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Thursday, June 4 2009

Review: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell by Susanna Clarke

By Cosmicfrog on Thursday, June 4 2009, 17:45 - Books

Jonathan strange and Mr Norell This week, I have chose to review a quite well-known book released in 2005: "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell", by Susanna Clarke.

"Unquestionably the finest English novel of the fantastic written in the last seventy years." Neil Gailman

  • Winner of the 2005 Hugo Award for Best Novel
  • Winner of the 2005 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel
  • Winner of the 2005 Locus Award for Best First Novel
  • Winner of the 2005 Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature
  • Winner of the 2005 British Book Awards Newcomer of the Year Award
  • Longlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize
  • Shortlisted for the 2004 Whitbread First Novel Award
  • Shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award
  • Shortlisted for the 2005 British Book Awards Literary Fiction Award
  • Time's Best Novel of 2004

(source: wikipedia)

Ok, I know that these critics do not mean much individually, but few books have succeeded in winning the Hugo and the Locus prizes in the same year ! Now that I have said enough on the context, what will you find in "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell" ? Nothing less that the renewal of English magic.

Imagine a world in which everything is the same except for one thing: during the Renaissance, magic actually worked, and North England was governed during centuries by a magician king - John Uskglass, the Raven King -. Unfortunately, the actual ability to perform magic gradually faded away and passed into the popular mind as a lost golden age.

The story takes place in 1806 in England, which is governed by a mad king, George III. Europe is torn by a war between Napoleon's armies and England and Prussia. In these dark times, a magician proposes its services to the English government. His name is Mr Norell, and he is famous for having being able to force the statues of York's cathedral talk. In London, Mr Norell meets a young and brilliant magician, Jonathan Strange, who becomes his pupil. Together, they will try to revive English magic...but as Mr Norell is obsessive about keeping its secrets, Strange's interests in the dark magic of the long gone Raven King grows deeper and deeper...

One of the first things that strucked me when reading "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell" was the incredible work of Susanna Clarke to transcribe the atmosphere of the England of Jane Austen (one of her favorite author) or Charles Dickens. Her style is thus a pastiche of Victorian social comedies of manners. She depicts with nuance how some characters do act as complete idiots, and her characters are full of defaults. On the mean time, she creates a very complete universe with the help of gigantic footnotes (185...) and pays attention to every single detail to keep her universe well-structured and coherent. The result is a fascinating story that makes magic sound....real.

And is this not what fantasy is all about ?

You will find here in this pearl more reviews on this book (click play)

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell

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Friday, May 1 2009

Video: First battle report of Starcraft 2

By Cosmicfrog on Friday, May 1 2009, 11:34 - Games


For the moment, I only spoke of books in the Cosmic Frog. Now is the time to address a new very prolific media for SF fans: the video games. Some of them have a very complex scenario, and build very interesting universes. There are lots of things to say on that matter (about that, I'm working on a post on media convergence in Sf and how books, movies and games directly influence each other)

One of the most awaited Sf-related game is Starcraft 2. Starcraft is very famous for being one of the best and intuitive strategy game ever created, but also for its very specific universe.

For those who want to discover the Starcraft universe, I suggest you to click on the pearl below.

Zerg Overview - Starcraft 2 Armory

For the others who are already fans (like me !!), I can't resist to display one battle report released by Blizzard.




Enjoy :)

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Friday, April 24 2009

Review: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

By Cosmicfrog on Friday, April 24 2009, 12:44 - Books


For this new review, I decided to comment a book I read last week during my holidays. It is rather old (published in 1985...) but it had been a long time since I had not read such a powerful predictive science-fiction work. I would even say that the last time I felt something similar was when I discovered 1984 !

Margaret Atwood is a critic, poet, feminist and a social-campaigner. She is today one of the most famous Canadian writer, and one of the more prolific awards winner among science-fiction authors: she won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Prince of Asturias award for Literature, the Booker Prize, and has been a finalist for the Governor General's Award seven times, winning twice.

Now, what is "The Handmaid's Tale" about ? The story takes place in the Republic of Gilead in a near future. The U.S do not exist anymore after an attack where the President and the Congress perished. A revolution installed a theocratic government into power while nuclear, biological, and chemical pollution rendered a large portion of the population sterile. We follow a woman called Offred, who is kept by the ruling class as a concubine ("handmaid") for reproductive purposes. She does not have the right to read, write, smoke, or being friend with anyone. She is constantly kept under surveillance by "aunts" (women who train train and monitor the handmaids). In this world, the population is divided in social categories that define what they are allowed to do (basically not much...); love is forbidden and punished by death penalty...
The authors reveals little by little what are the "rules" of this imaginary world. All you have to know is that the more you know, the more you are aware that living in a democracy is a chance: in this,

"The "Handmaid Tales" is the perfect example of a dytopia (Wikipedia definition: dystopian literature investigates how the human impulse to create utopia (a perfect world) goes awry when it meets the power to make such a place a reality). The "new order" is a fascit theocratic state which only leads to the destruction of the soul of its inhabitants. Several social critics are to be seen in this book, and some of them go along biblical references. Maybe you should also keep in mind the historical context (the 80s) in which Artwood wrote this book when you read it.

I could write pages and pages of interpretations about that book, but I won't. I believe that Science-Fiction, especially speculative fiction, is mainly aimed at make you think about the present. My interpretations would then biased your reading. However, I will discuss with you of your interpretations with joy !!

