Reviews by Evelyn C. Leeper

All reviews copyright 1984-2011 Evelyn C. Leeper.

THE MOTEL OF THE MYSTERIES by David Macaulay:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/04/2009]

THE MOTEL OF THE MYSTERIES by David Macaulay (ISBN-10 0-395-28424-4) is perhaps the best-known of what might be called "future archaeology" books. A thousand years from now, after civilization was destroyed by being buried under a flood of junk mail and solid pollutants, which apparently destroyed all knowledge of our era without driving everyone back into the Dark Ages. Howard Carson, a future archaeologist discovers and excavates a motel. The story seems like a cross between Howard Carter's discovery of King Tut's tomb, and Heinrich Schliemann's discovery of Troy. For example, Carson says he sees "wonderful things," and one of the illustrations shows Carson's wife wearing the "jewelry" and "ornaments" that he found in the motel. The fact that one of the pieces of jewelry is an old-fashioned bathtub plug on a chain, and one of the ornaments is a toilet seat gives you some idea of both Carson's accuracy and the nature of the book. (The motel is called the "Motel Toot'n'C'mon".)

Gary Westfahl wrote an article about this genre: "The Addled Archaeology of the Future". As he says, "there is a sporadic tradition of science fiction stories about future archaeology which endeavor to argue, albeit in a humorous manner, that this [misinterpreting of artifacts] is a genuine danger; however, these texts are rare, they are written by people who are not considered science fiction authors; and they are generally unsuccessful, both financially and aesthetically." He discusses four of these: Edgar Allan Poe's "Mellonta Tauta" (1849), John Ames Mitchell's THE LAST AMERICAN (1889), Robert Nathan's THE WEANS (1960), and Macaulay's MOTEL OF THE MYSTERIES (1979). [-ecl]

To order The Motel of the Mysteries from amazon.com, click here.

THIEVES IN THE TEMPLE: THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND THE SELLING OF THE AMERICAN SOUL by G. Jeffrey MacDonald:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/04/2011]

THIEVES IN THE TEMPLE: THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND THE SELLING OF THE AMERICAN SOUL by G. Jeffrey MacDonald (ISBN 978-0-465-00932-9) could just as easily have been subtitled "The Rise of American Churches and the Decline of American Religion", because that is MacDonald's basic message. While church attendance is up and mega-churches with thousands of members are becoming more common, MacDonald sees more and more people who profess to be Christians moving away from the central tenets and beliefs of Christianity.

MacDonald sees the primary problem as consumerism: people are reacting to churches as products, and churches are selling themselves to people as products. Pastors don't give sermons that make their parishioners uncomfortable, because people will leave that church and go to a more comfortable one. Churches now spend millions on state-of-the-art sound systems instead of soup kitchens, and people think charity means a celebrity golf tournament instead of visiting the elderly.

But MacDonald is not negative on Christianity, far from it--he is an ordained minister. What he wants a return to traditional Christian values. These may include traditional marriage, no abortion, etc., but he is more specific that they include honesty, self-discipline, charity, and other values apparently not as emphasized in many congregations. As he says, "Congregants grew more concerned about other people's abortions and euthanasia than about the morality of their own tax-paying and other financial habits." And also, "among those willing to support the use of torture, Christians were at the head of the pack ... the more one goes to church, the more likely one is to support torture."

One can argue, of course, that MacDonald is mistaken in his interpretation of Christianity. But unless you want to argue that Christianity is about finding the church with the best singles group and the least demands on its members, what he says does make sense.

To order Thieves in the Temple from amazon.com, click here.

HOAXES by Curtis D. MacDougall:
FADS & FALLACIES IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE by Martin Gardner:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/18/2006]

And then of course, I have to mention HOAXES by Curtis D. MacDougall (ISBN 0-486-20465-0), a 1940 volume which covers the Cardiff Giant, John Wilkes Booth's mummy, and the baby picture of Adolf Hitler (among many others). And even Martin Gardner's classic FADS & FALLACIES IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE (ISBN 0-486-20394-8) covers some of the same territory, though it is more about the delusions than the outright scams. (In some cases, it is hard to tell for sure--was Bridey Murphy a scam or a genuine delusion?)

