Flashforward

Book Cover: God, this book cover. Most of the time I avoid tie-in covers like a nasty plague. It doesn’t even matter if it turns out the movie (or in this case, TV show) was good or not (it wasn’t), I’m not interested in getting a book that’s essentially just a shill for what’s probably an inferior movie (or TV show). On the other hand, I am interested in getting a paperback for twenty-five cents. So my library will forever be reminded that this book became a series on ABC. I think “hit” may be pushing it.

Author: Robert J. Sawyer

Category: Canadian Literature, Contemporary Literature, Science Fiction, Aurora Award Winner, adapted: film

Why I Read It: Because I am on the internet a good deal of the time, I found out about ABC attempting to create the TV show Flashforward about a year before it premiered in ’09. Of course, there wasn’t much information on it then, just basically that it was based off this book by Robert J. Sawyer, and it was fairly obvious they were trying to recreate their success with Lost. And I can’t really hold that against them, because only an idiot wouldn’t. Despite an ending that is still finding new ways to piss me off, for most of its run Lost was still an amazing show that defied current storytelling convention and raked in viewers like it was its job.


But I’m straying. I heard about Flashforward, heard it was based off a book, and went searching for any information I could find, which at that point consisted of the Wikipedia entry. But it was enough to intrigue me. The concepts the article said the book dealt with were the kind of physics I enjoy hearing about in their extremely simplified versions on the Science channel, and it looked like it would make for some intriguing discussion.

Of course, this was during my first semester of my senior year in college, when I was currently enrolled in two literature courses, a writing course, and two sociology courses, followed by spring semester, where it was three literature courses and two sociology courses. My reading lists for that year were pretty well set in stone, and none of the courses included a science fiction book list (Although my American Authors class did include Silent Spring, so I guess I did have some science fact in there). And then I graduated.

I was like a teenage girl who’s been given daddy’s plastic and permission to destroy his credit rating before being dropped off at the Mall at Millenia. After four long years of only having time for my school reading lists, I could read whatever I wanted. And no one was going to expect a ten page paper on it, either. I wasted no time creating insanely long wish lists on Barnes and Noble and burning through books like I was in a Bradbury novel.

I can mention here that it was in college that I started to buy only used books. I used to think I wanted only new ones. I could have this book that no one else has touched and it would be mine, right from the start. And then I was staring down the barrel of a book list twenty to thirty items long every five months and suddenly used books started to look real promising. After four years of that I realized that used books sometimes had a lot more character, sometimes could hold little pieces of the past in the form of notes from the last reader, and sometimes were brand new anyway, just overstocked or shipped wrong or something. I don’t think I’ll ever buy a book new again (and this could lead into a discussion on why I buy instead of going to the library, or perhaps hard copies versus eBooks, but this section is already long enough).

So, while Flashforward has been on my list for close to two years now, I just haven’t gotten around to it. And then back in April I was making my thrift shop rounds in Cheyenne and found a copy in Meals on Wheels for twenty-five cents (a perfect example of buying books used, too. This copy is marked at eight dollars on the back, is barely a year old, and while I don’t like the cover, the book itself is still in perfect condition. That’s a 97% markdown, y’all). And, finally, it came up on next on my list.

Reading Time Period: July 20, 2010-July 21, 2010


Book Printing and Condition: Copyright 1999, Second Mass Market Edition printed September 2009, a little late for upfronts but just in time for the big season premiere! And yes, as I stated, this book is basically new. I’m not sure anyone read it before it ended up at MoW.

Where I bought it: Meals on Wheels in Cheyenne, Wyoming for twenty-five cents. It had been marked down from fifty cents.

Thoughts: I find it a lot funny that on two separate occasions Sawyer brings up H.G. Wells, because even before I got to the first mention that’s exactly who he reminded me of. This is not a good thing.


