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The Carpet Makers

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‘The Carpet Makers’ by Andreas Eschbach stands out as an original science fiction work of remarkable depth and intricacy, showcasing Eschbach’s exceptional storytelling skills and his knack for crafting a universe that is as fantastical as it is deeply human. Originally penned in German and later translated into English in 2005 by Tor Books, it features a foreword by Orson Scott Card, who goes on to explain how he was involved in bringing a translation of the novel to the English readers of the world. I’m one of those grateful readers.

As far as the story goes, it takes place on a far-off planet, with no real name but Planet G-101/2 in the Gheera galaxy, where an entire society is devoted to the creation of intricate carpets, each a work of art that takes a lifetime to create. These carpets are not made from ordinary materials, but from a source that is both personal and precious, adding a layer of profound significance to their creation.

Rather than following a linear path, the novel is a collection of interconnected stories that gradually reveal the larger narrative. Each chapter introduces a new character, a new perspective, adding another thread to the narrative tapestry. The result is a novel that is both episodic and cohesive, each story contributing to a larger, more complex picture.

The story offers the reader a thoughtful exploration of tradition and belief. The society depicted in the novel is bound by a tradition that is followed with almost religious fervor, yet the reasons behind this tradition are not fully understood by those who follow it. This tension between tradition and understanding is a recurring theme throughout the novel.

The novel also explores themes of power and influence personified by the immortal Emperor Alexander. Despite being a distant figure, the emperor exerts a profound influence over the society of the carpet makers. Yet, as the narrative unfolds, it becomes clear that power is not absolute and can be challenged.

Eschbach’s prose is evocative and richly detailed, bringing the world of the carpet makers to life. The descriptions of the carpets themselves are particularly striking, each one a masterpiece of craftsmanship and a testament to the dedication of its maker.

‘The Carpet Makers’ is a compelling read for any science fiction enthusiast. Its unique premise, intricate narrative structure, and thoughtful exploration of themes make it a standout in the genre. Eschbach’s novel is not just a story about a distant, alien society, but a reflection on the nature of tradition, power, and the human capacity for creativity and resilience. I have resisted mentioning anything of the plot simply to avoid spoilers. This is a read you want to go in knowing as little as possible.

Foundation

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In September 2021, Apple TV+ made the bold move to bring Issac Asimov’s groundbreaking saga to our living room screens. The first season was surprisingly enjoyable, the challenge of bringing such a monumental work to TV, which had its basis on Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was no small feat. The pressure to write that script must have been through the roof.


I’ve had the opportunity to watch the first two seasons, the third has been renewed and hopefully they will complete all the seasons they have planned. The show loosely adapts the books, which might disappoint some diehard fans of the book series, but for me, I personally have enjoyed the adaptation and the changes have been welcomed. I never really enjoyed the Foundation books as much as I enjoyed the Dune books. Although there seems to have been some level of Asimov’s influence on Frank Herbert’s Dune Chronicles, they have differing opinions about the future of humanity. Asimov was insistent that there must be science in science fiction, which clashed with Herbert’s intentional removal of science from his science fiction epic works. This was the new wave of science fiction, and it eventually won out, seen also in other writer’s work such as Ursula K Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle.

But I’m not complaining, with the Dune films and Foundation series, we have what are probably some of the best space operas ever written brought to life in cinemas and home theaters. Both reaching new heights in cinematic spectacle.

The Foundation series follows a group of exiles who try to preserve the legacy of humanity as the Galactic Empire faces its inevitable collapse. Led by the mathematician Hari Seldon (played by Jared Harris), Seldom predicts that the Galactic Empire, which has ruled the galaxy for 12,000 years, will soon fall into a dark age that will last 30,000 years. Using his science of psychohistory, which can forecast the future based on statistical laws of mass action, Seldon devises a plan to reduce the duration of the dark age to 1,000 years by creating two Foundations, one at each end of the galaxy, that will preserve the knowledge and culture of humanity.

There’s no way a saga of this proportion will be lacking themes. And several interesting themes are explored, which are both relevant to science fiction and human history. The rise and fall of civilizations, with the depiction of the decline of the Galactic Empire, which is modeled after the Roman Empire, and the emergence of new powers and cultures in the galaxy. The role of religion and science. Exploring how science and religion can be used as tools of manipulation and propaganda, as well as sources of inspiration and hope. The nature of free will and determinism, questioning the extent to which human actions and events are predetermined by Seldon’s plan, and how much agency and choice the characters have in shaping their own destinies. It also examines the ethical and moral implications of Seldon’s plan, and whether it is justified to sacrifice individual lives and freedoms for the greater good of humanity. And there are more.

