All reviews copyright 1984-2011 Evelyn C. Leeper.
KILLER ANGELS by Michael Shaara:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/27/2004]
Michael Shaara's THE KILLER ANGELS was a big hit with the "original" book discussion group--everyone thought it was wonderful. We ended up with a discussion split between the book and the Civil War itself, especially its causes.
To order The Killer Angels from amazon.com, click here.
THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL SOCIETY by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/20/2009]
The "high concept" description for THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL SOCIETY by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (ISBN-13 978-0-385-34100-4) would be "84 CHARING CROSS ROAD meets FOYLE'S WAR". It is an epistolary novel between a writer in England and the members of a literary society on Guernsey shortly after World War II, with the Guernesias in the Helene Hanff role, talking about the books they have read and loved (or not), and asking her to send books they have been unable to get, and writer Juliet Ashton in the role of book dealer Frank Doel.
Shaffer and Barrows have combined all this with the Guernesias' stories of the German occupation of Guernsey during the war, as related to Ashton, and later as re-told by Ashton to her publisher and her friends. There is also a romantic sub-plot which I though completely unnecessary--aren't books *and* the German occupation enough?
But more of a problem with the book was that while it was good, I kept hitting spots where I found myself thinking, "This character is writing something that sounds great. In fact, it sounds just like Helene Hanff might write." And then I realized that it was reading too much like a copy of Helene Hanff. It all made me think of Hanff's comment (after reading Chaucer's CANTERBURY TALES) about how she prefers non-fiction to fiction: "Wasn't anything else that intrigued me much, it was just stories. I don't like stories. ... I'm a great lover of i-was-there books." (11/09/63) It's not that any of the characters say it--it's how I felt reading this. Unlike Hanff, I do like stories, but when I was reading 84 CHARING CROSS ROAD, I felt like 'i-was-there', while with THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL SOCIETY I was reading a character's made-up feelings. I wanted to like this, and I did like parts of it, but I also felt I was being manipulated into it.
To order The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society from amazon.com, click here.
ARROWDREAMS: AN ANTHOLOGY OF ALTERNATE CANADAS edited by Mark Shainblum and John Dupuis (Nuage Editions, ISBN 0-921-833-51-2, 1997, 191pp, trade paperback):
This is a book for a fairly small audience, but one reason I'm reviewing it is because even that audience might not hear about it. (When I looked for it in the Toronto branch of Chapters, a Canadian superstore, no one there could find it. I eventually found it in short story collections, having checked the "Canadian Interest," "Canadian Fiction," and science fiction sections.)
It is, as the subtitle suggests, an anthology of alternate history stories whose focus is on Canada: Canadian history, Canadian personalities, Canadian sensibilities. I am (I hasten to point out) not Canadian, so several of them simply went over my head.
Anthologies usually start out with their strongest story, so I can only conclude that hockey is vastly more important in Canada than any sport is in the United States, because Edo van Belkom's "Hockey's Night in Canada" did nothing for me. Nancy Kilpatrick's "Gross Island--The Movie" is not even what I would call alternate history--a movie company is filming a historical drama about an epidemic and being very inaccurate about it. There is no historical speculation going on here. (Had this appeared as a straight story somewhere else I would say it was an interesting look at the film industry, so it's not badly written, just not alternate history.)
"Health in Us" by Paula Johanson is also about an epidemic, but it is alternate history and at least competently done, if a bit short. Paul Scott's "On the Edge" is a post-apocalyptic story with the "apocalypse" being the secession of Quebec in 1995. It's barely alternate history, the more so because a secession tomorrow could result in much the same story.
Michael Skeet's "Near Enough to Home" is set in a different United States Civil War, the result of us having lost Louisiana to the British and making Canada much more a force to be reckoned with. The main game here seems to be "spot the stars," but it's not too bad.
Derryl Murphy's "Cold Ground" has Louis Riel escaping execution through black magic. If I actually knew who Louis Riel was, it might have meant more.
"Misfire" by Shane Simmons has Richthofen surviving World War I and leading Germany to greater air power than in our timeline, and this survival is attributed to a jammed gun on an airplane flown by a Canadian. This is a tenuous connection to Canada at best, and the fact is that we have no idea who shot down Richthofen in our timeline anyway. In spite of this, the speculation on the effect of Richthofen's survival makes this worth reading.
