Get Access El Libro De Las Cosas Nunca Vistas Outlined By Michel Faber Presented In EText
in the future, humanity has discovered they are not alone in the universe: on a distant planet named Oasis dwells a race of supremely ugly aliens their faces are described as two foetuses fused together! and they LOVE Jeebus.
So much so that theyre withholding food from the handful of human colonists on their planet until they get a replacement missionary.
Enter Peter Leigh, a former homeless junkie thief turned bornagain Christian minister selected by the USIC Corporation to be sent to Oasis and preach from the Bible, which the Oasans refer to as The Book of Strange New Things.
But why are the Oasans so enamoured with Christianity And what happened to their last minister
Thats the setup for Michel Fabers latest doorstoppersized novel, and its actually quite enticing and originalseeming at first.
Except that summary is misleading because this book is actually about how long distance relationships dont work, I know pick your jaw up off the floor because thats revelatory information, right But that is essentially the whole book which wouldnt be so bad if I cared a bit about either Peter or his wife Bea but I didnt.
Peter heads to Oasis while Bea remains on Earth, Things go well for Peter the Oasans are receptive and he enjoys his time on the planet things for badly for Bea as the world around her falls apart China invades the Middle East and ends up controlling their oil supply, global supermarket chains go bankrupt, freak weather decimates countries, wars erupt, governments topple, its the complete and total collapse of Western civilisation.
Make no mistake though: The Book of Strange New Things is an utterly tedious read, Beyond the novelty of meeting the Oasans, theres nothing much to them, Theyre around five feet tall, theyre ugly, theyre a very simple, agrarianbased culture, and many of them believe the word of God completely.
Little is added to this knowledge as the novel progresses,
The only “conflict” Peter encounters is trying to make the Bible stories work for his new flock as they have trouble pronouncing “s” and “t” in their tongue as well as understanding some of the imagery they dont have sheep or fish so wouldnt know what stories involving them would mean, so he rewrites them to make it easier for them to speak and grasp.
He doesnt have to try to convert them as a large number are already devout Christians and he doesnt encounter the ones who arent.
Easier and easier.
He gets on with his fellow humans on the USIC base for the most part, Theyre a gentle but soulless bunch consumed with work they are the best in the professions: engineering, geology, biology, medicine, etc.
A giant read: “evil” corporation behind this space endeavour Never seen that in a scifi alien story! The only thing missing was the meathead soldier archetype but there are no weapons or fighting in the book so theyre absent.
Wondering where the drama/story here is There isnt any! Maybe youre thinking Oasis is some wonderful vista paradise like Pandora in Avatar Think again! Its a completely flat landscape with no discernible features.
The Oasans are completely isolated besides some weird duck creatures who appear a couple times so how did they evolve exactly, their simple huts, and their fields of whiteflower which they grow to trade for medicine with the humans.
I dont need the landscape to be extraordinary I just wish Faber would give me something, anything, than nothing!
This is barely genre writing.
Because its set on an alien planet doesnt make it scifi, or at least its not a good representation of that genres heights despite the way some readers look down upon scifi as a “lesser” genre.
Good scifi is imaginative The Book of Strange Things is not,
Peters wife Bea, though extremely whiny and annoying, tells Peter and the reader through her emails sent via the Shoot why did they rename a computer, a Shoot What was wrong with “computer” of troubles on Earth, which I mentioned earlier.
These emails are the only real conflict in the book by the way,
It seems that her story wouldve been much more interesting to read than Peters, Instead were subjected to the most monotonous nonstory ever: Peter telling the Oasans some Bible stories, Peter helping them harvest the whiteflower crop, Peter trying to learn their language, Peter having trouble sleeping and looking at the, Peter walking across a flat landscape drinking melonflavoured water, Peter staring blankly at nothing, This book is nearlypages long!! Cut out the tedious crap and youll have a mediocrepage novel instead of an awfulpage one.
