Reviews and Comments

Most of this book was meh, but there was one super hot ball-busting and economic domination moment.

In a scene of blatant and completely unrealistic wish fulfillment (which nonetheless gratified my prurient interests), Anastasia rebuffs her sexually harassing boss, and then when he tries to assault her, she actually remembers her self defense training and physically subdues him instead of freezing up and questioning herself. So far, a little far fetched, but it could happen, right? But then, it gets really unrealistic. The boss, not Anastasia, gets fired. Anastasia's otherwise abusive boyfriend doesn't victim blame her! Finally, when she comes in to work the next Monday SHE GETS PROMOTED TO HER FORMER BOSS'S JOB. While it's plausible she might be good at the job she's promoted into, her lack of impostor syndrome is just complete fantasy.

The rest of the books is Anastasia and her abusive boyfriend having vanilla sex on top or inside of expensive objects. Probably hot if you have an expensive objects fetish.

A fantastic piece of second wave feminist history, showing the very beginnings of the schism between the anti-porn and pro-sex branches. It's not as simple as it looks in hindsight. Interestingly Samois (the women's SM organization that put out the book) didn't have an official stance on pornography and the essays don't address it much, focusing instead, as the title says on Lesbian S/M. I think this book is an important read for anyone interested in the history of feminism, lesbians, and the evolution of BDSM.

The essays are from a variety of writers and don't even all agree with each other. The book is part essays, part erotica. I mostly found myself skipping the erotica. I'm sure it'll be enjoyable for some readers but for me there was something just kind of dated and silly about it. The essays on the other hand were great, and full of fantastic insights on the nature of power, S/M, and life as a lesbian.

Most of the writers were based in the SF Bay area so another group that might be interested in it is Bay Area historians.

Before I say anything else, since this might get lost in the literary discussion, this book is really funny. People looked at me weird when I was reading it in cafes and buses because I laughed so much.

Where Gravity's Rainbow was a work of sometimes impenetrable (or incoherent) genius, Bleeding Edge is just a really good book, one of the best I've read this year. It has one main character, Maxine, a fraud investigator/private eye, and everything that happens is a close third person narrative from Maxine's point of view. The story takes place in New York City, from spring 2001 to spring 2002. If you were in NYC during that time, or if you were in any way involved in the first dotcom boom (boom or bust part), you'll very likely enjoy it. The feeling of NYC and of dotcom excess is all very spot-on parody. It is parody not mimesis though. I got caught by that at first.

I kept coming across references to bits of late 90s cultural minutiae and thinking things like "How the fuck do you know all this, Pynchon?" I mean he's 77 how can the guy be some incredibly hip to everything? How? How does he know all this? But I have to say, getting almost all the references in a Pynchon novel feels amazing. Give it a try.

The one weakness of Bleeding Edge is the bits that take place inside the weird underbelly of the Internet called DeepArcher. DeepArcher is basically a really romanticized version of second life and just doesn't feel as right on as the rest of the story. It's nice and it's done well, but it just doesn't ring true. It's a bit of a stretch.

And I'll leave you with some choice quotes because that's what's best about this book, the actual language, the twists and turns of phrase.
"Maxine somehow got in an argument with a local bozo about Deloitte and Touche, which the bozo, who turned out to be Horst, insisted on calling Louche & De Toilet, and by the time they had this sorted, Maxine wasn’t sure she could even stand up let alone find her way back to the hotel"

"The most recent of these problematical payees is a little operation downtown calling itself hwgaahwgh.com, an acronym for Hey, We’ve Got Awesome And Hip Web Graphix, Here. Do they? Somehow, doubtful."

"busy with handheld game consoles. “Doom,” Igor waving a thumb, “just came out for Game Boy. Post–late capitalism run amok, ‘United Aerospace Corporation,’ moons of Mars, gateways to hell, zombies and demons, including I think these two. Misha and Grisha. Say hello, padonki.”"

Just go read it already.

It's hard to say if I'm getting more into the Culture universe and thus forgiving Banks his imperfections or if the books get better. Nevertheless, this was a very enjoyable piece of science-fiction action adventure. In a lot of other of Banks' books I find the switching point of view annoying and find myself reading some characters quickly to get back to what I consider the main, and more interesting plot line. In Surface Detail I found myself interested in every character's storyline. There's not really much more to say without spoiling the story, and this is a very story-driven book.

Unlike a lot of other Culture novels this one contains multiple references to rape. It wasn't particularly graphic and made sense as a means of advancing the plot, so I didn't object to it as a story point. However, it does merit a warning for folks who don't wish to read that kind of thing.

Some quotes I particularly liked:

"All you ever were was a little bit of the universe, thinking to itself. Very specific; this bit, here, right now. All the rest was fantasy. Nothing was ever identical to anything else because it didn’t share the same spacial coordinates; nothing could be identical to anything else because you couldn’t share the property of uniqueness."

"Normal Culture ships either went for maximum efficiency or the always popular let’s-see-what-we-can-squeeze-out-of-these-babies approach."

“Though it has to be said that those inclined to the fuck-up theory of history maintain that the Disk has no such planned purpose and is essentially the result of something between a minor Monopathic Hegemonising Event and an instance of colossal military over-ordering.”