And this could easily segue into several of Stephen Jay Gould's collections, such as THE MISMEASURE OF MAN. But I've probably suggested enough books to keep you busy for a while already.

To order Hoaxes from amazon.com, click here.

To order Fads & Fallacies in the Name of Science from amazon.com, click here.

ROMANITAS by Sophie MacDougall:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/17/2006]

ROMANITAS by Sophia MacDougall (ISBN 0-75286-894-2) is set in the present, but in a world in which Rome never fell. (MacDougall conveniently provides an appendix with her altered timeline, and it is the foiling of the assassination of the emperor Pertinax in 193 C.E. that makes the difference.) Rome now rules most of the world (except for the Sinoan Empire, the southern half of Africa, and Australia, which is either completely ignored by everyone or part of Nionia--the map is unclear). Christianity seems to have have failed to take hold, and slavery is still the rule of the land. The only problem is that the story could take place anywhere--it is full of political intrigue, but of a sort that could be transposed to just about any empire. It is well- written, but I found myself wishing that there had been more dependence on the world that MacDougall had created. For example, though Rome controls "Terranova", this is only mentioned in passing a few times. This is a British book, so it is not surprising that it focuses on Europe rather than "Terranova" or Asia (and of course Rome is there and not here), but I suspect that in spite of the popularity of alternate histories in the United States, this may be an obstacle to getting it published over here.

To order Romanitas from amazon.com, click here.

OPERATION MINCEMEAT: HOW A DEAD MAN AND A BIZARRE PLAN FOOLED THE NAZIS AND ASSURED AN ALLIED VICTORY by Ben Macintyre:

THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS by Ewan Montagu:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/07/2011]

After you've read the title of OPERATION MINCEMEAT: HOW A DEAD MAN AND A BIZARRE PLAN FOOLED THE NAZIS AND ASSURED AN ALLIED VICTORY by Ben Macintyre (ISBN 978-0-307-45327-3), reading the book is almost superfluous. Well, okay, not really, but this is definitely an excessive title. The book tells the true story of a super- secret World War II operation to give the German High Command disinformation. Briefly, the plan was this: take a body, dress it in uniform, plant some fake documents on it that make it look as though the invasion of southern Europe will be in the Balkans instead of Sicily. They would then dump the body off the coast of Spain where the Germans will eventually get a hold of the papers.

The title for the classic book on this subject--THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS by Ewen Montagu (ISBN 978-1-557-50448-7)--was certainly catchier. Of course, that book was less comprehensive, and also much less accurate. There are two reasons for this. One was that Montagu, as one of the leaders of the team that created Major William Martin, had perhaps a natural tendency to inflate his role and minimize those of the others, as well as to emphasize all the good points and omit the various errors. (Another example of this sort of narcissist distortion was Eliot Ness's memoir, THE UNTOUCHABLES.) But there was a second reason, and in this Montagu had a better excuse than most authors, as Macintyre points out: because much of the truth was still classified, Montagu was obliged to hide a lot of the details, change others to obscure the truth, and leave a lot of names out. In fact, Macintyre spends quite a few pages talking about Montagu's book and other accounts, along with the movie. Not surprisingly, the film of the same name was even less accurate than Montagu's book.

For example, Montagu's book doesn't talk about how the original idea for "Operation Mincemeat" probably came from Ian Fleming (who got it from a Basil Thompson mystery novel). Indeed, Montagu makes it sound as though the entire project was his, with only passing mention of other major players. Nor does Montagu talk about how the team actually made a lot of errors in the execution of the plan, such as having no random items in Martin's pockets, or assuming there were no German spies in England who might investigate some of the details. And though Montagu (and everyone else) claimed "Martin" had died of pneumonia, Montagu at least knew that he died from rat poison, and ignored the fact that this could, in fact, have been detected if the Germans were thorough. Or that Montagu's brother was spying for the Soviets in the early days of the war (before Hitler wrote his treaty with Stalin), and

that information was being passed to the Germans at that time. (One might assume that by 1943, of course, this was no longer true).

