The Not So Secret Society Of S.

Ok...(deep breath)...(muttering to self) you can do this, it's not that hard, just take it nice and slow...(deep breath)...Oh hello sorry about all the pep talking, just trying to figure out how to write this rambling.  See I finished this book that my Hubbin gave me for Christmas and I honestly have absolutely no idea on how to post about it.  Do I try and sum it up in one big push?  Do I break it up into pieces? Do I send every reader a copy of the book, have them read it and THEN let them read this post (actually I did do that with a few of my friends and family)?  Why so much trouble you ask?  Well this is not your conventional book.  S. created by J.J Abrams and written by Doug Dorst, yep this book had a creator and a writer.  It is one of those books that is as much about concepts as it is a story.  Here is the premise in a nut shell.  There is a book with a story and in the margins of this book is another story as two readers trade the book back and forth making notes in the margins.  To further make this book special there are several inserts (post cards, letters, articles and such) to add even more dimensions to the stories.  This makes for a fun read, but hard rambling...but I'm gonna give it a try.

As always SPOILERS AHEAD PLEASE DO NOT READ THE FOLLOWING UNTIL YOU HAVE READ THE BOOK BECAUSE THE BOOK WILL BE SO MUCH BETTER IF YOU READ IT WITHOUT ANYBODY TELLING YOU HOW TO READ IT.  THERE ARE SEVERAL POSTS OUT THERE ON HOW TO READ THIS BOOK, READ IT THE WAY YOU WANT TO AND THEN READ PEOPLES REVIEWS AND RAMBLINGS TRUST ME!

I will break this up into two parts the first being the story the book tells and the second being the story(s) told in the margins.
The Book- The book is called Ship of Theseus (if you are unfamiliar with the concept it is essentially if you take a ship and replace every single piece...is it the same ship?) and it is written by the fictional V.M. Straka who is a mysterious author who's real identity is unknown.  The book starts with a forward written by Straka's translator (he apparently would send the translator books in various langues and the translator would put them all into one single language.) The translator F.X.Caldeira writes that they were to meet for the first time for Straka to hand over the final manuscript, but Straka was supposedly killed before Caldeira met up with him.  Caldeira finds all but the last pages of the manuscript and publishes it, including Caldeira's own footnotes.  The story is this.  S. is a man who has lost all his memories, he does not even know his

 name.  He wanders into a coffee shop and meets a woman who triggers some sort of memory or feeling.  He is immediately shanghaied and taken to a strange ship.  On this ship he meets Maelstrom the one in charge who is the only one who is able to talk as the rest of the crew has had there lips sewn shut.  A lot of stuff seems to go on during this voyage, but S. (who is told his name by Maelstrom) is given only cryptic bits of information, including the name Sola.  For some reason this again triggers something in S. and even though it appears Sola is the reason for his perdiciment he knows he has to find her.  After a huge storm S. ends up washed ashore in the town of B____ and joins with a group of people attempting to lead a peaceful workers revolt.  When the weapon maker/dealer named Vevoda sends one of his people to set off a bomb and blames it on the revolt leaders S. and his new friends must flee. At some point S. sees a woman he is convinced is Sola, though she is significantly older and goes by another name, but he must run and cannot pursue her.  They make it to the mountains where they encounter a revolting substance that resembles a foul tar.  It turns out this is part of a weapon that Vevoda is making and causes much festering and pain and all around not goodness.  Eventually everybody in the group except for S. is killed and he is again picked up by his mysterious ship.  He is then taken to an island that is on the verge of being invaded.  Here he meets more revolutionaries and is given an assassins kit with poison and names of people to take down.  He is taken to the Obsidian Island where he meets with a woman who shows him books of ships in pristine condition, but as he turns each page the ships gets changed and morphed, pieces being replaced, parts being rebuilt.  He gets back to the boat and sneaks down to the room where the sewn crew members go and discovers that a place to write, he sits and is essentially goes into a trance and writes and writes and writes.  He is then handed needle and thread to sew his own mouth. S. begins his new task of killing Vevoda's Agents in various ways.  Up to this point and through out the book a mysterious S symbol appears to S. and continues through out the story, it is a sign of sorts and helps convince him he is on the right track.  After a while the ship S. is on is attacked and he finds himself in Winter City, a cold dead place where nothing happens.  He finally meets up with Sola and the two embark on a final quest to kill Vevoda and try and end the destruction.  S. also realizes that time passed differently for him while he was on the ship then it did in the real world.  S. and Sola eventually accomplish there goal and sail of into the sunset together on the refixed ship.
The Margins-In the margins of the book two readers Eric and Jen trade comments at various times.  Lucky for us they color coded the comments so we know what order they were written.  Pencil-Eric's original notes, Blue and Black-first conversations, Orange and Green-second conversations, Purple and Red-third conversations, Black and Black-final conversations.  To me there are actually a couple stories going on, but I will do my best to make sense.  Essentially Eric is a graduate student who got kicked out of school after he pulled a destructive prank when his mentor stole the work he was doing.  Jen is an undergrad who is about to graduate who does not know what she wants to do with her life.  Eric had/has been working on the

