Speculative Living

"Dying Inside" by Robert Silverberg

2010-10-01T09:00:00.067+02:00

Yet again I'm surprised and pleased by the SF Masterworks series, most recently for introducing me to Robert Silverberg's "Dying Inside".

"Dying Inside" sits somewhere between Kafka's "Metamorphosis" (in which a man awakes to find himself transformed into a bug) and "The Fermata" by Nicholson Baker (in which a man has the ability to stop time at will). David Selig, the main character of "Dying Inside" is a mind-reader. Unlike the main character of "The Fermata", he cannot bring himself to take advantage of his gift to gain an advantage (by reading stock tips, for example). Instead, in spite of his gift, David Selig struggles through life, vainly searching for some real connection and identification with the rest of humanity.

We meet him as his powers are waning, as the ability that defines him slips away and leaves him floundering. Even at the height of his power he has not found a connection to the people whose minds he can read, or to another telepath he encounters, or to the rare girl he finds whose mind he cannot read. As his powers fade, he becomes more hopeless until at last something has to give.

There's something to the phrase "mind reading". The beauty of this book is that as reader's to David Selig's narrator, we are privileged to explore his mind, to have his secrets opened to us and try to understand him. The novel makes us perfect receivers, just as Selig is, but we are powerless to transmit back, just as he is. Without his power, he struggles just as we all must to make a connection with others, and his drama is our drama. This is a great book, and highly recommended.

Silverberg's "Downward to the Earth" and "Book of Skulls" are also on the SF Masterworks list, I look forward to reading those very soon.

"Pavane" by Keith Roberts

2010-09-24T09:00:00.010+02:00

Yet again, the "SF Masterworks" series has delivered another amazing and unexpected book to my reading list. This week's entry is "Pavane" by Keith Roberts, an alternate history of England (in the same sense that

"Bring the Jubilee" by Ward Moore was an alternate history of the US).

Although England has quite a few turning points to choose from in its history, Roberts starts with the death of Queen Elizabeth by an assassin's bullet, and the conquest of a divided England by the Spanish Armada. From this single point of divergence and its immediate consequences, Roberts brings us forward to the year 1968. In this history, the Protestant Reformation never occurred, and the Church is a second Roman Empire. England and America are both provinces of the Church.

Although electricity, combustion engines, and other relatively modern inventions are known, their use is regulated by the Church as a means of preserving order and limiting opposition. Instead of radio or telegraph, giant towers use mechanical arms to signal in semaphore over vast distances, where scouts watching through binoculars record and relay messages that must travel beyond the line of sight. Metal and fuel are carefully regulated as well, so that freight is hauled by short trains of steam-powered cars that run on dirt paths rather than rails. This is steampunk without the romanticism, a second dark age where the Inquisition still has free reign. Into this difficult time come amazing characters, who fight against and sometimes transcend the limitations of their time.

"Pavane" was assembled from a series of six short stories set in the same universe. Two of the stories are standalone vignettes describing some aspect of this altered world. Four of the stories make a longer arc that takes us through three generations and (finally) beyond the long reign of the Church. Each story is compelling and breathes life into Roberts' England . The end of the arc is elegant, fitting, and true.

A final section ("Coda") accompanies the books, and here Roberts implies that the Church is aware of our world and has limited man's progress to avoid the horrors of World War II and the atomic age. I was recently thinking a lot about the role of a "modern man" in most time-travel novels. It simplifies the narrative, and makes it easier to comprehend. When working in the short form (television, movies), I can understand the necessity of simplifying a narrative in this way. In novels, it gives the author a means of steering the reader's understanding, of inserting an interpretation of the larger meaning of the novel. For whatever reason Roberts chose to use the device, it bothered me.

There is a similar moment in "Man in the High Castle" by Philip K .Dick, an alternate history in which the Allies lost World War II. In "Man in the High Castle", there is an author whose infamous and contraband book "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy" describes our own world.

In a key conversation, the author reveals that the novel was written entirely relying on the I-Ching to construct the narrative, and admits that he believes the world he describes (our world) to be the real one. These are characters attempting to peer beyond the edge of the page, looking at the audience, and it succeeds because they don't hold or force the moment. I'm almost glad Dick never finished the proposed sequel in which characters from the alternate present attempt to break into our world. It's better to leave a bit of mystery and room to imagine.

I disagree with Roberts' assessment of his England as an improvement, but more importantly, I think it undermines the strength of the book as a whole to spell things out in such detail, even if we're only ultimately talking about two paragraphs in a larger work. Maybe it's just me, I didn't want to know that "The Force" is actually produced by "Midichlorians", either.

"Coda" aside, this is a great book, and the larger arc is a fine one. I would highly recommend that anyone read this book and make up their own mind about the rest.

"Pygmy" by Chuck Pahlaniuk

2010-09-17T09:00:00.000+02:00

If you were to try to recreate American culture based on the works of Chuck Pahlaniuk, you would get quite an odd picture.

His characters are individuals, defined by their history, but straining against their limits. The subservient missionary in "Survivor" has been trained all his life to serve, to please people, to do a good job. He's so eager to please people that he mimics a different disorder out of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders each week to give his case worker something to diagnose. He's so wholesome that he erases his own wholesomeness to please others. The main character of "Diary" is a prisoner of her own history, which has been recorded before she experiences it.

His characters are invariably on their way to find infamy in the crazed world they inhabit, even though that's rarely their goal. In "Rant", characters try to gain literal immortality by creating such a big disaster that they are pushed outside of time. In "Choke", a sex addict attends meetings to hook up with other addicts and get their best ideas. In "Invisible Monsters", a woman unties the knot that holds her life together (her beauty) and embraces the chaos that follows as she travels around the country with people whose lives are similarly unraveling.

His characters spend their lives tiptoeing around their (and other people's) secrets, only to crash through them all at once. The famed ending of "Fight Club" is only one example. The main character in "Lullaby" is running from the tragic death of his family (for which he was unwittingly to blame). The main characters in "Haunted" are each prisoners of their secrets, which are exposed to the reader one by one, leaving us witnesses to their hidden shame and denial.

His latest book, "Pygmy", is all of these things and more. "Pygmy" follows the eponymous agent of an unspecified dictatorship (or communist regime) that has trained its best and brightest to infiltrate, undermine, and destroy America. Each of these are planted in a host family through an exchange student program. You don't have to be a spy to detect your (host) family's secrets, but it helps.

Pygmy's inner monologue reveals nothing but contempt (and humor) as each fresh part of America's underbelly is exposed to him. He is a trained killer pulling his punches during the mock battles of spelling bees and dodge ball. He sees all of us as worthy of punishment, and seeks to live a life infamous enough to merit the punishment "the deity" has already meted out for him. He gains infamy, but not necessarily in the way he seeks, and not without encountering the usual assortment of oddly human characters (and caricatures) found in most Pahlaniuk novels.

Pygmy is a good example of Pahlaniuk's work and if you can get into the flow of the affected broken English Pygmy uses (which took me a while), it's an enjoyable and darkly humorous book.

"Timescape" by Gregory Benford

2010-09-10T09:00:00.000+02:00

I'm nearing the home stretch with the SF Masterworks series, and it's still full of surprising and great books. The latest example is "Timescape" by Gregory Benford.

Time travel is a well-explored concept to say the least in Science Fiction. From "The Time Machine" to "The Terminator" to "Futurama", SF fans have read and watched as wave after wave of time travelers travel through time, creating ripples of paradox in their wake. In most works, the time traveler is exempted from paradoxes, and can witness the effects of the changes they make in the full knowledge of how the new world compares to the world they left behind. To name just a few examples:

In Ray Bradbury's "Sound of Thunder", a time traveler steps on a butterfly in prehistory and returns to an altered (and diminished) present.
In the "Back to the Future" series, numerous characters change the present by altering the past. The main character fades into a ghostly half-existence when he threatens to undo his parents' marriage.
In the "Yesterday's Enterprise" episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation", a ship is sent forward in time and (as a result of its absence at a key point in history) encounters an altered future.
In Orson Scott Card's "Pastwatch", travelers from the future make changes in the time of Columbus to ensure that European and American cultures meet as equals.

Traveling physically through time gives us a narrator who experiences another time with the same sense of wonder and otherness that we (the reader or viewer) do. It gives the author a natural means of describing the world in terms of specific differences from our own world. For the same reason, having the time traveler remain unaffected by the changes gives us someone to identify with and learn from as we try to make sense of the altered world. If the world is worse (as it often is), there's one character who can work to undo the changes and set things right.

Another good example is the relativistic time traveler, a person from our time who travels close to the speed of light and reaches their destination hundreds or thousands of years in the future. In works like "Planet of the Apes", these characters help bring drama to the story. "Planet of the Apes" would have been a very different work if there were no astronauts from our time involved in the story. We might simply see a cross-section of ape society from the point of view of a chimpanzee archeologist who discovered the ruins of the Statue of Liberty. In the right hands, it could still be dramatic, but it would be a slower-paced and more challenging kind of drama than following Charlton Heston as he bellows, outraged, through the world of the apes.

These two pillars of time travel works are incredibly common and (on the whole) enjoyable, but after so many variations on a similar theme, it's refreshing to encounter a book like "Timescape" that has something new to offer. The first key difference in "Timescape" is that no one ever actually travels in time. Only information (in the form of tachyon beams) is sent into the past. The right information can change the future, and that's all that's needed to explore the idea of paradox in more detail.

This brings us to the second key difference in "Timescape", which is the way in which paradoxes are handled. Benford's treatment is elegant and surprising, and evolves naturally as the characters involved (many of whom are research scientists) become aware of the possibilities. I'll avoid going into further detail to avoid spoiling anything for anyone who hasn't read the book.

Beyond those two variations, "Timescape" is a solid novel with good characters and story. We follow two sets of main characters, one in a near future in which environmental ruin looms, one in a near past in which a young junior professor struggles to avoid becoming marginalized as he discovers a message from the future hidden in the background noise in one of his experiments. Both time periods are well-rendered and the characters are memorable, even if in some cases they aren't particularly likeable.

This is a great novel with solid ideas and strong characters, and well worth a read.

"VOR" by James Blish

2010-09-03T09:00:00.062+02:00

I read my first James Blish novels working my way through the Sci-Fi Masterworks series, and it's been a pleasure to wander off the path and track down his other works. I found a few piles of Blish novels on my recent trip to San Francisco, and the last of these is "VOR", a short novel about a spaceship that crash lands on earth and its lone inhabitant, the first alien encountered by human beings.

On balance, this feels like a lesser work for Blish. There's nothing to surprise or stretch the imagination, none of the inventiveness, the philosophy, the scope of his more famous works. Except for the alien, the central character's main arc seems close to "Zero Hour" (the film on which "Airplane" was based, which was released the year before "VOR"), but without the tension or (laughable) melodrama. The ending seems like the sort of pat single twist you'd expect from a classic Trek episode. When it was released, I'd like to think it was better written than most pulp, and held its own with the films and novels of its day. It's not timeless, though, and unless you're a big Blish fan, you'll probably be a bit underwhelmed.

If you want something a bit more accessible, try "Spock Must Die" if you're a Trekker, "Dr. Mirabilis" if you're a history buff, and "Cities in Flight" if you haven't tried Blish before).

"House of Suns" by Alastair Reynolds

2010-08-27T17:38:00.061+02:00

During my recent journey around the world, I caught up on a lot of reading. I don't usually think of myself as a fan of space opera. I think of it as something I'm not often in the mood to enjoy. Looking back, it seems like I've been in the mood often enough, as I made my way through the works of Ken Macleod ("The Star Fraction", The "Engines of Light" trilogy and others not reviewed here) and Iain M. Banks ("Player of Games", "Use of Weapons", "Against a Dark Background", "Excession", "Consider Phlebas", "Look to Windward", "Inversions, "Feersum Endjinn", "The Algebraist" and "Matter").

I had skimmed portions of Alastair Reynolds' work in bookstores in the past, but was never hooked until I finally took the chance and bought "House of Suns". I wasn't disappointed.

"House of Suns" tells the story of "the lines", families of a thousand clones of the same individual, who began life with a shared set of memories, and who set out to explore the galaxy. They reunite every hundred thousand years or so to exchange their memories over the course of a thousand nights. The telling takes three years and (owing to relativistic effects and the distances they must cover), it takes ten to twenty years for everyone to assemble. That the equivalent of a family reunion takes ten or more years is a sign of how long members of the line live and the time scale they operate in. These are explorers who plot wide arcs in both space and time.

Into this already interesting base Reynolds throws familiar but well-handled material such as forgotten civilizations, machine intelligences, conspiracy, treason, and murder. To dwell on any of it in great detail would be a disservice. Suffice to say it's an enjoyable mix of hard Sci-fi and drama and a fairly short read (as space operas go). I found it a good introduction to Reynolds' work and worth checking out.

"Roadside Picnic" by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

2010-08-20T09:00:00.088+02:00

I had never read any Science Fiction coming out of the former Soviet Union until I finally sat down and read "Roadside Picnic", one of the few remaining books in the Sci-Fi Masterworks series.

The Strugatsky brothers describe a world scarred by alien visitation. The central metaphor is of a roadside picnic viewed by the ants, for whom each piece of trash left behind is an artifact of a god-like intelligence. The unseen aliens are the picnickers, and we are the ants. The picnickers left behind scarred, altered places, littered with strange artifacts and dangers. The artifacts bring new discoveries, new technologies, new money to those daring enough to find, study and exploit them. Enter the "stalkers", fortune hunters who brave strange death to retrieve alien artifacts and sell them to those who would study them.

What makes this book great is that the dynamic it describes is only marginally related to alien technology or even science. "Roadside Picnic" is really a study of how money is exchanged for life. Some sell their lives as a hopeful gesture, thinking that their sacrifice will mean greater things for themselves and their family. Some sell their lives for drink, and smoke, and women, and then risk it all for another day of the same. All are making the same choices that people have made for millenia, and are recognizably human and full of life, love, and fear. Put another way, it's a study of the potential of capitalism, and the terrible costs.

As with many translated works, the language, expressions, and meter are a bit strained at times, but it rarely detracts from the book. It's a great book, a quick read, and well worth the time.

Three Tales of Immortality: "Welcome, Chaos" by Kate Wilhelm, "Time Enough for Love" by Robert Heinlein, and "The Passage" by Justin Cronin

2010-08-13T09:00:00.165+02:00

When I started grazing through the Sci-Fi Masterworks series a few years ago, I had never heard of Kate Wilhelm. Her "Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang" was a wonderful discovery, a meditation on the changes cloning might have on the nature of individuality. Wilhelm's "Let the Fire Fall" reminded me of Robert Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land", with its mix of superhuman potential, power politics, and religion, and recently I happened to read two books on similar topics by Wilhelm and Heinlein within a few weeks of one another. I had planned to compare their takes on immortality, but while mulling things over I read Justin Cronin's "The Passage" (one of this summer's hot reads), and it just made sense to write about them all in one sitting.

Justin Cronin's "The Passage" follows the outbreak of a virus which both prolongs human life and turns humans into unthinking monsters. These "virals" are destroyers of life, and despised and feared by the few remaining humans, who struggle to enjoy what little time they have on Earth amidst the horror of their world. We follow one of the last colonies as attrition slowly grinds it away, and a handful of adventurers who look for a last bit of hope in a long trip across the shattered remains of America. Their story provides the same mix of ordinary people and extraordinary times, natural and supernatural that made Stephen King's "The Stand" such a great book to read many years ago.

In an interview with Trisha Page over at BookPing, Cronin likens immortality to "steal[ing] the future from our children", and this philosophy is borne out by the book. He finds the desire for immortality misguided, the costs too high, and thus his take on immortality is bleak, a nightmare world.

"Welcome, Chaos" tracks the accidental development of an indefinite life-prolonging treatment during the Second World War, and its threatened exposure to the public in the midst of the cold war. The immortals Wilhelm depicts are also resistant to disease and radiation, and so become a kind of nuclear deterrent that could prompt each side to start a war before the other can protect their people.

In addition to the struggles of world powers to control and use longevity as a political tool and a weapon, Wilhelm focuses on the effects of longevity on personal identity. Wilhelm's immortals are full of life and energy, but are also less hurried, more willing to simply enjoy each day and work towards even the most important goals on a longer scale. They have the time to get to know and love each other along the way. Wilhelm's take on immortality is cautious, but hopeful. Immortality has the potential to destroy humanity, but also the potential to free humanity from death and old age, to let people enjoy life for as long as they care to.

"Time Enough for Love" takes this second idea to its extreme. It's a lusty tale that follows Lazarus Long, who, through a combination of breeding for longevity and artificial rejuvenation techniques, becomes the longest lived human. Immortality is the secret province of a select few families, who live the equivalent of dozens or even hundreds of normal human lifespans. These immortals are living during a pioneer period, in which humanity is peopling the stars.

Heinlein's is the most positive take on immortality by far. Human society is expanding to other worlds, so even if everyone were immortal, there would be no overcrowding, no lack of resources, no exploitation of the younger generations. No matter how long Heinlein's immortals live or how far they go, time is longer and space farther still. The immortals are still constrained, just on a much larger scale. Heinlein's immortals keep going as long as they can still live in the moment, as long as they can find ideas, challenges, friends and family to keep them engaged and, almost literally, alive.

All three are great books for different reasons and highly recommended.

"Camouflage" by Joe Haldeman

2010-08-06T09:00:00.012+02:00

I just finished "Camouflage", another quick and fun read from Joe Haldeman, author of "Forever War", "Accidental Time Machine" and "Marsbound". Joe Haldeman fills his book with thinking characters, outsiders who succeed because they take leaps of faith, outwit or just outluck the problems they encounter. His characters are self-aware, but not navel-gazers by any means. They are pragmatists, survivors, but also tend to have a sense of humor gained through hard experience in the absurdities and harshness of life.