I do disagree with Macintyre on the "unreality" of the letters supposedly from Martin's girlfriend, which he says read more like letters one would find in a book or movie than in real life. I have read some letters written at that time, and there were certainly some letters written in that style.

And in 1998, Montagu's claims that "Martin" had died of pneumonia and that permission had been granted by his family for the body's use were revealed as false: Martin was actually Glyndwr Michael, he died from eating rat poison, and his family (his parents had been dead and he was estranged from his siblings) had never been contacted. Montagu believed that all evidence of Martin's real name had been destroyed, but it was still on (at least) one document, and that was discovered by Roger Morgan.

To order Operation Mincemeat from amazon.com, click here.

To order The Man Who Never Was from amazon.com, click here.

EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS & THE MADNESS OF CROWDS by Charles Mackay:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/18/2006]

If you liked any of these books, you should read Charles Mackay's EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS & THE MADNESS OF CROWDS (ISBN 0-486-43223-8). This was written in 1841, so the delusions, schemes, and manias are all fairly old--though most are still with us in some form or other. We do not have tulipomania, but every generation seems to have some commodity that becomes vastly over-priced until the bubble bursts. (The 1932 introduction by Bernard M. Baruch mentions the 1929 stock market boom and bust.) Mackay writes about scams such as "the Mississippi Scheme" and "the South Sea Bubble", follies that recur in slightly modified forms such as the Crusades and the witch hunts, as well as seemingly permanent delusions such as alchemy and fortune- telling. Of the Crusades, Mackay says, "Every age has its peculiar folly; some scheme, project, or phantasy into which it plunges, spurred on either by the love gain, the necessity of excitement, or the mere force of imitation. Failing in these, it has some madness, to which it is goaded by political or religious causes, or both combined. Every one of these causes influenced the Crusades, and conspired to render them the most extraordinary instance on record of the extent to which popular enthusiasm can be carried." A hundred and fifty years later, that statement probably still holds. I will admit to not re-reading this whole book to comment on it, but I was sorely tempted, and given that it is seven hundred pages long, that is a strong recommendation.

To order Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madnesss of Crowds from amazon.com, click here.

THE SUMMER ISLES by Ian R. MacLeod:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/02/2005]

Too many alternate histories spend all their time on how things got to be different without telling you how things would be different. One gets a five-hundred-page book that details all of the battlefield and political maneuvers of Lincoln, Davis, Grant, Lee, and everyone else, then ends with, "And so President Lincoln signed his name to the treaty that once and forever recognized the Confederate States of America as a separate country." That's not the end of an alternate history; that's the beginning. So it is wonderful to get an alternate history that looks at just what life would be like in a changed world, and such a book is Ian R. MacLeod's THE SUMMER ISLES (ISBN 1-933-08300-X). The premise (hinted at from the beginning, but spelled out about a third of the way through) is that Britain and her allies lost the War of 1914-18, and was taken over by a "Modernist" (fascist) party. The time frame is 1940, but there is, of course, no hint of a second World War. Our main character is, as is often the case in alternate histories, an outsider, someone who does not quite fit in with the new way of things. But MacLeod does not make him Jewish (too cliche) or Irish (too obvious) or even Communist. No, MacLeod makes the main character a homosexual and by doing so makes it more difficult for readers to see the Modernists just as people who are evil, but of course we would never do anything like that . . . . As an American, it is difficult for me to be sure, but I get the feeling that MacLeod captures very well the feel of Britain and the feel of what a defeated and demoralized Britain might have been like in the 1930s. There is one major plot contrivance that seems forced, but not impossible as described, so I can suspend my disbelief, particularly since in everything else MacLeod takes a very realistic approach. A novella-length version appeared in the October/November 1998 issue of ASIMOV'S, was nominated for a Hugo for that year, and won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History (Short Form). In spite of this, the novel-length version was turned down by every major publisher, and as a result, is available only as a limited edition from Aio.

To order The Summer Isles from amazon.com, click here.

