All reviews copyright 1984-2024 Evelyn C. Leeper.
TRSF: THE BEST NEW SCIENCE FICTION (No. 1) edited by the editors of the "MIT Technology Review":
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/30/2013]
Our discussion book last month was TRSF: THE BEST NEW SCIENCE FICTION (No. 1) edited by the editors of the "MIT Technology Review" (no ISBN, UPC 09281-01333, order direct from MIT Technology Review). Normally, we try to pick something with enough copies available from the library system, but this is difficult to do: one cannot use inter-library loan for newer books, and too many of the older books have been purged from the libraries. This was cheap enough (and short enough) that we decided to go for it.
TRSF consists of a dozen stories, each tied to a specific technology, along with artwork by Chris Foss. While I like the artwork, I think the layout does it a disservice. As you are reading a story, you come across a page in the middle containing a beautiful painting by Chris Foss, and you spend a minute or so looking at it, admiring it, and trying to figure out what the heck it has to do with the story. Eventually, you realize that the answer is, "Nothing"; the artwork is just randomly placed in the middle of the various stories.
By the way, the cover says "12 Visions of Tomorrow" and then lists the twelve authors represented. Chris Foss's work, arguably more a "vision" than any story of words on paper, apparently does not count as a "vision of tomorrow."
What struck me the most about the stories was that they all seemed to be re-working of older (often classic) stories.
"The Brave Little Toaster" by Cory Doctorow (Communications) is in some ways a re-imagining of Robert Silverberg's "The Iron Chancellor". The big difference is that when "The Iron Chancellor" was written the situation was science fictional; today "The Brave Little Toaster" seems all too close to reality.
(Our own recent interactions with technology support Doctorow's underlying theme of progress having its drawbacks. Our old VCR could be programmed up to a year in advance; our DVR can be programmed only about a week in advance. Twenty years ago we got a can opener that attached to the bottom of the cupboard; now you have to take up counter space for one.)
Cory Doctorow seems to be making a project of re-using classic titles for completely different stories, by the way, and Doctorow's "Brave Little Toaster" has little, if anything, to do with Thomas M. Disch's story of the same name.
"Indra's Web" by Vandana Singh (Energy) seems to have its roots in "Dial F for Frankenstein" by Brian W. Aldiss, but with a more positive spin. For that matter, there are also similarities to "A Subway Named Moebius" by A. J. Deutsch. In all these stories, an entity of one sort becomes sufficiently complex to make a quantum leap to another sort of entity.
"Real Artists" by Ken Liu (Computing) has some interesting ideas about film-making, but I do not think it bears closer examination. For example, the time required to do the sort of development would seem to be too long--the computer parts would be fast enough, but the human interactions can run only in real time. It also harkens back to Connie Willis's REMAKE. It was ultimately disappointing, strangely, because Ken Liu has written some very thoughtful works, and I was hoping for something of that sort.
"Complete Sentence" by Joe Haldeman (Computing) has what has been referred to as a "virtual sentence" as its gimmick. This one reminded me of a story (whose name and author I cannot remember) in which Hitler is resurrected and executed over and over, with the goal of executing him six million times or eleven million times or whatever. These executions were not virtual, but both fall in the category of technologically enhanced punishments.
"The Mark Twain Robots" by Ma Boyong (Robots) is explicitly based on Isaac Asimov and his three laws of robotics, but also connected with Asimov's "Jokester", about the origin of jokes, and "Liar", about the application of the First Law.
"Cody" by Pat Cadigan (Biomedicine) reminded me of Chris Lawson's "Written in Blood", which also used the notion of encoding text in one's DNA.
"The Surface of Last Scattering" by Ken MacLeod (Materials) has as its central conceit "the Rot", a bio-weapon that has destroyed all paper in the world. One is reminded of such works as Kit Pedler's MUTANT-59. (And the existence of a lot of historical documents on parchment would seem to undermine the protagonist's father's intentions.)
"Specter-Bombing the Beer Goggles" by Paul Di Filippo (Web) is a fairly lightweight story about using technology and something like Google glasses to change how you see the world--and more specifically, other people. Whether it addresses the issue of how this objectifies other people is not clear. This almost seems more interested in the vulnerabilities of the technology than the morality of it in the first place. A much better story on a similar idea is Ted Chiang's "Liking What You See".
"Lonely Islands" by Tobias Buckell (Energy) is a short-short about two people matched up with each other on opposite sides of the environmental issue of cars. Eh.
One reviewer thought "The Flame Is Roses, the Smoke Is Briars" by Gwyneth Jones (Communications) was the best in the anthology. I could barely understand it.
"Private Space" by Geoffrey A. Landis (Spaceflight) is a story with a beginning and a middle, but no end, and seems as though it were lifted from ANALOG. "Gods of the Forge" by Elizabeth Bear (Biomedicine) looks at "right-minding", which one could consider as psychological modification taken to another level--and whether that is something we should do.
Though this is described as the first annual anthology, it came out in 2011, and a second volume was never produced.
SEVERANCE by Ling Ma:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/28/2018]
SEVERANCE by Ling Ma (ISBN 978-0-374-261597) is something we are seeing more of in the last decade or so--a science fiction novel written by someone apparently not familiar with science fiction, and not writing primarily for a science fiction audience. The book focuses as much on the isolation of living in New York as on the science fictional element, which is a plague that causes people to perform some task repetitiously until they starve to death. We see the pre-plague world in flashbacks. There seems to be only our small band of survivors, but there don't seem to be piles of dead bodies around. Oh, when they go into a house in suburbia somewhere, there may find the corpses of the residents, but there is never any sense, for example, that the New York they leave is full of millions of corpses rotting away.
The thing is, the parts that had nothing to do with science fiction were quite good, and while I understand that the plague was supposed to make specific the automatic and unthinking routines of life, I wish the author had developed it with more care.
THE UNINVITED by Dorothy Macardle:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/27/2018]
THE UNINVITED by Dorothy Macardle (Doubleday, Doran / S.J.R. Saunders): It is hard to read this without being reminded by, and influenced by, the film version. That I happened to see the film version less than a week before the nominations were announced merely made this more evident. So while reading it, I kept noticing differences between the book and the film.
For example, in the book Roderick Fitzgerald is an author. In the film, he is a musician, possibly because expressing emotion through music is clearly easier in a film that in a book, and indeed one of the main ways one does this in a film.
In the book, Stella is 18 and Roderick is 23. In the film, she is 19; Roderick's age is not given, but Ray Milland was 37 at the time, and looks it. The result is that the relationship between them is a lot less creepy in the book.
The book seems adequate enough, though there also seems to be a lot of superfluous scenes of Roderick writing his play, meeting with people about his play, re-writing his play, and so on. My other problem is that I am just not a big fan of ghost stories, at least in written form. (Somehow, I enjoy cinematic ghost stories more.) This, of course, is a problem with the Hugo Awards (and others) in general--one is usually presented with a mixed bag of stories in a category and has to compare them. This category, for example, has a political novel, a space opera, a philosophical novel, a technology novel, and a ghost story. For most readers, at least one of these will not be their cup of tea.
THE MOTEL OF THE MYSTERIES by David Macaulay:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/04/2009]
THE MOTEL OF THE MYSTERIES by David Macaulay (ISBN-10 0-395-28424-4) is perhaps the best-known of what might be called "future archaeology" books. A thousand years from now, after civilization was destroyed by being buried under a flood of junk mail and solid pollutants, which apparently destroyed all knowledge of our era without driving everyone back into the Dark Ages. Howard Carson, a future archaeologist discovers and excavates a motel. The story seems like a cross between Howard Carter's discovery of King Tut's tomb, and Heinrich Schliemann's discovery of Troy. For example, Carson says he sees "wonderful things," and one of the illustrations shows Carson's wife wearing the "jewelry" and "ornaments" that he found in the motel. The fact that one of the pieces of jewelry is an old-fashioned bathtub plug on a chain, and one of the ornaments is a toilet seat gives you some idea of both Carson's accuracy and the nature of the book. (The motel is called the "Motel Toot'n'C'mon".)
Gary Westfahl wrote an article about this genre: "The Addled Archaeology of the Future". As he says, "there is a sporadic tradition of science fiction stories about future archaeology which endeavor to argue, albeit in a humorous manner, that this [misinterpreting of artifacts] is a genuine danger; however, these texts are rare, they are written by people who are not considered science fiction authors; and they are generally unsuccessful, both financially and aesthetically." He discusses four of these: Edgar Allan Poe's "Mellonta Tauta" (1849), John Ames Mitchell's THE LAST AMERICAN (1889), Robert Nathan's THE WEANS (1960), and Macaulay's MOTEL OF THE MYSTERIES (1979). [-ecl]
UNQUIET SPIRITS by Bonnie MacBird:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/01/2017]
UNQUIET SPIRITS by Bonnie MacBird (ISBN 978-0-00-820108-1) is the second in MacBird's series of Sherlock Holmes novels. It is competently written, but there is too much about the manufacture of whisky, too many characters with too many secrets in their past, and too much back story about Holmes, dribbled out in bits and pieces, although I will admit that one giant info dump of the whole story would not be better. I suppose my complaint may be more that the Holmes back story is too complicated, with too many pieces to be revealed in the first place. However, if you are the sort who wants to know everything about Holmes, from childhood on, you will probably like this more than I did.
THIEVES IN THE TEMPLE: THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND THE SELLING OF THE AMERICAN SOUL by G. Jeffrey MacDonald:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/04/2011]
THIEVES IN THE TEMPLE: THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND THE SELLING OF THE AMERICAN SOUL by G. Jeffrey MacDonald (ISBN 978-0-465-00932-9) could just as easily have been subtitled "The Rise of American Churches and the Decline of American Religion", because that is MacDonald's basic message. While church attendance is up and mega-churches with thousands of members are becoming more common, MacDonald sees more and more people who profess to be Christians moving away from the central tenets and beliefs of Christianity.
MacDonald sees the primary problem as consumerism: people are reacting to churches as products, and churches are selling themselves to people as products. Pastors don't give sermons that make their parishioners uncomfortable, because people will leave that church and go to a more comfortable one. Churches now spend millions on state-of-the-art sound systems instead of soup kitchens, and people think charity means a celebrity golf tournament instead of visiting the elderly.
But MacDonald is not negative on Christianity, far from it--he is an ordained minister. What he wants a return to traditional Christian values. These may include traditional marriage, no abortion, etc., but he is more specific that they include honesty, self-discipline, charity, and other values apparently not as emphasized in many congregations. As he says, "Congregants grew more concerned about other people's abortions and euthanasia than about the morality of their own tax-paying and other financial habits." And also, "among those willing to support the use of torture, Christians were at the head of the pack ... the more one goes to church, the more likely one is to support torture."
One can argue, of course, that MacDonald is mistaken in his interpretation of Christianity. But unless you want to argue that Christianity is about finding the church with the best singles group and the least demands on its members, what he says does make sense.
HOLY COW by Sarah MacDonald:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/16/2008]
HOLY COW by Sarah MacDonald (ISBN-13 978-0-7679-1574-8, ISBN-10 0-7679-1574-7) is the story of a journalist's stay in India, and her quest for religion, or spirituality, or God, or something like that. What is not clear is when or how she decided this was a spiritual quest--that was not why she went to India to start with, yet it is clear that this becomes her goal, or why else would she be so diligent in seeking out every possible religion to find out what they have to offer.
That quibble aside, it seems as though every attempt by MacDonald to find something meaningful in India runs up against what can only be termed "loonies". This includes the Jews, who seem to be all Israelis or Americans, and more interested in hugging, dancing, and smoking hash than in anything that I would consider an expression of Judaism. After reading this section, though, I end up basically discounting all her other encounters with the extremes of each religion. (Trying to get the essence of Hinduism by attending the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad is, after all, like trying to understand the essence of Christianity by standing in St. Peter's Square on Easter Sunday, or understanding Islam by making the Hajj.) HOLY COW does give you a sense of India, but often a somewhat deceptive one.
HOAXES
by Curtis D. MacDougall:
FADS & FALLACIES IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE
by Martin Gardner:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/18/2006]
And then of course, I have to mention HOAXES by Curtis D. MacDougall (ISBN 0-486-20465-0), a 1940 volume which covers the Cardiff Giant, John Wilkes Booth's mummy, and the baby picture of Adolf Hitler (among many others). And even Martin Gardner's classic FADS & FALLACIES IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE (ISBN 0-486-20394-8) covers some of the same territory, though it is more about the delusions than the outright scams. (In some cases, it is hard to tell for sure--was Bridey Murphy a scam or a genuine delusion?)
And this could easily segue into several of Stephen Jay Gould's collections, such as THE MISMEASURE OF MAN. But I've probably suggested enough books to keep you busy for a while already.
ROMANITAS by Sophie MacDougall:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/17/2006]
ROMANITAS by Sophia MacDougall (ISBN 0-75286-894-2) is set in the present, but in a world in which Rome never fell. (MacDougall conveniently provides an appendix with her altered timeline, and it is the foiling of the assassination of the emperor Pertinax in 193 C.E. that makes the difference.) Rome now rules most of the world (except for the Sinoan Empire, the southern half of Africa, and Australia, which is either completely ignored by everyone or part of Nionia--the map is unclear). Christianity seems to have have failed to take hold, and slavery is still the rule of the land. The only problem is that the story could take place anywhere--it is full of political intrigue, but of a sort that could be transposed to just about any empire. It is well-written, but I found myself wishing that there had been more dependence on the world that MacDougall had created. For example, though Rome controls "Terranova", this is only mentioned in passing a few times. This is a British book, so it is not surprising that it focuses on Europe rather than "Terranova" or Asia (and of course Rome is there and not here), but I suspect that in spite of the popularity of alternate histories in the United States, this may be an obstacle to getting it published over here.
THE GREAT GOD PAN by Arthur Machen:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/28/2017]
THE GREAT GOD PAN by Arthur Machen (ISBN 978-1-535-41671-9) is supposed to be a classic of horror fantasy, but whether it is the archaic style or something else, I did not find it horripilating at all.
OPERATION MINCEMEAT: HOW A DEAD MAN AND A BIZARRE PLAN FOOLED THE NAZIS AND ASSURED AN ALLIED VICTORY by Ben Macintyre:
THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS by Ewan Montagu:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/07/2011]
After you've read the title of OPERATION MINCEMEAT: HOW A DEAD MAN AND A BIZARRE PLAN FOOLED THE NAZIS AND ASSURED AN ALLIED VICTORY by Ben Macintyre (ISBN 978-0-307-45327-3), reading the book is almost superfluous. Well, okay, not really, but this is definitely an excessive title. The book tells the true story of a super-secret World War II operation to give the German High Command disinformation. Briefly, the plan was this: take a body, dress it in uniform, plant some fake documents on it that make it look as though the invasion of southern Europe will be in the Balkans instead of Sicily. They would then dump the body off the coast of Spain where the Germans will eventually get a hold of the papers.