The main characters in "Camouflage" are immortal aliens with the ability to mimic humans. Think of it as "Highlander", but with much less romanticism and simplicity, and a lot more alienness. They may pretend to be human, but they are much more than long-lived humans. They can change identities, changing their apparent age, sex, race not quite as easily as we change clothes, but easily enough that they can move from life to life, career to career as they live through our history.

For most of the book we follow the more naive of the two aliens, the changeling, who has emulated a shark and other sea creatures for millions of years, and one day emulates the sailors it has seen and wanders ashore. Thus begins its journey from being only slightly more than animal to being more than human. Although life is nasty and brutish at times for the changeling, it's not short, and this makes all the difference. "Camouflage" is one of three books I read during my trip that deal with the challenges and advantages of a very long life. Stay tuned for a double-bill comparing "Welcome, Chaos" by Kate Wilhelm and "Time Enough for Love" by Robert Heinlein.

As with "Accidental Time Traveler" and "Marsbound", this is a short book, a fun read, and highly recommended.

"Midsummer Century" by James Blish

2010-07-30T09:00:00.002+02:00

"Midsummer Century" is the last of the small treasure trove of James Blish novels found in several used book stores in San Francisco during my recent "journey to the west".

When I first started reading Blish (with "Cities in Flight"), I thought of him as a long-format author. Now I realize that he actually writes in fairly short form, and that it took four of his novels to add up to a compilation as long as single books like "Mockingbird" by Walter Tevis or "Grass" by Sheri S. Tepper (review coming soon on that one).

"Midsummer Century" is another of these short novels. It's scarcely half an inch thick, and it flew by almost before I picked it up and started reading. With a novel this short, it's hard to even give an approximation without spoiling things. I'll stick to what's on the dust jacket.

Suffice to say this is another in the long tradition of Science Fiction novels that send a modern man into the future ("Accidental Time Machine" by Joe Haldeman, "Farnham's Freehold" by Robert Heinlein and "Word Out of Time" by Larry Niven are good examples). This variation on a common theme is uniquely Blish.

The main character journeys not in body, but in mind. His struggles in the new world are largely psychic rather than physical. The ultimate empowering of the hero comes from visualizing the nature of consciousness and enlightenment. This visualization is described in loving detail, I think I spent longer trying to sketch that out than reading the rest of the book.

This is a very short novel, a popcorn kernel with a bit of philosophy inside. It's not the absolute best of Blish, but it's an incredibly quick read and still well recommended.

"Mockingbird" by Walter Tevis

2010-07-23T09:00:00.000+02:00

I dropped by Galaxy Books in Sydney on my recent trip around the world, and I was pleased to find a few of the last remaining gems from the Gollancz SF Masterworks series. Chief among them is "Mockingbird" by Walter Tevis. "Mockingbird" is a remarkable novel about the loss and rediscovery of literacy, science, culture and simple human curiosity.

We take a lot of things for granted in a modern society. Very few of us understand how the things we use daily actually work beyond our own limited areas of expertise. "Mockingbird" looks forward to a time where almost no one understands anything about the machines that keep life moving. Has the machine that makes clothes forgotten how to make zippers? Live without them. Are the antidepressants dispensed to you every day slowly killing humanity? Oh well, at least they keep everyone quiet. This is definitely a world that's ending with a whimper rather than a bang.

Schools have been stripped down to teach the social norms of the day and almost nothing else. Teaching is conducted by simple robots and via video recordings. Everything has been decided and planned for them by the ruling class of robots, including how much they can develop as individuals and how they are allowed to relate to others. They are never taught anything more than they would need to become another harmless, emotionless, ignorant, unquestioning, superfluous cog. To quote the female lead: "they have to deactivate machines to find things to pay us to do". Innovation, creativity, introspection, and even reading itself are almost extinct. People are conditioned not to pay attention to one another, to avoid displaying emotions, and are continuously drugged. This is a bleaker future even than "Brave New World", in which at least people had their pick of diversions and pursued their shallow lives with gusto.

The story follows two humans and a clone with a synthetic brain who is the last and best of the ruling class of robots manufactured to keep things running. These three are the only individuals with their eyes open, who notice and question the routine existence everyone else accepts. The tension and drama in the book is whether these people can preserve their own bubble of awareness, to teach themselves to fight back the decay and disrepair that surrounds them even as they rediscover basic concepts like intimacy and friendship.

This is a great book, and highly recommended.

"Anywhen" by James Blish

2010-07-18T06:11:00.000+02:00

I was very fortunate on my recent trip through San Fransisco to stumble on a treasure trove of books by James Blish, whose "Cities in Flight" and "After Such Knowledge" series I heartily enjoyed. Over the next few months, I'll be reviewing the books I found in between a few of the remaining books from the SF Masterworks series.

What I love about Blish is that his characters are driven by their morals and philosophies. The critical turning point in his stories is far more likely to be a change of heart or key realization than a deus ex machina or twist of fate. His stories are a stage on which principles and ideas are given life and pitted against one another.

In "Anywhen", Blish wrestles with grand ideas such as attitudes towards death ("A Dusk of Idols"), whether deception in service of truth is permissable and sustainable ("A Style in Treason"), and how our expansionist nature might be tested when humanity finds its way to the stars ("Writing of the Rat" and "Some Were Savages").

I've been thinking a lot about Blish in comparison with Olaf Stapledon. Stapledon's focus in "Last and First Men" and "Star Maker" is so broad that there is barely room for recognizable human drama. Blish, on the other hand, is more successful in presenting the higher concerns of individuals in the context of their daily lives. The main character of his most famous series ("Cities in Flight") John Amalfi reminds me of Gino Molinari from Philip K. Dick's "Now Wait for Last Year" (one of my favorite books). Both are the types of great (but conflicted) men that see humanity through times of testing. They make hard choices, and although they bend their morals, ultimately they hold themselves to the ideals of their conscience.

"Anywhen" is short, but enjoyable, in that it gives us vignettes of a few of these principled characters, and makes us care about their choices and principles. Highly recommended. Stay tuned for a review of "VOR", also by Blish.

Journey to the West, Part 6: Amsterdam

2010-07-05T06:50:00.001+02:00

My journey to the west ended where it started, back home in Amsterdam. We've lived here for a year and a half, and this is the longest I've been away in that time. There's a phrase written on the underside of a bridge near Central Station:

"Terugkomen is niet hetzelfde als blijven"

I've always translated that as "coming back is not the same as staying put". I'm not sure if it has a double meaning in Dutch, but I feel it can either mean that the journey is worth it even if you end up in the same place, or that being home is something to look forward to as much as travel.

Even though I've had a great time getting to know my colleagues around the world (and seeing a few old friends along the way), I'm glad to be back in Amsterdam. It's a great place to live even when the weather is bad (and it often is), and I returned to find that summer had finally arrived, the weather was only a few degrees cooler than KL. It was literally a warm welcome, and perfect weather to walk off a bit of jetlag between fits of napping.

On the way home, I found myself with a little time to spare just as the Brazil-Netherlands World Cup match began. I watched as long as I could (and probably a little longer), and then ran for my flight. The Netherlands was still a goal behind when I boarded, I didn't get to find out until the next day that they'd managed to come from behind to win the game. I'm not much of a soccer fan, but I think it's time to learn. I look forward to watching the next game in Amsterdam, surrounded by teammates, friends who aren't also teammates and thousands of excited Netherlanders.

Of course, there are always things to look forward to here, which is one of the reasons it suits us so well.

Journey to the West, Part 5: Kuala Lumpur

2010-07-05T06:24:00.001+02:00

The last stop in my world tour was Kuala Lumpur, where I spent a week with my colleagues at Customware. They work European working hours, so it was a college student's dream job: roll into work at 3, leave at midnight. The team is a diverse bunch of smart, enthusiastic, and energetic people, and they went out of their way to be great hosts as well. We usually ate dinner together, and we managed a few lunches and (after midnight) suppers as well. It's hard to cover how amazing the food is in Malaysia, but among other things, while I was there I enjoyed:

Nasi Lemak, the national dish of Malaysia.
Roti Canai, a local interpretation of Indian flat bread
Otak Otak, a seasoned fish mousse steamed in banana leaves
Rojak, a sweet salad of fruit and vegetables in a thick brown sauce
Assam and Curry Laksa, two noodle soups that are justly famous around the world.
fresh Popia, tasty uncooked spring rolls filled with vegetables, a light brown sauce, and crunchy treats like peanuts.
fresh Guava with a little bit of sweet and sour seasoning

The KL team are really active on Facebook, here's a good starting point to see what we were up to during my trip:

It was a great visit, long enough to get to know everyone a little, but short enough to make me want to come back and visit again.

Journey to the West, Part 4: Singapore

2010-07-04T23:20:00.001+02:00

In transit from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur, I stopped off to see some old friends in Singapore. It was a short trip, but great. I hadn't seen them in about four years, and it was great to catch up. We did a bit of touring, a lot of shopping, and had some of the best food I've ever had. Fresh Durian, Lamb Satay, Bo bo cha cha and Ais Kacang were among the highlights.

Here are some photos from the trip:

Journey to the West, Part 3: Sydney

2010-07-04T22:55:00.004+02:00

My journey around the world continued in Sydney, where the home office for Atlassian is located. This was my first trip to the mothership, and it was a blast. I got to meet a lot of amazing people, put faces to names, and have a lot of face to face conversations that would ordinarily take place over blogs and email.

Although I worked most of the time I was there, I was lucky enough to take a little time to check out the Sydney Biennale and a great exhibit at the White Rabbit Gallery. My favorite pieces were the video installation at the Biennale in which a couple walk naked through a waterfall, and the installation at White Rabbit in which a van was reskinned with a carefully painted canvas, and hooked up to a pump so that it appeared to breathe in and out.

I also enjoyed visiting Manly Beach, where I read Walter Tevis' "Mockingbird" from cover to cover (review coming soon). I mistakenly referred to Manly Beach as "Manly Island" when purchasing my ferry ticket, and the ticket vendor corrected me. After a few seconds, I thought it over and said "I guess no Manly is an island". The ticket vendor thought it over for a second, and then made a little eye movement as the pun sank in.

Before, during, and after work I managed to have some great meals in Sydney. The highlights were the Vegemite and toast at the coffee shop just south of the office, the Laksa on Hunter Street, the pies at Central Baking Depot, the pulled pork sandwich at Four Ate Five, the Pho at the place under Wyndham Station and the Roti Canai at Mamak.

Here are a few photos from the trip:

Here's a video of the ferry trip to Manly Beach:

Journey to the West, Part 2: San Francisco, California

2010-06-20T15:32:00.000+02:00

The next stop on my world tour was San Fransisco, where I spent a week with my colleagues at Atlassian. Most of them were feverishly getting ready for our annual Summit, but there were still plenty of opportunities to put faces to names and get to know the extended family of Atlassians and ex-Atlassians. There's a love, excitement, and drive common to so many Atlassians that at times it seems less like a job than a life philosophy. It was a blast to meet so many of them at a go, and I gather I'm in for an even bigger dose in Sydney.

In addition to meeting and talking with so many new people, I was fortunate enough to eat some nice sushi, a sausage biscuit (bliss!), and to have three really great burritos and a bit of Mayan food as well.

The last day of my visit, the Atlassian Support team in SF had a picnic in Golden Gate Park. Here are a few photos:

Here's hoping the rest of the trip is as much fun.

Journey to the West, Part 1: Boulder, Colorado

2010-06-20T14:39:00.002+02:00

The first stop in my world tour was a side trip to see my friend Antranig in his new home in Boulder.

The city is lovely and so warm after Amsterdam. We did a fair amount of walking around, which is always welcome after a long flight or three. The Boulder Creek was swollen with snow melt after a recent hot spell, it was both relaxing and exciting to experience the rushing water among the trees. Along the way, I was fortunate enough to stock up on books at the excellent Boulder Book Store on Pearl Street.
Afterwards, we went to the Taiko Summit and heard some exciting drum work.

We had our last meal together at the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse, shown here:

We talked a lot about Qin Shi Huang Di, the first emperor of China. I'd been taught that he unified the Chinese writing system. Fans of the film "Hero" will remember the scene in which a rival school of calligraphy is beseiged by the emperor's army. Thanks to Antranig's Droid and data plan, we discovered that Wikipedia does not share that view of history (although I've since figured out that the Qin Dynasty entry includes something about the topic). It still made for a good conversation, particularly given the backdrop at the Dushan Tea House, the interior of which was crafted in Tajikistan, disassembled, and shipped to the US.

Antranig and I have both studied Mandarin, during my visit he showed me the remarkable Chinese learning site Skritter on his new Lenovo tablet. It's a paid site, but you can see the amount of polish they've put in to justify the $10 monthly fee. You write a word and pick the right pronunciation, and you get feedback immediately. Words are repeated periodically based on how often you remember them correctly. The stroke recognition is amazing. The whole experience of using Skritter is almost enough by itself to make me go out looking for a tablet PC, iPad or the Android equivalent.

It was a great visit, and a good start to the trip.

My Journey to the West...

2010-06-20T14:31:00.004+02:00

For the month of June, I'm traveling around the world on business, hitting the following ports of call:

I'll be posting from each of these places and writing about the absolute flotilla of books I'm reading in transit. Stay tuned!

"Tau Zero" by Poul Anderson

2010-06-18T09:00:00.055+02:00

I was pleased and surprised to encounter a copy of Poul Anderson's "Tau Zero" at the American Book Center when stocking up on books for a recent trip. This is one of a shrinking handful of books I still haven't read in the Gollancz Sci-fi Masterworks series, and I was happy to have found it.

"Tau Zero" is a novel about relativity, about a generation of astronauts who travel close to the speed of light, reaching other worlds in a few years subjective time (the rate at which people on the ship age), but several decades objective time (the rate at which the Earth they leave behind ages). In "Tau Zero", the idea of traveling close to the speed of light is the main character, and it is explored to the fullest, and with the highest respect for the hard science behind the concept. The technology behind their travel is roughly the same kind of ramjet that the main character in "World Out of Time" uses to circle the universe at relativistic speeds and thus outlive the society that imprisons him, but here it's not just a means to roll the clocks forward on Earth and encounter a new world.

The 50 astronauts (and potential colonists) in the ship which is the focus of the story must live together for years before reaching their goal and either founding a colony or deciding to brave the trip back home. Many of them have skills that are more useful when they arrive, and must find ways to occupy themselves. Even those of the crew who are busy with its day-to-day maintenance must find ways to keep their spirits up over the long haul even if the mission goes exactly as planned. Of course the mission does not go as planned, and Reynoud (arguably the main character) must play father to the crew and enforce the basic routines that help keep everyone's sanity as things unravel further and further. I won't spoil the ending except to say that it reminds me of the ending of Cities in Flight in its scope, but is more hopeful and amazing.

I enjoyed the book as a whole. It's hard sci-fi (with real science rather than science as magic) at its best, playing with the best science available at the time to see how it might change the human condition. I also think the drama is handled well enough. The only small thing that bugs me about "Tau Zero" are the characters. As in his "HeeChee" saga, Anderson can't resist the urge to analyze the characters, and adding that to the somewhat stiff way the characters tend to express themselves, the novel on balance feels a bit more firmly an intellectual novel than an emotional one. The same could be said of many science fiction works, and this is definitely one of the better ones. Highly recommended.

"Lisey's Story" by Stephen King

2010-06-11T09:00:00.018+02:00

When I was 12, I read almost everything Stephen King had ever written. His work was (and is) imaginative, but accessible. He spins a web of simple words, drawn from music, movies, books, but always combined in novel ways. His books were filled with memorable (but flawed) protagonists and sinister, sometimes leering villains. They were a quick and enjoyable read, comfort food, but eventually, I moved on to other reading interests (mainly science fiction, graphic novels, and mainstream literature).

Recently, on a visit with my mother, she played part of the audiobook of "Lisey's Story" as we drove around. I enjoyed Mare Winningham's narration, and had a kind of itch to hear the rest of the story. I just finished reading "Lisey's Story" from cover to cover, and wasn't disappointed.

One of my favorite parts in any Stephen King novel is the way he establishes a unique vocabulary. Each character has their own way of speaking, built from their own life experiences. I especially like how words pass between characters in King's writing. Sisters share phrases from their childhood. A husband and wife evolve almost their own private language based on years of using their own pat phrases with each other. When you use the same words, on some level you think the same way. The shared language of husband and wife is really a sign of the depth of their relationship, and the intimacy they share. King also knows how strongly words evoke memories, and Lisey is never more than an uttered (or misheard) phrase away from her past.

I also like King's shifting narratives. Often, his books cover multiple characters, and we alternate between them (as in "The Stand"). In books like "The Dark Tower" and "Talisman" (with King and Peter Straub), the story is divided between two worlds. "Lisey's Story" is split into four worlds. At first, the story stays firmly in Lisey's present as the recent widow of a famous writer. Over time, we jump back and forth between the couple's shared past and the present alternately. Eventually, the story encompasses another fantastic world, one of imagination. As we start to experience this world, the story moves between the present reality, the past reality, and the past fantastic. At the climax of the book, the story shifts so quickly that chapters are often only a paragraph in a single mode before moving on.

"Lisey's Story" is a good book, nuanced and fresh comfort food that's grown up quite a bit. When I stopped reading Stephen King, he was two books into "The Dark Tower" series. After a long hiatus, the series is now a lot further along. I'll have to pick them up soon and continue rediscovering the ever-evolving comfort food that is Stephen King.