LEARNING THE WORLD: A SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE by Ken MacLeod:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/05/2006]

Although I started Hugo-nominated LEARNING THE WORLD: A SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE by Ken MacLeod (ISBN 0-765-31331-6), I could not get interested in it, and gave up after about fifty pages.

To order Learning the World from amazon.com, click here.

THE RESTORATION GAME by Ken MacLeod:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/24/2010]

When you read the first page of THE RESTORATION GAME by Ken MacLeod (ISBN 978-1-841-49647-4), you think you know exactly what this book will be. "FIRST-PERSON SHOOTER: MARS, 2248 A.U.C." Ah, you say, it's an alternate history, with Rome never falling and now, in what would be the late 15th Century on our calendar, it has arrived on Mars.

Then on page 3, you discover there is a computer simulation running: "Millions--billions!--of fully conscious simulated humans living a history where .... I don't know. Something didn't happen. Something changes everything. The history's still far in the past, thank heavens--a millennium, perhaps. But almost unrecognizable. The City's in ruins, the population tilling the soil and ruled by warrior chiefs, their minds dimmed by some death cult." Okay, you say, that simulation must be our world.

And sure enough, in a few pages we are in our world. Oh, there do seem to be a few anomalies, but they are just the sorts of things one would find in a normal novel--a street name that doesn't exist and such. Or are they?

Luckily, this sort of whipsawing does not continue (though one wonders what a book would be like if every two pages the world in it was completely re-written). Most of the rest of the book is a straightforward story set in our world (although the McGuffin is based on the underlying premise). The problem is that there is no real pay-off to the premise, and the story just kind of ... ends. A pity, since up to that point it was pretty good. (In fairness, I should say that others have found the end satisfying, but it did not work for me.)

There is also a ten-page diary extract that has all the abbreviations and vague allusions that a real diary would have. It is realistic, but it is also very hard to read.

I also have an annotation and a mathematical quibble. The annotation is that the Borges story referenced on page 150 is "The Sect of the Phoenix". The quibble is that MacLeod writes, "There is no such place as Krassnia. If you were to draw it on a map, right where the borders of Russia, Abkhazia and Georgia meet, and then fill it in, you'd need a fifth colour." On a basic level, if one describes an area as where the borders of three countries meet, it is implied that there are no other countries that meet as well, so choosing a color different from that of Russia, Abkhazia, or Georgia would be sufficient. On a more philosophical level, though, saying that adding a country would require a fifth color implies that it will make the world topologically different than it is. Even China Mieville's Beszel and Ul Qoma don't do that. It is a striking image that MacLeod creates, but it also seems typical of the sort of statement made by an author in a field with which he is unfamiliar.

To order The Restoration Game from amazon.com, click here.

"Who's Afraid of Wolf 359?" by Ken MacLeod:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/27/2008]

"Who's Afraid of Wolf 359?" by Ken MacLeod (THE NEW SPACE OPERA): I assume that the title is a reference to the "Outer Limits" episode "Wolf 359" (which was also referenced in "Star Trek" in the episodes "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II" ["The Next Generation"] and "Emissary" ["Deep Space 9"]), but MacLeod's story has no other apparent connection to that episode.

-30-: THE COLLAPSE OF THE GREAT AMERICAN NEWSPAPER edited by Charles M. Madigan:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/26/2007]

-30-: THE COLLAPSE OF THE GREAT AMERICAN NEWSPAPER edited by Charles M. Madigan (ISBN-13 978-1-56663-742-8, ISBN-10 1-56663-742-2) is a collection of articles by different people, so it is not surprising that they do not all agree on the causes of the phenomenon, the solutions (if any) to the phenomenon, or even the age of the phenomenon. Several writers say that the newspaper has been in decline for decades now. The causes seem to be some subset of 1) the growth of the suburbs, 2) the erosion of advertising revenues, 3) the spread of competing media, and 4) greed. The growth of the suburbs is a two-fold problem. First, the people in the suburbs have more interest in their local communities and less in the big city itself. And second, distributing a daily newspaper over an entire metropolitan area is considerably more difficult than distributing it within the relatively compact city limits.