The title for the classic book on this subject--THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS by Ewen Montagu (ISBN 978-1-557-50448-7)--was certainly catchier. Of course, that book was less comprehensive, and also much less accurate. There are two reasons for this. One was that Montagu, as one of the leaders of the team that created Major William Martin, had perhaps a natural tendency to inflate his role and minimize those of the others, as well as to emphasize all the good points and omit the various errors. (Another example of this sort of narcissist distortion was Eliot Ness's memoir, THE UNTOUCHABLES.) But there was a second reason, and in this Montagu had a better excuse than most authors, as Macintyre points out: because much of the truth was still classified, Montagu was obliged to hide a lot of the details, change others to obscure the truth, and leave a lot of names out. In fact, Macintyre spends quite a few pages talking about Montagu's book and other accounts, along with the movie. Not surprisingly, the film of the same name was even less accurate than Montagu's book.
For example, Montagu's book doesn't talk about how the original idea for "Operation Mincemeat" probably came from Ian Fleming (who got it from a Basil Thompson mystery novel). Indeed, Montagu makes it sound as though the entire project was his, with only passing mention of other major players. Nor does Montagu talk about how the team actually made a lot of errors in the execution of the plan, such as having no random items in Martin's pockets, or assuming there were no German spies in England who might investigate some of the details. And though Montagu (and everyone else) claimed "Martin" had died of pneumonia, Montagu at least knew that he died from rat poison, and ignored the fact that this could, in fact, have been detected if the Germans were thorough. Or that Montagu's brother was spying for the Soviets in the early days of the war (before Hitler wrote his treaty with Stalin), and
that information was being passed to the Germans at that time. (One might assume that by 1943, of course, this was no longer true).
I do disagree with Macintyre on the "unreality" of the letters supposedly from Martin's girlfriend, which he says read more like letters one would find in a book or movie than in real life. I have read some letters written at that time, and there were certainly some letters written in that style.
And in 1998, Montagu's claims that "Martin" had died of pneumonia and that permission had been granted by his family for the body's use were revealed as false: Martin was actually Glyndwr Michael, he died from eating rat poison, and his family (his parents had been dead and he was estranged from his siblings) had never been contacted. Montagu believed that all evidence of Martin's real name had been destroyed, but it was still on (at least) one document, and that was discovered by Roger Morgan.
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/29/22]
OPERATION MINCEMEAT: HOW A DEAD MAN AND A BIZARRE PLAN FOOLED THE NAZIS AND ASSURED AN ALLIED VICTORY by Ben Macintyre (Harmony, ISBN 978-0-307-45327-3) is an updated telling of the events in the better known THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS by Ewen Montagu. Montagu was a major player in the original plan, but because of various secrets acts and diplomatic considerations at the time, THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS was substantially fictionalized. (For example, the story at the time was that the British government got the permission of Glyndwr Michael's parents to use his corpse for the plan. In fact, Michael was a an orphan and a vagrant whose siblings may not have even still been alive.) The only reason Montagu was allowed to publish was that an American--not under the control of the British government--was going to publish his version of the story.
Macintyre goes into a lot more detail than Montagu, and some of that is in worthy of a book on its own. For example, Montagu's brother Ivor was a dedicated Communist, and he was passing information to the Soviet Union. Before 1939, in spite of Ivor Montagu being Jewish, the pact between the USSR and Germany meant that he was effectively passing Allied secrets to the Nazis. He also invented "table tennis' (after he tried to form a "Ping Pong" group and was told the term was trademarked), and was an active filmmaker who produced a half dozen of Alfred Hitchcock's films.
Even without all the interesting sidebars, the main story is engaging enough. It is like a sort of C.S.I. in reverse, with the planners trying to make sure that they have considered every way that their ruse might be discovered and then figuring out a way around it.
This was the basis of the Netflix movie OPERATION MINCEMEAT, but is much better, because it goes into a lot more technical detail, and does not over-emphasize the "romance" between Montagu and "Pam". I must have read Montagu's book at some point. I don't remember it, but I can pretty much guarantee that this is better.
EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS & THE MADNESS OF CROWDS by Charles Mackay:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/18/2006]
If you liked any of these books, you should read Charles Mackay's EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS & THE MADNESS OF CROWDS (ISBN 0-486-43223-8). This was written in 1841, so the delusions, schemes, and manias are all fairly old--though most are still with us in some form or other. We do not have tulipomania, but every generation seems to have some commodity that becomes vastly over-priced until the bubble bursts. (The 1932 introduction by Bernard M. Baruch mentions the 1929 stock market boom and bust.) Mackay writes about scams such as "the Mississippi Scheme" and "the South Sea Bubble", follies that recur in slightly modified forms such as the Crusades and the witch hunts, as well as seemingly permanent delusions such as alchemy and fortune-telling. Of the Crusades, Mackay says, "Every age has its peculiar folly; some scheme, project, or phantasy into which it plunges, spurred on either by the love gain, the necessity of excitement, or the mere force of imitation. Failing in these, it has some madness, to which it is goaded by political or religious causes, or both combined. Every one of these causes influenced the Crusades, and conspired to render them the most extraordinary instance on record of the extent to which popular enthusiasm can be carried." A hundred and fifty years later, that statement probably still holds. I will admit to not re-reading this whole book to comment on it, but I was sorely tempted, and given that it is seven hundred pages long, that is a strong recommendation.
THE SUMMER ISLES by Ian R. MacLeod:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/02/2005]
Too many alternate histories spend all their time on how things got to be different without telling you how things would be different. One gets a five-hundred-page book that details all of the battlefield and political maneuvers of Lincoln, Davis, Grant, Lee, and everyone else, then ends with, "And so President Lincoln signed his name to the treaty that once and forever recognized the Confederate States of America as a separate country." That's not the end of an alternate history; that's the beginning. So it is wonderful to get an alternate history that looks at just what life would be like in a changed world, and such a book is Ian R. MacLeod's THE SUMMER ISLES (ISBN 1-933-08300-X). The premise (hinted at from the beginning, but spelled out about a third of the way through) is that Britain and her allies lost the War of 1914-18, and was taken over by a "Modernist" (fascist) party. The time frame is 1940, but there is, of course, no hint of a second World War. Our main character is, as is often the case in alternate histories, an outsider, someone who does not quite fit in with the new way of things. But MacLeod does not make him Jewish (too cliché) or Irish (too obvious) or even Communist. No, MacLeod makes the main character a homosexual and by doing so makes it more difficult for readers to see the Modernists just as people who are evil, but of course we would never do anything like that . . . . As an American, it is difficult for me to be sure, but I get the feeling that MacLeod captures very well the feel of Britain and the feel of what a defeated and demoralized Britain might have been like in the 1930s. There is one major plot contrivance that seems forced, but not impossible as described, so I can suspend my disbelief, particularly since in everything else MacLeod takes a very realistic approach. A novella-length version appeared in the October/November 1998 issue of ASIMOV'S, was nominated for a Hugo for that year, and won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History (Short Form). In spite of this, the novel-length version was turned down by every major publisher, and as a result, is available only as a limited edition from Aio.
WAKE UP AND DREAM by Ian R. MacLeod:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/24/2012]
WAKE UP AND DREAM by Ian R. MacLeod (ISBN 978-1-848-63194-6) is set in an alternate Los Angeles where the talkies were quickly supplanted by the feelies, and so people who would have become great actors ended up in other professions. For example, Clark Gable is a private detective in the Philip Marlowe mold. In addition to the feelies, though, there is at least one other major change: it is 1942 and the United States has not entered the war. This seems to be attributed to a much stronger isolationist--and racist--party in the United States, but I am not sure that explains why Japan would not have attacked us, especially since the racist attitudes make it unlikely that we would be any friendlier towards them.
I have a few nits (other than questioning the premise). In 1942, phone calls were still a nickel, not a dime. Hertz car rental had been around since 1918, but Avis had not been founded yet. And one stylistic (though not factual) mistake: the Clark Gable POV narrator refers to someone wearing a ragged "jumper". The American word is "sweater", and to keep from breaking character, MacLeod should have used that term.
LEARNING THE WORLD: A SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE by Ken MacLeod:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/05/2006]
Although I started Hugo-nominated LEARNING THE WORLD: A SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE by Ken MacLeod (ISBN 0-765-31331-6), I could not get interested in it, and gave up after about fifty pages.
THE RESTORATION GAME by Ken MacLeod:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/24/2010]
When you read the first page of THE RESTORATION GAME by Ken MacLeod (ISBN 978-1-841-49647-4), you think you know exactly what this book will be. "FIRST-PERSON SHOOTER: MARS, 2248 A.U.C." Ah, you say, it's an alternate history, with Rome never falling and now, in what would be the late 15th Century on our calendar, it has arrived on Mars.
Then on page 3, you discover there is a computer simulation running: "Millions--billions!--of fully conscious simulated humans living a history where .... I don't know. Something didn't happen. Something changes everything. The history's still far in the past, thank heavens--a millennium, perhaps. But almost unrecognizable. The City's in ruins, the population tilling the soil and ruled by warrior chiefs, their minds dimmed by some death cult." Okay, you say, that simulation must be our world.
And sure enough, in a few pages we are in our world. Oh, there do seem to be a few anomalies, but they are just the sorts of things one would find in a normal novel--a street name that doesn't exist and such. Or are they?
Luckily, this sort of whipsawing does not continue (though one wonders what a book would be like if every two pages the world in it was completely re-written). Most of the rest of the book is a straightforward story set in our world (although the McGuffin is based on the underlying premise). The problem is that there is no real pay-off to the premise, and the story just kind of ... ends. A pity, since up to that point it was pretty good. (In fairness, I should say that others have found the end satisfying, but it did not work for me.)
There is also a ten-page diary extract that has all the abbreviations and vague allusions that a real diary would have. It is realistic, but it is also very hard to read.
I also have an annotation and a mathematical quibble. The annotation is that the Borges story referenced on page 150 is "The Sect of the Phoenix". The quibble is that MacLeod writes, "There is no such place as Krassnia. If you were to draw it on a map, right where the borders of Russia, Abkhazia and Georgia meet, and then fill it in, you'd need a fifth colour." On a basic level, if one describes an area as where the borders of three countries meet, it is implied that there are no other countries that meet as well, so choosing a color different from that of Russia, Abkhazia, or Georgia would be sufficient. On a more philosophical level, though, saying that adding a country would require a fifth color implies that it will make the world topologically different than it is. Even China Mieville's Beszel and Ul Qoma don't do that. It is a striking image that MacLeod creates, but it also seems typical of the sort of statement made by an author in a field with which he is unfamiliar.
"Who's Afraid of Wolf 359?" by Ken MacLeod:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/27/2008]
"Who's Afraid of Wolf 359?" by Ken MacLeod (THE NEW SPACE OPERA): I assume that the title is a reference to the "Outer Limits" episode "Wolf 359" (which was also referenced in "Star Trek" in the episodes "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II" ["The Next Generation"] and "Emissary" ["Deep Space 9"]), but MacLeod's story has no other apparent connection to that episode.
THE WAR THAT ENDED PEACE: THE ROAD TO 1914 by Margaret MacMillan:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/18/23]
Someone recommended THE WAR THAT ENDED PEACE: THE ROAD TO 1914 by Margaret MacMillan (Random House, ISBN 978-0-812-98066-0). (I really have to start noting who it is that puts a book on my reading list to start with. I mean, obviously I put it on my list, but whose recommendation got me to do that?)
Anyway, MacMillan begins by covering the major players in the lead-up to World War I, including all the heads of state of the countries that ended up in it. (The United States shows up more as a secondary participant which, given that we did not play as active a role as England, France, Germany, Russia, or Austro-Hungary, this is not unexpected. As for the title, Europe had been (basically) at peace since 1815--if you didn't count the revolutions of 1830, 1848, 1871, the Greek War of Independence, the Crimean War, and the Franco-Prussian War, as well as several Balkan wars which may have been just early parts of World War I. (I know--who am I to criticize MacMillan's definition of peace? As Mark once replied to a similar albeit less academic question, who do I have to be?)
One chapter introduces Kaiser Wilhelm II. He is described as ill-tempered, apt to insult other countries (and monarchs), believing himself to be smarter than anyone else, turning on anyone who contradicted him (or even didn't support him sufficiently), loving to give speeches (and prone to ad lib when speaking), and considered all the political parties who opposed him as traitors.
This sounded familiar to me, and when I Googled, I found I was not alone. Miranda Carter wrote "What Happens When a Bad-Tempered, Distractible Doofus Runs and Empire?" (6 June 2018). Stephen M. Walt wrote "The Donald Trump-Kaiser Wilhelm Parallels Are Getting Scary" (12 October 2017). And these were just the first two that turned up.
But while Kaiser Wilhelm may have been the least qualified of the bunch, there were no brilliant statesmen among the rest of them either. Any brilliance seems to have been on a lower level, and inevitably the person who actually knew what was going on managed to annoy his head of state enough to be removed, or at least ignored.
So countries spent money they didn't have on the wrong military equipment to put in the wrong location under officers with no real training. And diplomats thought they were being clever in keeping their plans secret when in fact they (and their motivations) were obvious to everyone.
Another chapter, titled "What Were They Thinking?", sounds so contemporary:
And best of all:
I commented on Mike Duncan's THE STORM BEFORE THE STORM: THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC and Cullen Murphy's ARE WE ROME? THE FALL OF AN EMPIRE AND THE FATE OF AMERICA in the 06/05/2020 issue of the MT VOID, and discussed how the authors of those books saw parallels between current events and ancient Rome. Now I find that there are also a depressing number of parallels between current events and pre-World War I Europe.
-30-: THE COLLAPSE OF THE GREAT AMERICAN NEWSPAPER edited by Charles M. Madigan:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/26/2007]
-30-: THE COLLAPSE OF THE GREAT AMERICAN NEWSPAPER edited by Charles M. Madigan (ISBN-13 978-1-56663-742-8, ISBN-10 1-56663-742-2) is a collection of articles by different people, so it is not surprising that they do not all agree on the causes of the phenomenon, the solutions (if any) to the phenomenon, or even the age of the phenomenon. Several writers say that the newspaper has been in decline for decades now. The causes seem to be some subset of 1) the growth of the suburbs, 2) the erosion of advertising revenues, 3) the spread of competing media, and 4) greed. The growth of the suburbs is a two-fold problem. First, the people in the suburbs have more interest in their local communities and less in the big city itself. And second, distributing a daily newspaper over an entire metropolitan area is considerably more difficult than distributing it within the relatively compact city limits.
The erosion of advertising revenues is, again, two-fold. The big city center stores, with their multi-page ads, have declined, and the chain stores in the suburban malls advertise in suburban papers and direct mail flyers. And the classified section is being eaten away by Web sites such as Craigslist.
Competing media have been around since radio became popular, and this is why the story of the decline of newspapers has been around almost as long. For example, the decline of the afternoon newspaper can be attributed to the rise of the evening television news, which competed in the same time slot, but with newer news, and with more pictures.
And finally, greed. As newspapers went public, bought by large conglomerates, their stockholders started demanding higher and higher profits, profits comparable to other investments but not in accord with the more intangible goals of the press. This may be in part why the smaller newspapers are still surviving--they are often still family-owned, and the family cares more about the quality of the newspaper than squeezing out another few dollars.
