viernes, 31 de julio de 2015

¡Otra hermosa reseña!

Segunda reseña, preciosa. Muchísimas gracias.

BLOG: Every fairytale needs a good old-fashioned reader


BOOK REVIEWS: MEMORY BY TERESA P. MIRA ECHEVERRÍAI received a free e-version copy of this story
from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Thank you so much!This novelette, written by an Argentine author,
is the story of Jedediah, a Mars colonizer, who tells his story from his
younger years to his adulthood. Jedediah’s life was always marked by the
silence of his father, the dustiness of Mars, his solitude, and his neighbor’s
pink car. One day, he meets Ajax, a native, one of the people who were
genetically created and modified to the terraforming of Mars. The natives’
lives should be entirely devoted to making Mars a suitable place for humans.
Later, they would be used as slaves. Ajax was one of the leaders of the
revolution intent on freeing Mars from human captivity. Even though they only
met once when Jedediah was young, a connection was formed. Jedediah grew,
started working, and then set off to find Ajax. Meeting him, he found more than
he was expecting: he found love, a sense of belonging, a home.  The
novelette is divided into several short pieces, each one telling a little bit
of Jedediah’s growth and how he views the planet he lives on. We get to see his
childhood, his adulthood, and his own children and how Mars modifies them and
connects them. It was a lovely narrative about human behavior,
emotions and actions: colonization, coming of age, love, sexuality, family,
right and wrong, memory, and many other themes were discussed in this short
narrative. The singularity of Mars gave space to a singular narrative, in which
different characters, perspectives, and situations were intertwined to form a
unique, and sometimes thought-provoking, story. The importance of memory and
its role, how it modifies the way we behaved was explored in a different way,
in which the consequences of one’s actions could transform the future radically
and alter not only the person’s reality, but the reality of a whole world. I would recommend this novelette if you are
interested in a quick, deep read and, of course, if you like science fiction
stories!
BOOK REVIEWS: MEMORY BY TERESA P. MIRA ECHEVERRÍA
I received a free e-version copy of this story from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Thank you so much!
This novelette, written by an Argentine author, is the story of Jedediah, a Mars colonizer, who tells his story from his younger years to his adulthood.
Jedediah’s life was always marked by the silence of his father, the dustiness of Mars, his solitude, and his neighbor’s pink car. One day, he meets Ajax, a native, one of the people who were genetically created and modified to the terraforming of Mars. The natives’ lives should be entirely devoted to making Mars a suitable place for humans. Later, they would be used as slaves. Ajax was one of the leaders of the revolution intent on freeing Mars from human captivity. Even though they only met once when Jedediah was young, a connection was formed. Jedediah grew, started working, and then set off to find Ajax. Meeting him, he found more than he was expecting: he found love, a sense of belonging, a home.
The novelette is divided into several short pieces, each one telling a little bit of Jedediah’s growth and how he views the planet he lives on. We get to see his childhood, his adulthood, and his own children and how Mars modifies them and connects them.
It was a lovely narrative about human behavior, emotions and actions: colonization, coming of age, love, sexuality, family, right and wrong, memory, and many other themes were discussed in this short narrative. The singularity of Mars gave space to a singular narrative, in which different characters, perspectives, and situations were intertwined to form a unique, and sometimes thought-provoking, story. The importance of memory and its role, how it modifies the way we behaved was explored in a different way, in which the consequences of one’s actions could transform the future radically and alter not only the person’s reality, but the reality of a whole world.
I would recommend this novelette if you are interested in a quick, deep read and, of course, if you like science fiction stories!

lunes, 27 de julio de 2015

Primer reseña de "Memory" en inglés y es... WOW

¡Realmente, no podría estar más feliz!

MEMORY by Teresa P. Mira de Echeverría is a Mind Expanding Sci-Fi Read

REVIEW SUMMARY: Memory is a lyrical meditation on the nature of love when it is freed from Earth-bound traditions.
MY RATING:  
BRIEF SYNOPSIS: When a human and Martian “native” fall in love, their union and their work reversing the terraformation of Mars forces them to consider the nature of memory and their own expectations for the future.
MY REVIEW:
PROS: Graceful style;compelling characters.
CONS:  A bit too compressed at certain points in which years are skipped over quickly.
BOTTOM LINE: Read Memory if you like expanding your mind and reading a good story at the same time.
There are so many reasons why I love this novelette, but the main one is that Argentine author Teresa P. Mira de Echeverría subverts expectations so gracefully and expertly (and this comes through clearly in Lawrence Schimel’s translation from the Spanish). Originally published in Terra Nova: An Anthology of Contemporary Spanish Science Fiction,Memory functions well as a free-standing novelette, raising numerous tantalizing questions and ideas in the reader’s brain without offering much closure.
And while Memory is labeled “science fiction” because of its Martian setting, genetically-engineered characters, and discussions of terraforming (and its reverse!), it is ultimately a book about love that transcends genre. Here we have the story of a human boy (Jedediah) who is drawn to a Martian “native” (Ajax)- one of the genetically-engineered humans sent to Mars hundreds of years before to terraform the planet. These natives are ostracized by the humans living on Mars, and they live in their own peripheral communities.
Jedediah grows up determined to leave his neglectful father and join Ajax to work with him on returning Mars to its pre-terraformed state. Ultimately, Jedediah and Ajax acknowledge their mutual love and commit themselves to one another for life. Mars, though, is not Earth, and its inhabitants are not bound by traditional human beliefs about marriage and binary relationships. Rather, this new civilization forged by native-human relationships is all about multiplicity and generosity. Many of the family units contain three, four, and even five members who have committed themselves to one another. The children that they have are raised by the entire unit.
What makes this story especially compelling is Ajax’s ability to see his memories of the future: as he explains to Jedediah, “One part of my memory works forwards…Glimmerings of you have always accompanied me.” Memory, for Ajax, then, is not simply a calling-up of the past, but also a way to choose a specific future, one that includes a beloved partner. In this way, memory is an active thing: the natives can choose certain paths based on a preferred future, just as they can reverse the terraforming process that they themselves initiated hundreds of years before. A memory of Mars as it once was informs their drive to take it back from Earth, even though the natives themselves came from Earth, too.
In many ways, Memory reminds me of Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles in terms of the latter’s use of Mars as a kind of exotic backdrop to the human drama that plays itself out. De Echeverria, like Bradbury, is interested less in the science of Mars and more in what it means for humans to colonize and change another planet- what does this do to humans’ perceptions, beliefs, and desires? How does a radically different environment change how we think about what it means to be human?
Most interesting of all, to me, is how much Memory makes me think about a famous novella (Death in Venice) by my favorite author of all time (the German writer Thomas Mann). Mann’s story, too, explores desire and “unconventional” love and its connections to art, memory, and death. Unlike Memory, though, Death in Venice despairs for a world in which love isn’t policed and bounded. De Echeverria’s story, in its lyrical and ultimately positive portrayal of non-binary, expansive love, seems like the answer to Death in Venice‘s question.
Memory would work wonderfully expanded into a full-length novel, since it seems so compressed in its current form (jumping ahead over years, etc.). Nonetheless, de Echeverría offers us a unique vision of human evolution- both biological and social- and she does this with lyricism and grace.