Alexander Besher's Mir

Mir is the first of two sequels to the Alexander Besher’s cyber-fiction novel Rim. I read Rim back in late 1995 at a time in my life that was full of both despair and the sort of uncertain resolution that characterized my late teens. Rim was a comfort to me in that moment and in that situation just by being a good story, and I never forgot what it did for me. I always intended to go back and read it again, and when I finally did last year, it was the first book I read on my Kindle. Fitting, I thought—an e-reader is the sort of thing you’d find in one of Besher’s books. I’d known there were two sequels to the book, but I’d never bothered to get around to them till now. Well, till last December, actually, which is when I got both books, Mir and Chi, in hardcover for a few books each. There’s something to be said for procrastinative reading. I took up Mir as soon as I got it, but it just wasn’t the right time for it, and I don’t think I even got through the prologue. As much as Rim meant to me, and as much as I’d still enjoyed it the second time through and some fifteen years later, I was a bit disappointed.



Not so on the second attempt. I took up Mir again Friday afternoon, and I was done with it early Sunday morning. This post is really about me, not about the book, so I won’t go into any details about plot or character here. What I will say is that Besher’s future world is intriguing in its combination of technology and Pacific Rim cultures, and that Besher is obviously a lover of language as verbal art. When I read Rim, the internet was just beginning to approach something mainstream. I’d only had the least bit of experience with BBSs, and I was fascinated with the idea of the (as it was then touted) “Information Superhighway”. Stupid name, but nobody much knew what the internet would be like back then, so it’s excusable. I was also the slightest bit interested in Japanese culture at the time. I’d read Shogun the year before, and was intrigued enough by the bits of Japanese language sprinkled in Clavell’s novel that I bought a Japanese dictionary and self-teaching book that came with (get this) a cassette tape for practicing. Yeah. Anyway, Rim just fit right in because of the Orientalism, even though 21st century cyber Nippon is a far cry from 16th century feudal Japan.

Reading Mir, I couldn’t help thinking how much it reminded me of anime somehow. I’m no fan of anime—don’t even really care for it on the whole—but it has its charms as an art form. When I first read Rim, I’d only ever seen Vampire Hunter D and Fist of the North Star, but they were exciting to me at the time, and I wonder if I wouldn’t have ended up an anime freak give different circumstances.

Instead, I ended up a poetry freak who just this weekend was considering tackling the entire Norton Anthology of English Literature—both volumes. I decided against it because that would mean wasting a month or more in the 18th century, and my post on Tristram Shandy made it pretty clear, I think, how highly I value the literature of that era. I try to be fair and to take all works of literature on their own terms, but even I have my limits and personal tastes. Books like Besher’s cyber-fiction novels probably won’t ever be included in any literature anthologies, but I like what I like, and my literati credentials can’t be questions, so let others waste their time on Pope, and I’ll read what I like.

Maybe I’ll read another of Clavell’s books before too long, but I’m thinking of Brideshead Revisited next. It’s another of those I always see mentioned but don’t really know anything about. My wife is borrowing my Kindle this week, so I’m reading some in the massive complete poems of Hardy that I’ve got. I’m also reading a book on CS Lewis that I’ll probably post about later on this week.