One local example given by Neil Hickey may serve to explain why there is disagreement. According to Hickey, "when Gannett took over the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey, it cut the staff from 225 to 180 and told the theater critic there was no money for him to cover Broadway plays." Cutting the staff means less coverage, and less in-depth coverage, than before, but I think Gannett may have a point on the Broadway plays. At one time Asbury Press and its constituents could have been considered being within the circle of influence of Broadway. Nowadays, that is not true, due to part to rising transportation and ticket costs. If the Asbury Park Press wants to continue to cover culture, it would probably do better for everyone if it shifted its staff to books, which remain far more available to the Press's readers. (One doesn't expect the Allentown, PA, or Albany, NY newspapers to cover Broadway plays, does one?)
As for the solution, some feel a better integration of print format and Web sites would help. Most feel that blindly following what readers say they want (shorter stories, more pictures, horoscopes) rather than providing better, more in-depth reporting and analysis is not the solution. And all agree that the constant cutting of staff most newspapers are trying will not solve the problem. And there should be some solution; Hickey points out that the news business "is the only business protected by the Constitution of the United States, a status that brings obligations for both the shareholder and the journalist."
If you want to read more about the future of journalism (with
some comments on newspapers),
see
HOW THEY SAID IT: WISE AND WITTY LETTERS FROM
THE FAMOUS AND INFAMOUS
edited by Rosalie Maggio:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/31/2003]
I've been reading HOW THEY SAID IT: WISE AND WITTY LETTERS FROM
THE FAMOUS AND INFAMOUS, collected and edited by Rosalie Maggio.
Two samples:
Edna St. Vincent Millay to Arthur Davison Ficke: "Please don't
think me negligent or rude. I am both, in effect, of course,
but please don't think me either...."
Agnes de Mille to Anna George de Mille: "Tomorrow at dawn, or
literally very early, we motor north. The address will be
MONSTER, 1959
by David Maine:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/06/2009]
MONSTER, 1959 by David Maine (ISBN-13 978-0-312-37302-3, ISBN-10
0-312-37302-3) is a re-telling of "King Kong", but set in the late
1950s on a radioactive island which has produced a monster with
some characteristics of King Kong, some of Godzilla, and some
original. It is an interesting combination of the two themes, but
parts are a bit predictable, and the ending is just, well, bizarre
(and also probably makes it unsuitable for young adult readers).
INTRODUCING CAMUS
by David Zane Mairowitz and Alain Korkos:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/01/2006]
Coincidentally, the same week I read THE RABBI'S CAT by Joann Sfar
(set in Algeria), I also read INTRODUCING CAMUS by David Zane
Mairowitz and Alain Korkos (ISBN 1-840-46064-4). Coincidentally,
because Camus was from Ageria and set many of his works there.
(He also played goalie at soccer. This is a fact which won me a
"Dublin Literary Pub Crawl" t-shirt when I was the only one in the
group who knew which position he played. This was because it was
about the only position I knew the name for.) This is one of the
good books in this series, and of necessity covers the political
situation in Algeria as well as Camus's life and writing.
100 ONE-NIGHT READS: A BOOK LOVER'S GUIDE
by David C. Major and John S. Major:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/03/2015]
I bought 100 ONE-NIGHT READS: A BOOK LOVER'S GUIDE by David C.
Major and John S. Major (ISBN 978-0-345-43994-9) with the idea of
getting a lot of ideas for our book discussion group. Our group,
you see, has a 300-page limit on books, so I figured everything
here would qualify. Well, a closer examination indicates that
there are probably a few that exceed that limit. The first one I
checked was THE HOBBIT and that was 287 pages, so I suspect there
must be a few that will be too long. And even the authors says
that "sometimes ... perhaps the evening will last a little beyond
your normal bedtime..." Still, out of a hundred suggestions there
must be quite a few that qualify. Then the only problem is whether
they are available at the library. Some are classics, but that
does not necessarily mean much--recently Mark discovered that our
library did not have a paper copy of THE MOON AND SIXPENCE by
Somerset Maugham, only an e-book.
EAT MY GLOBE: ONE YEAR TO GO EVERYWHERE AND EAT EVERYTHING
by Simon Majumdar:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/18/2009]
EAT MY GLOBE: ONE YEAR TO GO EVERYWHERE AND EAT EVERYTHING by Simon
Majumdar (ISBN-13 978-1-4165-7602-0, ISBN-10 1-4165-7602-9) is
supposedly about food, but it is heavily laced with anecdotes and
comments about travel, and also about "Clan Majumdar" (the author's
family). Unfortunately, the combination did not work for me.
STRANGER THAN FICTION
by Aubrey Dillon Malone:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/30/2005]
STRANGER THAN FICTION by Aubrey Dillon Malone (ISBN 0-8092-9904-6) is a delightful little book of literary lists, such as "10
unintentional double-entendres from the classics" and "5 authors
who went missing or got lost". And unlike most books of this
sort, this one has an index! So if you know there was something
interesting about a particular author, you can actually look up
that author. (Of course, if it's Ernest Hemingway or W. Somerset
Maugham, you still have a lot of pages to check.) Two examples
(from another well-represented author): Brendan Behan was asked
to come up with an advertising slogan for Guinness. He
suggested, "It makes you drunk." And when he was offered thirty
pounds for a play if they could change the title, he said, "For
thirty quid you can change it to "The Brothers F***in'
Karamazov."
JEFFERSON THE VIRGINIAN
by Dumas Malone:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/27/2015]
JEFFERSON THE VIRGINIAN by Dumas Malone (ISBN 0-316-54472-8) is the
first volume of a six-volume work, "Jefferson and His Time", for
which he won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1975 (after
publication of the fifth volume). This volume, though, was
published in 1948 and (perhaps) combined with the fact that Malone
was born and raised in Mississippi and Georgia probably explains
some of the infelicitous terminology he used at times. For
example, Malone speaks of the Indian school at the College of
William and Mary, which he says "a few redskins still attended."
In describing the printing office of the local newspaper, he says,
"People often went there to insert notices about runaways, to
advertise the sale of 'parcels of likely Virginia-born wenches,' or
to offer to the horse-breeding public the service of stallions in
their prime." While Malone's quotation marks around the "parcels"
phrase might indicate that he is merely giving a sense of
Jefferson's time, he later writes about the Exchange, "where
planters ... arranged to purchase Negro fellows or some of those
likely wenches." Malone lack of quotation marks here seems to
indicate a certain insensitivity to how this would sound to at
least some modern readers.
Malone's language suffers from changing meanings as well. When he
writes that Jefferson kept horses, "as his gay friend Willis did,"
he merely means that Willis was what we might call a "party
animal," not that Willis was homosexual, and similarly for
references to "others of their gay friends."
Jefferson, though very intelligent, could be taken in: he thought
Ossian ("this rude bard of the North") "the great poet that has
ever existed." But Ossian was a literary hoax by James McPherson.
[As for Sally Hemings, there is merely a brief mention of how
Jefferson acquired "the noted Hemings family, who were mostly
'bright' mulattoes" from his wife's family's estate. In this case,
again, words have changed or lost meaning--"bright" did not mean
intelligent, but light-colored. And in an appendix discussing "the
Walker Affair," Malone writes, "In [1802] the notorious
scandalmonger, James Thomson Callender, gave wide currency to the
story about Mrs. Walker, along with a much more unsavory one about
one of Jefferson's slaves." The latter was the story of Jefferson
and Hemings. Although it took place after the timespan covered in
this book, we would find it odd today if there were not at least
some reference, particularly as there are many other "forward
references."]
GOLDBERG STREET: SHORT PLAYS AND MONOLOGUES
by David Mamet:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/17/2004]
David Mamet's GOLDBERG STREET: SHORT PLAYS AND MONOLOGUES (ISBN
0-802-15104-3 is successful only if you are familiar with Mamet's
work on stage and screen. Trying to understand these without
hearing them in your head with Mamet's peculiar rhythm would be
almost impossible. Even knowing how to "hear" them doesn't always
explain what Mamet intended with these pieces. They are the sort
of thing one might find in a Mamet film as a way to show a
character's state of mind, but standing alone they seem less
meaningful. Still, if while you read these, you hear William Macy
or Joe Mantegna delivering the lines, the sheer beauty of the
rhythm of the words makes it worthwhile. (Synchronistically with
the What, many of these plays have Jewish themes or characters.)
STATION ELEVEN
by Emily St. John Mandel:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/05/21]
STATION ELEVEN by Emily St. John Mandel (Vintage, ISBN 978-0-804-17244-8)
is about a plague, a very contagious and deadly form of
flu. It's reminiscent of EARTH ABIDES and other plague novels in
that the main characters all seem to avoid dealing with the actual
mass dying and the millions of corpses that would be around. The
TV series WORLD AFTER PEOPLE does this by just hand-waving the
disappearance of all the people, but generally books at least try
to justify it. In some, the characters are hiking up in the
back-country, in others they fall ill and are unconscious for several
days, but don't die. Here the main character manages to stockpile
food and water and just stays in his brother's apartment for enough
time for the dying to end--which is not very long, given how fast
the virus acts. There is a traveling theatrical/musical company,
and the usual cliche of the town taken over by a cult, but
thankfully no zombies. :-)
This is either just what you want to read now, or just what you
want to avoid. I've been reading true accounts of plagues;
fictional ones are actually a bit of a relief. Ultimately you have
to decide.
1491: NEW REVELATIONS OF THE AMERICAS BEFORE COLUMBUS
by Chares C. Mann:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/03/2006]
1491: NEW REVELATIONS OF THE AMERICAS BEFORE COLUMBUS by Charles
C. Mann (ISBN 1-400-03205-9) sounded promising, but is written in
such a dry style, and structured so poorly, that I could not
finish it. (By poorly structured, I mean that Mann does not
follow any of the rules about having a first and last sentence
that help summarize whatever comes between.) In addition, Mann
has decided to follow new spellings for names in indigenous
languages. So, for example, he uses "Inka" rather than "Inca",
"Atawallpa" rather than "Atahualpa" and "Qosqo" rather than
"Cuzco". This makes everything difficult to follow, but even
worse, he does not cross-reference these in the index, so if you
look up "Cuzco", there is no entry for it or pointer to
"Qosqo". (I have no idea why someone decided that "Inca" was
incorrect and should be "Inka" instead; it is not as though they
are pronounced differently.)
THE AFFINITY BRIDGE
by George Mann:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/17/2009]
THE AFFINITY BRIDGE by George Mann (ISBN-13 978-0-7653-2320-0,
ISBN-10 0-7653-2320-6) is a steampunk novel with airships and
mechanical automata, as well as a glowing blue policeman who has
apparently come back from the dead to avenge his murder. The
subtitle "A Newbury & Hobbes Investigation" tells you several
things. One, this follows in the great tradition of
detective/assistant mysteries. Two, neither Newbury or Hobbes is
likely to turn out to be the villain. And three, both will survive,
because there seems to be clear intention to make this a series if
this one is successful. And it is reasonably entertaining in a
steampunky, Victorian-detective sort of way.
However, Tor really needs a better proofreader. On page 98, we
read: "The device is designed to power itself. When the automaton
moves, a rotor inside its abdomen rocks back and forth, racheting
the winding mechanism and causing the mainspring in the chest to
become taut. Effectively, the unit is self-winding, and thus it
will never power down, unless commanded to do so. If left inactive
for long periods without instructions, the unit will eventually
move itself to trigger the winding mechanism." This may be an
alternate world, but they presumably have not repealed the Laws of
Thermodynamics. First, what Mann has described is a perpetual
motion machine, one in which no energy is lost while it is
operating (a violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics). But
even assuming that worked, why would it then have to wind itself
when it was inactive for a while? That implies that energy is
leaking out somehow, but that it can recharge itself as a closed
system to restore that energy (a violation of the First Law of
Thermodynamics).
(It is true that the person who says this is not scrupulously
honest, but there is no revelation that he has lied in this
context.)
ENCOUNTERS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
edited by George Mann:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/22/2013]
The stories in ENCOUNTERS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES edited by George Mann
(ISBN 978-1-781-18003-9) are well-written, but they are all too
often "doubly derivative" (or in Hollywood terms, "high concept").
You know the sort of thing: "Sherlock Holmes meets Raffles",
"Sherlock Holmes meets the Martians (and H. G. Wells and Rebecca
West)", and so on. And since many of the authors have on-going
series with other well-known characters, it is not surprising that,
for example, Mark Hodder writes about Algernon Swinburne and Sir
Richard Francis Burton. (And for anyone who knows the real-life
characters in Hodder's stories, there is not much mystery.)
Still (as I said), the stories are competently written and not so
overtly divorced from the original setting and mood of the Holmes
stories as to be jarring, so I do recommend this book.
SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE SPIRIT BOX
by George Mann:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/25/2020]
If you want a better World War I historical novel than THE HAUNTING
OF H. G. WELLS involving a
famous character and possible supernatural goings-on, read SHERLOCK
HOLMES: THE SPIRIT BOX by George Mann (Titan, ISBN 978-1-781-16002-2).
Mann has written several books in the supernatural alternate
history of Newbury & Hobbes, and Newbury appears here as well.
Again, we have a German plot against England, this time more
centered on espionage, and the question of whether there is
anything supernatural going on runs throughout the book.
THE SOLARIS BOOK OF NEW SCIENCE FICTION
edited by George Mann:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/18/2008]
I got THE SOLARIS BOOK OF NEW SCIENCE FICTION edited by George
Mann (ISBN-13 978-1-84416-448-6, ISBN-10 1-84416-449-9) in order
to read a single alternate history story in it (Peter
F. Hamilton's "If at First..."). But then I read the Paul
Di Filippo story ("Personal Jesus"), and then the Stephen Baxter
("Final Contact"), and then decided to read the rest of the
anthology. Noteworthy were the Di Filippo and James Lovegrove's
"The Bowdler Strain". The Baxter had an interesting idea, but
there was a bit too much "British-stiff-upper-lipism" for me.
The other stories varied in quality, but in any case it is good
to see original un-themed anthologies being published. Tor's
"Starlight" series was excellent while it lasted, but ceased
after five volumes. Perhaps a mass-market format will last
longer.
THE MAN WHO BECAME SHERLOCK HOLMES
by Terry Manners:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/17/2004]
Terry Manners's THE MAN WHO BECAME SHERLOCK HOLMES (ISBN
0-7535-0536-3) is about Jeremy Brett and his life and career, and is
probably more thorough about his earlier career than his stint as
Holmes. In part this is because his illness (manic depression)
became most pronounced during his times as Holmes, and so Manners
concentrated more on the illness than on Brett's portrayal of
Holmes. It all seemed a bit sensationalist at times, but I suppose
if one is attempting to explain a lot that people may have
misinterpreted, that is necessary. (For example, towards the end,
Brett was too heavy to be an accurate Holmes, but this weight gain
was a side effect of medication and not something he could
control.)
