his pointed question "How does a utopia come about?" I don't recall any other author addressing this issue in sufficient (let alone convincing) detail -- futuristic utopias appear out of nowhere as the story begins, without a good explanation of how we got (or can get) from here to there.
Unfortunately, KSR indulges in a kind of "author's diary" that opens each chapter with an entry full of his own ruminations. He should have spent less effort on it and more on developing the sketchy background story about how Tom et al transformed the kind of society epitomized by late 20th century US into the community-oriented utopia of the novel. But at least KSR gave it a try. The unsatisfactory fence-straddling ending keeps me from giving this book 5 stars. Even so, it's the best of the three.
I FELL IN LOVE WITH THESE CHARACTERS AND THEIR TOWN.......2005-08-25
This book is not action-packed and it's not really what I consider science fiction. All that makes it futuristic is that it's set a few decades into the future. If you're looking for high-tech or hard sci-fi, look elsewhere. However, if you want to read a pleasant story about the lives and loves of a small, mid-twenty-first century liberal community in southern California rendered in simple, clear prose that even achieves a certain degree of lyricism at times, then give this a try. You may end up loving it, as I did. Liberals probably more than conservatives will enjoy this book because the good guys are liberal while the one bad guy, if the story can be said to have a bad guy, is a republican-type who lets his greed get the better of him at the expense of the community. But nobody in the story is really all that bad (or completely perfect either); they're just basically decent people trying to do their best given their character flaws. The town, while not exactly a shangri-la, is a pleasant, healthy place to live. I really grew to like this community and its simple, back-to-basics (but without being primitive) way of living. In a sense, reading this book is therapeutic; there's nothing morbid here, but lots that is beautiful and uncomplicated, even spiritually uplifting (God is not banned from this liberal community). I found the plot compelling. It kept me turning the pages. The characters were mostly likable, some even adorable. When I finished this book, I got the sense of having visited a place in which I would like to live. Instead of giving a doom-day scenario of the future, the book allows the reader to imagine a future that, while not perfect, is still better than the past. If you are a parent looking to find a book to share with your young adult, this book is good because it works for both adults and kids (over twelve, I'd say). Notwithstanding the somewhat meloncholy ending, this novel is a very pleasant, light-hearted read. If innocence is not your thing, you may not like this book. But I am usually into much darker stuff and I nonetheless found this book to be like a ray of light shining through a cloudy sky.
Book Description
2027: Southern California is a developer's dream gone mad, an endless sprawl of condos, freeways, and malls. Jim McPherson, the affluent son of a defense contractor, is a young man lost in a world of fast cars, casual sex, and designer drugs. But his descent in to the shadowy underground of industrial terrorism brings him into a shattering confrontation with his family, his goals, and his ideals. The Gold Coast is the second novel in Robinson's Three Californias trilogy.
Customer Reviews:
Not Free SF Reade.......2007-09-04
A decaying California? Basically, Robinson's weakest work, this lot. Not something I am interested in, in general. Three Californias is perhaps two and a half Californias too many, in this case. This is perhaps close to mundane. Orange County is not a nice place to start with, not too suprising it will be less nice in the future. Prefer others to this, particularly his newer books.
Fascinating and frustrating at the same time.......2007-04-16
I'm making my way through all of KSR's novels (I have three or four left to go), and with a little reluctance place The Gold Coast squarely in the middle of his body of work in terms of achievement. I say this reluctantly because, as a man about Jim's age living in Southern California, I was prepared to love this novel as much as I love any other by Robinson. It is of course fascinating--the future setting is scrupulously plausible and the theoretical/political/philosophical issues Robinson brings up are all dealt with maturely and satisfyingly--but on a sentence-for-sentence basis I think this is some of KSR's weakest prose. He's best when he's waxing philosophical with a small cast of characters(especially in the earlier books like Remaking History and Icehenge) or world-creating on the scale of the Mars Books or The Years of Rice and Salt. The Gold Coast, on the other hand, is too short to realize fully the large number of characters while at the same time dwelling on Jim and his friends' antics which reveal less about them or their Orange County than one would expect to learn. The thoughts in this book that relate to Southern California--its ambivalence to its own history, its end-of-the-world location and worldview--are for me what make the book worth reading, but after finishing it I still felt like the characters were only beginning to get interesting.
