All reviews copyright 1984-2012 Evelyn C. Leeper.
FEAR AND TREMBLING by Søren Kierkegaard:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/04/2011]
I am doing the reading for a University of California at Berkeley called "Existentialism in Literature and Film" (taught on podcasts by Professor Hubert Dreyfus). One problem is that so far as I can remember, he never defines existentialism--nor does anyone else. Even Wikipedia is not very useful.
[Can anyone out there take a stab at it? -mrl]
The first book in the syllabus was FEAR AND TREMBLING by Soren Kierkegaard (ISBN 978-0-140-44449-0). Originally written in Danish, it apparently has no good translation, probably because even in Danish it is difficult to follow. (Example: according to Dreyfus, there is only one word in Danish for "particular" and "individual", which have different meanings in English. Translators have apparently been choosing one or the other English word at random.) So I spent a lot of time slogging through what-- without benefit of clear definition--he calls "knights of resignation" and "knights of faith" and it wasn't until lecture eight that things started to make sense. Kierkegaard talks about Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac, and this somehow connects with existentialism. Dreyfus finally got around to explaining this in plain(er) English as that Abraham is driven to do something that he knows is wrong, but knows he must do it anyway. It is inexplicable, and we are not to attribute this to insanity on Abraham's part, nor to some higher ethic.
For example, Dreyfus contrasts Abraham's decision with Agamemnon's decision to sacrifice Iphigenia. The latter *is* explicable--the higher ethic of Agamemnon doing what he must as a king overrides the ethic of doing what he wishes as a father. Another example Dreyfus gave (suggested by a listener to earlier podcasts) is that of Huck in THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN when he decides not to turn Jim in. Huck is not claiming a higher ethic; indeed, he says:
So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write the letter--and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:Miss Watson, your runaway n****r Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send. Huck Finn.I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking--thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and suchlike times; and would always call me honey, and pet me, and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he's got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.
It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:
"All right, then, I'll go to hell"--and tore it up.
Unfortunately, most of Dreyfus's examples in the course (other than Abraham, who was Kierkegaard's original example) were people whose motivations we would now see as of a higher ethic than what they turned their back on. We see Huck's decision as the more ethical of his choices (turn Jim in or not) because we have come to believe that slavery is bad, slaves are people, etc. But Kierkegaard is attempting to justify the decision even if there is no higher ethic. He does not give God's will as a higher ethic for Abraham-- he just says that Abraham knew he had to sacrifice Isaac, and as a result, he got to keep Isaac. (This decision is called "suspending the ethical" based on some sort of "unconditional commitment.")
If existentialism leads to claims like this, I'm not surprised that no one can explain it.
To order Fear and Trembling from amazon.com, click here.
11/22/63 by Stephen King:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/16/2012]
11/22/63 by Stephen King (ISBN (978-1-4516-2728-2) is an 842-page time-travel alternate history novel. It is *not* the first book of a trilogy. I only mention that because so many alternate histories are these days. And if you are looking for this outside the United States, it is still called "11/22/63", even though by rights it should be "22/11/63".
King spends the first hundred pages setting up the premise and giving you all the rules. Basically, there is a time portal in Al's Fatburger Diner that goes back to 11:58 AM, September 9, 1958. Every time you go through it everything resets ("Every trip is the first trip"), and when you return it is always two minutes after you left, no matter how long you spent in the past. You can bring items forward with you into the present. And this is where there is at least one big plot hole.
How does Al manage to sell his burgers as cheap as he does? Well, he goes back every few days or so and buys ten pounds of ground chuck from Mr. Warren the butcher at fifty-four cents a pound. He agrees that this sounds a little like the loaves and fishes, since he is always buying the same ten pounds of meat, but waves that off with a sort of "it's a mystery, my son" attitude.
But here's the problem. Before Al ever goes back, the newspapers from 1959 that he looks at in the present show that Carolyn Poulin is shot and paralyzed in a hunting accident. On day N, Al goes back and saves Carolyn, so the newspapers from 1959 that he looks at when he returns to the present have no record of the accident. On day N+1, he goes back again--thereby resetting everything ("Every trip is the first trip")--and does not save her, and voila! the newspapers from 1959 that he looks at in the present again show that Carolyn is shot in a hunting accident.
So assume that on January 2, 2005, he goes back, buys ten pounds of meat, brings it forward, and serves it from January 2 through January 5. Then on January 6, he goes back again to buy more meat, but ... bingo! everything resets and the meat that was served in his diner from January 2 through January 6 was never there. In fact, everything he has brought forward (cash, identification, etc.,) should vanish each time he makes the next trip. (As presumably should his memories, but one can argue that they are of a different substance than material objects.)
King does eventually attempt to explain his way out of this. But the problem is two-fold: First, why doesn't the paradox occur to Al in all the time he has had to think about it? As I noted, he does mention it, but then basically ignores it as trivial. It is not-- it is crucial. And second, the explanation eventually given seems as though it had been designed for the novel, rather than the way things might actually work in the real world--albeit a "real world" with time travel.
From a structural point of view, it appears that King presumes a "base time line", called Timeline A, which is what would happen if no time travelers interfere with events. The arrival point in 1958 is a universe with a certain state, call it X. Left alone, it will develop in a manner determined by state X. When a traveler goes back to 1958 and does something, he changes the state and creates a branch, Timeline B, at that point, and when he "returns" to the present, he goes to the present on that branch. But if he returns to 1958 again, it is the point at which the universe is in state X and Timeline B has disappeared (or rather not formed yet). He can create a new branch, Timeline C, but he cannot go down Timeline B again.
The reset feature here seems very similar to that of GROUNDHOG DAY, except that King has decided to allow his "time looper" to carry back items from previous trips. (Even in GROUNDHOG DAY, though, Bill Murray can bring back his memories.)