The erosion of advertising revenues is, again, two-fold. The big city center stores, with their multi-page ads, have declined, and the chain stores in the suburban malls advertise in suburban papers and direct mail flyers. And the classified section is being eaten away by Web sites such as Craigslist.

Competing media have been around since radio became popular, and this is why the story of the decline of newspapers has been around almost as long. For example, the decline of the afternoon newspaper can be attributed to the rise of the evening television news, which competed in the same time slot, but with newer news, and with more pictures.

And finally, greed. As newspapers went public, bought by large conglomerates, their stockholders started demanding higher and higher profits, profits comparable to other investments but not in accord with the more intangible goals of the press. This may be in part why the smaller newspapers are still surviving--they are often still family-owned, and the family cares more about the quality of the newspaper than squeezing out another few dollars.

One local example given by Neil Hickey may serve to explain why there is disagreement. According to Hickey, "when Gannett took over the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey, it cut the staff from 225 to 180 and told the theater critic there was no money for him to cover Broadway plays." Cutting the staff means less coverage, and less in-depth coverage, than before, but I think Gannett may have a point on the Broadway plays. At one time Asbury Press and its constituents could have been considered being within the circle of influence of Broadway. Nowadays, that is not true, due to part to rising transportation and ticket costs. If the Asbury Park Press wants to continue to cover culture, it would probably do better for everyone if it shifted its staff to books, which remain far more available to the Press's readers. (One doesn't expect the Allentown, PA, or Albany, NY newspapers to cover Broadway plays, does one?)

As for the solution, some feel a better integration of print format and Web sites would help. Most feel that blindly following what readers say they want (shorter stories, more pictures, horoscopes) rather than providing better, more in-depth reporting and analysis is not the solution. And all agree that the constant cutting of staff most newspapers are trying will not solve the problem. And there should be some solution; Hickey points out that the news business "is the only business protected by the Constitution of the United States, a status that brings obligations for both the shareholder and the journalist."

If you want to read more about the future of journalism (with some comments on newspapers), see my write-up on the panel "The Future of Journalism" at the 2006 Worldcon.

To order -30- from amazon.com, click here.

HOW THEY SAID IT: WISE AND WITTY LETTERS FROM THE FAMOUS AND INFAMOUS edited by Rosalie Maggio:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/31/2003]

I've been reading HOW THEY SAID IT: WISE AND WITTY LETTERS FROM THE FAMOUS AND INFAMOUS, collected and edited by Rosalie Maggio. Two samples:

Edna St. Vincent Millay to Arthur Davison Ficke: "Please don't think me negligent or rude. I am both, in effect, of course, but please don't think me either...."

Agnes de Mille to Anna George de Mille: "Tomorrow at dawn, or literally very early, we motor north. The address will be

	BRYNHFRYD
	PONTFADOG
	WREXHAM
	DENBIGHSHIRE

To order How They Said It from amazon.com, click here.

MONSTER, 1959 by David Maine:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/06/2009]

MONSTER, 1959 by David Maine (ISBN-13 978-0-312-37302-3, ISBN-10 0-312-37302-3) is a re-telling of "King Kong", but set in the late 1950s on a radioactive island which has produced a monster with some characteristics of King Kong, some of Godzilla, and some original. It is an interesting combination of the two themes, but parts are a bit predictable, and the ending is just, well, bizarre (and also probably makes it unsuitable for young adult readers).

To order Monster, 1959 from amazon.com, click here.

INTRODUCING CAMUS by David Zane Mairowitz and Alain Korkos:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/01/2006]

Coincidentally, the same week I read THE RABBI'S CAT by Joann Sfar (set in Algeria), I also read INTRODUCING CAMUS by David Zane Mairowitz and Alain Korkos (ISBN 1-840-46064-4). Coincidentally, because Camus was from Ageria and set many of his works there. (He also played goalie at soccer. This is a fact which won me a "Dublin Literary Pub Crawl" t-shirt when I was the only one in the group who knew which position he played. This was because it was about the only position I knew the name for.) This is one of the good books in this series, and of necessity covers the political situation in Algeria as well as Camus's life and writing.