"Last and First Men" by Olaf Stapledon

2010-06-03T21:14:00.001+02:00

Olaf Stapledon isn't afraid to work on a big canvas. His "Star Maker" spans the life of our universe and beyond. Rather than searching for power, or money, or fame, or even love, the main character in "Star Maker" roams the universe trying to become aware enough to perceive and interact with a higher power. It's a spiritual book in which the universe is revealed to be both sublimely ordered and painfully uncaring. In this epic and amazing work, the life of humanity is a but a single thread, a few paragraphs in the larger story.

"Last and First Men" is more tightly focused, and follows the development of humanity over the course of some three trillion years. It starts in our own time, and moves forward slowly at first. As is inevitable, Stapledon's ideas about the immediate future date the work, but once modern civilization is safely past, the book hits its stride. Eighteen species of humanity come and go, rising to meet the challenges presented by the universe around them (or succumbing to them). Along the way, Stapledon explores ideas about longevity, higher consciousness, the proper goals of a world society, and imagines that larger patterns of rise and fall (for the world, for the species, for intelligent life in our solar system) might lie far beyond our own history.

The focus of "Last and First Men" is societies, states, civilizations, and species rather than individual lives. It's only toward the end that we learn the history of the narrator and find the full spiritual center of the book. "Star Maker" on the other hand, begins with the life of an individual and his core quest, and draws us in from the beginning. The later book ("Star Maker") seems more mature and complete as a result. I tend to pick lovingly worn second-hand copies of books in used bookstores, which doesn't always lend itself to reading things in the right order. In this case, I read "Star Maker" (the sequel) some months before "Last and First Men". "Last and First Men" holds up well, but if you get the chance, go through them in order, as the ideals of "Last and First Men" are expanded and played out on an even grander stage in "Star Maker".

Both "Star Maker" and "Last and First Men" are highly recommended food for the mind. If you find yourself getting a headache from the ultra-wide focus of both books, you could do a lot worse than Larry Niven's "World Out of Time", in which a single individual encounters the distant future (in two discrete chunks). I'd also recommend "Forever Free", by Joe Haldeman, which pans out toward the end to embrace some of the same scope, but keeps its focus more firmly on the individual.

Yet again I'm indebted to the Sci-fi Masterworks series for broadening my horizons to include Stapledon. Stay tuned for the few remaining installments ("Tau Zero" is coming with me on my next trip).

"Search the Sky" by Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth

2010-04-23T09:00:00.005+02:00

Hot on the heels of reading "The Space Merchants", I devoured "Search the Sky", another collaborative work between Frederick Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth.

There's a long tradition of stories in which a man whose world (and world view) are close to our own travels through a series of (from our perspective) oddly unbalanced worlds. You could pick half of the plots of any of the Star Trek series as examples ("Ryker finds love on a world where everyone is androgynous and heterosexuality is a crime"). These episodic sketches are the bread and butter of science fiction. Take the world, put it a bit out of balance, give it a spin, and watch it crash down. "Gulliver's Travels" is another wonderful example. A man steeped in the ideas of his age has his beliefs tested as he experiences different societies in his journeys.

In "Search the Sky", we follow a space traveler (Ross) who travels from a relatively normal (if stagnant) colony and visits isolated Earth colonies in search of answers to his colony's problems. He jumps from one monocultural frying pan to another, testing ideas about age, gender, and diversity itself. He returns enriched, and vows to share that experience with anyone who'll listen.

Travel tests your limits, shows you different ways of viewing the world and handling even the simplest of questions common to all people ("What's for dinner?" is an example you could spend a lifetime mapping out). This kind of diversity is key to the strength of the human race in "Search the Sky", and I'd like to believe it's the same with life.

This is a fun book, and a quick read. Highly recommended.

"The Space Merchants" by Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth

2010-04-16T09:00:00.076+02:00

I'm continuing to work through the Gollancz SF Masterworks series, I was pleased the other day to finally find a copy of "The Space Merchants" by Frederick Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth, one of the few remaining books in the series to have eluded me thus far.

Although there's a bit of corporate warfare and global overcrowding mixed in as well, this is largely a book about a consumer society grinding towards an end in which free space and raw materials can only be found on other planets (Venus in this case). Fittingly, we experience this material world through an advertising man.

Philip K. Dick wrote a lot about salesmen, both in his science fiction, and in his straight fiction like "In Milton Lumky Territory" and "Mary and the Giant". He focuses on the hopelessness, boredom, powerlessness of junior salesmen at stores, and the isolation of a travelling salesman driving from town to town. These men are a step above serfs in the commercial world. They're the tax collectors who feed money up to their betters and get to hold onto a bit themselves. The focus of "The Space Merchants" is advertising executives, who are much further up the chain. These are the men who craft the campaigns, who travel the world in style in constant contact with a team of people whose job it is to make their whims reality. Like any good royal court, they also fight for power among their peers.

We follow one of the princes of a major advertising firm (Mitchell Courtenay) as he is stripped of his power and forced to live as a wage slave in the world he helped create. Advertising is everywhere, and products are designed to introduce the consumer to a never-ending chain of addiction (finish a cigarette, have a drink, get a snack, have a cigarette, and so on). In his struggle to regain his power, Courtenay stumbles across conspiracies within conspiracies, which reminded me somewhat of the role-playing game Paranoia, in which no one is allowed to join a secret society, and yet everyone does. That's a roundabout way of saying the book has a good ear for satire, which is one of many things that make this an enjoyable read.

I have great hopes for collaborative works like this, as I've enjoyed Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's works (such as "Mote in God's Eye" and "Footfall") in the past. Whether their writing styles are largely compatible, or they review each other's work, or they have a good editor, the net effect is reading a single author with a single voice. I plan to keep following Pohl and Kornbluth's collaborations, I'll be reviewing "Search the Sky" by the same two authors shortly, and "The Merchants War" (the sequel to "The Space Merchants") as soon as I can find it.

"A Leg to Stand On" by Oliver Sacks

2010-04-11T10:50:00.000+02:00

I finally read "A Leg to Stand On" the other day, and have been thinking about it off and on. I enjoy Dr. Sacks' writing, from short case studies like "An Anthropologist on Mars" and "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat", to autobiography like "Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Childhood". He has an easy, engaging mix of science and storytelling that just works, and he has a zeal for his topics that's infectious.

"A Leg to Stand On" is a case study and autobiography in one. It describes Sacks' experience recovering from a serious injury to his leg. In the 1970s (when his injury occurred), it was more common for patients to experience protracted convalescences, and to have their injured limbs completely immobilized in heavy casts. For many patients, this resulted in an alienation for the casted body part, and it's this sense of alienation from a part of oneself that's the focus here. This sense of alienation was not well understood at the time, and generations of patients were unable to convey their experience in a way that brought understanding to their doctors, caregivers, friends and family. Patients were physically injured, their injuries were addressed surgically, and over time they were physically better. The physical wellness was the desired outcome. That they were baffled and terrified during their convalescence was beside the point.

Sacks is an articulate man who is blessed with an eye for detail and a good memory. He emerged from his convalescence with the desire to document it for the outside world (doctors and laymen alike), and his years of experience documenting similar experiences with his patients put him in a unique position to tell the story and explain the science behind it. As with all of his case studies, it's the human experiences that shine through amidst the notes on neuroscience (and its history).

An engaging, insightful, and very human story that's well worth reading.

A Weekend in Brussels

2010-02-08T14:21:00.001+01:00

It was Elaine's birthday on Friday, so we went to Brussels for the weekend. We've been to Belgium before, but never as far south. Almost immediately, I was struck by the shift to French as compared to the Vlaamse-heavy north. It was a perfect chance for Elaine to work on her French and for me to learn to embarass myself less in French, but we could still take advantage of our Dutch as well.

We stayed at the Welcome Hotel, which had a nice atmosphere, a good location, and set the right mood. We stayed in the Silk Road suite (it was her birthday after all), and the jacuzzi was a nice way to relax after walking the soles off our shoes per the usual.

We ate a few notable meals, including frites and mossels (of course). Our favorite meal of the trip had to be at Comocomo, a Tapas restaurant where the dishes come out on a conveyor belt as soon as they're made. It reminded me of Frying Fish in L.A., good variety, good quality, and reasonable prices. They have about 45 dishes on the menu, and we tried 15, I guess we'll have to try again at their Antwerp location.

We spent most of our time at three museums. First, we spent an afternoon at the Koninklijke Musea, wandering through their ancient and modern art collections. My favorites there had to be the statue of Father Damian (it hasn't been retitled since his canonization), Matthieu Kessels sculpture "The Deluge", and Paul Delvaux's "Crucifixion". If you'd like to see more items from the collection, there's a large group of them on Flickr. We also visited the comic strip museum, in a lovely Art Nouveau building, and caught a small but wildly popular Frida Kahlo exhibition at the Musee de Beaux Arts ("Bozart").

We took a few pictures while we were in Brussels, click Elaine's picture below to see the set on Flickr:

"Spock Must Die" by James Blish

2010-02-05T09:00:00.001+01:00

James Blish is a great writer. Each of his books is a carefully considered meal prepared for the reader, complex, but balanced and enjoyable. His "Okie" novels are like a fusion chef's take on cowboy cuisine, full of pioneer spirit, but nuanced. His "Black Easter" is a solid meal which is made memorable by the dessert at the end of "Day of Judgement".

"Spock Must Die" (one of Blish's novels set in the Star Trek universe) reminds me of a gourmet hamburger, unabashed entertainment mixed with style and intelligence. Blish uses only the freshest ingredients (his firm grounding in philophy and science, the moral center of his characters), but he's still aiming for something tasty and accessible to the mainstream.

If you have any interest at all in Star Trek, "Spock Must Die" is a great way to encounter Blish, and if you have any familiarity with Blish, it's nice to see him having a bit of fun with the material. Highly recommended.

"Star Maker" by Olaf Stapledon

2010-01-30T10:22:00.000+01:00

Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

--Dante, "Inferno", Canto I

In many Science Fiction novels, there is a central conceit, a fantastic and key difference, an idea that shapes the world we explore through the printed page. Works like Richard K. Morgan's "Market Forces" and his Takeshi Kovacs Trilogy explore the passions of our present amplified through technology. These are enjoyable works, engaging works, but are the red meat of Science Fiction in all its lusty, escapist glory.

"Star Maker" is a different kind of novel, that presents a central philosophy, a central question, and strives to answer it. The question could be phrased as "What motivates God?" or "What is the nature of the universe that we experience and the creative force that caused it to come into being?".

In "Star Maker", there are no ships, no obelisks, no buried artifacts, no portals to other worlds. It is only awareness that makes the journey possible. The story begins with a man who is deep in thought outside his home on a starry evening. Like a dreamer becoming lucid, he slips in an instant beyond ordinary reality and travels to distant worlds by means he doesn't understand and can't fully control. Over time, we learn that he has become caught up in the search for the Star Maker. He and his eventual companions explore and increase their awareness, which makes it possible for them to perceive more, explore more, until they eventually are capable of perceiving the whole of the universe and beyond.

Stapledon's wrote "Star Maker" in the period between the two world wars, and World War I is a central player in the introduction to his "Modern Theory of Ethics" (full text online). Among many things, he believed that each of us has an underlying "real will" that takes into account the goals of consciousness itself. "Star Maker" is a broad stage on which this idea is played out.

This is an exhilliarating and at times exhausting book, but is truly great and worth reading. Now on to a bit of red meat.

"Marsbound" by Joe Haldeman

2010-01-17T14:29:00.002+01:00

It's easy to think of legendary Science Fiction authors in the past tense. If you're like me, you may have encountered classics like "Forever War" decades after they were written. If you're a fan of used book stores and are reading an older edition of "Forever War", the "other works by" page at the front or back of the book might give you the idea that Haldeman hasn't done anything in a while.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Joe Haldeman has been hard at work for decades turning out a great body of novels and short stories, including quite a few Nebula and Hugo award winners. Along the way, he's revisited the world of "Forever War" a few times (in "Forever Free" and "A Separate War"), and written two novels ("Planet of Judgment" and "World Without End") set in the Star Trek universe (original series), which I can't wait to track down. He wrote the screenplay for "Robot Jox" as well (here's hoping the film version of "Forever War" will fare better).

"Marsbound", published last year in paperback, is a story about a girl who comes of age just as humanity is establishing its first colony on Mars. In Philip K. Dick's novels (such as "The Divine Invasion" or "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch"), the lives of human colonists are both harsh and tedious, but mostly the latter. Theirs is a life of awful isolation and drudgery from which they try to escape, and rarely succeed.

The colony in "Marsbound" is a more hopeful affair, an energetic team of pioneers and their children. There is hard work, and drudgery, and the conditions are dangerous, but there is also comradery, humor and even romance. Carmen is coming of age at the perfect time to find her place in the world, and to witness and participate in amazing events. The main character of "Accidental Time Machine" finds his way out of the doldrums of his wasted youth and eventually hits his stride (a brisk jog settling into a comfortable walk). Carmen finds her pace (and place) early, and sprints through the amazing times in which she lives.

This is a hopeful and human novel, and well worth reading.

"The Accidental Time Machine" by Joe Haldeman

2010-01-08T09:00:00.002+01:00

Joe Haldeman has an intelligent and natural style that's hard to resist. Although his grasp of future science is good (sometimes even eerie), he never forgets about the characters who are our means of experiencing his ideas. Their lives alternate between drudgery and terror, between absurdity and triumph. They are distinctly human characters, and the main character of "The Accidental Time Machine" is no exception.

Matt Fuller is a doctoral student whose life has stalled out and now sits on the edge of complete failure. He discovers that a small component built for one of his advisor's experiments has the ability to travel forward in time. He siezes the opportunity to find greatness in the most harebrained way, and his stuck life lurches into high gear. His is a fool's journey straight from the Tarot, and is well underway when we meet him. His failed dissertation is the cross on which he is the hanged man, and his discovery of the time machine just as life as he knows it ends is a great example of Death as transformation.

Time travel is well-trod terrain for Science Fiction authors of all stripes, and Haldeman is more than equal to the challenge. Like the main characters in Robert Heinlein's "Door into Summer" and "Farnham's Freehold", Matt Fuller enters into a relationship that sits outside the boundaries of normal time, but never comes across as quite as creepy as the protagonist of either of those books. Like the main character in Nicholson Baker's "Fermata", Matt's honesty defuses and redeems the awkward and embarrasing situations he encounters with his companion Martha. They develop a partnership, a "conspiracy of two", a marriage, and this is only one of the pleasures of the book.

This is a quick read, exciting, funny, and full of character. Very highly recommended.

"Mission of Gravity" by Hal Clement

2010-01-01T10:00:00.000+01:00

I finished "Mission of Gravity" a while ago, and have had some time to think about it since.

This book has a great central conceit. On Earth, gravity varies a small amount, but is roughly constant. On Mesklin, the planet featured in "Mission of Gravity", gravity varies from around 3 times Earth gravity at its equator to hundreds of times Earth gravity at the poles.

We experience the world primarily through the eyes of the crab-like Mesklinites enlisted by their Earth allies to complete the titular mission. Through their experiences, Clement does a great job of fleshing out this world and the limits imposed. Plants, animals, and societies are adapted to the local conditions, and as the conditions vary, so do each of these.

Although the Mesklinites are not as alien in temperament as we might expect, they are not portrayed as savages or cannon fodder (as, for example, the aliens in "Jem"). They are canny partners who are less technically advanced than Earth men, but who understand that their ability to operate unaided on the planet gives them leverage.

The characters and narrative of "Mission of Gravity" are solid, but the greatness of this book rests on the strength of its central conceit and the detail with which it's brought to life. Highly recommended.

"Man Plus" by Frederik Pohl

2009-12-25T10:00:00.002+01:00

I've been travelling for the holidays, which means I've finally been cooped up for long enough to read a few new books. Since I have a bit of time off, I also have a bit of time to write up some of the books I've finished but haven't written up yet. Look for a few new posts in the next few weeks.

I wouldn't go so far as to call Frederick Pohl one of my favorite authors, but I've enjoyed his work before. "Heechee Rendezvous" in particular is a classic, just the right mix of fantastic ideas and everyday human experience.

The world of "Man Plus" is one in which the Earth's resources are scarce, and war looms. Humanity's hopes for long-term survival turn to Mars (apparently they haven't read that Ray Bradbury story where we get to Mars only to find out that we already used up all its resources before moving to Earth). The story centers around transforming an astronaut into a cyborg whose altered body is capable of withstanding the rigors of life on Mars. It's terraforming at the human level, androforming if you will.

The life of the titular cyborg is a believable mix of tedium and existential terror, duty and depression. Like the protagonist in "Now Wait for Last Year" (one of my all-time favorites), this "Man Plus" is more motivated by the desire for love, companionship, and understanding, even though he is also bound by his ambition and sense of duty to country. He is a "man" (husband, soldier) first, and a "plus" (cyborg) second. The "plus" is what makes this a good work of science fiction, the "man" is what makes it great.

Although I haven't loved every book in the "SF Masterworks" series, this book is another gem that I'd never have encountered otherwise. Highly recommended.

"Eon" by Greg Bear

2009-12-18T10:00:00.001+01:00

By all rights, I should love Greg Bear's "Eon". I loved his "Tangents", and enjoyed "Blood Music" as well. The subject matter seems almost perfect for me as well. If you told me a book by Greg Bear was about humanity unlocking the secrets of space travel in the aftermath of nuclear holocaust, I'd certainly be interested. If you added hints of time travel and parallel worlds, I'd be hooked.

For whatever reason though, the book left me a bit cold. In trying to understand why, I've been imagining a good science fiction story as a stool with three legs:

* Mind: The ideas or conceits that make the world different from our own
* Heart: The characters that help us feel the weight of this imagined world
* Body: The situations which allow the characters to explore themselves and the world they inhabit

A book like "Footfall" by Niven and Pournelle doesn't necessarily have the deepest characters, and its ideas are not all that challenging. What makes it enjoyable is the pacing, the characters are always doing something that advances the story. This a book that runs.