THE JEFFERSON BIBLE
by Peter Manseau:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/15/24]
THE JEFFERSON BIBLE by Peter Manseau (Smithsonian, ISBN
978-0-691-20968-5) explains that while THE LIFE AND MORALS OF
JESUS OF NAZARETH, usually referred to as "The Jefferson Bible" is
usually described as Thomas Jefferson's editing of the Gospels to
eliminate all the miracles and present a "rational" biography of
Jesus, it is actually many different books.
The original was a literal "cut-and-paste" work by Jefferson. He
bought two copies each of the Bible in Greek, Latin, English, and
French, and proceeded to cut out the verses from the Gospels that
contain the moral teachings of Jesus and paste them into four
parallel columns.
Jefferson never published it. The original floated around until
the end of the nineteenth century, when it was finally printed in
a small edition. After that, it kept turning up, but changed:
other verses were added, introductions tried to put different
spins on it, the non-English columns were eliminated, and so on.
What I found the most interesting was the edition edited by Dr.
Henry Jackson which was specifically aimed at "social
engineering". An example of Jackson's introduction:
And yet what is the simple fact, obvious to anyone
from whom it has not been hidden by a smoke screen?
Look at the preamble of the Declaration. The three
basic rights which it treats -- "life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness" -- are not these subjects
exactly paralleled in the teaching and thought of
Jesus? First -- "life"; said Jesus, "I have come
that they may have life and may have it in
abundance." Second -- "liberty"; said Jesus, "Ye
shall know the truth and the truth will make you
free." Third -- "the pursuit of happiness"; said
Jesus, "I have spoken to you that my joy might
remain in you and that your joy might be full."
And later Jackson said in a statement to the Committee of Finance
of the United States Senate in 1935:
One wonders what HUAC would have made of this interpretation of
the Bible.
MURDER ON MAIN STREET
by Cynthia Manson:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/15/2005]
MURDER ON MAIN STREET edited by Cynthia Manson (ISBN
0-56619-927-1), you will be pleased to hear, doesn't have any
overt anti-Semitism, though it's unlikely that someone editing a
book in 1993 for Barnes & Noble would include any of that sort of
material. (Of course, the subtitle is "Small Town Crime from
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine & Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery
Magazine", and one is somewhat less likely to have Jewish
characters to comment on in a small town in Nebraska than in
London.) As a summer beach read, this is pretty good, because
the stories are best read spread out over a week or two of
vacation rather than one after another.
MAO TSE-TUNG ON GUERRILLA WARFARE
by Mao Tse-Tung (translated by Brig. Gen. Samuel B. Griffith, USMC (Ret.))
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/15/24]
MAO TSE-TUNG ON GUERRILLA WARFARE by Mao Tse-Tung (translated by
Brig. Gen. Samuel B. Griffith, USMC (Ret.)) (Praeger, no ISBN) was
recommended to me somewhere, but I can't remember where.
Griffith's introduction summarizes what Mao says about guerrilla
warfare, but he also has his own observations. One particular
prescient one (written in 1961) was, "The position of active third
parties in a revolutionary guerrilla war and the timing, nature,
and scope of the assistance given to one side or the other has
become of great importance. ... Any assistance given should,
however, stop short of participation. The role of a third party
should be restricted to advice, materials, and technical training."
Many yers after the Vietnam War ended, an American general and a
Vietnamese general met at some social function. The American
general said, "You know, we never lost a single battle." The
Vietnamese general agreed that was true, but also pointed out that
it didn't matter, because the (North) Vietnamese had won the war.
In 1961, Griffith wrote, "There is in guerrilla warfare no such
thing as a decisive battle; there is nothing comparable to the
fixed, passive defense that characterizes orthodox war." The
American general was apparently unfamiliar with this notion.
THERE'S MORE TO NEW JERSEY THAN THE SOPRANOS
by Marc Mappen:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/29/2014]
This month's general discussion group discussion book was THERE'S
MORE TO NEW JERSEY THAN THE SOPRANOS by Marc Mappan (ISBN 978-0-813-54586-8).
It consists of a lot of stories from New Jersey
history, some as well known as Molly Pitcher or the "War of the Worlds"
broadcast, while others deal with less well-known
characters and incidents. (And as a lead-in to the next book, his
final chapter is called "Brief History of Corruption".)
THE WILD PARTY
by Joseph Mancure March:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/15/2005]
Joseph Mancure March's THE WILD PARTY (ISBN 0-375-70643-7),
illustrated by Art Spiegelman, is a re-issuing of what is
described on the flap as a "lost classic", a "hard-boiled jazz-age
tragedy told in syncopated rhyming couplets". Here's a
sample of the style:
As you can see, the couplets are not always obvious to the eye,
and the punctuation is idiosyncratic. The story itself has
echoes of Frankie and Johnnie, and was made (with many changes)
into a 1975 film (also titled THE WILD PARTY). In this re-issue,
Art Spiegelman, best known for MAUS: A SURVIVOR'S TALE, provides
wonderfully evocative woodcut illustrations for this story in
verse that conveys both the exuberance and the desperation of the
Jazz Age.
SHINING AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA
by Stephen Marche:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/20/2008]
SHINING AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA by Stephen Marche (ISBN-13
978-1-594-48315-8, ISBN-10 1-594-48315-9) is arguably science
fiction, though I know of no one who reviewed it as such. (The
cataloguing data calls it "experimental fiction". It purports to
be an anthology of Sanjanian fiction and other writings, with a
preface that provides the historical, sociological, and literary
background necessary to understand them. Sanjania is an island
nation in the North Atlantic, and was formerly part of the
British Empire. It is a very literary culture: "Sanjanians are
perhaps the most literary people on earth. Bookstalls are as
common as fruit stands, the theatres around Saint Magdalene's
Square dwarf the City Hall, and on Sanjair flights the stewards
push small carts of books down the aisle after the beverages and
pretzels."
Later, it says of Saint Magdalene's Square, "Seemingly endless
bookstalls fill the square's edge and spill into the side streets
in every direction. Bargain hunters and literature lovers cram
every nook and cranny from sunrise (more or less) to sundown
(more or less)." (Sounds like Hay-on-Wye in Wales.)
The only real drawback to this literary Shangri-La is that it
does not exist. Oh, well, you can't have everything.
The earliest pieces--in terms of the internal chronology--are the
most interesting, since Mache constructs a separate dialect for
that era: "In his eighteenth year, Marlyebone oxchopped and
mangled the other wolfheads, Goodfriday Martins, Samuel Baker
Deloney, Abraham Crisp and Lover Gromes, and claimed the
overward. In his nineteenth year, the Crown pursued him.
Crownagent Keagan Poulter took a bulletsmash in the face and
could not be regaliated. Agent Will Champion's moniker fibbed
everafter his failure. Robert Strunk sunk. In Marlyebone's
twentieth year, his Scourge Sally Parkman, a Woman Crownagent,
grabbed his pirate fleet, and yawled it against the waves of
Portuguese Cove, ane Marlyebone scuppered overhill byland toward
his homecove Restitution, flittering."
This dialect is characterized by many compound words, and I
suppose Marche got tired of creating them, because after the
first few pieces, they go away, alas.
AMAZONIA
by James Marcus:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/10/2004]
James Marcus's AMAZONIA (ISBN 1-56584-870-5) is the story of the
author's five years (from 1996 to 2001) as an editor at
amazon.com. It is okay to breeze through, but does not have any
real surprises or revelations. People who have been following the
dot.com phenomena in general will probably already know about
amazon.com's various policies and acquisitions, and others won't
learn much from this. For example, Marcus talks about the
disastrous acquisition of pets.com, but doesn't explain why it
was so bad compared to other apparently similar decisions that
went well. There were interesting tidbits--the Millennium Poem,
for one. And even though I knew the all about "Project Shift" and
one of its unintended side-effects, it was interesting to see an
even bigger picture. (Project Shift was the concept of removing
shipping charges for all orders of two or more items. When this
happened, "'The Book of Hope' began its meteoric ascent. This
slender Biblical tract clearly had much to recommend it.... Most
shoppers, however were attracted to its 99-cent price tag. Droves
of them tossed it in the shopping cart a second, more expensive
item and made their shipping charges disappear: a miracle on a par
with the loaves and fishes. We also did a surprisingly brisk
business with Dover Classics, which sold for a dollar each." I
used this ploy at least once, and various shoppers' web sites
suggested it as well, so it is not surprising that it actually
impacted amazon.com's bottom line. Apparently, amazon.com came
close to eliminating every item under five dollars from their
catalog to solve this problem, until wiser heads prevailed and
they dropped the "two-item-free-shipping" offer. (I believe now
it is free shipping for items over a certain dollar amount.)
ACQUIRING GENOMES: A THEORY OF THE ORIGINS OF SPECIES
by Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/21/2008]
ACQUIRING GENOMES: A THEORY OF THE ORIGINS OF SPECIES by Lynn
Margulis and Dorion Sagan (ISBN-13 978-0-465-04391-X, ISBN-10
0-465-04391-7) has a interesting theory (speciation happens by the
acquisition of genes from symbiotic organisms), but made statements
that I thought at odds with current definitions. For example, the
authors say, "Groups of organisms, again like people or corn plants
or chickens, considered to be all descended from the same ancestors
("clade") are classified as members of the same species. Such
organisms are called 'monophyletic' because they are descended from
'a single common ancestor.'" But as I understand it clades are
nested, e.g., all primates form a clade which itself exists within
the clade of all mammals. Clearly this crosses species boundaries
(or makes the term "species" meaningless.)
And "... viruses are not alive and indeed they are even, in
principle, too small to be units of life. They lack the means of
producing their genes and proteins." One can deduce from this that
viruses are not alive if producing their genes and proteins is
the definition of life (and if it is true that viruses cannot do
so). But my suspicion is that this is probably not the only
accepted definition of "life" and other, equally valid, definitions
may imply that viruses are alive.
I have to say that the authors show more desire for intellectual
honesty than most. Rather than attempt to hide contrary views,
they include a foreword by Ernst Mayr that contradicts or denies
them on several key points (e.g., symbiogenesis as an instance of
speciation, the validity of the principle of acquired
characteristics). Mayr says, "Given the authors' dedication to
their special field, it is not surprising that they sometimes
arrive at interpretations others of us find arguable. Let the
reads ignore those that are clearly in conflict with the finding of
modern biology. Let him concentrate instead on the authors'
brilliant new interpretations and be thankful that they have called
our attention to worlds of life that ... are consistently by most
biologists."
RICHARD III: HIS LIFE & CHARACTER, REVIEWED IN THE LIGHT OF RECENT RESEARCH
by Clements R. Markham:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/10/24]
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about TO PROVE A VILLAIN edited by
Taylor Littleton (MacMillan, ISBN 978-0-023-71360-6), which
included an excerpt from Clements R. Markham titled "Richard III:
A Doubtful Verdict Reviewed". This is an excerpt from Markham's
RICHARD III: HIS LIFE & CHARACTER, REVIEWED IN THE LIGHT OF RECENT
RESEARCH (1906) (CreateSpace, ISBN 978-1-508-60166-1), but it
turns out that the entire work is available relatively cheaply, as
well as from Project Gutenberg, from the Internet Archive, and
through Hoopla (at least from my library).
Reading the full text, I am even more convinced that Josephine Tey
used it as her major source for THE DAUGHTER OF TIME. It is not
just the historical facts. Tey has basically the same
reminiscence of the green and wooded England before everything got
divided and fenced in. Tey takes that Richard's mother was the
"Rose of Raby" (as mentioned in Markham) and creates an entire
historical novel in THE DAUGHTER OF TIME called "The Rose of
Raby". She has the same minor details, such as Richard paying for
cross-Channel transport with his fur-lined coat, or about Caxton
bringing printing to England. Markham calls John Morton "one of
the greatest pluralists on record"; Tey refers to him as "the
greatest pluralist on record". And so on.
Obviously Markham has more than Tey could cover, including the
background of the War of the Roses, detailed descriptions of the
various battles, and so on. But much of it will be very familiar
to anyone who has read THE DAUGHTER OF TIME.
In fairness, Tey does mention Markham. When Grant asks Carradine
when the rehabilitation of Richard III began, Carradine says it
was in Tudor times and then, "A man Buck wrote a vindication in
the seventeenth century. And Horace Walpole in the eighteenth.
And someone called Markham in the nineteenth." But this is not
much credit for such a major source.
At any rate, it you're looking for a well-researched non-fiction
source on the Richard III controversy, I would recommend Markham.
[Oh, and Josephine Tey claims that Henry VII was the first king to
have an armed bodyguard. This is apparently not true; other
sources say that Richard II started having a bodyguard toward the
end of his reign.]
WHAT IT IS LIKE TO GO TO WAR
by Karl Marlantes:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/13/21]
WHAT IT IS LIKE TO GO TO WAR by Karl Marlantes (Grove Press, ISBN
978-0-802-14592-5: I read a few chapters of this book, which was
recommended by historian podcaster Dan Carlin, which seems to be
basically a memoir of Marlantes's time in Vietnam, though told more
by "topic" than chronologically. At any rate, I was not motivated
to read any further.
THE SCIENCE OF CAN AND CAN'T: A PHYSICIST'S JOURNEY THROUGH THE LAND OF COUNTERFACTUALS
by Chiara Marletto:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/29/21]
THE SCIENCE OF CAN AND CAN'T: A PHYSICIST'S JOURNEY THROUGH THE
LAND OF COUNTERFACTUALS by Chiara Marletto (Viking, ISBN
978-0-525-52192-1) sounded so promising. Counterfactuals--like "what if the
speed of light were slower?" or "what if the Earth had no moon?"
But no, it was more like "when I use a word it means just what I
choose it to mean, neither more nor less." In other words,
Marletto is channeling Humpty Dumpty from THROUGH THE LOOKING
GLASS. She never really defines "counterfactual", but she says,
"... counterfactual explanations ... are explanations about what
physical events could or could not be made to happen." Sorry,
there is already an accepted definition for "counterfactual", which
is a situation contrary to fact, whether or not it is possible.
Both "Napoleon won at Waterloo" and "Napoleon is now living on the
moon" are both counterfactuals, even though one is something that
might have happened, an the other is not.
LOS HOMBRES LOBO EN EL CINE
by Carlos Diaz Maroto:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/17/2014]
I found a copy of LOS HOMBRES LOBO EN EL CINE by Carlos Diaz Maroto
(ISBN 978-84-95537-83-4) in Nashville, Tennessee, of all places.
Published in Madrid, its coverage of the werewolf film concentrates
primarily on English-language films, probably because they form the
bulk of the well-known werewolf films.
It is divided into five parts. The first ("Introduction") covers
the mythology of werewolves, and werewolves in literature. The
second (Chapter I) is a series of short essays about the key films
in the genre. Chapter II covers the rest of the werewolf films
with only a paragraph or two for each, divided into "Silent Howls".
"Howls Are Heard", "Anglo-Saxon Howls", "Werewolves South of the
Rio Grande", and so on. Chapter III covers other shape-changer
movies (e.g., ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU, CAT PEOPLE, THE FLY). Then
there is a filmography of werewolf and other shape-changer films,
and then a bibliography.