I have said that 11/22/63 is an 842-page time-travel alternate history novel. But more precisely, it is a 700-page time travel novel, and 142-page alternate history novel (and a not very good one), so if you're looking for alternate history per se, this may not be what you want.
To order 11/22/63 from amazon.com, click here.
"Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" by Stephen King:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/24/2006]
"Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" by Stephen King (in DIFFERENT SEASONS, ISBN 0-451-16753-8) is another story eclipsed by its film adaptation (THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION). The film is very good, but it did make a lot of changes from the story. SPOILERS AHEAD: For example, the film tightened up a plot hole about one of the characters, added a revenge plot, and put Morgan Freeman in the role of the Irish narrator. (Before someone asks, yes, I've heard of the "Black Irish" but this is not what is meant.) Interestingly, another novella in this collection, "The Body" was also made into a respected film (STAND BY ME).
To order Different Seasons from amazon.com, click here.
PSYCHOHISTORICAL CRISIS by Donald Kingsbury:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/01/2008]
When asked in what order people should read the "Foundation" series (since some later novels were prequels), the response is often, "Read the Trilogy. Then stop." I would modify that to, "Read the Trilogy. Then read PSYCHOHISTORICAL CRISIS by Donald Kingsbury." [ISBN-13 978-0-765-34195-2, ISBN-10 0-765-34195-6] Kingsbury takes the whole premise of the "Foundation" series-- psychohistory--and shows it as a stultifying tyranny. (He was not the first; Patrouch saw psychohistory, or at least Seldon's implementation of it, as leading to just this end.)
In writing a pastiche, Kingsbury has picked up on a lot of different Asimovian touches. His character names all sound like those used by Asimov in the "Foundation" series (Eron Osa, Jars Hanis, Hahukum Konn). And his historical timeline has obvious references (the Nacreome Revolt is the Anacreon Revolt, Faraway is Terminus, Lakgan is Kalgan, and Cloun-the-Stubborn is Magnifico the Mule). He has a humorous take-off on the Three Laws of Robotics ("Robot's Ritual Rundown"), and the Heart's Well Antiquarian Bookstore (Kingsbury's editor at Tor was David Hartwell).
And these are only some of the obvious ones. How about "Ojaisun- the-Adroit, ... prior to his execution for depraved malthanatostomy"? (If I tell you that "malthan" is Russian (derogatory) slang for a black man, does that help?) This is a book that cries out for annotations.
There do seem to be some inconsistencies. On the one hand, people know about Homo erectus from Java, and Catholics and the Bible, and the caves of Lascaux; on the other, there are references to "Alfred the White Head of the North" and to "Neel Halmstrun" as the first man to walk on another planet. (The explanation that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, and the first man to walk on Mars may be named Neel Halmstrun is too far- fetched to accept.)
And while Asimov uses words like "ci-divant", Kingsbury occasionally throws in a word like "cockamamie" or "kvetch".
And there is far too much about the history of measurement. This is ironic, because on page 403, one character tells another, "The brilliance of the Founder was his ability to strip away irrelevant detail. ... Here's one that you are reluctant to edit because it is very insightful; it will tell you how trading organizations form and evolve but at the same time will tell you more than you need to know to follow the evolution of length-and- weight standards. I love it, but you have to take it out. Nothing bloats a psychohistorical prediction to unmanageable size more than the cute variable that has a minor role to play." 'Nuff said.
(Another response to Asimov's "Foundation" series was Michael Flynn's IN THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND, which I reviewed in 01/03/92 issue of the MT VOID). Both PSYCHOHISTORICAL CRISIS and IN THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND won the Libertarian "Prometheus Award" for science fiction.)
To order Psychohistorical Crisis from amazon.com, click here.
KIM
by Rudyard Kipling:
IS HEATHCLIFF A MURDERER
by John Sutherland:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/23/2007]
KIM by Rudyard Kipling (ISBN-10 0-140-18352-3, ISBN-13 978-0-140-18352-8) was this month's discussion book. It seems to be catalogued at the library as a juvenile book, but I think that it would be a rare juvenile today who could read Kipling's elaborate prose interlaced with Hindi, Arabic, and other languages. (amazon.com says "age 9-12".)
John Sutherland is a professor of literature who writes short pieces on "puzzlements" in literature. For example, can Jane Eyre be happy? Henry V, war criminal? Is Heathcliff a murderer? Where was Rebecca shot? Who betrays Elizabeth Bennett? (Indeed, these are the titles of the various collections of his essays.) And one of his essays in IS HEATHCLIFF A MURDERER? (ISBN-10 0-192-83468-1, ISBN-13 978-0-192-83468-3) is "How Old Is Kim?" The only problem is that it is pretty clear how old Kim is, and even Sutherland basically admits this. At the beginning, Kim is thirteen; at the end, seventeen. The confusion Sutherland addresses is more that Kipling has Kim a specific age, and then ignores that whenever he feels like it. In specific, Kim's behavior at the start of the novel is too childish for a thirteen-year-old, particularly one who has been living on his own in India for years.
And in one of those instances of synchronicity that are becoming more and more common ("Year of the Jackpot", anyone?), the day before the meeting, Fred Lerner's fanzine LOFGEORNOST arrived in the mail. (This was actually doubly synchronicitous, because we had just watched BEOWULF & GRENDEL two days ago.) And the lead article was "The Tragedy of Rudyard Kipling", which Lerner sums up as "Rudyard Kipling came to discard the liberal sentiments that informed his youthful vision of empire. He became a reactionary and a racist an a vicious antisemite...." Lerner notes that the Kipling who wrote KIM was someone who appreciated the diversity of India, and respects the many cultures. But at some point, Kipling became a misanthrope, hating just about every group. Luckily, we are able to read his earlier work in all its glory without his later personality intruding.
