Book Review: Take Back Plenty by Colin Greenland

Take Back Plenty (Colin Greenland, Gollancz) – **** – Colin Greenland’s Take Back Plenty offers a delightful reading experience, presenting an action-packed interstellar adventure featuring renegade thieves and the capable female captain, Tabitha Jute, commanding the ship known as Alice Liddell.

In the world of Take Back Plenty, interstellar vessels are equipped with powerful artificial intelligence systems, with Alice Liddell being one of the primary AI characters.

The adventure commences on Mars, where Tabitha Jute, piloting the Alice Liddell, finds herself evading the authorities after nearly inciting a riot. She encounters the persuasive contraband dealer, Marco Metz, who enlists her for a mission to Titan under the guise of being associated with a band named Contraband. Desperate for funds to repair her ship and settle fines with law enforcers, Tabitha reluctantly agrees. Their journey begins at Plenty, a space station orbiting Earth, where they load a shipment from the Frasque, an alien civilization.

While en route to Titan, they face interception by pirates and are forced to crash-land on Venus. The shipment, revealed to contain a violent Frasque-being, becomes a source of conflict as Marco attempts to sell it. The crew endures an attack, resulting in the loss of a member. Escaping Venus, they encounter further attacks from pirates until aided by a cherub-AI member of Contraband, enabling them to reach the orbit of Pluto, where they encounter the Capellans, an alien race that enabled the human race’ technological capability for interplanetary travel. The Capellans repair their ship, allowing them to return to Plenty and return the Frasque-being cargo.

Take Back Plenty presents an enjoyable sci-fi narrative reminiscent of Guardians of the Galaxy, replete with humor and featuring the resilient and charismatic protagonist, Tabitha Jute. to find a balance between the existence of different alien races. It draws on the futural hope of a new society built on interplanetary peace. But its otherworldliness is nonetheless almost Earth-like. It follows the structures of power of our human civilization.

In the book, Greenland taps into the notion of capitalism as an interplanetary relation. Capitalism remains a central theme, influencing characters’ motivations and actions, underscoring the persistent pursuit of wealth and survival in an interplanetary setting. It ties together Tabitha’s persistence to aspire for a new life, Marco Metz’s motive for dealing with contrabands, and the pirates’ quest for salvageable cargoes.

Overall, Take Back Plenty offers an entertaining and engaging read, serving as the inaugural installment of Greenland’s Plenty series, promising further adventures across subsequent volumes.

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Book Review: Welcome to Camp Nightmare (Goosebumps #9) by R.L. Stine

Welcome to Camp Nightmare (Goosebumps #9) (R.L. Stine, Scholastic) – *** – Welcome to Camp Nightmare is a tale of camping gone awry. Initially appearing to be a typical camping narrative, R.L. Stine ingeniously subverts expectations with a surprising twist at the end.

Stine’s narratives typically immerse readers in first-hard experiences, and Welcome to Camp Nightmare is no exception. Through a first-person perspective, we join a group of campers thrust into unfamiliar territory, uprooted from their sheltered lives in middle-class suburbia.

The book fetishizes the wilderness as a ‘cultural outside,’ prompting Stine to explore the ethics of care within the camp culture. Horror and nightmarish conditions arise from neglect towards the campers, exacerbated by their displacement from their comfort zones. The fear of the unknown permeates this sense of displacement, acclimating as a deferral from the norm.

Stine masterfully structures the ending as a reversal of power dynamics. We discover that the entire camp is merely a simulation for an alien government project, preparing extraterrestrial beings for deployment to Earth. The protagonist is conditioned to feel utterly vulnerable, pushed to their limits to survive. As readers are led through a gripping drama of survival, Stine deftly shifts focus towards higher-order politics, revealing a crisis of care that short-circuits towards the politics of dissimulation and the lack of knowledge of this right-of-passage act. It’s as if Stine wants to tell us that the nightmare is only about to start in the end.

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Book Review: The Girl Who Cried Monster (Goosebumps #8) by R.L. Stine

The Girl Who Cried Monster (Goosebumps #8) (R.L. Stine, Scholastic) – *** – The Girl Who Cried Monster is Stine’s attempt to innovate a twisted ending: the reversal of the monstrous and the human.

