All reviews copyright 1984-2024 Evelyn C. Leeper.
"The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi" by Pat Cadigan:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/28/2013]
"The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi" by Pat Cadigan was fine after I managed to dig through all the jargon Cadigan created ("decs", "Dirt years", "jellies, "two-stepper", and so on). it's a somewhat traditional premise, but the style is definitely more modern.
NOT SO FUNNY WHEN IT HAPPENED edited by Tim Cahill:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/18/2003]
Time to play catch-up. It's actually been a couple of weeks since I read NOT SO FUNNY WHEN IT HAPPENED, edited by Tim Cahill. This is a collection of "travel humor and misadventure," and is certainly more light-hearted than the Granta book I mentioned earlier. The first story was about how the Vietnamese ask travelers personal questions. The most common are "Are you married?" and "How many children do you have?" followed by "What is your salary?" or "How much did your camera/shoes/whatever cost?" But more than that, they are very disturbed if you are not married or have no children. So the advice is to say something like, "We have no children yet." (This advice, I have to say, is not very helpful when you are fifty or so.) John Wood was divorced and his attempts to conceal this led to the story, "How I Killed Off My Ex-Wife." There are also pieces by well-known humorists Bill Bryson, Dave Barry, David Sedaris, and Douglas Adams, and some travel cartoons as well. (Disclaimer: even though Mark's writing has been published in another book in the "Travelers' Tales" series, we have no other connection to them.)
PECKED TO DEATH BY DUCKS by Tim Cahill:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/01/2003]
Tim Cahill's travel essays are also cynical, though with more of a touch of humor (at least at times). In PECKED TO DEATH BY DUCKS, the first few essays, having to do with war, are less humorous (perhaps surreal is a better word), but it comes through in the rest. I'm not talking about rolling-on-the-floor-laughing funny, or even funny at the level of Bill Bryson, but a recognition of the basic ridiculousness of the situations Cahill finds himself in.
THE WONDERFUL FLIGHT TO THE MUSHROOM PLANET by Eleanor Cameron:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/26/2011]
One of the books chosen for discussion at the Worldcon this year was THE WONDERFUL FLIGHT TO THE MUSHROOM PLANET by Eleanor Cameron (ISBN 978-0-31612-540-6, although my copy is the 1966 first printing of the Scholastic Book Services edition--and looks it!). I read this ages ago (around 1960, if you must know), in a hardback edition checked out from the Rantoul, Illinois, public library, and I do not think I have read it since. How, when, and why I acquired this copy, I have no idea.
"It was a different time." That phrase shows up a lot, usually to explain why the incorrect attitudes of people in the past did not make them bad people. (One hears it repeatedly, for ironic effect, in the 2003 short alternate history film "The Negro Space Program".) Well, when one reads of an ad placed by an older man looking for "a boy, or two boys, between the ages of eight and eleven," and that parents would not be alarmed at such a thing, one can only conclude, "It was a different time."
Cameron tries to follow science, saying that it seems impossible that such a small moon as Basidium-X could have an atmosphere, and what a spectroscope is. But she gets a couple of things wrong. She has David talk about the "frozen, dark side [of the moon] nobody else has ever seen"--but the far side of the moon is not frozen or dark all the time. (Okay, maybe it is David who is confused, but that is just a rationalization for presenting incorrect science.)
Cameron refers to "mushrooms and other peculiar plants"; now we say that mushrooms are not plants at all. But that is reasonable, because in 1954, we said that mushrooms were plants. Now we define plants as life forms with chlorophyll, hence mushrooms are not plants, but fungi (a separate kingdom). It is an example, though, of how science fiction can become dated.
There is also a problem with David's conclusion about why the flight is noiseless. He thinks it is because they have broken the sound barrier (first done by humans just seven years before the book was written), but does not wonder why they can still hear the oxygen urn whistling. And the explanation of what escape velocity means is not quite right. They do not have to travel at escape velocity to escape the Earth; that applies only to ballistic rockets--those that have only a single blast to impart velocity to them, such as being fired from a cannon.
Is "tritetramethylbenzacarbonethylene" a reasonable name, or just chemical verbal fruit cocktail? And Cameron has David ask whether he will ever be a "space man", leading me to wonder about "space man" versus "spaceman".
Chuck has brown skin and dark hair, making me originally think he was possibly African-American, but since his grandfather had "snapping blue eyes [and] pink cheeks which were red-veined from all the storms he'd been in", and Chuck's face could turn "quite red with embarrassment", this seems unlikely. (An interracial marriage in the 1910s to 1940s is not an explanation to be accepted.) No, Chuck just has a tan.
The boys at one point walk on a very narrow path, "with their backs to the steep, damp cliff and their faces turned outward." But surely one would traverse this facing into the cliff?
Cameron also tries to add some poetry to the book (in the style sense, not in the rhyming verse sense): "In the dim light of early morning the roaring tide had come in, clawing and reaching with its strong gray fingers." And: "Now Mrs. Topman came and put out a finger to touch the great, satiny stones--each of a different hue: cobalt, verdigris, saffron, carnelian, vermilion, emerald, ultramarine, Tyrian purple, viridian--pulsing with color so deep that you could not take your eyes from the swaying, almost living thing in David's hands." I have to admit to be out of touch with current children's books; do they read like this now? (The latter does sound like Cameron grabbed a handful of crayons out of one of the larger Crayola assortments. Then again, I don't know if Crayola even makes these any more--so much has changed.)
Oddly enough, though throughout the book there was an emphasis on the idea that the boys would do all the building and traveling, without any adult help, when the time comes to form the Young Astronomers and Students of Space Travel, Mr. Bass insists that an adult shall be elected President. There is something strange, indeed, about an era when it seems fine to have two young boys travel around space on their own, but when they form a club, they have to have an adult leader.
I have no idea what is meant by "Drawings adapted from the original illustrations by Robert Henneberger". It is possible, I suppose, that the original hardback edition had more elaborate illustrations that Scholastic Books could not afford to reproduce. (One site said that the latest editions have no illustrations.) For people who want more, there are several sequels: STOWAWAY TO THE MUSHROOM PLANET, MR. BASS'S PLANETOID, A MYSTERY FOR MR. BASS, JEWELS FROM THE MOON AND THE METEOR THAT COULDN'T STAY, and TIME AND MR. BASS. Only the first is widely available.
THE LUSIADS by Camoens (translated by William C. Atkinson):
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/23/2013]
THE LUSIADS by Camoens (translated by William C. Atkinson, ISBN 978-0-14-044-026-3) is the "national epic of Portugal." (Do we have a national epic? Why not?) Written in the mid-sixteenth century, it is a poem recounting the voyage of Vasco de Gama in 1497-1498 from Portugal around the tip of Africa to India and back. Though originally in verse, Atkinson has rendered it in prose, and six pages of the introduction explain why.
In one respect, Camoens set himself an impossible task. Modeling his poem after such epics as THE ILIAD, THE ODYSSEY, and especially THE AENEID, he felt obliged to put in all the Roman gods fighting over whether to help or hinder de Gama, as well as mythological tales of the founding of Portugal (a.k.a. Lusitania) by Lusus, the son of Bacchus. At the same time he is writing about what a pious Christian nation Portugal is, and how evil the Muslim infidels are. There is a real disconnect here, particularly in Canto 7 where he rails for four pages about how the other Christian nations of Europe should be fighting the infidels in Turkey, and Egypt, and North Africa instea of each other, and then says, "Now let us see what is happening to our famous navigators, now that Venus has calmed the blustering fury of the hostile winds and they are come at last in sight of land, the goal of their so constant perseverance, the land to which they have come to spread the faith of Christ, bringing to its peoples a new way of life under a new sovereign." It is good to know that the Roman goddess Venus is helping to promote Christ, though a bit strange.
In keeping with the classical epic style, Camoens uses a lot of similes. For example, he writes, "When the provident ants impelled to unwonted effort by fear of the harsh winter ahead, move in cumbrous supplies to the ant-hill, they show a vigour none had believed possible. Such were the strivings now of the nymphs as they sought to avert from the Portuguese the fearsome end that lay in wait for them."
It is also a bit strange how Camoens is constantly talking about how the Muslims are deceptive and lie to de Gama, and then in Canto 8 has the following: "And now the devil, speaking true for once, revealed to one of [the heathen soothsayers of Calcutta] how the [Portuguese] would mean their perpetual subjection to an alien yoke and the destruction of their lives and property." Sometimes one has to wonder which side Camoens is really on. Then again, probably Camoens thought that the perpetual subjection of heathens to the "alien" yoke of Christianity and the destruction of their lives and property was a good thing.
THEY RANG UP THE POLICE by Joanna Cannan:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/06/2009]
THEY RANG UP THE POLICE by Joanna Cannan (ISBN-13 978-0-915230-27-3, ISBN-10 0-915230-27-5) is another 1930's mystery in the Agatha Christie vein. The sleuth in this (and its sequel DEATH AT THE DOG) is Inspector Guy Northeast, unusual for the time in that he was not an upper-class toff, or even a person of Sherlock Holmes's or Hecule Poirot's class (whatever that would be called), but more an Inspector Lestrade or Chief Inspector Japp. (Someone more familiar than I with the British class system might be able to express this better.)
(And was Joanna Cannan named on a day that the typewriters at Somerset House had only five working keys?)
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/28/2003]
I recently bought, but haven't yet read, the two boxed sets of Canongate Bible books. Yes, I already have a copy of the King James Bible, but these have introductions written by people such as E. L. Doctorow, A. S. Byatt, and the Dalai Lama. It's a bit confusing, because the first boxed set has different introductions for about half of the books, depending on whether one has the British or American editions. Will Self wrote an introduction for "Revelation", but it was apparently so outrageous that even Grove Press refused to run it, and ran another by Kathleen Norris instead. The same happened with Louis de Bernieres's introduction to "Job", replaced by one by Charles Frazier. On the other hand the replacement of E. L. Doctorow for evolutionist Steven Rose ("Genesis"), Francisco Goldman for A. N. Wilson ("Matthew"), Barry Hannah for Australian rock star Nick Cave ("Mark"), Thomas Cahill for Richard Holloway, Bishop of Edinburgh ("Luke"), and Darcey Steinke for Blake Morrison ("John") probably had more to do with switching to American authors than any content problems.
CLOSE TO SHORE by Michael Capuzzo:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/29/2016]
CLOSE TO SHORE by Michael Capuzzo (ISBN 978-0-7679-0414-8) is a book detailing the 1916 shark attacks in New Jersey, including two in Matawan Creek, just two or three miles from our house. But more than that, it is a picture of life in 1916. Capuzzo describes in detail the homes and lifestyles of people of that time, the rise of the Jersey Shore as a destination, the changing attitudes toward "ocean bathing" (swimming), the state of the knowledge of medicine, what was known then about sharks, what is known now about sharks, and so on. Alas, the one thing missing is an index. Given how easy it is to generate an index of at least the names and places mentioned in a book these days, there is really no excuse for omitting one.
As an example of his style (and of the sort of thing covered) consider this ObSF reference: "Dr. Vansant was astonished to read that many Americans were disappointed in [Professor William Curtis] Farabee's expedition [to British Guiana]. It was a great age of exploration, when Peary reached for the North Pole, and many believed Farabee had set out to find "the lost world" of Jurassic dinosaurs on a remote Amazonian plateau discovered by the British Professor Challenger in 1912. Dr. Vansant was mystified that the average man didn't seem to understand that both the Jurassic dinosaur and Professor Challenger were fictions in Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 bestseller THE LOST WORLD. Indeed Dr. Vansant was frequently struck by the ignorance of the public in scientific matters."
Some of what Capuzzo writes about ties in with a lot what I've been reading about animal intelligence. For example, "As it swam and grew, the shark adapted and learned by experience, but the ability to reason, suggested some experts, was beyond it. 'Reasoning implies the ability to integrate experience, forethought, rationality, learning ... into a complex decision-making process,' ichthyologist George Burgess of the University of Florida's Museum of Natural History says. 'Sharks, like most animals, simply react in predetermined ways that, from an evolutionary standpoint, are clearly effective--or else they wouldn't be here any longer!" Well, maybe yes, and maybe no. (I will have more to say about animal intelligence next week, when I comment on Franz de Waal's ARE WE SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW HOW SMART ANIMALS ARE?)
Lest anyone think that New Jersey was a liberal, Northern state, Capuzzo reports that in Asbury Park, "the St. Claire was advertising for 'colored waitresses,' [and] the Surf House for 'two experienced white chambermaids.'"
Capuzzo says that in the 1960s and 1970s scientists "began ... to accept the fact that there are no documented cases of an orca ever killing a man." There are such cases, of course, the first being in 1981, but Capuzzo is often sloppy with his tenses and probably meant that there were none in the 1960s and 1970s. There are even now, though, no documented cases of wild orcas killing a human.
All in all, this is an enthralling history of the New Jersey shark attacks of 1916.
THE CRYSTAL CITY by Orson Scott Card:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/20/2004]
Orson Scott Card's THE CRYSTAL CITY is the sixth of his "Alvin the Maker" series. The premise of this series is that the Aztecs defeated the Spaniards and the Puritans remained in power in Britain. It does an even worse job of standing alone [than MIDWINTER NIGHTINGALE], since apparently the first three chapters were removed to become the novella "The Yazoo Queen" in Robert Silverberg's anthology LEGENDS II. The result is that there are not just references to previous books which manage to be explained enough for new readers, but references to things in the first three (now missing) chapters that aren't explained. This will be particularly annoying to readers who buy all seven books (there's one more to come), and then discover that they still don't have a whole coherent story.
ENDER'S SHADOW by Orson Scott Card:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/19/2003]
My library science fiction discussion group read Orson Scott Card's ENDER'S SHADOW, a parallel book to ENDER'S GAME. Though people say it stands alone, I'm not convinced of that. (I read ENDER'S GAME years ago, so I can't completely judge.)
PASTWATCH: THE REDEMPTION OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
by Orson Scott Card
(Tor, ISBN 0-312-85058-1, 1996, 348pp, hardback):
There is a really interesting philosophical question here.
Unfortunately, Card manages to side-step it entirely.
In the future (our future), a time machine has been invented, but
it's not a chronoporter, it's a chronovisor. That is, you can't
travel to the past, just view it. (I found myself asking the same
question of this that I asked of Queen Tikka's television in
Phantom Empire: where were the cameras and microphones that were
sending these pictures?) Tagiri, one of the watchers, begins to
think they should go back and fix history to be better. (Why does
she think this when everyone is sure that time travel is
impossible?) One day Diko, her daughter who is also a watcher,
sees a vision appear to Columbus telling him to sail west.
Convinced that the vision is really a traveler from another
timeline (even though everyone has rejected the idea that there are
many parallel worlds), Diko manages to convince the project that 1)
they can build a time machine and 2) they should send her back to
change history. What about the fact that changing history will
wipe out there world? Card neatly postulates an eco-disaster that
will leave everyone dead in a few years anyway, so what the heck.
(I guess the lives of all those who lived in the mean time don't
count.)
In other words, Card raises the issue of whether changing the past
is ethical, given that doing so will cause the annihilation of
millions of people. And then he drops it. Oh, his characters
spend time talking about how much better the world will be for the
(as yet non-existent) people in the new world, without talking very
much at all about the fate of the currently existing people in the
old.
Card also makes a few other slips, On page 171, for example, he
claims that plagues sweeping through Americas wouldn't cause a
Tlaxcala empire to fall any more than plagues in Europe caused the
fall of empires there, but he overlooks the fact that the plagues
in Europe didn't kill 90% and the plagues in America would.
(Later, Card gets around this by having Diko spread a milder
version of everything to create an immunity.)
Card also has a devout Muslim say, "I spit on your Christ." Devout
Muslims consider Jesus a prophet and would never say such a thing.
It could be that Kemal is not a true Muslim, but since he is
portrayed as one, a little more accuracy and fairness would be
nice.
I also thought it ironic that, given that one of Diko's co-travelers
thinks the native American cultures superior, he
nonetheless makes a speech (on page 183) about how mating without
marriage is a repudiation of the community. The Americans he is so
eager to save didn't necessarily feel this way. Why does Card
insert this? To preach at the reader. Which is why I find the
thoughts (on page 187) of a character thinking about the expulsion
of the Jews from Spain particularly ironic: "No, the Jews had to be
expelled because as long as the weaker Christians could look around
them and see unbelievers prospering, see them marrying and having
children and living normal and decent lives, they would not be firm
in their faith that only in Christ is there happiness. The Jews
had to go." I wonder how many other readers realize that Card has
hit on the real reason that many people are against same-sex
marriages. I wonder if Card realized it.
Unfortunately, most of what Card is pushing is that the Europeans
were almost entirely evil, and that the native Americans were
almost entirely good, except for a few minor details like human
sacrifice. Card seems to have jumped on the political correctness
bandwagon here, overlooking the possibility that the lower
technological level in the Americas was what kept the native
Americans from being as successfully oppressive as the Europeans.
By giving the Americans a technology on a par with the Europeans,
it's quite possible that the time travelers could have created a
world in which the Americans conquered and enslaved the Europeans.
(Of course, Card wrote the book so they didn't. Heinlein was good
at this sort of thing also.)
And one final note: Card lists the sources that he used in
researching this book. The one source that seems to me the most
obvious and necessary he doesn't even mention: the letters of
Columbus himself, written to Ferdinand and Isabella and reporting
on his four voyages. It is available in a bilingual edition from
Dover Books.
EYEWITNESS TO HISTORY
edited by John Carey:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/22/2007]
Our book group chose selections from EYEWITNESS TO HISTORY edited
by John Carey (ISBN-10 0-380-72968-7, ISBN-13 978-0-380-72968-5)
for this month's discussion. After much debate we decided on
pages 1 through 174, along with the introduction. (This brought
us up to the founding of Jamestown in 1607, which seemed a good
cut-off point. We try to keep the page count per month under 300
pages.) The introduction was added at the last minute, when I
realized that it provided a fair amount for discussion, as Carey
talks about the history and philosophy of reportage. For
example, he cites Ben Jonson's 1626 play "The Staple of News" as
using "the self-evident absurdity of news-gathering as an
activity. History has not supported Jonson's judgement." He
also discusses the science fiction novel THE TIN MEN by Michael
Frayn (ISBN-10 0-006-54102-X, ISBN-13 978-0-006-54102-8).
"Blueprint for Armageddon"
by Dan Carlin:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/27/2014]
Even better than Tuchman's book, though, or at least more engaging
and involving, is Dan Carlin's "Hardcore History" podcast series
about World War I, "Blueprint for Armageddon". So far he has done
three episodes (totaling ten-and-a-half hours) and covered up
through 1915. You can find this at
http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hharchive.