I read The Time Machine and The Invisible Man back to back, and then I read Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, and holy crap did I get some whiplash over that sudden change of direction. If there’s one thing any person alive today can say about Oscar Wilde, currently unwilling to give any interviews, it’s that he loved the medium he was using for his art. He loved language. He could fire off these instantly classic quips like he was a damned Gatling gun and his detail and description in scenery have a poetic quality. In Dorian Gray there are entire chapters where it seems Wilde completely forgot he had a plot of any sort to work with and reveled in the ability to use language to describe the things he personally found beautiful in life. The writing in Dorian Gray is a joy, and a welcome relief, for me anyhow, after the double dose of Wells.

Wells was not fond of the language. He did not love it. He used it. All writing was to him was a means to an end. Several of my college professors are probably getting angry right now and they have no idea why, and I know I’ve been taught from several directions that you can’t write about why an author wrote something the way he did when he’s been dead for around a century. But this isn’t going into a peer edited journal, and, I mean, come on. What Wells did in both The Time Machine and The Invisible Man was not storytelling. It was the relation of facts and ideas that happened to come in a story-shaped package. There was no love for the language present, no soul in the words. It’s either that he didn’t care how he got his message across as long as it got there, or he wasn’t a very good writer.

I feel the same about Robert J. Sawyer. The presentation here is dry, crisp, and to the point, points he makes with about as much subtlety as a Michael Bay movie. It’s not that the plot or the characters are lacking, I think. Everything is well rounded and there are grounds for actions taken. It’s just that Sawyer never tries to let the reader figure it out for herself, he just tells her. Why? Because he doesn’t want the reader mired in attempting to figure out characterization or subtle plot points on her own, dammit. She has more important things to chew on, like the Higgs boson, or Schrodinger’s cat!

I will give him this, the arguments and theories he presents in the book are fascinating, and it lends itself to a wonderful discussion, but you still couldn’t really bring Flashfoward to a book club unless it’s, like, the Boeing employee book club, or UCF engineering. Book clubs usually decipher clues and motifs and overtones and undertones and characterization, not gaps in the spacetime continuum and robotic immortality, unless of course that robotic immortality means something on another level, which if it did here I didn’t pick up on.

So maybe it’s not a book club book. I read plenty that wouldn’t get a spot on the discussion table. But was it enjoyable? Not nearly as much as it could be. I really am intrigued by the kind of theories presented here, and as much as I really, really don’t understand it all, I enjoy watching physics programs on the Science channel (back when I had cable). But it all just seemed like a waste of potential at the same time, because I could be enjoying these theories encased in a better written book. And I wasn’t. What I was stuck with was sparse. And blatant. And sometimes incredibly un-fun. Given that the best descriptor I could come up with for the show was ‘boring’ I guess the two mediums of the story tied. At least the show at John Cho.

The Best American Short Stories 1997

Book Cover: As far as I can tell there’s no variation in book cover, because there’s no second printing. Or, rather, no trade printing, I think it’s called, where they package the book in a cheaper setting and sell it for half the original price. The cover is also the same as every other cover between, from what I can tell, 1989 and 1999, with only the date and the name of the guest editor changing.

Editor: E. Annie Proulx

Category: American Literature, Contemporary Literature, Anthology, Short Stories

Why I Read It: The Best American Short Stories Series might very well be the death of me someday. When it comes to books I am not just a reader; if that were true I’d be getting them from the library (Dude, if you are ever in Cheyenne for any period of time and you like reading, check out the library. Three floors, full collections, everything is well kept...the staff is pretty surly, actually, for reasons I'm not entirely sure on, but there's an automated check out so you can just shun them all as soon as you walk in. The library is one of the things I am going to miss when I leave Cheyenne). I mean, I am a broke AmeriCorps VISTA living on a pittance and yet the guy down at Phoenix Used Books practically knows my name. All because I am a notorious collector.

The library's impressively large BASS collection. If I were very evil they'd never see half of these books again after I moved away in September. Lucky for them, my evil flavoring is mild.