A book like "Dr. Mirabilis" has very few new ideas, and sparse action. It lives or dies based on how fully the reader sympathises with the main character. This is a book that must be felt to be enjoyed.

"Eon" had stronger ideas than characters or situations. It lives based on the strength of its ideas. This is a book which must be considered to be enjoyed.

On balance, the characters and situations could have been stronger, but if you want a bushel of hard sci fi to mull over on a winter's night, you could do a lot worse.

"Matter" by Iain M. Banks

2009-12-11T10:00:00.001+01:00

"Matter" is another epic space opera in the "Culture" series. I've enjoyed (and reviewed) "Consider Phlebas", "Look to Windward", "Use of Weapons", "Player of Games", "Against a Dark Background", "Inversions" and "Excession", and "Matter" is a fine way to end the run.

Banks is a master of bringing a fresh perspective to what could easily be repetitive and derivative material. Often he uses contrasts to keep the perspective fresh. In "Inversions" and "Consider Phlebas", we see The Culture contrasted with its enemies. In most Culture novels, we see The Culture contrasted with the more primitive societies it tries to nudge towards its higher ideals. In "Excession", we see The Culture contrasted with both an artifact from advanced society and its enemies.

In "Matter", we get the best of these contrasts and new perspectives to boot. We follow one of The Culture's newest recruits as she returns to her homeworld during a time of crisis. We also follow her brother as he works to escape the political turmoil of his homeworld and encounters his "Cultured" sister. As if that weren't enough, we also see how citizens (human and machine) of The Culture deal with technologies beyond their own when cut off from the full resources of their own society.

Banks continues to amaze with the imagination he brings to each book. The Culture series is astonishing in its scope, and in between all the fantastic ideas and characters are enough amusing and well-crafted phrases to make it nearly exhausting. I'll have to get plenty of rest before the new Culture novel is released next year. If you haven't already done so, take advantage of the deals and reprints leading up to the new release and enjoy the whole series.

"The Algebraist" by Iain M. Banks

2009-12-04T10:00:00.000+01:00

The phrase "gas giant" was coined by the author James Blish in one of his stories, and is now widely applied to planets such as Jupiter. "The Algebraist" is a novel of gas giants (and the cultures they sustain).

This isn't a Culture novel, but it's the same style of epic space opera that fans of that series have come to enjoy. As with so many of Banks' books, there's easily enough material for three novels. The Archimandrite in particular is villain enough for a book of his own.

Entertaining as the Archimandrite is, this is not a novel about a brutally imaginative sadist. It's a novel in which the power of the seemingly powerless is revealed. It's a satisfying read and highly recommended.

"After Such Knowledge" by James Blish

2009-08-16T17:34:00.004+02:00

I recently finished the thematic trilogy "After Such Knowledge" by James Blish.
The book consists of four novels: "Dr. Mirabilis", "Black Easter", "The Day After Judgement", "A Case of Conscience". The last of these was recently reprinted as number 30 in the Gollancz SF Masterworks series, which is kind of like Pokemon for science fiction nerds who don't also collect Pokemon. I just checked, I still have 28 out of 70 to read.

A while ago, I reviewed "Cities in Flight" (number 3 in the SF Masterworks series). I enjoyed the scope of those works (which spanned from the present day to the end of time) and Blish's approach (applying the lessons of history to the future).

I wasn't sure what to think when I started "Dr. Mirabilis". I was expecting science fiction, and instead faced lovingly detailed historical fiction, a biography of the 12th century friar and scientist Roger Bacon. Blish presents Bacon as a man obsessed with expanding scientific knowledge through experimentation, making him one of the first modern scientists. It is clear that Blish feels Bacon was held back in his accomplishments by the time in which he lived, and that his accomplishments are all the more amazing as a result. The drama of "Dr. Mirabilis" hinges as often on points of principle and ethical choices as well as points of science. It's challenging fare, and reminded me of the excellent "Canticle for Leibowitz" by Walter M. Miller.

By comparison, the rest of the series was much shorter and more straightforward. "Black Easter" and "The Day After Judgement" are two parts of the same story. They present a world in which magic is made possible by collusion with demons and angels. Dark magic is soul-damning but effective, and it is used to terrifying effect in both novels. I won't say anything about the specifics, other than to say that the ending of "The Day After Judgement" is both surprising and great.

The final novel ("A Case of Conscience") is a morality play set in space, and more than any other book I've read outlines how belief a deeply spiritual man's belief in God would be changed by an encounter with a world that defies church canon about the nature of life, God, and the Devil. It's understandable that this would be the only one of the series to be included in a list of science fiction masterworks, as it's the only one that includes the usual trappings of science fiction (rockets, alien races, and the simple fact that it's set in the future.)

Of the three, I would have to say that "A Case of Conscience" was my favorite. "Black Easter" and "The Day After Judgement" are short, and are worth reading in order to understand their truly great ending. "Dr. Mirabilis" is a long read and probably is more of interest to history buffs than science fiction readers. Still, it's a good book, and I'm glad to have read it.

"Greybeard" by Brian Aldiss

2009-07-05T16:36:00.003+02:00

After reading "Non-stop" and a confusing misprinted edition of "Cryptozoic" last year, I thought I would give Brian Aldiss another go. I picked up a tattered copy of "Greybeard" and finished it on a lazy summer afternoon.

This is yet another end-of-the-world scenario, in which atomic testing has rendered all of mankind sterile. Extinction by attrition is terrain well-trod by later works such as "Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang", "Galapagos", and the recent film "Children of Men".

In "Greybeard", we follow members of the last generation as they make their way through the ruins of the world. This is a society of the old, which lacks the infusion of energy and new ideas that each new generation brings. After the "accident", the first changes are small. Businesses dependent on the young (record shops, toy shops) falter before anyone understands why. Eventually, people understand their situation, and the hopelessness of a future without children infects all levels of society. Government and industry break down, and disease, decay, and vermin break down the corpse of human society where it falls. There is no apparent future to work for, and so people selfishly wring what sustenance and comfort they can out of the world, often without regard for the people they must kill or enslave to do so.

In reading this book, I was reminded of "World Out of Time" by Larry Niven. Niven's work depicts one man from our society encountering an alien and distant society of the far future. The turning point of the story hinges on discovering a key piece of technology that holds the secret to eternal youth. There was the suggestion of something similar early on in "Greybeard", and I kept expecting Aldiss to unveil a technological solution (a secret project that leaves an incredible legacy, etc.). The Deus Ex Machina never comes. It is life, rather than science that finds a way.

Instead of an immortality treatment, "Greybeard" offers us something more relevant to our lives. We see characters who are forced into a series of seemingly hopeless situations. They regain some measure of dignity and integrity by realizing that they can and must move beyond the meaningless echoes of the previous society that deaden and degrade most and benefit a privileged few.

This is the not a novel like "To Your Scattered Bodies Go", in which the things that constrain us are set aside to allow us to realize our full potential. Instead, it is a novel about the ways in which humans realize their potential in spite of all constraints, and is well worth a read.

I would loan you my copy, but its binding has decayed beyond repair, even as its ideas are passed on, which seems fitting. Perhaps my copy of "To Your Scattered Bodies Go" (in similar disrepair) will be resurrected with its youth and vigor on some distant planet... :)

"Gods of Riverworld" by Philip José Farmer

2009-06-01T20:57:00.004+02:00

I finished "Gods of Riverworld" by Philip José Farmer a while ago. I've waited a while to write this up, as I was kind of lukewarm on the last book in the Riverworld series.

In the Riverworld, people have souls ("wathans"). It doesn't matter that they were created using technology, the important thing is that a soul can take on new bodies, and continues doing so until it moves beyond its need for reality and becomes one with the "oversoul". This technological Buddishm was the central premise of the first four novels, and I liked this idea a lot.

Imagine my surprise when Farmer came along in the fifth book and tinkered with the formula. It's his to tinker with, of course. It doesn't mean I have to like it though. To me, it seems like he swapped something spiritual for something political. Instead of a state of nirvana that an individual achieves in their own way, enlightenment is now like a doctoral thesis, you get it as soon as you can convince the doctoral committee. I found this somehow less satisfying.

I have to admit that I found the book a bit tiresome for other reasons. Farmer realized that he could pull from anywhere in history, and to do this well, he obviously did an awful lot of research. After a certain point, though, we get somewhat dry backstories for each character presented as a whole. I realize it's necessary to introduce the major characters, and that their histories are relevant, but if we encounter smaller portions of their history over time, it's a bit less taxing. Iain Banks is quite good at this, bringing back hints of a larger history, showing us that his characters have a past by presenting scenes from their lives. In earlier books in the series, the main characters' previous lives were introduced over time, in segments, and as relevant to the story. By the time we get to the fifth book, Farmer is almost throwing his raw notes about each character's biography at us.

This is not to say that the book didn't have its moments. It's just not as enjoyable as the first four books, and for me at least ventures into the same kind of cringeworthy revisionism that tarnishes "Star Wars: Episode One" for anyone old enough to have seen the original series first.

Take my advice and stop with the fourth book ("The Magical Labyrinth").

"The Synthetic Man" by Theodore Sturgeon

2009-05-30T22:31:00.007+02:00

In preparation for an upcoming move (across town), I've been working through a pile of books so that I can sell them back to the Book Exchange and lighten the load a bit. One of the recent quickies I whipped through is "The Synthetic Man" by Theodore Sturgeon. I had previously read and enjoyed "More Than Human", which was featured in the Gollancz "Sci-fi Masterworks" collection that revived my interest in reading the classics of the genre.

This book reminds me of "Blood Music" by Greg Bear. The protagonist of both books has a power he is at first unaware of, but which grows as his confidence and awareness grow. In this case, we follow "Horty", a boy who becomes an extraordinary man. He is both more and less than human. As mentioned on the back cover, as a boy he loses three fingers, which reminded me of "Demon with a Glass Hand" just a little bit, even though the two stories are very different.

A better comparison is with Borges' "The Circular Ruins", where a man is imagined into being by another man until the imagined man assumes a life of his own. This book seems like a simpler treatment of the same idea.

Still, it's entertaining enough. If you want a quick read that lies somewhere between the heady fare of Borges and the guilty pleasure of pure space opera, there are worse ways to spend your time.

"The Dark Side of the Earth" by Alfred Bester

2009-05-30T22:14:00.004+02:00

Now that I have a steady source for paperback editions of classic science fiction in town (the Book Exchange here in Amsterdam), I have been picking up a sampling of books from authors I've enjoyed previously. In the latest batch, I picked up "The Dark Side of the Earth" by Alfred Bester, whose "The Stars My Destination" is one of the all-time classics, and whose other great work "The Demolished Man" isn't far behind.

"The Dark Side of the Earth" is a collection of short stories. As with many collections of this type, there are a few gems and a few misfires. The highlights of this collection are "Time is the Traitor" and "They Don't Make Life Like They Used to". "Time is the Traitor" is a meditation on memory and loss, and succeeds fairly well.

"They Don't Make Life Like They Used to" is a post-apocalyptic story in the same vein as "Night of the Comet" or "The Quiet Earth". In both those films, a handful of survivors attempt to live out their lonely lives in the ruins of our society, and have what fun they can doing it. The story is mostly about the characters, we never really even know how the world ended. It's speculative fiction more than science fiction, characters driven by fantastic circumstances, but still recognizably and endearingly human.

A few of the other stories just seem a bit dated, or maybe they just didn't suit my mood at the time I read them. Regardless, there are enough gems to make this worth picking up.

"Inside Outside" by Philip José Farmer

2009-05-28T18:43:00.004+02:00

Hot on the heels of finishing the "Riverworld" series by Philip José Farmer, I decided to go through one of his shorter works, "Inside Outside". I got a strange sense of déja vu reading this. Farmer paints a world in which people are resurrected after death, and in which they can't die. They are watched by advanced beings, whose goal is to help them reach enlightenment. This should sound really familiar to anyone who has read the Riverworld series.

"Inside Outside" was published a few years before "To Your Scattered Bodies Go", and to me seems like a beta version or a sketch for the later work. This isn't to say that it's a bad book. It's just good in a less epic way.

I would recommend this if you like Philip José Farmer and the Riverworld series, or if you just want a good old-fashioned simple sci-fi novel with a couple of mildly amusing twists.

"The Magic Labyrinth" by Philip José Farmer

2009-05-26T19:14:00.003+02:00

I was hooked by "To Your Scattered Bodies Go" a few weeks ago, and have been blazing through the rest of the series. I just finished "The Magic Labyrinth", the fourth book, which completes the major arc that brings the "lazari" of the Riverworld face to face with the people responsible for bringing them back to life on this new world.

The first installment was largely the story of Richard Burton, and introduced the questions whose answers might lie at the source of the river. The second book was largely the story of Samuel Clemens and his dream of building a boat that (among other things) is the best hope of travelling upstream to the source of the river. As the river windws around the entire planet, most of the third book was spent in transit.

The fourth book brings us in sight of the goal and unlocks its secrets (or at least some of them). It's a major payoff after a series of small revelations and a long journey with these (now familiar) character. Well worth the time.

I'm working on the fifth book "Gods of Riverworld" at the moment and will review that in a few.

"The Dark Design" by Philip José Farmer

2009-05-25T13:30:00.009+02:00

"The Dark Design" is the third of four books in the main current of the "Riverworld" series. We pick up from where "The Fabulous Riverboat" left off.

A friend of mine liked this installment fairly well, but I think of it more as an arrow in flight than as a standalone work. The bow was strung and pulled taut in "To Your Scattered Bodies Go" and let loose somewhere between the end of "The Fabulous Riverboat" and the beginning of this book. It remains in flight throughout this book, destined to find its target in the final installment ("The Magic Labyrinth"). According to the author, the two books were originally intended to be a single installment, which explains a bit.

A good serial has the initial setup, and a series of smaller mysteries orbiting around the central mystery (or mysteries). Each subplot or portion of the underlying plot is carried forward through the eyes of one or more of the characters. This formula should seem familiar to anyone who has watched "Lost" or any other modern serial.

Thankfully, the Riverworld series doesn't quite attempt to spin one's head around quite as quickly or as frequently. What it does is pull an ensemble cast of characters from throughout history and set them in motion on an epic journey to find out the meaning of the new life they have been granted.

This is a pivotal installation in the series, and stops just short of the final goal. It's a good book in a great series, and well worth the time. Quick tip: pick up "The Magic Labyrinth" at the same time, if you're anything like me, you'll want to dig into it right after finishing this book.

"The Reader" by Bernhard Schlink

2009-05-24T14:03:00.006+02:00

On a recent trip, I ran through my own stack of books and borrowed a copy of "The Reader" by Bernhard Schlink.

To describe the story in too much detail would be to spoil it. In short, this is a story about a romance (of a sort) set against the backdrop of the collective societal guilt in Germany following the holocaust. The characters are believable and human, and the story on the whole is enjoyable. I suppose I prefer other particular flavors of moral ambiguity a bit better (the film "He Got Game" by Spike Lee, for example), but on the whole I thought the material was interesting and well handled.

As with many translated works, it's a little difficult to get into the flow of the novel, the prose just doesn't sing or grab your attention in quite the same way. Regardless, it's a very quick read, and worth a look.

"The Fabulous Riverboat" by Philip José Farmer

2009-05-24T12:46:00.005+02:00

Having read and enjoyed "To Your Scattered Bodies Go" and the "Riverworld" novella that predated it, I decided to work my way through Philip José Farmer's "Riverworld" series on a recent trip.

The first novel in the series brings us the first seven years of life on the Riverworld. This book resumes the story not long after from the viewpoint of different characters. The central character of "The Fabulous Riverboat" is none other than Mark Twain, and the eponymous riverboat is his dream made real through sacrifice, gut-wrenching political compromise, and the introduction of industrialized society to the pastoral Riverworld.

Not a lot is revealed of the makers of the Riverworld or their purposes in this installment. From the previous book, we known that riverworld is peopled with the entirety of human history, distributed in a mixture that favors a dominant society in each area, but mixes in people, languages, and ideas from other times and place. We have been told that the goal is to stimulate personal growth, and to give every human the chance to reach a kind of enlightenment. In this installment, there are no big surprises or revelations. Instead, we see how strong characters from history soften or amplify their character over the years.

This book is a smallish stepping stone in the epic series, but it's an enjoyable one. Stay tuned for the upcoming review of "The Dark Design", in which the series really hits its stride.

"Feersum Endjinn" by Iain M. Banks

2009-05-24T12:44:00.002+02:00

I picked up the last three of Iain M. Banks science fiction novels ("Feersum Endjin", "Inversions", and "Matter") the other day at the American Book Center in Amsterdam.

Of the three, "Feersum Endjin" was my least favorite. It follows three main characters as they attempt to avert a crisis threatening their world. One of the characters has a diminished capacity (read: funny spelling), which usually doesn't work very well for me. In the case of someone like Irvine Welsh, the spelling makes the work, it's presenting and preserving the word as spoken. In this case, it's a bit of a strain.

As in many of the author's works, people can be resurrected (restored from tape, basically). Unlike previous works, each person has a limited number of lives (eight physical lives, followed by eight virtual lives in storage). The limit is introduced briefly and only really made use of for a single character. It would be a good idea for a longer series, where there was time to get used to the idea, here it's not well explored. What is interesting is the idea that the dead are routinely in contact with the living in this world. That too is mentioned a few times, but isn't really stretched all that much.

The characters and their stories move forward in parallel until at last they intertwine near the end of the story. This is a technique Banks uses to good effect in books such as "Matter", "Excession", and "Look to Windward". For "Endjin", there just isn't enough about each thread to make the overall tapestry as appealing.

I've now read all of his science fiction novels, they are almost all enjoyable. If I had to suggest one to skip, this would be the one.