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Monday, April 20 2009

Review: Darwinia by Robert C. Wilson

By Cosmicfrog on Monday, April 20 2009, 00:00 - Books

darwinia For my second review (and my first book review !), I've decided to comment the excellent Darwinia by the famous Robert Charles Wilson.Before going any further, you should know that I'm a devoted admirer of this author, so don't be surprised if I warmly recommend you to read his work. I'm not the only one to like his writings considering that he won several prizes including the prestigious Hugo Award in 2006 for Spin ! (this makes me think that I will have to write a review about that one pretty soon...).

Let us be more enthusiastic. you want to know how Stephen King called him ?

"probably the finest science-fiction author now writing"

Now that you are convinced (?!) that Wilson is worth reading, what is Darwinia about ?

Imagine that in 1912, Europe suddenly disappear overnight. No one knows what happened to its inhabitants. Instead of Europe, a completely new and wild continent is to be found. And reports assert that the wildlife is completely different from traditional terrestrial standards, and as if the evolution has not been the same....An expedition is set to unravel the mysteries of this new place now called "Darwinia" by journalists. We follow the adventures of a the youngest member of this expedition, the American photographer Guilford Law, who is determined to explore rationally all the mysteries of Darwinia. There is a lot to discuss in this book. But to me, it seems that Wilson put two very interesting themes into light.

The first is the description on how an unexpected event can entirely change history. In Wilson's post "miracle" world, religion has won against science. Everyone believes that the "miracle" is a divine intervention, and thus science is no longer nor reliable nor relevant to explain the principles ruling the world. Many religious biases have stopped the work of scientists to explain the disappearance of Europe. In the post-miracle world, obscurantism and fanaticism are thus more developed. From a geopolitical point of view, the disappearance of Europe obviously prevented WW1 from happening; what remains from England, Japan and the U.S fight politically for the supremacy over Darwinia, and Wilson succeeds in making this rewriting of history rather credible. Another interesting theme is its reflexion on parallel worlds. Matrix is not far, but you won't find me adding anything more. You'll understand when you read Darwinia !!

I will finish with one of Wilson's specialties: the complexity and depth of its characters, and the way they are foregrounded in his imaginary world. Guilford Law witnessed the miracle when he was 14 years old and has always been determined to answer the anxious questions: "How ?" and "Why ?". His rationality and naivety make him very pleasant to follow for the reader.

What about you ? Did you enjoy Darwinia ?

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Sunday, April 19 2009

Review: Solid State Society by Masamune Shirow

By Cosmicfrog on Sunday, April 19 2009, 22:59 - Manga

ghostFor the first review of this blog, I've decided to talk about the latest opus of the Ghost in the Shell saga, Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society (purely subjective choice, I confess).

(For those who discover the Ghost in the Shell universe, you must know that it was originally a manga written by mangaka Masamune Shirow. It was then adapted for film by Mamoru Oshii, who directed Ghost in the Shell and Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. These two movies served as an absolute reference for the Cyperpunk genre when they were released. The main themes of the Ghost in the shell saga are the links between the soul and the body, the questions raised by IAs, body mechanization, human/machine fusion and more generally, all the Ghost in the shell opus try in a way to answer the fatal recurrent SF questions: what makes us human ? How is it possible to define the human soul ? After the movies, a serie of two seasons directed by the young Kenji Kamiyama, Ghost in the shell Stand Alone Complex was created. Solid State Society takes place 2 years after the end of the second season of Stand Alone Complex).

Kamiyama's team faced a very difficult challenge: they had previously worked on a serie, which means they had 26 episodes to develop the psychology of the characters, to let them clear up the (very !) complex plots of the scenario. With Solid State Society, they were supposed to maintain the main quality standards in terms of scenario complexity, philosophical and sociological questioning, but in 1h45 instead of 9 hours. Besides, being the rightful successor Oshii was not the easiest thing to do...

In Solid State Society, we follow the members of a Japanese elite police team, the Public Section 9. They are charged to solve a case that links thousands of child abduction, series of suicides amongst parts of the population and falsifications of information inside the Health Ministry network. They quickly suspect a high talented hacker, the Marionnetist, and try to track him despite its apparent invulnerability.

Let's say I was rather impressed by the quality of the work of Kimayama and his team. Solid State society is less contemplative than the movies, more focused on the relations between the Section 9 members and raises more contemporary sociological issues (How can Japan deal with its fast aging population ? How to react toward child abuse ?). The narrative line is far more punchy, punctuated with more frequent splendid action scenes. From an artistical point of view, the fusion between classic animation and 3D animation is perfect and I've rarely seen sets of that quality in an anime.

To sum up, fans will not be disappointed with that new opus of the saga. And no doubt the others will appreciate to see a wonderful thriller a bit different than what they are used to watch...

I almost forgot the most important: what did you think of Solid State Society ?

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Welcome to the Cosmic Frog !!

By Cosmicfrog on Sunday, April 19 2009, 22:58 - Life of the blog

First blog, first post....I'm discovering a lot of new things on the net and I feel a bit excited about the next weeks and months. But first, let me welcome you to this blog. Basically, what will you find here ?

I'll speak about one of my greatest passion, Science Fiction. I'll try to cover SF under all its forms (books, movies, games, manga...). As a French SF fan, I also want to make you discover the very active French SF community.

Now that we made the introductions, all I have to do is to wish you an enjoyable stay at The Cosmic Frog !!

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