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Daniel Defoe, The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe

Diesen absoluten Klassiker wollte ich schon so lange wieder lesen und schob es doch immer wieder vor mir her. Nachdem ich die kostenlose Ausgabe von Public Domain bei Amazon fand, gab es keine Ausrede mehr, und die E-Bookversion liest sich m.E. so viel schneller und bequemer. Ich kann garnicht mehr genau sagen, wann ich das Buch zum letzten Mal las, aber tatsächlich kamen mir beim lesen viele Sachen wieder ins Gedächtnis. Das hat sich auf jeden Fall gelohnt.

How strange a chequer-work of Providence is the life of man! and by what secret different springs are the affections hurried about, as different circumstances present! To-day we love what to-morrow we hate; to-day we seek what to-morrow we shun; to-day we desire what to-morrow we fear, nay even tremble at the apprehensions of. This was exemplified in me, at this time, in the most lively manner imaginable; for I, whose only affliction was that I seemed banished from human socienty, that I was alone, circumscribed by the boundless ocean, cut off from mankind, and condemned to what I call silent life; that I was as one whom Heaven thought not worthy to be numbered among the living, or to appear among the rest of His creatures; that to have seen one of my own species would have seemed to me a raising me from death to life, and the greatest blessing that Heaven itself, next to the supreme blessing of salvation, could bestow; I say, that I should now tremble at the very apprehensions of seeing a man, and was ready to sink into the ground at but the shadow or silent appearenace of a man having set his foot in the island.

It put me upon reflecting how little repining there would be among mankind at any condition of life if people would rather compare their condition with those that were worse, in order to be thankful, than be always comparing them with those which are better, to assist their murmurings and complainings.

(Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, 1719)

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Iain Banks, Stonemouth

Das vorletzte (nicht SF) Buch von Banks erwies sich wieder als hochgradig faszinierend, so dass es mir wirklich leidtat als ich zum Ende kam, obwohl das Drama am Schluß natürlich wieder entsetzlich spannend war. Gerade bei der Beschreibung von solchen Mikrokosmen wie hier die Kleinstadt an der schottischen Küste in der zwei Familienclans den Ton angeben war Banks so außerordentlich, dass mir der Gedanke, was er noch alles hätte schreiben können mir immer wieder fast unerträglich ist.

"Everybody says kids are what it's all about, don't they? But then that just means you have kids so they can have kids and then those kids can have kids too, and so on and so on ad infinitum, and you have to stop at some point and think, Hold on, shouldn't some of it be about me, or, well, about any of the people from any of those generations? Shouldn't we have something else apart from just being a link in this chain of procreation for the sake of it?" She sighed again, arranged Hannah's hair just so. "Not as though the human race is in any danger of dying out. And we have choice now."
"No time machines, though."
"No, no time machines," she agreed. Her smile was still as beautiful as it had been.
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I suspect we all sort of secretly think our lives are like these very long movies, with ourselves as the principal characters, obviously. Only very occasionally does it occur to any one of us that all these supporting actors, cameo turns, bit players and extras around us might actually be in some sense real, just as real as we are, and that they might think that the Big Movie is really all about them, not us; that each one of them has their own film unreeling inside their own head and we are just part of the supporting cast in their story.
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I still have a vague feeling that there might be more to existence than can be experienced with our surface senses, so technically I guess I'm an agnostic, but nothing's more guaranteed to bring out my inner atheist than listening to the witterings of a holy man who thinks all the answers are already there in some book, whether it was written millenia ago or last week.
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(Iain Banks, Stonemouth, 2012)

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Iain Banks, The Steep Approach to Garbadale

Noch eine wirklich faszinierende Geschichte über ein großes Familienunternehmen oder besser im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes Imperium, in dem einer der Vertreter der dritten Generation bei dem Versuch sich abzukoppeln mehr Skelette im Schrank findet als er verkraften kann. Nachdem ich mich erstmal in die ganzen verzweigten Verhältnisse eingelesen hatte, konnte ich das Buch kaum noch aus der Hand legen.

