A Short, Sharp Shock

Rating:
Summary: A little Slow
Review: I have read the Mars Trilogy and Antarctica, and really enjoyed them. One of the author's best gifts is the interactions between characters- in all of the other books, I found the introspections a bit slow- this story doesn't show a lot of connections to others- and so feels much less real than his others- I won't pass this one on to my friends-

Rating:
Summary: A Kafkaish Gulliver's Travels
Review: I read red-green-blue mars and I put it in the category of big fat sci-fi series suitable for very long airplane trips. I love sci-fi but rgb got pretty boring by the time blue was published. I got the distinct impression that Robinson wished he could finish his contract and get on with writing something important. I think that SSS may be that book.

Short, Sharp Shock is a great book but if you didn't like Kafka, you couldn't plough through all of Gulliver's Travels, and you think that Jean Paul Sartre is an idiot then you will probably have difficulty with SSS. One of the other reviews refered to the forced style of the prose -- sometimes it is, just like Swift, Robinson occasionally falls into the trap, for a few pages, of trying to "tell us something". But apart from these occasional pedantic lapses the book is profound.

Robinson successfully explores the temporal nature of personal existance. "It might be that events more than a few months gone would always be nothing more than broken and fleeting images, images like those that fled from the mind each morning upon waking, fragments of dreams too powerful to face. The past was a dream." The past is nothing but a dream state, a memory that becomes less and less relevant to the present. What Robinson's principal character discovers about the intrinsically uncertain future follows from his discovery that he doesn't need his past.

It's an existential, meaningful, very symbolic book. Unless you classify Kafka as scifi then it isn't scifi and it certainly isn't rgb. I loved SSS and plan to read it again soon.

Rating:
Summary: A Kafkaish Gulliver's Travels
Review: I read red-green-blue mars and I put it in the category of big fat sci-fi series suitable for very long airplane trips. I love sci-fi but rgb got pretty boring by the time blue was published. I got the distinct impression that Robinson wished he could finish his contract and get on with writing something important. I think that SSS may be that book.

Short, Sharp Shock is a great book but if you didn't like Kafka, you couldn't plough through all of Gulliver's Travels, and you think that Jean Paul Sartre is an idiot then you will probably have difficulty with SSS. One of the other reviews refered to the forced style of the prose -- sometimes it is, just like Swift, Robinson occasionally falls into the trap, for a few pages, of trying to "tell us something". But apart from these occasional pedantic lapses the book is profound.

Robinson successfully explores the temporal nature of personal existance. "It might be that events more than a few months gone would always be nothing more than broken and fleeting images, images like those that fled from the mind each morning upon waking, fragments of dreams too powerful to face. The past was a dream." The past is nothing but a dream state, a memory that becomes less and less relevant to the present. What Robinson's principal character discovers about the intrinsically uncertain future follows from his discovery that he doesn't need his past.

It's an existential, meaningful, very symbolic book. Unless you classify Kafka as scifi then it isn't scifi and it certainly isn't rgb. I loved SSS and plan to read it again soon.

Rating:
Summary: Nothing Here
Review: I'm a big Kim Stanley Robinson fan; this book is not the reason. No plot, no characters, no resolution. The reviewers who like the book claim that it has deep symbolic meaning. If you look hard enough, you can trick yourself into thinking you've found just as much deep symbolic meaning in totally random sequences of words.

Not everything that makes no sense hides worthwhile philosophy. This book is an emperor with no clothes.

Rating:
Summary: Nothing Here
Review: I'm a big Kim Stanley Robinson fan; this book is not the reason. No plot, no characters, no resolution. The reviewers who like the book claim that it has deep symbolic meaning. If you look hard enough, you can trick yourself into thinking you've found just as much deep symbolic meaning in totally random sequences of words.

Not everything that makes no sense hides worthwhile philosophy. This book is an emperor with no clothes.

Rating:
Summary: An Extreme Story Inspres Extreme Opinions
Review: If you scan the other reviews posted here, you will see they are cleanly divided: you will either love this story or you will hate it.

I admit it, I'm a fan of Robinson's writing, but I'm, not one to praise a book because I like the author. I'm in the "Love it" camp with this one. Robinson plants the hook, and plants it deep, with the opening paragraph. What follows next is an undulating story of undying pair bonding. At times the story is very reminiscent of various myths, at others it is a unique fantasy tale. Woven into this tale is a wonderful parable.

If you've read other Robinson stories, you will find this one of the most lyrical tales he's told to date. It is distinctly different from his hard-core Sci-Fi offerings, like the Mars trilogy, and different still from his entertaining stories like "Escape Form Katmandu".

