Jack Faust

Rating:
Summary: it is the best book i have read in my entire life.
Review: jack faust is the best book in the markets toda from cover to cover it engrosses the reader in its marvel. i invite anyone who thinks otherwise to debate it with me.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: Jack Faust was an incredibly ambitious story that, for me, was successful in avoiding the pitfalls that so much genre writing cannot. Michael Swanwick's re-telling the story of a man (and ultimately a society) corrupted by his desire for knowledge is not a slave to the common props and circumstances that frequent so much of recent genre fiction. The story and characters are the central issue here. This is a book that resists all classification, save one. Jack Faust is an important work. For me, the story possessed a real depth that provoked thinking and individual reflection. I look forward to re-reading it...after I finish the rest of Mr. Swanwick's work. I've even recommended Jack Faust to my mother. It doesn't get any better than that... :) Randy

Rating:
Summary: Swanwick yearns to be taken seriously
Review: Maybe I came to this book with too many expectations -- Michael Swanwick is an author whose work I respect, and "Jack Faust" looked like an attempt to bring literary and moral values to the fantasy genre. The problem is that the story of Faust already has about as much moral and literary value as it is possible to have, thanks to Marlowe and Goethe. So what was Swanwick thinking?

The premise is eternally compelling, and Swanwick gives it a fun spin: what if Faust gains access to all the scientific knowledge in the universe, and is therefore able to compress every industrial and post-industrial revolution into a single generation, so that ultimately even atomic power will come to the 16th century. The joy of such alternate world stories is in the details: what are the political and social implications of the changes? What would the 16th century FEEL like with automobiles and mass production? Unfortunately, Swanwick is more concerned with keeping his plot moving, so the tale is a quick read but not a stimulating one. Swanwick shows us nothing we have not seen before, and by the second half of the book it is difficult to care about anything that is going on.

Even if you come to it with much lower expectations than I did, it would be hard to find "Jack Faust" any more than a mild entertainment disguised as an intellectual and literary exercise. For entertainment, read any of Swanwick's other works. For intellectual and literary exercise, try Pynchon's "Mason & Dixon". (Unlike Pynchon, Swanwick seems to have studied only the history of the era he chose to write about, not the literature. Despite the lugubriously descriptive writing in the first few pages, Swanwick's Wittenberg remains indistinct.) And if variations on the story of Faust are what most interest you, check out Klaus Mann's "Mephisto".

There is nothing wrong with science fiction and fantasy writers striving to be taken seriously as artists. Many have succeeded, including Swanwick. But "Jack Faust" is a specimen of such sloppy thought and construction that it doesn't deserve to be taken seriously as fantasy, never mind anything more.

Rating:
Summary: Connecticut Yankee meets the Iron Dream
Review: Michael Swanwick = Mark Twain + Orson Scott Card + Hal Clement + Alfred Bester + Norman Spinrad + a twist on the rocks.

This is a book mined deep from the pure seam of the genre. Malzerbergian? Hommage?

Twain's Connecticut Yankee - the impact of modern tech and science on pre industrial Europe. Card's Ender's Game + Hal Clement [+ Stephen Baxter?] - visions from fast living aliens a long, long way away. A Besterian equation explaining what Mephistopheles really means (remember I = pi i^ e mu). And a Nuremberg rally with"just add water" war toys.

With this book you could play spot the reference and wear out your Clute - but you could just read and relish the satire that is Jack Faust.

Rating:
Summary: Just OK Alternate History
Review: Swanwick is an all-to-infrequently published author. However, "Jack Faust" is not his best work.

The story is well-written. Swanwick is an accomplished writer. Yet, I never felt any kinship with any of the book's characters. In addition, the pace of the story is very "choppy". You are required to wade through page after page of meta-mystical metaphores, before coming upon scenes that are like nuggets of gold.

If you have a hankering to read this author, pass this one up and read "Vacuum Flowers" instead.

Rating:
Summary: A thought provoking meditation on technology and history.
Review: Swanwick's earlier novels (Stations of the Tide, The Iron Dragon's Daughter) and his short stories (collected in Gravity's Angels) only hint at the scale, ambition, and power of Jack Faust. From the opening paragraphs, which introduce us to 16th century Wittenberg and hint ominously at the "pleasant suicidal fantasy of the spark that would come to liberate its timbers into explosive fire", Swanwick's meticulous, often metaphorical prose paints rich sensory portraits of Faust's time and place. That the plot follows the traditional lines of Goethe's Faust adds rather than detracts from the surprises Swanwick has in store. For hereMephistopheles is an extraterrestrial devil---a magnificent, protean being who accompanies Faust throughout his life, whether he wants company or not---and the pact Faust makes mirrors the compact humanity has made with 20th century technology. Thus Swanwick sets up a tale which ranges all over Europe and throughout Faust's life, culminating in as darkly nihilistic vision of the human prospect I've encountered in a long time. Unlike many SF authors who have explored similar territory, Swanwick never flinches from the implications of his novel's take on human nature and its infinite corruptibility. Lest I leave the impression that Jack Faust is a downer, let me add that the sheer pleasure of Swanwick's prose, sentence by sentence, page by page, makes this book a luxuriant, compelling read. And the wit and invention he brings to the problem of telling a story which necessarily must span several decades all but demands rereading, which the novel rewards handsomely. Best of all, this novel is about something: the nature of history, logic versus faith in a technological society, and above all the challenge that the runaway technological engine of the 20th century poses to all of us as that century seques into the next. Buy the hardcover; you'll want this one for your permanent collection.

