I’ve been busy, so no real posts for a long time. (one of these dead blogs? Probably).
That said, I’ll talk a bit about the post-cold-war spy genre.
The end of the cold war put a lot of people — Carre, Deighton, Clancy, semi-out-of-business. While 9/11 has, horribly, somewhat revitalized the genre, it’s certainly not what it was in its heyday.
Spy fiction, as a reflection of the cultural iconography, the zeitgeist, the struggles at hand, remains important. (Hmmm, sounds a little pretentious. Oh well, I’ll live with it).
We’ll look very briefly at two authors: Henry Porter, and Mark Burnell. Both started publishing novels at what the pedantic would call the extreme tail end of the 20th century: circa the year 2000. For most, they are very early 21st century spy genre novelists.
Porter, born in England in 1953, is almost archetypically English. Naming Jeeves, Sherlock Holmes, and James Bond as three of his favorite literary heroes, he grew up in cold-war Germany.
His books include Remembrance Day, A Spy’s Life, Brandenberg Gate, and Empire State.
His writing is tight, competent, and tends to return to the heyday of the cold war: the 80’s, and sometimes the ’90’s.
Characters are generally well-defined, and there’s more than a soupcon of the techno-thriller about much of his writing. Enough to make any man (and some women) at least interested.
Mark Burnell is over ten years younger. More of a Generation-X type. With several books under his belt — Gemini, Chameleon, Zoo Station, and The Rhythm Section, it’s that last that remains his best known work.
The Rhythm Section tells the story of an orphaned woman, Stephanie: her family was destroyed by a terrorist. The book is an impressively stylistic tale of an extreme identity crisis. She disintegrates into a downward spiral of addiction, sex and disaster, and then is reborn. Yet it’s not a simple tale of revenge, and the multiple aspects of her character are intriguing indeed.
The plot, is, frankly, nothing special, but the settings and character of Stephanie are spectacularly well drawn.
While my description makes it seem as though it’s some kind of violent ‘chick-lit’, that’s not the case at all. This is a good book for men, and we can enjoy it. Women too, will likely find interesting things Stephanie’s character.
The window this provides into terrorist thought is not to be discounted, either.
Porter’s good. The Rhythm Section is better. I’d say it’s a must read, if you like the genre. Of course, if you’ve not heard of it, you’re 6-7 years behind the times!
Len Deighton’s Berlin Game and Mexico Set are the only ones I remotely enjoyed.
Jonathan Black’s The Carnage Merchants was a far more enjoyable read albeit cornier and more of a stretch for the imagination. It rings familiar to some of Clancy’s books.
I find SciFi to be a much more appealing genre. Especially Asimov’s books.
While the end of the cold war may have killed Clancy’s literary career, his video game career only flourishes.
-Dick
You really like books, don’t you. Have you thought about writing your own? Something in a genre similiar to this one maybe?
http://www.gleebooks.com.au/default.asp?p=events/events4_htm#Robyn_Williams
You probably won’t agree with the content (I haven’t read it, so can’t say) but you’d probably be pretty good in a genre of relating scientific facts to cultural concepts.
@Dick: Are his new games any better? I found Rainbow 6 buggy and suffering from horrible graphics. I admit I have had some fun times playing other stuff, but FPS (even intelligent FPS) is generally not my genre.
@Female Thanks, I think. Yes, I do love books. I think they’re the one great form of immortality (other than reproduction) that human beings have. I think books will remain vital even as we move into an increasingly digitized age. I’ve thought about writing, but apart from some published technical stuff, I’ve really not gone down that road.
-wolfe
You know, I really have no idea if they’re better. I was watching some students playing a recent incarnation of the Clancy series and I was amazed at the graphics. They seemed to be having a good time. They were also quite drunk.
-Dick
Excellent, Sonyad’s made it with at least one comment. Sony, Dick had to approve it. Spam Karma does seem very agressive, but I’ve heard when trained that it’s good. Thanks for approving it, Dick.
@Sony: I used to love sf, but mostly have drifted away from it over the years. Asimov is good, but I somewhat prefer Heinlein. Jerry Pournelle, H. Beam Piper are also favorites. (All three had quite good, coherent future histories too. So did Asimov to a more limited degree, though I did love The Caves of Steel and its sequels).
@Sony: Yeah, I liked Game, Set, Match. Hook, Line, Sinker wasn’t bad either. I really liked the character of Bernard Samson: well drawn. I always felt that was something Asimov lacked: much weaker characters, weaker dialogue.
Any good Romanian SF writers (preferably that have been translated)? I’m afraid Stanislaw Lem’s about the only one I’ve read from Eastern Europe. Wasn’t wild about Solaris, but loved The Cyberiad and quite liked His Master’s Voice.
@Dick: Yeah, if the graphics looked good, they must have improved. I guess that’s the only time you can safely play with firearms and be drunk…
@Fem. true.
-wolfe