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A Genteel Black Hole

Tag: sci-fi

  • Bookish Ramble: The Man in the High Castle

    Ally

    Title: The Man in the High Castle
    Author: Philip K. Dick
    Year: 1962
    Country: USA

    Format: E-book
    Pages: 256
    Read: 17 – 27 April 2026
    First reading

    A disparate group of characters navigate life in 1960s San Francisco—now part of the Pacific States of America, following the Axis powers’ victory in the Second World War. Robert Childan is an antiques dealer, selling historical Americana to wealthy, prestigious Japanese clients whom he resents. One of Childan’s clients, a high-ranking Japanese official called Mr. Tagomi, needs a gift for a visiting Swedish industrialist called Baynes. Frank Frink, who must hide his Jewish heritage, works for a company that supplies the unsuspecting Childan with counterfeit Civil War antiques. Meanwhile Frank’s estranged wife Juliana, who lives in the neutral territory between America’s Japanese and German states, begins an affair with an Italian truck driver. Each of these characters’ lives are in some way touched by a controversial novel, Hawthorne Abendsen’s The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, which imagines an alternate history where the Allies won the war.

    The Man in the High Castle asks plenty of intriguing questions. “What if the Axis powers won the war?” is the first and most obvious question. The answer is quite horrifying. We learn of the Nazis’ destruction of Africa, the ovens in New York, and their plans to betray their wartime allies. But Philip K. Dick uses this scenario to explore plenty of his other preoccupations. The plot about counterfeit antiques asks what counts as genuine anyway, and what therefore counts as fake. (Dick would investigate this idea more thoroughly in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) Objects have no memory and aren’t materially changed by their mere presence at historical events, so does it matter that Childan’s “antique” guns weren’t really used in the Civil War? Not especially… until someone asks the question.

    Then there’s the I Ching, which various characters consult for advice and insight. This is one way in which Dick explores themes of cultural imperialism: the white American characters have Japanese culture imposed upon them, the same way actual America imposes its culture on the world. Dick also mentions the yin-yang cycle—light and dark, each giving birth to its opposite. The yin-yang symbol could be a diagram of this whole book. In reality, Philip K. Dick wrote a novel imagining the Axis powers won the war; in that novel, the fictional Hawthorne Abendsen wrote a book imagining the Allies won. The real and the imagined, each containing its opposite. When Juliana finally meets Abendsen, she discovers Grasshopper was written by consulting the I Ching. She interprets the Oracle’s message to mean that, in some way, the Axis powers really did lose the war. Does this mean that Dick’s own novel implies the reverse in our reality? Given our current situation, maybe he wasn’t far wrong. But the cycle will continue: darkness will again give way to light.

    These are all thought-provoking concepts, I really enjoyed pondering them; but the book’s structure and pacing are all over the place. (My buddy-reader Mark found it even more confounding than me! You can see his review on YouTube.) For much of the first half it feels like Philip K. Dick is slowly, meticulously outlining this alternate history, drawing tenuous but intriguing connections between all the main characters. I found myself wondering, half excited and half impatient, where exactly the story was going. Then, for a couple of chapters, there’s a sudden burst of action… which is soon over, giving way to the previous, slow pace. The ending feels less like a crescendo than a fade-out, or a nonchalant shrug. “And things continue pretty much like that—you get it, right?” Ultimately the book gave me a lot to think about, but the actual reading experience was somewhat mixed.

    That said, I’m still eager to read more Philip K. Dick.

  • Bookish Ramble: The Left Hand of Darkness

    Ally

    Title: The Left Hand of Darkness
    (Hainish #4)
    Author: Ursula K. Le Guin
    Year: 1969
    Country: USA

    Format: Paperback
    Pages: 300
    Read: 2 – 13 April 2026
    Reread

    Genly Ai is an Envoy for the Ekumen, a sort of interplanetary United Nations. He is sent to the ice planet Gethen (aka Winter) to persuade its constituent countries‚ starting with the nation of Karhide, to join the Ekumen. To Genly the Gethenians are utterly alien: For one thing, they have no concept of gender. Most of the time they are androgynous and asexual, developing the drive and capacity for sex only in the part of their monthly cycle known as kemmer—during which they could become either father or mother to a child. (To them Genly is in permanent kemmer, which they consider a perversion.) Karhidish society is also dictated by shifgrethor, an intricate set of unspoken social rules that Genly finds impossible to understand. So when Prime Minister Estraven, Genly’s chief supporter, is exiled as a traitor, the Envoy finds himself in an increasingly precarious position. Will he find the neighbouring country of Orgoreyn more welcoming?