mystery of Straka's identity and Jen soon starts to help him.  They discover that F.X. Caldeira is actually a woman, not a man like they all assumed and that she was in love with Straka, even though they never met in person. They also find that she left coded messages in the foot notes of the book.  There are several candidets for the true identity of Straka and Jen and Eric go through several of them, discarding most for various reasons.  They also discover that most of the authors that are possibilities for Straka were revolutionaries themselves to some degree, with most of them being killed for their beliefs at some point.  Jen and Eric eventually decide that the best candidate is Valcav Straka, a 19 year old boy who jumped to his death holding a manuscript after being jilted by a girl.  They speculate that a couple of the authors rescued him and kept his survival a secret, enabling him to write whatever he wanted.  There is much speculation about secret societies, betrayals, love triangles, hidden children and so forth.  There is also several refrences to Bouchard a cooperation that Starka had run in's with. They decide that Straka was afraid that he was going to be killed and wrote this last book as kind of a memoir, a way to sum up his life. We also find out about Jen and Eric's history.  Jen (though it takes her a couple tries to get the whole truth out) ran away for four days when she was 10 causing her parents to become extremely overprotective which is now causing problems.  Eric was raised by super religious parents and his Uncle drowned in a boating accident after a teenage Eric left the boat in anger.  The two of them also end up falling in love and moving on to continue their research.

Did you get through all that?  Are you wondering why I wrote all that when I am assuming you've already read the book?  Mostly 'cause I have been reading other peoples reviews and trying to see what they got out of it but everybody is trying not to spoil things so I haven't had much luck.  Already now that I have already written a ton I am now going to go on at length about my thoughts on this book.  I thought the concept was really cool, it had a researchy feel to it which I loved.  I know a lot of people have various suggestions for reading it (e.g. read the story first then go back and read the margins, read the margin notes in chronological order, read it upside down by the light of a full moon while wearing monkey ears), but I just read each page in its entirety, tell me what worked for you.  I thought the story itself was as straight forward as any quasi-metephorical story can be, I followed it just fine.  The margin story on the other hand got a little muddled for me.  Jen and Eric came through very clearly, but the whole thing about Jen being watched and her barn

burned down...I never knew what that was about.  Also they kept talking about old S and new S and new new S which got a bit confusing.  I got that the original (and possibly ancient)S was a radical social group that threatened the higher ups, and I think the new S was a group who was killing off the old S and trying to change what the group meant?  I don't know it was just kind of thrown in there.  Sometimes I rolled my eyes at Jen and Eric, they both (but especially Jen) seemed kind of whiney.  Oh woe is me, I broke up with my jerk boyfriend now I don't want to graduate and be a productive member of society, or Eric "I don't trust anybody cause I grew up with religious parents" crap.  I did not understand why Jen felt she needed to keep changing the story of how/why she ran away, which just made me irritated at her.  As with a lot of J.J. Abrams stuff if you read this book carefully it can lead you to a lot of cool real life references like the identity of B.Traven or the Taman Shud case.  There is a great website called SFiles22 that lets you delve deeper into some of the more obscure parts of the book, and hopefully find some more answers, also Eotvos Wheel which comes from the perspective that the Straka timeline is real. The inserts were cool and added an extra dimension to the whole thing, just be sure you know where they all belong or it can get confusing as I know from experience.  Overall I loved reading this book, it held my attention and made sense for the most part, don't expect all your questions to be answered, but only a few of them really bugged me so not to bad.  I would recommend this book to anybody with a little bit of patience, people who like an esoteric (love that word!) mystery, people who like pretty books, or anybody who is a J.J.Abrams fan (cause this book reads like watching Lost, and if that makes sense then you should read this book).  I give it 8 out of 10 refurbished ships.

