Jack Womack, 1987, Grove Press Books.

It seems to me that there is a grand poker game among speculative dystopian writers, dating back to Huxley, Zamyatin, and Orwell, if not even farther, with each player trying to out-play the previous extreme. If this is indeed the case, Burgess pushed out Orwell with the low spade in the hole, only to have the table taken over by a bunch of young, cocky beatniks and science fiction writers: Burroughs, Ellison, Bradbury, and Vonnegut. Then Philip Dick started dominating the game, even while Brin, Atwood, and Walter Miller, Jr played a hand or two. Things changed again when Varley and Gibson anted up. Varley called, Dick folded, then Womack saw Gibson and raised him an apocalypse or two. While there are still hands to be dealt, it seems that Womack is currently the player to beat.
Womack clearly has a debt to a number of the other players. Most often noted is Burgess, as much of Ambient is told in future dialects of English; also noteworthy, perhaps, is Chandler, who taught many of the players the rules of the game in the first place. But Womack brings an amoral ruthlessness and matter-of-fact brutality to his tale that outdoes his predecessors. It’s not that Womack’s dystopia is just a nasty place, it’s that there’s concerted, unrelenting nastiness oozing out of every alleyway, human oriface, and gun barrel. Do we find any sympathetic characters? Not a one. Do we still flinch at the outrages they endure? Yes, we do. Ambient is so over the top that it would be easy to dismiss it as an exercise in exaggeration and sick bravado. But it’s clear that it was written with a sense of (warped, black) humor, which allows us to stay with the story through otherwise untenable situations.
Yeah, there’s nothing like a good dystopian science fiction novel. Always make me want to write a few of my own. Fortunately for you, that desire fades quickly away, and I go play a few rounds of Counterstrike or something.

Booth Tarkington, 1899, from the Gutenberg Project, read as an e-book from BlackMask.com

A well told, if conventional, love story and tale of life in the emerging American Midwest. Tarkington is at his best when he shows the changing character of places as they transition from obscure hicksvilles into “modern” American cities. He writes with the optimism of the American west, seeing the good in the evolution of the towns and the improvement of the populations, all the while giving occasional sad nods to the passing of a slower, more formal time.
This particular book lacks particularly deep characters, but nevertheless delivers an interesting tale of educated East-Coast people and their impact on a small, southern Indiana town. These outsiders come into the community and immediately set about changing it with their college-educated form of intellectual imperialism. Yet though though they come in as a force of change, they too are changed, and become a inseparable parts of community themselves.
Tarkington, in this book, shows a clear belief in the intrinsic quality of people; it is not classist, per se, because there are good but ignorant people; it is not based on race, nor is it based overtly on religion. But there is a morality that underlies his characters, and a good character is Good with a capital G regardless of minor flaws, but a bad character is Bad, and probably irredeemable. It’s interesting, since we don’t really see a similar belief expressed in The Magnificent Ambersons; there we find far more ambiguity and subtlety, or at least a development and evolution of consciousness among the characters.

Neal Stephenson, 2003, William Morrow Publisher

Gosh, what a mess. Stephenson dishes out nine hundred and forty-four pages of rambling story that take us hither and yon, romping around in and through history, and spares us no detail on the mechanics of … well, anything, really, whether it’s monetary systems, or European palace intrigue. It’s unfocused and goes off on countless side roads, from only some of which it beats its way back through the undergrowth.
And yet, it’s a fun ride. Stephenson’s greatest gift is also his greatest detriment. He loves storytelling, and this part of the telling reminds him of another story, which, half-way through, reminds him of another … and so on. Individually, these stories vary in quality between highly amusing and awfully contrived; woven together, they form a tapestry that is both fun and tremendously tiring. Really, with the aid of a good editor, this could have been a great book. It makes real some of the early characters (charicatures, perhaps) of early modern science and medicine and it paints a picture of European politics that feels plausible. As a historical novel, it provides context for many famous people, all the while winking and nodding anachronisms for the benefit of the science fiction fans who make up much of Stephenson’s fan base.
The Baroque Cycle is aptly named. In all, Quicksilver is probably best compared to one of Mad King Ludwig’s crazy baroque castles — there are individual pieces of it that are appealing, attractive, or fascinating, but as a whole it’s overwhelming and leaves you with a sense of squandered wealth.

Mark Haddon, 2004, Vintage Press

“The first important book with an autistic hero” trumpets a review on the front jacket of this book. Yet by my reckoning, looking at the story from that standpoint would make it too easy to dismiss the book as a gimic. Hey — there haven’t been any popular novels told from the perspective of an autistic kid — what a niche! While this may have come into Haddon’s mind at some point, it would be missing the point to summarize the book thusly.
This is a story of discovery from the viewpoint of an unreliable narrator. The narrator is a boy discovering the circumstances of his parents’ marital troubles. That he is an autistic boy, and that his autism contributes to the tension and events, just makes the journey of discovery more complicated and more involved. That he’s high-functioning (as autistic boys go) makes the story tellable, and reduces the requirements for suspension of disbeleief; yet it could just have well been told from the perspective of some other clueless kid of around the same age, and still been a good story.
It’s an easy book to read, and has the added educational benefits of describing some of the characteristics of autism in a way that’s accessible and comprehensible. I found myself sympathetic to the narrator, even to the extent of his hatred of the color brown (which, after all, is too close to the dreaded color yellow).

Sue Monk Kidd, 2002, Penguin Books

I found this to be a strangely beautiful book, less for the larger plot arc, which was a little too pat for my taste, but for the richness of the characters and their indiosyncracies.
Kidd has a really good eye for ritual and people’s relationship to traditions. Some of the beekeeping rituals, like the draping of the hives in black after a death, seemed too natural to not be old traditions.