JUNGLE OF STONE: THE EXTRAORDINARY JOURNEY OF JOHN L. STEPHENS AND
FREDERICK CATHERWOOD AND THE DISCOVERY OF THE LOST CIVILIZATION OF
THE MAYA
by William Carlson:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/01/2019]
JUNGLE OF STONE: THE EXTRAORDINARY JOURNEY OF JOHN L. STEPHENS AND
FREDERICK CATHERWOOD AND THE DISCOVERY OF THE LOST CIVILIZATION OF
THE MAYA by William Carlson (ISBN 978-0-06-240740-5) is the story
of two of the early archaeologists, who were best known for their
explorations of the Mayan ruins of Central America and Mexico,
though they began in Egypt and the Middle East. Catherwood is the
lesser-known of the two, though his precise drawings were crucial
to the understanding of these sites. Stephens did the writing, and
he also was quite thorough. There had been earlier explorers, but
they often spent more of their time writing about the people or the
terrain, and only a paragraph or two about the actual ruins. And
the explorers who did write about the ruins often let their
prejudices get in the way; they would claim, for example, that the
ruins looked Mediterranean and hence were built by the Phoenicians.
Jean-Frederic Waldeck, for example, drew the Pyramid of the
Magician at Uxmal to look very Egyptian, and put (non-existent)
elephants into the glyphs at Palenque. Waldeck also drew very
Egyptian-looking statues that simply did not exist, and in fact
Waldeck had never visited the sites where he claimed to have seen
them.
(Ironically, there are glyphs at Copan that actually do bear a
strong resemblance to elephants. These have generated much
discussion, with one theory being that a small number of mammoths
might have survived in the Americas until relatively recent
(paleontologically speaking) times.)
The main problem with many of the other illustrators is that the
structures and carvings don't look at all Mediterranean, but until
people accepted that the earth (and its people) were older than
6000 years, they could not envision how a totally unknown race
could even exist. Even after this, they resisted the notion that
the indigenous population could have constructed such elaborate
cities. Stephens and Catherwood went a long way towards showing
that the ancient Mayan civilization covered a broad area and was
totally unrelated to any "Old World" civilizations.
Carlson covers a lot of historical detail that Stephens's writing
ignores, such as the odd circumstances that led Stephens to end up
in Panama to start with. (He was sent as a diplomat after several
previous appointees had died, either in Panama, or before even
leaving the United States.) Carlson also describes the great
difficulties Stephens and Catherwood faced, and in general provides
the background, but clearly the key works to read are Stephens and
Catherwood's four volumes on the Maya (INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL IN
CENTRAL AMERICA, CIAPAS, AND YUCATAN in two volumes and INCIDENTS
OF TRAVEL IN YUCATAN in two volumes), as well as their INCIDENTS OF
TRAVEL IN EGYPT, ARABIA PETRAEA, AND THE HOLY LAND and INCIDENTS OF
TRAVEL IN GREECE, TURKEY, RUSSIA AND POLAND. BREAKING THE MAYA
CODE by Michael D. Coe is also well worth reading.
PAST IMPERFECT
edited by Mark Carnes:
NOVEL HISTORY
edited by Mark Carnes:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/23/2005]
In 1996, Mark C. Carnes edited PAST IMPERFECT (ISBN
0-8050-3760-8), in which historians wrote essays about various
(historical) films. For example, Jonathan D. Spence wrote about
SHANGHAI EXPRESS, and (as an example of the broad definition of
"history" used) Stephen Jay Gould wrote about JURASSIC PARK. Now
Carnes is back, with NOVEL HISTORY (ISBN 0-684-85765-0), in which
historians write about historical novels. And this time the
novelists (well, most of them) are given a chance to respond.
Part of what this means is that you can be reasonably sure that
none of the living authors are going to be completely trashed.
On the other hand, it probably would not be worthwhile to spend
time writing essays on bad books anyway. The one problem is that
if you are not familiar with the book being discussed, then the
discussion is not very meaningful. (This was less of a problem
in PAST IMPERFECT, as the movies chosen were far more widely
known.)
MANDEN FLORES A LA LUNA
by J. Carnicero:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/26/2016]
MANDEN FLORES A LA LUNA ("Send Flowers to the Moon") by
J. Carnicero (no ISBN; Toray, 1970) appears to be the Spanish
equivalent of half of an Ace Double. At about 24,000 words, it is
a novella, and a short one at that. Toray "Bolsilibros" ("pocket
books") were published in a number of genres, just like Ace
Doubles. (Yes, there were Western Ace Doubles, and probably other
genres as well.) Toray had six different Western lines, much as
a romance novel publishers today will have several lines (time
travel, contemporary, frontier, etc.). Toray had two SF
("Anticipation") lines: Science Fiction and Space. (The icon for
Science Fiction was a robot, so it was not strictly a hard/soft SF
split.) Each came out fifteen times a year and cost ten pesetas
(about 15 US cents at the time).
It is difficult to find information on many of these works (and
authors). Apparently, being an Anglo author had a certain cachet,
so, for example, Luis Garcia Leche wrote as "Louis G. Milk" and
Jose Leon Dominquez wrote as "Kelltom McIntire". ("Kelltom
McIntire" sounds as nicely inconspicuous for a pseudonym as "Ford
Prefect", but that's neither here nor there.) "J. Carnicero" does
not sound like a pseudonym, but it is; his real name is Jose Carlos
Canalda. (In Spanish, "carnicero" means "butcher" so I will
forever think of author Jim Butcher when I hear the name, even
though he is totally unconnected both linguistically and
personally.)
MANDEN FLORES A LA LUNA starts with a prologue--a dialogue between
(one presumes) the author and the "man in the street" ("hombre de
la calle"). The author is moved and inspired by the achievement in
1959 of landing a craft on the moon; the man in the street wants to
know why we are wasting money on this sort of thing. Carnicero's
response is a bit too much like "There will always be hunger,"
though he does note that the solution to world hunger involves
changing the nature of human beings, not just throwing money at the
problem. The man in the street wants to "make habitable" the
Sahara or the Amazon jungle. Nowadays most scientists have a
completely different attitude toward making the Amazon jungle
(more) habitable--it's a really bad idea, both in terms of loss of
possibly valuable plants and animals, and in terms of further
destruction of the parts of Earth's biosphere that produces oxygen.
One can only be pleased that we did not take the money from the
space program and spend it on cutting down the rain forests!
The story itself is about a moon mission. In the world of the
novella, there have already been several moon missions so this one
is just another mission, with little press coverage or attention
paid. Now this immediately brings to mind the Apollo 13 mission of
early 1970, since obviously something will happen to this mission
to make it exciting. (And it does.) Obvious plot twist,
coincidence, or just a short publishing cycle? Well, the fact that
Carnicero also writes about using "free return" (slingshotting
around the moon) just as Apollo 13 did, and of one of the
astronauts pulling off his bio-sensors because he is tired of
everyone knowing everything about his bodily functions (just as
happened with Apollo 13), makes me think this was written after
that mission.
At any rate, Carnicero writes, "What yesterday was big news and had
a big impact on the public consciousness, today nobody even
remembers it. These are the consequences of modern life," and that
pretty much sums up the later space missions.
One can say that Carnicero recognizes verisimilitude in having the
mission be an American one. While we in the United States are
accustomed to having space novels take place with American ships
and crews (though this is changing), near-future novels from other
countries did not have the luxury of having their characters be
familiar countrymen. And the near-future setting and the long
introspective passages, as well as the lack of a lot of
techno-babble, makes MANDEN FLORES A LA LUNA more in the style of Michael
Crichton and Martin Caidin than an "Analog"-style story.
However, for a short novella, it does have a lot of padding in the
middle. Almost a third of it consists of agonized waiting on earth
when contact is lost with the ship. And the very "Twilight Zone"
ending is totally at odds with the rest of the story.
[I realize that readers will not be able to go out to their local
used bookstore and pick up a copy of this. However, as a glimpse
into science fiction in the rest of the world in the 1970s, it
seemed worth covering.]
THE ITALIAN SECRETARY
by Caleb Carr:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/03/2005]
Caleb Carr's THE ITALIAN SECRETARY (ISBN 0-7867-1548-0) is a
straightforward Holmes story. The "Italian secretary" of the
title is David Rizzio (music teacher to Mary, Queen of Scots),
who was killed three hundred years ago. But his ghost may or may
not be involved in some very strange murders in Holyroodhouse in
Edinburgh. There are a couple of problems with this novel. One
is that Carr, although an historian, has no ear for the use (or
mis-use) of ahistorical words. So in the first dozen or so pages,
we run across such words as "odds-on", "sonic", and "electronic"
scattered among the supposedly Victorian prose, and each time
it's like tripping over a concealed rock. And I find the use of
the supernatural in Holmes stories problematic in general. At
the end either it turns out that there are supernatural goings-on
(which to my mind is completely contrary to the spirit of the
Sherlock Holmes canon--no pun intended), or there aren't, in
which case the reader feels they have been led down the garden
path. (Yes, in some of Doyle's stories, a ghost is suggested,
but Holmes immediately discounts that idea. I'm talking about
stories in which he is not so adamant.) Somehow, I just can't
recommend this book.
ALIAS SIMON HAWKE: FURTHER ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES IN NEW YORK
by Philip Carraher:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/30/2004]
Philip Carraher's ALIAS SIMON HAWKE: FURTHER ADVENTURES OF
SHERLOCK HOLMES IN NEW YORK (ISBN 1-4033-6992-5, 1st Books
Library) is another collection of mystery stories, in this case a
novella and three short stories set during a time when Sherlock
Holmes was incognito in New York after the incident at Reichenbach
Falls. Carraher tries, and his evocation of 1890s New York is a
reasonable substitute for Victorian London, but I miss Watson's
narrative style.
CONSTANTINE'S SWORD: THE CHURCH AND THE JEWS
by James Carroll:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/03/2008]
CONSTANTINE'S SWORD: THE CHURCH AND THE JEWS by James Carroll
(ISBN-13 978-0-618-21908-7, ISBN-10 0-618-21908-0) covers an
important topic--the attitude of the Roman Catholic Church towards
Jews through the ages. Unfortunately, it seems completely
unfocused. Carroll will talk about some historical period, then
veer off into a description of how he met Pope John XXIII, or
seeing some Catholic ceremony in Germany when he was a child, or
being in the anti-(Vietnam)-war movement. I can't help but feel
that he should have written two books: one a memoir of his life and
the other a history of anti-Semitism in the Church.
This anti-Semitism went through several phases. At times, the
belief that the Jews must remain to witness the final days was a
dominant factor. Other times, the drive to convert Jews was based
on the idea that if they just heard the "truth", they would
convert. A particularly counter-productive phase was the belief
that the Jews knew that Jesus was the Messiah, but refused to
convert out of contrariness and/or wickedness. (I find it ironic
that a few years ago I heard a variation of this argument from a
Jew, who argued that gays and lesbians knew that what they were
doing was wrong, but did it anyway out of wickedness.)
One of the digressions was actually fairly apt in its depiction of
how people turn history to their own ends. Carroll was constantly
told about his great-uncle in Ireland for whom he was named. "It
was the year of the Rising against the British, and he died an
Irish hero," his mother would say. So when Carroll went to
Ireland, he went to his ancestral town, and asked about whether his
great-uncle was buried there. Sure enough, he was directed to the
churchyard. "I pushed away high the grass away to read the
inscription: 'James Morrissey, RIP.' Sure enough, the date of his
death was 1916. [But] I now made out before his name the letters
'Pvt.,' and below it was the seal of the British Empire. I read
the words 'Killed in France.' I was confused only for a moment.
Private James Morrissey 'died an Irish hero in the year of the
Rising against the British,' but instead of as an Irish Republican
Brotherhood rebel, he died as a British soldier, fighting for the
king in the Great War."
TOP DOG
by Jerry Jay Carroll (Ace, ISBN 0-441-00368-0, 1996,
330pp, trade paperback):
William Bogart Ingersol awoke one morning to discover he had been
turned into a giant dog.
Well, maybe not giant, but definitely a dog. This is where the
resemblance to Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis ends, unless one
considers Ingersol's attempts to deal with his new body as
paralleling Gregor Samsoe's efforts. In fact, the rest of the
story is a more traditional fantasy, with wizards and magic and
such. But the conceit of having the main character a corporate
magnate transformed into a canine and transported into a magic
world gives this a new level that other such stories often lack. I
am not generally a high fantasy fan, but this (in my opinion) walks
the line between high fantasy and ... well, it's not low fantasy,
but whatever other sort of fantasy one finds. (Urban fantasy, just
a bit?) If you're looking for a fantasy that stands out for its
originality, I would recommend Top Dog.
REMARKABLE CREATURES: EPIC ADVENTURES IN THE SEARCH FOR THE ORIGINS
OF SPECIES
by Sean B. Carroll:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/17/2009]
REMARKABLE CREATURES: EPIC ADVENTURES IN THE SEARCH FOR THE ORIGINS
OF SPECIES by Sean B. Carroll (ISBN-13 978-0-151-01485-9, ISBN-10
0-15101-485-X) pointed out what a remarkable anniversary year 2009
is. Most people who follow this sort of thing are aware that it is
the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. But it is
also the 150th anniversary of the publication of ORIGIN OF SPECIES,
the 100the anniversary of the discovery of the Burgess Shale, and
the 50th anniversary of the first hominid finds by the Leakeys in
east Africa. (And it is apparently the 30th anniversary of when
Luis and Frank Alvarez, Frank Asaro, and Helen Michael wrote their
paper on the Chicxulub asteroid extinction at the end of the
Mezozoic, since it was published in the June 1980 issue of
SCIENCE.)
"Badass Moms in the Zombie Apocalypse"
by Rae Carson:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/04/21]
"Badass Moms in the Zombie Apocalypse", Rae Carson (UNCANNY
MAGAZINE, January/February 2020): My main problem with this is that
there seems to be a never-ending stream of post-apocalyptic zombie
movies these days. (Well, more like a surging river, and "these
days" is more like "at least the last twenty years".) Is it right
to downgrade because of that? Who knows?
ABC FOR BOOK COLLECTORS
by John Carter, revised by Nicolas Barker:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/28/2007]
ABC FOR BOOK COLLECTORS by John Carter, revised by Nicolas Barker
(ISBN-13 978-1-584-56112-5, ISBN-10 1-584-56112-2) is a
delightful book that covers all the terms a serious book
collector needs. The problem for the rest of us is that we may
not have as much interest in the fine distinctions among types of
leather binding as serious collectors. Personally, when I am
describing my collection of science fiction paperbacks, the terms
"crushed Morocco" and "Levant leather" rarely arise.
However, there is enough to make flipping through it worthwhile
for people who love books even if the books are not two hundred
years old, bound in leather, and inscribed.
For example, Carter (or Barker) has a clear opinion on the
question of whether advance copies are the true first editions:
"But they do not (as is sometimes suggested) represent a first
or early issue in the proper sense of the word; nor can the
existence of fifty advance copies of a book prejudice in any way
the firstness of the first edition as issued on the day of
publication." He refers to this preference for an advance copy
as "the chronological obsession", of which he says, "if a
slightly acid note is discernible in the comments offered [in
various entries] in this book on the more extreme manifestations
of priority-consciousness, it must be set down to the conviction
that all extremes are a bore."
Of deckle edges, he says (or they say--it is not always clear
what is Carter and what is Barker), "They have, certainly, a sort
of antiquarian charm, ..., but they collect dust and, being
technically obsolete for a century and a half, hardly avoid a
self-conscious air. In books of reference they are intolerable."
The item on dos-a-dos binding says that it is usually done on
"service books or works of piety" but does not even mention Ace
Doubles.
Carter (or Barker) does not suffer fools gladly. Of "else fine"
he says, "A favourite phrase with the never-say-die type of
cataloguer, used in such contexts as 'somewhat wormed and
age-stained, piece torn from title, headlines cut into, joints
repaired, new lettering-piece, else fine.'" And of
"excessively": "An adverb of enthusiasm, frequently and
irritatingly mis-used with the adjective 'rare'. Rarity may be
extreme, notorious, ultimate, even legendary; but it cannot be
excessive."
One of the best things about this book, though, is that it labels
all its parts with the correct terms. So the loose endpaper has
"loose endpaper" printed on it in small capitals, the righthand
edge of it has "fore-edge", and so on. The only parts not so
labeled are the outside of the dust jacket. [This was true of
the Seventh Edition; I assume it will continue in future
editions/printings as well.]
PLATO AND A PLATYPUS WALK INTO A BAR: UNDERSTANDING PHILOSOPHY THROUGH JOKES
by Tom Cathcart and Dan Klein:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/30/2007]
PLATO AND A PLATYPUS WALK INTO A BAR: UNDERSTANDING PHILOSOPHY
THROUGH JOKES by Tom Cathcart and Dan Klein (ISBN-13
978-0-8109-1493-3, ISBN-10 0-8109-1493-X) gives a very sketchy
outline of such topics as metaphysics, logic, ethics, and so on.
Each aspect of the topic is illustrated with jokes so, for
example, a paragraph on utilitarianism is followed by a joke
illustrating (or refuting) it. My problems with the book are
that the philosophy is fairly superficial, and the jokes fairly
old. It is clearly intended as a book intended to make people
feel they are reading something edifying, while not taxing them
too much. There is a brief (humorous) glossary, but no index.
This is okay for a quick read, but don't mistake it for a useful
text on philosophy.
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/10/2009]
I had read PLATO AND A PLATYPUS WALK INTO A BAR: UNDERSTANDING
PHILOSOPHY THROUGH JOKES by Tom Cathcart and Dan Klein (read by
Johnny Heller, ISBN-13 978-1-428-17376-7, ISBN-10 1-428-17376-5)
before, but I listened to it on a recent trip. (The selection of
books on CD near me is not very extensive--at least in ones that
interest me--and most cheap rental cars do not have an input jack.)
As I said before, the philosophy is fairly superficial, and the
jokes fairly old. I had hoped the latter at least would improve by
hearing them spoken rather than reading them, but no such luck. On
the other hand, it was better than four hours of repetitive news
radio.
I did notice a couple of errors that I either had not caught or did
not remember from the book. A housewife is told that a certain
household appliance that would cut her work in half. "Great, I'll
take two!" she says. The authors point out that this is wrong; two
would only cut it by three-quarters. Fine, but then they say three
would cut it by five-sixths. Bzzzt! But thank you for playing.
Another joke has a museum guard telling someone that the dinosaur
bones on display are three million four years and six months old.
How does he know so exactly? Well, when he started he was told
they were three million years old, and that was four-and-a-half
years ago. Since the dinosaurs died out sixty-five million years
ago, this is way off.
DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP
by Willa Cather:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/01/2016]
DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP by Willa Cather (ISBN
978-0-679-72889-4) is considered a classic, but while modern audiences can
read it as a description of the landscapes and scenery of New
Mexico, they will probably also find the human aspects troubling.
