Startide Rising

by David Brin

Did not finish. This is another attempt to read good, more recent sci-fi, and I picked this book because it won both the Hugo and Nebula (like Among Others and Ancillary Justice). I got about 50 pages into it and just did not care what happened to these sentient dolphins. I think this has more to do with me than the book, though, so here are some thoughts about that.

I have a hard time knowing what I like. I gravitate toward the sci-fi shelf at the bookstore, but what was the last sci-fi book I really loved? I’ve read at least 5 sci-fi/fantasy books this year, and none were much better than okay. It’s like I’m trying to force a relationship. Looking over books from the past few years, the most recent sci-fi book I genuinely enjoyed (won’t say “loved”) was Ball Lightning.

The other books that jump out at me as, “oh yeah, that was good,” are all history, biography/memoir, theology, and self-improvement (like Deep Work). It seems like I’m drawn toward more serious, adult subjects, and some part of me deeply resists this development.

My relationship with music is similar. I made a real effort in 2018 to listen to more new music. I peruse the CDs at Half Price whenever we go. But as often as I buy music, I don’t listen to it much. It’s just a part of me that I hate to see die.

Fiction I liked in recent years: David Copperfield. Hatchet. The Revenant. My Best Friend’s Exorcism. Norwood. True Grit. Lonesome Dove. Wolf in White Van. Some Stephen King (Mr. Mercedes, 11-27-63). The Martian. The Power and the Glory (but that almost counts as theology). Machine Man, anything by Max Barry. How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. Anne of Green Gables. Anathem. The Help. The Good Earth.

What are the themes here?

• serious/important books, classics (Dickens, Pearl S. Buck)
• danger, survival (The Revenant, True Grit)
• well-written Westerns (True Grit, Lonesome Dove) – I like Westerns a LOT more than I would readily admit
• sci-fi if it’s funny (Max Barry, The Martian) or on the thoughtful/literary side (Anathem, How to Live Safely).
• smart people being awesome (The Martian). This is what I seem to like in biographies, too (Feynman, Conway, Erdos, LBJ when he’s working like a madman, T. Roosevelt)

Maybe? This is hard to sort out.

Reading is not the only area where I feel that I can’t tell what I like. Clothes, music, art. I don’t know if it matters, or what it says about me. I’m usually content with things, but if you ask me to pick out something (e.g., shopping for clothes), I have trouble. I ordered t-shirts this morning for Kaeta and me for Inktober, and I made a last-minute change to the shirt I was going to order, going for one with a picture of a robot taco instead of one that just said, “Inktober 2019.” Why? And why do I feel like I’m going to regret that? Some part of me still thinks I should think robot tacos are cool. But do I really?

Certain more childish things – the “Comics Archetypes” poster hanging next to my desk, the vinyl figures and pile of unusual decks of cards on my shelf – do spur me to create things, even if those things are just doodles, unfinished songs, and half-baked websites. The books that make me feel open and excited are mainly inspiring productivity.

Maybe I am just afraid of dying, so I am clinging to art from my youth, and I’m drawn toward productivity because it wrongly feels like a path toward immortality. If that’s really what I think, I should probably read more theology.

If reading only 40 pages of this book led to such introspection, imagine if I’d finished it! I’d probably achieve some sort of deep enlightenment. Oh well!