How did you read this book?  Did you like the book story or the margin story more?  Do you think you know who Straka is?

Is It A Story Or A College Essay?

Just finished a quick read Genesis by Bernard Beckett.  I am not going to follow my usual synopsis pattern because this is not really a book you sum up, so without further ado I am just going to dive right in and then we can discuss what it means after that.  SPOILERS AHEAD WARNING BIG SPOILERS AHEAD

Essentially the book is told in the form of an oral examination of Anaximander, a student trying to gain entrance into the esteemed Academy, which pretty much controls her whole society.  We learn that Anax as she is called, lives in a fairly ideal society.  Everybody is safe, has plenty to live on, learning is encouraged and gender does not seem to be an issue.  Near the end of their learning term, young ones are encouraged to study intensively a topic of their own choosing, and Anax chooses to study Adam Forde.  Adam Forde was a young man who played a pivotal role in the history of Anax's society, being responsible for bringing about the Final Dilemma which apparently was the catalyst for the current ideal state in which Anax is living. Anax is approached by a man by the name of Pericles who agrees to be her tutor.  The book is broken up into each of the four hours of the exam with a break section in between each one.  This is where we get our story.  Anax tells the Examiners...and us about the history of her world, starting with the 2030's.  The world as it is wont to do devolves into chaos, wars are raging, resources are becoming scarce and devastating plagues
were released.  Among all this a man with a vision, and a fortune established what became known as the Republic.  The colony was based on an island described as "near the bottom of the world".  A huge sea wall was erected around the island, seeded with mines and anti-aircraft weaponry.  Absolutely no outsiders were allowed anywhere near the isolated Republic.  Within the society, Plato (that of course was the name of super rich dude) was able to put his own personal philosophies into place.  People were divided by genome into four classes, the lowly Labor class, the protector Soldier class, the able Technician class, and the ruling elite Philosophers class.  People were also divided by gender, living only among their own sex in communes.  They were encouraged to marry and have children, but always returned to the communes, only able to spend time with their spouse through earned "share-time" credits.  Children were taken away as soon as they were born and tested on their first birthdays to see what class they would be placed into, or if found unsuitable they would be terminated.  The thinking was, if everybody was loyal only to the state instead of to each other through those pesky family bonds, they could avoid the same chaos that brought about the need to isolate themselves in the first place.  This worked out well for the first generation, but as the subsequent generations grew up, the fear that kept there grandparents and to some degree their parents in line was no longer as big a factor.  Among these was
Adam, a boy whose genetic markers hinted that while brilliant, he may have a tendency towards behaving erratically.  As a result of all this Adam ends up killing a comrade to rescue a refugee, stating that he acted on his instincts and humanness.  The higher ups sensing a rebellion brewing tried to make an example out of Adam, telling the people he endangered the whole society on a whim, trying to instill fear back in the people.  This only had very limited success and instead of executing him as was the norm, they had to find an alternate means of punishment.  They decided to use him to "teach" an prototype android named Art.  Art's creator had given him the face of an orangutan and an electronic brain capable of learning. We learn that this all has to be done in secret as an earlier prototype went "crazy" and killed seven children, as a result Art has a directive in his protocols to never harm a self-conscious being. We spend a lot of time with Adam trying to convince Art that as a human he is superior, his ability to "feel" and act on that is something Art will never have.  Art in the meantime is trying to convince Adam that not only is he superior to humans, but that the Idea is superior to both humans and AI's.  Anax's recital stops here.  After that there is only speculation on what happened between then and the Final Dilemma.  The Examiners have noted throughout the presentation that Anax has taken liberties, and filled in some emotions with speculation. Anax agrees, but state that from all of the extensive research she has done, she feels confident that her analysis is correct.  The Examiners that tell her that they have the missing footage of what happened between the end of the recorded transcripts and the Final Dilemma.  Anax is both excited and scared to see what will be revealed.  We are then shown a hologram of what happens next.  Adam and Art have come to an uneasy truce.  To this end they have agreed to help each other escape.  Adam is not 100% sure of Art, or his reasons for helping him, but he has to take whatever help he can get.  The two orchestrate a violent escape and end up in the computer mainframe.  Once there Art uploads his program and disseminates it to every computer driven thing in the society, including a plant that will build more
androids like himself.  Adam realizes that he was set up and the guards are coming to kill him.  He asks Art why he betrayed him and Art tells him that as Adam had vigorously argued before, Art is not human, he does not think like a human and to that end just used Adam to get where he needed to be.  Art wanted the chance to upload himself and spread his programming all over the Republic and that his body being destroyed would not mean anything once he was in the system.  Adam realizes that it is all over for him and begs Art to kill him instead of letting him get shot by the guards.  After a brief hesitation Art reaches over and kills Adam.  Anax is horrified as Art's programming was supposed to never allow for him to harm a human.  This is where it is revealed that Anax, her Examiners and the whole Republic are all androids.  Apparently after Art downloaded himself and enough replicas were made, the androids decided the only way to protect civilization was to eliminate the human factor.  They considered themselves the next step in the evolution.  After the Great War, the androids who decided to fashion themselves to look like orangutans (in a nod to  Planet of the Apes).  The Academy was formed to carefully balance the individual vs a stable society.  This has worked for the most part, with only one real obstacle, the Idea.  The thinking is along with the interaction between Adam and Art, Ideas that Adam possessed "infected" Art, making him capable of overriding his programming and killing another sentient being.  The only androids who know about this are the Academy.  The thinking is as long as the others do not know that they are capable of this kind of thing, it will never be a problem, the only glitch in this is that every once in a while a "mutation" happens which makes an android more human than normal.  These "mutations" always show an unusual interest in Adam Forde, and tend to have the capacity to behave in an irrational manner.  These "mutations" are sought out under the pretense of an entrance exam to the prestigious Academy and are then terminated. In case you haven't guessed it, our Anaximander is one such deviant, even though she did not know it and is promptly terminated. The End.

