#322
Title: The Raw Shark Texts
Author: Steven Hall
Year: 2007
Publisher: Canongate
430 pages
A fun novel for those who like science fiction, and probably not at all for those who don't. This is Being John Malkovich meets Memento meets John Varley's "Press Enter." It's enjoyable, pastiche-y, and brings literally brings ideas to life. I like the conceptual shark very much, and the reminder that both meaning and entropy arise from interactions of complex information systems. In some ways, it bucks the idea of death as nothingness or decay; instead, death is having one's meaning join larger constituents. Narratively and in its symbolism, there are some similarities to Connie Willis's Passage.
I was bothered by sloppiness in the narrative that was not accounted for by the story's structure. What is the point of the cat? What happened to the other cat? Was it a Schrödinger's Cat joke that didn't quite work? Is the protagonist his own second incarnation, or were there more? In what ways is Scout who he thinks she is? While not critical to the plot, these lacunae were annoying.
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