It starts with three Cardinals in Rome needing to name a bishop for
the new See of New Mexico. The Bishop of Durango has written to
suggest one of his priests, but the Bishop from America who is in
Rome says, "[It] would be a great misfortune if a native priest
were appointed; they have never done well in that field." This is
the same feeling expressed by Abner Hale in James Michener's
HAWAII--he keeps asking his superiors back on the mainland to send
more ministers and refuses to ordain any native Hawaiians. Maybe
this was a common trait among missionaries, but in DEATH COMES FOR
THE ARCHBISHOP it is just the first of many rather patronizing
comments about the native Latino population. Cather is much more
respectful towards the Navajos, and does make her worst "villains"
white people, but her attitude towards other races seems to
consider them as children who need to be (gently) disciplined and
taught.
This is reinforced by such asides as, "The Mexicans were children
who played with their religion." Of the Native Americans on the
other hand, she writes, "It was the Indian's way to pass through a
country without disturbing anything," "They seemed to have none of
the European's desire to 'master' nature," and (of two Zuni
runners) "their bodies disappearing and reappearing among the sand
dunes, like the shadows that eagles cast in their strong, unhurried
flight." The Archbishop (and presumably Cather herself) sees them
as a part of nature, not as people. To him, they have no desire to
change, to improve their condition. Given that, could they be true
Catholics, could they convert from their old way of life to a new
one? If the Bishop at the beginning of the novel was against
making Mexicans anything higher than an ordinary priest, then the
Archbishop here would probably not accept Navajos even as priests.
(I will also note that Cather and her characters consistently refer
to characters as Mexicans, even though they are living in American
territory and are presumably Mexican-Americans. Then again, even
today people refer to Mexican-Americans (and often other Latinos as
well) as "Mexicans", so this shouldn't surprise me. After all,
this was written in 1927.)
Like I say, the descriptions are poetic, but the social attitudes
seem very dated. I cannot say it worked for me, but Catholics may
find some of the religious meditations more meaningful than I did.
REVISITING NARNIA: FANTASY, MYTH AND RELIGION IN C. S. LEWIS' CHRONICLES
edited by Shanna Caughy:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/17/2007]
The BBC ran an adaptation of C. S. Lewis's "Chronicles of
Narnia"--all seven books, running about twenty-four hours in
total. We listened to this (over several days), and I also read
REVISITING NARNIA: FANTASY, MYTH AND RELIGION IN C. S. LEWIS'
CHRONICLES edited by Shanna Caughy (ISBN-13 978-1-932100-63-1,
ISBN-10 1-932100-63-6). This is a collection of essays about the
Narnia books from various perspectives. For example, in "Greek
Delight" Nick Mamatas explains how Lewis's theology is very Roman
Catholic and often completely at odds with the Greek Orthodox
view of God and Jesus. (And also how if you want to recreate the
taste of Turkish Delight, you should "find a well-worn sliver of
fragrant soap, dip it in confectioner's sugar, and eat it."
Naomi Woods's "God in the Details" makes a lot of points I agree
with. Woods says that at times it seems as if Aslan had created
Narnia for the benefit of children from Earth, so that they could
come there and learn spiritual/religious lessons. Also, all the
good children seem priggish, possibly because what Aslan teaches
is blind obedience to him. Lewis at times uses characters' looks
to signal that they are not the "good guys": "prim dumpy little
girls with fat legs" or boys who look like pigs. Eustace's love
of informational books and his parents' vegetarianism are
considered negative qualities, and the Calormenes embody all the
negative stereotypes of the Arabs.
There are two essays on the "correct" reading order for the
books. They agree that the correct order is that in which they
were written, but for completely different reasons.
My own observation is that in THE LAST BATTLE, Shift (the ape)
deceives everyone by telling them that they cannot speak to Aslan
directly, but only through him. This sounds to me very much like
the traditional Catholic view that the priest is needed to
intercede between God and man, and I was a bit surprised to see
Lewis show that as such a negative thing and prone to abuse.
And if the end of THE LAST BATTLE is "the beginning of the real
story", what kind of story can it be, with no conflict and no
change? "The term is over; the holidays have begun." But what
is the purpose of a never-ending holiday? It may be enjoyable,
but as a story, it is not very interesting.
24 FAVORITE ONE-ACT PLAYS
edited by Bennett Cerf and Van H. Cartmell:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/07/2003]
I also finished 24 FAVORITE ONE-ACT PLAYS edited by Bennett
Cerf and Van H. Cartmell. These may be their favorite plays,
but many of them are completely fprgotten today. Then again,
one-act plays don't lend themselves to the sort of theater one
finds today, except maybe in pairs or trios by a local theater
group. There was even a Lord Dunsany play ("The Jest of
Hahalaba"). (I looked this up on amazon.com and discovered that
the same collection is now listed as edited by Van H. Cartmell as
the primary editor.)
THE REEL CIVIL WAR
by Bruce Chadwick:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/07/2005]
Bruce Chadwick's THE REEL CIVIL WAR (ISBN 0-375-70832-4) takes a
distinct "anti-Southern" position, but nonetheless offers some
interesting viewpoints on films about the Civil War. I say
"anti-Southern" because Chadwick seems to see any indication that
Southerners were brave, or noble, or had any higher feelings as a
denial of the brutality of slavery. The result is that he
criticizes any film that doesn't show the South and Southerners as
completely without redeeming characteristics. On the other hand,
he does cover a lot of films which were far too slanted towards
the South, and it's possibly that this tendency has led to a
backlash from him. It's certainly interesting to read about all
the forgotten Civil War films of the first half of the 20th
century.
A PSALM FOR THE WILD-BUILT
by Becky Chambers:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/24/22]
A PSALM FOR THE WILD-BUILT by Becky Chambers (Tordotcom, ISBN
978-1-250-23621-0) is set on a not-Earth (at least based on the
description of the geography) that has gone through the Awakening
(when robots became self-aware and separated themselves from
humans) and the Transition (when civilization apparently scaled
itself way back to fit better ecologically into the world). Dex
is a monk who is trying to find their purpose. Along the way, they
meet Mosscap, a robot trying to understand humans. There is more
than just the usual human-robot failure to understand each other
(though certainly there is that), including a long discussion of
what anyone's or anything's "purpose". Recommended.
TO BE TAUGHT, IF FORTUNATE
by Becky Chambers:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/25/2019]
TO BE TAUGHT, IF FORTUNATE by Becky Chambers (ISBN 978-0-06-293601-1) is an interesting merger of Golden Age science fiction and
modern sensibilities. It is a story of interstellar exploration,
told in four sections, one for each of the planets explored. There
is an ice planet (Aecor), a lush planet (Mirabilis), an ocean
planet (Opera), and a tidally-locked planet (Votum). These are
pretty straightforward classic planetary exploration stories. The
modern aspects include no faster-than-light travel (they travel in
suspended animation), genetic engineering to enhance the explorers
abilities to survive in the various environments, the diversity of
the crew, and the situation on Earth, both before and during the
trip.
Obviously, even without FTL travel, there is some hand-waving here:
we don't have either the long sleep capability or the genetic
engineering yet, so the story is placed at the start of the 22nd
century. There is some concession to climate change and sea level
rise, but it seems to be much delayed from what is currently
predicted.
For those looking for science fiction like they used to write, but
without the prejudices, biases, and (often) over-simplification of
much of the fiction of that time, TO BE TAUGHT, IF FORTUNATE is an
excellent choice.
CLASSIC AND ICONOCLASTIC ALTERNATE HISTORY SCIENCE FICTION
by Edgar L. Chapman and Carl B. Yoke:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/19/2004]
Most of the books that I receive as a judge for the Sidewise
Awards are straight alternate history. (There are also some
straight fantasies that publishers send, either out of confusion
about the award, or the hope that we may decide they are alternate
history after all.) But occasionally we get a non-fiction study
of alternate histories. This year it was Edgar L. Chapman and
Carl B. Yoke's CLASSIC AND ICONOCLASTIC ALTERNATE HISTORY SCIENCE
FICTION. Published by the Edwin Mellen Press, it consists of
fifteen essays by various authors. With titles such as
"Metafiction and the Gnostic Quest in 'The Man in the High
Castle': Dick's Alternate History Classic After Four Decades", it
is clear that these are not casual jottings, but works that could
be described as "academic" and (one suspects) would probably count
as publications needed in the "publish-or-perish" game. Which is
not to say that they are not of interest value. (I found Robert
Geary's essay on Ward Moore's BRING THE JUBILEE particularly
valuable, though perhaps that is because two friends have just
read this book independently of each other.) I will admit that
some essays depended too much on literary theories that I was
unfamiliar with. If you understand the concept that "the
distinctive focus in THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE is on hermeneutic
activity, on the process of interpretation itself and on questions
about the interrelationship of reality, history, and text (or
artifact)," then this may be the book for you. Except for one
small detail--the book's list price is $119.95! Some research
indicates that Mellen Press is an academic vanity press, which
probably explains the price. (Many of the individual papers, I
should point out, were presented at the more traditionally
legitimate venue of the International Association for the
Fantastic in the Arts in Florida.) Now I realize that if you
bought some of today's alternate history series in hardcover,
you'd be paying this much, but I still cannot recommend this. And
I'm guessing even your public library won't have it. You might
try an academic library, or there are used copies available for
"only" about $85.
40 DAYS AND 40 NIGHTS: DARWIN, INTELLIGENT DESIGN, GOD,
OXYCONTIN, AND OTHER ODDITIES ON TRIAL IN PENNSYLVANIA
by Matthew Chapman:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/21/2007]
40 DAYS AND 40 NIGHTS: DARWIN, INTELLIGENT DESIGN, GOD,
OXYCONTIN, AND OTHER ODDITIES ON TRIAL IN PENNSYLVANIA by Matthew
Chapman (ISBN-13 978-0-061-17945-7, ISBN-10 0-061-17945-0) is an
account of the Kitzmiller v Dover case of 2005, with several
parents suing the Board of Education in Dover, Pennsylvania, over
its attempt to introduce "intelligent design" into high school
biology classes. Chapman just happens to be the great-great-grandson
of Charles Darwin (which does not seem to have
influenced his views), and was raised and educated in Britain
(which does). Even though many European countries have official
state religions, they seem to have no problem with teaching
evolution in the schools, and no interest in cluttering it up
with "intelligent design", "creationism", or "last Tuesdayism".
In fact, on the whole they think Americans are a bit loony to
have a problem with evolution at all.
Anyway, the book covers the trial, but also includes a lot of
editorializing by Chapman. I particularly found Chapman's
personal opinions of all the participants annoying at times,
though others may prefer his approach. A better (in my opinion)
account was "Nova"'s "Judgment Day--Intelligent Design on Trial".
(This uses recreations for the trial scenes, so there may be
undetectable bias. This can be watched on-line at
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/program.html.)
Chapman's title comes from an exchange at the end of the trial.
One of the defense lawyers said, "By my reckoning, this is the
fortieth day since the trial began, and tonight will be the
fortieth night, and I would like to know if you did that on
purpose?" Judge Jones replied, "That is an interesting
coincidence, but it was not by design."
Oh, and the outcome? The plaintiffs (who opposed the teaching of
intelligent design) won. Judge Jones minced no words when he
referred to "the breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision" to
promote intelligent design. Ironically, by the time the Board of
Education lost, though, almost all those who had tried to promote
intelligent design had been replaced by "evolutionists" in the
fall 2005 election. (In fact, one of the new Board members was
also a plaintiff in the case.) So in some sense the winners had
to pay the fine and costs anyway!
THROUGH THE ALIMENTARY CANAL WITH GUN AND CAMERA
by George Chappell:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/07/2003]
If you have any friends who are doctors, you should point them
towards George Chappell's THROUGH THE ALIMENTARY CANAL WITH GUN
AND CAMERA, an older novel (or possibly novella) of a tour of the
human body written in the style of late 19th century travelogues.
DEFINING MOMENTS IN BOOKS
edited by Lucy Daniel:
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN UNKNOWN INDIAN
by Nirad C. Chaudhuri:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/06/2018]
I have been reading DEFINING MOMENTS IN BOOKS edited by Lucy Daniel
(ISBN 978-1-844-03605-9) which has hundreds of paragraphs on
important books, writers, characters, and moments in 20th century
literary history. Not surprisingly, this has resulted in books
being added to my reading list. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN UNKNOWN
INDIAN by Nirad C. Chaudhuri (ISBN 978-0-201-15576-1) was one of
these, and when it showed up at the Bryn Mawr book sale less than a
week after I put it on the list, it just seemed serendipitous.
Written in 1951 (shortly after Partition), it covers Chaudhuri's
life through 1921, albeit with a few references to the politics of
Partition. Chaudhuri has been accused of too much Anglophilia,
although he was also supportive of the right-wing nationalist
movement in India. Some of this is apparent in THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF AN UNKNOWN INDIAN, of course, but mostly it is an utterly
enthralling portrait of India--or rather, one Bengali's experience
of Bengal and Kolkata--in the first two decades of the 20th
century.
One of the most obvious examples of referencing the later history
of the region is Chaudhuri's discussion of the dissension over the
British partition of the Bengal Presidency (subdivision) in 1905
into Eastern and Western Bengal; the two were re-united in 1911.
THE CHERRY ORCHARD
by Anton Chekhov:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/13/2010]
We recently watched a 1962 BBC production of THE CHERRY ORCHARD by
Anton Chekhov and I was stuck by how topical it was. The mother,
faced with having to pay taxes on the estate, basically decides to
bury her head in the sand and refuse to take any action. For
example, she could save the house by selling the cherry orchard,
but apparently doesn't think she should have to make any sacrifices
and so refuses to do so. This reminded me of people now who want
to keep getting Social Security, Medicare, police, road
maintenance, etc., but not to have to pay the taxes to support
those services.
The mother also does not want to take the alternative of cutting
down the orchard and leasing the plots of land either. Nowadays,
of course, her attitude would fit right in with the idea of
preservation of "greenspace", but I don't think that was Chekhov's
intent. (In specific, the characters talk about how no one is
buying the cherries anymore, and they've even forgotten how to make
cherry jam.) Rather, she refuses to realize that unless she takes
action, the orchard will be sold and then be cut down anyway. This
too is familiar--people bemoaning how they don't like all the
changes going on and how they want to freeze everything in place.
The mother here has her nice house, beautiful view of the orchard,
access to the river--and she doesn't want other people to have any
of those things because that means giving up a bit of what she has.
It may be a stretch, but all the people whose ancestors got here
before there were immigration restrictions and took land that no
one else was using (except the Indians, who didn't count), are now
complaining about immigrants in just the same way. (One I know not
only had ancestors who got here a couple of hundred years ago, but
apparently further back they were among those who came over to
England with the Norman invaders. I guess invading another country
is better than being an illegal immigrant.)
And in THE CHERRY ORCHARD, who eventually buys the orchard? A man
whose grandfather used to be a serf on the estate before
emancipation (1861). Not surprisingly, he has no great emotional
attachment to the accoutrements of the landed gentry--he sees the
orchard as an impediment to be removed in order to get full value
from the land. This is not surprising--I doubt that the
grandchildren of slaves here would have been too upset to see the
plantations sold and broken up so that houses could be built on
small plots that they might be able to own.
THE COMIC STORIES
by Anton Chekhov:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/13/2006]
I discovered THE COMIC STORIES by Anton Chekhov (translated by
Harvey Pitcher, ISBN 1-56663-242-0) from listening to "Cutting a
Dash", a BBC show based on Lynne Truss's writings about
punctuation. (She later wrote a book on the subject, EATS,
SHOOTS & LEAVES, which I reviewed in the 12/03/04 issue of the MT
VOID.) In her discussion of the exclamation mark on the show,
Truss quotes from the Chekhov story "The Exclamation Mark". When
I went to find this story, I discovered that the various web
sites that claim to have all of Chekhov's stories did not have
this one, and indeed, this collection is this story's first
appearance in English. These stories are not comic in the same
way that P. G. Wodehouse or Damon Runyon or even Nikolai Gogol is
comic, but they are amusing. My problem is that because I
borrowed this from a distant library, I have to read the thirty
stories too close together (even with a three-week loan period).
Reading too many comic stories too close together is like eating
a pound of chocolate at one sitting. So if you have a taste for
Chekhov's humor, this book might be better purchased than
borrowed.
WASTE TIDE
by Chen Quifan:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/01/2019]
WASTE TIDE by Chen Quifan (translated by Ken Liu) (Tor,
ISBN 978-0-765-38931-2) takes place in the near future on Giuyu Island in
China dedicated to recycling materials from electronic waste. The island sounds like a horrific dystopia; the fact is that Guiyu is a
real place now. (A few years ago it was the largest e-waste
recycling site in the world.) WASTE TIDE is definitely a novel in
the category of "if this goes on."
THE WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD
by Apsley Cherry-Garrard:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/17/2020]
THE WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD by Apsley Cherry-Garrard (Carroll &
Graf, ISBN 978-0-7867-0437-8) is an account of Scott's expedition
to the South Pole (1910-1913), told primarily in the first person
by Cherry-Garrard, with extensive quotes from the diaries of other
expedition members.
When you think of what supplies a polar expedition should bring,
you probably don't think of what Cherry-Garrard thinks is
important: "Rash statements on questions of fact were always
dangerous, for our small community contained so many specialists
that errors were soon exposed. At the same time there were few
parts of the world that one or other of us had not visited at least
once. Later, when we came to our own limited quarters, books of
reference were constantly in demand to settle disputes. Such books
as the Times Atlas, a good encyclopaedia and even a Latin
Dictionary are invaluable to such expeditions for this purpose. To
them I would add Who's Who."
Considering how bad the journey was, there was plenty of humor,
such as, "It was very dark, and I mistook a small bag of curry
powder for the cocoa bag, and made cocoa with that, mixed with
sugar; Crean drank his right down before discovering anything was
wrong."
As for why the expedition failed ... wait, let me attempt to
re-phrase that. Scott's attempt to be the first to reach the South
Pole failed, and his attempt to reach the South Pole and return
failed, but the expedition had several other objections: to recover
Emperor penguins eggs at a particular stage of development, to
discover fossils (if any existed), to make meteorological
measurements, to determine what was the best way to equip polar
expeditions, and so on. Indeed, the title refers not to the
journey to the Pole, but to the winter journey to the penguin
nesting grounds to collect the eggs. In all of these other goals,
they did remarkably well. The one notable failure was Scott's
attempt to reach the Pole first and to return.
So why did this fail? The Jesuit motto is "Age Quod Agis": "Do
What You Are Doing". Amundsen, who reached the South Pole five
weeks before Scott, and returned successfully, followed this motto.
He had one objective: the South Pole. He landed as close as
possible to it, albeit in an unexplored area, and started sixty
miles closer to the Pole than Scott. Scott used dogs, ponies, and
motorized transport, and was fairly ignorant of how to use any of
them well. But this diversification meant he needed to carry two
kinds of food, plus fuel. Amundsen used only dogs, and had
experienced dog drivers plus the knowledge he had learned from the
Inuit in his earlier North West Passage expedition. Amundsen had
experienced skiers in his party; Scott did not. Scott changed his
plans during the journey in two significant ways: at the point
where the final group was to head for the Pole, Scottt decided to
take five men instead of four, and he also took the dogs further
than planned, requiring killing the ponies to feed them.