    The Left Hand of Darkness was Ursula K. Le Guin’s breakout hit, winning her first Hugo award and putting her name on the sci-fi map. (Or should I say star chart?) It’s easy to see why: This is a much bolder, more self-assured piece of writing than any of the first three Hainish novels. Le Guin explores her themes with a newfound depth and maturity, asking some big, searching questions about sex, gender, otherness, patriotism and nationalism.

    “Hate Orgoreyn? No, how should I? How does one hate a country, or love one? Tibe talks about it; I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one’s country; is it hate of one’s uncountry? Then it’s not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That’s a good thing, but one mustn’t make a virtue of it, or a profession… Insofar as I love life, I love the hills of the Domain of Estre, but that sort of love does not have a boundary-line of hate. And beyond that, I am ignorant, I hope.”

    This is a story of two halves—quite apt for a book with a yin-yang symbol on the cover. I find the first half extremely dense. Genly’s field notes explain Gethenian biology, sociology and folklore in meticulous detail, to the point that it honestly threatens to give me a headache. Genly, due to the baffling rules of shifgrethor, doesn’t understand much of what happens to him on Gethen, and I feel similarly out of my depth as a reader. (I had hoped to understand it better on second reading… alas not!) Once Genly and Estraven join forces for an arduous trek across the ice, however, the story finally coalesces. Le Guin narrows her focus to the relationship between two people from different worlds, alternating narrators to let us see their unique perspectives on each other. Only then does it become a deeply emotional story, and one that I ended up loving.

    In the first chapter, Genly attends a keystone ceremony. King Argaven places the keystone, the final piece that turns two separate structures into one complete thing: an arch. This is one of the key images of the whole book. Gethen is an isolated planet on its way to joining the Ekumen, becoming part of something bigger than itself; and on a personal level, Genly and Estraven are two aliens gradually finding common ground, forging a deep connection with one another. The more intimate aspect is the one that really captivates me, but both parts are necessary for the story to work. By the end, those two halves have become one complete thing.

    The group reading project, hosted by Gareth (Books Songs and Other Magic) continues to be a very rewarding experience. I think we all agreed that The Left Hand of Darkness is our favourite Hainish novel so far, and we’re looking forward to a livestream discussion on Gareth’s channel soon. I’m also excited for the next book in the series: The Word for World is Forest, which I remember being my favourite of the Hainish books I’ve read. After that, the rest of the series will be entirely new to me!

  • Bookish Ramble: City of Illusions

    Ally

    Title: City of Illusions
    (Hainish #3)
    Author: Ursula K. Le Guin
    Year: 1967
    Country: USA

    Format: Paperback
    Pages: 158
    Read: 15 – 21 March 2026
    Reread

    My Hainish series read-through continues with City of Illusions, first published in 1967. (You can also read my reviews of the first two books: Rocannon’s World and Planet of Exile.)

    An exhausted, terrified stranger emerges from the forest. His eyes are yellow, cat-like and alien, his memory a complete blank. The forest people take him in, teaching him their language and naming him Falk. He lives happily with them for six years, coming to think of the place as home, but questions of his past still linger. Who was this man before he was Falk? Where is his forgotten home and how did he arrive on Earth? Who erased his memories and why? Falk sets out westward to rediscover his true self, taking him gradually towards a mysterious city inhabited by an elusive, powerful people known as the Shing.

    City of Illusions is Ursula K. Le Guin’s third novel, the third part of her Hainish series, and for me it’s the strongest of the three. Le Guin continues to hone her skills, crafting more memorable characters and more evocative prose than before. (The first sentence is only two words long and I found it a more intriguing opening than either of the first two books.) The mysteries of Falk and the Shing kept me engaged throughout, and I enjoyed seeing the connections gradually emerge between the first three Hainish books. It’s a satisfying read that also strengthens what came before it.