To order Introducing Camus from amazon.com, click here.

EAT MY GLOBE: ONE YEAR TO GO EVERYWHERE AND EAT EVERYTHING by Simon Majumdar:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/18/2009]

EAT MY GLOBE: ONE YEAR TO GO EVERYWHERE AND EAT EVERYTHING by Simon Majumdar (ISBN-13 978-1-4165-7602-0, ISBN-10 1-4165-7602-9) is supposedly about food, but it is heavily laced with anecdotes and comments about travel, and also about "Clan Majumdar" (the author's family). Unfortunately, the combination did not work for me.

To order Eat My Globe from amazon.com, click here.

STRANGER THAN FICTION by Aubrey Dillon Malone:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/30/2005]

STRANGER THAN FICTION by Aubrey Dillon Malone (ISBN 0-8092-9904-6) is a delightful little book of literary lists, such as "10 unintentional double-entendres from the classics" and "5 authors who went missing or got lost". And unlike most books of this sort, this one has an index! So if you know there was something interesting about a particular author, you can actually look up that author. (Of course, if it's Ernest Hemingway or W. Somerset Maugham, you still have a lot of pages to check.) Two examples (from another well-represented author): Brendan Behan was asked to come up with an advertising slogan for Guinness. He suggested, "It makes you drunk." And when he was offered thirty pounds for a play if they could change the title, he said, "For thirty quid you can change it to "The Brothers F***in' Karamazov."

To order Stranger Than Fiction from amazon.com, click here.

GOLDBERG STREET: SHORT PLAYS AND MONOLOGUES by David Mamet:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/17/2004]

David Mamet's GOLDBERG STREET: SHORT PLAYS AND MONOLOGUES (ISBN 0-802-15104-3 is successful only if you are familiar with Mamet's work on stage and screen. Trying to understand these without hearing them in your head with Mamet's peculiar rhythm would be almost impossible. Even knowing how to "hear" them doesn't always explain what Mamet intended with these pieces. They are the sort of thing one might find in a Mamet film as a way to show a character's state of mind, but standing alone they seem less meaningful. Still, if while you read these, you hear William Macy or Joe Mantegna delivering the lines, the sheer beauty of the rhythm of the words makes it worthwhile. (Synchronistically with the What, many of these plays have Jewish themes or characters.)

To order Goldberg Street from amazon.com, click here.

INTO THE LOOKING-GLASS WORLD by Alberto Manguel:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/20/2002]

I also read Alberto Manguel's collection of essays, INTO THE LOOKING-GLASS WORLD. (He is the editor of the *really* excellent anthology of magical realism, BLACK WATER.) On one of the section title pages, he quotes Chapter V of Lewis Carroll's THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS:

"There's the King's Messenger. He's in prison now, being punished: and the trial doesn't even begin till next Wednesday: and of course the crime comes last of all."

"Suppose he never commits the crime?" said Alice.

"That would be all the better, wouldn't it?" the Queen said.

Is this where Philip K. Dick got his idea for "Minority Report"?

I also started Avram Davidson's collection THE OTHER NINETEENTH CENTURY, about which I will probably say more later. [-ecl]

To order Into the Looking-Glass World from amazon.com, click here.

1491: NEW REVELATIONS OF THE AMERICAS BEFORE COLUMBUS by Chares C. Mann:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/03/2006]

1491: NEW REVELATIONS OF THE AMERICAS BEFORE COLUMBUS by Charles C. Mann (ISBN 1-400-03205-9) sounded promising, but is written in such a dry style, and structured so poorly, that I could not finish it. (By poorly structured, I mean that Mann does not follow any of the rules about having a first and last sentence that help summarize whatever comes between.) In addition, Mann has decided to follow new spellings for names in indigenous languages. So, for example, he uses "Inka" rather than "Inca", "Atawallpa" rather than "Atahualpa" and "Qosqo" rather than "Cuzco". This makes everything difficult to follow, but even worse, he does not cross-reference these in the index, so if you look up "Cuzco", there is no entry for it *or* pointer to "Qosqo". (I have no idea why someone decided that "Inca" was incorrect and should be "Inka" instead; it is not as though they are pronounced differently.)

