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(em português: sol2070.in/2024/12/livro-hum-helen-phillips/ )

“Hum” (2024, 272 pages), by Helen Phillips, is a dystopian fiction that is both suffocating and sensitive, about the difficulties of a woman and her family in a techno-surveillance society in ecological collapse.

Despite the futuristic setting, it could just as well be set today, with our current dependence on screens, corporate domination, ubiquitous digital ads, non-existent privacy, disastrous politics and the horror of environmental collapse. The difference is the absurd intensification of these factors, which includes the presence of advertising androids, called “Hum”.

But anyone expecting traditional science fiction may be disappointed, this is more like a backdrop for the drama — of marked internalization — of the protagonist May. Not that this is a flaw, I especially liked the psychological side, without seeing anything too special in the techno-dystopian part.

After losing her job to an AI, May undergoes facial microsurgery, in search of money, for an experiment on methods of obscuring surveillance cameras. Because of her longing for the lost natural world she experienced in childhood, she spends what she can't to take the two children and her husband for a few days in a kind of ecological dome. Unforeseen events, including a well-known internet phenomenon, exacerbate the protagonist's crisis.

It's not an easy read. There is a Kafkaesque tone, of a powerless person massacred by a vast automated system. This is compensated for by the tender moments of warm subtlety, and the character's feelings, without being cheesy. It's also worth it for the impressive ending.

I had read the author's previous acclaimed book, “The Need” (2020). A psychological horror similar to “Hum” in the internalization of a threatening crisis. Another point in common is that the genre of the story is just a backdrop for a powerful inner journey.

( artigo completo, incluindo a seção de Spoiler: sol2070.in/2024/12/quadrilogia-comando-sul-jeff-vandermeer/ )

Depois de ler "Absolution" (2024), a quarta parte da série "Comando Sul", de Jeff Vandermeer, fiquei com algumas interrogações, já que a última vez que havia relido os livros anteriores foi há mais de um ano.

Em um dia em que faltou energia aqui, comecei a folhear Aniquilação para passar o tempo. Não consegui parar e acabei relendo toda a trilogia, pela terceira vez. Essa foi a melhor experiência até agora.

"Comando Sul" é a única série que li mais de uma vez, e continuarei relendo. Um banquete para quem gosta de ficção especulativa e, especialmente, ecológica.

Área X é uma região costeira isolada do sudeste dos EUA cuja natureza enigmaticamente torna-se completamente selvagem, intocada e livre da contaminação anterior; seu povoado desaparece e uma barreira inexplicável se ergue. Invasão alienígena? Mutação natural? Acidente com experiências secretas? Portal de outra dimensão?

É também a história dos erros da agência de inteligência clandestina responsável em investigar e conter o evento, o Comando Sul — um símbolo da ignorância humana em relação à natureza —, que pode ter influenciado o fenômeno. As pessoas-chave para entender a anomalia são retratadas de modo brilhante: uma bióloga antisocial, duas pessoas que em momentos diferentes dirigem a agência e um ex-pastor que se refugia em um farol de praia. Suas envolventes histórias quase eclipsam o mistério principal — isso só não acontece porque se entranham completamente no enigma.

No quarto livro, "Absolution" — uma prequela-surpresa, lançada dez anos depois da terceira parte — personagens secundários com papel-chave em uma “proto-Área-X”, 20 anos antes, saltam para o primeiro plano.

Além da história principal da quadrilogia ser hipnotizante, com uma formulação inédita e genial do mítico embate com uma vasta força desconhecida, a metáfora principal é sobre a estupidez com que humanos lidam com o mundo natural, através da dominação, controle, cegueira etc. Uma personagem chega a anunciar o tema, especulando que a luta entre o Comando Sul e a Área X na verdade é algo ancestral, sendo travado em um ciclo vicioso ao longo das eras, e que agora chegou num limite definitivo, em que é apocalipse ou salvação.

Por isso é uma história tão relevante para os dias de hoje.

Outro tema é um tipo de misticismo natural, em que há contato íntimo com uma força de poder inconcebível, que possui as personagens e transfigura tanto sua visão de mundo quanto seus corpos.

Inicialmente, predomina o horror cósmico à la H.P. Lovecraft, em que algo com poder praticamente infinito aterroriza a pequeneza das mentes que testemunham, jogadas na frente da monstruosidade que é aquilo que não podem nem começar a compreender. Mas com o desenrolar do mistério, já não fica tão nítido se os conceitos humanos de bem e mal se aplicam ao que está acontecendo.

Por viver praticamente desvencilhada dos valores dominantes, a bióloga se conecta à Área X de modo orgânico, chegando a questionar se o que está acontecendo é a aniquilação da humanidade ou sua salvação. O modo como esses dois polos se alternam é extraordinário, algo que nunca vi igual em nenhuma história.

Um fator que faz as pessoas se apaixonarem pela série é seu mistério e a conclusão aberta. Não fica muito claro o que exatamente aconteceu e, ao juntar as peças, surgem diversas teorias. Montar racionalmente esse quebra-cabeça não é algo obrigatório para apreciar os livros, eles podem ser sentidos e vivenciados de forma poderosa, mesmo sem uma explicação lógica.