"Inversions" by Iain M. Banks

2009-05-24T12:43:00.003+02:00

I'm still working my way through the last remaining Iain M. Banks novels, and have recently finished "Inversions".

This book alternately presents two stories of unrequited love set in a medieval world. One story follows a court physician through the eyes of her apprentice. The other follows the king's bodyguard and chief concubine through war, intrigue, and treachery. Both are very well handled, and as with other non-Culture books like "The Algebraist", Banks shows that he can do just as well starting from scratch as he can extending and expanding his own ideas.

Like "The Steel Remains" by Richard Morgan, "Inversions" is a departure into a new genre, or at least a new facet of the same genre. In fact, if it weren't for a few key points handled in a skillfully vague way, this would be a period romance rather than science fiction.

For readers who are familiar with Banks' Culture novels, there are often forays by citizens of the Culture into less advanced societies. Banks does a great job of taking two engaging and only tangentially related stories set on the same world and making us question whether there isn't some kind of interference by a group like the Culture at work. It would be hard to argue that there wasn't one agent of a higher power at work in the book, and it's tantalizing to consider who (if anyone) might also be more than they seem.

This is a lovely book that still has its share of blood, but is a whole lot lighter than "Against a Dark Background", "Use of Weapons", and "Consider Phlebas". It's a great book, and makes me want to give some of the author's mainstream fiction a try.

"Riverworld and Other Stories" by Phillip José Farmer

2009-05-23T12:45:00.000+02:00

In between reading "To Your Scattered Bodies Go" and "The Fabulous Riverboat" by Philip José Farmer, I took a brief detour and read "Riverworld and Other Stories", which contains the original novella on which the Riverworld series is based.

I would recommend reading the Riverworld novella after "To Your Scattered Bodies Go". As a reader, it's a lot easier to digest the background concepts if you're reading about them as a character experiences them for the first time. In the novella, we join the characters some years after the initial resurrection, without a lot of clear exposition up front. Without having read them, I think of the novella as a beta version of the fifth and six novels, which cover side trips outside the main arc of the Riverworld storyline.

Although the Riverworld novella is the highlight of the collection, there are other entertaining moments. I was surprised to learn that "The Henry Miller Dawn Patrol" was first published in Playboy, and yet "J. C. on the Dude Ranch" was not. Both are fun and raunchy stories, and wouldn't be out of place a few pages away from a centerfold. "The Problem of the Sore Bridge" was also a fun one for anyone who's a fan of Arthur Conan Doyle with a lot more humor and a dash of Lovecraft thrown in for good measure.

In short, if you can find a copy of the collection, pick it up, but read the novella at least after "To Your Scattered Bodies Go".

(If you want more information about Philip José Farmer and his work, I'd suggest taking a look at www.pjfarmer.com.)

"To Your Scattered Bodies Go" by Philip José Farmer

2009-05-08T00:05:00.005+02:00

I finally got a chance to swing by the excellent Book Exchange here in Amsterdam. Although the owner claims not to know much about Science Fiction, they have a pretty impressive collection way down in their basement.

Having heard about "To Your Scattered Bodies Go" from my good friend Antranig, I scooped up a copy along with four or five other books soon to be featured in their own reviews here.

With most Science Fiction novels, there are a few central conceits that take life beyond what we consider normal at the moment. The ability to teleport by thought alone, as in "The Stars My Destination", for example. The central conceits of "To Your Scattered Bodies Go" are grand in scope and presented well.

At a stroke, Farmer erases the physical realities underlying almost all of the world as we know it. All of human history has been recorded, and 36 billion humans are resurrected at the same time and laid out along a great river than winds around the surface of an entire planet. All are reborn in a youthful and vigorous body based on their own, minus any defects or injuries. No one ages physically beyond the apparent age of 25. Injuries heal at an amazing rate, eyes and limbs lost regrow. Those who die in this new world are reborn yet again somewhere else along the river.

There is time, land and food enough for everyone to live in peace and comfort. Instead, humans quickly recreate the concepts of scarcity and wealth, and soon move on to recreate slavery, trade, and war. War and preparations for defense drive men to develop technology. In this installment, society progresses to the Stone Age within days of the resurrection.

One of the chief ideas of this new world is the idea of the soul. Later science fiction authors like Iain Banks, Ken MacLeod, Richard Morgan, and Philip K. Dick treat human experience as something that can be recorded and replayed. A clone with our experiences is in essence the same as the original. Each copy of a person that is killed falls into nothingness, even if a new and identical individual is recreated at a later stage.

In the Riverworld, Farmer makes it clear that each recreated body houses the same original soul. If two of the same bodies are recreated, only one will be animated with the living spirit of its owner. There is a connection between soul and body (a silver cord, if you will). If a person dies too many times, their soul loses its affinity for its body and is lost. If a person reaches a state of enlightenment, they become one with the oversoul.

This emphasis on philosophy and religion is a current that travels throughout the series, and is part of its enduring charm. We are not reading about Flash Gordon narrowly cheating death time and time again. We are reading about characters who continue to live and grow beyond the bounds of our short terrestrial lives. They have seen beyond the veil of death and only have new questions confronting them.

It's a classic in the best sense, and well worth the time.

Review: "The Steel Remains" by Richard K. Morgan

2009-03-08T22:24:00.003+01:00

I just picked up Richard K. Morgan's latest ("The Steel Remains") at the American Book Center here in Amsterdam. His previous novels (the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy, "Market Forces", "Black Man") have all been science fiction, this is his first fantasy novel.

"The Steel Remains" has swords and sorcery, but the latter is treated in a way that reverses Arthur C. Clarke's famed quote: in this world, magic is indistinguishable from sufficiently advanced technology. Instead of a spirit world, for example, the principle baddies in the novel travel in a world that lies between all possible worlds and in which time is flexible. Gods and wizards are simply more advanced beings, with their own inhuman agendas. There is even a race who achieve through science what others achieve through evolution.

The sword (and lance-staff) fights in this novel are handled well, as are most of the other period details. As our own middle ages were, the world of "The Steel Remains" is a nasty time and place to be alive. Bloody death comes quickly, as do betrayals, intrigue, and sex. Only occasionally do we get the sense that a modern concept is being translated into its fantasy equivalent for the sake of expedience.

In short, Morgan brings his style to a new genre pretty much intact. It's a fantasy novel, heavy on the noir influences. The epilogue in particular should be familiar to anyone who's read (or seen the film version of) a Dashiel Hammett story. The story's not over until the hero has tracked down and repaid a betrayal of his trust that we should have seen coming all along. (This isn't technically a spoiler, as pretty much all of his previous novels have also shared this feature).

It's a guilty pleasure if ever there was one, but still definitely a pleasure.

Review: Revisiting "The Early Stories" by John Updike

2009-02-19T23:36:00.004+01:00

With his recent passing, I was reminded that I have the excellent but partly unfinished "The Early Stories", a collection of John Updike's short stories from 1953 to 1975.

I have a mixed reaction to some of his longer works (although admittedly I've only read two or three). With the longer form, he seems to get caught up in laying scene after scene at the expense of the characters. Loving detail and exquisitely fine prose drip off of every morsel of the natural and urban landscape. The characters are equally well observed and described, but somehow the overall effect is a bit distracting for me.

I greatly prefer his short stories, in which the detail is more restrained. These more tightly focused scenes hold their proper place as parts of the larger world into which characters propel themselves. The details that travel into each person's interior world via their ears, eyes, and sense of touch are presented to us in enough detail that we can imagine their experiences in context. Their thoughts and emotions make sense as reactions to (or distractions from) their environment.

His short stories also have a fantastic economy, a rightness to their pace. The endings come just in time, and usually are both the natural outcome of the rest of the story and also just a little bit surprising.

Maybe the longer works have the same flow, and I've just learned to read Updike better. I'll have to pick up a "Rabbit" omnibus edition one of these days.

In closing, I thought I would share a pair of stories (one from 1972, the other from 2005) that come to mind when I think of Updike.

"How to Love America and Leave It at the Same Time" (free abstract, paid story)

The Roads of Home (free story)

The first link is sadly only available with a paid subscription to the New Yorker. When the copyright finally lapses on Updike's work, the public domain will be quite a bit richer for it.

A picture is worth 300 words...

2009-02-13T23:43:00.004+01:00

Here's a quick visualisation of this blog as produced by Wordle.

Review: "The Mind of a Mnemonist" by A. R. Luria

2008-12-01T22:02:00.004+01:00

I finally got a chance to read "The Mind of a Mnemonist" in the midst of a business trip. As with "The Man with a Shattered World", also a later work of Luria, "The Mind of a Mnemonist" is a case study following one of Luria's subjects over a large portion of his life. Where "The Man with a Shattered World" detailed the life of a man with severe visual and memory defects, "The Mind of a Mnemonist" details the life of a man whose prodigious visual memory (and imagination) are both his greatest strength and weakness.

There are memory-improving techniques that urge students to train themselves to construct mental landscapes, patterns of items connected to each other in space, each of which connects with and leads to the remembrance of the next item. "S" (the subject of this book) easily creates these types of mental landscapes, but in greater detail and over a greater area than seems possible. He can walk through and recall precise details in immense landscapes even decades later.

In his story "Funes the Memorious", Borges prefaces his use of the word "memory" by saying that we ordinary mortals hardly deserve to use the word compared to the subject of his story. With apologies, "S" also lays claim to that word in a way very close to that of Funes. In addition to memory, "S" owns the word "visualisation" in a way that few of us will ever do. Three words into reading a novel, "S" has already established the time of day, the architecture of the house, the clothing of the characters, their appearance, all far out of proportion to what is described. This owes in part to his synesthesia, which allows the sound of words to spill over into additional sights, smells and sensations that colour his perception.

What is remarkable about this story is that "S" is very nearly a prisoner of his visualisations. As a child, he was late for school because he would either hold the memory of the clock as it read at half seven (and thus think he had plenty of time to prepare) until it was after nine, or because he would imagine his doppelganger dressing and going to school, and did not realise that in reality he had taken no action.

His life is a waking dream, filled with rich but nonsensical images. People's faces seem incomprehensible, because he cannot recognise some kernel of their appearance as being consistent between all the angles and lighting conditions that are possible. When compared with utterly faithful imagined worlds and utterly faithful (or perhaps perfectly well imagined) worlds of memory, the present itself seems somehow dimmed to "S", like only one possible channel to which the mind can be tuned.

When I finished this book, I was sitting in a pub I had visited perhaps a year and a half earlier. Looking across at the sea on a dark winter's night, I was able to recall (dimly) the view in summer, and each of the individuals who had been with me the last time I was at the pub. It seems to me that my recollections were based on a series of abstractions. The place itself was recreated from multiple observations over a handful of visits that summer. The people were recalled as they appeared when I saw them over the course of days or even months, and generally in terms of key details (their faces, their hair, a particular expression, a typical cut of shirt or trouser). This ability to generalise over varied experiences and to store only salient details is key to functioning in daily life.

We do not need to recall what our coworkers looked like on a particular day last summer to interact with them today. We only need to be able to identify them today based on the key details of their appearance. It is not necessary for our daily lives to recall where we parked five days ago in precise detail. We only need to remember where we parked today, and in fact are better served if little trace of the previous location lingers in memory. So what can we learn from a mnemonist, whose experience is structured so differently from our own? Looking beyond the limits of what we are likely to experience helps us question the role of memory, nostalgia and fantasy in the life of a fully functioning adult.

This is a well-written and utterly engaging book, and a very quick read. Very highly recommended.

Review: "An Anthropologist on Mars" by Oliver Sacks

2008-11-23T00:35:00.004+01:00

Oliver Sacks is a master of translating brain dysfunction into narrative, helping those of us who are fortunate enough to have more less normal brain function understand ourselves by examining those less fortunate.

"An Anthropologist on Mars" presents seven case studies dealing with visual defects, autism, and memory disfunction. My favourite of these is the story of Temple Grandin, the autistic engineer famous for her humane slaughterhouse designs.

What's remarkable about these studies is how well the careful detail and explanation of the underlying science is mixed with quite human details. We hear about the functions of the brain, but also get disarming glimpses of the lives of the real people dealing with these neurological dysfunctions.

This mix of biography and hard science is quite compelling and inspiring. I'm reminded of "The Man with a Shattered World: History of a Brain World" by A. R. Luria, which was similarly engaging.

I recently picked up "The Mind of a Mnemonist" by A. R. Luria, a precursor to Sacks' blend of science and general interest . This book is heavily referenced in Sacks' work, and is often mentioned in combination with the story "Funes the Memorious" by Jorgé Luis Borges, so it sounds thoroughly like my cup of tea. Stay tuned for a review shortly.

Review: "Look to Windward" by Iain M. Banks

2008-11-22T23:36:00.004+01:00

"Look to Windward" opens with the same T. S. Elliot quote as "Consider Phlebas", the first of Iain Banks' Culture novels, and the books are in a sense are companion pieces. Where "Consider Phlebas" deals with the Idiran war, "Look to Windward" deals with the aftermath of both the Idiran war and the interference of the Culture in a civil war among the Chelgrians.

Like his other Culture novels, "Look to Windward" has quite a few digressions, but in this case all of the subplots are more less recognizably in the service of the larger plot. As with his previous novels, there are rich descriptions of the natural and constructed environments, which as always are engrossing.

What is singular and enjoyable about this novel, however, are the two central characters, one a Chelgrian, one a "Mind", an artificial intelligence centuries old. As in "Consider Phlebas", the Chelgrian character in part acts as a foil to help us understand the nuances of the Culture by comparison.

I particularly liked the insight into the "Mind", whose perception of time and scope of focus are so far outside human experience that it can live a lifetime of our experiences in an instant and coordinate billions of decisions where we would be hard pressed to handle a handful.

Banks is as always incredibly inventive. Each twist in the plot is an "a-ha moment", an expansion of our own imagination rather than the kind of contrivance that drives your average mystery (or CSI episode, for that matter).

An entertaining read, particularly the last few chapters, in which all the loose ends are tied up. Although for the most part the right are redeemed and the wrong horribly punished, it never seems arbitrary, it always just fits.

A good book, and highly recommended, particularly for anyone who has enjoyed other Culture novels.

Review: "Consider Phlebas" by Iain M. Banks

2008-11-19T23:40:00.005+01:00

Having read "Excession", "State of the Art", "Use of Weapons", "Against a Dark Background" and "Player of Games", I was excited to pick up another of Iain Banks' Culture novels, "Consider Phlebas".

"Consider Phlebas" is the first of the Culture novels, but it works very well if you've already read a few in the loose series. Instead of learning about the Culture from the inside, we follow Bora Horza Gobochul (great name), an agent who is at war with the Culture, who opposes its ideals with violent action. I'm impressed that Banks started on this note, most authors would have held this type of narrative device in reserve for a follow-up work.

"Use of Weapons" and "Player of Games" explored how the Culture shapes the destiny of less advanced civilisations through its Contact and Special Circumstances branches. Think of Contact as the arm that does the heavy lifting and Special Circumstances as a hand that practises sleight of hand most of the time, but is always ready to form a fist as a last resort. Horza works for the equivalent of Special Circumstances among the enemies of the Culture, the Idirans. Horza is a shape changer, the ultimate spy, and quite literally a born killer, with venomous teeth and poisoned nails. He fights the Culture because their intelligent machines are in his mind the enemies of all living beings.

As with many of the Culture novels, "Consider Phlebas" takes an impressively long view. There are small and long arcs that nudge forward the larger plot. Most of these diversions do their job well enough, carrying us through the varied set pieces Banks has lovingly crafted and placed before us. As always, Banks provides a lot of descriptive detail, which requires careful reading, and is a kind of workout for the imagination, but is generally enjoyable.

As with many of the Culture novels, Horza picks his way through his own past as he draws closer to his final goal. This is perhaps a mild cliché, but as the reader begins each novel in utter ignorance of the life and history of its main character, a wee bit of self-absorption and reflection on the past are necessary evils to help us understand the emotional weight of the character.

I don't want to give anything away, but "Consider Phlebas" is, if anything, a bit darker than "Against a Dark Background" in its ultimate resolution (thankfully it's a bit lighter than "Use of Weapons"). It's a testament to Banks that this book is neither much better or much worse than his later Culture novels. Each novel finds a way to mine different facets of the same material, and each stands alone in its own right. All are highly recommended.

I'm in the midst of reading "Look to Windward", thus far it's a great read, stay tuned for that review in a few days.

Review: "Night Sessions" by Ken Macleod

2008-10-13T22:56:00.005+02:00

Having thoroughly enjoyed "The Execution Channel" and most of Ken Macleod's novels, I was excited to pick up a copy of "Night Sessions" on a recent trip through Inverness.

"Execution Channel" is a novel of the near-future, post 9-11. Terror, torture, surveillance, paranoia are intertwined in a near enough future that's eerily familiar. "Night Sessions" sets its sights a little further into the future, and yet seems no less relevant to the world around us.

The chief obsession of "Night Sessions" is religion, and Macleod tackles the material with his usual deep sense of history and fantastic imagination. The world has literally been to Armageddon, and still bears the scars of the "Faith Wars". A large portion of the world has reacted by rejecting religion nearly altogether. The Edinburgh in which "Night Sessions" is largely set has most traces of religion scrubbed from its public life. Churches are converted to public halls and bars. Religion still exists, but the police go out of their way not to be aware of their activities. It's a kind of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, which permits religion to exist in the shadows of a secular society without attracting its wrath.

I won't go into anything further to avoid spoiling it. This is a genre-hopping novel, a sci-fi crime thriller steeped in the history of religion, and a great read. Highly recommended.

Review: "Footfall" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

2008-10-06T20:59:00.005+02:00

A couple of years ago, a colleague of mine recommended "The Mote in God's Eye" to me, also by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. Since then, I've read and enjoyed "Oath of Fealty", "Lucifer's Hammer" and "The Burning City" by the same pair.