    Le Guin herself, in her foreword to a later reprinting of the novel, expressed dissatisfaction with the Shing as obvious, uninteresting villains—a character type she generally avoided in her work, preferring to explore more complex themes than hackneyed ol’ Good vs Evil. I can see what she means, but I still enjoyed the book on its own terms, unencumbered as I am by the author’s own artistic vision. Yes, Le Guin would soon go on to better, deeper things, but that doesn’t make this book an artistic failure. I really enjoyed my time with it. City of Illusions may not be Le Guin’s finest work but it certainly set the stage for it.

    And, once again, my enjoyment was enhanced by the group reading experience hosted by Gareth (Books Songs and Other Magic). So far I think we’ve all agreed that City of Illusions is the best of Le Guin’s first three books—but everyone seems even more excited for the next entry in the series: The Left Hand of Darkness.

    But before that, keep an eye on Gareth’s channel for a livestream discussion of the first three Hainish books.

  • Bookish Ramble: Lord of Light

    Ally

    Title: Lord of Light
    Author: Roger Zelazny
    Year: 1967
    Country: USA

    Format: Paperback
    Pages: 284
    Read: 1 – 11 March 2026
    First reading

    An alien world is ruled over by the Lords of Karma, Hindu gods with legendary names: Brahma, Kali, Vishnu, Krishna. But they’re not the true gods. In fact they are the First—human settlers who have colonised the planet. Their technology, so advanced it looks like magic, imbues them with the power and immortality of gods. The Lords of Karma abuse this power to reinstate the old caste system, placing themselves at the top, and imposing upon the planet a perpetual Dark Age. At every turn they are opposed by Sam, a fellow First who has rejected godhood. Sam assumes the role of the Buddha and, in various reincarnations across the centuries, spreads his message, slowly and patiently building a resistance movement. But is it enough to defeat these ruthless self-made gods?

    I was excited to read Lord of Light, having recently fallen in love with Roger Zelazny’s short stories. But Zelazny is a literary chameleon, his writing style ever shifting to fit the story, and Lord of Light is one that just didn’t click with me. On the surface it’s a religious myth, an epic tale of cruel and capricious gods. But that mythic tone is an ornate veil, concealing behind it a more rational, more “sci-fi” explanation. At first I was enjoying the process of peeking behind the veil, trying to glimpse the real story. But about halfway through I started to tire of it, and my enthusiasm never really recovered.

    For one thing, it’s hard to keep track of characters’ identities. Colonists often get reincarnated, taking on the mantle of different gods in different chapters. This made the whole thing feel quite disjointed to me, something compounded by the overall structure: Every chapter feels like an individual short story, each one centuries apart. (Two chapters were actually first published as short stories.) I love both novels and short stories, but for me “a series of interconnected short stories” is a hard sell. I had similar problems with A Canticle for Leibowitz—another beloved sci-fi classic with religious overtones.

    While I do appreciate ambiguous storytelling, Lord of Light is a dense text with very little space for interpretation. It felt more like something written in code, its one true meaning stubbornly obfuscated by Zelazny’s ornate, mythic prose—for “metal lotus” read satellite dish, etc. I found it an oppressive experience, and ultimately an exhausting one.

    That said, I do look forward to recording a discussion video with my friend Gavin from Genre Books. We buddy-read this as part of Gavin’s Century of Sci-fi project, in which he’s reading a sci-fi novel for every year of the last century. I get the impression he liked the book more than I did, so maybe he’ll be able to show me some of what I’m missing.

  • Bookish Ramble: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

    Ally

    Title: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
    Author: Philip K. Dick
    Year: 1968
    Country: USA

    Format: E-book
    Pages: 208
    Read: 10 – 21 February 2026
    Reread

    Rick Deckard, proud owner of an electric sheep, is a bounty hunter for the San Francisco police. His targets are androids, escaped slaves who have killed their human owners on Mars and fled to this bleak, post-apocalyptic Earth. Deckard must track down the androids, using the Voigt-Kampff empathy test to discern android from human, and “retire” them. But is Deckard a match for these superhuman androids? And just how reliable is the empathy test anyway?