Na seção “Spoiler” a seguir, compartilho o modo como absorvi a narrativa e seu final, e porque considero como uma história esplêndida sobre catástrofe ambiental e como lidar com ela. Pode ser útil para quem leu e ainda se inquieta com alguns elementos.

sol2070.in/2024/12/quadrilogia-comando-sul-jeff-vandermeer/#spoiler-o-que-%C3%A9-a-%C3%A1rea-x

(em português: sol2070.in/2024/12/livro-the-drowned-world-jg-ballard/ )

"The Drowned World" (1962, 198 pages) is one of the first novels by englishman J.G. Ballard, from the period when he was dedicated to more genre science fiction.

Known for the film adaptations of David Cronenberg's "Crash" (1996) and Steven Spielberg's "Empire of the Sun" (1987), Ballard combines delirious imagination and hypnotic prose like no other, transcending genres and entering the pantheon of literary genius.

This novel is an end-of-the-world dystopia with cities overrun by the sea, deadly heat and nature mutated by solar radiation. The planet's habitable zone has been reduced to the poles and the biospheric transformation also ends up affecting the human mind evolutionarily, making the story a perfect example of the altered consciousness of sixties New Wave science fiction.

A biologist studies the changes in an abandoned London and, for him, this is not necessarily a catastrophic scenario — as is usually the case in Ballard's stories, where people end up magnetized by the abyss.

I had read some of Ballard's later books when I was young. I only got to know his new wave phase recently, with the short story "The Voices of Time" (1960), which is very similar to the book. This made me put his entire bibliography on my reading list.

(em português com links: sol2070.in/2024/12/livro-the-third-realm-karl-ove-knausgard/ )

In "The Third Realm" (2024), Karl Ove Knausgaard continues his captivating kaleidoscopic saga that mixes literary realism with science fiction and even horror, in the third installment of the "Morning Star" series.

The previous book, "The Wolves of Eternity" (2024), seems almost independent, while this one is clearly a sequel. Although the author envisioned the books as a loose series, in which it would be possible to read any of them without having read the others, "The Third Realm" picks up where the first book left off, when a great star takes over the sky and the unexplained begins to interfere in the characters' lives.

Although the supernatural becomes more explicit, the book retains the style of delving into the routines and minds of the various characters, each with engaging parallel stories. It's as if there were several short stories embedded in the main story, all interconnected.

One of the main subjects is the Norwegian black metal scene, which connects multiple characters, even though they are not part of that. The members of one of these satanic bands are found dead, in a hideous and ritualistic way. There is a fascinating investigation into what drives young people to extreme forms of transgression, including a secret new movement that breaks with social standards in an unprecedented way.

The title of the book is about a related religious aspect, the belief linked to Christian mysticism that there would be three sequential realms on Earth: God's, Christ's and a future third realm of the spirit. The idea was appropriated by the Nazis in their “third reich”.

You could say that, in this book, the floodgates are wide open, hell breaks loose.

The problem now is waiting for the next ones.

(em português, com links → sol2070.in/2024/11/livro-the-wolves-of-eternity-karl-knausgard/)

"The Wolves of Eternity" (2024, 800 pgs.), by Karl Ove Knausgård, is the second book in "The Morning Star" series, about routines transformed by the appearance of a big new star in the sky.

Volume one covers the first and second days from the point of view of nine people in present-day Norway. "Wolves", on the other hand, is a kind of interlude focusing more on two key people. The young Norwegian Syvert returns from military service at the time of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and discovers his deceased father's secret past, which connects him to the Soviet Union. In contemporary Russia, Alevtina is confronted with personal crises and her obsession with the essence of biological life.

The narrative at the end integrates deeply with the series and its huge themes of death, life, human crisis and nature. But this book has few of the fantastic elements of the first, which in no way detracts from it, concentrating on the interconnected story of these two characters. The context of the environmental emergency and the investigation into the biosphere are also more present.

Karl's style won me over. He writes without pretension in the first person, things like: “I did this, then that. The day was like this; the other man, like that.” In addition to the cosmic enigma of the setting, people are left pondering the big questions, without sounding too philosophical, in a perfect dosage for stories that are both profound and captivating.

The central theme of "Wolves" is a question that stems from the anxiety about death. The book's title is the same as a character's essay, linked to the origins of Russian cosmism and the fabulous poet Rainer Maria Rilke, who investigates the hypothesis of the “beginning of eternity”.

I'm already reading the third, "The Third Realm", and I'm equally hooked. For the time being, the series has gone so far, although sequels are expected. However, it's not the kind of series whose plot continues in subsequent books. Each one can be read on its own, although there are many connections between them.

The cover blurb makes it sound like a cautionary tale about our highly-tech-dependent world (even in the 1990s!), but it's not the technology that's the problem. It's the homogenization of culture, and the insistence that there be one perspective, and only one perspective, that really matters.

Think of how we travel and find the same chain stores, chain restaurants, the ISO standard Irish Pub with its bric-a-brac decor, and how our TV and movies are full of endless reboots, spinoffs and sequels.

We see it first in Sutty's memories of Earth, controlled largely by a theocracy until contact with alien civilizations kicks their support out from under them. And then in the world she's trying to understand, one that's undergone a complete transformation in the time it took her to travel there at relativistic speed. She knows there were flourishing cultures here before she left Earth. She studied the few fragments that made it offworld during first contact. But she finds a world that has discarded its past and modeled itself on the one she left.

It's largely a story of discovery: Sutty, frustrated and depressed, trying to figure out what the heck "The Telling" actually is and what it means, and the government agent shadowing her also discovering what it is he's trying to suppress and why. A lot of it takes place in small villages, but there's also a long trip through mountains that feels like counterpoint to the glacier expedition in The Left Hand of Darkness.

Well worth the read!

(Slightly condensed from my website.)