Most of what is in this book is known to fans of the genre. But
every once in a while Maroto comes up with a surprise. For
example, in CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF, the beggar at the beginning was
originally intended to be more wolf-like in appearance, but the
British censor said, "He must not have fangs. He can have fangs,
or relations with the girl, but not both." (Censors seem to have
had it in for werewolf films; the Spanish censor seemed to object
to anything in a werewolf film that would connect it to Spain:
names, locations, descriptions.)
Of course, the main drawback for this book is that it is in
Spanish. Still, the reading level is probably similar to that of a
newspaper rather than an esoteric literary novel. For example,
after listing all the classic films done by the creative team
behind THE BOY WHO CRIED WEREWOLF, Maroto says, "El film que nos
ocupa, por el contrario, es un absoluto desastre." You don't need
much Spanish to figure that one out. And some of the Spanish
neologisms are wonderful: the two friends in AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF
IN LONDON are described as arriving in a "pueblecito de innegable
tono hammeriano" ("a village of undeniably Hammeresque tone").
On the other hand, occasionally one finds a word not recognizable
by context and not even in the typical paperback Spanish-English
dictionaries. For example, when Maroto talks about "el tono
gamberro-yanqui" in AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, I had to pull
out my 1500-page doorstop of a dictionary (Spanish only) from the
Real Academia Española to find that "gamberro" means "libertino,
disoluto". Those I could translate without a dictionary, and then
Maroto's additional reference to Landis's NATIONAL LAMPOON'S ANIMAL
HOUSE made more sense as well.
A MEMORY CALLED EMPIRE
by Arkady Martine:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/23/2020]
A MEMORY CALLED EMPIRE by Arkady Martine (Tor, ISBN 978-1-250-18643-0)
won the Hugo this year and is described as a classic space
opera. It certainly reminded me of one--I kept feeling that it was
heavily inspired by Isaac Asimov's FOUNDATION(*). Not the whole
series, but the first book and in particular the first part, "The
Psychohistorians", in which Gael Dornick arrives at Trantor and
finds himself immersed in all sorts of politics he does not
understand, and the third part, "The Mayors", which deals with a
succession crisis. And there's a soupcon of China Mieville's
EMBASSYTOWN, with some very linguistic stuff.
(*) One wonders if the author's name being "Arkady" is somehow
connected to this. :-)
One big difference is that the main character, Mahit Dzmare, and
about half the main supporting characters are female. (One need
not add that Martine's portrayals of female characters is far more
accurate and less condescending than Asimov's.) Needless to say,
this passes the Bechdel test.
Unfortunately, the book also has the bane of many science fiction
readers' existences: a glossary (nine pages) of characters, titles,
and other terms, along with two pages explaining the alphabet and
pronunciation. It's a lose-lose situation: without a glossary, it
is too difficult to follow everyone and everything, but who wants
to keep flipping back to the glossary to figure out what's
happening?
In spite of this, however, I do recommend this book for fans of
classic space opera--its positives definitely outweigh its
negatives.
ALL THE WONDERS WE SEEK
by Félix Martí-Ibáñez:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/15/2009]
ALL THE WONDERS WE SEEK: THIRTEEN TALES OF SURPRISE AND PRODIGY by
Félix Martí-Ibáñez (no isbn) was first published in 1960, but two
of the stories appeared in WEIRD TALES in the early 1950s. Before
I comment on the stories, let me point out that Martí-Ibáñez is yet
another doctor who writes speculative fiction, though his writings
tend more towards fantasy. More current examples are Michael
Crichton (definitely science fiction) and F. Paul Wilson (horror).
But Martí-Ibáñez's model is more from the mainstream, since his
dedication reads, "To William Somerset Maugham, greatest modern
example of the physician as homme de lettres, whose friendship has
been throughout the years an evergreen source of joy, inspiration,
and enlightenment."
Another general observation is that although Martí-Ibáñez was born
and raised in Spain, and later moved to the United States, his
stories are all set in Latin America. One might say they are
magical realism (see last week's column), but in any case,
Martí-Ibáñez apparently felt that the atmosphere needed for his stories
was neither Iberian nor North American. (Not until such writers as
Mark Helprin and Neil Gaiman did this sort of writing with North
American settings gain a wide audience.) One perhaps sees the
inspiration of Maugham here, since Maugham set many of his stories
in hot jungle climates.
But Martí-Ibáñez is very even-handed about his settings. Every
story is set in a different country (or in some cases, two),
meaning that of the seventeen continental Latin American countries
or territories, he covers all but Mexico, Panama, and Uruguay, as
well as having one story set in Cuba. (Belize, Guyana, Surinam,
and French Guiana cannot really be included in Latin America in
this context.) And there is no duplication of countries, leading
one to think that this was intentional.
"The Sleeping Bell", for example, takes place in the Colombian
jungle. We know this because in the very first paragraph he
writes, "when one is traveling on foot in the Colombian jungle...."
Indeed, he is very explicit in every story about where the events
take place. Unlike some authors whose descriptions are either
vague or contradictory, Martí-Ibáñez is quite clear in his
locations. And like many of his other stories, this one is rooted
in the events of the Spanish conquest--in this case the story of a
pagan statue and a church bell.
"The Star Hunt" (which takes place in Ecuador) uses another
recurring theme: the desire to escape from "the commonplace and
hopeless." The main character goes out one morning on an errand
and finds himself drawn into a series of extraordinary adventures
far beyond his normal banal existence.
"A Tomb in Malacor" is one of the WEIRD TALES stories and takes
place between Managua (Nicaragua) and Guatemala City (Guatemala).
It has a real "Twilight Zone" feel to it, but definitely pre-dates
the series, so it is possible that this is one of the stories that
inspired Rod Serling.
"Niña Sol" is set in high-altitude Peru, "The Seekers of Dreams" in
"Maitecas, close to the steaming Paraguayan jungle" (what an
evocative description!), "The Buried Paradise" in La Paz (Bolivia),
and "Amigo Heliotropo" in Honduras and El Salvador.
The inspiration for "Between Two Dreams" may very well be the story
of Zhuang Zhou (a.k.a. Chuang Tzu), who fell asleep one day and
dreamt he was a butterfly. When he woke up, he wondered whether he
was Zhuang Zhou dreaming he was a butterfly, or a butterfly
dreaming he was Zhuang Zhou. I find Martí-Ibáñez's choice of Costa
Rica a little unusual for a tale of a conquistador, although I
suppose if Central America was good enough for "stout Cortez", ....
Okay, that's a literary reference--I know Cortez was not in Central
America. (This is the other WEIRD TALES story.)
"The Song Without Words" (set in Argentina) has a definite Pied
Piper sub-text (or maybe not even so "sub") as well as having the
popular fantasy plot device of the circus. Even when the circus is
not literally magical, the whole philosophy of a circus is
magic--something beyond our daily existence.
"The Threshold of the Door", set in Caracas (Venezuela), is a story
that with a couple of additional phrases could have appeared in
Clifton Fadiman's FANTASIA MATHEMATICA. "Stand sideways on the
threshold and walk sideways toward the frame. ... if you walk
straight toward the frame without fear, I promise you that you
shall enter the poetic world whole and safe. You know why?
Because in our world doors are horizontal instead of vertical. Our
doors, when open, cross yours. That is why you can't enter the
poetic world through the opening of your doors. You must stand
sideways on your threshold and walk straight into the side beam.
You will then enter the invisible door of our world." Even as it
is, without any descriptions of the fourth (spatial) dimension, it
seems inspired by Edwin A. Abbott's FLATLAND ("Upward, not
northward!").
"Havana: 60 Longitude West, 70 Latitude South" is not a typo, even
though Havana is actually 82.33 Longitude West, 23 Latitude North.
(The title actually has degree symbols, but I cannot do them in
ASCII.) Let's just say that this brings plate tectonics to a whole
new level.
"Senhor Zumbeira's Leg" (set in Brazil) is a story that could
easily have come almost directly from the Arabian Nights. Not that
it is a secret--it is clear that that is what Martí-Ibáñez
intended. Is it just accidental that the only story based on a
story cycle from "the mysterious East" is set in the only
non-Spanish-language country in Latin America--or is it that
Martí-Ibáñez chose Brazil as the most foreign to himself as a native of
Spain?
"Riquiqui, I Love You!" (set in Chile) was listed in the table of
contents as "Riquiqui, I Lov Youe!", which actually sounded more
mysterious. Alas, this title was a typo, and while the story was
fine, the misprint seemed so redolent with atmosphere that I was at
least a little disappointed.
Martí-Ibáñez has written a lot of other books. Most seem to be
histories of medicine. He has at least one other collection of
stories (WALTZ), a historical novel, a humorous novel, and a travel
book. I suppose it is good that he can write in many fields, but
it does mean that we have not gotten as much speculative
fiction/fantasy/magical realism from him as we might otherwise have
gotten.
THE HAUNTING OF H. G. WELLS
by Robert Masello:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/25/2020]
THE HAUNTING OF H. G. WELLS by Robert Masello (47North, ISBN 978-1-542-09378-1)
is an odd mixture of historical fiction, romance, and
the supernatural. Well, maybe to others it would not seem odd; I
realize there are lots of supernatural historical romance novels.
But it is not something of which I have read a lot.
The romance is the relationship between Wells and Rebecca West, as
well as his relationship with his wife Jane.(whose real name was
Amy Catherine, in case any of you TIME AFTER TIME fans was
wondering). The historical part is World War I and the social
movements of the time. And the supernatural ... well, that's a bit
trickier. [SPOILERS] Masello keeps throwing red herrings at us,
starting with the "Angels of Mons", a genuine story/urban legend of
a supernatural event during the war. After pretty much dismissing
that, he hands us another possibility in the "ghouls" of the
battlefield. And so on. He does eventually get to genuine
supernatural happenings, but only after several "false starts."
You will either find this clever, or you will want to strangle him.
I found the historical aspects of far more interest than the
romance, and the supernatural aspects of interest only insofar as
they served the historical part. Masello does have Arthur Machen
and Alistair Crowley as characters, along with Wells and West, and
Winston Churchill, but since one cannot tell how much of their
characters are fictionalized, there's always the possibility of the
unreliable narrator. Well, okay, we know the main plot is
fiction. But it is the sort of "enemy agent" plot that one can
accept in an historical fiction novel.
THE LOST BOOKS OF THE ODYSSEY
by Zachary Mason:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/10/2003]
Another example of stealth science fiction is THE LOST BOOKS OF THE
ODYSSEY by Zachary Mason (ISBN 978-0-374-19215-0). It is subtitled
on the cover "A NOVEL", but it is not. It consists of 44 vignettes
of alternative events in the life of Odysseus, events which are
often mutually exclusive. For example, in "Penelope's Elegy"
Odysseus returns home to find Penelope dead, while in "A Sad
Revelation" she has remarried, and in "A Night in the Woods" a
third scenario unfolds. The stories, or vignettes (the longest is
still under 3000 words), do form a unified whole--not a novel, but
a series of meditations on the subject of Odysseus. Mason goes
back to the original meaning of "Odyssey" as being the story of
Odysseus, and some vignettes occur outside the ten-year period
covered in Homer's "Odyssey".
This raises an interesting question in terms of Hugo nominations.
The definition for Best Novel calls for "a science fiction or
fantasy story of forty thousand (40,000) words or more." It makes
little sense to nominate the individual pieces as short stories,
but the book as a whole seems ineligible.
My one complaint about THE LOST BOOKS OF THE ODYSSEY is that Mason
(or his editors) felt it necessary to footnote several of the
references to the original ODYSSEY. For example, a comment Odysseus
makes about not killing the Cyclops because he and his men would
then be trapped is footnoted with an explanation of how the Cyclops
had them in his cave with a massive boulder that only the Cyclops
could move blocking the door. I find it hard to believe that the
people reading this book would be unfamiliar with the ODYSSEY.
HAND OF GLORY
by Sophie Masson:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/10/2003]
I just read Sophie Masson's HAND OF GLORY,
an alternate history set in Australia. There aren't many of
these (for starters, known history there goes back a lot shorter
time than in Europe, for example), but this didn't seem to do much
with the "alternate" aspect.
Hand of Glory is not available in the US;
you might try http://www.amazon.co.uk.
AN OXFORD TRAGEDY
by J. C. Masterman:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/09/2007]
AN OXFORD TRAGEDY by J. C. Masterman (ISBN-10 0-486-24165-3,
ISBN-13 978-0-486-24165-4) is another classic Dover mystery,
notable for its academic setting. There is an entire sub-genre
of "bibliomysteries" which take place in bookstores, libraries,
and academic settings, and this falls in that category. (See
http://www.bibliomysteries.com/ for an extensive list.) This
is not especially noteworthy as a mystery, but I still applaud
Dover for having brought what seems to be an entire generation of
mysteries into print.
THE LAST MAN ON EARTH (I AM LEGEND)
by Richard Matheson:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/24/2011]
The science fiction book-and-movie discussion group chose Richard
Matheson's I AM LEGEND and the film THE LAST MAN ON EARTH. The
film is not bad, but has quite a few goofs and sloppy moments. For
example, Morgan says he has had eleven kills in three years, but he
is making dozens of stakes, and he asks, "How many more will I have
to make?" Morgan seems to be drinking three-year-old coffee,
finding huge amounts of fresh garlic, and not having any problems
with sides of beef that have been hanging in a meat locker for
three years. Even with an uninterrupted power supply--which is
very unlikely--they would be pretty rank. And the tires on the
cars he looks at would be flat.
An example of sloppiness is when Morgan meets the woman, there are
two trucks are moving along a road in the distance. Also, the
handle on the armory door is on a different side when seen from the
outside and the inside. (That is, on either side, if you are
facing the door, the handle is on your left no matter whether you
are inside or outside the room.)
She says she has been hiding and not eating, but apparently does
get to a hair stylist. (It turns out she is lying, but even so,
her hair is too well styled for the situation.)
I AM LEGEND
by Richard Matheson:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/21/2007]
I re-read I AM LEGEND by Richard Matheson (ISBN-13
978-0-765-35715-1, ISBN-10 0-765-35715-1) after seeing the movie.
I have to agree with Mark--the movie that is most faithful to the
book is the 1964 version, THE LAST MAN ON EARTH. In fact, the
current film credits not just Richard Matheson but also the
screenwriters of the 1971 film, THE OMEGA MAN, for the story. So
not surprisingly, the current film resembles that in many ways.
Of the current film, I will say that it is probably worth seeing
the movie for the production and set design, but not for the
action sequences or make-up. One note: the 1954 Fawcett edition
of I AM LEGEND is 160 pages long; the 1995 Tor edition (reprinted
in October 2007) is over three hundred pages long. This is not
just larger print and wider margins--the Tor edition also
includes ten additional short stories, hence is actually a
collection. Normally one would expect a title such as I AM
LEGEND AND OTHER STORIES, but I guess they felt that just I AM
LEGEND was stronger.