Prescient vision of a militarized society.......2005-12-30
Southern California sex, designer drugs, malls, and corruption are all here, but the eerie part of KSR's dystopian vision goes beyond materialism. In this novel, the US is engaged in several simultaneous small wars around the globe and gags the media to keep images of American casualties from the public eye.
The military-industrial complex is unassailable, openly controlling the US economy, which has become completely dependent on warfare. Nevertheless, some rebels plan a guerrilla strike against a warbucks company. The climax of their sabotage effort involves a skillful plot twist that reinforces the author's critique of corporate greed.
The technological gadgetry (e.g., cars driven by computer, which keeps accidents low in light of all the recreational drugs) hardly qualifies this as science fiction, but the book is after all a vision of the future. The protagonist's scattered, other-directed quest for meaning, embedded in a culture that is almost as purposeless as Huxley's Brave New World, complements the strong notes of hope that the author sings in the other two novels of this series.
The passages about Orange County history are not distracting, but they foreshadow the poorly executed "author's diary" that KSR indulges in throughout the third novel of the series. Also, sad to say, the personality named Tom is virtually insignificant in this book, languishing in an old age home and doing little more than recount "dreams" that are actually references to the eponymous characters in the first and third novels.
More Morality Tale than Imaginative Fiction.......2005-05-14
Part of Robinson's "Three Californias" triptych, this book is set in a future Orange County where economic development has continued unabated, supplanting the region's natural beauty with a vast suburban sprawl. Military installations, enormous malls, and a mechanized transportation system are now the dominant landmarks in areas once dedicated to orange groves. Against this gray backdrop, we get the story of would-be writer Jim McPherson, a smart and sensitive young man who has given in to the ennui of his age. He holds jobs that he has no enthusiasm for. He has relationships that have little meaning to him. He spends much of his time in the company of his social group: a bunch of recreational drug users dedicated to living the good life, and many of whom have more focus in their lives than he does. With so little direction in his life, is it any wonder Jim finds himself drawn into a terrorist campaign against the military-industrial establishment that his well-meaning father works for?
There's not much science fiction here, aside from an overall upgrade in the level of gadgetry, and while 80's societal trends are neatly extrapolated, there aren't any radically new ideas that grab one's attention. But if you can identify at all with Jim's stultifying malaise (something many people have been through at one time or another) this novel provides an interesting look at the effect the military-industrial complex has on modern American life. If you can't, this book will probably leave you cold.
One gets the impression that Robinson is unloading a lot of personal baggage in this book, leading this reviewer to question his artistic distance from the material. It's easy for a writer to put too much of himself on the page, not realizing that his readers won't "get it" in the same way that he does. Some sections seem to border on autobiography while others (are those historical entries Jim's or Robinson's?) read like a history textbook. Ultimately the book stands as a cautionary tale about industrial "progress" and its impact on our humanity. Jim barely escapes the destructive force of his own alienation, but others will not be so fortunate, with results that could be catastrophic for us all. But although this isn't an especially happy story, it's not entirely without hope either. Like Jim, we can renounce violence and re-establish our connection to the natural world, and hopefully undo some of the damage that's been done, building a better future for all.
I don't think so........2004-01-03
I found this book to be unremarkable at best. After reading the outstanding Mars trilogy, this was a big disappointment. I suppose a staunch KSR fan might find it interesting, but I fail to see how.
I forced myself to finish it thinking something must happen to justify the books existance, but I never found it.
Book Description
2047: For the small Pacific Coast community of San Onofre, life in the aftermath of a devastating nuclear attack is a matter of survival, a day-to-day struggle to stay alive. But young Hank Fletcher dreams of the world that might have been, and might yet be--and dreams of playing a crucial role in America's rebirth.
Customer Reviews:
Not Free SF Reader.......2007-09-03
Russia and others have blown the crap out of the USA, nuclear style.
Now an isolated, broken down country, the United Nations enforces this situation, and Robinson looks at what it is like to live inside this boundary.
The main character is a young man finding his way.
There are some funny parts, such as the yarns their elders spin them at times about 'the old days', and the author has fun with that part.
a WHOLE lot of California.......2007-04-20
California, California... and more California.
Withholding the fact that the book is part of a Three California series, why are so many books plotted in California? More books ought to take place in the great state of Illinois!