The promise of future seasons, as they happen, will span centuries and civilizations, and explore more themes of history, religion, science, and destiny. So far Foundation is proving to be a faithful and creative adaptation of the classic novels by Isaac Asimov, and a captivating and ambitious TV series that will appeal to both fans and newcomers of the genre. Though it can be a bit daunting for those unfamiliar with the books to begin with, I suggest you stick with it, and it will pay off as the story settles down, along with the characters and places. Rarely will you get the chance to watch something unfold like this on such a grand epic scale. Highly recommended.

The Windup Girl

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Paolo Bacigalupi’s Windup Girl has a strange title. One that gives the impression you’ll be reading a clockpunk story with automatons. You won’t. Contrary, you’ll be reading a story focusing on global warming and biotechnology, which will draw you into an intriguing, dystopian world, set in 23rd century Thailand. The book’s gorgeous cover had me intrigued, it looked like I was about to read a travel blog from the future. A mix of dusty street markets, pin-pointy skyscrapers, and Thai Buddhist temples. And what was a giant elephant doing on the cover of a biopunk science fiction novel? No, this was a Hugo and Nebula award-winning novel, and the blurb from Time Magazine stating, ‘Bacigalupi is a worthy successor to William Gibson,’ wasn’t far from the truth. Though I personally preferred The Windup Girl to Neuromancer.

The world’s resources are depleted, and society is dominated by megacorporations, whose monopoly on biotechnology gives them sovereignty over the masses. OK, isn’t that already happening? Scary. Now, Thailand has managed to be the exception, managing to preserve reserves of genetically sustainable seeds, as well as securing its borders from manufactured plagues and threatening bioterrorism brought about by economic hitmen. In this setting, and with the absence of oil and petroleum, giant springs are manually wound by genetically altered elephants, amply named Megadonts, and are used to store energy in those very same spring-driven motors. Quite the surprising solution and it explains the massive elephant on the book’s cover.

So, it’s from one of these hitmen, Anderson Lake, that we are introduced to the ‘Windup Girl’, Emiko. An enigmatic and attractive creature. She is one of the New People, who are slaves, soldiers, and toys to the rich, but Windups are illegal in Thailand. Emiko is an engineered human, created and programmed as a kind of geisha servant. She was originally a sex companion to a Japanese delegate, who was on a diplomatic mission and was left abandoned by her owner. As were other Windups once affluent humans got bored of them.

There is a lot you can interpret in the story as warnings of what the future of the present world will end up suffering if humanity does not act to solve current environmental problems. Against the backdrop of this dystopian future, Bacigalupi unfolds events and advances the story by immersing the reader in the lives and struggles of the protagonists. Offering a sense of nostalgia, engaging the reader empathetically, such as Emiko’s longing for her former master’s embrace. Or discovering the deeper machinations of Anderson Lake’s mission, who pursues his goals with unbending thirst and assertiveness. The two meet when Anderson meets Emiko in a sex club where she offers information for help in finding her freedom.

The book holds up well years later. Though it’s frightening to see a lot of what is written in its pages is unfolding in the news and social media today. A lot of the environmental issues in the story happen behind a veil of political friction, just as they are happening now. Emotionally tense, The Windup Girl is a remarkably intelligent story, which I highly recommend.

‘Politics is ugly. Never doubt what small men will do for great power.’ – Paolo Bacigalupi

Vesper

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Vesper feels as bleak as its dark dystopian depiction of Earth, in the aftermath of an ecological catastrophe that has left the Earth mostly wiped out. You know, the ones where engineered viruses and the like are let loose into the world creating an ecological disaster. Yet there’s hope, brought to light through its main character, Vesper (Raffiella Chapman), a compassionate and intelligent 13-year-old girl skilled in biohacking. She’s a survivor, abandoned by her mother to care for her sick, incapacitated father. He follows and communicates with her via a floating head shaped drone, displaying an emoji like face, while remaining bedridden in their house deep within the forest. She spends her time scavenging the land for things to trade, energy sources to keep her father breathing, seeds to grow food, and following on in her father’s work, engineering their own food.