There were many other reasons, but the ones above all point to the
fact that Amundsen had a single goal, made a definite plan based on
firm knowledge, prepared for it, and stuck to the plan, while Scott
had multiple goals and a plan made with insufficient knowledge that
he therefore had to keep modifying, and made unnecessary
modifications even beyond these. Age quod agis.
This is not to criticize Scott's bravery or nobility (or that of
any of the expedition). But bravery and nobility are not a
substitute for knowledge and planning. There was much that Scott
could not know (e.g., the importance of vitamins in the diet, or
just how many calories each man would need), but the fact that
Amundsen returned says that while these were contributing factors,
they were not the determining factors.
mysteries
by Agatha Christie:
THE INNOCENCE OF FATHER BROWN
by G. K. Chesterton:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/29/23]
I've been doing a lot of re-reading lately. While enjoyable, it
doesn't lend itself to a lot of new observations. Agatha
Christie's "Hercule Poirot" short stories, because they are short
stories, don't have a lot of complex plotting to comment on. This
might actually be a good thing--it prevents a lot of the multiple
coincidences that often pepper her other works. For example, A
MURDER IS ANNOUNCED has *two* instances of people key to the plot
just happening to show up--independently--in the village, and
someone else accidentally overhearing a key conversation. And
several novels have characters suspected in a murder who turn out
to be drug smugglers or antiquities thieves or atomic spies who
have nothing to do with the murder.
I also re-read THE INNOCENCE OF FATHER BROWN by G. K. Chesterton,
containing such classic stories as "The Hammer of God" and "The Eye
of Apollo". Chesterton seems to have imbued his Father Brown with
an incredible ability to cause criminals to repent and confess
their crimes. Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple always solved the
crimes, but relied on making sure that the police had the evidence
necessary to arrest and convict the criminal. Yes, sometimes the
criminal confessed (in MURDER IN MESOPOTAMIA, quite unbelievably),
but often these were confessions tricked out of them (in CARDS ON
THE TABLE, by producing a fake eyewitness). Father Brown appeals
to their higher natures. Christie's murderers often had no higher
nature.
THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH
by G. K. Chesterton:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/15/2005]
G. K. Chesterton's THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (ISBN 0-486-43178-9)
has no relation to either of the Hitchcock films of that title,
but is rather a collection of eight stories about sleuth Horne
Fisher, who "knows too much" about the British upper class. The
stories have Chesterton's literary flair, but are not as
appealing as his "Father Brown" stories, perhaps because Fisher
is not as appealing as Father Brown. And I came to this
conclusion well before I read the following speech by Fisher:
"...if you think I'm going to let the Union Jack go down and down
eternally, down in defeat and derision, amid the jeers of the
very Jews who have sucked us dry--no I won't, and that's flat;
not if the Chancellor were blackmailed by twenty millionaires
with their gutter rags, not if the Prime Minister married twenty
Yankee Jewesses, ...." (page 71-72) (Yeah, I know--I seem to be
seeing this sort of thing everywhere. Trust me, I'm not choosing
books trying to find these.)
GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING
by Tracy Chevalier:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/28/2003]
Our library group read Tracy Chevalier's GIRL WITH A PEARL
EARRING. I wish I could say I liked it, but it really didn't do
anything for me. People apparently liked the way it evoked that
period in Delft, but as someone who reads a lot of
"world-building" books (for worlds both historical and fantastical), I
didn't think it was exceptional. And in fact, several other
people found it not as enthralling as the reviews would make one
think. It is popular with reading groups, and I would attribute
this to two facts: it's short (233 pages), and its protagonist is
a woman (a girl, actually). Since most reading groups are either
all-female or mostly female, the books popular with them seem to
have a preponderance of female protagonists. I suppose I should
suggest some Joanna Russ or James Schmitz (although female authors
seem to get extra points also).
FINDERS KEEPERS: A TALE OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL PLUNDER AND OBSESSION
by Craig Childs:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/22/2017]
FINDERS KEEPERS: A TALE OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL PLUNDER AND OBSESSION by
Craig Childs (ISBN 978-0-316-06642-6) is a book with an agenda.
Childs is using the phrase "finders keepers" ironically (or
possibly sarcastically). Far from believing that people who have
found archaeological artifacts are entitled to them, he does not
believe anyone is entitled to them--they should remain in the
ground (or wherever they are). Museums should not get them--they
are already overflowing with artifacts in storage rooms. Even the
indigenous people (or whatever group is associated with them)
should not get them--he describes one tribe that is digging up
their artifacts and selling them to support the tribe.
Childs does somewhat grudgingly acknowledge that "salvage
archaeology" (removing artifacts that are discovered when a new
subway tunnel is dug, or the ground excavated for a new building,
for example) may be necessary. When he asked a Phoenix area
developer how he felt about destroying a Hohokam burial ground
(which involved removing all the corpses and giving them to the
local tribes (who are not Hohokam, but claim descent from them),
the developer said, "Tell me a place you can dig in the valley
without hitting something Hohokam."
But in general Childs believes that what is in the ground should
stay in the ground. If he thinks there is value in studying what
is found, he also believes it should be returned to where it was
found--exactly--in the same state in which it was found. He
believes this even though he realizes that doing that leaves it
vulnerable to "pot diggers", but since he does not think putting
things in a museum is any better than putting them in a private
home, this does not change his mind.
THE AWAKENING
by Kate Chopin:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/01/2004]
The general library discussion group chose Kate Chopin's THE
AWAKENING (ISBN 0-486-27786-0) for this month. I gather this is a
mainstay in courses on feminist literature, but it failed to do
much for me when reading it on its own merits. At the time of its
publication in 1899, it was considered shocking, and while on an
intellectual basis I see why, it fails to engage me emotionally in
the main character's feelings. (This is one of that series of
Dover "Thrift Editions" I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, which
had a spike in sales when amazon.com was offering free shipping on
orders of two or more books.)
MICHELANGELO'S NOTEBOOK
by Paul Christopher:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/09/2009]
Three weeks ago, in the 12/19/08 issue of the MT VOID, I wrote
about COUNTERKNOWLEDGE by Damian Thompson, and in particular his
discussion of pseudo-history. Well, MICHELANGELO'S NOTEBOOK by
Paul Christopher (ISBN-13 978-0-451-41186-0, ISBN-10 0-451-41186-2)
is another example of this proliferation of pseudo-history. The
copyright page of MICHELANGELO'S NOTEBOOK has the usual disclaimer:
"This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and
incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are
use fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, business establishments, events, or locales is totally
coincidental. But at the end is an "Author's Note" which says that
certain relationships in the story are "true" and "known". So far
as I can tell, this is not the case, and the "Author's Note", while
having some facts in it, is as fictional as the rest of the book.
(I am avoiding being too specific in case you decide to read the
book, though frankly, the "revelation" is predictable and the book
is not that good.) While I am no great admirer of the person in
question, this claim about what is "true" is really uncalled for.
One would think that a mystery/thriller about missing and stolen
art works would be sufficiently exciting, but ever since THE DA
VINCI CODE, authors have apparently decided that they must include
some long-running conspiracy--preferably involving the Catholic
Church--by a secret society to conceal the truth about something or
other. With a few additions and the right marketing, Michael Flynn
could have a runaway best seller with his 1990 novel IN THE COUNTRY
OF THE BLIND. Interestingly, when I reviewed that book twenty
years ago, I mentioned Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry
Lincoln's HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL (upon which THE DA VINCI CODE was
based) in the review.
But Flynn was honest about his book. He did not pretend in an
author's note that his speculations were actual facts, Christopher
(and others) seem to think that doing so makes their books better,
but it just serves to degrade the public's intelligence. For the
people who believe it, it makes them believe things such as that
there really is a secret society working to maintain Jesus's
bloodline. And for the people who realize that these "Author's
Notes" are as fictional as the rest of the book, it makes them
suspicious of everything they read. This may not seem so bad, but
what it means is that it is impossible to convince them of
anything, because any facts they don't like, they can dismiss as
mere fabrications.
There's apparently a sequel to this (THE AZTEC CONSPIRACY),
exposing some other conspiracy, probably also with an "Author's
Note". With novels this makes some sense, I suppose, but one
wonders why people are not more skeptical of the various claims
made by many "non-fiction" writers. Don't people find it peculiar
that the same person can manage to uncover hidden secrets in so
many diverse areas of history? It's as if in science the same
person who formulated relativity than went on to discover DNA.
(It could be that the Coen Brothers need to take some blame here,
for saying at the beginning of their 1996 film FARGO as "This is a
true story." Certainly many people believed it was.)
THE WAY OF CHUANG TZU
translated by Thomas Merton:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/20/2009]
THE WAY OF CHUANG TZU (translated by Thomas Merton) (ISBN-13
978-0-87733-676-9, ISBN-10 0-87733-676-6) is one of those "Shambhala
Pocket Classics". (Unlike convention "pocket programs", these
truly are pocket-sized. There is something odd about the fact that
one can fit the wisdom of Chuang Tzu in a pocket, but not the
schedule of a science fiction convention.)
A sample: "To organize is to destroy."
Or: "Of safeguarding property Chuang Tzu wrote: 'For security
against robbers that snatch purses and rifle bags, people stow
their possessions in trunks and bind them with ropes and bolts and
strong locks. This is what the world calls wit. But in reality it
is only saving up for the strong thief, who hoists the trunk on his
back and runs--fearing only that the ropes and bolts will not hold
or that the lock will break. Isn't everything we do to secure
ourselves against future loss a little like this? ...
The invention of weights and measures
THE GNOSTICS
by Tobias Churton:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/27/2002]
I just finished C. S. Lewis's autobiography, SURPRISED BY JOY.
I suggested it for the library book discussion group,
but someone wanted me to make
sure it was the sort of thing people would like. I'm not sure
I can judge that, but I'm finding it quite suitable. (The
discussion group has some constraints on its choices--the book
must be available in numbers in the library system, not too new,
and not too long. The last rules out most recent biographies.
The rule about "not too new" is because those books are in too
great a demand already.)
SURPRISED BY JOY is certainly more accessible than the other
"religious" book I read at the same time,
Tobias Churton's THE GNOSTICS.
It's surprisingly difficult to find any sort of basic book about
gnosticism, but apparently this was a companion piece to a
British television series about it, and so isn't too academic.
(What I'm really looking for is one of those "Gnosticism for
Beginners" or "Introducing Gnosticism" graphic texts from
Totem Books. (These should not be confused with the "for Dummies"
series. The "Introducing Kafka" volume is illustrated by Robert
Crumb.)
SELECTED POLITICAL SPEECHES
by Cicero:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/23/2015]
I was reading SELECTED POLITICAL SPEECHES by Cicero (ISBN 978-0-14-044214-4)
and have concluded that anyone who thinks political
speeches today are inflammatory has not read Cicero's speeches
against Lucius Sergius Catalina. From the second oration:
"At length, O Romans, we have dismissed from the city, or driven
out, or, when he was departing of his own accord, we have pursued
with words, Lucius Catiline, mad with audacity, breathing
wickedness, impiously planning mischief to his country, threatening
fire and sword to you and to this city."
And later:
"For what evil or wickedness can be devised or imagined which he
did not conceive? What prisoner, what gladiator, what thief; what
assassin, what parricide, what forger of wills, what cheat, what
debauchee, what spendthrift, what adulterer, what abandoned woman,
what corrupter of youth, what profligate, what scoundrel can be
found in all Italy, who does not avow that he has been on terms of
intimacy with Catiline? What murder has been committed for years
without him? What nefarious act of infamy that has not been done by
him. But in what other man were there ever so many allurements for
youth as in him, who both indulged in infamous love for others, and
encouraged their infamous affections for himself, promising to some
enjoyment of their lust, to others the death of their parents, and
not only instigating them to iniquity, but even assisting them in
it."
Doesn't it make you happy that you live in a time when the
candidates spew their venom only on illegal immigrants and
television reporters? (Then again, maybe Cicero attacked his
opponents because he didn't have illegal immigrants and television
reporters to pick on.)
The fourth oration begins with a discussion of the death penalty.
(I will note that the condemned are not guilty of murder, but of
conspiracy to commit treason and mayhem.) Decimus Silanus,
apparently, feels that the Cataline conspirators "should not for a
single moment be permitted to live and enjoy the air we all
breathe." Gaius Caesar (a.k.a. Julius Caesar), on the other hand,
feels that death was created by the gods "not as a punishment at
all, but as an inevitable natural happening, or a relief from toil
and trouble." However, imprisonment was clearly designed as a
punishment for "atrocious" crimes. Caesar argues that life
imprisonment is a greater punishment than death. "It was to scare
criminals here on earth that men of ancient times held that
punishments for evil-doers are paralleled by similar penalties
which they will continue to suffer after they are dead; because our
ancestors realized, evidently, that if the terror of those
posthumous sanctions were removed, the threat of death itself would
hold no fears any longer."
Cicero sides with Silanus, observing that they would have to build
prisons and pay people to guard these man and even then it seems
likely they would somehow contrive to escape. The argument that
the Sempronian Law forbids the death penalty against Roman citizens
when the Assembly has not voted it he dismisses in an
all-too-familiar fashion: he claims that Caesar (and others) "must also
know that a man who is a public enemy cannot possibly be regarded
as a citizen at all." How often throughout history have people
been stripped of their rights and their lives by the state deciding
that they are public enemies and hence not "real" citizens after
all? How often does one nation portray its enemies as
"sub-humans", "beasts", or "animals"? (And it clearly continues even
into science fictional futures, with the ironically named Caesar in
DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES being challenged by an ape opponent
that he must not kill Koba with the law "Ape not kill ape" and
responding "Koba not ape" right before killing him.)
FINNA
by Nino Cipri:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/22/21]
FINNA, Nino Cipri (Tor.com, ISBN 978-1-250-24573-1): This book
seems to be dedicated to anyone who has ever found themselves stuck
in an Ikea. (Clearly the store is called "LitenVarld" only to
avoid a lawsuit.) I've been in one only once, and that was more
than enough, thank you. The floor plan of an Ikea seems to make
the wormholes to other universes almost reasonable. In actual
fact, except for unlabeled doors that provide shortcuts, the
problem with the Ikea path is that it is a labyrinth, not a maze--it
is a single path with no branches or dead ends, which are
characteristics of a maze. So it doesn't have features that would
be conducive to wormholes. I also found the pronouns confusing--I
have no problem with using "they/them/their" as singular, but the
author needs to try to avoid confusing the reader with whether
these pronouns are referring to a single person or multiple people
in a given sentence, just as they would be careful to make clear
which of two women the pronoun "she" is referring to. The story
itself was reminiscent of classic science fiction, though whether I
would put it in GALAXY or ANALOG wasn't clear. (I particularly
liked all the themes for the display rooms, starting with the room
for the "Pan-Asian Appropriating White Yoga Instructor, complete
with tatami mats and a statue of Shiva.")
LIVES OF THE WIVES: FIVE LITERARY MARRIAGES
by Carmela Ciuraru:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/26/24]
LIVES OF THE WIVES: FIVE LITERARY MARRIAGES by Carmela Ciuraru
(Harper Collins, ISBN 978-0-062-35691-8) sounded promising: a look
at five marriages in which both parties had artistic aims, and yet
it seems that the wife was always the one to sacrifice. Whether
one can extrapolate to all literary marriages is questionable, but
that was not my problem. Rather, Ciuraru set herself so many rules
for choosing her subjects that as far as I was concerned she might
as well have been writing fiction. She did not want to write about
any living people, nor did she want to choose any overly familiar
subjects (which apparently eliminated Hemingway and his four wives).
So her choices were Kenneth Tynan and Elaine Dundy, Roald Dahl and
Patricia Neal, Kingsley Amis and Elizabeth Jane Howard, Alberto
Moravia and Else Morante, and Una Troubridge and Radclyffe Hall.
Of those, the only couple whose work was familiar enough to me to
make their story meaningful was Roald Dahl and Patricia Neal, and
there seemed nothing exceptional about it (other than his racism
and anti-semitism). I suppose that this book was aimed either at
more literary readers, or those who are looking at the institution
of marriage and its effects.
THE BLACK GOD'S DRUMS
by P. Djeli Clark:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/01/2019]
THE BLACK GOD'S DRUMS by P. Djeli Clark (ISBN 978-1-250-29471-5) is
set in the late 19th century in an alternate world where New
Orleans is free from either side of the still-continuing Civil War,
and Haiti has achieved a much more successful independence. The
book is told in a first-person narrative in a New Orleans patois;
one wonders how the audiobook would sound! (There is no audiobook
so far--one suspects finding the right reader for it is even more
difficult than usual.) At any rate, a very enjoyable read.
RING SHOUT
by P. Djeli Clark:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/22/21]
RING SHOUT, P. Djeli Clark (Tor.com, ISBN 978-1-250-78702-8): This
was a little harder to read than the other novellas; it is written
in two dialects: one is (I assume) Black English ("She stay seated
in her big chair.") and the other is Gullah ("Dem buckrah debbil
gii hunnuh trouble?"). But the slower reading pace is not a bad
thing (although given the total length of the works on the Hugo
Awards ballot, it would not be practical to read everything at this
pace). This seems to be part of a new literary movement--African-American Cthulhu--by
authors such as Victor LaValle and Matt Ruff.
In RING SHOUT, the Ku Klux Klan of 1922 is involved in bringing
beings from another dimension to our dimension, and the protagonist
needs to end this invasion.
"The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington"
by P. Djeli Clark:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/21/2019]
"The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington" by
P. Djeli Clark is not a story with a beginning, a middle, and an
end. It is rather a piece written in the same vein as many of
Jorge Luis Borges's "stories" (e.g., "The Library of Babel", "The
Babylonian Lottery") which are sketches or portraits more than
simple narratives. The title emphasizes that there are as many
different stories as there are teeth--it is not "The Secret Life
of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington".
BOOK GIRL
by Sarah Clarkson:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/04/2019]
BOOK GIRL by Sarah Clarkson (ISBN 978-1-4964-2580-5) is to some
extent yet another book about the joys of reading. It differs in
being aimed specifically at girls (and their mothers), and written
from and with a specifically Christian perspective. The former
manifests itself in the majority of the books recommended having
female protagonists, the latter, in almost all the biographies
being about missionaries or other religious figures.
For what it's worth, she recommends THE LORD OF THE RINGS in
multiple chapters. Oddly, she also recommends the "Narnia" books,
although the disposition of Susan in THE LAST BATTLE is considered
problematic by many current critics. (She is excluded from Narnia
when all her siblings are accepted, because she became interested
in "nylons and lipstick and invitations." Whether the problem is
her interest in these things, or her exclusive interest in these
things to the detriment of the "correct" spiritual life is much
debated.)
Anyway, for Christian mothers of young girls (or girls old enough
to choose their own books), this contains a lot of book
recommendations, many of which are considered classics by people
across religious and gender lines (e.g., CHARLOTTE'S WEB,
MIDDLEMARCH, THE ODYSSEY). But its narrow focus makes it less
useful to others.