However, while I enjoyed KIM, the rest of the group gave it a "thumbs-down": language too convoluted, too much use of words in the vernacular, and so on. People were unhappy with the use of non-English words which were not translated, but also with non- English words which were used (and translated) once, then never used again.
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/23/2012]
I recently re-read KIM by Rudyard Kipling (no ISBN) based on reading someone's description of it as "comfort reading" that they return to regularly. I am not giving a current ISBN for this because my comments are more about the physical book than the text. I bought this book in the bookshop Uffa's Dike in Ludlow, Shropshire, England in 2000 while I was there on a business trip. It was published by Macmillan and Co., Ltd., in 1927, and is bound in blue leather, with onion-skin pages, interior illustrations by J. Lockwood Kipling, and gold trimming on the spine and cover incorporating an elephant and several Indian swastikas. It is a joy to hold and read, and cost only two and a half pounds. Take that, Kindle!
(We had another copy of KIM--an Airmont Classic whose glue was giving out, so the cover was starting to detach, and the pages were not that firmly attached either. That edition was not a joy to hold.)
To order Kim from amazon.com, click here.
To order Is Heathcliff a Murderer? from amazon.com, click here.
KIPLING'S POCKET HISTORY OF ENGLAND by C. R. L. Fletcher & Rudyard Kipling:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/10/2003]
C. R. L. Fletcher & Rudyard Kipling's KIPLING'S POCKET HISTORY OF ENGLAND is an odd duck. The preface by the authors says, "This book is written for all boys and girls who are interested in Great Britain and her Empire," and it is clearly intended for a young audience. The writing is straightforward, the vocabulary relatively limited (compared to most histories), and facts are somewhat cleaned up. All gruesome details are omitted and anything that England or Britain did that might have been considered negative was either toned down or left out entirely. (For example, Edward I's expulsion of the Jews is omitted, and the only mention of Jews is how they were finally given the vote in 1853.)
And the prose is interspersed by poems about the various events, undoubtedly Kipling's contribution. One verse from "The Reeds of Runnymede" goes:
At Runnymede, at Runnymede,
Oh hear the reeds at Runnymede:
"You mustn't sell, delay, deny,
A freedman's right or liberty,
It wakes the stubborn Englishry,
We saw 'em roused at Runnymede!
But if the whole is somewhat sanitized, the last chapter's discussion of the Empire can only be called at best raging jingoism, and at worst outright racism. For example, they say, "In Canada we had really little difficulty in making good friends with our new French subjects, for they hated and feared the pushing Americans.... In Australia, we had nothing but a few miserable blacks, who could hardly use bows and arrows in fight." Referring to Africa, they say, "The natives everywhere welcome the mercy and justice of our rule...." And most egregious is their description of the Caribbean: "The population is mainly black, descended from slaves imported in previous centuries, of mixed black and white race; lazy, vicious and incapable of any serious improvement, or of work except under compulsion. In such a climate a few bananas will sustain the life of a negro quite sufficiently; why should he work to get more that this? He is quite happy and quite useless, and spends any extra wages which he may earn upon finery."
Well, what can I say? Clearly this history isn't suitable for children these days, and not useful as a history for anyone else. But as an example of cultural attitudes of its time (1911), it perhaps has something to say to us.
To order Kipling's Pocket History of England from amazon.com, click here.
LIVERPOOL FANTASY by Larry Kirwan:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/19/2004]
A standard alternate history is Larry Kirwan's LIVERPOOL FANTASY, in which the Beatles broke up in 1962 and went their separate ways and the National Front is now in control of Britain. If I cared more about the Beatles, I might have enjoyed it more. (I think part of it depended on recognizing the names of the Beatles' various girlfriends, offspring, and so on.) It has been well received by others more knowledgeable about the whole "Fab Four" scene than I am.
To order Liverpool Fantasy from amazon.com, click here.
"Five Guys Named Moe" by Sam Klein:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/12/2005]
Sean Klein, "Five Guys Named Moe" (scifi.com, Feb 23): A band consisting of five guys each named Moe is sent on a secret mission to Cuba by President Joseph McCarthy. I started it several times and eventually managed to finish it, but it never "worked" for me. (Obviously others disagreed, or it would not have made the short list.)
THE NEW ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES by Arthur Conan Doyle with annotations by Leslie S. Klinger:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/02/2005]
Mark got for me the three-volume THE NEW ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES by Arthur Conan Doyle with annotations by Leslie S. Klinger (ISBNs 0-393-05916-2 and 0-393-05800-X), so I'll be tied up reading that for quite a while (interspersed with other books, of course). It is published by the same publisher as THE ANNOTATED HUCKLEBERRY FINN, which I reviewed in the 09/23/05 issue, but has avoided what I considered the major problem with that: the placement of the annotations. In THE ANNOTATED HUCKLEBERRY FINN, when the text itself gets ahead of the annotations, the annotations do not "catch up" until the end of the chapter. In THE NEW ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES, when the text gets ahead of the annotations, there will be a page (or two) where both columns are annotations, just so they can get into sync again. Klinger's notes are very informative, certainly more interesting than those of the Oxford annotated version, but not as quirky or charming as William Baring-Gould's. Still, if you have re-read Baring-Gould's a half dozen times, this is certainly worth switching to for a different view. It is, however pricey: list price for the three volumes is $145. (Luckily, it is often discounted.)
To order The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Short Stories from amazon.com, click here.
To order The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Novels from amazon.com, click here.