TWILIGHT AT THE WORLD OF TOMORROW
by James Mauro:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/03/2010]
TWILIGHT AT THE WORLD OF TOMORROW: GENIUS, MADNESS, MURDER, AND THE
1939 WORLD'S FAIR ON THE BRINK OF WAR by James Mauro (ISBN 0-345-51214-6)
covers a lot of material that other World's Fair
historians seem to have overlooked. For example, considering the
amount of material written about the 1939 New York World's Fair, I
was surprised to discover that there was a terrorist bomb planted
in the British Pavilion on July 4, 1940, that exploded when it was
discovered and removed, killing two policemen. You would think
that all the various articles, books, plays, and so on might have
mentioned it.
Mauro spends most of the book, in fact, talking about things other
people haven't covered much. Other people write about all the
"World of Tomorrow" science and technology exhibits, but Mauro
spends more time talking about the various countries' pavilions.
There was no Germany pavilion, for example, and the Austria and
Czechoslovakia pavilions had the dubious distinction of being
country pavilions without a country by the time they opened. And
the staff of those pavilions, as well as of the Poland pavilion,
apparently ended up as refugees when the fair closed in 1940, as
they had no desire to return to their homelands.
Mauro also talks about the financial aspects a lot. Between
escalating costs and disappointing attendance, the Fair lost money.
(Actually, this seems to be true of most World's Fairs.) The
profits were supposed to go into developing Flushing Meadows into a
park after the Fair; that never happened. Oh, and about the Trylon
and Perisphere: people often ask why they were torn down. The
answer is simple: There was a war on and they and most of the rest
of the iron on the site (20,000 tons total, with 4000 tons from the
Tryon and Perisphere alone) went for the war effort.
CHINA DREAMS: GROWING UP JEWISH IN TIENTSIN
by Isabelle Maynard:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/18/24]
CHINA DREAMS: GROWING UP JEWISH IN TIENTSIN by Isabelle Maynard
(University of Iowa Press, ISBN 0-87745-571-6) is Maynard's
anecdotal recounting of her growing up the daughter of Russian
Jews fleeing the revolution in China and later in San Francisco. I
had hoped for an interesting meeting of cultures, but the truth
turned out to be that, as with most other non-Chinese, the
Maynards lived in an isolated compound where their only contact
was with often nameless Chinese servants. (Maynard knew her
personal "maid" only as "amah".) Her circle of acquaintances
included non-Jews, but no Chinese. She learned to speak English
and French in addition to Russian, but not Chinese. As a result,
the cultures that met were all European, and while this was of
some interest, this is not very different from the stories of
other Jewish refugees in the United States, or England, or
Australia. Somehow, I was hoping for more.
(This is not to blame Maynard for anything. It was her parents'
decision, and she could do no more than give a true accounting.)
VIDEOHOUND'S WAR MOVIES
by Mike Mayo:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/29/2014]
And while we're mentioning errors, let me note one in VIDEOHOUND'S
WAR MOVIES by Mike Mayo (ISBN 978-1-57859-089-6). In his
description of the film THE LIGHTHORSEMEN, Mayo writes, "The Light
Horse is "mounted infantry" as opposed to cavalry, though the
details of that distinction--beyond the troopers' use of rifles and
bayonets--are not too important." This is 180 degrees off--in the
climactic scene, the distinction is critical.
GREEK FIRE, POISON ARROWS & SCORPION BOMBS: BIOLOGICAL AND CHEMICAL WARFARE IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
by Adrinne Mayor:
GREEK FIRE, POISON ARROWS & SCORPION BOMBS: BIOLOGICAL AND CHEMICAL
WARFARE IN THE ANCIENT WORLD by Adrienne Mayor (ISBN 978-1-585-67608-8)
documents the common usage over the centuries of what we
think of as modern "weapons of mass destruction." While its
enumeration of the numerous ancient accounts of such warfare (and
the citation of modern instances that have particular parallels to
them) shows how common they were, Mayor seems to think that her
readers will be surprised by these ancient instances. Yet once she
mentions poisoned arrows, or catapulting dead animals into besieged
cities, the reader will immediately realize that, yes, there has
been such warfare through the centuries. So unless you are
interested in the specific recipes for arrow poison various people
used, or what disease a particular general tried to spread, this
book will have little new to offer besides a long list of examples.
THE INVISIBLE COUNTRY
by Paul McAuley:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/02/2004]
Paul McAuley's THE INVISIBLE COUNTRY was another collection of
short fiction by a British writer, although I was more familiar
with McAuley because of his alternate history, PASQUALE'S ANGEL,
which won the Sidewise Award in the first year those awards were
presented. Both PASQUALE'S ANGEL and THE INVISIBLE COUNTRY are
recommended--I am glad to see collections being published, since I
think that too often short fiction gets ignored as soon as the
magazine or book it appeared in is pulled from the racks.
PASQUALE'S ANGEL
by Paul J. McAuley
(AvoNova, ISBN 0-380-77820-3, 1997 (1995c), 374pp, paperback):
This is the second "alternate Leonardo" I read in quick succession
(Jack Dann's Memory Cathedral being the first, though this actually
predates the Dann by about a year). In this, however, Leonardo is
not one of the major characters on-stage. He does appear but
mostly he is talked about as the "Great Engineer" in the tower. So
far as I can determine, he got that way because Savonarola's
revolution of 1498 succeeded and Leonardo turned from concentrating
on art to concentrating on invention. The result is a Florence
well into the Industrial Age in Leonardo's lifetime.
Let me start out by saying that I enjoyed this book and that I
recommend it. I want to say that up front, because my comments
might lead you to think I had a negative opinion of Pasquale's
Angel, and that's not true.
One of my complaints has to do with the premise: I doubt the
Industrial Revolution could have proceeded this fast this early.
In twenty years, Florence seems to have gotten to the technological
level we achieved around 1900--considerably more than twenty years
after the Industrial Revolution started.
Another problem is that Pasquale's Angel starts with a
"locked-room" (or rather "locked-tower") mystery whose solution, alas,
should be obvious to most of the readers who would be attracted to
this book.
Given that McAuley wanted a murder mystery, I wish he had designed
one less derivative. He does a good job of describing his
characters and making them come alive. (Of course, most of his
characters were alive, at least in some form.) His use of the
politics and conspiracies of the time is the most interesting
aspect of the novel, and more emphasis on that, with less on
detailing more technical advances than seem likely or are
necessary, would have made me happier. But as they say, your
mileage may vary, and even with my reservations, I still strongly
recommend Pasquale's Angel.
THE ROWAN
by Anne McCaffrey:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/11/2006]
THE ROWAN by Anne McCaffrey (ISBN 0-441-73576-2) was chosen for
our science fiction group for July. Someone described it as a
"good quick summer read," which I suppose it is. However, that
is in part because it seems to be aimed at a teenage (or perhaps
slightly older) audience, and more specifically at teenage girls.
It is basically the coming of age and romance of a girl/woman
called (annoyingly) "the Rowan", after her home planet. Why not
just "Rowan"? Who knows? Anne McCaffrey has a lot of fans, but
her writing does not work for me.
BLACK BIBLE CHRONICLES: FROM GENESIS TO THE PROMISED LAND
interpreted by P. K. McCary
(African American Family Press, ISBN 1-56977-0000-X, 1993, 190pp, ):
Perhaps best described as "the Torah for homeboys," this is the first
of a series of books translating (or "interpreting," to use McCary's
term) the "Bible" into urban language. This volume covers the five
books of Moses ("Genesis", "Exodus", "Leviticus", "Numbers", and
"Deuteronomy"); a second volume has already been published covering the
four gospels (called "Rappin' with Jesus"). But as a Jew I was
understandably more interested in this volume.
This translation omits large sections of these books, particularly the
genealogies (the "begats"). Since the footnotes reference this
translation back to the chapters in the complete version, I don't
consider this a big fault. More problematic is McCary's somewhat loose
translation. The use of the term "church" to refer to the Temple may
not be too unreasonable (though it points out the Christian focus of
this translation, rather than a Judaic or Islamic one), but the
translation of "Sabbath" into "Sunday" in several spots is irksome and
deceptive. And, for example, the translation of Leviticus 18:21 as "he
can't put her children on the altar to be burned 'cuz that'll cause the
ultimate in punishment" may not be an accurate rendering of what the
original says: the King James translation is "And thou shalt not let
any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou
profane the name of thy God: I am the Lord," and Maimonides says this
refers to passing an old practice of passing a newborn child through
the smoke of a fire as a pagan rite ("The Guide for the Perplexed",
Part 3, Chapter 37). On the other hand, "Don't mess with someone else's
ol' man or ol' lady" is probably a better rendering of the intent than
"Thou shalt not commit adultery." (The latter seems to lead to all
sorts of hair-splitting over the precise definition of adultery.)
I notice, by the way, that while most of the Laws in "Leviticus"
are retained, the prohibitions against homosexual behavior between men
seem to have vanished. Not only does McCary include all the other
sexual prohibitions ("And the Almighty didn't want folks peeping on
people they had no business seeing naked"; "It was especially uncool to
get down with any animals"; "The Almighty didn't want kissin' cousins
getting hitched, and brothers weren't to sleep with their mothers or
any wife of your dad's, whether she's your mother or not.
Granddaughters, daughters, and half sisters are out of the question for
doing the wild thing, just as your aunt or your sister-in-law"), but
even the clothing ones ("Mix matching clothes, like wool and linen,
isn't just a fashion downer, it ain't happening here"). One can only
conclude that political correctness is at least partially responsible
for this omission.
"Black Bible Chronicles" is certainly an unusual translation, and
one that is surprisingly engaging. It manages to bring a life and a
directness to the story that traditional translations don't. Whether
it will reach its intended audience is not clear, but it could well
find a favorable reception with an audience looking at it as a literary
work rather than an inspirational one.
GLOBISH: HOW THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE BECAME THE WORLD'S LANGUAGE
by Robert McCrum:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/23/2010]
GLOBISH: HOW THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE BECAME THE WORLD'S LANGUAGE by
Robert McCrum (ISBN 978-0-393-06255-7) attempts to explain why
English is "the world's universal language". There is a very
favorable blurb on the back by Malcolm Gladwell (author of THE
TIPPING POINT), but John McWhorter's review in THE NEW REPUBLIC
(
Briefly, McCrum seems to believe that it is something inherent in
English that makes it suitable as a universal language rather than
just the fact of English and American culture being so pervasive
(English through the 17th to early 20th centuries, followed by
American). He says, "Language ... is intrinsically neutral, but it
is no contradiction to claim that English ... is unique." He then
spends most of the book recounting the history of English, and
England, and the United States--it's not clear that one needs dozen
pages about slavery to explain why so many Chinese speak English
today. McWhorter's review also points out many errors in fact as
well.
But McWhorter is most critical of McCrum's underlying reasoning.
McCrum attributes the popularity of English to its "being light on
conjugation suffixes ... and not having gender." But as McWhorter
notes, Russian has the opposite of these characteristics and other
complexities as well, yet is (or was) spoken by a vast number of
people as a second language. The reason is simple--Russia was the
superpower in Communist world just as the United States was in the
West. (The effect of the British Commonwealth in spreading English
should not be completely ignored either, obviously.)
McWhorter points out that McCrum also assumes that simplicity
causes universality, while (according to McWhorter) it is actually
the other way around.
THE PIONEERS
by David McCullough
YOU ARE NOT SPECIAL AND OTHER ENCOURAGEMENTS
by David McCullough, Jr.:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/18/2014]
YOU ARE NOT
SPECIAL AND OTHER ENCOURAGEMENTS by David McCullough, Jr. (ISBN
978-0-06-225734-5) grew out of a graduation speech given by
McCullough (son of the famous author). A lot of what McCullough
says addresses this attitude of "I'm special and deserve special
treatment." Closely related is, "We should never let any child
ever fail at anything, or get a bad grade, or suffer any
consequences for mistakes." The result is that often the first
time a child (now an adult) encounters negative consequences or
even criticism is in college (if they are lucky), or when they hit
the real world after college.
In Poland, in South Korea, in Finland, or indeed in almost any
other country, students have to excel to get into college. Here
they merely have to show up for classes in high school (or maybe
not even that). It is not surprising that so many of them drop out
of college after a year or so. In other countries, there are
vocational schools and other paths for the non-college-bound.
But it is worse than that. High school graduates in other
countries have a knowledge of math, of reasoning, of how to analyze
problems, of how to organize their thoughts and communicate them.
All too often, high school graduates here have none of these.
Industries looking for factory workers say that high school
graduates are not trained enough in even these skills for the jobs
that are now available.
"The Ashbazu Effect
by John McDaid:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/12/2005]
John McDaid, "The Ashbazu Effect" (REVISIONS, ed. by Julie
Czerneda and Isaac Szpindel, ISBN 0-7564-0240-9): This assumes
that the idea of embossing whole pages at a time onto clay
tablets has been discovered in Sumeria, and shows the next stage.
As seems to be very popular, within the story someone talks about
alternate histories ("fiction-that-continues-a-line"), including
of course our own timeline. This gets extra credit for a more
interesting setting and divergence point than one normally finds.
(I commented on the entire collection in the 10/01/04 issue of
the MT VOID; click here for that review.)
OMEGA
by Jack McDevitt:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/05/2003]
Jack McDevitt's OMEGA is apparently the third book in a series
preceded by CHINDI and DEEPSIX, though there is no indication
anywhere on the dust jacket or facing the title page. It stands
moderately well on its own, but I kept getting the feeling that I
was supposed to be getting more out of some of the references than
I was. The premise of clouds that travel through the galaxy
destroying all signs of civilization was intriguing, but the
geometry was all wrong. That is, it was claimed that they looked
for right angles, which don't appear in nature, but there are in
fact crystal forms that have right angles. In addition, an
artifact called a "hedgehog" was described as having a lot of
right angles, but the description made it sound more like
something with spikes that were more like tall pyramids stuck on
the central piece, and as such would have a lot of obtuse and
acute angles, but few right angles.
BRASYL
by Ian McDonald:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/25/2008]
BRASYL by Ian McDonald (ISBN-13 978-1-591-02543-6, ISBN-10
1-591-02543-5) is a Hugo nominee, but it has a major strike
against it--the book comes with a six-page glossary (and a
suggested reading list, and a playlist of songs). It also has a
long description of a soccer game (which I can't follow). The
only one of the three threads it follows that I could understand
was the one taking place in 1732. Maybe if I studied the
glossary first.... Or maybe not. I really wanted to like
this one, but it didn't happen. (In fairness, I will add that I
gave up around page 60.)
CYBERABAD DAYS
by Ian McDonald:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/09/2010]
CYBERABAD DAYS by Ian McDonald (ISBN-13 978-1-59102-699-0) is a
collection of short stories (well, probably closer to novelettes)
set in the world of McDonald's RIVER OF GODS, the India of 2047.
India has split in several warring states. What is interesting is
how McDonald has managed to address so many current issues:
"Sanjeev and Robotwallah" is about combat by telepresence (not
unlike the film SLEEP DEALER), class and ethnic differences in
"Kyle Meets the River", genetic engineering in "The Dust Assassin",
gender imbalance in "An Eligible Boy", and so on. All of these are
played out in the Indianized world of the future. For example,
McDonald doesn't write about "A.I.", he writes about "aeai" (just
as people in India have names like "Vijay"). And people watch
"tivi". McDonald manages to capture the feeling of India. He
lives in Belfast; either he travels a lot or he spends his days
watching Bollywood movies.