And speaking of Beas increasingly difficult life on doomed Earth, USIC do their best to censor their offworld staff from news of Earths collapse by ripping out pages of magazines/newspapers arriving at the base but they dont censor Beas emails even though they have the capability to do so Her emails contain the most damning information!
I will say that Fabers prose is for the most part clear and accessible.
He may not be able to tell a tight, fastmoving story anymore, but he can still write quite well, And I did like some scenes in the book, particularly with the former minister who went native, and Grainger, the USIC pharmacist, as she fell apart on Oasis.
I had her and Peter pegged to have a rushed, embarrassing affair though Faber thankfully steered clear of that though he did everything he could to hint at its possibility!
And I liked how many of the USIC characters were named after Marvel Comics writers from the Silver Age, in particular Jakob Kurtzberg, the missing former minister, who mirrors the real name of Jack Kirby technically a Golden Age creator.
Who was Jack Kirby, noncomics reader Creator of much of the Marvel Universe: Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Fantastic Four and the XMen to name a few and a preacher of a kind himself who lived in the!
Fabers look at Christianity is just not insightful.
What do we learn That Bea converted Peter when he was a troubled criminal, He bought into the religion and became a personable minister, Away from his wife, her troubles overwhelm her and she loses her faith, And
Also, how easy is it to write a devout Christian character “Jesus saves, God has a plan for everything, Trust in the Bible and our Lord he shall provide” etc, This isnt great writing or characterisation,
The Christian overtones to the story were too on the nose and werent enough to redeem it, The book haschapters like the Gospel of Matthew which is repeatedly referenced, Peter is bitten by an animal, seeming to die in the eyes of the Oasans and return a la Christ after the crucifixion not really but to the Oasans perhaps, the walking through the wilderness with Grainger temptation.
Does Peter become like Christ to them Is this how Christ was to us an alien Is this how religions start Maybe some people will be blown away by these aspects of the book but I could not care less I was beaten into apathy at this point by the sluglike pacing.
As theres no real story the book doesnt build to a big finish, or any kind of finish at all really, and simply ends.
It couldnt be more dissatisfying or anticlimactic,
Fabers Strange New Things is a deeply unimaginative novel, The scifi element is poorly conceived and uninteresting Oasis and the Oasans could not be more dull, The book drags on for hundreds of pages without a plot, with barely any character development, and with hardly a thing happening to break up the boredom.
The whole “Earths collapse” felt forced, done because Beas life needed to get worse so that she and Peter could fight via email, not because it was convincing on any level.
I mean, China invading the Middle East what!
Ive enjoyed Fabers work over the years from Under the Skin to The Fire Gospel to his short stories in Some Rain Must Fall, but The Book of Strange New Things is gimmicky and horribly boring.
Its far too long with much too little substance, Arguably this is his worst novel I can see why hes saying hes giving up on writing any more of them seeing how uninspired this one turned out! Unlike the Oasans and the Bible, most people will have more than enough of this book long before its end.
It was a real struggle to get there and not really worth it,
Side note: theres some question among some reviewers as to why the Oasans would so readily accept Christianity though Faber does explain this in the book.
Heres why, and its actually one of the few parts of the novel I liked:
A slowing moving book, much more focused on faith and evangelization and long distance relationships than on the disasters or aliens from the blurb.
Not much happens to warrant the nearlypages
This place is one big anticlimax
I expected something all together more propulsive and exciting from sitelinkThe Book of Strange New Things when starting this read.
The blurb mentions tsunamis, food shortages and a world falling apart, But main character Peter is whisked away from this mayhem by a shadowy organisation called USIC, that sends him on an interstellar conversion mission.
Converting aliens to Christ, what can go wrong would you think as a seasoned science fiction reader
I immediately thought of Pandora in Avatar the blue people edition, but the narrative sitelinkMichel Faber investigates is in as much about aliens as it is about the problems a truly long term relationship brings with it.
This mixture is further more "spiced" with Christian overtones, that make Peter his reflections not to speak of his responses to his wife far away rather tiring.