As a novelist, Stine exhibits a penchant for reimagining endings within his narratives. His inaugural novella in the series, Welcome to Dead House, is, for me, his best work yet on staging an ending towards the chaos, when the family realized that the whole town is ‘dead.’

In The Girl Who Cried Monster, there is no morphology of the artifactual. The horror and horrific resides in the xenophobia towards alien, or rather ‘alienated’ beings. For Stine, at least within the book’s lore, the alien-monstrous is the non-human. Stine adapts the tale of the boy who cried wolf and transposes it to mid-1990s suburbia. The protagonist embodies the archetype of the unreliable witness, experiencing a taste of her own medicine when she witnesses the transformation of the librarian into a grotesque creature. Despite her earnest attempts to persuade her parents and friends, her claims fall on deaf ears. Only when her parents themselves become convinced do they invite the librarian for dinner, unwittingly devouring him.

Stine plays on the diametrical lines of representation between the human and the monstrous. The twist annuls the human aspect of the story, by bringing to fore gradations of what it takes to be the monster. We later learned that the girl’s parents – and perhaps her whole family – are also monsters of a higher kind that preys on other monsters.

Stine’s notion of the monstrous is more cultural than horrific. If the girl’s ‘monster’ family survives by assuming the human form, one can infer that monstrosity is encoded in the privatized confines of people and customs. For Stine, monstrosity demands an element of belongingness. The librarian’s incapability to ‘belong’ and his impatience to remain within the coded form of ‘being human’ signifies his lack of cultural assimilation. He is, in his most categorical form, ‘alienated’ – both applies in the cultural-capital context and in the context of ‘becoming-alien.’

Stine’s theory of monstrous ‘alienation’ is present in his earlier novella Stay Out of the Basement, which tells about the father ‘alienated’ from his family. In The Girl Who Cried Monster, two types of monstrous alienation manifest: the overt alienation embodied by the librarian, and the covert alienation exhibited by the girl’s family. Stine masterfully navigates these shifting modalities of alienation, a theme recurrent throughout the “Goosebumps” series.

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Book Review: Night of the Living Dummy (Goosebumps #7) by R.L. Stine

Night of the Living Dummy (Goosebumps #7) (R.L. Stine, Scholastic) – **** – A brief biographical note: R.L. Stine’s Night of the Living Dummy marked the inaugural book I read entirely by my own volition. In the third grade, while accompanying my mother, then pursuing her Masters in Education at Bicol University, I found myself at the Booksale Branch in LCC Mall, located in Legazpi City, Albay, the largest urban center near Sorsogon. Each Saturday, as my mother attended her Masters classes, she would bring me along, often entrusting me to librarians of the university’s libraries. During lunch breaks, we’d venture to LCC Mall for meals and light shopping. It was during this time that my interest in books began to bloom. The year was 1998, and aside from indulging in television, my primary joy was playing with friends. Encountering something new, such as a horror book tailored for children, sparked immense excitement within my third-grade self. Seizing it from the bookstand, I implored my mother to purchase it, much to her surprise, as it deviated from my typical requests for toys. Nonetheless, she obliged, and that summer, I delved further into the Goosebumps series before progressing to the Harry Potter saga in fourth grade. My grandmother, Lola Mila, played a pivotal role in my literary journey, imparting her wisdom on reading pocket books, of which she was an ardent enthusiast. Serving as my “reading mentor,” she shared techniques for speed reading, vocabulary enhancement, and comprehension refinement. Now, after 26 years, here I am, rereading again the book.

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Stine’s Night of the Living Dummy is about a pair of haunted ventriloquist dolls named Slappy and Mr. Wood. The narrative employs some sibling rivalry: two twin sisters vie to outsmart each other with their ventriloquist dolls.

Slappy is a found-object. The first of the twins found it on a dump while surveying the ruins of an old house. By convention, Slappy is the best candidate for the Stinian hauntology of the artefactual. The doll is abandoned and found, and exhibited potentials signs demonic possession. However, in a dramatic twist, it is Mr. Wood, the store-bought counterpart acquired to appease the other sister, who becomes the vessel for haunting.

