Staff Review: The Star Diaries by Stanislaw Lem

I’m glad I decided to check out this little book of short stories called The Star Diaries by Stanislaw Lem. I’ve read Lem’s The Futurological Congress and rate it as one of my favorite books, so felt optimistic going in that these further adventures of Ijon Tichy, the space traveler and hero of The Futurological Congress, would be just as outlandishly cartoonish yet frighteningly plausible.

First off, I don’t know how translator Michael Kandel does it. These stories are masterfully translated from the original Polish. The force of the language — the beauty, the puns, the made-up jargon — comes through clearly in the English translation. Only a truly gifted translator could do this. I’ve read the English version of Lem’s most well-known work, Solaris, notoriously translated from a poor French translation, and had to force my way through it. The Star Diaries tales are mind-melting, playful, satirical, and sometimes dark. None of the fun creative wordplay came through in Solaris.

Lem’s been likened to Bach for the artistry with which he constructs his stories and to Einstein for his sweeping intellect — comparisons certainly ripe for scrutiny. I can say that Lem’s mind works on a different level from many of us mere mortals. Tichy’s adventures are a vehicle for Lem’s scientific and philosophical speculation. He often uses other planets and life forms to illustrate an outsider’s view of human behavior or to show how similar intelligent beings evolve far in the future, seamlessly bringing to light many of our foibles. Understanding the scientific jargon or made-up words (both of which are liberally used and often mixed together) isn’t essential to enjoying the stories. The stories are dense, but completely readable and a lot of fun. There are puns-a-plenty thrown around and each re-reading brings about more snorts and chuckles.

To show what one is in for, I’ll share bits from two of my favorite stories. Time slips are always ripe for good humor. The first story in the book is probably the funniest of this kind that I’ve ever read. Ijon Tichy finds himself having to fix a rudder on his one-man rocket ship, a job that takes two. After going through a gravitational field Monday, he’s awakened by the Ijon Tichy from Tuesday. Several time slips later, things turn to chaos as the ship fills up with Tichys from various days of the week and they quarrel over fixing the rudder. It’s not really even necessary to keep things straight as the story moves maddeningly and hilariously forward.

In one of his more satirical/philosophical stories, Tichy finds himself on a distant planet, whose dominant life forms bear many similarities to homo sapiens. Most of the revealing and interesting information about this world comes from the history books being read by our protagonist. One example, illustrating humans’ endless desire for ‘more,’ deals with the inhabitants’ physical “enhancements.” When science has advanced so that people can have whatever appearance they wish, naturally people get restless (see Lem’s humorous illustration of an “Octabod”— a skeleton with 8 legs). The physical and monstrously cartoonish characters that eventually inhabit the planet no longer resemble us, but are eerily within the realm of reason.

These fantastic stories, written in the late 50s through early 70s, will muster up questions pertinent to technological issues we face today. They can be simultaneously frightening and hilarious. In terms of style, Lem has been compared to Borges, Vonnegut, and Philip K. Dick, among others. His stories share elements with these authors but are still entirely Lem. This book is definitely not for everyone, but fans of satire, scientific speculation, and unconventional stories should love it.

~Ben, Adult Services

#ComicsWednesday: Through the Woods by Emily Carroll

When I was a kid I loved Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, but as I got older, I lost my taste for horror. I, however, love the creepy stories in Emily Carroll's collection Through the Woods.

Emily Carroll's beautiful art is what convinced me to read outside of my comfort zone. I'd first encountered her work in a blog where she and Vera Brosgol illustrated historical fashion. I was impressed by the way Carroll could give hints of a person with a personality and a story to tell from just a single image. That ability to capture emotion in her drawings is what takes Through the Woods from good to great.

The stories are creepy and well paced, with a striking use of color. Twisted lines, washes of gray, and deep black shadows with bright pops of color help to create the creepy atmosphere. This book is eerie and haunting, without being the gorefest so common in modern horror, although the red is sometimes blood. Most importantly, readers are given room to imagine what lurks in the dark spaces.

This book is a great pick for anyone who loves classic ghost stories, especially readers who might otherwise avoid contemporary horror. And if you find yourself wanting more, be sure to check out Emily Carroll's website, where she has several other comics available to read.

~Sarah, Adult Services

Staff Review: China Mountain Zhang by Maureen McHugh

A mosaic novel is made up of a series of related short stories that stand up well individually, yet taken as a whole become something bigger. As a non-English major*, I had no idea there was a name for this until last year. Having a name for one of my favorite types of book has helped me in tracking down new books to read.

When I read an article that mentioned Maureen F. McHugh's first book and described it as a mosaic novel, I snapped it up immediately. Published in 1992, China Mountain Zhang was nominated for both the Hugo and the Nebula and won a Locus Award for Best First Novel, a Lambda Award, and a James Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award.

There is some excellent world-building in China Mountain Zhang, and the imagined future holds up fairly well almost 25 years later. Part of why it does is McHugh's focus on the characters: people are recognizably people no matter how different their worlds might be. Because of the focus on the characters' lives, readers learn about the larger setting gradually. A character will reference some historical event in one story, two stories later you'll get a few more details, while other pieces of the background are left almost entirely to your imagination. This added to the book's suspense and made it harder for me to put down at the end of my lunch break.

The central character of the book, the person who ties the various stories together, is Zhang Zhongshan. His name roughly translates to China Mountain Zhang, though his oldest and closest friends know him as Rafael. Zhang lives in a future where China is the center of the civilized world and has the best technology, universities, fashion, etc. Zhang is a native of New York and fortunate in his Chinese father. That his mother is Hispanic is less beneficial to his chances for advancement. Even more damning is the fact that he is gay, something he would be killed for in China. It's less dire in the States, though I suspect the consequences of official discovery would be very grim.

This was probably my favorite book of 2016 and I don't want to give too much else away, so I'll limit myself to one final appeal: there are domed communes on Mars with beekeeping colonists. Politics AND space bees!

~Sarah, Adult Services

*Anthropology, in case you were curious

Staff Review: Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

I love short stories. They are the perfect thing for a busy schedule. Short enough to read in a single sitting, but in the hands of a skilled writer still complex enough for character development and a satisfying plot arc. Jhumpa Lahiri is an incredibly skilled author of short stories, and she has the Pulitzer Prize to prove it.

The Interpreter of Maladies, her first collection of short stories, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000, and it is one of the five books I'd take with me to a desert island.

Lahiri writes characters that feel so real to me as a reader, it's almost as if they are people I met once at an airport or a party. These are characters who feel out of place in their own lives, in homes they do not recognize. Many are immigrants in a foreign land, perhaps returning home after years abroad, or maybe they never left but have watched the world around them change into something unfamiliar.

Lahiri's second collection, Unaccustomed Earth, while still powerful, is somewhat less of a personal favorite. There's a stronger focus on the ties and changing pressures of family relationships, and three of the stories revisit two characters at different points in their lives. While I love how she explores similar themes in her story collections, I prefer the focus of her standalone pieces over the linked stories or her longer novels where I sometimes become lost in the details of her beautiful descriptions.

~Sarah, Adult Services