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/21/2020]
The other day Mark was looking for the Classics Illustrated edition
of ROBUR THE CONQUEROR that he was sure he had. Well, we couldn't
find it, and checking the catalog turned up no entry, so it must
have been something from his childhood that had disappeared. We
did had a Marvel Classics Comics edition of MASTER OF THE WORLD,
but that was not the same story. This got us into a discussion of
whether the Marvel comics were just the "original" Classics
Illustrated with a new cover. I thought they were, but Mark
(correctly) said they were not.
Well, it turned out that we had four different editions of
illustrated comics of THE INVISIBLE MAN: the "original" Classics
Illustrated #153 (price 15 cents), Marvel Classic Comics #25 (1977,
price 50 cents), the Spanish-language edition of the "Classics
Ilustrados" #M-9 (1981, price M$33 in Mexico), and the new Classics
Illustrated #20 (1991, $3.95). The two Marvel editions are the
same artwork, while only the text in the text blocks differing in
language. Their artwork is reminiscent of the original Classics
Illustrated edition, but not identical and the text also differed.
The new Classics Illustrated was the most different. To start
with, it is on heavy glossy paper bound as a book (not on
saddle-stapled newsprint), complete with an ISBN (0-425-12663-3). And the
artwork is of a much more modern style, and did not imitate the
original nearly as much as the Marvel did. (The latter had panels
that were very similar except for distance from the action, or
characters wearing the same red scarf, and so on.)
By the way, I put "original" in quotation marks above, because
Classics Illustrated began as "Classic Comics" (1941 through 1947).
However, the series appears to have just changed names, rather than
restarting, so I do not believe there was a "Classic Comics"
version of THE INVISIBLE MAN.
PAPA
by Susy Clemens:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/25/2003]
A more interesting literary biography [than Aldiss's] was PAPA, the biography of
Samuel Clemens written by Susy Clemens when she was thirteen years
old. Her spelling is quite outrageous, but her descriptions of
Twain are pretty much spot-on.
"Attitude"
by Hal Clement:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/17/2019]
There's always one on each ballot--one finalist that is totally
unavailable--and this year it is "Attitude" by Hal Clement. This
will not stop it from winning, of course; Clifford Simak's "Rule
18" won a Retro Hugo in 2014 for its 1939 publication, and it had
been reprinted since only once--in Italian. I think I can safely
say that he won on name-recognition, and the same could happen with
Clement. ("Attitude" is available in NESFA's Clement collection,
but I have no access to it.)
MISSION OF GRAVITY
by Hal Clement:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/18/2004]
Hal Clement's MISSION OF GRAVITY (ISBN 0-345-00993-2), unlike the
Asimov, did not seem to age well. Maybe my tolerance for pages of
world-building infodump has decreased, because I seem to remember
that when I first read it about thirty years ago it was great.
NEEDLE
by Hal Clement:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/27/2004]
I re-read Hal Clement's NEEDLE as a stroll down Memory Lane, and
concluded that it is really a "young adult" novel. And though
Hunter talks about the clues that give the fugitive's host away,
when I flipped back through the book, I couldn't really find where
they were revealed to the reader, somewhat marring the mystery
aspect. (Hal Clement died October 29, 2003, for those who have
not heard. -mrl)
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/05/22]
Our film-and-book group did THE HIDDEN as its film, and NEEDLE by
Hal Clement (Avon, ISBN 0-380-44263-9) as the accompanying novel.
(The film is chosen first, and then an appropriate book is chosen
to go with it. Often the book is the basis of the film, but not
always.) NEEDLE was written in 1950 and, boy, does its age show.
And "boy" is the operative word here. There is a female school
nurse, and Bob's mother, and maybe a female teacher, but this is
definitely a boy's book. And a boy's book of the "Tom
Swift"/"Hardy Boys" type, where somehow the (fifteen-year-old boys
have all sorts of unsupervised time, and get to do all sorts of
dangerous things, and seem totally independent of any adult
supervision unless it is needed to give them something to get
around. (In fairness, "Nancy Drew" books were the same.) I guess
things were like that back then (whenever the "then" was that
Clement was writing about, even though it was supposedly set in the
near future). If one reads ROCKET BOYS by Homer Hickham, Jr., one
sees the same independence: the boys in that build and fire rockets
miles from home, as well as pull up and sell abandoned rails and
other activities that would be more than highly questionable today.
And the setting of NEEDLE is equally unbelievable: a small South
Seas island (my estimate from the information is about five square
miles) with lots of construction materials and enough children to
provide Bob with at least three friends his same age, as well as
enough to have quite a few other children in the island's school.
(Oddly, though, none of the teenagers seem to have any noticeable
siblings.) Most of the people live in about thirty houses, so
figure maybe fifty houses total, or a couple of hundred people.
Even if the company only took young married couples (and given that
all the jobs seem to be held by the men, why would the company take
on all those extra people?), the demographics are all wrong.
(And while we're at it, why is Bob attending a private school
literally halfway around the world from his home?)
Yeah, I know--that's not the point of the story. But it creates a
problem with accepting the premises. But somehow it's easier to
accept an amorphous alien that inhabits its host's body that the
human society Clement has describe.
"Proof"
by Hal Clement:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/25/2018]
"Proof", by Hal Clement (Astounding Science Fiction, June 1942):
"They had evolved far down near the solar core, where pressures and
temperatures were such that matter existed in the "collapsed" state
characteristic of the entire mass of white dwarf stars. Their
bodies were simply constructed: a matrix of close-packed
electrons--really an unimaginably dense electrostatic field, possessing
quasi-solid properties--surrounded a core of neutrons, compacted to
the ultimate degree. Radiation of sufficient energy, falling on
the "skin," was stabilized, altered to the pattern and structure of
neutrons; the tiny particles of neutronium which resulted were
borne along a circulatory system--of magnetic fields, instead of
blood--to the nucleus, where it was stored."
If this is your cup of tea, then this is your cup of tea.
Otherwise, this will read like a physics book about physics that
you never run into in your daily life. People who complain that
Clement's MISSION OF GRAVITY has no real characters should read
this--by comparison, MISSION OF GRAVITY is a novel of deep
psychological analysis.
READY PLAYER ONE
by Eric Cline:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/30/2018]
I recently watched READY PLAYER ONE. It took me about thirty
seconds after one character was introduced to figure out where this
was going. James Halliday is Steve Jobs. Oasis is the Metaverse.
Clearly i-R0k is Raven. The Distracted Globe is the Black Sun.
The Curator is the Librarian. Wade doesn't live in a storage
locker per se, but what he does live in is not very different.
RAISED BY PUPPETS
by Andrei Codrescu:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/01/2003]
I enjoy Andrei Codrescu's essays on NPR and find them
thought-provoking, but somehow when they are put down on the printed page,
they seem much more cynical and bitter. The latest of his
collections that I'm reading, RAISED BY PUPPETS, certainly has
that problem, though I suppose it's possible that the radio essays
are bitter and cynical and I just miss it. Codrescu does say in
"My Brush with Hollywood" that writing is different than speaking
when he writes, "If they're written down, they're literary. When
they're on tape [or radio], they're not." (He's wrong about
Sabbatai Zevi, however. Codrescu places him around the year 1000;
actually Zevi lived in the 17th century. In addition, Sabbatai
Zevi and his followers were Jewish; why would they think the world
was ending in the year 1000? And for that matter, there was no
widespread belief at the time that the world was ending in 1000--that
was a story concocted about six hundred years later.)
THE LIFE OF THE HONORABLE WILLIAM F. CODY
by Buffalo Bill Cody:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/11/2003]
As I said, I got to only one Williams play before I got
sidetracked into the autobiography of Buffalo Bill Cody. One
might say that Cody's attitude towards Indians was less than
currently politically correct, but he was after all a man of his
times, and interesting times they were.
CODY'S BOOKS: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A BERKELEY BOOKSTORE 1956-1977
by Pat and Fred Cody:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/26/2005]
Pat and Fred Cody's CODY'S BOOKS: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A BERKELEY
BOOKSTORE 1956-1977 (ISBN 0-8118-0140-3) is at times more about
Berkeley in that turbulent time than about the bookstore itself.
People looking for tips on how to start and operate a bookstore
will find some information here, but even that is of more interest
historically than practically. When Cody's started as a paperback
bookstore, distribution, marketing, and just about every other
aspect of book-selling was very different than it is now. (And by
paperback bookstore, they seem to have meant primarily trade
paperbacks, not mass market.) So far as I can tell, in fact, the
store was kept afloat for many years only by the wildly successful
European art calendars, in a time when there was not an American
calendar industry other than those given away by service stations
and such. This book probably has its greatest appeal as a history
of those times in Berkeley from someone "on the front lines", so
to speak.
BREAKING THE MAYAN CODE (REVISED)
by Michael D. Coe:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/19/2017]
BREAKING THE MAYAN CODE (REVISED) by Michael D. Coe (ISBN
978-0-500-28133-8) goes into much more detail than the NOVA special
"Cracking the Mayan Code", to the extent that it is not always easy
to follow what Coe is trying to say, especially in terms of
analyzing the component parts of the glyphs, and the categorization
of them as logographic, syllabic, or alphabetic (phonetic,
actually). The television show could highlight various parts of a
glyph as the narrator explained its role in the total meaning of
the glyph, while that does not happen in the book.
While in general Coe seems to be fair and even-handed, a couple of
slips stood out. I can understand why Coe gave full credit to
Michael Ventris for the decipherment of Linear B: the contributions
of Alice Kober to that task were pretty much unknown until several
years after BREAKING THE MAYAN CODE was written. (See my review of
THE RIDDLE OF THE LABYRINTH: THE QUEST TO CRACK AN ANCIENT CODE by
Margalit Fox in the 03/21/2014 issue of the MT VOID
[
http://leepers.us/mtvoid/2014/VOID0321.htm#reading], for details
on this.) His use of the phrase "the famous husband-and-wife team
of Col. William Friedman" is more worrisome--unless somehow Col.
William Friedman married himself.
As I said, it is often difficult to follow what Coe is saying, and
maybe it just required more concentration than I gave it; it seems
more at the level of an academic-level book (undergraduate,
probably) than one aimed at the general public.
[I know what someone is going to say--the idea that the general
public would be interested in any book on translating Mayan
glyphs is risible. But I think you know what I mean.)
THE DEVIL AND MISS PRYM
by Paul Coelho:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/20/2022]
THE DEVIL AND MISS PRYM by Paul Coelho (translated by Amanda
Hopkinson) (Harper One, ISBN 978-0-060-52800-3) is basically a
reworking of Fredrich Duerrenmatt's play THE VISIT, which is
actually mentioned by one of the characters. In THE DEVIL AND MISS
PRYM, the village will get ten bars of gold if they murder one of
the villagers within three days.
It is not clear exactly when the story takes place. But it is
obviously after 1956, when THE VISIT was written, so it is not too
unlikely that it was also after 1962, when the "Twilight Zone"
episode "The Hunt" aired. "The Hunt" was an original story by Earl
Hamner, Jr., about a man and his dog and their encounters with
Heaven and Hell, and the plot of it is re-told as a story in THE
DEVIL AND MISS PRYM.
But it isn't the originality of the premise or internal stories (or
lack thereof) that matters, but the way it which Coelho tells his
story, and that is what makes this well worth reading.
WHO KILLED THE CURATE?
by Joan Coggin:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/02/2009]
I had bought a dozen "old" mysteries (from the 1930s and 1940s)
re-printed by Rue Morgue Press in nice trade paperbacks. I read the
first one (for me, anyway), WHO KILLED THE CURATE? by Joan Coggin
(ISBN-13 978-0-815230-44-0, ISBN-10 0-815230-44-5). It was fine
except for the main character, Lady Lupin, who is a society
flibbertygibbet married to a vicar. The back blurb compares her to
Gracie Allen, and an apt comparison it is--she is full of apparent
non sequuntur(*), and as the back blurb says, "she literally doesn't
know Jews from Jesuits." I never found this type of character
either believable or funny, so it was hard for me to enjoy the
novel, even though the mystery and supporting players were fine.
(*) Yes, that's the plural of "non sequitur"!
THEY STILL CALL ME JUNIOR
by Frank Coghlan:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/11/2013]
THEY STILL CALL ME JUNIOR by Frank Coghlan (ISBN 978-0-786-46381-7)
is Coghlan's memoir of his life in Hollywood as the child actor
playing Billy Batson in the "Captain Marvel" serials and later in
the navy as a pilot and Hollywood liaison. While some of the
various anecdotes are interesting (and occasionally salacious), the
long plot descriptions of every film he was in serve more as
padding than as revealing of anything worthwhile. This book is an
example of the minimal editing that McFarland reportedly does, with
such errors as "descendants" when "ancestors" is meant, or
"gratuitously" instead of "done at no charge." Unless you are
fascinated by child stars, there is little here to enthrall you.
is "The Wall Around the World"
by Theodore Cogswell:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/16/2004]
My choice for the Retro Hugo for Novelette is "The Wall Around
the World" by Theodore Cogswell. Oddly enough, this seems like it
would be a fine companion piece for the "Harry Potter" books, with
its "scientific" approach to magic. I also liked Philip K. Dick's
"Second Variety", though either I remembered it or the ending was
obvious. Still, the discussion of war and its methods was what
the story was really about.
MAKING HISTORY: THE STORYTELLERS WHO SHAPED THE PAST
by Richard Cohen:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/17/22]
MAKING HISTORY: THE STORYTELLERS WHO SHAPED THE PAST by Richard
Cohen (Simon & Schuster, ISBN 978-1-982-19578-6) is not about
history per se, but about historians, from Herodotus and Thucydides
to the present. One review talked about how Cohen compares and
contrasts those two early historians, with the reviewer referring
to "Team Herodotus" and "Team Thucydides". The former was
apparently not one to let facts get in the way of a good story, so
tended to include everything anyone told him, not matter how
unlikely, while the latter was more rigorous in his recountings.
I will admit to skipping some chapters--a chapter about a
particular historian is more interesting (and easier to follow) if
you have some familiarity with their work. Still, there was plenty
to read.
Alas, however, Cohen is one of the vast multitude who do not
understand life expectancy. He writes, "Life expectancy [in
Elizabeth I's reign] ranged between twenty-five and thirty-five, so
[London] was overwhelmingly a youthful place." This ignores the
very high infant and child mortality rates. The fact that he later
writes that Edward Gibbon's mother "gave birth to seven children,
all but Edward dying in infancy," and of Sir Walter Scott that "six
of his eleven siblings were to die in childhood" does not seem to
have made him question his earlier statement. Gibbon died at age
57; if his six siblings each died at age 2, the life expectancy of
his generation was about 10. Scott died at age 61; if five
siblings lived to that age, but six died at at 5, the life
expectancy of his generation was 33--just about the Elizabethan
figure, without a particularly youthful component.
[MAKING HISTORY by Richard Cohen should not be confused with MAKING
HISTORY by Stephen Fry, a 1996 alternate history which won the
Sidewise Award for Alternate History (Long Form) for that year.]
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/15/23]
MAKING HISTORY: THE STORYTELLERS WHO SHAPED THE PAST by Richard
Cohen (Simon and Schuster, ISBN 978-1-982-19578-6) is 750 pages and
covers historians (and others) from Herodotus and Thucydides
through Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (The "others" include writers of
historical fiction, or even then-contemporary fiction such as Jane
Austen's novels that gives future readers a look into what a
historical period was like.)
I will admit to skimming or even skipping some chapters. I don't
know enough about medieval history to make sense of the medieval
historians. And even Cohen doesn't do much with non-Western
history. Yes, there's a chapter on "The Muslim View of History",
but nothing on Chinese historians, or African historians, or South
American historians.
Even within those limitations, Cohen seems inexplicably selective.
I'm not sure how he is defining "historian" but I find it odd that
Will Durant gets only three entries in the index, none of which are
discussions of his massive eleven-volume world history.
The book is primarily chronological, with occasional topical
chapters. One chapter is "History from the Inside" (Julius Caesar,
Napoleon, and Ulysses S. Grant) even though many of the other
historians, particularly ancient ones) were present at many of the
events they described.
I personally found the early chapters very interesting, probably
because I'm interested in Roman history. (And obviously, the
Gibbon chapter as well, though he shared it with Voltaire, who did
*not* interest me.) The chapter on the Bible took a different
approach than one usually sees, as did the Shakespeare one. (Cohen
is at least somewhat of a Ricardian.)
The chapter on the Civil War historians (and the partial chapter on
Ulysses S. Grant) are of course worth reading, though Edmund
Wilson's PATRIOTIC GORE (mentioned as a reference) is clearly a
must-read for that period. (See my review from the 07/23/2004 MT
VOID at
http://leepers.us/evelyn/reviews/wilson.htm#gore.)
If you're a historian, maybe all the chapters would be of interest.
(On the other hand, don't historians usually concentrate on a
single era, or geographical area?) For most readers, my
recommendation is to read the chapters that interest you and just
skip the rest. Doing this, I found the book quite enthralling.
[But apparently not enough to remember that I read and reviewed
it a year ago!]
MEN AND DINOSAURS
by Edwin H. Colbert:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/31/2020]
MEN AND DINOSAURS by Edwin H. Colbert (Dutton, 1968, no ISBN) is of
course about the men (and they were almost entirely men) who
studied dinosaurs from the early beginnings of paleontology to the
(then-)present. But rather than give a summary of the book--this
is a classic work by a renown author--I am going to focus on two
minor bits.
The first is the phrase "two types of dinosaurian pelves." Only a
few days before reading this phrase, I listened to an episode of
John McWhorter's "Lexicon Valley" podcast titled "Does 'Processes'
Rhyme with 'Knees'?" in which he talked about how in Latin, words
ending in 'is' were made plural by changing the 'is' to 'es'. This
persists in English in a few words, but McWhorter claimed that most
words had lost this pluralization, and just added 'es' instead.
However, when McWhorter listed examples of 'is' words that just
added 'es', he included a lot that I would pluralize by changing
the 'is' to 'es', including 'axis', 'oasis', and 'diagnosis', I
noted in an email that I would also include 'prognosis',
'analysis', 'emphasis', and 'exegesis'.
But not in my wildest dreams would I have included 'pelvis' as one
that is still pluralized the Latin way, into 'pelves'.
[Note: I wrote to McWhorter re this, and he gave me a shout-out on
the next episode of "Lexicon Valley": "Verbs on the Move". Go to
about 34 minutes in for the section talking about plurals.]
And no, this does not mean that the plural of 'Elvis' is 'Elves'.
The other thing I want to focus on is Franz Aron Nopcsa von
Felso-Szilvas. Early on in his account Nopcsa's life, Colbert writes how
Nopcsa was "living the life of a baronial lord, going from one
Hungarian estate to another, with peasants owing low before him as
he drove by. His was on such occasions the life of a semiroyal
person in a sort of dreamland out of an operetta. And this life
seemed in part to be sufficient for Nopcsa never married." In
1968, this might be a reasonable conclusion. Nowadays, one comes
up with a different conclusion, and indeed a few pages later,
Colbert writes about Nopcsa's male secretary, "Bajazid, the
secretary who lived with Nopcsa for many years, was more than a
secretary; he was a lover.. Indeed, Nopcsa maintained two Albanian
homosexual boyfriends, who participated in his strange and unreal
life."
