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diff --git a/literature/book-of-strange-new-things.rst b/literature/book-of-strange-new-things.rst new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5206d16 --- /dev/null +++ b/literature/book-of-strange-new-things.rst @@ -0,0 +1,81 @@ +Review of “The Book Of Strange New Things” +########################################## + +:date: 2017-01-04T16:34:42 +:status: draft +:category: literature +:tags: tags + +The book called “`The Book Of Strange New Things`_” [#]_ by +Michel Faber is a combination of sci-fi with the +marriage-on-the-edge-of-falling-appart psychological novel. The +plot is rather simple: pastor of small English church is sent by +a strange private corporation USIC to the other galaxy (or +something like that, somewhere far far away) to be the Christian +missionary for aliens. However, the focus of the book is not +a space opera of meeting with aliens (although that’s included) +but a strain this put on the relationship with his wife, who is +living through complete collapse of the Earth civilization (looks +very much like the End of Times in Matthew 24). I won’t describe +more, because they I would trip about some spoiler. + +Michel Faber is without any doubts absolutely stellar story +teller and the focus of the book is great telling of the troubled +relationship over very (I mean very) long distance. For some +technical reasons, only something like email (censored as it +turns out) works. No MIME, no images, nothing else than plain +text. Of course, it is a great limitation for the written novel, +and it also boosts all communication problems between the +spouses. The husband suffers a lot with his inability to describe +completely undescribable world in which he has to live in +(although of course, the novelist himself describes that world +quite persuasively, but how much letters you can write in a bit +of free time the pastor has?), his wife is constantly frustrated +with her inablility to describe smelly dangerous wilderness into +which whole England quite fast changes. + +Pastor (and the reader) is quite surprised by the fact that +around hundred of local aliens are actually already Christians, +albeit in horribly legalistic, bit sectarian, most likely The +King James Version Only form (although, KJV is the only normal +Bible translation used in the book, which is a bit weird for +supposedly a bit liberal pastor). The aliens are quite different +from any human form (although apparently humans are able to eat +the aliens’s produced food), the pastor is not even certain about +their sex, and the only mean of communication is their rather +broken knowledge of English. Only after some time the pastor +comes with the surprising revelation that The King James Version +is not the best Biblical translation for the communication with +aliens (ehm) and starts to create himself some kind The Living +Translation-like retranslations of KJV into simplified English +(also, aliens have problems with pronouncing consonants, +especially some). If the pastor asked me before leaving the +Earth, I would tell him to pack NLT or some similar version. + +Anyway, the pastor during his stays in the aliens village (for +various reasons he has to return after every couple of days to +the human base) sinks more and more into going native, he starts +to learn the local language (first human to do so, apparently), +and feels finally a way closer to the aliens than to humans on +their base. + +There are books which are filled with the meaning from the start +to the bottom and we are not completely surprised by the end +(e.g., The Lord of the Rings; who of you, my dear readers, +expected that Frodo fails his task, The Dark Lord wins, whole +world falls into Darkness, the end of the story?). There are +other books which are more preparation for the final surprising +punchline (e.g., 2001: A Space Odyssey; and yes, there is a lot +of good story-telling even during the novel, but it all points +towards the end). These two examples show hopefully well, that +neither of these models of novel is inherently superior to the +other, and both can lead to excellent books (like these two +examples) or to something not so excellent. + +One of few + +.. [#] Yes, it *is* confusing; the book mentioned in the title is + The Bible as called by the local alien believers. + +.. _`The Book Of Strange New Things`: + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_Of_Strange_New_Things |