I know everyone these days says they have OCD, and really if everyone who said they did actually did the world would be a hell of a lot neater (Anyone who says they have OCD and then leaves their trays on the table when they leave a fast food restaurant is a liar. And also disgusting). So I’m not saying I have OCD, but I do have some…tendencies. One of which is that if I start collecting something, either on purpose or by accident, I’m not really happy until I have the entire set. I did it with small national flags you could buy from the Epcot Center (I have around fifty and I'm still trying to figure out what to do with them), I did it with those Beanie Baby Bears you could get with your Happy Meals back when people were still planning to go to college by collecting those things (Ahh, the great Beanie Baby Crash of 2002. One of the worst financial downturns of the century), and I’m doing it with my books. I want to have these books, little monuments to what I have read, and if I have a bunch by the same author, I’d prefer it if the covers match each other (as I said with Coyote Blue). And if they do match, I want them all.

The problem here is that Best American Short Stories started in 1915, and I only got my first one for my 22nd birthday shortly after I started snatching up all the fiction anthologies I could. That’s...okay, hold on her...born in '87...graduated '09...carry the one...okay, that's ninety-four books I’d need to catch up on, most of which can’t be in print anymore and the bulk of which must be damned hard to find.

So, in an effort to stay sane (sane enough, anyway) I’ve decided I’m only going to go back to the year I was born, 1987. I found 1997 at the same time I found 1998. There are some names in here I recognized instantly and looked forward to reading, and it’s funny to me that now, in 2010, I know these names and what they mean to the literary world, but when it was written, I was a ten year old kid who barely even knew how important language and storytelling was going to become to me. I remember having dreams of writing movie reviews, but whenever I pictured my future I was always working in a cubicle somewhere. Then again, ten year olds are notoriously stupid.

They say there are two reasons why people read something, because they want to, or because they want to tell people they have. I read this for both reasons, I guess, and for a third: if I’m going to be a writer, I want to read everything considered the ‘best.’ What did these writers do to get a place in this book? They tell you that as a writer you never get to read for pleasure again, and they’re right: it’s all research.

Reading Time Period: July 15, 2010-July 19, 2010

Book Printing and Condition: Copyright 1997, printed probably early 1998 although it doesn’t give a date anywhere. Printed by Houghton Mifflin Company in the USA. There’s a slight crease down the front cover but otherwise this book is in excellent condition. Also, I received a fun surprise as I reached “Search Bay” by Alyson Hagy: she had signed the book just above her name.

Where I bought it: Night Heron Books, In Laramie, WY, for $5.50, which explains how I got Hagy’s signature as she’s currently teaching at the University of Wyoming. What I can’t figure out is how a book with an author’s signature ended up in a second hand shop. Who goes out of their way to get the author’s signature and then sells it? There was nothing on the front indicating that the book had been signed, which makes me think the owner of the store didn’t even know. Hell, maybe she just took a walk to the store, found it on the shelf, and signed it for funsies.

Thoughts: Unlike the other BASS I’ve read in the past, guest editor E. Annie Proulx (best known at this point for writing the short story "Brokeback Mountain") split the stories up into groups, every story in each group relating to a main topic. The stories were well placed and obviously fit into the theme, and I think the order Proulx put them into made for a very even flow.

Manners and Right Behavior
“Saboteur” by Ha Jin

• Very dark, very sparse, and short. There is a brief female presence and a massive police presence. I feel that the spreading of the hepatitis at the end might actually have been the spreading of anger.
  
  

“Under the Pitons” by Robert Stone

• Another dark one. This story had great characterization and even better imagery. Everybody in this story is a pain in the ass, but you still care about them. Or at least, you care about who you’re supposed to care about.

“Bob Darling” by Carolyn Cooke

• “…lemony point of her nose.”
• We have two equally selfish people here who fail amazingly at any sort of communication. Bob doesn’t like Carla, he just wants her to submit, which she won’t because that’s not the kind of person she is. He’s screwed himself on this one. 

“Chez Lambert” by Jonathan Franzen.

• My favorite of the book. I loved the voice, especially, and I loved the style and the flow of the prose. 
• “…since the fiction of living in this house was that no one lived here.” God, what a line. It’s the truth, isn’t it? 
• “This is one way of recognizing a place of enchantment: a suspiciously high incidence of narcolepsy.”

