FACT SF Reading Group

September 2000

September 1: The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

Nine people participated in this discussion, including two first-time attendees. The subject of this discussion, Pullman's The Golden Compass, is the first of a planned trilogy called "His Dark Materials". The setting of this book is a world vaguely like our world in the present day, with some notable exceptions. Politics have had different results over the past hundred years or so, air travel is done by zeppelin and hot air balloon, and there are secret societies of witches and intelligent warrior bears. Additionally, each human has a companion called a "daemon" that looks like an animal, talks only to its designated human, and houses the soul of its human. The story involves a young girl, Lyra, who has been raised as an orphan but discovers that her parents are still alive and on opposite sides of a power struggle among secret societies. Both sides want to kidnap Lyra for reasons she does not understand, so she travels all over Europe as a fugitive, trying to figure out what's going on and how to keep herself and her friends safe. She carries with her a mysterious compass-shaped instrument, given to her by a kindly Oxford professor, that supposedly is very powerful if she can only figure out what it does or how to operate it.

We liked a lot about this book. Everyone thought the society of bears was cool. Lyra is fully developed and realistic, and we appreciated Pullman's daring in making her neither nice nor likeable. The concept of the daemons and its development as a major plot thread led to a lot of philosophical discussions, which we found reminded us of the work of C. S. Lewis. The mythology of this world is rich and imaginative. We thought the concept of the "golden compass" was a neat idea.

We did find a few problems. None of the characters except Lyra is at all well developed or even logically consistent. Lyra supposedly develops close friendships with several characters during the book, especially one of the intelligent bears, but we couldn't see why. It was almost as if the book's outline said "Lyra befriends bear", but the author didn't devote sufficient effort to fleshing out this point. Lyra gets kidnapped several times during the story, which got tiresome and seemed like a lazy way for the author to get her from one place to another to advance the plot. The ending ties up little, basically just providing a "to be continued..." message. Even though this was a planned trilogy, we had expected more closure.

Due to its young protagonist and its marketing toward younger readers, The Golden Compass is getting a lot of comparison to the Harry Potter books. Since we've read the first volume in each series, we compared them. The Harry Potter books are aimed at a 10-year-old and up audience, which The Golden Compass is targeted toward older readers -- at least mid-teens. The Potter books take place in familiar settings (modern-day England and a wizards' school), while the world of The Golden Compass is more original and complicated, and much darker. The Potter books have a well-developed cast of sympathetic characters, while The Golden Compass has one bratty little girl and a bunch of two-dimensional players. Finally, each Potter book has a self-contained story, while The Golden Compass is clearly just part one of a larger whole. We found both series to be worthy of attention, but obviously different readers will prefer one or the other.

In general we thought The Golden Compass was an interesting but flawed book. Several of us were intrigued enough by Pullman's concepts that we bought the sequel, The Subtle Knife.

September 19: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

The discussion of Neal Stephenson's recent Hugo-nominated novel drew a crowd of sixteen, including two first-time attendees. Cryptonomicon is a complex and long novel (over 900 pages) with several plot threads taking place during World War II and in our present day. Topics explored in this book include code breaking, haiku, pipe organs, early computers, ballroom dancing, Internet startups, dental care, conspiracies, and the proper way to eat breakfast cereal. The WWII segments primarily follow two Americans: Lawrence Waterhouse, a mathematician involving in breaking Japanese and German codes; and Bobby Shaftoe, a tough and competent Marine who travels all over the world pulling off near-impossible missions for the Allies. The present-day sections of the book largely follow the adventures of Lawrence's grandson, Randy, a gifted computer programmer involved in a high-tech startup company in the Philippines.

We found this book to be a fascinating and engaging reading experience. We were initially intimidated by the book's size, but soon grew deeply involved in the story. All of the characters were interesting and fun to read about, from the fictional creations to the several historical figures (including Alan Turing, Douglas MacArthur, and a cameo by a future president). We appreciated the author's willingness to go into great technical detail in the segments involving code breaking and computer programming, and we were impressed that Stephenson's writing was so passionate that the technical content was enjoyable. The prose in the WWII sections seemed to be patterned after the styles of popular writers of the era (particularly Hemingway), which we found to be a nice touch. The book is full of wonderful asides (tuning a pipe organ, a bizarre algorithm for a family to divide up inheritances, a letter to Penthouse, etc.) that may not have been strictly necessary to the plot, but we enjoyed them immensely. The densely woven plot is impossible to describe, but we enjoyed putting the pieces together and many people had already read the book twice.

We only had minor criticisms. One person felt the detail in the code-breaking sequences was excessive and repetitious. A couple of people found the ending was a little abrupt.

Overall we liked Cryptonomicon immensely. The plot, writing style, and setting are all wonderful, and the book has much to reward the careful reader. Most of us plan to reread this book soon.

-- A. T. Campbell, III