"..I've spent my life waiting for my life to start. It's as though one needs permission from somebody - parents, God, a committee of one's peers; I don't bloody know - to finally take responsibility for one's own actions, one's own life. Only the permission never comes, and gradually - well, gradually for me, I can't speak for others; maybe their realisation comes in some sort of sudden revelation and a blinding light or whatever - gradually you realise taht it never will come, that the way you've lived your life, stumbling through it, winging it half the time, is all thee really is, all there ever was. I feel cheated because of that. I feel, sometimes, like I've cheated myself though I can't see how I could have done much different. And I have a horrible feeling that even if I had a time machine and could go back to visit my younger self to warn him, or at least advise him about all this, he'd - I'd have no idea what my future self was talking about. I'd think he was an idiot. I'd ignore him. I'd ignore myself."
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Sophie was his religion, he thought, with a kind of shock. He'd built a temple round her image, her idol, her fixed, unchanging, incorruptible icon. The worship of that symbol had become what mattered, rather than the girl as she actually was or the woman she'd become. She represented his faith in his own trueness of spirit, his ability to keep on believing in something. If he could believe in his love for Sophie, he could believe he was a good person, a worthwhile person, a decent man. He was an atheist and a secularist, but now he had to confront his own idiot faith, this slightly mad belief system that he'd carried with him all this time, and accept it for the nonsense it was. Maybe it had been a useful nonsense, in a state of relative ignorance, the way conventional religions could be, but it was still nonsense.
He'd once characterised religions as reason abatement societies. Shit, he hadn't realised with what authority he'd been speaking. Maybe he owed Tom Fromlax an apology.
In his mind, he could feel a particularly non-violent and well-spoken mob politely storming the temple complex that held the graven image of Sophie. He could almost hear the wailing of the priests, the lamentations of the faithful as the great washed, the well-scrubbed crowd of intellectuals - waving scrolls (closely argued, ink still damp) rather than burning torches - defiled the sacred ground with their presence and their doubt and their faithless, argumentative lack of certainty.
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Sometimes it seemed that all that ever went on was each new generation trying to fix the mistakes and problems caused by the previous one - not to mention those accumulated via still earlier forebears. And this never really seemed to be possible, not as a finished result. It always seemed to be required and it certainly was always worth trying, but if you set your heart on fully achieving such a goal, you were bound to be disappointed.
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(Iain Banks, The Steep Approach to Garbadale, 2005)

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Iain Banks, Dead Air

Endlich wieder ein Banks - schon bei den ersten Kapiteln merkte ich wie sehr ich den Autor vermisst habe. Und dieses Buch erwies sich als noch viel besser - und vor allem spannender - als ich gedacht hatte. Vor allem im letzten Viertel, als der Radiomoderator Kenneth in so unglaublich vertrackte und haarsträubende Schwierigkeiten gerät, dass ein Happy End unmöglich erscheint, konnte ich mich kaum davon losreißen. Der nächste Banks steht schon auf dem Paperwhite bereit.

Faith is fine for poetry, for images and metaphors and art and for telling us who we are, who we've been. But when faith tries to describe the world, describe the universe, it just plain gets it wrong. Which wouldn't matter if it admitted it was wrong, but it can't, because all it's got is its unwavering certainty in its own infallibilty; the rest is smoke and mirrors, and admitting imperfection brings the whole lot tumbling down. There are no crystal spheres, and the planets are not the result of some sky god's wet dream. If that is supposed to be taken literally, the it's a lie, plain and simple. If it's a metaphor, then it has bugger all to do with the way things really work.
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'I was thinking,' she said, 'of bishops on opposing sides, and of different colours as well. Just the two of them there on the chess board, with no other pieces present.'
I nodded. I saw, now, what she meant.
'They could never connect,' I said. 'They could slide past each other for ever, but never affect. They appear to inhabit the same board, but really they don't. Not at all.'
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(Iain Banks, Dead Air, 2002)

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Ruth Hogan, Queenie Malone's Paradise Hotel

Mit dem dritten Buch hat es Ruth Hogan endgültig zu einer meiner 'regulären' Autorinnen gebracht, deren zukünftige Werke (von denen es hoffentlich noch viele geben wird) bei mir schon vorgemerkt sind. Auch wenn vieles im Nachhinein als zu sehr in Richtung Feelgood und harmonisch erscheint, bleibt die Geschichte mit ihrem ständigen Wechsel zwischen der erwachsenen Tilda und der siebenjährigen Tilly sehr bewegend und so faszinierend, dass ich sie wieder mal viel zu schnell las. Aber dem kann ja mit einem Wiederlesen irgendwann mal abgeholfen werden.

Achja, einen tollen ersten Satz hatte das Buch auch wieder. Und etliche zitierenswerte Stellen auch.
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It is etched glass with a large, delicate bowl and a tall, slender stem twisted like barley sugar. It is clearly also 'for best'; a precious confection spun out of fragile, glistening glass. But what good is its beauty if it is never seen and never used? It might just as well be a plastic tumbler. What was my mother saving it for? She could hardly have been expecting a chance call from a local dignitary, or a random visit from a passing celebrity or minor member of the royal family. My mother seems to have lived her whole life buttoned up in a stiff, starchy suit of 'what ifs', 'keep for bests' and 'what will people thinks'. A bright summer dress of 'chase the stars', 'seize the days' and 'hang the consequences' might have fitted her so much better if only she had dared to try it on.
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(Ruth Hogan, Queenie Malone's Paradise Hotel, 2019)