My locating the performative of haunting in the store-bought ventriloquist doll, Stine channels the ghost of capitalism itself. When the sister recites the incantation enabling possession of the dummy, she inadvertently resurrects the Marxist specter of the dancing table, embodying capitalism’s fetishistic drive to animate inanimate objects, imbuing them with a semblance of life. Commodities have, in themselves, the hauntology of the artefactual. And like any practical ends, the only means to dispel the spectral aura enveloping the dancing table is to dismantle its perceived capitalist worth, a fate befalling Mr. Wood as he meets his demise beneath a road flattener.

In a series of successive hauntings, as Mr. Wood succumbs to disintegration upon the unforgiving concrete, Slappy emerges from its dormant state, signaling a resurgence of residuals, a return of nostalgia towards found objects, intent on fulfilling their spectral purpose. Stinian hauntology of the artefactual, the overall generic term for R.L. Stine’s notion of horror, places capitalist objects above objects of the past for being the most spectral. This notion warrants further exploration in my subsequent reviews of the Goosebumps series.

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Book Review: Let’s Get Invisible! (Goosebumps #6) by R.L. Stine

Let’s Get Invisible! (Goosebumps #6) (R.L. Stine, Scholastic) – **** – In R.L. Stine’s Let’s Get Invisible!, the novella delves into the supernatural phenomenon of invisibility, facilitated by a mirror. It follows a group of children as they grapple with the complexities surrounding an antique mirror.

From the outset, the novella exhibits a pronounced penchant for uncritical reverence towards heritage. The mirror, formerly belonging to the protagonist’s grandparents, is treated as an heirloom, a cherished antique passed down through generations. Stine consistently constructs his narratives around the hauntology of the artifactual. This thematic thread is evident in his previous works such as The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (centered on the tomb itself) and Say Cheese and Die! (revolving around a cursed camera). Stine’s oeuvre is characterized by a generic and archetypal quality rooted in the unsettling nature of history, highlighting the irretrievable past and the inherent helplessness stemming from a lack of understanding of the past and its immiscibility with the present.

Stine excels in evoking fear in his youthful audience, portraying a sense of helplessness that transcends both physical and mental boundaries within the context of middle-class youth in Americana. His characters often exhibit a predetermined lack of creativity and resilience, most of them leading an encapsulated life within the confines of suburbia. Stine’s protagonists are constrained by their own disinterestedness in delving deeper or exploring beyond the familiar. Any attempt to break free from this comfort zone inevitably leads to disaster, plunging them into an abyss of uncertainty.

In Let’s Get Invisible!, Stine explores the netherworld of reflection. But Stine channels something else – a being of Lacanian nature – the manifestation of the Imaginary as the reflective beings that threaten to replace the children as they interact with the aged mirror. The usurpation of the Imaginary by the Symbolic is depicted as truly horrifying and chaotic. And for Stine, it is possible to cross over the two realm through a “mirror stage”: the play of invisibility and visibility, or recognition and misrecognition.

Let’s Get Invisible! explores the psychoanalytic concept of seizing control over the symbolic realm, lending the narrative a distinctly edgy quality. This thematic exploration adds depth and complexity to the story, making it one of the standout books of the first ten books of the series.

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Book Review: The Sea and Summer by George Turner

The Sea and Summer (George Turner, Gollancz) – ***** – This book is a remarkable discovery, offering a realistic portrayal of a society grappling with the repercussions of climate change. The book imagines two distant futures: the mid-2050s Australia (and the broader world) and a far-future scenario in the 2100s where much of the globe is submerged under deep floodwaters.

Turner adeptly navigates the intricacies of the mid-2050s future through multiple narrative strands. His rendition of this future is a symphony of voices; characters from various societal strata are afforded the opportunity to express themselves, providing insight into a world unjustly divided between the impoverished Swill and the affluent Sweet. In this dystopian landscape, characterized by rising tides and worsening global floods, economic collapse has exacerbated societal divisions. In the 2050 narrative, we witness the downward spiral of a Sweet family into Swill status due to mass unemployment during the mid-2040s economic collapse. The patriarch’s suicide leaves his wife and two sons to grapple with the remnants of their former life.

Forced to relocate to the Fringe zone—a Swill-dominated area in close proximity to the lowest echelons of Sweet society—the mother Allison Conway finds herself without recourse. Turner’s portrayal of the future offers a less-than-progressive outlook for women; instead of seeking employment, her two sons are thrust into the workforce. Francis, at just 12 years old, finds himself working as an accountant for a wealthy family due to his aptitude with numbers. Meanwhile, his 15-year-old brother, Teddy, becomes an apprentice in law enforcement. These arrangements are orchestrated by their host, Billy Kovacs, a Tower boss who eventually becomes romantically involved with their mother.