SIMPLEXITY: WHY SIMPLE THINGS BECOME COMPLEX AND HOW COMPLEX THINGS CAN BE MADE SIMPLE by Jeffrey Kluger:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/18/2008]
SIMPLEXITY: WHY SIMPLE THINGS BECOME COMPLEX AND HOW COMPLEX THINGS CAN BE MADE SIMPLE by Jeffrey Kluger (ISBN-13 978-1-4013- 0301-3, ISBN-10 1-4013-0301-3) has such chapters as "Why is it so hard to leave a burning building or an endangered city?", "How does a single bullet start a world war?", "Why is a baby the best linguist in the room?", and "Why are your cell phones and cameras so absurdly complicated?" But while Kluger generally covers these topics, he often leaves out key information, while at the same time adding digressions. For example, in the chapter on leaving burning buildings, he talks about how difficult to was to evacuate the World Trade Center towers, not just because of psychological reasons, but because the four of the stairways were 44 inches wide, and two were 56 inches wide, designed in 1970 for two people to walk abreast. The problem is that people in 2001 were much wider than those in 1970, and this disrupted the flow. Interesting and important, certainly, but not a question of simplicity versus complexity. And in his chapter on "How does a single bullet start a world war?", he never actually says what he is referring to. (I assume it is the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand by Gavrilo Princip that started World War I.) Even with these flaws, the book is thought-provoking. And perhaps complexity can best be summed up by this paragraph of Kluger's:
"The act of buying nearly any electronic product has gone from the straightforward plug-and-play experience it used to be to a laborious, joy-killing exercise in unpacking, reading, puzzling out, configuring out, testing, cursing, reconfiguring, stopping altogether to call the customer support line, then calling again an hour or two later, until you finally get whatever it is you've bought operating in some tentative configuration that more or less does all the things you want it to do--at least until some error message causes the whole precarious assembly to crash and you have to start all over again. You accept, as you always do, that there are some functions that sounded vaguely interesting when you were in the store that you'll never learn to use, not to mention dozens of buttons on the front panel or remote control that you'll never touch--and you'll feel some vague sense of technophobic shame over this."
To order Simplexity from amazon.com, click here.
WHAT ROUGH BEAST by H. R. Knight
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/07/2006]
WHAT ROUGH BEAST by H. R. Knight (ISBN 0-8439-5456-6) is a mystery-cum-horror novel featuring Harry Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle as characters. There have been other such novels already, including THE ARCANUM by Thomas Wheeler (reviewed in the 10/07/05 issue) and NEVERMORE by William Hjortsberg. This is not too surprising, since Conan Doyle and Houdini were at one time friends--before they fell out over spiritualism. The character of Houdini seems drawn a little too broadly, and for that matter that of Conan Doyle may be as well. If you don't mind some supernatural elements mixed in with your mystery, you might enjoy this, but I suspect that there are better Victorian supernatural horror novels that do not have to work Houdini and Conan Doyle into them.
To order What Rough Beast from amazon.com, click here.
REALITYLAND: TRUE-LIFE ADVENTURES AT WALT DISNEY WORLD by David Koenig:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/14/2008]
REALITYLAND: TRUE-LIFE ADVENTURES AT WALT DISNEY WORLD by David Koenig (ISBN-13 978-0-964060-52-4, ISBN-10 0-964060-52-3) is what appears to be a reasonably honest look at the rise (and to some extent fall) of Walt Disney World, the Florida mega-complex. Koenig does a good job conveying the obsessive nature of everything at Walt Disney World. For example, at the beginning employees at the hotels could not accept tips (this soon changed), security was handled by Disney staff, who decided whether or not to call local law enforcement (this also soon changed), calling every dissatisfied guest to try to placate them (ditto), and so on. In fact, the book can be summed up as a long recitation of Disney decisions that seemed like good ideas at the time, but turned out to be mistakes. So far as I can tell, the management of Walt Disney World (post-Walt) always thought that they knew better than the entire industry what should be done--and were usually wrong. One more example: when Space Mountain opened, no one was allowed to refer to it as a roller coaster. The result was that people expected a placid ride past space vistas and were often not happy with the results, which included bumps, bruises, wrenched backs, lost items, etc.
Of course, the public had its flaws as well. While real injuries were sometimes sustained, there were also attempts at scams. "Sometimes, the accusations were pure fiction, just someone trying to make a quick buck off the big corporation. One guest claimed she was injured by a brick that fell from Cinderella Castle. Impossible, Disney easily illustrated, since the castle has no bricks; it's a fiberglass facade. Another woman claimed the Hydrolator chambers at EPCOT Center's Living Seas pavilion descended so fast, they damaged her eardrums. Disney merely demonstrated that the pseudo-elevators only give the illusion of descending and actually let the guests off at the same elevation as when they entered." [page 142]
REALITYLAND is definitely worth reading if you are interested in the whole tourist mega-industry in the Orlando area. However, fans of Walt Disney World may find themselves somewhat disillusioned by all the backstage information.
REALITYLAND is definitely worth reading if you are interested in the whole tourist mega-industry in the Orlando area. However, fans of Walt Disney World may find themselves somewhat disillusioned by all the backstage information.
To order Realityland from amazon.com, click here.
WHY IS THERE SOMETHING RATHER THAN NOTHING?: 23 QUESTIONS FROM THE GREAT PHILOSOPHERS by Leszek Kolakowski (translated by Agnieszka Kolakowska):
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/08/2008]
WHY IS THERE SOMETHING RATHER THAN NOTHING?: 23 QUESTIONS FROM THE GREAT PHILOSOPHERS by Leszek Kolakowski (translated by Agnieszka Kolakowska) (ISBN-13 978-0-465-00499-7, ISBN-10 0-465- 00499-7) has a very long title for such a small book (223 pages, 4.25 inches by 6.25 inches, and 1 inch thick). The original Polish had seven additional essays, which would made it ideal for reading one a day for a month. The essays are Kolakowski's own interpretations of and thoughts on the great philosophers, such as "Truth and Good: Why do we do evil? [Socrates]" or "What There Is: Do ideas exist? [William of Ockham]"
One essay is "The Nature of God: Do we have free will? [Spinoza]" In this essay, Kolakowski asked, "But can we then (someone might ask), punish people for their misdeeds, if everything is entirely determined and no one freely chooses what he does, but is governed by implacable necessity? Kolakowski answers, "Spinoza says: yes, we can. Just as we kill venomous snakes without asking if they have free will, so, in the name of the common good, we must punish offenders." But it seems to me that either Spinoza or Kolakowski is missing the point: if there is no free will, then asking how we can punish people for their misdeeds (or, phrased another way, whether we should punish people for their misdeeds) misses the point: our punishing them is as much a product of "implacable necessity" as their misdeeds and asking "whether we should do it" is meaningless. It is like asking whether the apple should fall when you let go of it.
