Yet another blog

I finally started my World of Warcraft blog. The link is over on the right. I'm going to use it to write about anything and everything about the game I play the most, starting with the fantastic experience of getting my wife to play it with me just recently. If you've never played the game before, some of the stuff might seem unfamiliar, but it will make sense for anyone who's ventured into Azeroth.

The Golden Compass

I didn't know anything about this book before I saw previews for the movie. It was being compared to The Chronicles of Narnia, but other than that I didn't really show an interest in it. A few weeks later, on one of my long commutes, I picked up a random newspaper to read on the bus and there was an interesting article. Its basic statement was that Christians were up in arms about the movie because the author of the book is an atheist and the movie's plot revolved around the idea of killing God. Add to that that movie's target audience is children and young teens.

I have to admit that this perked my interest. I am definitely not an atheist, but the idea of someone who writes a fantasy book that is seemingly very anti-church intrigued me. What was more interesting though is that I later found out the producers of the movie actually played down the anti-religious sentiments in the screen adaptation. I guess they were afraid of what an overtly anti-religious movie's effect would be on viewers. In just seemed contra to what one would thing Hollywood's position is. I'm not an authority on the subject, but I wanted to read the book and understand what people were saying about it for myself.

All in all, the book is quite good. The action moves fast and keeps you reading to find out what happens next, and a whole lot happens. The protagonist is Lyra, a young girl with a destiny. The setting is Earth, but there are subtle differences such as each person having a dæmon which is a personal pet of some sort that acts a conscience and friend. One of the major plot points revolves around how people are connected to these dæmons. The girl is reckless, spirited, and intelligent, almost to the point of disbelief. She is able to resolve situations that were it not a fantasy book, I would think they were impossible for a small girl. I also thought that some parts of the book the reader is given to little knowledge to understand what is going on. Even when the characters are answering some of the mysteries in the book, I still found myself not quite getting it. This may be intentional as there are two more books in the series; so much is probably left to be explained.

I'll probably watch the movie now to see what differences there are from the book and how they've portrayed some of the underlying concepts. It will be interesting to see how far the sequels go and if the movies continue to down play the anti-religious views or if they begin to embrace them.

The Left Hand of Darkness

Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of light. Two are one, life and death, lying together like lovers in kemmer, like hands joined together, like the end and the way..

I first heard about this book from a magazine on an airplane. No, not SkyMall. I forget which airline it was, maybe American, or United, but it had an article in their monthly magazine about good Science Fiction novels. I've probably read many more fantasy books than I have Sci-fi, but I've read a few and I really enjoy Star Trek, so the draw for this type of fiction is still there. This book was listed in that article, and it looked interesting, mentioning a genderless people and political overtones. I took the article out of the magazine to help me remember to get the book at the next opportunity. I think that was a year or so ago, maybe more.

More recently, my wife and I watched The Jane Austen Book Club. The movie itself was really good, but more relevantly, one of the characters, Grigg, was a Sci-fi fan and and a sub plot involved him trying to get a women to read The Left Hand of Darkness. Of course, I suddenly remembered I had never taken the time to read it myself and resolved to do so. I often have time to read now that I spend about 2 to 3 hours each day on the Boston subway and bus system to and from work.

The book was different than what I had expected, but it really was a good book. The plot revolves around an man from a group of planets and peoples known as the Ekumen who is sent to a planet called Gethen where the inhabitants are neither male nor female. His mission is to get them to join the Ekumen to share knowledge, goods, and information. We follow his failures and accomplishments in this mission, and his befriending of the people of the planet, and how he relates to idea of their not being male or female.

The book explores a world where none of the problems or comparisons that we see show up between male and female has ever occurred. Everyone is equal, and able to participate in work, play, politics and life without being hung up on male or female roles. They have their own issues and political powers of course, but they are derived of different natures. It may be of interest to note that on Gethen, there is no word for war, and there has never been a war. There have been fights, skirmishes, assassinations, and murder, but never on a large scale. This may in part be to Gethen being a planet covered in an ice age.

It was a really interesting read, and I don't do it justice in my few words about it. It's been around since 1969, so it's been reviewed and pondered over and over by smarter people that delve a lot more in to its message or meaning. One thing that I had a hard time with is that even though the people have no gender, the pronouns he and him are used extensively to refer to the people. The reason is that 'it' is dehumanizing and 'he' is less identifying than 'she' is, historically. The Gethenians themselves have pronouns that cannot be translated, but using made up pronouns was thought to be laborious for the reader.