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"I loved Inception. Can you recommend any books that would be similar?" There are some good recommendations: Greg Bear's Queen of Angels, Iain Banks' Transition, Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves; your mileage may vary.
All about The Tesseract before Garland got all Zombie-fied.
The first author that came to my mind was PKD too.
Ubik, Ubik, Ubik.
Anything by Danielle Steele, really.
House of Leaves is only a good recommendation if the question is "I thought Inception had a good idea at its core, but the final product was a big sloppy mess that needed the close attention of a ruthless editor. Can you recommend a similar book?"
You mentioned this in the other thread. I thought the pacing was fine. What exactly felt sloppy to you?
Inception is a movie about pulling off heists in dreams. Heist movies create drama by setting up chains of cause and effect: X incident causes Y effect, and now Y is in the way of goal Z, etc. Unfortunately, a lot of the time, Inception: 1. failed to be coherent about cause and effect in the main action, and 2. seeded the first half with a lots of "causes" (a classic heist-movie staple) that were entirely glossed over in the second half.
WARNING, VAGUE SPOILERY TALK AHOY:
1. In the main action, the editing didn't make immediate connections between events in the "higher" dreams and effects in the lower dreams. Half the time, the film showed the effect in the "higher" dream first and then backtracked in time in the "lower" dream, which unspooled until we caught up with the effect from the "higher" dream, at which point all tension was lost. When I saw the movie, every time the film cut back to the super-slow-mo van in midair, everyone in the theater laughed, because it was so tension-deflating and absurd.
2. Perhaps more importantly, almost everything set up in the first half of the film was entirely unnecessary. The much-emphasized importance of getting a good Architect to build models for the dreams? Had absolutely nothing to do with the main heist (during that action, did you ever think "oh right, -that's- whose head we're in, because that person was trained on -that- model"? Me neither, because it was entirely ignored). The major secondary character who was introduced, at length, as "the character who exists to screw with the best-laid plans"? Entirely fails to be shown doing so during the heist. The character whose survival is set up as being essential for the payoff of the heist? Gets a one-line "oh, yeah, actually, it'll be fine even if I die" explanation mid-way through. Think back: did any plot point set up as being terribly important not get resolved (or just plain ignored) through no fault of the characters' own? Really?
I liked the idea of the movie. It had a great concept. It looked frickin' awesome. Problem is, it undercut its own tension at virtually every turn. Great idea (good actors! great costumes!), slack execution.
Goodness, that was a lot.
Oh, and there's a weird editing choice at the beginning, where we see a scene that only occurs after the action of the entire rest of the movie. It has no reason for being there, and would have been just fine at the end, in chronological order with the rest of the action. Unless I'm very dense (debatable!), I can't see why the editor chose to make such an unnecessarily confusing choice.
I haven't seen the movie, but here's a hint: the way the scenes are ordered is the decision of the writer or director, not the editor. So your answer is probably: it's just part of the Nolan Brand.
In that case, I blame everyone. ALL THE WAY DOWN TO THE CRAFT SERVICE PEOPLE.
Anyway, it's not a bad movie. It just could have been great.
Anything by Banks is great. Transition has a lot of gaps in logic, though.
YOU KNOW, I am a huge huge Banks consumer and Transition I am having a hard time getting into!
Oh man, I'm so glad that my "wait 'til paperback" insticts are paying off on that one. And I really like Banks, too.
I almost think he rushed this out before he thought through the concepts or the characters. But it's still an interesting read (he says optimistically).
You guys, I am too broke to be learning about new Iain Banks books I don't have yet!
So actually, in a perverse turn of events, I'm kind of glad that none of you think it matches up with his best work.
I haven't seen the movie, so I'll just say The Berenstain Bears Get a Case of the Gimmees.
You're welcome.
STC it's actually a Spongebob ripoff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oRTHLZJ7mo
(I know, I've posted this before.)
Ha! Thanks kitten. I have actually seen tht episode. Now I have to go check out the movie.
Other books with Leonardo DiCaprio on the cover include Revolutionary Road, The Beach, and Catch Me If You Can.
<3
You mean "Inception: The Novelization" isn't out yet?
Fermata by Nicholson Baker, LOL
That is a bad answer and you should feel bad for suggesting it.
AVOID.
That book was fascinating like unto a pornographic car crash. I wouldn't recommend it for anyone seeking anything other than a bizarre sci-fi jerkoff book, though.
@buzzorhowl: Given that metaphor, I'm obliged to recommend J. G. Ballard's "Crash," which actually is pornography about car crashes. Fun!
Aw, man. I was reading down the thread to make sure no one had pulled this out yet.
Queen of Angels is wonderful. I thought I was the only one who read Greg Bear. Also, Choire, by the same author, if you ever want to read a book so depressing it'll make you never want to get out of bed again? The Forge of God. It's kind of what the movie 2012 might have been if it were any good at all.
Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Lathe of Heaven" is thematically of a piece with Inception and totally awesome to boot. PBS recently released a DVD of their 1979 film adaptation, which is also quite good and freaked the hell out of me as a small child.
I was hoping someone else was thinking of Le Guin's book! I'd shunned the whole genre for much of my youth, but that book was a teenage revelation to me on how great sci-fi could be.
Check out the 1979 PBS adaptation. It was done on a budget of approximately nothing, which works to its advantage.
I haven't read 'Inception' but I'm just going to throw 'Ender's Game' out there as a recommendation.
Connie Willis — specifically Passage, Bellwether and Lincoln's Dreams — but all her books are pretty great.