Another essay, "God's Necessity: Could God not exist? [St. Anselm]", asks why, "If God is just, how can He save some sinners while condemning other, the former by His mercy, the latter according to justice, if the evil done by both is similar?" And for that matter, if God is immutable, He has no emotions, so what does "mercy" mean in this context?
To order Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing? from amazon.com, click here.
THE BEST AMERICAN SCIENCE AND NATURE WRITING 2009 edited by Elizabeth Kolbert:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/01/2011]
Our general book discussion group (which has pretty much mutated into a science book discussion group) read ten articles from THE BEST AMERICAN SCIENCE AND NATURE WRITING 2009 (edited by Elizabeth Kolbert) (ISBN 978-0-547-00259-0). This series is popular with our group because one does not have to try to find a copy of the book; almost all the articles in it are available free on-line. (In my comments I will include the tinyurl for all of them.)
As I did with the Stephen Jay Gould book of essays I commented on a while ago, I will give just a sentence or two on each.
"Faustian Economics" by Wendell Berry (Harper's Magazine)
"The Ethics of Climate Change" by John Broome (Scientific American)
"Is Google Making Us Stupid?" by Nicholas Carr (The Atlantic
Monthly)
"High-Tech Trash" by Chris Carroll (National Geographic)
(By this point in the book, one is tempted to just put it down and
shoot oneself.)
"Intel Inside" (a.k.a. "Piecing Together the Dark Legacy of East
Germany's Secret Police") by Andrew Curry (Wired)
"Blown Apart" by Keay Davidson (California)
"Did Life Begin in Ice?" by Douglas Fox (Discover)
"The Day Before Genesis" by Adam Frank (Discover)
"The Itch" by Atul Gawande (The New Yorker)
"Last of the Neanderthals" by Stephen S. Hall (National Geographic)
THE BEST AMERICAN SCIENCE AND NATURE WRITING 2009
edited by Elizabeth Kolbert:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/09/2011]
Our book discussion for August was the next third or so of THE BEST
SCIENCE AND NATURE WRITING 2009 edited by Elizabeth Kolbert (ISBN
978-0-547-00259-0), the first part of which we did earlier.
"Virtual Iraq: Using Simulation to Treat a New Generation of
Traumatized Veterans" by Sue Halpern (May 19, 2008, New Yorker)
"Chain Reaction: From Einstein to the Atomic Bomb" by Walter
Isaacson (March 2008, Discover)
"Wasteland: A Journey through the American Cloaca" by Frederick
Kaufman (February 2008, Harper's)
"Minds of Their Own: Animals Are Smarter than You Think" by
Virginia Morell (March 2008, Animal Minds, National Geographic)
"Back to the Future" by J. Madeleine Nash (High Country News)
"Taking Wildness in Hand: Rescuing Species" by Michelle Nijhuis
(May/June 2008, Orion)
"How We Evolve" by Benjamin Phelan (October 7, 2008,
Seedmagazine.com)
"Pop Psychology: Why Asset Bubbles Are a Part of the Human
Condition That Regulation Can't Cure" by Virginia Postrel (December
2008, The Atlantic Home)
"Contagious Cancer: The Evolution of a Killer", David Quammen (Harper's Magazine)
To order The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2009 from amazon.com, click here.
THE HISTORIAN
by Elizabeth Kostova:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/10/2006]
THE HISTORIAN by Elizabeth Kostova (ISBN 0-316-01177-0) has
gotten a lot of good reviews, but I gave up after a hundred
pages. It seems to have been written to be of the same genre as
THE DA VINCI CODE, with people tracking a mystery across Europe
through old books and documents, but it reads very flatly. In
the part I read there are three viewpoint characters (narrators)
--a young girl, her father, and his mentor. Three different
types, three different generations, yet they all sound alike. In
addition, it was so slow-moving that it began to feel very
padded.
To order The Historian from amazon.com, click here.
FROM TOKYO TO JERUSALEM
by Abraham Kotsuji:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/21/2008]
FROM TOKYO TO JERUSALEM by Abraham Kotsuji (no ISBN, amazon.com
ASIN B000J0SFXU) is the autobiography of a descendent of
generations of Shinto priests who eventually converted to Judaism
(with an intermediate period as a Presbyterian minister!).
Written in 1964, it is a fairly simple book, covering the basics
of Kotsuji's childhood (much of which he tells in the third
person before switching to the more standard first person when he
progresses past primary school). His discovery of Judaism came
when he found a Bible in an old bookstore. Although he found the
Old Testament much more "attractive", his options in Japan were
pretty much restricted by the fact that in the 1920s there were
many more Christians (and Christian missionaries) than Jews. So
in spite of his reservations, he converted to Christianity, went
to a Christian college, and eventually became a minister. But he
always felt more connected to the Old Testament, and as he had
more and more contact with Jewish refugees during the war, he
came to the conclusion that these were his people, and eventually
converted.