 

The inhabitants in Vesper’s toxic world are divided between the privileged elite, in their tall impenetrable citadels, and the unfortunate others, scavengers who are struggling to survive on what little they can forage from the junk of the past, while eating insects and broths created from fungus and bacterial concoctions. The oligarchs control the seeds, coded to yield only one crop. Their monopoly decides who will have access to them, which depends on what is traded.

The film is uniquely immersive, more so through its visually dystopian grimness, often transforming into a ghostly canvas of some medieval myth reset in a sci-fi dark age. The cinematography composes a limited palette and balanced tonality, begging to be sung as an endless lament to ecological devastation. This echoes as a cautionary tale with impressive emotional depth in classic European art house style. Its imaginative world building, of Earth recreated and coveted on intelligent and bizarre recreations of bioluminescent life forms and gory blood sucking flora. Steeped in surreal landscapes of bleak wastelands of overrun alien vegetation and twisted organisms. Overall, a beautifully crafted film.

Just don’t expect grand visual and narrative storytelling, this is not trying to be a sci-fi blockbuster. Vesper is indicative of culturally European science fiction, more in the tone of Solaris and similar works, but also inheriting the tropes and styles of other modern works of sci-fi. It’s a passion of love, six years in the making, directors/writers Kristina Boyte and Bruno Samper shot the film in Lithuania just as the snow began to thaw, taking advantage of the fairy tale mood of the country and referencing Dutch painters such as Vermeer and Rembrandt as key references to light the environments.

It’s hard to imagine how a young girl can survive the emotional turmoil she has to endure daily in such a morbid world, but she does, finding empathy and strength in her objectives and those she cares for in times where it might be lost. The focus is on Vesper, a gentle heroine who demonstrates the courage and capacity to take care of herself under impossible conditions. It’s her viewpoint of the world we witness and it’s through her eyes we learn how to find hope when all hope is lost.

Station Eleven

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For some reason when I first read Emily St. John Mandel’s, “Station Eleven” in 2014, I thought I was going to read a dystopian tale set in the near future with blights, deaths and horrors. Lots of scary end of the world stuff. What I discovered instead was a genuinely unique story centered on a group of nomadic people, which happened to be actors and musicians, known as the Travelling Symphony. They had embraced their predicament with a noble purpose, by keeping the essence of art burning, performing Shakespeare and classical music. It felt almost lyrical. Though there were creepy moments, involving the collapse of civilization due to a pandemic, with crazed survivors and a manic prophet leading a murderous cult. In the end, the book focused on what had been lost, on people’s nostalgia and longing, as well as the determination of art to expand our view of the world and save us from loneliness.

‘I stood looking over my damaged home and tried to forget the sweetness of life on Earth.’ – Dr Eleven

HBO Max’s “Station Eleven” gives the same vibes. It began filming in early 2020. HBO had ordered the adaptation in June the previous year. A year before the real pandemic began. I can just imagine what the production crew felt working on the series in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. There are elements, early in the series, where the perspective of the show reflects those real world fears we all experienced when the pandemic broke out. And the wonderful performances only strengthened those emotions.

Having just recently finished the limited series, I must admit I wanted to re-watch the first few (I think it was the first three) of the ten episodes again before moving on to watch the rest. There is a lot of complexity and depth, and re-watching actually helped to magnify the breadth of each episode in the beginning. I don’t recommend binge watching it.

Like the book, the film moves back and forward before and after the events of the pandemic. The episodes themselves will leave major characters by skipping an episode, to focus on introducing new characters, building up emotionally powerful scenes, only to return to them in the next episode.

I particularly loved how the graphic novel, Station Eleven, is recreated in the series. (I would love to find a copy) Here the term ‘Home’ becomes such an important theme in the story, and the graphic novel becomes central to that theme. Challenging us to consider the tragedy when things fall apart, and society ceases to exist. How much does it affect us to be where we are and with who we are? This narrative is explored while the Travelling Symphony moves through its motions and each play becomes an event. As when Shakespeare’s Hamlet is performed, and its plot impacts the narrative to form the intertwining pathway to all these places and people. It’s thrilling to watch.

Station Eleven can be viewed as a surreal journey exploring the past and the future of a society broken in half by a world-shattering event. It has its moments of darkness, but it also balances its scenes with unexpected humor and great performances. As a whole, it feels like a moving play, staged in a world of loss and struggle, which finds solitude when it finally returns home.

