Customer Reviews

A Short, Sharp Shock

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

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.

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.

"A Short, Sharp Shock" is quite different from any of Robinson's novels, or for that matter from any of his short stories that I remember. It's as good as anything else he's written, but in a totally different direction.

Robinson creates a world of mythology, of peculiar yet compelling visions. The story can only be said to be elliptical, orbiting far out into mysterious lands and lives, before hurtling back to its starting point in a particularly thought-provoking way. If all this sounds vague and atmospheric, I'm sorry, but this is not the kind of book that can be described by simply condensing its plot.

That plot focuses on an amnesiac character who finds himself abruptly thrust into a peculiar world, a thin strip of land surrounded by an untravelled ocean. As he travels along through this evocative landscape, he interacts with a cast of memorable persons most of whom are not clearly friends nor enemies, but all of whom provoke some kind of response in the protagonist (and in the reader). The meaning of this journey starts out simple -- a search for someone who might be his partner, and who was kidnapped by a band of local thugs -- and with every page, it becomes more complex. By the end, the journey has become a metaphorical strand tying together cosmology, love and hate, cultural diversity, parallel universes, the unrecoverable loss of memories, and I don't know what all else.

No review can adequately describe this story; it's too complicated and yet too simple. I *wholeheartedly* recommend it.

"A Short Sharp Shock" is a complex book, but it isn't as difficult to understand as some reviewers have made out. This novel is a story about a man and his journey to rediscover his past and the identity of a girl; a common enough theme. This strange world and the characters inhabiting it are painstakingly constructed by Kim Stanley Robinson to explore thoughts on chaos, dreams, memory, history, and love. Basically, what is it that makes us human? Pay special attention to the different creation myths told over various campfires throughout the book; since the author "created" the world, these myths explain what he was trying to accomplish with this novel.

Throughout the novel the reader is asked what makes us human and what makes us unique individuals? Is it our genetic make up? Our dreams? Our memories? Our biochemical construction? Our capacity to love? And, interestingly, is it our connection to the past, to our ancestors?

I finished this book in a day but I thought the novel was just long enough for Kim Stanley Robinson to cover all the points he wanted to, especially when you consider how intricately detailed each scene is described. If it were longer one could get bored, and his intent wasn't to create a rich fantasy world to escape to and to explore, but to create a world in which to explore questions of existentialism. There are, however, a number of inconsistencies in the narrative, I would be interested in finding out if they are deliberate literary devices or oversights stemming from impatience in going to press.

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.

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!

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).

Being a fantasy based book, I wasn't drawn to it very much but the author has other excellent books to his name, so I thought I'd try it out. The planet in which the story takes place is set on a large planet with a ring of earth around its belt. The characters deduce that this is geologically impossible and can offer no explainations of this or of why they have come to this planet. The journey around the ring of earth is interesting at times (crossing the submerged part of the ring), confusing (being drawn into the mirror) and pointless (the country of the queen and sex with the queen). All in all, a very strange read. A book which will finish before you know it and you'll think very little of it.

I find this a deeply atmospherical novel in the best tradition of Fantasy. What seems to be a picaresque fairy tale is an allegory on human life. You come into existence, get a name, have your good and bad experiences on a life-long hike until you jump into the unknown again. This novel is not only for Fantasy readers, everybody can read it with its delightful, unobtrusive imagery and strange, but fascinating setting and people.

This shorter work by Robinson was totally unexpected. Like all of the Robinson's writing it is more character driven than plot driven as are his other works I've read - The Mars series and Years of Salt and Rice, and his climate change trilogy. This one was more enigmatic, but very provocative. It is the story of an amnesiac on an improbable world that allows the author to explore, but not answer, themes such as the nature of beauty, memory, relationships, the essence of being, and the perils or rewards of social interactions. It is as strange a story as I have ever read, but oddly satisfying, despite its abrupt ending. Read it.