And while the book is good as Kotsuji's own record of his life,
he did not check all the statements about things he has only
heard second-hand. For example, he talks about Jews getting
visas in Kovna (Kaunas), Lithuania, from the Japanese consul,
Chiune Sugihara, and then says that Sugihara had been killed by
the Nazis. Actually, Sugihara returned to Japan in disgrace for
having violated his orders, ended up as a light bulb salesman,
and was still alive when Kotsuji was writing this book. (In
fact, he was invited to Israel in 1965 and lived until 1986.)
Ironically, a few pages later Kotsuji says that one of the
refugees who wrote an autobiography said that Kotsuji had been
killed during the war by the Japanese secret service!
To order From Tokyo to Jerusalem from amazon.com, click here.
"Evil Robot Monkey"
by Mary Robinette Kowal:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/19/2009]
"Evil Robot Monkey" by Mary Robinette Kowal (THE SOLARIS BOOK OF
NEW SCIENCE FICTION, VOLUME TWO) is what used to be called a short-
short (and maybe still is). As such, it really needs more of a
punch (or something) than it has to be in Hugo contention.
"For Want of a Nail"
by Mary Robinette Kowal:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/15/2011]
"For Want of a Nail" by Mary Robinette Kowal (in ASIMOV'S 12/10)
seems almost more like an ANALOG-type story, with its focus on the
technology aspects of the puzzle-like problem. It was okay, but
nothing special.
THE COMPANY OF THE DEAD
by David Kowalski:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/09/2007]
THE COMPANY OF THE DEAD by David Kowalski (ISBN-13
978-1-405-03804-1, ISBN-10 1-405-03804-7) starts out very
promising, with a time traveler going back to the Titanic to try
to save it. What happens, and what happens because of that,
occupies the first hundred pages or so. By that point, we know
what the protagonists are trying to do, but then the book goes
in circles for the next several hundred pages, only really
resuming the plot at the very end of the book. This middle
section does not advance the plot, or give us more interesting
background. Instead, it is standard espionage/stealth operations
stuff. This book would have been much better at half its 750-
page length.
To order The Company of the Dead from amazon.com, click here.
BEYOND STAR TREK: PHYSICS FROM ALIEN INVASION TO THE END OF
TIME
by Laurence M. Krauss:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/05/2008]
BEYOND STAR TREK: PHYSICS FROM ALIEN INVASION TO THE END OF
TIME by Lawrence M. Krauss (ISBN-13 978-0-7522-2464-0, ISBN-10
0-7522-2464-6) is not entirely beyond "Star Trek", as Krauss
uses several examples from that series. But he also discusses
"The X-Files", 12 MONKEYS, INDEPENDENCE DAY, and so on. For
example, the first chapter is Krauss's analysis of why the
invaders in INDEPENDENCE DAY really did not need to fire
anything at us to defeat us.
On the whole, the book is yet another attempt to write a
science book for the layperson, though the use of "Star Trek"
and other popular television shows and movies to initiate
ideas and illustrate examples will probably do a lot to make
this rise above the rest of the genre. While some may object
to this approach, I figure that anything that gets people
(especially teenagers) interested in reading about science) is
all for the best.
Krauss does make the occasional error. For example, on page
92 he talks about Joseph Banks Rhine and telepathic
communication and says, "[Rhine's] popularizations, combined
with the interest of the publisher of the pulp magazine
'Astounding Science Fiction', helped fuel public interest...."
It was the editor of the magazine--John W. Campbell, Jr.--not
the publisher, who latched on to telepathy. And when, in
talking about time travel and changing events, he says, "[If]
you go back in time to try to kill Hitler before he became
Fuhrer--when he fact he survived until shortly before the end
of the Second World War--you will trip at the crucial moment,
or the gun will misfire," I'd like to think that the "aside"
regarding real history is stylistic rather than added because
Krauss thought his readers wouldn't know what happened to the
real Hitler.
To order Beyond Star Trek from amazon.com, click here.
THE PHYSICS OF STAR TREK
by Lawrence M. Krauss:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/22/2006]
There seem to be a lot of books out these days titled "The [some
branch of science] of [some popular TV show or film]": "The
Biology of The X-Files", "The Paleontology of King Kong", "The
Algebraic Topology of Buffy", that sort of thing. Most seem
fairly undistinguished, but THE PHYSICS OF STAR TREK by Lawrence
M. Krauss (ISBN 0-465-00559-4) is a notch above the others.
Krauss looks at the various inventions and assumptions of "Star
Trek", from transporters and wormholes, to the holodeck to
parallel universes, and analyzes them in the light of current
knowledge of physics. Krauss has a very thorough knowledge of
the episodes of the many "Star Trek" series, and will cite them
by name as the one in which the lack of Federation cloaking
devices was explained, or what the various mechanisms were in
each time travel episode. In addition, even if you are
particularly knowledgeable about "Star Trek", Krauss's
explanation of modern physics does not depend on it, and all his
references give enough description to make it comprehensible to
all. Recommended for fans, and even for dabblers. (Krauss was
featured in the 1998 documentary "The Sci-Fi Files".)
To order The Physics of Star Trek from amazon.com, click here.
"Act One"
by Nancy Kress:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/25/2010]
"Act One" by Nancy Kress (Asimov's 3/09) adds to Kress's body of
work of medical/biological science fiction. In this instance, it
is a story about genetic modification--and not surprisingly, about
the Law of Unintended Consequences. As in most such near-future
science fiction stories, Kress recognizes that anti-genemod laws
passed by individual countries will be basically useless, as people
will just "offshore" their procedures. (Indeed, Ireland already
discovered a variant of this. It had made abortion illegal, and
also tried to legislate against Irish citizens traveling to England
for abortions. But it ran afoul of European Union laws which
mandate that all citizens have unrestricted travel among the member
countries. Ah, you might say, but the United States prohibits
travel to Cuba. Well, not really--it prohibits giving or spending
any money in Cuba. But even so, when a genemod clinic can be set
up on a ship in international waters, what exactly could be
legislated here?) I will refrain from revealing the actual genetic
modifications, since that is to a great extent the point, but it is
at least made plausible. Is this Hugo material, though? I'm not
sure.