In writing about Nopcsa, Colbert also displays a definite
condescension towards Albania. For example, he writes, "... this
colorful, backward land and its primitive people cast a lifelong
spell over Nopcsa." Later Colbert describes Albania as "that
picturesque and backward corner of the Balkan world."
WANDERING LANDS AND ANIMALS: THE STORY OF
CONTINENTAL DRIFT AND ANIMAL POPULATIONS
by Edwin H. Colbert:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/10/2007]
As part of our recent trip to the Canadian Rockies (which included
various paleontological sites),
I re-read parts of WANDERING LANDS AND ANIMALS: THE STORY OF
CONTINENTAL DRIFT AND ANIMAL POPULATIONS (ISBN-10 0-486-24918-2,
ISBN-13 978-0-486-24918-6) by Edwin H. Colbert. He talks about
the fauna of isolated islands, and says (on page 255) that the
native fauna of Australia consists of "marsupials, of some
monotremes, and of such placental mammals as rodents, bats, and
the dingo." If the native fauna of Australia includes the dingo,
and "it is obvious that the dingo was brought to the continent by
aboriginal immigrants," then doesn't that make the aboriginal
immigrants part of the native fauna, and in particular a native
placental mammal along with rodents and bats?
One might also note that the "tradition" of a North American
invasion into South America which drives many species to
extinction is not a twentieth century phenomenon. During the
Pliocene (a million years ago or so), the Panama land bridge was
re-established between North America and the previously isolated
South America, and the fauna of the latter --marsupial
borhyaenids, litopterns, notoungulates, ground sloths, and
glyptodonts--were decimated by the invading species.
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/04/2011]
WANDERING LANDS AND ANIMALS by Edwin H. Colbert (ISBN
978-0-486-24918-2-6) was February's choice for our [mostly science]
book discussion group. I recommended it; the reason I like it is
that it has an epic sweep the same way that Olaf Stapledon's LAST
AND FIRST MEN has. Both cover millions of years and the evolution
of species over that time. It is not the individual that is the
character but the collective, the species.
Back in 1972, when this was written, continental drift (a.k.a.
plate tectonics) was still relatively new, and the KT asteroid
still unknown. Colbert notes that the initial paleontological
evidence for continental drift, a.k.a. tectonic plates, was
explained in other unlikely ways, but geological evidence suggested
Gondwanaland and it explained the paleontological evidence much
better as well.
Although the KT asteroid was not known in 1972, there were
speculations that it was some sort of global catastrophe that
killed off the dinosaurs, and Colbert asks a question still
unresolved: "Why the dinosaurs should have become extinct at the
end of Cretaceous time is one of the great puzzles of geologic
history. ... [Why] did all of the dinosaurs die out at the end of
Cretaceous history? Why did not some of them survive, as did their
close cousins the crocodilians?" [page 202]
Colbert chooses his words very carefully. He writes, "A theory, to
be valid, must satisfy all aspects of the subject upon which it
touches." [page 13] Note that he does not say that a theory is
"correct", but that it is "valid." All those who talk about how
evolution is "just a theory" need to understand what a theory is
and what it means to be valid.
Colbert writes about digging for fossils in Antarctica, saying, for
example, "It was interesting, however, to note the variability of
temperatures within the hut. At floor level, water if spilled
would freeze; at waist level the temperatures were usually about 40
degrees; at shoulder level a comfortable 70 degrees was common; and
at the top of the arched hut the temperature was commonly 90
degrees and more." [page 48]
On the other hand, sometimes the information Colbert had at the
time was incomplete. There were many instances where fossils of a
certain type might be expected on a given continent but had [have?]
not yet been found. Other speculations have since been disproved--for
example, "It has recently [as of 1972] been suggested, upon the
basis of geophysical evidence, that most of China, and perhaps
Indonesia, may have been a part of Gondwanaland, forming a
northeastern extension of the ancient continent, to occupy much of
the area between Africa and Australia." [page 65, also page 152]
He has a sense of humor; after having discussed all the fossil
evidence of Lystrosaurus on various continents for several
chapters, he says, "By now the reader probably is sick unto the
point of ennui of Lystrosaurus, yet there is no getting away from
this useful reptile." [page 71]
[By the way, I indicate page numbers because the index is
skimpy--there are some entries in the index for "India", but not for all
the mentions of India in the text.]
When we visited Newfoundland, we saw evidence of the continental
drift Colbert is writing about. We toured the Tablelands, where
the Earth's mantle is exposed. Our guide used an analogy with an
apple: the skin is the crust, the pulp is the mantle, and the core
is the core. The Tablelands is a piece of the mantle. As he said,
"Here the earth is flipped inside out." How did this happen?
"Continents are big rafts floating on magma." What is now the
Americas is called Laurasia, and Eurasia/Africa is Gondwanaland.
The Atlantic was Iapetus. Laurasia and Gondwanaland collided a
billion years ago (the sign there said 450 million years ago,
though). Normally you have subduction (both plates move downward),
but here parts of Gondwanaland rode up on top of Laurasia. After
250 million years, they split apart, but on a different line,
leaving pieces of the mantle from Gondwanaland behind. The
glaciers scoured off the crust, exposing the mantle. It is not
unique, though--all of the Appalachian, Long Range, and Caledonian
mountains are the same range formed from this piece of mantle.
Of course, Newfoundland is weird in many ways besides having
exposed mantle and being partially covered by the European tectonic
plate. It, along with Labrador, was an independent country until
1949. Its time zone is a half hour off from adjacent time zones.
Its cell phone service is not shared by any other company. And its
provincial flower is carnivorous.
"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/03/23]
Samuel Taylor Coleridge may be a great poet, but an astronomer he
is not.
In "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", he writes:
If you think about how a solar eclipse works, it works because the
sun and the moon are the same apparent size. The sun is actually
400 times the diameter of the moon, and 400 times farther away.
(Coleridge is clearly not talking about absolute sizes, but
apparent ones.)
Coleridge also writes:
The "horned Moon" is the crescent moon, and if there is a "bright
star within the nether tip", you would probably think someone has
built a base on the moon and turned on all the lights, because the
part of the moon between the tips of the horns is still there, even
if not visible. (Actually, quite often it is visible, because
"earthshine" partially illuminates it.)
However, this has been seen by various people, and even has a name:
"the Coleridge Effect". One explanation is that there is an
optical illusion that makes the tips of the crescent moon seem to
encompass more area than they do, and the star is just next to the
moon. Another is that at least some of these viewings were of
meteor showers or asteroids passing between the moon and Earth.
FANCIES AND GOODNIGHTS
by John Collier:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/03/2013]
Our book discussion group did several stories from FANCIES AND
GOODNIGHTS by John Collier (ISBN 978-1-590-17051-9):
"Bottle Party": This is a traditional fantasy with a somewhat
predictable twist.
"Evening Primrose": Did Collier originate this idea (the story was
first published in 1941), which has been dramatized at least twice
on television and twice on radio, as well as apparently inspiring
several other teleplays? It is definitely a more poetic/literary
style than "Bottle Party".
"Witch's Money": The ending is almost "The Lady or the Tiger". I
have seen this idea before, I thought with a large bill that made
the rounds in a small town, functioning almost like Eric Frank
Russell's "obs" from THE GREAT EXPLOSION. Collier's story was
published in 1939, but the story I am thinking of may pre-date even
that.
"Are You Too Late or Was I Too Early?": This one was a bit too
poetic and airy for me.
"Fallen Star", "Pictures in the Fire", and "Halfway to Hell": I
suppose the "deal with the Devil" story was not stale when these
was written, but by now tricking the Devil has gotten very
familiar. In any case, Collier seems to love this theme.
"Three Bears Cottage": This is another story with a predictable
ending.
"Wet Saturday": Another twist ending, but I cannot figure out the
motivation for it.
"Squirrels Have Bright Eyes": Eh.
"The Lady on the Grey": This is not as traditional as "Bottle
Party", but still has a somewhat predictable twist.
"Incident on a Lake": For some reason, this made be think of the
film LAKE PLACID, though it really has very little in common
plotwise.
"Over Insurance": Mark has often related this story, but it turns
out his description does not exactly match the story--and I think I
like his better.
ROAD TO PERDITION
by Max Allan Collins and Richard Rayner:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/28/2003]
We picked up Max Allan Collins and Richard Rayner's ROAD TO
PERDITION since I was curious to see what graphic novels were like
these days. What I discovered, at least in this case, was that
the graphics were not very informative or useful to me in
understanding the story. I found this strange, because in the
film the visuals are very important. Maybe an appreciation of
graphic novels is something that requires a lot more background,
or practice, or something.
SIXPENCE HOUSE
by Paul Collins:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/05/2004]
For people who know about Hay-on-Wye, Paul Collins's SIXPENCE
HOUSE will be of interest. Collins decided to leave San Francisco
with his wife and baby and move to Hay-on-Wye. This sounds like a
book-lover's dream, but as Collins discovered, there is reality to
deal with as well as the fantasy.
BASIL
by Wilkie Collins:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/03/2011]
People who complain about the overuse in coincidence in modern
novels need to read one where it's laid on with a trowel.
(Warning: Spoilers Ahoy!) In BASIL by Wilkie Collins (ISBN 0-486-24015-0),
the main character, Basil, falls in love with a girl he
happens to see on the bus. It turns out the the girl's father's
clerk (and her tutor) is the son of a man hanged for forgery
because Basil's father would not forgive him. This is bad enough,
but there's more. Basil and the girl marry secretly, but she
continues her affair with the clerk. Finally, it has reached a
stage where she has Basil completely in her power--he is stuck with
her and is responsible for all her debts, but she has run off with
the clerk. So what happens? She goes to visit the clerk in the
hospital, accidentally runs up to the wrong bed, contracts typhus
for that five-second mistake, and dies.
BARKER STREET REGULARS
by Susan Conant:
Makes robbery easier.
Signing contracts, settings seals,
Makes robbery more sure.
Teaching love and duty
Provides a fitting language
With which to prove that robbery
Is really for the general good.
A poor man must swing
For stealing a belt buckle
But if a rich man steals a whole state
He is acclaimed
As statesman of the year."
"All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon."
"Till clombe above the eastern bar
The horned Moon, with one bright star
Within the nether tip."
MURDER, MRS. HUDSON
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/05/2003]
A couple of books inspired by Sherlock Holmes are Susan Conant's BARKER STREET REGULARS and Sydney Hosier's MURDER, MRS. HUDSON. The former involves a murder, dogs, and Sherlock Holmes aficionados. The latter is the second book in a series that has Mrs. Hudson as the detective and would be okay except for the fact that Hosier has decided to give her a friend who can travel out of her body. This is presumably explained more in the first book of the series, but I'm not going out of my way to find it.
THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE by Richard Condon:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/16/2004]
I had heard that Richard Condon's THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE was different from the film primarily in that the sexual undertones of the film were made explicit in the book. This is true, and while the book is well-written, I'm not sure it adds that much if you've seen the movie. (By the way, director John Frankenheimer gives a great commentary track on the DVD. There is a new release of the film on DVD scheduled for July 13 with some additional features, but the older release also has the commentary.)
MONITOR FOUND IN ORBIT by Michael G. Coney:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/16/2007]
MONITOR FOUND IN ORBIT by Michael G. Coney (ISBN-10 0-879-97132-0 ISBN-13 978-0-879-97132-8) is an old collection of nine of Coney's short stories that I was inspired to read by James Nicoll's review of it as part of his massive overview of DAW books that was posted to Usenet (http://tinyurl.com/2weru7). The lead story of a collection is usually assumed to be the strongest. But here the lead story, "The True Worth of Ruth Villiers", is a "gimmick" story, with the premises rather obviously set up so as to constrain the story rather artificially. "The Mind Prison" is also hard to believe, and predictable. I did rather like the idea behind "R26/5/PSY and I", even if it does not bear much examination, and similarly with "Esmeralda". I agree with Nicoll when he says, "[almost] all of these are competently written at the words and paragraph level even if some of the background assumptions don't seem to stand up to close inspection. This might seem like damning with faint praise but I do not intend to do so. It is a rare modern anthology which has this high a fraction of readable prose, and dodgy world construction is still just as common as in the 1970s."
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FICTIONAL & FANTASTIC LANGUAGES by Tim Conley & Stephen Cain:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/22/2013]
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FICTIONAL & FANTASTIC LANGUAGES by Tim Conley & Stephen Cain (ISBN 978-0-313-33188-6) is the sort of book that has been somewhat superseded by the Web in the sense that if you Google any of the languages, you would find more about it than you do in the book. Yet without the book you probably would not have any idea what languages there were for you to Google. One might quibble about the choice to arrange this encyclopedia by source work (book, film, or whatever) instead of by language, but since many of the languages are not actually named there really was not much choice. (There is an index so that you can look up a language by name.)
HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/10/2017]
I am listening to the Great Courses lectures on "Masterworks of Early 20th Century Literature" and although the professor said that the lectures would be accessible even if the listener had not read the works being discussed, I decided to read at least the shorter works. The first was Rudyard Kipling's "The Man Who Would Be King", which suffers (for me, at least) by being impossible to read without picturing the 1975 film.
The next was HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad (ISBN 978-0-486-26464-6). As preface to my comments, I will point out after an introductory lecture, there were two lectures about modernism, and particularly modernism (Impressionism and Post-Impressionism) in art. So I was particularly struck by all the references to the visual in HEART OF DARKNESS: by my count, 236 references to color, fog, smoke, dusk, "lurid glares", "unstained light", "gauzy and radiant fabric", "a sea the colour of lead, a sky the colour of smoke", luminosity, gloom, brilliance, and (of course) darkness.
Some of this is to be expected for a book titled "Heart of Darkness", but there seems to be far more than can be explained by that--unless the title was the back of the effect of Conrad's concentrating on the visual rather than the cause. And of course the fact that after noticing the first few references I became far more conscious of them, meaning that they became even more noticeable and made every scene a painting in my mind.
One reference to color may not be clear to most readers today. Conrad refers to "a large shining map, marked with all the colours of a rainbow. There was a large amount of red--good to see at any time, because one knows that some real work is done in there, a deuce of a lot of blue, a little green, smears of orange, and on the East Coast, a purple patch, to show where the jolly pioneers of progress drink the jolly lager-beer." It turns out that at the time Conrad was writing, maps tended to use standard colors: red for English colonies, blue for French, green for Italian, yellow for Belgian, and purple for German. (If such standardization seems odd, just think how we have ended up with red states and blue states.)
LORD JIM by Joseph Conrad:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/28/2004]
I tried to read Joseph Conrad's LORD JIM, this month's selection for the general book discussion group at the library. But it was just too tough going. I know people talk about how Joseph Conrad mastered English so well as a second language, but if one looks at just this novel, one gets the impression that he didn't really have the hang of it. His phrasing, combined with the non-linear telling of the story, made this the sort of book that I decided life was too short to read. (Many people felt this way, though a couple of people did finish it, and one really liked it. That gives it a slight edge over THE SUN ALSO RISES, which no one liked.)
CASTRO'S BOMB by Robert Conroy:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/24/2012]
In CASTRO'S BOMB by Robert Conroy (Kindle only, ASIN B005ORV3IM), the politics and military aspects are done reasonably well (at least as far as I can tell), but Conroy really needs to have only male characters. Regarding female characters, one of two things seem to be the case: 1) Conroy has no idea how to write female characters, or 2) Conroy knows how to write female characters, but figures his audience is all male and consists of people who do not want well-written female characters.
So far as I can tell, the female characters are entirely defined by sex (including rape), fear of pregnancy, menstruation, emotions, what they are wearing, and how they look. They plead for their husbands, or spend time searching their bombed-out apartments for jewelry. The only real exception to this seems to be the Cuban women who stop the tank column, and even they are more into passive resistance. (One might speculate on the differing portrayals of Anglo and Russian women versus those of Hispanic women, but I am not going to go there.)
(This problem, by the way, also appears in his earlier books, HIMMLER'S WAR and 1942, and possibly others that I do not recall.)
Conroy also depends a lot on infodumps, even to the extent of explaining the origin of the military response "Nuts!" But in non-military matters, he makes mistakes (which should have been caught by his editor, assuming Kindle books have editors). For example, there is his use of the term "Hobson's choice" in the sense of Scylla and Charybdis, when it really means no choice at all. ("Any color as long as it's black" would be a classic example.) And it is not a case of the error being the character's rather than the author's--the speaker (Kennedy) was classically educated and would know what "Hobson's choice" means.
1901 by Robert Conroy (Lyford Books, ISBN 0-89141-537-8, 1995, 374pp, hardback):
There are two kinds of alternate histories. The first is the kind that assumes some sort of change and then looks at what the world (or part of it) would be like years later. Examples of this are Philip K. Dick's Man in the High Castle, Ward Moore's Bring the Jubilee, and Robert Harris's Fatherland. The second assumes some sort of change and then starts following the affect of this change from that point. Examples of this are Harry Turtledove's Guns of the South and Leo Frankowski's Cross-Time Engineer. I must admit to a preference for the first. In part, this is because while the second can be well done, it all too often is just a detailed description of how the author thinks some war would have gone after the change. 1901 is precisely this sort of book.
The premise is that Germany, jealous of the United States' overseas possessions, attacks us in June 1901. Most of the book is spent detailing the land and sea campaigns resulting from this, with scant time given to what things are like in the areas of the United States not directly involved, or indeed even in the war zones except for a few somewhat perfunctory descriptions of fleeing refugees. As far as I can tell, Conroy does a reasonable job at what he does, though things work out a little too conveniently and pat. His characters are fairly one-dimensional: militarily, they're okay, but the emotionally they are trite and predictable, not to mention incredibly stereotypical. For example, it is the lower-class girl who gets raped, and who starts having "noisy" sex first, while the upper-class girl gets rescued after being merely groped, and who waits longer and then has more discreet sex.
If you are looking for an alternate history that dwells on "what-if" battles and wars, then you will probably enjoy this. The battles have a very World War I feel to them, though they are also reminiscent of Gallipoli, and it is interesting to read Conroy's speculations on how a German-American war would have gone fifteen years earlier, and on the other side of the Atlantic. By positioning the war when he does, Conroy gets to compare the styles of the commanders who fought in the Civil War with those of the commanders who fought in World War I (in our timeline). But if you're looking for a detailed look at a changed society, 1901 doesn't even start to do this.