To order 1491 from amazon.com, click here.

THE AFFINITY BRIDGE by George Mann:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/17/2009]

THE AFFINITY BRIDGE by George Mann (ISBN-13 978-0-7653-2320-0, ISBN-10 0-7653-2320-6) is a steampunk novel with airships and mechanical automata, as well as a glowing blue policeman who has apparently come back from the dead to avenge his murder. The subtitle "A Newbury & Hobbes Investigation" tells you several things. One, this follows in the great tradition of detective/assistant mysteries. Two, neither Newbury or Hobbes is likely to turn out to be the villain. And three, both will survive, because there seems to be clear intention to make this a series if this one is successful. And it is reasonably entertaining in a steampunky, Victorian-detective sort of way.

However, Tor really needs a better proofreader. On page 98, we read: "The device is designed to power itself. When the automaton moves, a rotor inside its abdomen rocks back and forth, racheting the winding mechanism and causing the mainspring in the chest to become taut. Effectively, the unit is self-winding, and thus it will never power down, unless commanded to do so. If left inactive for long periods without instructions, the unit will eventually move itself to trigger the winding mechanism." This may be an alternate world, but they presumably have not repealed the Laws of Thermodynamics. First, what Mann has described is a perpetual motion machine, one in which no energy is lost while it is operating (a violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics). But even assuming that worked, why would it then have to wind itself when it was inactive for a while? That implies that energy is leaking out somehow, but that it can recharge itself as a closed system to restore that energy (a violation of the First Law of Thermodynamics).

(It is true that the person who says this is not scrupulously honest, but there is no revelation that he has lied in this context.)

To order The Affinity Bridge from amazon.com, click here.

THE SOLARIS BOOK OF NEW SCIENCE FICTION edited by George Mann:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/18/2008]

I got THE SOLARIS BOOK OF NEW SCIENCE FICTION edited by George Mann (ISBN-13 978-1-84416-448-6, ISBN-10 1-84416-449-9) in order to read a single alternate history story in it (Peter F. Hamilton's "If at First..."). But then I read the Paul Di Filippo story ("Personal Jesus"), and then the Stephen Baxter ("Final Contact"), and then decided to read the rest of the anthology. Noteworthy were the Di Filippo and James Lovegrove's "The Bowdler Strain". The Baxter had an interesting idea, but there was a bit too much "British-stiff-upper-lipism" for me. The other stories varied in quality, but in any case it is good to see original un-themed anthologies being published. Tor's "Starlight" series was excellent while it lasted, but ceased after five volumes. Perhaps a mass-market format will last longer.

To order The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction from amazon.com, click here.

THE MAN WHO BECAME SHERLOCK HOLMES by Terry Manners:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/17/2004]

Terry Manners's THE MAN WHO BECAME SHERLOCK HOLMES (ISBN 0-7535- 0536-3) is about Jeremy Brett and his life and career, and is probably more thorough about his earlier career than his stint as Holmes. In part this is because his illness (manic depression) became most pronounced during his times as Holmes, and so Manners concentrated more on the illness than on Brett's portrayal of Holmes. It all seemed a bit sensationalist at times, but I suppose if one is attempting to explain a lot that people may have misinterpreted, that is necessary. (For example, towards the end, Brett was too heavy to be an accurate Holmes, but this weight gain was a side effect of medication and not something he could control.)

To order The Man Who Became Sherlock Holmes from amazon.com, click here.

MURDER ON MAIN STREET by Cynthia Manson:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/15/2005]

MURDER ON MAIN STREET edited by Cynthia Manson (ISBN 0-56619-927-1), you will be pleased to hear, doesn't have any overt anti-Semitism, though it's unlikely that someone editing a book in 1993 for Barnes & Noble would include any of that sort of material. (Of course, the subtitle is "Small Town Crime from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine & Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine", and one is somewhat less likely to have Jewish characters to comment on in a small town in Nebraska than in London.) As a summer beach read, this is pretty good, because the stories are best read spread out over a week or two of vacation rather than one after another.

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