    I first read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? in my early teens, having first seen the film adaptation, Blade Runner. I adored the film and watched it repeatedly. I remember being surprised by just how different the novel was. Revisiting it for the first time in all those years, I am once again surprised. This is a book stuffed with interesting philosophical and sociopolitical ideas, most of which were only hinted at (or outright ignored) by the makers of Blade Runner. I found it a fascinating, thought-provoking read.

    The setting is a future Earth, one where animals are all but extinct; owning a real, live animal is prohibitively expensive and therefore a status symbol. Failing that, one can keep up with the Joneses by purchasing a realistic electric animal, such as Deckard’s fake sheep. Deckard and his wife maintain the facade that their sheep is real, but they cannot care about it as deeply as a real creature. It simply doesn’t provoke the same empathic response. Similarly, Deckard feels no compunction about “retiring” androids. After all, they don’t count as people… do they?

    The Voigt-Kampff test (like in the film) measures a subject’s empathic responses to a set of hypothetical situations. Those who lack the proper response are revealed to be androids. But this is a poisoned Earth where humans are prone to developing cognitive disabilities. Such people are labelled “specials”—marginalised, banned from emigrating to Mars, despised and abused by humans and androids alike. And there’s a risk that a special could fail the Voigt-Kampff test and be mistakenly murdered by Deckard or his colleagues. Ultimately specials are seen as subhuman, just as unworthy of empathy as the androids Deckard is hunting. As a disabled reader myself, I found that theme particularly engaging.

    The novel’s dominant religion is Mercerism, in which humans can merge electronically with a martyr figure called Mercer and literally experience his suffering. But when Mercer’s authenticity is called into question, so is the validity of that experience. People can also use a machine to dial in the emotion of their choosing—including the desire to use the machine itself. If something so patently artificial can provoke real emotional responses, does that lend it a certain legitimacy after all? In our current age of chatbot therapy and AI-generated “art”, it’s increasingly clear that the answer is no!

    My only gripe with the book is a few moments of Male Author Syndrome: Women’s bodies, whether human or android, are frequently described in a little too much detail. Otherwise this is a fantastic novel. It’s a gripping, engaging, thought-provoking read. It works both as a hardboiled detective thriller and a piece of deeply philosophical sci-fi. I’m eager to read more Philip K. Dick in the coming months.

  • Bookish Ramble: Planet of Exile

    Ally

    Title: Planet of Exile
    (Hainish #2)
    Author: Ursula K. Le Guin
    Year: 1966
    Country: USA

    Format: Paperback
    Pages: 100
    Read: 1 – 5 February 2026
    Reread

    My Hainish series read-through continues with Planet of Exile, first published in 1966—the same year as its predecessor, Rocannon’s World. (You can read my review of Rocannon’s World here.)

    The story takes place on Werel, a planet with a decades-long season cycle. Jakob Agat leads a group of human colonists who, centuries ago, were exiled to Werel by the League of All Worlds. Jakob and his people, despite having never seen their long-forgotten homeworld, remain staunchly separate from the local indigenous tribe, the primitive Tevarans. As a harsh, fifteen-year winter approaches—bringing with it a horde of ruthless nomadic warriors called the Gaal—cooperation between human and Tevaran camps may be their only chance of survival. But things are complicated when Jakob breaks taboo with Rolery, daughter of the Tevaran chief.

    Planet of Exile, while not yet Peak Le Guin, is a marked improvement from Rocannon’s World. Both books attempt to blend sci-fi and fantasy, but the second book succeeds where the first fails. My friend Pat (Book Chat With Pat) shared a quote in our Hainish group chat where Le Guin describes her debut novel with a colour analogy: If sci-fi is blue and fantasy is red, Rocannon’s World is purple. I would argue that Rocannon’s World doesn’t successfully blend its colours; it’s a book of blue and red stripes, awkwardly clashing. Planet of Exile, on the other hand, is properly purple.