Rating:
Summary: A literate Downer ...
Review: The book starts with Faust burning his books. After years of study he now has a basis for critically examining the scholarship of the texts and realizes that science and knowledge has been filtered through religion and society and therefore it's mostly useless. He opens himself to any source that will give him true knowledge of science, the universe, and it's workings.

Great! I'm entranced. The fact that it's basically a re-working of Goethe's Faust just adds to my interest. It gets almost comic as he tries to interest his peers (the other university professors) in his newfound insights into the sciences. No one cares -- the only people he can get to listen to him are the merchants, the builders, and the actual 'doers' of society. But then it all falls apart.

Faust knows from the very beginning that the inter-dimensional creature who offers to instruct him only wants to be sure that humanity destroys itself. Faust singlemindedly developes everything he can and rails at the necessity to develop lower technologies in order to get the ones he wants. Never does he open his eyes and look at the results of the technology on the people, society, and environment. He doesn't think about whether he should develop the technology only about how to develope it.

The only evaluation of his creations and their impact comes from Margarete's view of her situation. But there is no depth and insight, just a few random comments on the place of women in society and the hopelessness of the workers.

After Margarete's suicide, Faust doesn't even stop to think about his own involvement in her death but determines to pay the world back for taking her from him.

This is Faust without the internal conflict of desire for knowledge balanced against moral responsibility. Swanwick has the skills to have made this a truly thought provoking novel with engaging characters. Instead we have an updated Faust but without the soul-searching -- an interesting premise but without depth.

Rating:
Summary: Technology is the Devil...
Review: The story of Faust has ancient roots: the over-reaching anti-hero who offers the core of his being in return for material benefit is present in many folk tales and legends. In its best-known form it is a tragic cautionary tale of mediaeval Christianity: the sacrifice of the soul for wordly power and knowledge. This is how both Marlowe and Goethe presented the message.

During and after the industrial killing frenzy of the Twentieth Century it became difficult to portray evil as 'outside': Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus is a more subtle work about art and Nazism, and the very human processes of self-annihilation that lead down the road to the the concentration camps and the gas chambers. By the end of the Twentieth Century though, science and technology had become the points of contention. Though knowledge has always been key to the Faust story, Michael Swanwick puts scientific and technical knowledge at the heart of his re-telling.

It begins, as with Marlowe and Goethe, in mediaeval Germany, and a fine, dirty and pungently atmospheric Germany it is too. Swanwick's descriptive style is immensely rich and seductive and quickly pulls the reader into a world before computers, before cars, before factories, before steam, before states, before industrial warfare. Faust is desparing. He, alone of all scholars, has seen through the hypocrisy of contemporary scholarship, and he despises every bit of it. Burning his books to the dismay of his servant, Wagner, he is confronted with Mephistopheles, not a demon or a devil in the traditional sense, but a collective entity from another dimension, immensely knowledgeable (beyond Faust's wildest dreams), but also afraid of what humanity could become and unable on their own to do anything about it. Instead they intend to destroy the world through scientific knowledge. Even the name, Mephistopheles, is presented to Faust as a complex equation about quantum energy, the details of which he cannot understand, but the import - oh, is it not everything that he wants? The deal then is simple: Faust will have total knowledge, but in return, this being a thoroughly millenial retelling, that knowledge will destroy not just Faust but all humanity, irrevocably and forever. The cruelty then is not so much with Mephistopheles but with Faust from the beginning: he always knows that his knowledge will destroy and kill, and even understanding that there will be no divine salvation - one of Mephistopheles' first revelations is that there is no God - he still fools himself into believing that he can control the forces which he is about to unleash. This self-deception is only confirmed for him by the fact that he wins the heart of the one woman whom Mephistopheles tells him he cannot have: Margaret, daughter of a wealthy merchant.

At first Faust tries to spread elements of his new knowledge in pure scientific form, for free, throughout Europe, but he finds only rejection and scorn. Finding that there is no interest in 'pure science', and with the wealth of Margaret's family behind him, Faust turns to applied science: engineering and the production of new (mainly military) technologies, and starts to produce rapid changes. Mediaeval Europe industrialises at frightening speed. But the technologies are soon beyond Faust's control, and in combination with the most base human desires for power and conquest they take on a destructive logic of their own.

As in earlier tellings: the end is inevitable and tragic in the true sense of the word. Faust can see it approaching: he is destroyed as a human being and left bitter, loveless and empty long before the conclusion - his deal has left him as nothing in the face of the destructive power produced by his machines. He is left to use his knowledge to pursue petty projects of personal vendetta and to further destroy the hopes of the most hopeless. The holocaust comes earlier and more fiercely than in our own history.

The Faust story is a bleak one, and Swanwick's variation is perhaps the bleakest and most nihilistic yet, particularly because it is unclear if there is any lesson of possibility of redemption (spiritual or material). There are hints that love in its purest human form might have saved Faust if he had not abandonned it, but this is not explored. Is Swanwick suggesting that there is no future for humanity in pursuing a technology-driven society? Is he effectively casting technology as the new devil? I don't know. The cumultive effect of this book is powerful, disturbing and pessimistic especially with the curt and cold ending.

Rating:
Summary: I would give it zero stars if I could
Review: This book is pure evil! I loved every page of it. Michael Swanwick's short fiction makes up half the Hugo nominees for short stories this year, and if you've read this book, you won't be surprised as to why.

Rating:
Summary: Pure evil
Review: This book is pure evil! I loved every page of it. Michael Swanwick's short fiction makes up half the Hugo nominees for short stories this year, and if you've read this book, you won't be surprised as to why.