Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Full review still in progress, but here's approximately the first half... pre-reading comments at the end.

EDIT: Okay, I'm never going to finish this thing. Frankly, I don't care. But I added a list of things I was planning to put into it at the end.

EDIT 2: Everyone who is even THINKING about reading this book should read this article: and find out exactly what you're dealing with and what you're supporting.



Introduction: I Am The Fourth Matrix

There is a theater in my city that shows movies after they’ve left the other theaters, for two or three dollars a ticket. It’s a pretty good deal. On Friday night they showed The Matrix- which I’d never seen- and I went with a couple of friends. It was decent. A little bit predictable, a little bit too violent at times, but overall pretty good. The problem was, I’d been reading I Am Number Four that same day, trying to finish it and put it behind me, and I watched one of the released movie clips of Six to reassure myself (before I encountered her in the book) that someone actually cool would show up eventually.
This tainted my viewing of The Matrix.
You see, I Am Number Four is what you get if you took the coolest sequences of The Matrix and the premise of Superman, tossed them in a blender, and added a sprinkling of generic Love Interest Powder to the top. But, ah, be sure not to blend it too smooth- it has to be choppy and jolting to experience, and you can’t have that if things meld together seamlessly.
I’m frustrated with ‘Pittacus Lore� for making me think of his characters when I was watching Keanu Reeves stop bullets in midair. But on the other hand, there’s a wonderful irony to going to see the original on the opening night of the cheap, poorly-concealed knock-off.
I’m not going to see the movie, obviously. It’s not worth my time. But I did spend time on the book, so let’s talk about that for a while�

Bad Researcher, No Cookie

It is painfully obvious that ‘Pittacus Lore� doesn’t know jack about science. I’m not sure if he’s trying to bill this as science fiction or not, but if so someone should go hit him over the head with the entire collected Dune series or something, because this is pretty much the worst science fiction I’ve ever read. Why do I say this? Oh, where to begin� well, actually, that’s obvious.
Lorien is a cheap imitation of Earth, and its inhabitants are equally cheap imitations of humans. Think about it. The fact that they look enough like us to pass as us without extra technology or spells or whatever should have given it away. If that wasn’t enough, maybe someone else noticed the color scheme of the planet? Really, Mr. ‘Lore�, do you think that all plants are automatically green everywhere in the universe? Or for that matter that all water is blue? It’s a matter of chemicals and elements, and since you take great pains to point out that Lorien has a different concentration of mineral resources than Planet Earth, we know that the ratios of elements in the soil have to be different. And even if the readers were inclined to let that slide, did you really think you get away with giving the Loric people all of these human structures? They drive cars and park them in driveways, for heaven’s sake! They have grass! Air shows! Fireworks! They even have the same kind of names! In essence, they are exactly like humans except for the ones with sparkly Sue powers.
Ah, and those powers. Did you think I’d miss that, too? Treat it as science fantasy, whatever, but let’s talk a little hard evolutionary science for a moment. When explaining the origins of the Legacies, Henri tells John that they were ‘like a gift from the planet� or some crap like that.
Um.
No.
That is not how evolution works.
It goes like this: New traits come to be through random mutations. Some of them will be beneficial, some simply not detrimental; some will be fatal or sterilizing. Events in the environment lead to one trait being favored over others, but it must already exist within the population. Evolution doesn’t spontaneously create beneficial traits; it amplifies them in the population at large. So there would have to have been Legacies already present among the Loric for them to become prevalent.
Okay, change gears here.
Planets and stars.
Lorien is one tenth the size of Earth, and its star is twice the size of our Sun. It’s fourth away from this star. All of these should have shaped the kind of life that evolved there. For this I have the manga Planetes to thank, because without it I might not have noticed; but gravity affects the way body shapes develop. Growing up in lower gravity, hypothetically, should result in a taller individual, because there’s less strain on the body. Now, unless you’re going to tell me that Lorien is superdense, that wasn’t accounted for in this book.
And as for that planet. Smaller than Earth? It can’t hold as much atmosphere. Still relatively close to the Sun? It should be BAKED before it can ever support life outside of Kingdom Archaea. (Granted I may be incorrect on this point; biology is more my strong point than astronomy.)
Culture, physiology, solar system� OH WAIT.
Parallel evolution.
If you’re not familiar with the term, this is what happens when sci-fi writers get lazy and decide that every sentient race in the universe looks almost exactly like humans, except maybe with pointy ears and funny eyebrows, or some crazy forehead makeup. TV shows can get away with it, or they could until technology caught up with them. Books just can’t. You don’t have to worry about how to simulate this alien; you’re just describing it, anyhow! That’s how we get things like the gaseous race that shows up in one of Anne McCaffrey’s ‘The Ship Who� books.
It’s possible to explain parallel evolution to reader satisfaction. (The Lighthouse Land by Adrian McKinty did this well.) ‘Pittacus� didn’t do so. And what’s worse, it’s not just one race that looks suspiciously humanoid� there are two alien races that are nonetheless capable as passing as native Terrans with a minimum of work. Even given that the book was optioned for a movie before it was published, this is unacceptable. Parallel evolution is the cheap trick that, as far as I’m concerned, should never be used.
And on that note, let’s talk about humans and the Loric.

