SF Signal had a Mind Meld feature a little while back that asked participants what
science fiction or fantasy book they would like to experience reading
for the first time again. I don't really have an answer to that. I
often get a lot of my enjoyment from a book when I'm not actually
reading it- when events or characters or ideas from it are just
rolling around in after my head I've finished it, or while its still
in progress but not actually in my hands; the experience of actually
reading the book, while still very important, is often less central
to me than it is to many people. Don't ask me why.
It
did, however, get me thinking about which books made the biggest
impression on me upon reading them for the first time, which is
something I'm better equipped to answer.
The
Night Face by Poul Anderson
This
is part of Anderson' vast Technic Civilization future history- which
I knew nothing of at the time, but it stood fine on its own. Human
interstellar civilization is starting to dig itself out of the ashes
after a long period of chaos and barbarism, and several human worlds
that have made it back to the stars mount a joint expedition to
another human world that has been completely isolated for thousands of years.
This
wasn't quite the first Poul Anderson book I read, but it was close,
and it was the first one to really show me some of the qualities that
would make Poul Anderson my favorite science fiction author. Much of
Anderson's work is pervaded by a sense of melancholy and an
ultimately tragic view of life that exists alongside an
energetic sense of discovery, adventure, and heroism, and The Night
Face has both.
The
part I always remember most is at the very, very end. One sentence,
three words, and rereading it still rips my heart out just like the
first time.
Side note: The book was originally published under the name Let the
Spacemen Beware!, presumably because the publisher thought that
the book's dangerously high levels of awesomeness needed to be
counterbalanced by giving it the most generic name for a science
fiction story ever conceived by man.
The
Golden Age by John C. Wright
Science
fiction based in post-singularity or "post-scarcity" sorts
of settings generally don't do much for me unless it's unusually
well-done, but despite this Wright's Golden Age trilogy -The Golden
Age, The Phoenix Exultant, and The Golden Transcendence- are among
my favorite books.
The
first book in the series quickly demonstrates much of the reason for
that. From the very beginning the the sheer density of ideas and
imagination was stunning, with ideas that could provide the basis for
a complete story or even a novel by themselves sometimes appearing on
literally every page. And yet I never felt overloaded, overwhelmed,
or confused- Wright does a masterful job of it immediately throwing
the reader into a radically changed world and making it
comprehensible.
Rolling
Hot by David Drake
One
of Drake's Hammer's slammers military science fiction stories, first
published on its own in 1989 and now included in the collection The Tank Lords. This is the big one for me.
I
picked up an old copy of Rolling Hot in a used bookstore in my late
teens. I knew of Drake, slightly, but I hadn't read any of his work.
I was interested in military science fiction and had heard good
things about him, so I picked this book put more or less at random.
Like Drake's other Hammer stories, it's about a group of mercenaries
in the future, heavily influenced by Drake's own military experience.
The characters are members of an armored cavalry unit hired to fight
on one side of a planet's civil war, plus a a young war correspondent
who finds himself dragooned into accompanying them; To the best of my
recollection, the cause of the war and the nature and motivations of
the two sides fighting it are never mentioned.
It
was probably the most emotionally grueling experience I've ever had
with a book, or with a work of fiction in any medium. I read it
quickly, entranced. I can't really describe what finishing that book
was like; it was psychologically numbing and overwhelming at the same
time. I felt like someone had driven hooks into my gut and torn my
insides out, while part of me felt it happen and part of me just
impartially watched it through a window.
The
book has some heartbreakingly sad moments, but it wasn't just that. Ironically,
much of Rolling Hot's tremendous emotional effect on me was for much
the same reason some people have accused Drake of glorifying violence
or writing military "porn": The book is written with the
understanding that people trapped in awful situations frequently
don't have the luxury of consciously feeling the emotions that might
be appropriate to the situation if they want to remain at least
somewhat functional, and the way it is written thrusts the reader
inside that mindset.
If someone doesn't understand what the
conspicuously flat affect with which Drake often describes violence
and death actually signifies (and/or has some sort of preexisting
antipathy towards soldiers or warfare as subject matter or military
science fiction as a genre), I suppose it can seem like callousness
or indifference. But when I first heard that some people interpreted
him that way I was utterly baffled by how anyone could think that, when the sense of pain and horror that suffuses much of Drake's work seemed so immediately palpable and obvious.
I've had other books affect me emotionally, but Rolling Hot was a book that had a more directly personal emotional relevance. Despite being based on a situation far
removed from my own life- armored warfare being fairly uncommon in
late 20th-century Illinois- Rolling Hot spoke to me in a way that nothing else
I had encountered did, though I didn't really understand why at the time. I quickly began buying all the David Drake books I could find, and he's among my all-time favorites today.