1945: A Novel by Robert Conroy:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/07/2007]
1945 by Robert Conroy (ISBN-13 978-0-345-49479-5, ISBN-10 0-345-49479-2) is an alternate history that takes as its premise that Japan does not surrender after the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but rather that a coup imprisons the Emperor and insists on continuing the war. The premise is fine, the way the story unfolds is reasonable, but the writing style is wooden. Conroy often insists on referring to characters by full name and military rank, even when such usage is awkward, and misuses some words as "decimated". I suppose that military strategists might find this of interest, but I cannot really recommend it for other readers. (Conroy's other books are 1901 and 1862, which are not easily remembered titles, and also liable to be confused with the 1632, 1633, 1634, 1812, 1824, or whatever from Flint and Weber. Actually, I think that Flint and Weber have multiple books titled 1634, differing only in their subtitles.)
ACRES OF DIAMONDS by Russell Conwell:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/05/2010]
One of my father's favorite books is ACRES OF DIAMONDS by Russell Conwell. I am not giving an ISBN for this, because what I am discussing here are various editions. My father had several copies on his bookshelf, and flipping through them I discovered that editors love to tamper.
Russell H. Conwell gave the text as a public speech more than 6000 times between 1877 and 1926. Not surprisingly, it was written in the ornate, declamatory style of the era. So I suppose it is not surprising that editors in the last forty years feel they should "update" it--after all, they are "updating" Shakespeare!
So what I had to compare were:
The first paragraph of the 1905 edition--which I would assume to be the most accurate to Conwell--reads:
"When going down the Tigris and Euphrates rivers many years ago with a party of English travelers I found myself under the direction of an old Arab guide whom we hired up in Bagdad, and I have often thought how that guide resembled our barbers in certain mental characteristics. He thought that it was not only his duty to guide us down those rivers, and do what he was paid for doing, but also to entertain us with stories curious and weird, ancient and modern, strange and familiar."
The 1968 edition renders this as:
"While traveling down the Tigris and Euphrates rivers many years ago, I found myself in the company of an old Arab guide we had hired at Bagdad. He was unusually talkative, and seemed to think it was not only his duty to guide us, and do what he was paid for doing, but also to entertain us with stories."
Ptooi.
The 2003 edition leaves the opening untouched, but makes other changes. For example, one story Conwell tells is of A. T. Stewart who started with $1.50, but lost 87-1/2 cents on his first business venture. He learned from this and invested the remaining 62-1/2 cents wisely. The 2003 edition decided that half-cents would confuse people, so it dropped them. The result is an arithmetic error: Stewart starts with $1.50, loses 87 cents, and has 62 cents left! But I suspect the biggest difference in the 2003 edition is the formatting to emphasize the key points.
The 1968 and 1972 editions retain the half-cents. In fact, the 1972 edition seems identical to the 1905; the difference in word count is probably due to sampling error.
AUGUSTINE FOR ARMCHAIR THEOLOGIANS by Stephen A. Cooper:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/02/2007]
And speaking of Augustine, I also listened to AUGUSTINE FOR ARMCHAIR THEOLOGIANS by Stephen A. Cooper (read by Simon Vance) (ISBN 0-664-22372-9, audiobook ISBN 1-596-44188-7). This is much longer (about six hours) and aimed mostly at Catholics, I suspect, but I found it interesting nonetheless. There were a couple of points I thought worth mentioning. First, Cooper talks about how Augustine "proves" the existence of "natural law". Augustine argues that stealing is against natural law, because even thieves do not believe it is right that people should steal from them. As such, this seems to be an application of Kant's categorical imperative centuries before Kant formulated it. And Cooper says that Augustine had tried to read the Bible when he was young but gave up, but not because it was too difficult. Cooper pointed out that Augustine was educated in a classical manner, and read elegant Latin works. However, the Latin translation available to him was aimed at the average person (I got the impression that the modern English equivalent would be the "Good News Bible"), and Augustine found it very inelegant and vulgar. I think this was probably the "Vetus Latina", not the Vulgate.
THE DARK IS RISING by Susan Cooper:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/20/2020]
THE DARK IS RISING by Susan Cooper (Margaret K. McElderry Books, ISBN 978-0-689-82983-3) is another book on Time Magazine's "100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time". It is another juvenile/young adult book, and has what is clearly a common theme in this category: the child or teen of about the age of the target audience who has unsuspected magical powers. (In science fiction, the protagonist has unusual intelligence, calculating skills, or deductive reasoning.)
Towards the beginning of the book, the powers of darkness try to defeat the protagonist in a sequence that is very similar to one in the film THE DEVIL RIDES OUT: a rider appears on a black horse, and the people representing the forces of good form a circle, holding hands but facing outward, to hold it off. Then voices come through the door claiming to be the protagonist's sister and mother, asking him to let them in. All this is very much like the scene in THE DEVIL RIDES OUT where the voice of the daughter of a main character is heard (and indeed, her image is seen) but it is a trick to tempt the mother, and there is a black horse and rider. I assume these are standard tropes, although it is possible Cooper borrowed them from the Dennis Wheatley book THE DEVIL RIDES OUT, which came out in 1934 (the film was in 1968), while THE DARK IS RISING was published in 1973.
THE DOSSIER OF SOLAR PONS by Basil Copper:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/29/2010]
THE DOSSIER OF SOLAR PONS by Basil Copper (ISBN 978-0-897-33252-1) is the eighth in the series of Sherlock Holmes pastiches featuring Solar Pons. (The first seven were written by August Derleth.) Of all the "copies" of Holmes, Solar Pons is the best, and also the one who appears primarily in short story form (as did Holmes). One of the things Derleth did when he started the series was to place it in the 1920s rather than the late 19th century. This lets Pons use somewhat more up-to-date methods, while still setting the story back in a more picturesque time.
LEVIATHAN WAKES by James S. A. Corey:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/22/2012]
LEVIATHAN WAKES (ISBN 978-0-316-12908-4) by James S. A. Corey is a classic space opera in the tradition of Robert A. Heinlein, with battling space ships, complicated politics, etc. Following what was going on was not always easy (because of the use of jargon), and the ending seems contrived. Also, it is the size of a doorstop, 600 pages in a large trade paperback format--you might have stuck RED PLANET in a back pocket, but this requires a tote bag. This makes it inconvenient to read.
"The Copenhagen Interpretation" by Paul Cornell:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/29/2012]
I have read "The Copenhagen Interpretation" by Paul Cornell (Asimov's 07/11) three times and when I am done, it is as if it has made no impression or sense whatsoever on my brain.
LEAVE ME ALONE, I'M READING: FINDING MYSELF AND LOSING MYSELF IN BOOKS by Maureen Corrigan:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/10/2006]
LEAVE ME ALONE, I'M READING: FINDING MYSELF AND LOSING MYSELF IN BOOKS by Maureen Corrigan (ISBN 0-375-50425-7) is about her experiences in reading, both as a girl growing up in Queens, and as a book reviewer in her adult life. Corrigan focuses on three categories of books, as she says: "I especially want to look at men's and women's lives as they've been depicted in three mostly noncanonical categories of stories: the female extreme-adventure tale, the hard-boiled detective novel, and the Catholic-martyr narratives." By "female extreme-adventure tale", Corrigan does not mean women mountain-climbers, but women who endure domestic abuse, societal mistreatment, etc. Examples she gives include Anne Bronte's THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL, or for that matter, almost any Bronte novel. Interestingly, though Corrigan talks a lot about the women in the Brontes' novels, she does not even mention any of George Eliot's female characters, though Eliot's Dorothea Brooke in MIDDLEMARCH and Dinah Morris in ADAM BEDE are very memorable. (And it's not even clear that Eliot's characters would contradict any of Corrigan theories.) "Catholic-martyr narratives" was perhaps a bit more central to Corrigan's life than to other readers since she attended pre-Vatican II Catholic schools. They include such books as KAREN (about Karen Killilea, though perhaps as much about the author, her mother Marie) and Dr. Tom Dooley's memoirs. KAREN rang a bell--I'm sure I read it back in school over forty years ago, indicating that that sort of inspirational book was probably promoted as much in public schools as in parochial ones. Corrigan's reminiscences of growing up reading will strike a wonderfully familiar and nostalgic chord with anyone for whom books were a major part of their childhood, as well as providing an interesting perspective on these categories.
THE CORONER'S LUNCH by Clive Cotterill:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/01/2014]
THE CORONER'S LUNCH by Colin Cotterill (ISBN 978-1-56947-376-4) is the first in Cotterill's series about Dr. Siri Paiboun, chief coroner in Vientiane, Laos. This one is set in 1976; shortly after a Communist government was installed in Laos, and there are currently eight more in the series. Cotterill blends murder mystery, political commentary, humor, and the supernatural, and manages to make it work.
The political commentary is of two sorts: the internal thoughts of the main character about the political situation, and such descriptions as, "The Lao Women's Union was housed in a two-storey building whose frontage was overgrown with flowering shrubs. They'd been tended to look natural but were kept under total control"--not unlike the populace as well, one imagines.
Cotterill has a breezy style and although there is a fair amount of police involvement, the book is not as graphic as many police procedurals. One is reminded of Agatha Christie, or perhaps of Sven Hjerson, the Finnish detective of Christie's mystery writer character, Ariadne Oliver. (Many also make the obvious comparison to Alexander McCall Smith's "Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency" series.) I am looking forward to reading more Dr. Paiboun stories.
KILLED AT THE WHIM OF A HAT by Clive Cotterill:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/01/2014]
I also read KILLED AT THE WHIM OF A HAT by Colin Cotterill (ISBN 978-0-312-56453-7), the first of his "Jimm Juree" series. (Just as Agatha Christie had both Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple, and Alexander McCall Smith has both Mma Ramotswe and Isabel Dalhousie, Cotterill has his two detectives.) Jimm was a crime reporter in Chiang Mai, Thailand, before having to move to southern Thailand. But soon enough she is involved in investigating several murders, along with her semi-senile mother, her close-mouthed grandfather, her transgender sister, a gay policeman, a monk, and a nun. Okay, it does sound like an assortment of "funny hats," but Cotterill makes it work.
"Early Retirement" by Mat Coward:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/13/2002]
One story I liked was Mat Coward's "Early Retirement" in the September 2002 issue of INTERZONE. As someone who worked for a company that sponsored these "team-building" exercises, I could appreciate it perhaps more than others. (Though I will admit that I personally never went on one.)
DISCOVER YOUR INNER ECONOMIST by Tyler Cowen:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/25/2008]
The notion that people are too concerned with the origins and expert opinions of art and not enough with their feelings about it ties in with comments made by Tyler Cowen in his book DISCOVER YOUR INNER ECONOMIST (ISBN-13 978-0-452-28963-5, ISBN-10 0-452-28963-7). He was discussing the best way to see an art museum. Interspersed with suggestions such as to skip the first room entirely (because it is always the most crowded), he observed that most people spend more time reading the labels than looking at the art. When you enter a gallery, he said, look around, pick the one item that you like the most or find the most intriguing, and spend your time looking at that.
AN ECONOMIST GETS LUNCH: NEW RULES FOR EVERYDAY FOODIES by Tyler Cowen:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/13/2012]
In AN ECONOMIST GETS LUNCH: NEW RULES FOR EVERYDAY FOODIES by Tyler Cowen (ISBN 978-0-525-95266-4), Cowen looks at food from an economic standpoint. Some of this may sound familiar, e.g., the idea that foods grown on another continent and brought in by ship may have a lower carbon footprint than locally grown foods. But Cowen spends more time talking about such things as the specifics of various ethnic cuisines. For example, Mexican cooking involves cutting meat thinner or shredding it, while American cuisine has thick steaks--why? Mexican beef is grass-fed, so the meat is stronger tasting, gamier, and "chewier" (tougher). American beef is corn-fed, hence milder and more tender.
As for why most American food is--or at least was--fairly mediocre, Cowen's theory is that the causes are primarily:
There is also a great chapter--perhaps the best chapter in the book--on learning how to shop in an Asian supermarket.
THOMAS WORLD by Richard Cox:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/07/2015]
THOMAS WORLD by Richard Cox (ISBN 978-1-59780-308-3) is a novel that one would think should have gotten more attention from the science fiction community. The first-person protagonist, Thomas Phillips, has a strange experience with a shining blue orb that seems to enter his head during a church service, after which he starts seeing strange reactions (or lack of reactions) from people he interacts with, as well as having the feeling that he is being watched and followed by mysterious men. And in addition, he hears voices reciting numbers and even random strangers suddenly turning to him and telling him things such as that everything is an illusion. All this somehow seems to be tied up with a game called "Ant 2.0" and the novels of Philip K. Dick.
The main problem is that this seems a bit too much like THE TRUMAN SHOW, though even that comparison raises questions. The basic one is whether Thomas's solipsism is purely mental, or has a physical basis. With Truman, we see the physical limits, but with Thomas, his travels seem to cover too large an area to be within a physical world.
Oddly enough, THOMAS WORLD seems to have made no impression on the usual science fiction reviewers, and all the reviews I can find are in mainstream media. (Maybe Google just doesn't find those in genre publications.) In any case, if you are a fan of Dick, you definitely should seek this out.
AMERICAN INDIAN VICTORIES by Dale R. Cozort (Booklocker.com):
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/18/2003]
Dale R. Cozort's AMERICAN INDIAN VICTORIES (published by Booklocker.com) is an odd book. It is not, strictly speaking, alternate history, but rather a discussion of how the conquest and colonization of the Americas went, and a discussion of a set of historical changes with brief suggestions of possible results of these changes. As alternate history it seems like taking the easy way out--coming up with a list of ideas for stories without actually writing the stories. But as history, this is perfectly acceptable, and I would recommend this to people interested in the historical aspects of that period. (By the way, this in general is a period well before the "Indian Wars" of the 19th century, so there are no alternate Custers et all here.)
THE OXFORD BOOK OF ENGLISH DETECTIVE STORIES edited by Patricia Craig:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/08/2005]
THE OXFORD BOOK OF ENGLISH DETECTIVE STORIES edited by Patricia Craig (ISBN 0-192-80375-1) is a 1990 collection of the classics of that genre. It is a great collection, even if the people who are most likely to be interested in it are also the most likely to have read many of the stories already. It might make a good gift for someone who has just discovered the English detective story, though, and needs a sampler to see which authors he might like.
FIFTEEN DECISIVE BATTLES OF THE WORLD by Sir Edward S. Creasey:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/09/2007]
Written in 1851, FIFTEEN DECISIVE BATTLES OF THE WORLD by Sir Edward S. Creasey (ISBN-10 0-306-80559-6, ISBN-13 978-0-306-80559-2) is a classic.
The battles are (briefly):
490 B.C.E.--The Persians defeated at Marathon.
413 B.C.E.--The Athenians defeated at Syracuse.
331 B.C.E.--Darius III defeated at Gaugamela (Arbela).
207 B.C.E.--The Catheginians defeated at Metaurus.
9 B.C.E.--The Romans defeated in the Teutoberg Forest.
451 C.E.--Attila the Hun defeated at Chalons.
732 C.E.--The Moors defeated at Tours.
1066 C.E.--Harold defeated at Hastings.
1429 C.E.--The English defeated at Orleans.
1588 C.E.--The Spanish Armada defeated.
1704 C.E.--The French defeated at Blenheim.
1709 C.E.--The Swedes defeated at Poltava.
1777 C.E.--Burgoyne defeated at Saratoga.
1792 C.E.--Foreign armies defeated at Valmy.
1815 C.E.--Napoleon defeated at Waterloo.
One thing that is noted by everyone is that all of these are very Eurocentric choices. But even more than that, they are all battles that reinforced (western) European dominance. Even Teutoberg is seen by Creasy as leading directly to the establishment of the British peoples. Creasy chooses Tours as critical in halting the Arab invasion of Europe. But he ignores the recapture of Jerusalem by Saladin in 1187 or the capture of Acre in 1291, either of which could be cited as halting the expansion of Europe into the Middle East and Asia. He ignores the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. He ignores the defeat in the Battle of Koan of the Mongols invading Japan in 1281.
[He also does not include Yarmouk in 636 which brought Islam
flooding out of Arabia and is arguably the most important. See
One might think that Creasy's critical turning points would have
generated various alternate history stories, but one would be
only partly accurate. Yes, there are stories based on most of
the early ones (though with Alexander, Carthage, and Joan of Arc
they are more general than based on specific battles) and for
Saratoga and Waterloo, but nothing for Syracuse, Tours, Blenheim,
Poltava, or Valmy.
Historian Joseph B. Mitchell has five more battles since 1851:
For alternate histories, Vicksburg has been almost ignored, while
Gettysburg has inspired dozens of stories. Sadowa? Nothing.
The Marne? Most World War I alternate histories focus on either
the assassination or some obscure German corporal. And it seems
as though there are only a couple of stories on Midway and none
on Stalingrad. (One might argue that Mitchell should have chosen
Pearl Harbor, since without that we might have "sat out" the war,
and things would be very different now.)
By the way, in his chapter on Saratoga, Creasy quotes Alexis de
Toqueville, who had written fifteen years earlier. Even by
Creasy's time, it was a picture of the United States that was not
accurate, and certainly as a prediction of what would come was
fairly far off: "The time will therefore come when one hundred
and fifty millions of men will be living in North America, equal
in condition, one race, owing their origin to the same cause, and
preserving the same civilisation, the same language, the same
religion, the same habits, the same manners, and imbued with the
same opinions, propagated under the same forms. The rest is
uncertain, but this is certain; ...." (The United States
population was 150,000,000 in 1950.)
Creasy himself repeatedly refers to "Anglo-Americans", and says
things like, "They, like ourselves, are members of the great
Anglo-Saxon nation", and "our race is one, being of the same
blood, speaking the same language, having an essential
resemblance in our institutions and usages, and worshipping in
the temples of the same God." Again, even in Creasy's time this
was not accurate--even before the massive influx of immigrants in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the United
States had a fair percentage of German (almost 10% of the
population during the War of 1812), Scots, and Irish. And of
course there was a very large percentage of African-Americans,
which both he and de Toqueville ignored.
THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN
by Michael Crichton:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/16/2009]
The newly formed science fiction discussion group in Middletown
(NJ) chose THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN by Michael Crichton for the January
meeting. (Each month we choose a book and the movie made from
it--we read the book ahead of time, then watch the movie for the first
half of the meeting, then discuss the two for the second half.)
A few observations about the book: It is a massive expository lump
(or as Mark said, "an expository lump with trimmings").
A couple of weeks ago I talked about novels that blurred the line
between fiction and fact. Crichton did that forty years ago--the
"Acknowledgements" at the beginning and the "References" at the end
are both made-up. Even the opening quotes after the title page are
made up, attributed to characters in the book.
Crichton cites Lewis Bornheim's definition of a crisis: "a
situation in which a previously tolerable set of circumstances is
suddenly, by the addition of another factor, rendered wholly
intolerable." Then he says, "At the time of Andromeda, there had
never been a crisis of biological science...." What about the
bubonic plague, the introduction of European diseases to New World,
or the 1918 Influenza Pandemic?
He also claims that "1-101-1110" is "a perfectly reasonable
telephone number". No, it wasn't at the time (1969) and probably
not even now. Exchanges (the "101" part) could not start with a
"1", because that signaled long distance.