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Tanith Lee, Nightshades, Thirteen Journeys into Shadow

Schon eine ganze Weile suchte ich eine Kurzgeschichte von Tanith Lee, von der ich mir sicher war, dass ich sie als Buch hatte, aber trotzdem nicht finden konnte. Erst als ich beim stöbern bei Amazon in dieses Buch blickte, wurde mir klar, dass ich die Geschichte nicht gefunden hatte, weil ich dachte, dass es sich um einen Roman handelte. Überdies lag das Taschenbuch schon seit Jahren bei mir im Verkaufsregal. Aber sei's drum, jetzt las ich ihn als Ebook wieder und musste feststellen, dass ich außer der gesuchten Story "After the Guillotine" und der schon bekannten "The Devil's Rose" fast alles in dem Buch vergessen hatte. Vor allem die Titelgeschichte. Hier gefiel mir vor allem "Huzdra" und "Blue Vase of Ghosts" am besten, aber am meisten beeindruckte mich doch nach wie vor "After the Guillotine".
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It seemed, when it came, like a blow, the blow of a sledgehammer, but not quite hard enough - so there was an instant's appalled thought: Those bloody fools have botched it! Then the perspective altered. The eyes glimpsed the basket as the head fell into it, and other faces, already forgotten, looked up at it with anxiety as it came to meet them. After this the light went and there was only one odd final sensation, the head lying where it was, but the last reflexive relaxing spasms of the body eerily somehow communicated to it. Is this what a chicken feels? And a moment of horror, wondering how long one must endure this this. Followed by oblivion.
Oblivion, of course, for D'Antoine the atheist had reckoned on nothing. And here nothing was. All senses gone. The void. Blackness not even black, silence not even silence. Sans all.
There is a certain smugness attached to finding oneself perfectly right; even if one can no longer experience it.
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In this story, you see, the lovers do not join for ever to violin accompaniment on a cloud of mortal love. The lovers are no longer mortal, and tehre are no violins, no clouds. It is difficult not to experience annoyance or mournfulness, or even fear, that individual liaisons do not need to persist, in frantic intensity, there where the love is all-pervasive, calm and unconditional. We must try not to lament or be irritated by them. Only note how happy they are, even if "happy" is an analogous word.
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While somewhere close as a hand to a glove, D'Antoine 'turns' over and finally wakes, and is no longer D'Antoine. The lenghty sleep of nothingness has acted like a sponge, and wiped away physical identity. Though the emerging soul remembers it, of course, as all of them remember who they have been, plan who they will be (no unfinished business is ever left unfinished; there will be other work, other loves, other springs), it is now a garment held in the hands, not the substance of the self. The true self is quite free. It leaps forward into liberty with an analogous roar of delight and resolution.
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(Tanith Lee, After the Guillotine, 1993)

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Jasper Fforde, The Last Dragonslayer

Ziemlich unsinnig, aber irgendwie hatte ich bis jetzt immer gezögert mit der Dragonslayer-Reihe anzufangen, weil sie mehr für Jugendliche geschrieben wurde. Aber schon die ersten Kapitel des ersten Bandes überzeugten auf Anhieb und ließen mich die weiteren Abenteuer von Jennifer Strange aus dem 'Ununited Kingdoms' schon fest einplanen, schon bevor ich über 50 % erreicht hatte. Wieder eine typische Fforde-Welt mit allen skurrilen und treffenden Details, überaus spannend dazu und mit einer wirklich überraschenden Wendung am Schluß. Wirklich perfekt.

The Kingdom of Hereford was unique in the Ununited Kingdoms for having driving tests based on maturity, not age, much to the chagrin of a lot of males, some of whom were still failing to make the grade at thirty-two.
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'Well, counting in base ten is pretty wild, for a start,' he said after giving the subject a moment's thought. 'Base twelve is far superior. You also have extraordinary technical abilities, a terrific sense of humour, thumbs, being built inside out -'
'Wait! Being built inside out?'
'Of course. As far as the average lobster is concerned, mammals - with the possible exception of the armadillo - are built inside out. Any crab worth his claws will tell you the soft stuff should definitely be on the inside. Bones in the middle? Whoever designed you was having a serious off day.'
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'But where does magic come from?' I asked. 'And where does it go?'
'Explaining magic is like explaining lightning or rainbows a thousand years ago; inexplicable and wonderful but seemingly impossible. Today they are little more than equations in a science textbook. Magic is the fifth fundamental force, and even more mysterious than gravity, which is really saying something. Magic is a power lurking in all of us, an emotional energy that can be used to move objects and manipulate matter. But it doesn't follow any physical laws that we can, as yet, understand; it exists only in our hearts and minds.'
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(Jasper Fforde, The last Dragonslayer, 2010)