If you like pure fantasy, read it. If you enjoy metal gymnastics, read it. If you like things clearly spelled out for you, avoid it. If you thought classical mythology was a bore in school, avoid it.

Rating:
Summary: What the ...?
Review: There's a late-night tv talk show where I live called "Rove Live". Rove has nice little interviews with people, invites contortionists onto the stage to entertain the audience, that sort of thing. Amongst all the miscellaneous showbiz stuff, he has a little segment every week called "What the ...?", where viewers send in things like product packaging with weird korean-english translations. "What the ...?" usually seems like an approriate response.

"A short, sharp shock" is a book in the "What the ...?" genre of really bad fiction. One dimensional characters (or worse), ham-fisted plotting and *incredibly bad* prose make this one of the most amateurish books ever published in recent years.

A previous reviewer compared this tripe with "The Bridge" by Iain Banks. Read both and you'll quickly see how false this is. Banks is a beautiful writer. KSR has to work *very* hard to get his ideas across - Red, Green, Blue Mars are masterful, inspirational epics, and any beauty they possess has come about through dozens of rewrites and some talented editing. "A short sharp shock" seems like it has not been edited at all. In fact it seems like a wacky-weed induced stream-of-consciousness ramble.

I won't give away the end for those of you who have paid full price for this steaming pile. But I do want to ask...Shoulder Apples?? Baboon and Otter???? WHAT THE ...?

Rating:
Summary: Utterly engrossing and philosophical
Review: This book, which other reviewers have described well, was totally enthralling and absorbing. After finishing it, my perceptions of reality had changed, and it took a while before I was able to relate to the real world again! Robinson's writing in this work, more than most of his other novels, is artistic and literary, almost Kafka-esque. I would compare A Short, Sharp Shock to a similar book, also a surrealistic fantasy written by an SF author, The Bridge, by Iain Banks. Aside from their superficial similarities (fish-out-of-water protagonist traveling on a trip of land/bridge on an endless sea), both are astonishingly thought-provoking and deep. Very highly recommended for those willing to challenge themselves.

Rating:
Summary: Wow...I mean...Wow
Review: This is Robinson like you've never seen him. I guess I COULD compare it to his Mars trilogy, Ice Henge, or Antarctica, but it's really unlike them. However, it ranks up there with his very best works.

As usual, his character development is incredible. The description of the Fantasy world he creates is amazing. I finished it in one sitting, though I thought about it for the next week.

The novel's strength lies in its inner meaning. Read for face value, it's a decent novel though extremely confusing. Read with some thought and reflection, it can be seen in many different lights, such as the circle of a human life, relationships, histories...the list goes on.

Truly a remarkable novel, but don't read it if you just want a light, fun read (like Dune or Grisham novels).

Rating:
Summary: Oh man! What a dream!
Review: Whilst, judging from some of the other reviews, I am not sure I "got" *all* of the philosophical depths and alleged allusions to allegory here, I was perfectly content enough to just go with the flow and enjoy the vivid trippy experience that KSR has penned for our delectation and to pick up perhaps a few wry insights into life's great comedy along the way.

Short, it certainly is, coming in at just 150 pages (plus 30 identical chapter title illustration pages). Sharp? Yes, I guess so, in the keen, striking, intelligent or even witty sense. And how about the shock? Well our mysterious and amnesic wanderer Thel certainly encounters plenty of these in his travels.

KSR has populated his spineworld (a kind of negative manifestation of Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld) with some of the most bizarre and evocative creations that the sci-fi/fantasy genre has ever spawned. From seaweed-folk to tree-people and the enigmatic facewomen, from people of rock/clay, to the profoundly disturbing eroticism of the Queen of Desire, all of the strange inhabitants conjured forth by KSR are players in a series of increasingly sumptious and dream-like tableaux (the almost Dali-esque homes of the shell-people being my personal favourite).

Many human archetypes are here - companion, lover, provider, bully, mage. Traditional characterisation is kept to a minimum though - and rightfully so; to do otherwise would have diluted this novel's impact.

I devoured this book in a flurry of page-turning and many of its images will stay with me for a long time. I certainly got a few flashes of realisation long after reading certain chapters.

Someone compared this to Iain Bank's (marvellous) "The Bridge". On a very superficial level I can appreciate that parallel being drawn, however, to me, Short Sharp Shock felt like a more profound and satisfying version of Coelho's "The Alchemist".

So what fundamental truths did I pick up from SSS?

....... no. Sorry. To share them with you would be perhaps to prejudice your enjoyment of this book, but, if you have an open mind and appreciate challenging works, enjoy it you certainly will!