Humans Lame, Aliens Awesome: Your Accomplishments Mean Nothing

This is a theme of I Am Number Four that particularly stood out to me, and here is why: One of the roleplays I’m doing on Gaia right now is about human settlers reaching the first planet they intend to colonize and finding an existing alien civilization. As I’m in control of the aliens, I’ve been doing all the worldbuilding for this place, and that included figuring out why they resembled a cross between humans and Terran birds. My solution was a little like McKinty’s: I tossed in an ancient race that meddled with both the younger species and made them in their own image. When I first proposed this, though, I hadn’t really figured out how it would go yet, and so my partner raised a point: isn’t this cheapening human achievements as a species, if you credit their whole existence and all their achievements to other aliens?
And he was right, you know? So I backed off and made it work a different way.
I wish Pittacus Lore had had to run his ideas by a similar audience. Because he didn’t, we get things like this: “We helped the humans, taught them to make fire, gave them the tools to develop speech and language, which is why our language is so similar to the languages of Earth.�
Okay, really? No one language can be similar to all the languages of Earth. It’s simply not possible. Apparently Pittacus hasn’t seen a language family tree� well, ever. Grammar alone, even if every language had the same sort of pronunciation, would make it impossible; add in the fact that letters are pronounced differently, or that you have tonal languages and languages that use percussive sounds as well- not to mention myriad dialects- and this whole sentence is shown to be complete bullshit. But it’s not the worst. This is:
“What happens if we try to have children with humans?�
“It’s happened many times before. Usually it results in an exceptional and gifted human. Some of the greatest figures in Earth’s history were actually the product of humans and the Loric, including Buddha, Aristotle, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.�
I’m going to ignore the suggestion that the Greek gods were also just half-Loric humans, because this is more than preposterous enough. According to Pittacus Lore, you see, not only would humans not have developed fire or language on their own, they wouldn’t have come up with things like the Four Noble Truths or the theory of Relativity if the speshul aliens hadn’t been involved. Frankly, seeing this list, I’m kind of surprised that Lore stopped here: why not claim responsibility for Muhammad, or Jesus, or Confucius, for example, while we’re undermining world religions? Why not assert that Michelangelo or Van Gogh were half-Loric? Hell, what about George Washington� or, since Genghis Kahn made the roster, Adolf Hitler? Because clearly noooooothing important can go on without alien involvement. (Oh, and how did the two species crossbreed? This goes back to the evolution thing, I guess- if there’s an explanation there, it might solve this problem too, but I doubt there is.)

Formerly planned sections:
The Hero Is Exempt From Morals�
In which I would have discussed John's flagrant abuse of his power, including some incidents of untempered (and unregretted) harm caused to others who were barely more than bystanders, and that one time he attacked Henri. Also the fact that he never cared about Henri enough to remember his name until he was dead.
…And All Characters Are Exempt From Brains
In which I would have discussed Henri's abominably stupid decision to investigate a Mogadorian threat on his own, and John's decision that staying in the town where his girlfriend lived was more important than his own life or the future of his planet.
We Should Have Expected This From James Frey
In which I would have discussed the way Frey wrote his own pen name into the story and glorified himself by making 'Pittacus' one of the most famous Lorics of all time.
Of Course, He Wasn’t Being Paid That Well
In which I would have discussed Frey's book factory business plan and the truly horrible writing in this book.
Minor Fails
In which I would have discussed the anvilicious (and obvious attempt at trend-riding) environmental 'message' presented in the contrast between the Lorics and the Mogadorians, the absurd plot convenience of Sam just happening to mention the Mogadorians, and the fact that it is impossible to see vegetation moving under wind if the globe you're looking at is the size of a raquetball.


Long story short: Don't waste your time or your money. If you want sci-fi, go read some C.J. Cherryh or Frank Herbert or watch Firefly or Doctor Who.






While reading:

Forget Alex Pettyfer. Let's see Tom Baker in this part!

Before reading:
I've got a galley of this sitting on my bookshelf, and I was quite looking forward to it... until I saw an add for the movie trailer on Facebook.
No book should be made into a movie for release the year after publication. I'm sorry, but that's just wrong. And now I 'm kinda not looking forward to reading this. I still will, but I'll take my time getting to it.