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It's a Colony recap! Previous chapters. Wow, this one ended up looooong.

Chapter 8, in which David has some growing up to do.

Yay, this chapter's back on Island One! I am growing really really fond of Evelyn and David. Maybe it's just because I've seen more of them than a few pages of introduction, but I just... like them. I really enjoy their interaction in this chapter, too.

I don't remember if David's age is ever stated, but even if he's an adult, he's pretty much got the mind of a teenager, in my opinion. This is his puberty chapter.

It starts with them at the holo!ballet.

Yes, the holo!ballet. Because on Island One, they stream ballet performances from Moscow in hologram form, and then transmit the audience's reaction back for "emotional feedback". I bet the dancers and the Moscow audience really hate that: there's bound to be lag, and imagine the irritation of a bunch of disembodied clapping halfway through the next section.

Also, David is jealous of the dancers, because he's too self-conscious for dancing. He "decided that ballet was not for him, emotionally." See, he totally has weaknesses and everything, despite being a perfectly engineered test-tube human! Well, the self-consciousness, and the fact that he's really pretty thick.

Anyway, they go to a café (with robot waiters!) and Evelyn tells him about breaking in to Cylinder B and finding it empty except for rainforest. He tells her that she should be careful, as people have been thrown out of the colony for less, and she finally tells him that she's not planning to stay on Island One for any length of time, but actually just went there to write a story about him to sell back on Earth.

He is not very happy about that.

"Well, you got your story the first night. I hope you enjoyed it. Everything you always wanted to know about the manufactured man, including his sex life. Was I any good? Do you want me to pose for photos?"

N'aww, someone needs a hug.

Evelyn tells him that she isn't going to leave yet, because he's really hot she realised he was a real, feeling human being, and her conscience won out, so she's trying to find an even better story in Colony B. And David can help her find out what's going on!

"Now I understand. If I help you to unravel this mystery, then you'll have a story about Island One bigger than the test-tube baby story. Right?"

"I'm sure of it!" She nodded excitedly.

"And if I don't help you, you've still got my story. You can go back to Earth and sell my story to your bosses."

An unhappy frown creased her brow. "I don't want to do that, David."

"But you will if you have to."

"If I have to... I don't know what I'll do."

But I know, David said to himself.

Well, what's wrong with using your initiative and some implied blackmail to get a good story and keep the guy?

I love these kids.


~*CHANGE OF SCENE*~


The mysterious Board of Directors is having a meeting. Via holograms, again. (Sent by laser via privately-owned satellites, naturally.) Holograms are all the rage this chapter. Here's the members of The Board (cf. World Government):

T. Hunter Garrison: "[W]ispy white hair fringing a bald dome, narrow-eyed hawkish face with skin like badly wrinkled parchment, liver-spotted hands that would have been gnarled with arthritis if they didn't possess so much money and power." Lives on the top floor of his office-building in Houston and never leaves because the world comes to him.

Hideki Tanaka: Bluff industrialist with eyes "as cold as those of a professional killer". Lives somewhere with a view of Mt Fuji.

Wilbur St. George: Lives in Sydney, smokes a pipe, "beefy face" with a "no-nonsense scowl"

Kurt Morgenstern: Lives in Cologne, "wary-eyed [...], pasty-faced and flabby-looking", controls most of central Europe's industry.

And my second favourite character (Ev and Dave get joint first), the evil Sheik himself, al-Hashimi.

They discuss their funding of El Libertador! (he just feels like he should have an exclamation mark in his name) and how to stop him from causing too much trouble for them while destroying the World Government, and the ways they've been manipulating the weather to make things easier for him. Because it's important for the reader of a novel to always know the plans and objectives of every single character or group of characters, lest they strain their brains with speculation and uncertainty for more than a chapter or two.

Other points the book wants us to know about:

- Al-Hashimi has contacts with a member of the PRU who he gives money and advice to.
- Some of the Board members feel a bit guilty about killing people and/or endangering their profits, but their computer predictions show that the World Government will bankrupt them all if they don't do something. (Where "doing something" = fucking over most of the world's economy through disasters and wars. Go go gadget self-fulfilling prophecy?)
- They have a thing called Operation Proxy that will combine all the revolutionary movements around the world to cause a global civil war, and which somehow involves Island One
- Garrison controls Dr Cobb. He's very sure about this. He uses italics, and everything.

Oh, and St. George, the Australian member, owns the newspaper Evelyn works for, and is using her as a spy without her knowledge! Well, unless he has a different "snoop" who "[t]hinks she's digging up a scandal for the International News".