For those not familiar with the geography and cities of the state of California (like myself), reading about the different cities becomes monotonous. I just started to skip over the names of most of the cities and landmarks. Beyond this California-ization, everything else was easy to read and also a great pleasure!
Relation to the characters was an easy build-up. Their lives, hardships and joys were all presented very well to the reader. The sheer detail of life in the post-apocalyptic California was refreshing to read: the author touched base on communications, technology, politics and idiosyncrasies in the time.
Perhaps one more complaint would be the lack of information about what happened to the rest of the country after the attack on America. From the reading, it almost seems as if the author thinks California is better and beyond the union of the USA. The neutron bomb attack on America was an America disaster, not just a local California disaster.
Dreaming of a Post-Apocalyptic California?.......2006-11-30
Being a California Native and a lover of post-apocalyptical fiction this book should have been a slam-dunk for me and in some ways it was.
Robinson got two things right -
First, she realistically portrays the life of a primitive, struggling, post-nuclear attack community along a wild and rugged California coast. They fish, hunt, sow and trade for their survival. Many want to forget their past in order to brighten their future while others are obsessed with their once powerful history and take great risks to reassert their independence. That is exactly what one would expect from a post-apocalyptical American society.
Second, the survivors would flounder under the burdens of lack of communication, lack of central government and the frustration of walking among the rubble of technology you know would be helpful but that no one alive has more than rudimentary understanding of. The geo-political situation would be not only misunderstood, but in many ways unknown and perhaps even irrelevant to survivors in such circumstances. The bits and pieces of the world situation that these people do happen upon are unvalidated and confused.
This realism, and the thought and consideration behind it, are impressive. It's very in tune with Robinson's detail-oriented style.
But that detail-heavy writing style is the thing that most turned me off of this book. The superfluous descriptions of the natural scenery was overwhelming and literally boring. I understand that Robinson is trying to imply a tie to nature that these post-war people would have that we can barely imagine in this day and age - yet pages and pages of scenic detail are unnecessary. I found myself literally skipping pages ahead to avoid having to read yet another description of the sea-cliff or the redwood grove. Not even an uber-naturalist would be interested in this much information. And it takes away from an otherwise fascinating and well-flowing narrative of a young boys life in the turbulent times Robinson has created.
While I'll probably finish this series, I'd only recommend it to those with a particular interest in California or post-apocalyptical writing. Or if you have trouble falling asleep.
More than a coming-of-age story.......2005-12-30
I read this a couple years ago, when I was 50, and enjoyed it very much. It's not strictly a coming-of-age story, but perhaps it is intended for the young at heart: romance, teenage rebellion, and idealism about the future.
After a nuclear attack, US society has rolled back to the sparse population and low tech that characterized the 19th century (part of the story focuses on trying to rebuild a railroad line). A major theme is "young man yearning to break free of restrictions" -- in this case, a US that has been quarantined as a protectorate of Japan (which Americans suspect is conspiring to keep them from regaining mainstream 20th century technology).
The wise old man Tom of this story not only is a key supporting actor here, but also appears in name and personality in the remaining novels of the triptych. But he's not really the same character, because there is no connection linking the three novels other than the common locale and a few "what if" musings (a contrivance by KSR).
A very good standalone novel. Also a good introduction to the series and to KSR.
No _Postman_ - this is a coming-of-age story.......2004-11-02
I had recently read David Brin's The Postman which, like Wild Shore, is also concerned with the rebuilding of community after a nuclear holocaust in the U.S. Both focus on men - young or middle-aged. Instead of being concerned with the rebuilding of a nation, however, Wild Shore focuses on community, being true to one's self, yearning for something more, and the horrors of war. While the Postman is fiercely patriotic set on a national scale, The Wild Shore is locally minded. Kim Stanley Robinson sympathetically portrays his protagonist, Henry, and it is his `coming of age' that Wild Shore is concerned with.
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The Stavelot Triptych, Mosan Art, and the Legend of the True Cross
Pierpont Morgan Library
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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A book to read and reread, inspired imagery!.......1999-04-22
Rudhyar sheds light on the basic phases which constitute spiritual unfoldment, a repeated emergence out of a series of typical conditions which test one's strength, resilience and faith. Rudhyar is unique in his power to synthesize all elements of Astrology into a new vision.
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Woman Before a Glass: A Triptych in Four Parts
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