 Identifying the Stranger

“Transactions” by Michelle Cliff

•  Brilliant characterization, and I loved the voice, the style, and the word choices. It’s quite the oddball story, when you think about it, from beginning to end, and it’s written in a way that doesn’t shy away from that, exactly, but makes it feel like oddball is the normal. 

“Nobody in Hollywood” by Richard Bausch

• I wasn’t a fan of this story in the beginning but it grew on me until I loved it by the end. Everybody hates the kind of person Samantha is, don’t they?

“Save My Child!” by Cynthia Ozick 

• I liked Lidia more and more as this went on but was still glad to see her go. Such culture clash! And such a destruction of expectations for both people in this relationship. There was a line of dark humor here I very much appreciated and the imagery was very clear.

“Eternal Love” by Karen E. Bender

•  I didn’t love this one but it was all right. Bob was very annoying and I only felt mildly bad for Ella. It was a very interesting thing to write about, I will give it that. It’s not a topic you’d see just about anywhere.

“A Girl with a Monkey” by Leonard Michaels.

•  I loved the opposites and turned around expectations used to write this. “He knew it wouldn’t work so he only did it three more times.” Stuff like that. This kind of phrasing peppers the whole piece and clearly sets it apart. 

“St. Martin” by Lydia Davis

• The house and their lives during this time are the true main characters here, not the people themselves. The details are lovingly written and expounded upon and you can feel the seasons change in the story. Who are they and why are they there? Doesn’t matter. The house matters. 

Perceived Social Values

“Fiesta, 1980” by Junot Diaz

•  I loved the voice on this one. Authentic, I think, and still very unique. I loved how the party is the eye of the storm, a moment in time where events folded in on themselves, coming together from the past and then spreading out indefinitely in the future.
• “The affair was like a hole in our living room floor, one we’d gotten so use to circumnavigating that we sometimes forgot it was there.”

“From Willow Temple” by Donald Hall

• This was written carefully and has a slow meter. I wrote in my notes right after reading that I didn’t love it, that it was too slow and felt liked it dragged, but sitting here a few days away from reading it I have a better appreciation for it. It’s a life and death story. It should be told with care.

“Killing Babies” by T. Coraghessan Boyle

• Fascinating. This one has left the biggest emotional impact on me so far. God help me, I wanted him to do it. This one is easily my favorite of the section, and my second favorite of the book. The style, the characterization, the layers these characters have, the dialogue – all of it. Loved it.
• “…and looked hate at us.”

“Send Me to the Electric Chair” by Clyde Edgerton

• A tight and sparse story that is darkly funny after a little thought about it.

“Missing Women” by June Spence

• I loved the style used here. It was unique and it worked very, very well. Missing person stories are rarely about the missing – they’re about everyone else. The style caters to that and that sets this story apart.

“Air Mail” by Jeffrey Eugenides

• Quiet and contemplative. I knew he would still be sick and even though I knew he was just being stubborn I rooted for him to not take the pills. Unfortunately, these existential bordering on nihilistic types always get under my skin. They’re too much unlike me. I kept calling him a damn hippy as I was reading it.

“Soon” by Pam Durban.

• This story was selected to be in The Best American Short Stories of the Century, which I have already read (took me almost a year, too). Reading through it again, I still don’t like Martha. Nutter. 

Rites of Passage

“Shipmates Down Under” by Michael Byers

• I loved this one. I didn’t want it to end. I wanted to know more about this family and where they were going to end up. And honestly, if the couple didn’t make up, and ending up splitting, I was rooting for the father to end up in that house in Perth with his son.
• “…as if someone had told her a joke she hadn’t understood.”

“Powder” by Tobias Wolff

• Short, sweet, cute tale of a failing marriage and a father just reckless enough to make for a fun little childhood. And to produce a child opposite from him, something only just carefully brushed over. I liked it a lot.

“Search Bay” by Alyson Hagy

• So slow and methodical I’d call it plodding if I didn’t like it so much. I loved the use of imagery here and the way it was written. It’s understated, but you could feel and see and hear winter all around them perfectly.

“Little Frogs in a Ditch” by Tim Gautreaux

• Two men with equally dire families just trying to figure out how to set their kids straight without killing them. I liked the style here. And I liked Annie.