Practicalities are not your strong suit his wife Beatrice muses to him, and it is definitely true that Peter is rather talented in making problems, including a stubborn conviction to live with the natives, to get closer to them.
Strangely learning their language is not a high priority, leading to a lot of scope for misunderstanding,
Aliens being helped by human medicines with food versus medicine exchange relieving pressures on the supplying of the colony is interesting, given that physiological differences should be applicable and the humans hardly know anything about them apparently.
Also the fact that the aliens farm food for humans seems a rather dangerous proposition, as we see in our current globalised world, food security is of paramount importance.
Even atof the book not much in terms of actual events really happened, The theme Faber investigates are definitely fleshed out well, but any expectation of events or escalation is deftly changed to a kind of eternal now in the colony planet of Oasis.
Even the staff of misfits at the base seem benign and with humanising backstories,
At home, with Tesco and Barclays going bust, events move fast, making me eager to learn more on the situation on Earth.
There is a kind of breakdown of society/The Purge in real life in America, terrorist attacks, deaths, riots, volcanoes, food shortages and tsunamis.
A book from the perspective of Beatrice, if more conventional, would have been more interesting if I'd need to guess.
The strangeness of the aliens is well described, if that they are conveniently friendly and susceptible to the Bible the Book of Strange New Things from the title.
Peter going native is also well done as are the questions on what religion would mean without sin, with the aliens being so good this starts to be a real question.
Even emotions and their perception of time is something that sets them apart from the humans,
Death rate at the base is rather high, but the surprise that in general things go quite well, voiced by the narrator, strikes me quite strange.
I mean, people selected for a planetary mission as the elite of the elite in their field would also be selected to not fight each other I mean scientists on Antarctica dont bash each other heads in as well No one is surprised about that
In the end Peter and Beatrice their relation deteriorates from all the tensions, with the whole "emotional support across the galaxy" being rather depressing and boring, and full of misunderstandings and frustration coming out
Unhappiness was a test you had to pass, and he passed thinks Peter, but he is rather prone to obsession and we are treated to nearlypages of his breakdown without a wife by his side to take care of him.
I was underwhelmed by the book overall, despite it having an artisanal quality, I was left wanting more, not just clarity but even just events, instead of reflections and overthinking:,rounded down.
Quotes:
Remade himself as a babe into the wood
His body would evict his soul
Take your cheerleader pompons off padre
He must cling to his sincerity, it was the only thing he had left
Everything is always falling apart I can't recall the last time I was so utterly transported by a book so imaginative and completely absorbing! I lived it, thought it, dreamed it.
. I'm still thinking about it,
A British pastor, Peter Leigh, is chosen in a very rigorous process by a mysterious megacorporation called USIC, to travel to another galaxy to minister to a native population he knows nothing about.
To do so, he must leave his beloved wife, Beatrice, behind for a period of time, Once on the planet called Oasis, he will communicate with his wife solely via messaging on a device called The Shoot.
Peter moves in with the native population, the Oasans, to bring them the word of Jesus, To his surprise, the Oasans are already converted and hungry for more from the "Book of Strange New Things, " As Peter becomes more and more absorbed by his mission and the unique circumstances of his alien ministry, his relationship with Beatrice becomes strained and begins to unravel.
On Earth, all manner of calamities are happening earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, and a breakdown in the financial and political systems.
Beatrice is overwhelmed and, feeling abandoned and unsupported by Peter, begins to question her faith,
This book has it all great writing, a plot that is very suspenseful and believable, compelling and sympathetic characters and a rich and vivid environment to let your imagination run free.
When I look back at the first page of the novel, I marvel at the mastery of the author what an incredible journey he packs into thesepages!
Very small quibbles some unresolved and curious storylines with a couple of characters Kurtzberg and Tartaglione, some extremely unlikely situations who would go on such a mission "blind," with no information on the natives, the physical atmosphere of the planet, etc.
and so on but this is such minor stuff,
If you enjoy science fiction, most definitely pick this one up, It's so much more than that, though it's ultimately about relationships, faith, humanity, I couldn't put it down, A.for me.
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