"The Erdmann Nexus"
by Nancy Kress:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/29/2009]
"The Erdmann Nexus" by Nancy Kress (ASIMOV'S Oct/Nov 2008): The
brief summary of this might be "Dial E for Elderly", since it seems
very similar to Sir Arthur C. Clarke's "Dial F for Frankenstein",
except that the gestalt mind is formed by the elderly instead of
the phone system. Okay, but nothing special. This seems to be
part of what might be called "the Old Wave"--the trend towards
fiction about the elderly. Could it be because the authors are
getting older?
"The Fountain of Age"
by Nancy Kress:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/11/2008]
While it has a definite science fictional idea, "The Fountain of
Age" by Nancy Kress (ASIMOV'S Jul) seems more like a story about
the Rom (a.k.a."gypsies") and their philosophy and customs, than
a science fiction story. The premise (having to do with stopping
the ageing process--and more than that would be telling) is an
intriguing one, but seems to get pushed into the background for a
lot of the story.
STEAL ACROSS THE SKY
by Nancy Kress:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/07/2010]
STEAL ACROSS THE SKY by Nancy Kress (ISBN-13 978-0-7653-1986-9)
suffers from a problem shared by many science fiction (and mystery)
novels. It is written around a mystery and the reader may well
find that she is more interested in just knowing the solution to
the mystery than in reading the novel, getting to know the
characters, etc. In STEAL ACROSS THE SKY, the premise is that
aliens show up and tell us that they feel really guilty about
something they did to the human race ten thousand years ago, and
they want some humans from Earth to go to other planets and
"witness" until they understand what the aliens had done. Okay,
but the problem is that given this, I found myself more interested
in the "solution", the "answer", rather than the book in its
entirety. There can be "puzzle" books that don't have this
problem--Raymond Chandler or Arthur Conan Doyle mysteries, for
example, or (to use a book discussed here recently) China
Miéville's THE CITY & THE CITY. In all of these, even when you
figure out the puzzle, the book remains interesting, the characters
engaging, the language poetic, and so on.)
To order Steal Across the Sky from amazon.com, click here.
NAMING AND NECESSITY
by Saul A. Kripke:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/15/2011]
As part of the reading list that included Searle's MIND, I also
read NAMING AND NECESSITY by Saul A. Kripke (ISBN 0-674-59846-6),
transcripts of three lectures given at Princeton in 1970 and a
classic in the field of philosophy of language. But it also turns
out to have strong connections to alternate history.
In analyzing language, philosophers use the idea of "possible
worlds" or of counterfactuals to test various theories. For
example, if on some duplicate Earth there is a substance that looks
like water, serves all the purposes of water, and is called water,
but has a different molecular structure, does someone there mean
the same thing when he says "water" as we do?
But even more directly connected to alternate history is the
question of proper names, which is called "transworld
identification." First of all, to whom are we referring when we
say "Richard Nixon"? We can try to answer that with a list of
properties: he was born in Yorba Linda, he was Vice-President under
Eisenhower, he was President from 1969 to 1974, and so on. But we
might talk about an alternate world in which Nixon was not
President. Is he no longer Nixon? I cannot speak for
philosophers, but alternate history fans would probably say he is
still Nixon. What about if e wasn't Vice-President either? What
if he did not do anything the same except be born on the same date
to the same parents? What if they gave him a different name as
well. Is that John Nixon the same as our Richard Nixon?
To writers (and readers) of alternate history this is important.
For example, it is pretty much impossible to have a world in which
the United States loses World War II, and Nixon still becomes Vice-
President under Eisenhower. But what if instead something
different happens to Nixon early in his life--is he still Nixon?
If he gets a slightly different set of genes, but is still born on
the same day with the same name to the same parents, is it still
Nixon? And when we read an alternate history where the South won
the Civil War and in 1960 there is a character in California named
Richard Nixon, are we supposed to believe that is the same Nixon?
To order Naming and Necessity from amazon.com, click here.
MY SHERLOCK HOLMES
edited by Michael Kurland:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/26/2004]
As I noted a few weeks ago, trying to come up with ways to
distinguish new Sherlock Holmes anthologies from all those that
have come before is getting harder, and new twists are getting more
convoluted. Michael Kurland's MY SHERLOCK HOLMES takes the
approach of having the stories told by different viewpoint
characters: Mrs. Hudson, Mycroft Holmes, Moriarty, Billy the Page
Boy, .... My problem with this is that it is not just the plot of
the Holmes stories that I like, it is the characters, the
atmosphere, and the style. When you have a different narrator, all
of these change. (There are whole web sites devoted to retelling
"The Lord of the Rings", for example, in different author's
styles. The Raymond Chandler version is very different from the
Dr. Seuss version. See http://www.teemings.com/extras/lotr/ for
lots more.) So Billy the Page Boy writes in a different style from
Watson, sees the characters differently, and certainly see
Victorian London differently than a retired Army surgeon, and very
little Holmsian is left.
To order My Sherlock Holmes from amazon.com, click here.
SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE HIDDEN YEARS
edited by Michael Kurland:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/23/2007]
SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE HIDDEN YEARS edited by Michael Kurland
(ISBN-10 0-312-31513-9, ISBN-13 978-0-312-31513-9) is a
collection of eleven stories set during the years when Sherlock
Holmes was presumed dead, that is, between the events at
Reichenbach Falls ("The Final Problem", 1891) and those of "The
Adventure of the Empty House" (1894). In the latter, Holmes
gives a brief account of his travels during that time, and
several of the authors here have used that as a basis for their
stories. For example, Michael Mallory's "The Beast of Guangming
Peak" is rooted in the notion of Sigerson, the Norwegian explorer
in the Himalayas. Carolyn Wheat's "Water from the Moon" has him
in Siam, and while Peter Beagle's "Mr. Sigerson" puts him in
Europe and Linda Robertson's "The Mystery of Dr. Thorvald
Sigerson" in Alaska, Holmes is still Sigerson. (No one can seem
to agree on his alter ego's first name, of course.) Other
authors move him to locations not mentioned in the Canon: Bill
Pronzini's "The Bughouse Caper" puts him is San Francisco and
Carole Bugge's "The Strange Case of the Voodoo Priestess" in New
Orleans. A couple of them (Wheat's story and Rhys Bowen's "The
Case of the Lugubrious Manservant") use the trick of Holmes
having (temporarily) lost his memory. Michael Collins's "Cross
of Gold" delves into politics. But all of these have a similar
problem--the basic appeal of the original stories is that of
Watson chronicling Holmes's cases. (The two stories not narrated
by Watson--"The Adventure of the Lion's Mane" and "His Last Bow")
are generally considered among the weakest of the Canon.) But
since these stories occur during the period that Watson presumes
Holmes to be dead, they are of necessity narrated either by an
omniscient third-person voice, or by another character in the
case, who usually focuses on his own role rather than that of
Holmes.
A few avoid this snare. Michael Kurland's "Reichenbach" manages
to use the constraints in an ingenious way into the basis of the
plot. Gary Lovisi's "The Adventure of the Missing Detective" is
an alternate history. Richard Lupoff's "God of the Naked
Unicorn" is so far out I cannot begin to categorize it.
To order Sherlock Holmes: The Hidden Years from amazon.com, click here.
RAN
by Akira Kurosawa:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/17/2006]
I recently watched Akira Kurosawa's RAN again. There is a book
connection--it is based on Shakespeare's "King Lear" (just as
Kurosawa's THRONE OF BLOOD is based on "Macbeth"). For that
matter, there is a fair amount of Lady Macbeth in one of the
characters in RAN as well. But my comment is that whoever did
the subtitles did an excellent job of capturing a Shakespearean
feel; for example, near the beginning of the film, Hidetora (the
Lear character) says:
"I hoisted my colours over the main castle.
I spent more years fighting lance to lance
with these two gentlemen.
Now the moment has come to stable the steeds of war
and give free rein to peace.
But old Hidetora is seventy years old."
To order Ran from amazon.com, click here.
SHADOW DIVERS
by Robert Kurson:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/29/2006]
SHADOW DIVERS by Robert Kurson (ISBN 0-375-50858-9) is the story
of the discovery and exploration of a previously unsuspected
U-boat off the shores of New Jersey. It is understandably
popular here in New Jersey, but is also popular across the
country. The "Nova" episode about this discovery was reportedly
the highest-rated ever in that series. Kurson covers all aspects
of the discovery--not just how it was discovered and explored,
but also the biology, physics, and chemistry of the ocean and of
diving, the history of U-boats in general and this one in
particular, and the psychology and sociology of divers. Kurson
loves a catchy phrase ("Shipwrecks are where the food chain poses
for a snapshot"), but also makes the science of diving
understandable to everyone. And of course a lot of the
exploration parts will appeal to science fiction fans, because it
is just like exploring an alien planet.
To order Shadow Divers from amazon.com, click here.
"Dr, Cyclops"
by Henry Kuttner:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/15/2006]
Henry Kuttner's novelette "Dr, Cyclops" was made into a film of
the same name, which sticks fairly closely to the story.
However, Kuttner is a bit sloppy with his arithmetic. First, the
people see Thorkel as being thirty feet high, indicating they are
about one-fifth size, or a little over a foot tall. The cellar
door is described as being as big as a two-story house--assuming
an attic, etc., that is probably consistent. Later, though, he
says, "Human beings--scarcely more than half a foot tall!"
HISTORY'S TRICKIEST QUESTIONS: 450 QUESTIONS THAT WILL STUMP, AMUSE AND SURPRISE
by Paul Kuttner:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/04/2012]
HISTORY'S TRICKIEST QUESTIONS: 450 QUESTIONS THAT WILL STUMP, AMUSE
AND SURPRISE (ISBN 978-0-8050-2127-1) is a very mixed bag. Many of
the questions are "trick questions", e.g.,
A: True. E. D. Nixon helped to organize the Brotherhood
of Sleeping Car Porters, founded by A. Philip Randolph in
the 1920s. In 1955, he bailed Rosa Parks out of jail
after she was arrested for refusing to yield her seat in
the from of a Montgomery, Alabama, bus."
Some are merely obscure:
A: Heinrich personally bestowed the rank of honorary general
of the SS on Richard Strauss.
And occasionally, they are just wrong:
A: The year was 1881, and the three American presidents were
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822-93), who was serving out his term
in 1881; James A. Garfield (1831-81), who was elected and
served for only six months when he died of gunshot wounds
inflicted by an assassin; and Chester Alan Arthur (1980-86)
who succeeded Garfield and served out his term in 1885, the
year before he died.
The only problem is that this is only half correct. In 1841,
Martin Van Buren was serving out his term, William Henry Harrison
was inaugurated but caught pneumonia at his inauguration and served
only about a month, and John Tyler served out the rest of his term.
To order History's Trickiest Questions from amazon.com, click here.
Q: "Nixon helped to organize a labor union and in 1955 was
instrumental in bailing a woman out of jail after a
history-making racial incident. True or false?"
Q: What honorary title did the Nazis confer on "Der
Rosenkavalier"'s composer, Richard Strauss?
Q: In the history of the United States, when did three
Presidents serve in the White House in the same year, and who
were they?
Go to Evelyn Leeper's home page.