The tension between Teddy and Francis is palpable, manifesting as a complex interplay of emotions: both resent Billy’s relationship with their mother, yet harbor a deep-seated animosity towards each other. Francis becomes ensnared in his employer’s eugenics project, aimed at eradicating the Swill population, which Teddy and his team was able to stop at the end of book. Against the backdrop of familial strife, the narrative unfolds against a shifting environmental backdrop, with rising sea levels and increasing severity of weather and storms.

Fast forward to the distant future of the 2100s, where scientists and artists delve into the ‘lost world’ of the 2050s to comprehend the events that precipitated humanity’s downfall. This era experiences extreme summers and prolonged winters, alongside unprecedented sea level rise.

Turner’s materialistic portrayal of class antagonism serves as the book’s cornerstone. He keenly observes the value systems individuals must navigate during crises and critiques the notion of societal stasis. The inability to adapt ultimately leads to societal collapse—a sobering reminder that change is imperative for survival in the face of environmental threats like climate change.

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Book Review: Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson, Penguin Randomhouse) – ***** – Snow Crash opens with an engaging introduction featuring Hiro Protagonist as a Pizza Deliverator. Set in a dystopian California of the distant future, pizza delivery is controlled by the mafia, with failure to deliver within twenty minutes resulting in fatal consequences. Hiro excels in this perilous occupation.

In this future California, which has seceded from the United States, Hiro frequents the Metaverse, akin to contemporary social media but rendered in immersive virtual 3D. Within the Metaverse are virtual clubs where users’ avatars can interact.

The novel unfolds as a gripping, action-packed adventure, following Hiro’s pursuit of the creators of the computer virus known as “Snow Crash,” distributed as a hallucinogenic drug in the alleys of the Metaverse. His journey traverses both online and offline realms, encountering diverse communities residing in desolate conditions. It blends elements of sabotage, espionage, and adrenaline-fueled samurai-armed pursuits, culminating in Hiro halting the virus’s spread and neutralizing its mastermind, Bob Rife.

Snow Crash dwells into the intricacies of command language and biocultural language, how biocultural language are rendered void by command language and vice versa. As a computer virus, snow crash has a capability to change the biological make-up of the host. It becomes apparent that, for whatever reason, Stephenson wants to channel a potential world that embraces the primacy of Negarestani’s superior language model that could generally create or uncreate the notion of what it is to be human in a such a flat world of the metaverse.

Stephenson’s narrative delves into the complexities of command language and biocultural communication, illustrating how they interact and sometimes nullify each other. “Snow Crash,” functioning as a computer virus, possesses the ability to alter the biological composition of its hosts. Stephenson seems intent on envisioning a world where the primacy of Negarestani’s superior language model could redefine humanity’s essence within the flat expanses of the Metaverse.

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Book Review: White Noise by Don DeLillo

White Noise (Don DeLillo, Penguin Books) – **** – DeLillo’s White Noise is an intriguing novel, satirical yet also reflective of the prevailing trends in Americana. The book depicts the demise of the family as a consequence of their folly and the privatization of pleasures.

The novel delves into themes of political conservatism, alienation, the fear of death, and the technological constraints of humanity, focusing on the family of Jack Gladney and his fourth wife, Babette. Their four children hail from different ex-spouses. Jack, a founder of Hitler Studies at College-on-the-Hill, and Babette, seemingly addicted to the unregistered drug Dylar, navigate their peculiar domestic lives filled with surreal facets.

DeLillo skillfully captures this peculiarity through a matter-of-fact portrayal of the family’s ironic existence. Trapped in a middle-class trance, they are seemingly oblivious to the society at large, overly fixated on individual goals. DeLillo subtly subverts Ayn Rand’s objectivism through contradiction. He shows that no matter how ‘stable’ a middle-class family is, one is still driven by barren, unchecked desires. They still relapse into a lumpenized state no matter how they try to hide it.

In the second part of the book, Jack’s family’s peculiar response to a global disaster illustrates their disconnectedness from society. The lack of urgency regarding the event highlights the family’s desensitization, indicative of their commodified lives. Even faced with the need for evacuation during an airborne toxic event, Jack treats it almost casually, viewing it as a mere rehearsal.

