Short takes: ‘The Left Hand of Darkness,’ ‘The Late Show’ and ‘Radicalized’

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Aug. 8, 2021

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1969 novel, is the type of science-fiction tale that I used to hate. It’s entirely set on one planet. There are no real aliens. No technology more exotic than a snow-crawler makes an appearance. There’s no fighting. Nothing really happens.

Eighteen-year-old me would probably have thrown the text aside in disgust after a few hours of reading, if I even made it that far.

I have, fortunately, matured just a tad since then. I wouldn’t call this my favorite science-fiction novel, not by a long shot, but I did find it to make for an interesting reading experience.

The Left Hand of Darkness is about psychology, both individual and collective. It begins during a parade on the first day of the year 1 — the residents of the planet Gethen, I ought to note, use an insane calendar in which every current year is the year 1. This particular parade occurs roughly 24 hours before an emissary named Genly Ai is scheduled to meet the ruler of Karhide, a nation of Gethen.

A player for all genres: Nick Cole’s heroic video gamer assumes the mantle of a knight-errant in ‘Soda Pop Soldier’

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
July 7, 2015

Nick Cole’s 2014 novel, Soda Pop Soldier, is a fun science-fiction romp with literary value roughly equal to the nutritional value of — well, of soda.

Cole’s vaguely realized protagonist doesn’t even get a proper name; most of the time, he’s known as PerfectQuestion, his in-game handle for the WarWorld video game competitions. At other times, others address the character as Wu, the moniker of the samurai he plays in an illicit fantasy video game.

Still, the plot is fairly compelling. Several decades in the future, Question has a job playing WarWorld games on his computer. The results have real-life consequences: Each victory on a given virtual front rewards the winning team’s sponsor corporation with valuable real-world advertising space. Unfortunately, Question’s sponsor, ColaCorp, has been losing battle after battle to the enemy WonderSoft corporation in a modern-warfare game set in a fictitious Southeast Asian country. (For ColaCorp, read Coca-Cola; for WonderSoft, Microsoft.) If things continue on this course, the entire team will be fired.

Whimsy and seriousness: Connecting the threads, comparing World War II vs. the Los Angeles riots

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
May 2, 2015

Since I can’t stop, won’t stop making connections between different things…

and since I want to keep my weekly posting tallies as high as is reasonably possible…

I just wanted to point out that one of the subjects of Friday’s post, the 1992 Los Angeles riots…

Veteran Los Angeles homicide detective Harry Bosch gets a second shot at justice in Michael Connelly’s ‘The Black Box’

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Sept. 17, 2014

Michael Connelly is a best-selling mystery author who’s written more than two dozen books. The Black Box, Connelly’s 2012 novel, is the 16th entry in the Harry Bosch series, which chronicles the exploits of a hard-bitten Los Angeles homicide detective.

I’ve read a few Connelly works, including Nine Dragons, the 14th of Bosch’s adventures. In The Black Box, the detective is working on a cold-case investigation of the murder of a Danish journalist and freelance war correspondent on the final night of the 1992 L.A. riots, which broke out after not-guilty verdicts were rendered against the four police officers accusing of beating Rodney King.

Bosch originally investigated Jespersen’s killing two decades ago, but the riots afforded him only a matter of minutes to search for evidence. With the 20th anniversary of the riots fast approaching, he gets another crack at providing justice for the victim, as this early expository passage shows:

Bosch specifically asked for the Anneke Jespersen case and after twenty years returned to it. Not without misgivings. He knew that most cases were solved within the first forty-eight hours and after that the chances of clearance dropped markedly. This case had barely been worked for even one of those forty-eight hours. It had been neglected because of circumstances, and Bosch had always felt guilty about it, as though he had abandoned Anneke Jespersen. No homicide detective likes leaving a case behind unsolved, but in this situation Bosch was given no choice. The case was taken from him. He could easily blame the investigators that followed him on it, but Bosch had to count himself among those responsible. The investigation started with him at the crime scene. He couldn’t help but feel that no matter how short a time he was there, he must have missed something.

Danger propels Connelly’s ‘Nine Dragons’ at breakneck pace

I have not been a true mystery fan for quite a while, but I have read and enjoyed a number of Michael Connelly novels over the years. This American crime novelist is in peak form with his 2009 entry in the Detective Harry Bosch series, Nine Dragons.

The book opens near the end of a dull early September work day in the Los Angeles Police Department’s special homicide squad room. Bosch has been idle for a month and is itching for a case.

The call comes on the second page. Bosch and partner Ignacio Ferras are dispatched to Fortune Liquors in the city’s dodgy South Normandie neighborhood. Owner John Li has been shot to death behind his counter; footage from the store’s security camera has been stolen, but clues suggest gang involvement.

Unfortunately, the immigrant victim’s family — a Chinese-speaking mother and her daughter and son — do very little to point the police toward a specific suspect. Bosch, chafing at the lack of progress, takes his frustration out on his regular partner and on Detective David Chu, who is drawn into the case. It doesn’t help matters that the slow-moving investigation appears to have developed a serious leak.