At around the time this book came out, I (as a twelve year old) was a huge fan of Stephen King, blazing through everything he had published to that point. Some of his books (notably "The Stand") were long, but all had a fairly simple vocabulary and cinematic plots. Reading "Footfall", I realized that it had that same feeling. It's a long, fast run over even terrain, where Banks and Macleod require slower passage over steeper ground. "Footfall" is also very cinematic. Each scene comes easily to mind and seems like something that can and should have been filmed (it would have made a good miniseries, and I swear bits of it showed up in "Independence Day").

If you've enjoyed "Lucifer's Hammer" or "The Stand" or any other similar bit of disaster fiction, this book is certainly enjoyable enough. Well worth taking along to the pub on a rainy Sunday (as I did).

Review: "Excession" by Iain M. Banks

2008-10-02T22:47:00.005+02:00

Having previously read "State of the Art", "Use of Weapons", and "Against a Dark Background", I've started filling in gaps and reading the rest of Iain M. Banks Science Fiction novels.

"Excession" is one of the best I've read so far (second only to the original "State of the Art" novella in my mind). I particularly like the details of the machine culture that sits parallel to (and in some ways governs) human society.

As with other Culture novels, "Excession" has a rich cast of characters and settings. The Affront culture in particular stands as a nice contrast to the tolerance of the Culture.

Banks has imagination to spare, and every aspect of the story just drips novelty and wit. Here's an example: as with every other experience in the Culture, childbirth is no longer an inflexible biological fact limited to one of two sexes. An individual in the Culture can change sex at will, get pregnant as a woman, and then become a man again, holding the fertilised egg in suspension indefinitely.

The story itself is more coherent than "Against a Dark Background", and ties together the various scenes better as a result.

This is a good book, one of the author's best, and well recommended.

Review: "The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula LeGuin

2008-10-02T22:10:00.003+02:00

"Light is the left hand of darkness, and darkness the right hand of light"

On a recent trip through Inverness, I was pleased to find a copy of "The Left Hand of Darkness" at Leakey's bookshop. I have enjoyed "The Lathe of Heaven", "The Dispossed", "Four Ways to Forgiveness" and other collections of her short stories in the past. What I've liked most in other works I've read is her ability to craft detailed and compelling personalities and cultures around a handful of key differences. An example would be the four-way marriage contract outlined in one of her short stories, in which each partner is paired with one opposite sex partner, one same sex partner, and has a platonic relationship with the remaining opposite sex partner.

The "Left Hand of Darkness" centers on the world of Winter, which has two key characteristics. One is that its climate is comparable to the lower arctic regions of Earth even at its equator. The other is that its inhabitants are asexual for 20 or so of their 26 month days, and only assume a gender when in heat (or kemmer).

Leguin takes these two vanishing points and paints a believable world. She is a gifted storyteller, and presents the worlds she writes not as dry facts and third-person narrative, but as a series of first-person moments and third-person histories. We see their present as a thing lived by people, and their past as a series of stories and rumours about people who lived before.

The story itself is slow to develop, but well laid out, much as "The Dispossessed" was. It is the journey as much as the waypoints that we are meant to savour. Through the person of an envoy whose world and world view are closer to our own, we come to appreciate the colour of the world, the subtle differences in personality and culture.

This is a great book by a gifted storyteller writing at the top of her form, and is highly recommended.

Review: "Let the Fire Fall" by Kate Wilhelm

2008-09-20T20:04:00.003+02:00

Having read and enjoyed "Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang" by Kate Wilhelm, I was pleased to pick up "Let the Fire Fall" on a recent trip to Leakey's bookshop in Inverness. I've always enjoyed used bookstores as a source of books that are no longer in print, and Leakey's did not disappoint in this case.

"Let the Fire Fall" is a novel about an alien ship landing on Earth, and about a single survivor making his way in a world gripped by Millennial hysteria. The fear and paranoia of the age are fueled by an evangelist, who amasses power and influence through a blend of showmanship and gut instinct.

I'm reminded of "The World Jones Made" by Philip K. Dick. Both feature fear, spawned by an encounter with aliens, and an evangelist rising to power. I'm also reminded of "Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert Heinlein. The main character in "Let the Fire Fall" is not a human with an alien upbringing, but an alien with a human upbringing who strikes out on his own and becomes a self-made individual, yearning to learn about his past.

This is a good book. Not quite as classic as "Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang", but still well worth picking up at a library or used book store.

Review: "More Than Human" by Theodore Sturgeon

2008-09-20T19:59:00.004+02:00

I sat down to write this review after reading "More than Human" by Theodore Sturgeon and "Cryptozoic" by Brian Aldiss within a day of each other. I had thought at first that "Cryptozoic" was the older work, and had hoped that might explain the somewhat dated feel of "Cryptozoic" and the apparent modernity of "More Than Human". In fact, "More Than Human" was printed in 1953, and "Cryptozoic" in 1967. I suppose what makes "More Than Human" the more timeless work is in part the fact that it tends to show rather than tell. In reading "More Than Human", we experience the evolution of a new communal being as a series of experiences, with words that seem to come naturally from those experiencing it. Rather than telling us about the technology involved through one or more characters, Sturgeon shows us an extended example of evolving human potential and the impact of that evolution on ethics (personal rules for conduct) and morals (societal rules for conduct).

This is, in short, a classic.

Review: "Cryptozoic" by Brian Aldiss

2008-09-20T19:57:00.004+02:00

After reading the flawed but compelling "Against a Dark Background", it was refreshing to read an older work, with a straightforward central premise. In "Cryptozoic", humans have discovered that they can (through the aid of drugs and mental discipline) project their consciousness back to visit the distant past. They can observe but not interact with the past, thus avoiding any number of paradoxes. The main character is an artist, who intends to exploit the past as inspiration to express the spirit of the time-travelling age that is his native time.

I won't give away the ending of the book, but will say that my experience of the climax of the book was somewhat dimmed by my particular copy of the book, which had pages 17-32 printed a second time in place of pages 161-176. I thought at first that the character had backed himself in some kind of time paradox, and was reliving past events with an increased awareness of their real meaning. On closer inspection, it was clear that the text was repeated without variation, and that it was unintentional. I'll have to find a better copy of the book at some point, but honestly, the plot was straightforward enough that it was easy enough to fill in the gaps.

Anyway, this is a good book, but still firmly a part of the older and simpler school of Science Fiction. The novel's central conceit is like a single diamond in a simple setting. Tasteful, easy to appreciate, but not quite as appealing to the jaded palate as a glittering and ornate Ken MacLeod or Iain M. Banks novel.

Review: "Against a Dark Background" by Iain M. Banks

2008-09-20T19:53:00.001+02:00

"Against a Dark Background" is the first of Iain M. Banks' novels I've read that is not set in the "Culture" universe. If nothing else, he easily demonstrates that he doesn't need to fall back on the established conventions from those novels to spin a good yarn. This is a book with invention and narrative detail to burn. Ideas that would have been the central premise of a science fiction novel written in the 1950s are tossed around like confetti.

As the title suggests, this is a darker work than "Player of Games" or "State of the Art" (I'd say it's on par with "Use of Weapons"). Sharrow, the central character is haunted and hunted by her past, and pursues her destiny as everything and everyone she loves is methodically stripped from her. In this sense, it is a punishing novel, establishing a raft of characters at length only to make their absence that much more painful.

The culture in which she and her team travel is space-faring and has progressed to peaks of scientific achievement and then descended into relative savagery. The star system in which the story is set has been shaped by conflict bred of isolation, similar to "The Mote in God's Eye". There is advanced science left over from earlier ages, which includes the "Lazy Gun", the MacGuffin for this particular journey. The "Lazy Gun" is a weapon that is almost cartoonish in its effects, I'm surprised the author stopped short of having it drop anvils on its victims. This makes a nice change from the usual doomsday device, all deus and machina, with very little humor.

I finally found a copy of "Trillion Year Spree", the sweeping history of Science Fiction by Brian Aldiss, and even in the first few pages, it's provided some relevant insights regarding gothic novels as the forerunners of Science Fiction novels:

"Other planets make ideal settings for brooding landscapes, isolated castles, dismal towns, and mysterious alien figures; often, indeed, the villians may be monks, exploiting a local population under the guise of religion."
-- "Trillion Year Spree" by Brian Aldiss (with David Wingrove)

This is indeed a gothic novel, full of moody environs, steeped in protracted mysteries and eventual revelations. On that level, it's straightforward enough, and in fact just a little disappointingly so. Where the novel really shines are in the details, the set pieces established along the way. Parts of the novel, such as the boat heist, the android city, and the train heist are compelling and enjoyable. The overarching plot is just the excuse the author gives himself to progress from set piece to set piece. I would urge anyone who enjoys compelling ideas and descriptive detail to just enjoy the individual squares in the quilt, and not to think too much about the overall design.

Review: "Emphyrio" by Jack Vance

2008-08-21T23:51:00.002+02:00

Yet again I am delighted to have encountered (through the Gollancz SF Masterworks series) a book I would never otherwise have read.

Ghyl Tarvoke is a curious young man, who drifts aimlessly through his young world, allowed by his father the freedom to live somewhat outside the strictures of society. When his father is killed for contradicting the simplistic understanding of the police and judiciary, Ghyl rises beyond his childhood dreams of star flight and adventure to uncover truths worth sharing.

The story unfolds slowly, with a tempo that only gradually rises in the second act, and which finally hits its stride well into the third act. Vance takes the time to build the environment of his characters in lavish (but never tiring) detail. Thus, we care when Ghyl makes his break from polite society, and delight when the rough cloth of his society finally shows signs of unraveling.

This is a very good book, well worth the time to read.

Review: "Where Wizards Stay Up Late" by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon

2008-08-21T18:34:00.006+02:00

On a recent trip, I finally finished "Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet". Most times, I'll wade through historical nonfiction, and it seems unfamiliar, difficult to engage with. I've abandoned even well written books like "The Power Broker" and "Team of Rivals" because it just wasn't enjoyable to keep on reading. I may finally have discovered what I've been doing wrong. In short, read what you know. Although broadening your interests is a worthy goal, you have to build on your current knowledge and understanding and branch out from there. Case in point: This book deals with the history of the internet, email, telnet, FTP, chat, all topics near to my heart, and that made this book a great departure point for me.

Most of the technologies discussed in this book are so well established that their RFC (requests for coment) are commandments, well understood and inviolable. In this book, these RFCs are brought to life as the product of careful thought, ongoing and fierce debate, and even trial and error. In short, the technology we take for granted was crafted by sharp minds and strong personalities working through their differences and the inevitable technical hurdles. Most of us don't get to make this big a difference (connecting billions of people with each other), but their success should inspire us to try anyway.

Given how much I enjoyed this, I think it may finally be time to read up on the history of Computer Science a bit more, perhaps with a biography of Turing...

Review: "Desolation Island" by Patrick O'Brian...

2008-08-04T22:55:00.002+02:00

I went through all the fiction books in the house while resting during my recent cold. At the bottom of the stack was "Desolation Island", the fifth in the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian. I'm glad I finally got to it.

As with the other books in the series, "Desolation Island" is set during the Napoleonic Wars, a generation after Nelson. The period is lovingly rendered, the details of daily life are amazingly rich. However, what holds the piece together are the central characters and their motivation. We see their great moments and their human and ordinary moments. The color of their emotional lives shows through. We realize that these were people living in their time and making their way within the constraints of their society. During the first few books, the details about bracings, sails, riggings can be incomprehensible. After five books, patience wins out, and the technical detail adds to the charm and even the excitement of the work.

Anyway, this was an enjoyable read. Looking at the fact that there are twenty volumes in the series, I was considering taking a break once I finished the book. However, things are left at a good stopping point, but somewhat unresolved at the end of "Desolation Island", so I may have to pick up "Fortunes of War" before I stop reading the series for a while.

Review: "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini

2008-07-30T22:41:00.003+02:00

Having read and enjoyed "The Kite Runner" last summer, I picked up "A Thousand Splendid Suns" when it first hit the charts. I didn't get the chance to read it until a recent cold gave me a bit of extra time next to my night stand. It was worth the wait.

"The Kite Runner" was an impressive mixture of personal and historical drama, and "A Thousand Splendid Suns" mines the same vein. "A Thousand Splendid Suns" is also a story about Afghanistan, and covers much of the same time period, but where "Kite Runner" focused on the lives of the central character and the men in his life, in "Suns", the lives of four generations of women take center stage.

The fortunes of women in Afghanistan vary from the 1970s until the early 2000s. At the low point, a career, education, choice of husband, even the freedom to walk the streets unaccompanied are all denied to women. Even at the high point, the freedom to pursue any of these things is largely determined by the men in a woman's life.

With war as a constant backdrop, life becomes a daily exercise in loss, and a daily struggle for survival. Resources for women in this society are a luxury in good times, like education and music, and a burden in bad times. The shocking conditions at the womens' hospital in Kabul and the consignment of a female child to an orphanage to leave more food for the male child are especially striking examples.

Hosseini is obviously a gifted storyteller. He takes what must have been an overwhelming flood of stories from the lives of Afghani refugees and distills them down to a compelling handful of threads that make the point without quite overwhelming the reader.

This is a great book, and a quick read. Highly recommended.

Review: "The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios" by Yann Martel

2008-07-30T21:29:00.004+02:00

Like many people, I first encountered Yann Martel's work with the stunning "Life of Pi", which was a playful and engaging book with dark notes to it, and which holds up to repeated readings. (There are other, less kind views of the book on librarything.)

"The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios" is a book of Martel's short fiction written prior to "Life of Pi". Other reviews (1 2)have criticised his experimentation with narrative devices as overly contrived. I can see that three of the four stories could be read that way, and to be honest, it's hard to shake that off as being anything other than a fair criticism.

The titular story revolves around storytelling game in which a man and his friend escape from a devastating illness by creating the history of a fictional family, kind of like "Hundred Years of Solitude: The Home Game". There are nice spots in the story, but on the whole the device does overstay its welcome a bit.

The next story is entitled "The Time I Heard the Private Donald J. Rankin String Concerto with One Discordant Violin, by the American Composer John Morton". The lack of economy in even the names of stories tells you something about the maturity of his writing, although in this case, the story transcends its title. It is an ode to serendipity, to siezing the moment to discover something of the truth of another human being. The narrator stumbles on to a performance by a veterans' orchestra of a series of works, including the titular Rankin concerto. His pursuit of and interaction with the composer is well handled, and rings true with its small details of a failed life with brief hints of greatness. Not to spoil the next review, but I have a cold at the moment, and blew through this book and "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini in a single sitting. Reading these books one after the other helped me see that this story is the strongest in the book precisely because it highlight's the author's ability to collect and present the details that make a compelling character.

The other stories in the book display this talent to perhaps lesser effect. "Manner of Dying" is engaging enough, but reads somewhat like an episode of the Twilight Zone, but without any metaphysical questions. "The Vita Æterna Mirror Company" is also engaging enough, but is so uneconomical with space (half the page is often literally filled with "blah blah blah") that it reads as though it were five pages of story spread thinly to cover just over forty pages. Contrast this with Borges, who is so economical that five pages merit their own careful study and reflection, or with Updike, whose short stories are so dense with descriptive detail that I can typically only read one or two at a sitting before my focus is strained (perhaps reading Updike is the antidote to the lack of focus that Google is purported to be engendering in modern readers).

In short, this is a collection that has its moments, but is obviously among the author's early work. To be honest, it's not a book that I would have bought myself, but having received it as a gift, I'm glad to have had the chance to read it (the "Rankin" story especially).

Paris Photos

2008-07-21T16:10:00.004+02:00

Our photos from the 9th Sakai conference and our subsequent holiday in Paris are now up on Flickr. Enjoy!

Review: "The Mustache" (La Moustache) by Emmanuel Carrère

2008-07-13T00:45:00.004+02:00

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect." --Franz Kafka, "The Metamorphosis"

Hot on the heels of "Class Trip", I just finished "The Mustache" by Emmanuel Carrère. Written some ten years earlier than "Class Trip", this is an even more astonishing book.

The main character alters his routine one morning, and instead of shaving around his mustache of many years, decides to see how he'll look without it. From there his world is gradually unraveled. His present and future are tinged with uncertainty, and shockingly, so is his past. His very identity begins to slip away.

Where Gregor Samsa's transformation was grand and undeniable, the man behind (or lacking) the eponymous mustache suffers all the more for the complete acceptance his wife, friends, and colleagues all have of the altered reality that unfolds around him.

This is a grand portrayal of mental anguish and paranoia. For much of the book, the main character alternates between believing that he is insane and believing that the world is either mad or conspiring against him. The transitions between these two irreconcilable extremes are sometimes gradual, and sometimes startlingly abrupt.

In his struggle to find some stability in the shifting reality he occupies, the main character ends up becoming a kind of parody of the world traveler, latching onto what temporary routines and human connections he can while shifting from one impersonal locale (hotel, ferry, airport, restaurant) to another.

A bit of warning: the ending of this book is absolutely devastating. I was clenching my teeth when reading the last few pages, and very nearly had to bite my knuckle to keep from crying out.

This is an absolutely vital work, and wonderfully crafted. Highly recommended, but only for those who delight in the uncertainty and complexity of a book like "The Metamorphosis" and who also have a strong stomach.

Review: "Class Trip" (Classe de neige) by Emmanuel Carrère

2008-07-13T00:43:00.001+02:00

After reading the excellent "I Am Alive and You Are Dead" a while ago, I promised myself to track down other books by Emmanuel Carrère. On a recent trip to Paris, I did just that, picking up translations of "Class Trip" and "The Moustache" (likely the next book I'll read).