"The Little Goddess"
by Ian McDonald:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/12/2006]
"The Little Goddess" by Ian McDonald (ASIMOV'S Jun 2005) is set on
the near-future Indian subcontinent. India has splintered into
several nations, all jockeying for position and power. The
narrator begins as a goddess, chosen after a series of spiritual
tests, but this is a position that will end after a few years, not
with her death, but with puberty. She then finds herself trying
to become a normal person again, but having been a goddess creates
certain drawbacks. I really enjoyed this, both for the story, and
for the milieu. (In general, I recommend McDonald's work. I have
not had a chance yet to read his Hugo-nominated novel from 2004,
RIVER OF GODS, but I am looking forward to it.)
"The Tear"
by Ian McDonald:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/29/2009]
"The Tear" by Ian McDonald (GALACTIC EMPIRES): I read this last,
because it was not made available as part of the electronic Hugo
packet until version 2.0. It has all the faults of Rosenbaum &
Doctorow's "True Names" with none of the virtues. One problem with
reading something electronically (for me, anyway) is that it is
harder to skip through it and sample bits--not that a story should
be read that way, but it can encourage one to stick with something
because it seems to get better.
"Vishnu at the Cat Circus"
by Ian McDonald:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/25/2010]
"Vishnu at the Cat Circus" by Ian McDonald (CYBERABAD DAYS) was the
one new story in the collection CYBERABAD DAYS, and frankly, the
least engaging. In fact, I had started it, given up, and was about
to return the book to the library when the Hugo nominations were
announced. So I went back and read it, but still could not managed
to get enthused about it.
CASTRO'S BOMB
by x:
[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.
"Romanitas" Trilogy
by Sophia McDougall:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/24/2012]
Sophia McDougall has finished her "Romanitas" trilogy. As a
Sidewise Award judge, I was sent copies of all three books when
they came out, but either the publisher did not want to provide a
nicely matched set, or the books were published without concern for
having a nicely matched set. ROMANITAS (ISBN 978-0-75286-894-3) is
in the British "C format" (the size of a hardback but with a soft
cover, 6"x9.25"), ROME BURNING (ISBN 978-0-7528-7930-7) is in the
"A format" (US mass market size, 4.5"x7"), and SAVAGE CITY (ISBN
978-0-575-09638-7) is in the "B format" (somewhere between the two,
5"x7.75"). This is not the most mis-matched set I own, though--that
"honor" goes to the Jasper Fforde "Thursday Next" series, with
volumes in Viking hardcover, Viking UK C format, NEL B format, and
two Penguin US trade paperbacks. But the fact that the heights of
the "Romanitas" books vary so much makes them very difficult to
shelve (or box) together.
FILM CRAZY
by Patrick McGilligan:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/08/2006]
FILM CRAZY by Patrick McGilligan (ISBN 0-312-28038-6) is
presented as a collection of interviews with famous directors and
writers. However, for a few of the people, there is no
interview, but just an article by McGilligan about the subject,
with some quotations. (The entry for Reagan is an article rather
than an interview, and was written early in his political
career.) As articles in a magazine they would be interesting,
but they make for a rather lightweight book.
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SCIENCE FICTION: FROM THE TWILIGHT ZONE TO THE FINAL FRONTIER
by Gabriel McKee:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/07/2014]
I had hoped for better things from THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SCIENCE
FICTION: FROM THE TWILIGHT ZONE TO THE FINAL FRONTIER by Gabriel
McKee (ISBN 978-0-664-22901-6). I was hoping for an in-depth
analysis of science fiction works that dealt with the themes of
Gospels (e.g., A CASE OF CONSCIENCE) or future Christianity (e.g.,
A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ). Instead, McKee darts from work to work,
choosing such a motley assortment of works that most readers will
be unfamiliar with a large proportion of them, and spending only a
page (or even just a paragraph) on most of them. Sometimes his
choices are just peculiar: he covers Arthur C. Clarke's "Nine
Billion Names of God" even though that is rooted in Buddhism rather
than Christianity, but omits Clarke's classic story, "The Star".
He also makes sweeping statements, such as, "The purpose of this
creation [science fiction] is to change our world. By creating
altered universes, science-fiction authors hold up a mirror to our
time, sometimes amplifying its best aspects, sometimes warning us
of its worst. In all cases, the goal of science fiction is to use
its imaginary worlds to create a real world of the future that is
better than our present." The idea that science fiction has a
single goal (other than perhaps to entertain) is misguided at best.
Every once in a while, someone decides science fiction is not doing
enough to make a better future and comes up with a project to
change this; the latest is HIEROGLYPH, an anthology edited by Neal
Stephenson. But this is a subset of science fiction; it is large,
it contains multitudes.
He also makes some basic logic errors. On page 1, for example, he
says "Space, [Han] Solo argues, conceals no spiritual secrets, no
answers to eternal questions, and no gods. But STAR WARS and its
sequels are an epic refutation of this statement. Powers beyond
our everyday understanding do exist, and there is mystery and
wonder to be found in the vast reaches of the universe." No, STAR
WARS is not a refutation of anything--it is a story, written by a
human being. (Similarly, the claim by someone in STARSHIP TROOPERS
that their system of flogging et al is good because it works is
not applicable to the real world. This ties in with the
discussion of "The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse" a few
weeks ago.) Is "The Nine Billion Names of God" a refutation of the
Christian view of the universe?
"Eight Miles"
by Sean McMullen:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/15/2011]
"Eight Miles", Sean McMullen (in ANALOG 09/10) is a
steampunk-meets-Edgar-Rice-Burroughs story. It's okay, but nothing special, and
not what I would consider Hugo material,
"The Precedent"
by Sean McMullen:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/10/2010]
"The Precedent" by Sean McMullen (F&SF,
Jul/Aug 2010) is a rather over-the-top story about climate change.
Set in 2035, it is all about "climate crime", where basically
everyone born before the turn of the millenium ends up on trial for
such specific crimes as denial, squandering, greed, and gluttony.
McMullen does think up all sorts of apropos Dantesque punishments,
and indeed there are explicit references to Dante in the story. I
suppose if one takes it as a parable one might accept it, but it
still has a somewhat weak ending. I will say, though, that it is
memorable.
FILM FLAM: ESSAYS ON HOLLYWOOD
by Larry McMurtry:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/01/2007]
I was reading the foreword to FILM FLAM: ESSAYS ON HOLLYWOOD by
Larry McMurtry (ISBN-10 0-743-21624-5, ISBN-13
978-0-743-21624-1), but was taken aback when I read, "As the ante
for each picture goes up the old fever of excitement gives way to
the constant low-grade fever of dread. What if we spend $30
million and it flops?" Just how old was this book?! It turns
out it is from 1987, those halcyon days when $30 million was a
lot of money in Hollywood. (SPIDER-MAN 3 just cost $250
million.) These essays reflect McMurtry's experience both as an
author whose novels have been filmed, and as a screen-writer.
His filmed novels include HORSEMAN, PASS BY (filmed as HUD); THE
LAST PICTURE SHOW, TERMS OF ENDEARMENT, and perhaps his best known
novel, LONESOME DOVE. McMurtry takes a refreshingly practical
approach to the business of screen-writing--and, yes, to him it is
a business. In the essay "The Fun of It All" he says that far too
many screen-writers have an inflated sense of their own
importance, and need to gain some perspective. (Among other
points, he notes that "if writers play limited roles in Hollywood,
they also bear limited responsibilities. They don't have to foot
the bill when a picture gets made; and nobody's going to blame
them if a picture flops.") This attitude puts him at the far end
of the spectrum from, say, Harlan Ellison. McMurtry is in favor
of treating screen-writing as a craft, working with deadlines,
being open to input from others and changes to the script, and not
insisting on being on set through the entire shoot.
Of having one's novels turned into movies, he writes, "When
Hollywood entered my life I was sitting in a tiny room in Fort
Worth eating meatloaf. The phone rang, and I was informed that
some people I had never heard of had just bought the movie rights
to my first novel. Three nights later I was sitting in the best
restaurant in Fort Worth, eating my first chateaubriand--a steak
so thick that in most parts of Texas it would have been called a
roast--and discussing title changes with a gentleman from
Paramount. At the time it never crossed my mind to wonder
whether the movie would turn out to be better than the book; what
I knew for a certainty was that the steak was better than the
meatloaf." (page 36) (Stephen King tells a similar story about
hearing about the sale of the movie rights to CARRIE.)
But what about the notion that a bad movie hurts the author of
the source book? Regarding RAGTIME, McMurtry says, "In my view
it is preeminently silly for Doctorow to give a damn about what
happens to RAGTIME as a film. His work is done, and his tale now
belongs, most properly, to its readers, not to him. The film De
Laurentiis may eventually make of it is another problem, but it
is clearly De Laurentiis's problem, no Doctorow's." (page 71)
McMurtry's implication throughout all this, never stated, and
perhaps just my conclusion, is that if the author is going to
care that much about what a film made from the book will be like,
he should not sell the rights. (Returning to Steven King,
however, it is generally agreed that the best films made from his
works are those he had the least involvement with, and
conversely.)
(The title of this book, FILM FLAM, is a (perhaps unintentional)
example of how books and movies are different. No one would use
this phrase in a movie, because it is virtually unpronounceable.)
SACAGAWEA'S NICKNAME
by Larry McMurtry:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/01/2007]
Larry McMurtry is best known for LONESOME DOVE--indeed, for most
people, that is his only work they could name (but see the review
of FILM FLAM below for a list of others). However, he has also
written a fair amount of non-fiction, mostly in the form of
essays. These have been collected into several, one of which is
SACAGAWEA'S NICKNAME (ISBN-10 1-590-17099-7, ISBN-13
978-1-590-17099-1). This includes twelve essays from "The New
York Review of Books", covering such diverse aspects of the West
as Buffalo Bill, the Zuni tribe, John Wesley Powell, and Angie
Debo, as well as (obviously) Sacagawea. McMurtry places his own
view of the West between the triumphalists and the revisionists.
(I would summarize these as "manifest destiny" and "noble
savage", but that is my shorthand, not McMurtry's, and even I
will admit that both are more complex than that.) McMurtry has
been involved in the popularization of "the West", yet he still
retains the ability to look at how that popularization has done a
disservice to both the West and those who are perceiving it.
MOBY-DICK: ISHMAEL'S MIGHTY BOOK
by Kerry McSweeney:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/05/2012]
MOBY-DICK: ISHMAEL'S MIGHTY BOOK by Kerry McSweeney (ISBN 0-8057-8002-5)
makes a useful distinction between what McSweeney calls
"Ishmael the character" and "Ishmael the narrator." Ishmael the
narrator is the one who talks about all the cetology, all the books
written by explorers, and in general all the stuff that Ishmael the
character would have no reason to have knowledge of before or
during the journey of the Pequod. However, it is Ishmael the
character who writes the passages that foreshadow the end of the
book, because writing the book after all the events in it have
happened, he would obviously know those.
This distinction has probably been made by other critics, but I
thought this way of identifying the two aspects of the "first
person" in the book is better than the usual "Ishmael vs. Melville"
distinction, since calling a first person voice "Melville" is
awkward and illogical.
THE POWER OF BABEL: A NATURAL HISTORY OF LANGUAGE
by John H. McWhorter:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/11/2010]
THE POWER OF BABEL: A NATURAL HISTORY OF LANGUAGE by John
H. McWhorter (ISBN-13 978-0-7167-4473-3), written in 2001, could be
considered the companion book to his Teaching Company course, "The
Story of Human Language." I started reading it, but found that it
duplicated the course almost completely. Ironically, when
McWhorter talks about how change is inevitable, he says, "It has
gotten to the point that saying I don't have a 'cell' lends me, I
suspect, the air of a sequestered holdout that we sense in people
who do not have VCRs." Now, only a few years later, lots of
people do not have VCRs--they have become "old technology".
It you don't have access to the Teaching Company, I recommend this
book, but the course is much better. For one thing, when McWhorter
is talking about how words change, vowels shift, and consonants
drift, hearing the comparisons is so much more meaningful than
just seeing them written phonetically.
TALKING BACK, TALKING BLACK: TRUTHS ABOUT AMERICA'S LINGUA FRANCA
by John McWhorter:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/08/2017]
In TALKING BACK, TALKING BLACK: TRUTHS ABOUT AMERICA'S LINGUA
FRANCA by John McWhorter (ISBN 978-1-9426-5820-7), McWhorter lays
out what I think is a convincing argument that Black English (which
has some formal name in linguistics such as "African-American
Vernacular English") is not just English spoken badly, but a
genuine dialect or language in the same sense that Yiddish is not
just German spoken badly, but is a separate dialect or language.
(The difference between a dialect and a language is that "a
language is a dialect with an army.")
DEADLINES PAST
by Walter Mears:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/13/2004]
Walter M. Mears's DEADLINES PAST is the reminiscence of Mears's
forty years covering American Presidential campaigns and
elections. I suppose I found it particularly interesting because
these elections are precisely the ones I remember (I was ten years
old in 1960). But certainly his descriptions of some of the older
campaigns and how they differ from the current ones would be of
interest even if you don't remember them. The "informality" of
the earlier campaigns, done on buses with no security staff (or
often any staff) to speak of contrasts sharply with the structure
of today's campaigns. And this period is also that of the rise of
television as a major force. Mears had to rely on his memory for
what wasn't archived in his columns, however. He explains in his
introduction that he didn't think it was important to keep his
notebooks, but strongly encourages young reporters not to make the
same mistake. (This may be an unnecessary warning: I was under
the impression that the notebooks serve as primary documentation
for the facts of a story, and the newspaper or magazine would
probably insist that they be kept for several years any way.)
THE SEVEN SAMURAI
by Joan Mellen:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/03/2015]
I have been reading more of the BFI booklets on film, and have come
to the conclusion that the first one I read (CAT PEOPLE by Kim
Newman, reviewed in the 10/10/14 issue of the MT VOID) may be the
best, at least for my purposes. Certainly the last two had some
surprising errors.
In THE SEVEN SAMURAI by Joan Mellen (ISBN 978-0-85170-915-X), the
author writes, "The coins which Katsushiro rains down upon the rice
grains are an application of Eisenstein's synaesthesia, the
substitution for the whole." No, that's synecdoche; synaesthesia
is "the production of a sense impression relating to one sense or
part of the body by stimulation of another sense or part of the
body." (Frankly, I do not think either term describes what is
happening; it is more than the coins make explicit the high value
of the few grains of rice to the hungry villagers.)
THE ELEPHANT AND THE TIGER
by Robyn Meredith:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/15/2009]
I recently listened to the audio book of THE ELEPHANT AND THE
TIGER: THE RISE OF INDIA AND CHINA, AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR ALL OF US
by Robyn Meredith (read by Laural Merlington) (ISBN-13
978-1-4001-0485-7, ISBN-10 1-4001-0485-8). I have two sets of
comments, one on the actual book, and one on the audiobook
experience.
The book is about the rise of India and China as economic super-powers.