On page 201 he has the characters discussing "what is life?" One
definition they give is, "All living organisms in some way took in
energy--as food, or sunlight--and converted it to another form of
energy, and put it to use. (Viruses were the exception to this
rule, but the group was prepared to define viruses as nonliving.)"
Then someone claims three items stretch this too far: a black cloth
(in sunlight, it converts radiant energy to heat), a watch with a
radium dial (radioactive decay produces light), and a piece of
granite ("It is living, breathing, walking, and talking. Only we
cannot see it because it is happening too slowly.") While one may
agree with the first two, I have no idea what he means by the last.
But the classic test case that is usually given is fire--it
consumes fuel, outputs waste, etc.
SPHERE
by Michael Crichton:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/22/2013]
SPHERE by Michael Crichton (ISBN 978-0-061-99055-7) is very
cinematic. This is not precisely a compliment. It is written in
short simple scenes, with not very well-fleshed out characters: the
mathematician is a bad guy, the woman is defensive about her
gender, and so on. It is full of sloppy science and writing. For
example, the marine biologist refers to "octopi" (the correct term
is "octopuses"). Another character talks about a computer using
"askey code." And there are several (other) awkward info-dumps as
well.
THE ASTONISHING HYPOTHESIS: THE SCIENTIFIC SEARCH FOR THE SOUL
by Francis Crick
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/07/2012]
This month's book discussion group choice, THE ASTONISHING
HYPOTHESIS: THE SCIENTIFIC SEARCH FOR THE SOUL by Francis Crick
(ISBN 978-0-684-19431-8), is mis-named. The "astonishing
hypothesis" is a form of determinism--everything is reducible to
the activities of neurons. Of it, Crick says: "There are, of
course, educated people who believe the Astonishing Hypothesis is
so plausible that it should not be called astonishing. ... I
suspect that such people have often not seen the full implication
of the hypothesis. I myself find it difficult at times to avoid
the idea of a homunculus. One slips into it so easily. The
Astonishing Hypothesis states that all aspects of the brain's
behavior are due to the activities of neurons. ... Many of my
readers might justifiably complain that what has been discussed in
this book has very little to do with the human soul as they
understand it. ... Such criticisms are perfectly valid at the
moment, but making them in this context would show a lack of
appreciation of the methods of science."
There are several problems with this. First, the book is not
about the "scientific search for the soul"--indeed, the soul is
barely mentioned. Most of it seems to be about how vision works.
Crick explains that this is because that is one of the easiest
brain functions to study. (I am reminded of the joke about the
man looking for his keys under the street light.)
Second, Crick spends a lot of time talking about vision and color,
and describing various optical effects and illusions, but there
are no color plates or illustrations.
Third, I find it rather patronizing that Crick tells the reader
that if she does not think the hypothesis is astonishing, that is
because she does not understand it.
Mark gave what I thought was a good parallel to much of what Crick
was saying: a television picture is due to the actions of
pixels, yet the collective result seems to be more than just the
sum of the parts.
As is often the case, the discussion group drifted off-topic,
talking about such diverse topics as how many brains an octopus
has, the possibility of multiple origins of life, and "the doorway
effect." The last is the fact that you are more likely to forget
something when you pass through a doorway. For example, if you
get up to get a pen and walk ten feet within the same room, you
will probably remember why you got up. But if you walk ten feet
into the next room, you are more likely to get there and find
yourself thinking, "Now why did I come in here?"
KAFKA'S SOUP
by Mark Crick:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/07/2010]
KAFKA'S SOUP: A COMPLETE HISTORY OF WORLD LITERATURE IN 14 RECIPES
by Mark Crick (ISBN-13 0-15-101283-0) is a collection of recipes,
each written in the style of a well-known author. (well, mostly--I
had never heard of Irvine Welsh before). One can only appreciate
the pastiches of authors one is familiar with, though, so I really
only "got" about half this book: Raymond Chandler, Jane Austen,
Franz Kafka, John Steinbeck, Homer, Geoffrey Chaucer, and (of
course) Jorge Luis Borges. Some of the others I could get a sense
of, but realized I was missing a lot. For example, "Tarragon Eggs
à la Jane Austen" begins, "It is a truth universally acknowledged
that eggs, kept for too long, go off." Or "Lamb with Dill Sauce à
la Raymond Chandler: "I took hold of the [leg of lamb]. It felt
cold and damp, like a coroner's handshake." Without a familiarity
with the original, these homages fall flat. The Borges, in
particular, is patterned after a specific story in addition to its
more general imitation of style and images. The Kafka, also, has
implicit connections to THE TRIAL.
On the other hand, I have no ideas if the recipes are any good.
(Having just tried a couple of recipes out of cookbooks that
sounded good to me, but turned out only so-so, I am convinced that
I cannot judge a recipe on the page.) I do find the idea of Kafka
serving "Quick Miso Soup" a bit outré--but maybe that was on
purpose. The rest of the recipes seem better paired to their
"inspirations."
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/14/2003]
As part of my alternate history reading I read CRIMSON SKIES, a
tie-in to the game. It's three novellas (or perhaps novelettes)
rather than a single novel, and the first and third stories are
at least entertaining, if not great literature.
THE POLITICALLY INCORRECT GUIDE TO THE CIVIL WAR
by H. W. Crocker III:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/27/2017]
We also listened to THE POLITICALLY INCORRECT GUIDE TO THE CIVIL
WAR by H. W. Crocker III (ISBN 1-433-25123-X) or rather, we
listened to one disc of the ten. The problem was that it was far
too annoying to listen to Crocker's attempts to justify the
legality of the South's secession and the rightness of its cause..
Do not misunderstand--there are definitely actions of the Union
during Civil War that were not only of questionable legality, but
that were flat-out illegal: the creation of West Virginia, the
suspension of habeas corpus, and the special requirements laid on
Southern states before they we "re-admitted" to the Union that the
Union claimed they could not leave.
But Crocker persists in saying things like "South Carolina wanted
to secede because they felt the Northern states were oppressing
it", or "Virginians just wanted to continue their lifestyle and
traditions", or "the way of life is the South was slower and
easier, with the rough edges smoothed off." What he means, of
course, is "white males in South Carolina wanted to secede because
they felt the Northern states were oppressing it", or "white
Virginians just wanted to continue their lifestyle and traditions",
or "the way of life in the South for rich whites was slower and
easier, with the rough edges smoothed off."
He also argued both that since the states were independent
sovereign entities that formed the United States, they could
secede, and because the colonies were colonies they could not
secede from England. But when was Arkansas an independent entity?
THROUGH FIVE ADMINISTRATIONS: REMINISCENCES OF COLONEL WILLIAM H. CROOK
by William H. Crook:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/17/2017]
THROUGH FIVE ADMINISTRATIONS: REMINISCENCES OF COLONEL WILLIAM H.
CROOK (ISBN 978-1-3316-2057-0) consists of Crooks's experiences and
observations during his time as body-guard, clerk, and dispersing
agent to Lincoln, Johnson, Grant, Hayes, and Garfield, and Arthur.
(He was not on duty when Lincoln was assassinated, and no longer a
bodyguard when Garfield was.) Crook actually served under twelve
Presidents--Lincoln through Wilson--but these memoirs cover only
six. Arthur is covered in the same chapter as Garfield, and
apparently Crook considered them one administration.
Mixed in with the more straightforward observations, we catch
glimpses of less reported aspects. We see the casual racism of the
time--not just the use of terms such as "darkies", but descriptions
such as "we saw some [Union] soldiers not far away 'initiating'
some negroes by tossing them on a blanket. When they came down
they were supposed to be transformed into Yankees. The darkies
yelled lustily during the process, and came down livid under their
black skins. ... The President [Lincoln] laughed boyishly; I
heard him afterward telling some one about the funny sight." (It
reminded me of the scene in BOARDWALK EMPIRE when some white
character just reaches over and rubs Chalky White's head "for
luck"--apparently this used to be considered [by whites] acceptable
behavior! You can tell, of course, that White is less than
thrilled.)
It was of this same visit of Lincoln to Richmond that Crook says,
"It was nothing sort of miraculous that some attempt on his life
was not made. It is to the everlasting glory of the South that he
was permitted to come and go in peace."
There is much made by Crook and others of Lincoln's premonitions
about his death. (For example, Crook says that evening was the
only time Lincoln did not say "good night" to him, but rather
"good-bye.") But Crook also quotes Lincoln as saying, "I have
perfect confidence in those who are around me--in every one of you
men. I know no one could do it [assassinate me] and escape alive.
But if it is to be done, it is impossible to prevent." While it is
true that Booth was eventually killed, it is certainly conceivable
that he could have escaped.
Crook describes the actions of the Congress in 1866 and 1867 to
effect Reconstruction by opining, "The first was tragic,
culminating as it did in negro Suffrage, the disenfranchisement of
the majority of the better class of Southerners, ..."
There are also small asides illuminating the characters of the men
and women Crook encountered. For example, of President Hayes he
wrote, "At the commissary the very best things were to be obtained
at cost price. This President Hayes refused to do. 'I prefer to
buy like other men,' he said." But he was also careful to absolve
Grant of blame in availing himself of the commissary, preceding
this by, "It had been the custom during the Grant administration to
buy the groceries [for the White House] of the army commissary.
This was perfectly natural and proper because of the army
associations of General Grant." (I am not sure I would say this
was proper, since by the time he was President, Grant was not
longer in the Army.)
ECOLOGICAL IMPERIALISM: THE BIOLOGICAL EXPANSION OF EUROPE, 900-1900
by Alfred W. Crosby:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/14/2011]
ECOLOGICAL IMPERIALISM: THE BIOLOGICAL EXPANSION OF EUROPE,
900-1900 by Alfred W. Crosby (ISBN 978-0-521-33613-0) was one of the
textbooks for Geography 10 at the University of California at
Berkeley. This was a course available through podcasts, or at
least mostly available--the course included several films, and
audio podcasts are not the best medium for a course which features
a lot of maps. However, I was able to gather some useful
information, and decided that reading this textbook would be
worthwhile.
Crosby wrote this in 1986, well before Jared Diamond's GUNS, GERMS,
AND STEEL, and Diamond seems to have gotten a lot of his ideas
either from Crosby, or from Crosby's sources. There's nothing
wrong with this, of course, but I suspect most people think Diamond
originated it all. Crosby covers just about everything Diamond
does, and more besides, such as how the existence of Pangaea meant
that evolution had a very different effect before its break-up 200
million years ago (or so) than after.
One of the films for the course, by the way, was GRASS (1925). This
silent documentary of nomadic herders in Iraq and Iran was
sufficiently popular that its filmmakers were able to get funding
for their next film: KING KONG.
"A New Refutation"
by John Crowley:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/06/2006]
As with so many works these days,
"A New Refutation" by John Crowley (subtitled "Hommage a
J.L.B."), written for the Readercon 17 Souvenir Book,
suffers from a lack of editing. In it Crowley talks about
computers generating texts, and talks about "the long-standing
problem of how few colors a mapmaker would need to construct a
map where no two contiguous countries or regions would be the
same color" and says, "a computer . . . has proven that three
colors are in fact enough." No, it is four colors. What is
disturbing about this is that an author would be embarrassed to
have written that France is in Asia, or that Herman Melville
wrote DAVID COPPERFIELD, but I suspect that if this mistake were
pointed out, the response would be that no one would notice. (I
will not accept as valid the suggestion that the story is set in
an alternate universe where three colors suffice.)
THE TRANSLATOR
by John Crowley:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/04/2003]
I had seen John Crowley's THE TRANSLATOR in a new bookstore and
resolved to try the library, but when I saw a copy at Half-Price
Books, I figured it was probably as good a way as any to use some
of my store credit. Unlike his other books, this has no overt
fantasy element, but is the rather straightforward story of an
exiled Russian poet and a college student during the Cuban missile
crisis. Crowley has his characters spend a lot of time not just
writing poetry but explaining why they chose this word instead of
that word, and how this phrase was a reference to that other
quotation, and so on.
A SLIGHT TRICK OF THE MIND
by Mitch Cullin:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/03/2005]
Mitch Cullin's A SLIGHT TRICK OF THE MIND (ISBN 0-385-51328-3) is
not a Sherlock Holmes pastiche in the usual sense of the term. There are
a couple of mysteries involved, but the focus is not so much on
solving them as on Holmes as an old man, ninety-two years old and
dealing with both the physical and the mental infirmities that so
often accompany old age. He can no longer take in a scene at a
glance and remember it perfectly. As he expresses it, "Over
time, I have realized my mind no longer operates in such a fluid
manner. . . . My means for recall--those various groupings of
words and numbers--aren't as easily accessible as they were.
Traveling through India . . . I stepped from the train somewhere
in the middle of the country . . . and was promptly accosted by a
dancing, half-naked beggar, a most joyous fellow. Previously, I
would have observed everything around me in perfect detail . . .
but that rarely happens anymore. I don't remember the station
building and I cannot tell you if there were vendors or people
nearby. All I can recall is a toothless brown-skinned beggar
dancing before me, and arm outstretched for a few pence. What
matters to me now is that I possess that delightful vision of
him; where the event took place is of no account. Had this
occurred sixty years ago, I would have been quite distraught for
being unable to summon the location and its minutiae. But now I
retain only what is necessary. The minor details aren't
essential--what appears in my mind these days are rudimentary
impressions, not all the frivolous surroundings. And for that I
am grateful."
I'm sure some will complain of this "aging" of the story. After
all, most people get hooked on the Sherlock Holmes stories when
they are fairly young, and A SLIGHT TRICK OF THE MIND has lacks
any of the adventure of THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, or any of
the detection skills shown in A STUDY IN SCARLET. In science
fiction, a fair number of people have taken up the complaint that
the "sense of wonder" is vanishing, replaced by stories about old
age and downbeat futures. And this story may indicate a similar
trend in other fields (though the downbeat world here is not the
future, but a bombed-out post-WWII Japan.) Twenty years ago, we
had YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES, looking at a childhood (patterned more
after Indian Jones than Sherlock Holmes, one suspects), but now
we get what is in essence "Sherlock Holmes--The Twilight Years".
Is this because authors are getting older, or because readers of
books are getting older, or (possibly) not even an accurate
description of the current state of writing? In any case, I am
also getting older, and so at least for me this book was a
thoughtful change from the vast number of books set during
Holmes's prime. (Has anyone ever tried to take all the pastiches
and fit them into a timeline? I suspect that, like "M*A*S*H" on
television, or Bernard Cornwell's "Sharpe" series, there are more
stories than time to fit them into. And Mark has noted that
James Bond forty years after DR. NO still seems to be the same
age, so the timeline there is obviously off as well.
SIMPLE LIBRARY CATALOGUING (SEVENTH EDITION)
by Arthur Curley:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/19/2013]
I recently finished SIMPLE LIBRARY CATALOGUING (SEVENTH EDITION) by
Arthur Curley (ISBN 978-0-810-81649-7) but frankly, what can one
say about a book like that? I suppose the only observation of
interest is that many of the alphabetization rules in it that we
learned in school have been replaced by rules based on computer
sort order. So the old rule to treat words starting with "Mc" as
if they started with "Mac" (e.g., "McBride" precedes "MacDonald",
which precedes "McDougall") has been replaced by alphabetizing by
what is actually there (e.g., "MacDonald" precedes "McBride" which
precedes "McDougall").
On the other hand, I still think that "Dr." and "Doctor" should
both be treated as "Doctor", because frankly, who can remember when
the title is spelled out and when it isn't?
And while one normally alphabetizes numbers as being spelled out,
there is much to be said for occasionally treating them as numeric.
For example, "World's Best SF: 1969" should precede "World's Best
SF: 1970". And "The Fourth Galaxy Reader" should precede "The
Fifth Galaxy Reader".
THE GOSPEL PROBE
by Myron Curtis:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/26/2006]
I recently read THE GOSPEL PROBE by Myron Curtis (ISBN
0-595-36327-X), published by iUniverse. iUniverse publishes
books that cannot find other publishers; it is what used to be
called a "vanity press" (though I am sure they would protest the
term). The book was sent to me as an alternate history, and there
is indeed an alternate history aspect (which I will not reveal
here). But it is minimal, and--the book is mostly a time travel
story of representatives from what is apparently the Roman
Catholic Church in the future going back to 30 C.E. to check on
the accuracy of the Gospels (and others trying to stop them,
etc.). It then also has a secret history aspect at the end. I
found the plotting disjointed, but it is also technically poorly
written. It is full of typographical errors ("Ok" for "OK" or
"Okay" [page 8]), spelling errors and/or wrong homophones
("effect" where "affect" is meant [page 37], or "in a lighter
vain" [page 53]), and just bad writing. For example, Curtis
defines acronyms within direct speech, e.g.:
He also coins the name "Palistisraelia", where "Palestisraelia"
is more likely (if either could be considered likely!). And he
gives long Latin or Italian names for committees, objects, and
such, immediately translates them, and then never uses the Latin
or Italian again.
It did make me realize that however bad I think proofreading as
become in major publishers' books, it is close to non-existent in
publishers like iUniverse.
REVISIONS
edited by Julie E. Czerneda and Isaac Spzindel:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/01/2004]
All too often, alternate histories focus on battles or military
maneuvers. So it was encouraging to see Julie E. Czerneda and
Isaac Spzindel's REVISIONS (ISBN 0-7564-0240-9), whose premise was
alternate histories based on changes in scientific discoveries.
Not all lived up to this, though. For example, "The Resonance of
Light" by Geoffrey Landis has the scientific discovery, but then
it gets all wrapped up in an assassination. It's not a bad story,
but it falls into the same sort of track as so many others.
Others fail because they make some unjustified assumptions, or
because they fail to show how the alternate world is different
from ours. There are some good stories mixed in, however. Some,
like "The Ashbazu Effect" by John G. McDaid, work because simply
they have an interesting scientific premise and follow through on
it. Others, like Mike Resnick and Susan R. Matthews's "Swimming
Upstream in the Wells of the Desert", work because they give the
reader a well-drawn picture of the alternate world. And at least
one, James Alan Gardner's "Axial Axioms", is very good in spite of
the fact that it doesn't work as an alternate history story at
all. In fact, it's not even a story, but more an alternate
mathematical philosophy, or alternate philosophical mathematics,
or something. (Read it, and then you try to define it.)
Though the overall quality of this anthology is spotty, the fact
that there is at least at attempt to look at alternate history
from a different basis makes this worth looking at.
1863--Confederates defeated in the Vicksburg Campaign.
1866--Austria defeated at Sadowa in the Seven Weeks' War.
1914--German forces defeated at the Marne.
1942--Japanese defeated at Midway.
1942--Germans defeated at Stalingrad (now Volgograd).
"You must understand ...," said the secretary.
"If we make no effort to satisfy the Lobby for
Judeo-Christian Traditions (LJCT) which is
pressuring the council, ...." [page 18]
Go to Evelyn Leeper's home page.