In "Class Trip", we see inside the mind of and look out from the eyes of Nicholas, a troubled boy, an outcast, on the cusp of adolescence, whose morbid fantasies give him comfort even as they begin to come true. We as adults understand many of the things that are mysteries to young Nicholas, which does not soften our own horror at detecting some of the hard truths that seem on the verge of being revealed to him throughout the book.

The book is simultaneously accessible and dense. The words flow by, the sense of Nicholas' internal struggles are astonishingly well rendered. At the same time, there are things unsaid that challenge the reader to keep track of the full range of possibilities, evaluating each new development in the light of what may or may not be the truth behind Nicholas' overheard whispers and imaginings.

I suspect that this is not only a good, but a great book, and look forward to reading it again fresh after a few months.

Review: "Film Club" by David Gilmour

2008-07-13T00:42:00.000+02:00

When I was young, my father (whose first two degrees were in Radio, Television, and Motion Pictures) would on occasion share films with me, some of which might have been just at the edge of my understanding as a teenager, but which opened my eyes to the world of film that I enjoy exploring to this day.

The book "Film Club" is about a father and son learning to relate to one another and make sense of their lives in the context of watching and discussing films together. Their conversations wander from relationship troubles to finding and using one's talent, to the dangers of alcohol and drugs: in short, they talk about life, and build a kind of intimacy that helps carry them both through a directionless period.

Their conversations are tinged with snippets of wisdom gleaned from films like "Giant", "Notorious" and "True Romance" to name only a few. The author has kindly provided a full list of films discussed at the end, most of which I've seen, a few of which I can't wait to see, one or two that I'll wait to see until my Dad comes to visit us in the UK.

Anyway, I know I'm biased, but I loved this book. It reminds me of film nights past, buying or cooking dinner and then watching a film together over a few beers. I can't wait to send my Dad a copy, if there's anything I like as much as talking about a good film, it's talking about a good book.

Review: "Bring the Jubilee" by Ward Moore

2008-07-09T23:56:00.003+02:00

One of the first books that rekindled my interest in Science Fiction as an adult was "The Man in the High Tower" by Philip K. Dick. This classic story involves a parallel world in which the allies lost World War II.

"Bring the Jubilee" was written at the end of World War II, and deals instead with a parallel world in which the South won the American Civil War (which is instead referred to as "The War of Southron Independence"). "Bring the Jubilee" does not get bogged down in the same kind of metaphysics as "The Man in the High Tower" (there is a navel-gazing point in that work in which the characters realize theirs is not the world that was meant to be). Instead, as with "Earth Abides", "Bring the Jubilee" is a work which is earnest and direct in a way that later books tend not to be. Instead of philosophy, we get details about daily life in a world in which indenture is common, and in which the remaining 26 United States are a part of the third world while the Confederacy is a center of learning and commerce.

I plan to run this one by my friends who are more up on their Civil War history and hopefully start a few good conversations. Until then, I'll hold my tongue to avoid giving anything away.

Review: "Super Crunchers" by Ian Ayres

2008-07-09T23:44:00.003+02:00

I read the bulk of the now-infamous "Freakonomics" while waiting for a friend to join me for dinner. It was a very quick read, and good food for conversation.

"Super Crunchers" comes from another mind that runs in the same circles, breaking down real-life problems into equations, struggling to explain phenomena we see in life in terms of either random chance or human action.

Where "Freakonomics" was a bit of a ramble through a few applications of regression, "Super Crunchers" clearly brings regression analysis to center stage. Like the wheel, the screw, the lever, regression analysis and other experimental methodologies are simply tools. Each of these tools was initially expensive and required specialized knowledge, but over time became ubiquitous and universally understood. "Super Crunchers" chronicles the emerging ubiquity of making decisions based on statistical analysis. It also provides hints as to the changing role of thinking individuals in a statistics based world.

A quick read, and good food for thought. Buy it for (or loan it to) someone you plan to have dinner with and have at it.

Review: "The Dispossessed" by Ursula Leguin

2008-07-09T23:17:00.003+02:00

I generally carry three to four books with me whenever I travel. On my recent trip to Paris, I had the pleasure of working my way through "The Dispossessed" by Ursula Leguin.

In many works of science fiction, time itself is the principal actor. The future provides evidence of the progress of mankind, allowing man (or the equivalent) to explore the limits of consciousness. In many works, the chief evidence of this progress comes in the form of a series of technologies. In "The Dispossessed", the chief developments are cultural and intellectual. Annares, the anarchist moon on which our main character begins the story, is rendered as fully as if it were a separate character. Citizens alternate between pursuing their individual talents (if they have any) and taking whatever work needs to be done. In a world where material goods, housing, and even partners and children are freely interchanged, peer approval is one of the only forms of riches, and peer disapproval the chief punishment.

The main character travels from this world to the neighboring (and dominant) Urras, a materialist society which includes women and servants among the things that can be possessed. The contrast between the two cultures with regards to class, gender, and intellectual achievement helps to illuminate the ideas on which both are based, and provides food for thought.

A good book, and well worth reading.

The 9th Sakai Conference, Paris, France

2008-07-09T23:04:00.002+02:00

I've just returned from the 9th Sakai conference in Paris France. As always, the conferences are a kind of a family reunion for long-time Sakai community members. It was great to catch up with the professional (and personal) life of so many institutions and individuals. There were so many great conversations, learning the nuances of existing colleagues, meeting new colleagues, all while surrounded by good food and wonderful scenery.

In spite of all the wonderful distractions Paris has to offer, it was also an incredibly productive time. An idea would be passed around in the morning and available to work with by the evening. I brought back with me a moleskin full of ideas regarding my own Config Viewer and Config Editor tools that should keep my nights and weekends busy for the next few months if not the next year.

The next full conference is planned for next Summer (possibly in Boston). I can't wait.

Review: "Earth Abides" by George R. Stewart

2008-06-27T00:17:00.004+02:00

As you may have guessed in reading previous posts, I have a particular affection for apocalyptic literature. "Earth Abides" is a great apocalyptic tale, in which hints of "The Stand" and countless later works are apparent.

The book follows a survivor of a great plague through his life as a young man until his death as a very old man. Through the course of his life, he learns to let go of the memory of the civilization that was, and to accept the civilization that has come to be among the survivors. Along the way come questions about the relationship of the individual and the state and many other observations about custom, law, superstition, and our relationship with the natural world.

This is an earnest book, without the cynicism of work like "Cat's Cradle". It tackles the material directly, and seems to be honestly considering at each point what it would be like to rebuild some vestige of society in the wake of the nearly total extinction of the human species.

At times the situations and tone of the book seem dated, but this is still a book well worth reading.

"One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

2008-06-27T00:05:00.004+02:00

My boss (and friend) John Smith loaned my a paperback copy of "One Hundred Years of Solititude". It took me longer than most books, but I gradually made my way through.

This is a great book in every sense. It is a book full of characters and imagery, full of every aspect of life; love, ambition, intellect, sex, war, death; all are explored in their turn.

The "magic realism" or "fantastic realism" of the work is one of its appeals. Confronted with the literal description of ghosts and magic carpets, a pragmatic reader like myself thinks about ghosts as a synonym for memories of the dead, and about the power of suggestion to lend credibility to the impossible.

Anyway, a fantastic book and highly recommended.

Review: "Flight" by Sherman Alexie

2008-06-03T00:27:00.002+02:00

Having just finished "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" (also by Sherman Alexie), I dove right in to "Flight" with some relish.

It was a bit uncanny, in that "Flight", like "Diary", is another coming of age story. "Zits", the main character in flight, has fallen through the cracks, has no family, no friends, and even before his sixteenth birthday is on a downward spiral towards prison or the grave, to become yet another Lee Boyd Malvo, Seung-Hui Cho, or William Morva.

His descent is miraculously halted, and somehow he is ultimately able to reach out and rejoin the world. The narrative device used (which I won't spoil) is a variation on the same type of forced reflection that transforms Scrooge, George Bailey, or Sam Beckett (the character from "Quantum Leap", not the playwright).

What I particularly like about Alexie's variation on the theme is that it allows him to construct a range of vignettes, presenting characters of different races, classes, ages (as in old or young) and ages (as in past or present). In each of these vignettes, Zits learns that although he has the potential for violence, he also still cares about the victims of violence, betrayal, abandonment.

This is a work about the power of empathy to broaden us and help us remember our involvement with the rest of the world. We may be sad and isolated, but we are all human. It's also a more adult work, steeped as it is in the violence of the modern world.

I might not recommend this to younger readers who enjoyed "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian", but I would recommend it to nearly everyone else.

"Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" by Jorge Luis Borges

2008-06-01T12:52:00.007+02:00

My good friend Antranig and I had a conversation on the train back from London the other day in which we discussed Borges. I mentioned his story "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", which was one of the few I didn't care for as a younger reader (I first read the story in my senior year of high school).

In fairness to Antranig, who quite enjoyed the story, and to the author, who is still one of my favourites, I decided to reread the story. However complex the material, a Borges story is typically amazingly concise (usually less than ten pages of even the smallest paperback). So, even with multiple rereadings, there's always time for a Borges story. One of the things I love about his stories is that they can be read and reread in a matter of moments and hold up to hours or even days of reflection. "Tlon" is no exception.

I don't want to spoil anything for anyone who intends to read the story (see the link below), so I'll just say that this story reminds me of the concept of "kipple" as presented in "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" by Philip Dick. If you haven't read either, clear your schedule and get started. Today.

The best version I've found online has a side-by-side comparison of the English translation and the original Spanish:

http://interglacial.com/~sburke/pub/Borges_-_Tlon,_Uqbar,_Orbis_Tertius.html

I won't get into the whole debate about copyright laws, but I almost get goosebumps when I find something this great that's out there online in full text for everyone to enjoy.

Enjoy.

Review: " The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian" by Sherman Alexie

2008-06-01T01:02:00.009+02:00

I've read quite a bit of Sherman Alexie's work previously. I've particularly enjoyed his short story collections, "Ten Little Indians" and "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven" are great, full of humor, pain, and wisdom.

"The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian" is a novel (with excellent illustrations) targeted at younger audiences. As with the outstanding "Summerland" by Michael Chabon, "Diary" is a coming of age story. The main character (Arnold Spirit) is a young man straddling two worlds, the Indian world of his upbringing and family life, and the white world of his new high school. He feels compelled to take advantage of the possibilities for growth his new school offers, but feels as though his success is an insult to everyone who has stayed on the reservation. His thoughts about reservation life, poverty, alcoholism and life in general are well observed and distilled down to their essence.

It's a great work, and a very quick and fun read. I'm nibbling at the edges of another of the author's works ("Flight") at the moment, expect a review shortly.

Review: "All Over but the Shoutin'" by Rick Bragg

2008-05-29T19:33:00.003+02:00

On a recent trip over from the states, my mother brought a copy of "All Over but the Shoutin'" by Rick Bragg, which I read during my recent holiday.

Rick Bragg is a journalist, a Southerner, and a storyteller. In this book, he tells his story, his family's story, and with love, respect and regret, his mother's story. Their stories are closer to my mother's generation and its experience of the old south and its poverty, but those experiences are still accessible in a quite personal way for me at a distance.

It was particularly timely to read about Bragg flying his own mother to New York to watch him receive the Pulitzer Prize while in the midst of our trip around the UK with my Mom, who had never been outside the states before.

Anyway, I loved the book and highly recommend it.

Review: "Use of Weapons" by Iain M. Banks

2008-05-29T16:35:00.003+02:00

"Use of Weapons" is another in Iain M. Banks' series of "Culture" novels. For those not familiar with the series, the Culture is an interplanetary civilization in which disease, injury, age, material want, and even war are all things of the past. Citizens live their lives almost entirely as they choose, and information and aesthetically satisfying experience are valued above almost all else.

The permanent peace is made possible because the Culture is so heavily armed that only its ideals prevent it from obtaining any goal by force. In fact, the decision makers and the vast majority of ordinary citizens are so content, well-adjusted and just plain enlightened that they must recruit individuals who are maladjusted enough to be able to enforce their ideals. These individuals work for Special Circumstances, the part of the culture that deals with first contact (as in "Player of Games") foreign relations, and espionage.

Cheradenine Zakalwe is an operative of Special Circumstances. He is an immigrant to the Culture, and comes from a world steeped in conflict. As we come to understand, he is a man of action, inclined to solve problems with force. He is also intelligent enough to be a master tactician and (critically) needs ultimately to believe that he is a force for good in the world.

"Use of Weapons" reminds me of "All My Sins Remembered" by Joe Haldeman, in which a man is conditioned to be a deadly operative against his deeper ideals as a Buddhist. In both works, the larger conflict is for the main character to come to grips with his own identity.

Both "Use of Weapons" and the larger "Culture" series (particularly the original "State of the Art" novella) are highly recommended.

Review: "The Man with a Shattered World" by A. R. Luria

2008-05-11T21:00:00.003+02:00

Although I read little non fiction in general, one exception has been the work of Oliver Sacks, whose writing I enjoy, and whose topics are almost always entertaining and engaging. I picked up "The Man with a Shattered World" largely because Sacks wrote the introduction, and because it sounded as though it would be a nice companion to "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" and other works already in my library.

I was not disappointed. "The Man with a Shattered World" is one of two biographies published at the end of A. R. Luria's distinguished career as a neuropsychologist. The book tells the story of Zazetsky, a soldier in the Second World War whose brain injury instantly transformed him from a bright young man on the verge of finishing his engineering degree to an illiterate unable to perform any meaningful work or even hold a simple conversation.

Zazetsky discovered that he was still able to write by rote (although reading even his own writing was a tortuous process), and was able to chronicle his injury and its effects. Although he never recovered as fully as he hoped, Zazetsky struggled to improve himself in what ways he could and did make some small progress. Given that he initially could not even recognize the Cyrillic alphabet and at his best could barely read more than two words at a time, the fact that he was able to write over 3,000 pages of journal entries over the course of 30 years is as inspiring as the moon landing.

Between the numerous journal entries, Luria intersperses observations, brain science, and other narrative details. He provides the structure that Zazetsky himself could not, but with a light hand, so that the journal entries themselves shine through. This combination of subjective detail (from Zazetsky) and objective detail (from Luria) is what makes the book so enjoyable and comprehensible.

A very good read, both informative and inspiring. I look forward to picking up a copy of the other biography ("The Mnemonist") at some point in my travels.

Review: "A Separate War & Other Stories" by Joe Haldeman

2008-05-11T20:46:00.003+02:00

After reading through the omnibus edition of "Forever War", "Forever Free" and "Forever Peace", I picked up a copy of "A Separate War & Other Stories" based on a friend's recommendation. The collection is short, but good. "A Separate War" is a parallel narrative to the last section of "Forever War", in which we follow Marygay Potter's last campaign in the Forever War.

Recent works like the "Ender's Shadow" series by Orson Scott Card have tread this territory, mining the author's most famous work and constructing a parallel narrative. Where even the best of the "Ender's Shadow" series seemed a bit convoluted, "A Separate War" flows naturally and is a fine companion piece to the larger work.

The rest of the collection is quite enjoyable, particularly the paired stories "Out of Phase" and "Power Complex". What really makes the collection especially enjoyable are the author's introduction and notes. Haldeman teaches writing, and shares his insights about the craft of writing in a natural way that's a refreshing accompaniment to the stories themselves, kind of like a good director's commentary on a DVD.

Well worth picking up and a very quick read.

Review: "Raw Spirit" by Iain Banks...

2008-05-04T16:39:00.003+02:00

I don't usually read non-fiction for pleasure, but "Raw Spirit" is not only one of my favorite non-fiction books, but one of the best books I've read in a long time, period.

The book is as much an autobiography as anything else, as in the process of exploring all things whiskey, Banks shares little gems about so many other topics. The book is littered with observations about Scotland, driving, Science Fiction, and the start of the war we still find ourselves dealing with over five years later. Think of it as a whiskey-themed stream of consciousness with notes of politics and storytelling. Scotland itself is the most important component, just as the water that feeds a distillery determines the character of the whiskey produced.

I look forward to reading more from Banks very soon. I borrowed "Raw Spirit" from the Stornoway library, so I also look forward to picking up my own copy of this book, as I expect it will be a well-thumbed reference as we explore Scotland in the next few years.

First Long Run of the Year...

2008-04-27T17:55:00.004+02:00

I went for my first long run of the year, you can see the route below. It was clear and sunny and warm for this time of year. The wind was a bit strong, it kept blowing my earphones out of my ears. I saw five ships anchored off the coast, which was unusual and kept things interesting as I tried to figure out what kinds of ships they were, etc. A lovely day and a good run, hopefully the first of many for the season.

Keith Street to Arnish
Find more Runs in Stornoway, United Kingdom

Review: "Forever Peace" by Joe Haldeman

2008-04-22T00:06:00.003+02:00

I picked up an omnibus edition of "Forever War", "Forever Free" and "Forever Peace" a few days ago. I had read the first two a while back, and they remain among my favorites, so much so that I can't leave them lying around or I'll reread whole sections every time I walk past them.

I had high hopes for "Forever Peace", which is not a bad book by any means, but is perhaps a bit more ordinary than the excellent "Forever War" or the engaging "Forever Free". Both "Forever Peace" and "Forever Free" were written in the late nineties, around 25 years after "Forever War". "Forever Free" is less of a departure, as it expands on the technologies and situations of "Forever War", with a bit more philosophy and a bit less technology. "Forever Peace" seems less connected, there is in fact almost nothing to suggest that the story takes place in the same world as the other two novels.

It starts reasonably enough, with the life of Julian Class, a part-time soldierboy operator who joins with his platoon to form a kind of collective consciousness for ten days out of each month. During the other twenty-odd days, Class is a researcher and lecturer in physics. Both aspects of his life are introduced and fleshed out well. The work begins to falter when it the main dynamic of the second half of the work is unveiled. We are meant to believe that the immediate choice facing humanity is either utter and immediate self-destruction or utter and more or less immediate pacification. It's the forced juxtaposition that hurts the work.