Or rather, it is about the return, since Meredith claims
that both countries had been super-powers for most of the last
thousand years, and their "decline" in the 20th century was just a
blip. The chapters seem to alternate between China and India, and
the two seem very much like the hare and the tortoise, with China
leaping ahead rapidly, while India is taking a slower path which
may yet make it the ultimate leader. Both countries have achieved
massive gains in part because they insisted companies set up
research and development facilities (along with factories) in the
country. (Mexico, by comparison, seems content to accept factories
with no higher-level facilities to provide white-collar
opportunities.)
In the discussions of why India has been able to get millions of
service jobs (e.g., call centers), the widespread knowledge of
English was given as a major factor. It has been said that the two
good things England did for India were to build the railroads and
to wipe out the Thuggee. Perhaps one needs to add a third: to
introduce English.
Meredith claims that some jobs cannot be off-shored, and gives as
an example personal services like plastic surgery. But this is
wrong--people are more than willing to travel to India, or
Thailand, or the Philippines, to get major surgery done for a
fraction of what it would cost in the United States.
As for the audiobook experience, I have to say that long lists and
statistics don't work well in audiobooks. For example, a list of
the major United States companies served by an Indian call center
would be fine in a print book, but listening to the narrator
reading off dozens of company names is boring, and uninformative.
These seem to be filler in any case, along with such things as a
long description of how flax is made into linen.
And Meredith loves the word "tectonic".
UNTHINKING THINKING: JORGE LUIS BORGES, MATHEMATICS, AND THE NEW PHYSICS
by Floyd Merrell:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/28/23]
[Note that this is superseded by a more complete review here.]
UNTHINKING THINKING: JORGE LUIS BORGES, MATHEMATICS, AND THE NEW
PHYSICS by Floyd Merrell (Purdue, ISBN 0-911198-72-5) has a back
story to it. I had first heard about this book at least ten years
ago, but probably closer to twenty years or more. (It was
published in 1991.) When I started looking at listings, all copies
were more than $100 each, and for years $142 was about the lowest
price I could find.
But it was in my list of books I checked every week or so, and a
couple of weeks ago, to my astonishment, a copy appeared for ...
$5. And it wasn't even a charity shop, but a major used book
dealer. I immediately bought it, and when it arrived, I had an
inkling of what happened. There was a Post-It stuck on the front
page sticking up like a bookmark that had "95.99" and under it
"4.82"--but the '9's had big loops and small tails. And $4.82
looks like the tax amount on $95.99.
So what probably happened is that someone priced it at $95.99, but
the data entry person took a quick look at the note, read the '9's
as '0's, didn't wonder why anyone would write $5 as "05.00" and
entered it as $5. (Or they were using a scanner to enter the data.)
Anyway, someone there knew the value, but someone entered it
wrongly, and while I feel a twinge of guilt, the seller doesn't
allow refunds from or returns to its outlets or warehouses. (Of
course, normally this policy benefits them. :-) )
But what about the book itself? I was at first intimidated by the
very academic writing. Here's an example:
"Consider the possibility that in 'The Circular Ruins' a projection
of spatio-temporal synchronicity into linear existence entails a
symbolic abolition of the life/death dichotomy. This assumes an
implicit attempt to overcome temporal existence wherein spatial
hierarchy and temporal linearity predominate."
However, as I read on, I started to see errors, or at least slips.
For example, on page 4 Merrell says, "'The sun rotates around the
earth' and 'the earth rotates around the sun' represent two
conflicting perspectives." Actually that's not true; the Earth and
the moon revolve about a point that is three-quarters of the
Earth's radius from the Earth's center. And the pairs Pluto-Charon
and Sun-Jupiter each revolved around points that are not within
either of the bodies involved. And so it is possible to consider
both true, or both false, rather than one absolutely true and one
absolutely false.
But even more of a flub is that Merrell speaks of bodies "rotating"
around each other, when he means "revolving" around each other.
Rotation is the motion of a single body about a point or an axis.
Later, he writes about Leibniz's "binary system based on the root
2"; he means Leibniz's binary system based on the base 2 (which is
actually a bit redundant).
Another, deeper dispute I have with Merrell is that he defends the
argument that mathematics is invented. not discovered, by saying,
"In sum, from this perspective mathematics is invention rather than
discovery, a human institution rather than an eternal playground
for the gods. Right and wrong mathematical behavior lies in the
game, for mathematics is normative. Consequently, number systems
need not be decimal, as is our Western system. To cite only two
examples rom among many, the ancient Mayas used a system to the
base five, for reasons unknown. And within a fictive context, the
inhabitants of the planet Tlon used a duodecimal system...."
Merrell seems to confuse the way we express mathematics with the
mathematics itself. He could as easily claim that the different
shapes of the ten digits used in Egypt makes their mathematics
different from ours.
"We are to suppose not only that each page of the book after page
one is followed by an immediately preceding page, but also (and
this is not unimportant) that each page is separated from others by
a finite number of pages." This makes no sense, given the rest of
the description, even in a chapter about paradoxes, unless what he
meant to say was "an immediately succeeding page."
I may comment more on this book again when I finish it, but it is
very slow going.
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/25/23]
[With yesterday being the anniversary of Jorge Luis Borges's birth,
I thought this would be a good time to run my complete comments on
UNTHINKING THINKING. I am including the text I wrote about it in
the 04/28/23 issue so as to have a full review here.]
UNTHINKING THINKING: JORGE LUIS BORGES, MATHEMATICS, AND THE NEW
PHYSICS by Floyd Merrell (Purdue, ISBN 0-911198-72-5) is at first
intimidating by the very academic writing. Here's an example:
"Consider the possibility that in 'The Circular Ruins' a projection
of spatio-temporal synchronicity into linear existence entails a
symbolic abolition of the life/death dichotomy. This assumes an
implicit attempt to overcome temporal existence wherein spatial
hierarchy and temporal linearity predominate."
However, as I read on, I started to see errors, or at least slips.
For example, on page 4 Merrell says, "'The sun rotates around the
earth' and 'the earth rotates around the sun' represent two
conflicting perspectives." Actually that's not true; the Earth and
the moon revolve about a point that is three-quarters of the
Earth's radius from the Earth's center. And the pairs Pluto-Charon
and Sun-Jupiter each revolved around points that are not within
either of the bodies involved. And so it is possible to consider
both true, or both false, rather than one absolutely true and one
absolutely false.
But even more of a flub is that Merrell speaks of bodies "rotating"
around each other, when he means "revolving" around each other.
Rotation is the motion of a single body about a point or an axis.
Later, he writes about Leibniz's "binary system based on the root
2"; he means Leibniz's binary system based on the base 2 (which is
actually a bit redundant).
Another, deeper dispute I have with Merrell is that he defends the
argument that mathematics is invented. not discovered, by saying,
"In sum, from this perspective mathematics is invention rather than
discovery, a human institution rather than an eternal playground
for the gods. Right and wrong mathematical behavior lies in the
game, for mathematics is normative. Consequently, number systems
need not be decimal, as is our Western system. To cite only two
examples rom among many, the ancient Mayas used a system to the
base five, for reasons unknown. And within a fictive context, the
inhabitants of the planet Tlon used a duodecimal system...."
Merrell seems to confuse the way we express mathematics with the
mathematics itself. He could as easily claim that the different
shapes of the ten digits used in Egypt makes their mathematics
different from ours.
"We are to suppose not only that each page of the book after page
one is followed by an immediately preceding page, but also (and
this is not unimportant) that each page is separated from others by
a finite number of pages." This makes no sense, given the rest of
the description, even in a chapter about paradoxes, unless what he
meant to say was "an immediately succeeding page."
Merrell asks, "How can consciousness be one an at the same time
many?" The obvious answer is the same way God can be one and at
the same time three. (I will mention my engineering analogy to the
three-in-one paradox: an engineering drawing of a toothpaste tube
from the standard three perspectives would show a circle, a
rectangle, and a triangle respectively--yet it is a single item.)
"Funes is capable of seeing only particulars. ... The problem was
that his memory became a garbage heap. It contained an infinite
number of individuals, but he was incapable of "ideas of a general,
Platonic sort. ... Although our imaginary Funes escaped the human
penchant for hypothetical abstractions, we obviously cannot."
Except that is apparently what some people with autism do, at least
according to Temple Grandin, and she should know.
"In fact, science fiction writers are now borrowing ideas from
physicists, rather than, as has been conceived in the past, science
'catching up' with H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, and others."
Merrell is apparently unaware that science fiction has been
borrowing ideas from physicists since the very beginning. There
are really two sorts of science fiction in this context:
technological fiction and theoretical fiction. The former is full
of submarines, short-range spaceships, invisibility sera, and so
on. The latter is full of wormholes, faster-than-light travel
(through some new discovery), use of the wave/particle
complementarity, and so on. My first guess as to why the
transition from technology to theory is that the 19th century was a
technological century--the Industrial Revolution and all--while the
big changes in theoretical physics did not start until late in the
19th century and into the 20th century. So Wells and Verne were
based on technology, and Hugo Gernsback kept pushing science
fiction as based on at least seemingly practical science. After
the atom bomb, everyone--writers included--started noticing
theoretical physics, at least to the level of E=mc^2.
"La indagación es fácil: basta multiplicar 1x2x3x4x5x6x7x8x9x10,
prolija operación que nos da la cifra de 3.628.800."
I would give as a fairly literal translation: "The determination is
easy: it is enough to multiply 1x2x3x4x5x6x7x8x9x10, a long
operation that gives us the number of 3,628,800." (Note that in
Spanish numbers, the use of the period and the comma are reversed.)
Merrell writes, "The investigation is easy: it is sufficient to
multiply 1x2x3x4x5x6x7x8x9x10, a tedious operation that gives us
the sum of 3,628,800."
Whether it is tedious or not is a matter of opinion; however, the
result is not a *sum*, it's a product, and "cifra" is "number".
Given that everywhere else the name is correct, I will assume that
referring to "H. G. Well's 'The Crystal Egg'" is just bad
proofreading.
"The fact that particles display wave properties gave evidence that
they represented some kind of statistical effect, a discovery which
soon led to the unending of causality and predictability. No more
could be known but that a given electron had a certain probability
of being at a certain place at a certain instant." Unless I
completely misunderstand what Merrell is trying to say, he means
"ending of causality and predictability", not "unending".
Merrell explains why the 50-50 chance of nuclear decay is not
really similar to a coin flip. I understand that he is saying that
with enough data on force, position, temperature, etc., we could
predict the coin flip (though I'm not sure chaos theory would
agree).
But I totally disagree with his statement, "... the coin, while
flip-flopping, entails two alternative worlds, but in the quantum
realm the two worlds are no more than a potential. We cannot speak
of the existence of either until one of the two has been
actualized, i.e., until it has been, so to speak, 'observed,'
interacted on by another entity.'" For the life of me, I cannot
see how the two alternate worlds of the coin are any more real than
those of the nucleus.
And while we're at it, the whole Schroedinger's cat thought
experiment has problems. For example, isn't the cat intelligent
enough to observe whether it is alive or dead, so the wave form
collapses immediately? There is no "waiting period" before the
external human observer opens the box. For that matter, what
changes if the human observer is in the box? Unlikely, but we can
postulate a quantum "trial by ordeal" situation, where chance/God
decides whether the accused is guilty and should be executed, or
innocent and should not be. (Sounds like a great SF idea!) [-ecl]
THE MARTIAN WAR
by Gabriel Mesta:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/17/2006]
THE MARTIAN WAR by Gabriel Mesta (ISBN 0-7434-639-9) is an
expansion of "Scientific Romance" and "Canals in the Sand" by
Kevin J. Anderson (who for some reason has adopted the penname
"Gabriel Mesta" for this book). This is actually two
inter-leaved stories, each of which could have stood on its own (though
since the two together are only 256 pages, each would have been a
bit skimpy). One story has Percival Lowell and Dr. Moreau
providing a signal in the Sahara to bring a Martian spaceship
there, and their subsequent adventures with the invaders. The
other has H. G. Wells, T. H. Huxley, and almost all the remaining
characters from the books of the real H. G. Wells traveling to
the moon and then to Mars to battle the Martians. In addition to
all these characters, Mesta re-uses themes and phrases, making
the book as much a game of "spot that reference" as a story in
itself. On the whole, this is a fairly lightweight entry in the
field of pastiches of Wells. (Though not labeled as such, I
suspect this is intended as a "young adult" novel.)
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/13/2018]
THE MARTIAN WAR by Gabriel Mesta (ISBN 978-0-7434-4639-9) is an
attempt to treat H. G. Wells's classic novel THE WAR OF THE WORLDS
as a cautionary tale inspired by events unknown to the general
populace but of which Wells was aware. Unfortunately, Mesta (a
pseudonym for Kevin J. Anderson) felt obliged to bring in many of
Wells's other characters and ideas: Cavor, Griffin, Moreau, the
crystal egg, Herakleophorbia, and so on. This is even less
convincing that Isaac Asimov's attempt late in his career to retro-fit
all his major works into a single "future history". The "fun"
of being able to "spot the reference" is more than overcome by the
annoyance of having everyone and everything shoe-horned in.
As far as the story itself, it has its flaws. Wells was vague
about how long it took Cavor's capsule to get to the moon. He does
say that the occupants felt no hunger (no explanation given), but
surely their oxygen supply would have been a limiting factor.
Mesta has the capsule not only travel to the moon, but to Mars and
solely by manipulating the gravitational forces. Naturally, there
is someone who has calculated how long it would take a capsule that
size to fall to Mars if there were no other gravitational forces:
7.8 years if you started at the point where Earth (would have been)
farthest from Mars, or 1.7 years at the closest point.
BRYNHFRYD
PONTFADOG
WREXHAM
DENBIGHSHIRE
This is not a cable code. It is a Welsh address recognized
by the Royal Automobile Club and the post office...."
[Let] us suppose that the minister in beginning his
sermon should say, "I want to consider with you some
ideas of Jesus as they are recorded in the preamble
of the Declaration of Independence," would you be
shocked? You might be shocked to hear it from a
pulpit, but would you be shocked at the statement
itself? Almost all the other worshippers would.
Would you? Would it not at present be generally
regarded as sacrilegious to suggest that Jesus and
Jefferson had worked at the same task?
"Strangely enough the right to work was not among
the basic natural rights listed by Thomas Jefferson
in the great declaration which gave birth to the
Nation; only the rights to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. But the right to the pursuit
of happiness is merely theoretical and meaningless
unless one has the right to the things which
produce happiness; the right to liberty is
theoretical and meaningless unless one is in a
position to exercise it; the right even to life
itself is theoretical and meaningless unless one
has a right to secure the means necessary to support
it. The right to work, to earn a living, to earn
enough to support a family in decency, is a prior
antecedent right, without which no other rights have
value."
Christ,
What a crew!
Take a look at Madeline True;
Her eyes slanted. Her eyes were green;
Heavy-lidded; pouched: obscene.
Eyes like a snake's;
Like a stagnant pool filled with slime.
Her mouth was cruel;
A scar
In red,
That recently had opened and bled.
Go to Evelyn Leeper's home page.