This is a short one, so I squeezed it in before 2015.
John Anderton is the head of Precrime, a department that uses three idiots savants/precogs to triangulate and anticipate crimes before they’re ever committed. Thanks to Precrime, violent crime is basically nonexistent in this world. The book starts with Anderton warily assessing a new employee who he quickly suspects of conspiring for his job and the Precrime department. In just a few pages, Anderton picks up a report from the precogs that he will shortly murder someone he doesn’t know. He hides the report and decides to get to the bottom of it. Hijinks ensue. Is his wife in on the conspiracy? Who even is this dude he’s supposed to kill? Is he actually changing the future by changing his intention, or is it all fate?
I’m just gonna say it: I liked the movie better. I think they (was it Spielberg?) did a great job of taking this story “seed” and developing it into the thriller it obviously wants to be.
This is a short story–it’s good, but there’s no character development to speak of. I never felt like I knew Anderton, or his wife (what kind of relationship did they have that he immediately suspects her of conspiring against him…and then changes his mind?), or the bad guy…or the “bad guy.” The explanations of the precogs and the alternate timelines, etc, are clearly articulated and smart but somehow feel a little convoluted at the same time, maybe because I didn’t relate to the characters so much. And the ending was a bit too easy for a story grappling with fate and precrime. It felt to me like a novel that had been abridged to a short story.
I wanted a little more heft, but the book is good and the ideas are intriguing, especially for a book that takes about an hour to finish, so it’s still worth a read!
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And now it’s time for a quick summary of my CBR6!
I read 36 books by women, 31 books by American authors, and 46 of my 53 were fiction…next year I think I’ll aim for more non-fiction. My efforts to read more African lit were successful, and it was a fun project. I got to learn a little bit about Sierra Leone, Ghana, Malawi, Senegal, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, and, Angola. I also got some classics in there, and all ladies, to boot: I finally read George Elliot, Virginia Woolf, Sandra Cisneros, Alice Munro, and Mary Shelley.
My favorite books of the year: Hild and A Constellation of Vital Phenomena were both just superb. I literally sent Catherynne Valente’s Fairyland series to everyone in my family. Redemption in Indigo is a definite winner. The Joys of Motherhood was perhaps one of the hardest books to read, but one of the most moving and important, I think. Everyone I’ve given The Martian to has enjoyed it. And I find myself think about The Dispossessed all the time.
See you next year!