This is not to say that parts of the work aren't genuinely enjoyable. Haldeman teases aspects out of "jacking" that other authors dealing with similar material haven't picked up. Most notable is his idea the that the prolonged joining of minds through technology leads to greater sympathy of joined individuals for the whole of humankind.

At any rate, it's a fairly short read and enjoyable enough if you're willing to invest the time.

Review: "Cities in Flight" by James Blish

2008-04-19T11:44:00.006+02:00

"Cities in Flight" is a remarkable and epic four-volume cycle of novels that follow space-faring humans from their first tentative rocket-powered journeys to the planets of our own solar system to the end of the universe itself.

The first volume introduces us to a near future which is about to be revolutionized by two key discoveries that will enable man to venture out into space en masse. The second volume follows one young man suddenly thrust into the "Okie" culture in which entire cities fly from planet to planet looking for work and raw materials (those of you who have read "Execution Channel" by Ken MacLeod may find this concept familiar). The third volume follows the decline of the civilization in which the "Okie" cities operate. The fourth volume continues beyond the decline of civilization to the end of time itself.

What's impressive is the way in which Blish manages to project his ideas about the life cycle of cultures and civilizations while still making it clear that cultures and civilizations are always composed of living, breathing individuals. In the first volume, there are three key characters who give us a vantage point to understand the declining western culture and the two key scientific discoveries that make possible the birth of the new culture of space pioneers. In the second volume, we follow a young man who is swept up ("press-ganged") into an "Okie" city, and through him we learn about the emerging "Okie" culture. Towards the end of the second volume, we are introduced to John Amalfi, the mayor of the space-faring city of New York, New York, who is the main character of the third and fourth volumes.

The omnibus edition I read includes an afterword that ties the timeline of the volumes to historical civilizations and compares them to the "Okie" civilization. Even without the afterword, this is a well-crafted exploration of culture and civilization with heavy references to our own Earth-bound history, and stands the test of time incredibly well. Well worth a read.

Review: "The Rediscovery of Man" by Cortwainer Smith

2008-04-13T12:30:00.005+02:00

"The Rediscovery of Man" is a collection of short stories (all set in the same universe at different time periods) by Cortwainer Smith. This universe is largely ordered by the Instrumentality, a governing body spanning centuries and controlling in fine detail the lives of almost every living human.

Like Huxley before him, Smith imagines a world in which genetics and behavioral conditioning sanitize life to the point where individual achievement is nearly meaningless. Smith's Instrumentality extends the control of science over nature somewhat further than Huxley, to the point where everyone is allocated 400 years of life (instead of the roughly 80 years of youth the denizens of Huxley's "Brave New World" lived). They live without fear of disease, weather, aging, hunger or the lack of material goods. Access to history is tightly controlled, and all divisions of language and culture have been more or less erased. At the height of the Instrumentality, the only human individuals not perfectly adjusted to the needs of their society and their own ability to fulfill those needs are extreme aberrations (and extremely rare).

The title "The Rediscovery of Man" refers to the reemergence of chance and diversity as means of allowing the human race continued growth. This relaxation of some of the controls on their society arises in no small part from the study of undermen, animals modified to resemble, interact with, and serve humans. Early in the timeline of the Instrumentality, undermen are slaves, less than human, destroyed when they fail or become inconvenient. They are utterly disposable labor, and only those who are strong, witty, and lucky survive. Thus it is that the various species of underpeople grow while the human race in its perfect control over heredity and environment stagnates.

The reemergence of human progress and the rise of the underpeople are two of the major themes. Minor themes include telepathy, the mob mentality and the progress of societies and technologies over millenia. Like Tolkien's Middle Earth, you get the sense that Smith had a full vision of this universe stretching over millenia, and that each story was just a window into a fully-realized world.

This is a great collection of stories, well worth reading and rereading. I look forward to reading the small collection of additional fiction works by the author.

Review: "Jem" by Frederick Pohl

2008-04-01T00:03:00.002+02:00

I just finished another in the excellent SF Masterworks series, "Jem" by Frederick Pohl. I had previously read all four books (are there more now?) in Pohl's Heechee saga (although I enjoyed the later ones in the kind of way you enjoy the fifth series of a television show, more because you enjoy the characters and less because of the novelty or originality).

Anyway, back to "Jem". "Jem" is a well-crafted story of space colonization from the ground floor up. The three main political blocs on Earth (countries which export fuel, countries which export food, and countries which export labor) each hope to exploit a newly discovered world to give them an advantage over their rivals. They each ally themselves with one of the three sentient races on the new world, and very nearly complete the cycle of arms race and then mutually assured destruction on two worlds.

A good book, a quick read, with some nice characters and excellent descriptions of the culture of the alien races. Highly recommended.

Recipe: Marmite Tofu

2008-03-27T10:30:00.004+01:00

Currently I can only buy small quantities of silken tofu on the island where I live, so I've been learning to make my own extra firm tofu. For my third batch, I tried an idea I'd been mulling over, and made Marmite tofu. Obviously this is only for the rare enlightened individual who loves both tofu and Marmite, all others should stick to less adventurous fare...

Although you can make your own soy milk, I usually start with a generic store brand that contains as few additional ingredients as possible (some use apple juice or other sweeteners, which is a no-no for good tofu). The only other thing you need is a coagulant, epsom salt works if you don't have any nigari (available online). Anyway, here are the steps I used:

Start heating one container (one liter) of soy milk in a pan.

While the soy milk is coming to temperature, put 2-3 tablespoons of warm soy milk in a ramekin or small bowl and dissolve 1 tablespoon marmite per liter of soy milk.

Stir the dissolved marmite into the rest of the soy milk.

When the mixture reaches about 180 degrees Fahrenheit or about 75 degrees Celsius, take it off the heat.

Introduce the coagulant (nigari or epsom salt) and let the soy milk sit covered for 10-15 minutes

While the soy milk is cooling, prepare the strainer that will remove the excess water from the curds. I use a small tofu press, but you can also line a sieve or steamer insert with cheese cloth.

Pour the curdled soy milk slowly into the strainer or tofu press.

When all the curds have been added, fold the cheesecloth over the top of the curds.

If you're using a tofu press, you should have a lid that goes over the top of the wrapped curds. If you're using a sieve or steamer insert, you'll have to improvise something using a plate or pan or anything that's slightly smaller than the strainer.

If you want anything beyond soft tofu, you'll need to apply weight to the lid, a pot full of water should be adequate.

Let the water press out of the tofu in proportion to how firm you like it. For extra firm tofu, leave 15-20 pounds on top of the curds for an hour. For softer tofu, use smaller weight and/or decrease the time.

When the tofu is at the desired firmness, you can use it immediately or store in water for up to seven days before using.

My recipe is based on my own experience, the instructions for my tofu press, and on a few other recipes I've read online:

Bryana Clark Grogan's recipe

The recipe from the "Just Hungry" blog

Review: "Behold the Man" by Michael Moorcock

2008-03-26T23:56:00.000+01:00

Although Michael Moorcock is so prolific that I can't claim to have read even a tenth of his work, the works I've read have been those dealing with time travel ("The Dancers at the End of Time" series) and alternate realities (The "Oswald Bastable" series). "Behold the Man" is a time travel story, to be sure, but it transcends that conceit to become a fractured reflection on the nature of belief and on the history of Christianity.

Karl Glogauer is a complex and deeply troubled former psychology student with a strong interest in both Jung and Christianity. Glogauer has been degraded by the world and yet is still a brilliant and independent thinker. He is full of self-loathing, so much so that his self shifts almost completely (and at times uncontrollably) to please those around him. He is obsessed with Christianity intellectually, emotionally, and even sexually.

At a point of crisis in his personal life, he is given the opportunity to go back in time. He wants to witness the crucifixion, to see just how much of the New Testament is history and how much is myth (in other words, how much of the New Testament is scripture, truth that comes from God and how much is doctrine, the imperfect interpretation imposed by man). Instead of simply observing and having his questions answered, Glogauer finds that history is not as recorded in the Bible. Ultimately, he decides to correct the discrepancies, to build up the myth of Christ by taking on the role himself.

On the surface, the plot reminded me of the excellent (but very different) "Past Watch" by Orson Scott Card, in which time travelers correct the brutality that followed Columbus' discovery of the new world. "Past Watch" was an intellectual work, a reimagining of society. However well rendered, the characters of history were ultimately pawns to be repositioned to change the outcome of the game.

"Behold the Man" is about belief instead. Robbed of comfort of the supposed historical truth of the Bible, Glogauer sets out to ensure that future Christians will not have to face a similar dilemma. Far from being a selfless martyr, he does this in part because his own obsessions require him to do so. Sacrificing himself for the world becomes on some level a selfish act, one of the many astonishing contradictions in his character.

This is a brilliant and outstandingly complex book, but perhaps not for everyone. Numerous and compound blasphemies and heresies fill the work. The last paragraphs are reminiscent of the Jefferson Bible (which removed all references to Christ's miracles), and are a final narrative rebuttal of the story of the Gospels.

This book will probably only appeal to the type of reader who can see the brilliance (and perhaps even humor) of a story like Three Versions of Judas by Jorge Luis Borges, in which a theologian convinces himself through tortured logic that Christ was in fact Judas. I would love to hear from anyone else who has also read the book, as there is much to discuss.

Review: "The Fifth Head of Cerberus" by Gene Wolf

2008-03-25T18:48:00.000+01:00

I bought a half dozen or so books in the SF Masterworks series the other day, and am about half way through the set now that I have a little time off. I just finished "The Fifth Head of Cerberus" by Gene Wolf.

The book is composed of three long stories involving the same pair of planets, which were colonized by Earth men, but which may or may not still be inhabited by their aboriginal people, who can change shape, and who may in fact be perfectly emulating and entirely replacing Earth men.

The third story in particular is an amazing narrative, cutting back and forth in time, seamlessly moving between diaries, third person narration, and transcripts of dialogues. The narrator of the third story sits in prison, and (shades of Kafka), his captors refuse to even tell him what he is accused of, because telling him would be a kind of admission that he might not already know what he had done, that he might actually be innocent. The dialogue is wonderfully executed, the interrogations remind me of the verbal thrust and parry of "Eternal Curse on the Reader of these Pages".

I suspect I'll need to reread the work at least once to start making sense of some of the subtleties. It's a brilliant and challenging work, and is highly recommended.

Review: "Non-stop" by Brian Aldiss

2008-03-23T00:14:00.000+01:00

"Non-stop" is a classic of science fiction, and stands the test of time amazingly well. Like "Learning the World" by Ken MacLeod, "Non-stop" deals with a massive ship (and self-sustaining ecosystem) traveling between stars over the course of generations. Unlike "Learning the World", the society of the ship that is the focus of "Non-stop" has broken down in a fundamental way, devolving in some ways, evolving in others.

One thing that makes this book remarkable is how wonderfully constructed the narrative is. The origins of society and of the inhabitants themselves are revealed in a way that keeps the reader engrossed. The plot twists, and there are many, all emerge naturally, and hold up to close scrutiny when rereading the book. None of the twists or revelations seem cheap or contrived, which is refreshing if you've seen one too many Hollywood blockbusters or episodic TV series (I love "Heroes" and all, but seriously, the strain of having to come up with the next plot twist that fits the prior narrative must be just exhausting).

Another thing that amazed me when leafing back through the book was just how short each seminal section of the book turned out to be. The major revelations seldom take more than a few paragraphs. It's as thought the economy of a brilliant short story author (Borges, for example) were turned towards creating a novel as a series of linear vignettes. I'd imagine the work would have worked well serialized, and I'm sure it also will fit the attention span of the traveling reader as well.

At any rate, the book is a quick read (and reread), and is highly recommended. I look forward to picking up Aldiss's history of Science Fiction as well as further of his fiction works in the future.

Review: "Babel-17" by Samuel R. Delany

2008-03-20T15:49:00.000+01:00

Although "Babel-17" is set in a future with starships, reanimated consciousnesses, extreme body modifications, advanced weapons, and interstellar conflict with alien cultures, it is not so much a story about any of these things as it is a story about language and understanding.

Rydra Wong, the main character, is a genius at understanding spoken languages. She can also read attitudes and at times entire trains of thought from body language. She is enlisted to decipher a new language (Babel-17), and her journey to understand the language and the mindset it implies takes her far in both space and understanding.

It's a short book, and has a nice focus to it. Delany gives a lot of detail about the characters and their communication to give the book a nice depth, but goes light enough on the details about the technology and environments that the reader's imagination can fill in the details. With very few exceptions, the low level of tecnnical detail helps avoid dating the book, which stands the test of time quite well.

Very enjoyable and a quick read, highly recommended.

Review: "The Burning City" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

2008-03-13T22:43:00.001+01:00

I just finished the epic "Burning City" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. I don't tend to read much fantasy, but it was a pleasant enough diversion. What strikes me after reading "Oath of Fealty", "Lucifer's Hammer" and "Burning City" is just how much of Niven and Pournelle's work is centered around California and Particularly Los Angeles. I wish I'd read more of their work when I lived there.

"Burning City" offers a nice take on the fantasy genre. There's magic, to be sure, but interpersonal dynamics, class struggle, and the love of storytelling are just as much a part of the world they describe. Its also a nice take on the epic story. "Burning City" does not take its hero's greatness for granted. We see the hero come from his early childhood through to middle age, and grow to new kinds of greatness all along the way. Although we clearly see the main character grow into adulthood, the book does not follow the formula of so many "rite of passage" novels, taking the hero through a great test that leads them to adulthood only to summarize the remainder of their life in a single chapter (ala Harry Potter, "His Dark Materials", "Middle Passage", shall I go on?).

The tone of the story and the careful avoidance of more graphic content remind me somewhat of Michael Chabon's excellent "Summerland". Where "Summerland" is a sprawling (but somewhat shallower) pastiche of legends from North America, "Burning City" is a narrower cross section of just a few recognizable elements explored in more depth. Both novels are about learning to make one's way in the world, and just as in life, each character has his own solution. On balance, I like the darker tone of "Summerland" and the outstanding ending a tad better.

This isn't to say that "Burning City" is a bad book, in fact quite the opposite. The authors are obviously skilled enough to succeed in venturing outside of their primary genre. I don't know that I'll read any more fantasy for a while, but it was a nice change of pace and I plan to read their remaining collaborative works when I get a chance.

Here's a challenge for anyone who likes Fantasy more than Science Fiction: try this book, then cross over and try "The Mote in God's Eye" to see how you like it...

Review: "Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang" by Kate WIlhelm

2008-03-08T20:14:00.000+01:00

I'm continuing to work my way through the Gollancz SF Masterworks series, which is just chock full of great stuff. I found a reasonably complete list of the scheduled and published works, it looks like I've read almost exactly half of the works on the list thus far. Many of the books on the list have been favorites for years, some I'm finding through this series. The latest that I've finished is "Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang" by Kate Wilhelm.

The novel is about cloning, but more importantly, it's a well-crafted exploration of the tensions between the individual and society, and what it means to be an individual at all.

The story begins in a community made up of close-knit but extended family living in rural Virginia. Even the closest knit family would and does seem chaotic when compared to the clone society that arises through the course of the story, in which a clone is born part of a community and never quite comes to realize their own individuality or even see themselves as anything other than a part of a seamless whole. The clones exist only in relation to the rest of their pack. Rarely, individual personalities do arise, and it is by comparison with these individuals that the ultimate flaws in a perfectly communal society are highlighted. There is no value in being different, and so there is no innovation, no improvisation, no creativity.

The territory has been explored somewhat with the two clone species in "Forever War" and "Forever Free", the clones in "Appleseed", and many other works, but never in quite so loving a way. It's a great book with the same type of crossover appeal that "Gattaca" had when dealing with similar themes a few years ago, and is strongly recommended.

Review: "Lucifer's Hammer" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

2008-03-04T23:06:00.000+01:00

After enjoying "Oath of Fealty" recently, I went ahead and worked my way through "Lucifer's Hammer". The book is an epic and apocalyptic work that manages to establish a whole raft of key characters going about their normal lives, and then follow them as they make their way through the remains of modern society.

I've read quite a few postapocalyptic works, "Farnham's Freehold" by Robert Heinlein is a recent example. "Cat's Cradle" and "Galapagos" are excellent examples from the works of Kurt Vonnegut.

["The Stand" is also a close cousin of "Lucifer's Hammer", and apparently came out at roughly the same time, something I hadn't realized when writing the original post.]

Where "Farnham's Freehold" deals with the end of our society in a more abstract way (looking back through the distance of centuries), "Lucifer's Hammer" is a more intimate apocalypse, in which we are made well aware of just how much humanity is in the process of losing, and how much farther they can fall.

Where "Galapagos" and "Cat's Cradle" are farcical and (especially with "Cat's Cradle") philosophical, "Hammer" is a more serious exploration of how modern values could immediately become a lot less modern and a lot more pragmatic and/or savage in the wake of a global disaster.

I was trying to convince my friend Antranig to pick up the graphic novel "Watchmen" the other day, that's a good example of a work in which one phase of the world ends and another begins. "Hammer" is another work in which our society ends, and another society comes into being, similar to what we have now, but with newfound focus and a lot of the trivia of our materialistic society stripped away.

If the book lacks anything, it's perhaps the sadness and nostalgia in works like Ballard's "The Drowned World" or the films "On the Beach" or "The Quiet Earth". The survivor's of Hammerfall (as they call it) are pragmatic, resigned to the new reality, determined to hold on to whatever meager life they can preserve for themselves.

It's a great work, very thought provoking, well worth a read, particularly if you enjoy apocalyptic novels.