From now on, I'm imagining Evelyn with an Australian accent. Even if it is the International News.


~*TWO SCENE CHANGES IN ONE CHAPTER HOLY SHIT*~


Ok, exciting things: we finally get to meet Dr Cobb, head scientist of Island One, and David's father figure.

Aaaaaand now I have George Michael stuck in my head. :|

Anyway, Cobb has banned organised team sports from Colony One, because he doesn't approve of "vicarious violence" or competition of any kind, apparently. Good luck with that, doctor. He does have a 0g sports complex, so he can play ball games while having fatherly talks with his after-school projects, like we're suddenly in an American family movie.

So, there they are playing 0g-handball, which is apparently a very hazardous game and can cause a lot of injuries. This is hardcore handball, guys. Believe it.

David asks him about Cylinder B, and Cobb, who has the same exposition disease as everyone else, goes all "oh yes, she asked you about it, didn't she, I watched her break in the other day through the security cameras I SEE EVERYTHING." He reveals he threw David and Evelyn together when she first got there to give him an opportunity to learn how to deal with people from the real world. So, that went well.

He also reveal the plans for Cylinder B. (He's just looking out for us readers, really. Do you want to risk brain-strain?) The members of the Board has requested five mansions to be built in it.

"But why... what do they..."

Arching an eyebrow, the old man asked, "Do you see any statistical correlation between the fact that the Board has ordered five mansions and the fact that there are five—count them, five—members of the aforesaid Board of Directors of the island One Corporation, Limited?"

David blinked at him.

Are you sure you engineered this guy with a superior brain, Dr Cobb? I'm just asking, purely out of interest.

The Board want the mansions on the colony to retreat to once the Earth collapses into chaos and civil war, obviously:

"And they'll let the world collapse around them?"

"There's nothing they can do to prevent it, even if they wanted to."

"I don't believe that!"

"Well... there is one thing," Cobb said. "After the Board comes here to love, we can shoot anybody else out of the sky when they try to come up here and invade us!"

DUN DUN DUUUUUN.

And with that, we get to the end of Book One (of five). Pray to the gods of the five-act structure that now things will begin to happen. Prediction: David and Evelyn team up to save the world.


Sometimes reading books, you think about whether they would make good films or not. I think Colony would make a neat anime. I'm not sure why it makes me think of that rather than live-action, maybe it's the politics and the great silliness.

Also, I'm still hoping for a Colony Drop (TV Tropes, click at your own risk.).
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Technically I'm meant to be studying Japanese right now, but I want to read more Colony, which means I have to write more about Colony or I'll get too far ahead. (I should just write about each chapter as I read it, really. But some of them are only 4 pages long, so I can read about a million in one stretch.)

Chapter 6, in which we are imprisoned in the home of the evil Sheik, oh noes!

This chapter is stupid. Backstory: Dennis McCormick is an Irish-Canadian architect who's building the palace from 1001 Arabian Nights in Baghdad for tourism reasons, and someone tries to assassinate him in the market quarter as he's walking back from the site one day. Not in a sexy Assassin's Creed way, in a hired thugs with knives way. Anyway, he's rescued by a pretty lady in an expensive car, and blacks out.

He wakes up in a room like "the Moslem version of Paradise—or, at the very least, on a movie set for an Arabian Nights scene." Draped silk, luxurious sofas, a view over the rooftops of Baghdad, the works. Turns out it's al-Hashimi's house, and the pretty lady was his daughter, who brought him there instead of the hospital for no particular reason. Well, because it's ~*romantic*~, but she'd presumably have an easier time being allowed to visit him in the hospital than getting past her father's guards. Because yeah, al-Hashimi has totally posted armed guards on his door. He's very "old-fashioned" about his daughter, as the servant girl informs us, but he himself sleeps with a bunch of girls and boys all the time, blah blah blah. We all heard the dun-dun-duns last time, he's totally evil.

Also Bahjat, the daughter, gave Dennis a blood transfusion so he wouldn't die, and then they meet for about three seconds before she goes to Island One to be educated there (and get hit on, probably) and then they are ~*in love*~ and this chapter is just really contrived and I'm bored of them already.

Chapter 7, in which you are a white-ass dude.

Chapter 7 is only 5 pages long, and I really want to just type them all up for you, because they are pretty amazing. It's all about gangsters in Manhattan, and they talk in future gangster slang, which means saying "shee-it!" and asking people if they want to "get zapped", basically. Oh, and it offers a rare insight into future!2008 fashions:

The dude was black, and he wore the right kind of clothes: blood-red shiny plastic jacket with the sleeves torn off, tight-ass bullfighter pants, heavy boots that're good for stomping or running. But the clothes were too right, like somebody'd handed him a uniform. And they were new. Instead of fitting into the First Avenue scene, he stood out like a hooker's pointed bra.