‘I remember damage. And escape. Then adrift in a stranger’s galaxy for a long time. But I’m safe now. I found it again. My home.’ – Miranda Carroll

Ode to a Lost Explorer – Free eBook

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Finally found some time to format the completed Ode eBook and have uploaded it here on my site for anyone who wants to read it.  You can download it for free and it’s available in both mobi and epub formats.

For more information about the story as well as links to the downloads, click here or on the eBook cover image.

Hope you enjoy it.

Becoming Superman

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This is a dark book, with moments of light shedding rays of hope into dark places. People have different thresholds, different limits to how much they can endure. I know I have mine and I know where I would lose all hope. But J. M. Straczynski surpasses all these trials; a terrible childhood of impoverished circumstances and abuse that only shocks the senses.

We witness the struggle as he inches on as a writer of screenplays and comic books, towards his career in Hollywood; from The Twilight Zone and Changeling, to Babylon 5 and onto Netflix originals with Sense 8, and shows us how it’s done with perseverance, courage and determination. He offers essential writing advice throughout his personal story, advice which makes the book indispensable.

The story of becoming superman exceeds any story written before of the superman I’ve grown up to know and admire. J. M. Straczynski’s Becoming Superman is a life tale that goes well beyond the fictional account of Clark Kent and what we’ve come to know of him after he arrives from Krypton. For him, meeting Superman as a child was transformative.

But Straczynski’s biography is both inspirational and horrifying. A young boy raised by damaged adults, who must learn to survive. He finds refuge in comics and imaginary characters, where he discovers a world of superheroes whose special powers give them the ability to overcome their misfortunes. Here he makes a discovery that will change his life, a realization that change comes and can happen to the most unfortunate and emotionally devastated souls. Where Straczynski, a little boy whose story is part darkness and part creation, uncovers his own superpower. The ability to weave stories from the depths of his imagination and break free from within. From here the writer’s journey begins. A journey that takes us on a personal history of discovery, which up till now was veiled in mystery. J. M. Straczynski manages to keep a balance on the horror we discover in the mystery, with humor and intelligence.

My first and most noteworthy meeting of Straczynski’s work was Babylon 5, a story that encompassed a single-story arc across five seasons, a “novel for television”, with a defined beginning, middle, and end; in essence, each episode would be a single “chapter” of this “novel”. This was new territory for television, something we take for granted today with Netflix, HBO, Amazon Prime etc., but a great risk for TV in the early 90s. Not only did he take on this immense challenge, Straczynski wrote most of the 110 episodes, as well as the pilot and five television movies. On the journey, he constantly kept his viewers and fans updated online on the fan-run website, The Lurker’s Guide to Babylon 5. And this was in 1993, with the internet in its infancy! Yeh, I was one of the fans who after every episode would dial up the internet to learn more from the lips of our hero, Straczynski, who would post detailed analyses and answer fans’ questions. Oh, and by the way, The Lurker’s Guide is still alive and well today. A historical legacy and testament to what J. M. Straczynski achieved with Babylon 5.

Becoming Superman is a story with controversy and drama, but it never overwhelms you. Instead, it’s a tale of discovery and coming to terms with yourself, of breaking away from your past, no matter how ugly it was. A narrative that chronicles a journey to uncovering your true potential.

Ode to a Lost Explorer – The Singer in the Sea

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Some more long overdue chapters are now done.

The Travellers’ journey has taken them to a strange and dangerous place that should not exist.  It is here they hope to find the last part of the missing puzzle to help them escape an uncertain reality.

Several chapters are already available and can be heard from these links below, and the list will grow:

iTunes

Podomatic

The Galactic Hub

Player FM

I’ve also uploaded audio chapters to My YouTube channel here.

Ode to a Lost Explorer – The Dancer in the Wind

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I’ve written a couple of more chapters (20 & 21) to the story, if only to show time is not on my side.  Not that it ever was. The same might apply to the Traveller and his friends.  When they encounter a very old nemesis their dangerous path takes a surprising turn for the worse and they are found wanting.

But I did promise something special was coming.  With the help and wonderful enthusiasm of my friend Donnie Gallagher, Ode to a Lost Explorer can now be heard coming alive as an exciting new audio adaptation.  Several chapters are already available and can be heard from these links below, and the list will grow as the story unfolds:

iTunes

Podomatic

The Galactic Hub

Player FM

I’ll also be uploading more audio chapters to My YouTube channel here.

Finally, Donnie hosts his own podcast here at Craft Brews and Geek News.  So make sure to check it out.