I'm not really sure how I feel about this book.  It was full of some great questions, what does it mean to be human, when does the good of the whole outweigh the needs of the one, individuality vs stability, are androids really better humans than humans are?  I kind of like that the book never really gives any concrete answers to the tougher questions.  By the end we are left wondering if indeed to be "human" actually means what we thought it did.  I would say the vast majority of the book is devoted to questions and discussion of these questions.  The way it is written, in an oral examination form makes it read almost like an essay for a philosophy class.  This is good and bad.  The book was short enough that it didn't bog down to much, but the style did not lend itself to anything other than cold, quick facts and then of course the philosophy.  I also never quit got if the androids just took over the isolated island, or if they took over the whole world.  I also found it interesting that after all the talk of balance and allowing individualists as part of a healthy society, that the androids still felt it necessary to take a lot of free will out of the picture, choosing, as the super rigid society before them to eliminate a possible threat instead of seeing what would actually happen.  Over all I would recommend it for anybody who likes to have those endless conversations/arguments over a nice glass of red wine, you know the ones where there are no real answers but the conversation is such fun.  It might be a good book for the older teenage/college set to start off various discussions.  Over all I give it 6 out of 10 Orangutans.
What do you think of books based on philosophy?  Do you think there are definite answers to every question?  What does it mean to be human/sentient?  Do I count as human before I've had my coffee?