Yessss. The dude is a cop from the "Fuckin' World Guv'mint" who wants to meet Leo. Leo is the uber-boss of the local Neighbourhood Associations: "[W]hen Leo says you do, you do. No matter which association you're with, no matter who's got a war going on with who." The Neighbourhood Association pope, so to speak. He's also got the best food-analogy-skin-colour description so far: he's the colour of an aubergine. He's also pretty badass.

When they meet it's revealed that Leo is actually a World Government agent called Elliot, and his orders are to come back to base, but he likes it too much as a gangster, so he tells the cop to GTFO.

"Listen to me," the cop said. "If you don't come back now, voluntarily, they'll drag you back."

"Take some draggin'," said Leo.

"They can do it. You know that."

Leo slowly got to his feet. It was like a dark storm cloud rising. "No, they only think they can do it, Frank,” he said in a kind of voice that Lacey had never heard out of him before. He sounded almost like the cop! "I've learned quite a bit about how things go out here in the streets, quite a bit about power—how to get it and how to use it. Power does not reside in the government bureaus and agencies. There's no power in those long corridors between offices or among those faceless, interchangeable automatons that you report to. Power is here, in the streets, in the cities, among the people who are hungry enough, scared enough, mean enough, desperate enough to fight."

The cop staggered a step backward. "You're talking nonsense. Madness!"

"Am I?"

"You can't survive out here without us, Elliot. The melanin treatments, the steroids, the hormones—they'll cut off your supply."

Leo shrugged massively. "I've got other sources, Frank. I don't need you people anymore."

[...]

"You're crazy, Elliot. The drugs must be affecting your brain. They'll come and get you..."

"Shee-it, man!" Leo's voice went back to normal, and Lacey felt better for it. "We gonna come an' get you. We got more soldiers than you got, more guns, too. An' we know how t' use 'em. All over the world, man—the underdogs are gonna knock off the white-asses, wherever they are."

Yeah, Leo is badass.

I am actually quite excited about all these bits of plot that keep being set up, but I really hope this is the last one. I'm ready for them to get started moving and actually happening now, ok?


PS: Spellcheck keeps asking me if al-Hashimi shouldn't be "sashimi".
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Guys. I tidied and rearranged my bookshelf a few days ago (I was procrastinating), and I have a ton more vintage sci-fi and fantasy books hanging around waiting to be read. I think I should make this a ~series~. What do you guys think of Sign of the Unicorn by Roger Zelazny next? With a cover like this it's got to be good, right?

Right, I finished with Chapter 3, where Evelyn and David were doing it and talking about politics and how David was basically the extracurricular after school project of the scientists on Island One (that's the name of the space colony, btw), who genetically engineered him to be the perfect human (he's immune to the common cold. So jealous.) after his engineer mother died in some tragic construction accident while he was in the womb. No-one knows who his father was. I can never get a handle on this future!2008; it's such a weird mix of progressive and backwards.

I forgot to mention, by the way, in the end of Chapter 3 David also explains what it is he does with all his time on the colony, since, as secret after-school science projects don't get passports (angst!), he's not allowed on Earth: he's a "forecaster". Which means he tries to predict the future with the clever use of maths and computers and shit. It makes about as much sense that Island One's weird hippy organic farmer in space self-sufficiency. See, he's really good at economics — he got "within half of a percent of last year's Gross Regional Products for Western Europe, Eurasia, the Mideast, and North America" but apparently he stays away from politics because it's too complicated. Because... politics... never affects the economy... at all.

But fair enough, I can see he would be rubbish at politics, because until Evelyn suggested otherwise, he was absolutely convinced the corporations who run Island One were in no way involved in politics. Island One produces all of Earth's energy by harvesting solar energy with satelites and beaming it to Earth in some unexplained way that allows it to be caught with antennas.

Yeah, no political power at all.

He also thinks this:

And where would rebels such as the revolutionaries in Latin america get their arms and munitions? If the corporations wanted to weaken the World Government...

Gee, do you think those mysterious rebels might be important for plot reasons? I wonder, I wonder.


Chapter 4, in which we meet the World Government.

The World Government is based in Messina. I don't know why, maybe they just thought it was a nice place. In any case, they went to Messina, and built a big shiny glass-and-steel complex next to the old city, so as not to distract the beggars and starving children, which seem to litter... everywhere on Earth, basically.