    Le Guin’s prose here is more focused and more evocative than in her debut. The cast of characters is also more streamlined—there are just three races to keep track of, and the tension between human and Tevaran tribes is made tangible by the star-crossed romance of Jakob and Rolery. I sincerely enjoyed Planet of Exile. And it’s exciting to see Le Guin’s progression as a writer, especially knowing just how much farther she would go from here.

    The group reading experience, hosted by Gareth (Books Songs and Other Magic) also continues to delight. These past two months we’ve had some fascinating discussions, and I’m eager to continue them as we work through the rest of the Hainish series together.

  • Telly Ramble: Enterprise

    Ally

    Title: Star Trek: Enterprise
    Year: 2001-05
    Country: USA

    Format: Blu-ray
    Seasons: 4
    Episodes: 98
    Seen: 9 August 2025 – 16 January 2026
    First viewing (mostly)

    Captain’s Blog: Back in August of ’25, a few weeks before I started Project Glowing Rectangle, I also started a months-long telly-watching project. On days when I don’t have the time, energy or inclination to watch a film but I still need something to lure me away from doomscrolling, my main Thing To Watch has been Star Trek: Enterprise. It has seen me through some rough times and big changes these past five months. And yesterday I watched the final three episodes.

    I had seen a handful of Enterprise eps when they originally aired—T’Pol made a big impression on my adolescent self! But this was my first time watching the entire series. Overall I enjoyed it… but it did play everything very safe. Maybe this is inevitable for a prequel series; it had to slot into the existing Star Trek continuity, so it could never take big swings. The riskiest aspect of the whole show was the theme tune, a godawful country power ballad that I ended up skipping for most of the run.

    The cast is decent but mostly pretty bland. Being something of an outsider myself—let me count the ways!—naturally I’m most drawn to Star Trek’s outsider characters. I was spoilt for choice with Deep Space Nine, but there’s slim pickings on Enterprise. Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula), a dog dad and water polo fan, is easily the least interesting of all the pre-streaming Star Trek captains. The standouts for me are the two alien crew members, science officer T’Pol (Jolene Blalock) and Dr Phlox (John Billingsley), but even they don’t get to shine as often as I would like. I also enjoyed the recurring character Commander Shran (Jeffrey Combs), an Andorian who keeps trading favours with Archer. Jeffrey Combs’ many, many guest appearances were a highlight of DS9, so I was happy to see him again here.

    Enterprise has none of the truly atrocious episodes that make me yell at the telly, ‘WTF was that?!’ (I’m looking at you, Sub Rosa…) Equally there are none of the stunning, profoundly moving stories that make me rejoice to be a fan of Star Trek. There’s nothing here that approaches the level of Darmok, The Inner Light, The Visitor, or Far Beyond the Stars. But maybe it’s unfair to ask lightning to strike twice. Or even once!

    The high point for me was season 2, episode 2: Carbon Creek, in which a Vulcan crew—including T’Pol’s great-grandmother (also played by Jolene Blalock)—is stranded on 1950s Earth. It’s quite telling that the best episode was one that didn’t involve the regular crew at all, aside from the framing device of T’Pol relating the story over dinner. But if you watch only one episode of Enterprise, make it this one.

    I also enjoyed the third season, a completely serialised story about the Xindi plot to destroy Earth. This was something unique for pre-streaming Trek, and I think they pulled it off. After that, the final season reverted to more episodic storytelling; not in itself a bad thing, but a lot of these two- or three-part stories felt like desperate fan service. There’s a two-parter devoted to explaining why Original Series Klingons had smooth foreheads. Give me a break!

    The final episode, These Are the Voyages…, is notoriously detested by fans. The whole thing is a holodeck simulation run by Riker, taking place in the middle of a Next Generation episode. As a finale to Enterprise, it doesn’t really work. As a celebration of Star Trek in general, it… doesn’t really work either. I didn’t hate it like the fandom seems to, but I agree the preceding two-parter is a more fitting and emotionally resonant finale to Enterprise.

    So yeah… all in all, a pretty middling iteration of Star Trek. Not much I hated, but not much I really loved. It felt like a show that could never fully decide what it wanted to be. But it was nice to see some new-to-me Trek with a substantial number of episodes per season. Enterprise has been a good companion to me these past five months, for which I’m grateful.

    Up next, a rewatch of The Original Series.