DeLillo critiques America’s inclination towards exceptionalism, attributing it to a quest for individualistic notion of greener pastures that, in his view, has led the country to succumb to systemic violence. Jack’s descent from an academic to a narcissistic psychopath, reminiscent of Hubert Selby Jr.’s works, is portrayed humorously by DeLillo. Both Babette and Jack’s preoccupation with death, their inability to control its inevitability, results in their self-destruction. DeLillo presents this matter-of-factly, almost too literally, asserting that this descent into psychopathy is a general tendency among American conservatives—a metaphorical cancer affecting societies aspiring to resemble the USA, such as the Philippines.

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Book Review: The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (Goosebumps #5) by R.L. Stine

The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (Goosebumps #5) (R.L. Stine, Scholastic) – *** – R.L. Stine’s The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb delves into the anxieties of cultural abandonment and the uncanniness of the ancient. While lacking traditional gothic elements, the narrative carries a foreboding tone, exploring humanity’s vulnerability when ensnared by cultish beliefs.

The novella follows the adventures of cousins Gabe and Sari in Egypt, where the geographic setting assumes a character-like role, heightening anxieties toward the foreignness of a non-Western country. Stine employs an orientalist othering in depicting alleys and people as seemingly inaccessible, with the young protagonists’ middle-class upbringing preventing them from interacting with strangers.

The novella also scrutinizes the middle-class American family, embodying a touristy archetype—checking into a hotel, visiting the pyramids solely for sightseeing. As the mummy’s curse unfolds, Gabe’s uncle Ben, Sari’s father, emerges as the only truly assimilated foreigner in the narrative. A scientist studying mummies, Ben serves as the voice of reason. When his assistant Ahmed succumbs to the curse, Ben adeptly navigates the pyramids to rescue the two children.

While the novella may not offer profound insights, it portrays how American families perceive travel as a replication of their home. Stepping out of their comfort zone means relinquishing privatized knowledge and pleasures, with the foreignness of a place also serving as a breeding ground for cult beliefs.

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Book Review: Non-Stop by Brian W. Aldiss

Non-Stop (Brian W. Aldiss, Overlook Press) – **** – I’ve always been a fan of long, epic narratives, such as Lord of the Rings. Non-Stop employs a similar approach but on a smaller, speculative scale—a journey towards unraveling the true nature of its characters, a search of one’s home.

Non-Stop revolves around a seemingly human community living inside a ‘starship.’ These inhabitants have dwelled within this terrarium ‘planet’ for twenty-three generations, unaware of their origins. They believe their history has been erased, surviving within a terrarium filled with overgrown plant life. One day, their priest Marapper discovers the truth about their living ‘planet’ as a ship. Protagonist Complain joins Marapper and two others in exploring this revelation, only to be captured by the technologically advanced ‘higher’ tribal species, the Forwards, also living in the ship. Marapper revealed his plan to the Forwards, and together they discovered a harsh truth about their being-there, being-in-the-ship for 23 generations.

In an existential manner, Aldiss taps into the fabric of our being. There is a hint of Heideggerian notion of being-thrown, or to live a life predetermined already, and one’s quest is to find the authenticity of one’s life through a journey of discovery. In Non-Stop, the ship’s inhabitants perceived the Outsiders and Giants as enemies, as the othered, only to learn that they are the true ‘Humans,’ while the ship’s inhabitants are the lesser ‘humanoids’ who have been in the ship for too long, they have mutated regressively. Their height is half the size of their human counterparts that is why they see the Giant humans as gigantic.

When the secret is unveiled, it feels as if the book has finally come to a stop for a significant reason. Aldiss structures the narrative as a journey toward knowledge, overcoming traditional ways of existence. However, it also critiques the ‘othering’ of the ship’s inhabitants, depicting them as savages, despite being descendants of the explorers who discovered another Earth-like planet eleven light years away.

Aldiss, nonetheless, demonstrates compassion. Towards the end, there’s a humanization of savagery—Complain and his romantic partner Vyann, a Forward, treat their evacuation to Earth as a rebirth. Their frailties, genetic imperfections, and nomadic lifestyle coalesce as a resolved contradiction, a sublated difference.

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