The Director of the World Government is Emanuel de Paolo, who has the "swarthy" skin and "dark and suspicious" eyes of a Sicillian peasant, but "instead of the fleshy, heavy features of the native Sicilian [his] face [is] fine-boned, almost delicate."

This chapter is full of great descriptions like that. The North American representativel for example, has skin "the color of milk chocolate". Here's what the rest of the government looks like, in a paragraph of De Paolo musing about the homogeneity of internationalism:

Each man had come from a different part of the world: tobacco-skinned Arab, brown Chinese, black African, red-haired Russian, blond Dane, and the darkish American. Yet they all wore the same type of conservatively cut grayish suit. The colors of their clothing varied less than the colors of their skin. And they were all men. We still do not allow women to rise to the level of the Executive Council. That would be too cruel.

That paragraph. I don't even know where to start. Is Africa one country now? Like Denmark? What sort of colour is "tobacco"? Darkish. That would be too cruel.

The big thing for the World Government at the moment is weather modification. They came to power, it seems, by preventing a nuclear war, which they did by threatening everyone with ruining the weather if they didn't disarm (and the Moon helped by threatening everyone with satelite lasers, apparently. From then on I basically imagined everything in the style of a Gundam episode). Except now everyone has gotten hold of weather-modification technology and are using it to make a ~*secret war*~ or droughts and flooding. I admit, I think that is actually a really neat concept, if pretty impractical. It's also possible that the multinational corporations are the ones doing all the weather modification, in order to destabilise the World Gov, though why they'd want that is anyone's guess. De Paolo is worried they're developing weaponised diseases up there in space. Because the scale of scientific progress naturally goes NUCLEAR BOMBS => MANIPULATE WEAHER => WEAPONISE DISEASES. Yes.

Al Hashimi, the tobacco-coloured one, gets all defensive because he's on the board of a multinational, and they are NOT DOING ANYTHING, OK? HE INVESTIGATED! HARD! BUT YOU CAN'T COME VISIT ISLAND ONE BECAUSE... WE ARE PAINTING THE LIVING ROOM RIGHT NOW. And then he and the Russian have a little catfight because, and this is possibly the best thing in this chapter, Russia is still communist. They are "the workers' paradise". I guess they must've sorted themselves out and are totally cool now, having happy Marxist-Leninist funtime parties every night.

They have another problem, whch is El Libertador, an underground revolutionary who has united the global discontent into one big "Peoples' Revolutionary Underground" movement "against the gray authoritarianism and sameness of the World Government". And the the South American representative enters and reveal that El Lib' has TAKEN ARGENTINIA. DUN DUN DUUUN.

And then tobacco-flavoured Al Hashimi sends this memo to someone:

De Paolo's main concern continues to be the weatehr modifications, I suggest we terminate this phase of the operation as quickly as possible, before they can find a leak.
We should make stronger ties with El Libertador, [...]. Under no circumstances should [he] be allowed to make conciliatory gestures toward the World Government, or vice versa.

DUN DUN DUUUN.


Chapter 5, in which Evelyn gets hit on a lot.

Evelyn must be one sexy lady, because she spends this entire chapter being hit on by guys who think it's cute how low gravity makes her feel queasy. She is generally sarcastic about this in her head, but uses it to her advantage in her journalistic endeavours. I like Evelyn.

First, she's shown around some farm-pods outside the main Island One cylinder, in which "experimental crops" are grown. (dun dun duuun?) On the way back some guy gives here som anti-space-nausea medication and spends the entire trip talking to her about his ~lonely bachelor life~. Yeah.

After her induction tour, she goes off trying to find a way into the second cylinder. I was just writing up a big thing about how it doesn't make sense for two rotating (for gravity purposes) cylinders to be thethered togetherk and then I realised they're probably not next to eacother, but in a line. I'll let you get away with it this time, Bova. In any case, the two cylinders are tethered together, and there's an elevator that ferries people across, but the Cylinder B is meant to be off limits. To Evelyn, this is a personal challenge. I really like Evelyn.

On the way there she runs into an astronaut, who takes it upon himself to steady her when the gravity decreases as they approach the control center (zero gravity = getting hit on) and then tries to get her to give him her adress, but she tells him he can just call her at the training center. Shot dowwwwn.

She eventually slips away and hacks into a few security doors to make her way into an elevator that takes her to Cylinder B. Which contains... a rainforest. Except there's only plants, no birds or insects. So, an empty rainforest. And there the chapter ends.

I've read the next few chapters, as well, but I'm too lazy to write more right now, so I'ma save it until the weekend.
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