My prediction is that Jews will enjoy "The Last of the Maccabees" by Allan Weiss and Gentiles won't. It seems in many ways a sort of in-joke which reminded me of the tribe in "Joe Versus the Volcano." Not that "The Last of the Maccabees" is a humorous story, but having "Indians" wearing tzitzit and payes, and speaking Hebrew is by its very nature somewhat risible. The fact that their discoverers are from the Roman Commonwealth, and the French seem to be Buddhists just adds to the mix, and there's even more I won't tell you. (Weiss does slip at least once and have the Indians speak Yiddish instead of Hebrew.) I enjoyed this more than most of the other stories, but then it really is more an "alternate Judaism" story than an "alternate Canada" one.
"The Coming of the Jet" by Eric Choi assumes Canadian supremacy in the aerospace industry. I suppose techno-types will appreciate it, but it was only slightly above the hockey story for me. Dave Duncan's "For Want of a Nail" assumes a French victory on the Plains of Abraham an is not related to Robert Sobel's novel of the same name (which dealt with a British victory at Burgoyne).
Glenn Grant's "Thermometers Melting" takes the familiar approach of taking well-known people and looking at them in an alternate timeline. In this case Grant uses Hemingway and Trotsky, and adds an additional bonus at the end. It's a bit hard to follow at times, since it is supposedly excerpts from a longer work, but one of the better stories nonetheless.
And finally is "The Case of the Serial 'De Quebec a la Lune' by Veritatus" by Laurent McAllister (pen name for Yves Meynard and Jean-Louis Trudel). I think it is a (fake) academic article on a (non-existent) serial patterned after Jules Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon" but written by a Canadian and possibly set in its own past. Are you sufficiently confused? If not, read the story and you will be. Some people like this sort of thing, which is why Connie Willis won a Hugo for "The Soul Selects Her Own Society ...," but this is so dry as to rive away all but the most confirmed academic.
Interestingly, though the final story is about a (fictional) French-language story, none of the stories in this Canadian anthology appear to have been written in French. (At any rate, I saw no translator credits.) This in itself seems to imply an alternate Canada, one in which there is no French-language science fiction. (I note that the one Quebec secession story implies a negative result.)
If you are Canadian and enjoy alternate histories, you probably want to seek out this book. For those of us south of the border (or over the seas, or for that matter west of the border in Alaska), this is probably not going to appeal to you unless you are a student of Canadian history or culture.
To order Arrowdreams from amazon.com, click here.
HENRY IV, Part 2 by William Shakespeare:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/11/2011]
I have been watching the British television mini-series "Shakespeare's Age of Kings", broadcast in 1960 in fifteen parts with a really amazing cast: Sean Connery as Harry Percy (a.k.a. Hotspur), Judi Dench as Princess Katherine of France, Julian Glover as King Edward IV, and Frank Pettingell as Sir John Falstaff.
In "Henry IV, Part 2", King Henry V makes the following speech to the Lord Chief Justice when Henry becomes king after his father's (Henry IV's) death:
You shall be as a father to my youth: My voice shall sound as you do prompt mine ear, And I will stoop and humble my intents To your well-practised wise directions. And, princes all, believe me, I beseech you; My father is gone wild into his grave, For in his tomb lie my affections; And with his spirit sadly I survive, To mock the expectation of the world, To frustrate prophecies and to raze out Rotten opinion, who hath writ me down After my seeming. The tide of blood in me Hath proudly flow'd in vanity till now: Now doth it turn and ebb back to the sea, Where it shall mingle with the state of floods And flow henceforth in formal majesty.
And later, when speaking to Falstaff:
Presume not that I am the thing I was; For God doth know, so shall the world perceive, That I have turn'd away my former self; So will I those that kept me company. When thou dost hear I am as I have been, Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast, The tutor and the feeder of my riots: Till then, I banish thee, on pain of death, As I have done the rest of my misleaders, Not to come near our person by ten mile. For competence of life I will allow you, That lack of means enforce you not to evil: And, as we hear you do reform yourselves, We will, according to your strengths and qualities, Give you advancement. Be it your charge, my lord, To see perform'd the tenor of our word. Set on.
This seems merely an elaboration upon I Corinthians 13:11: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."
To order Henry IV, Part 2 from amazon.com, click here.
PERICLES and CORIOLANUS by William Shakespeare:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/18/2005]
When I finished Plutarch's life of Pericles, I said, "I don't remember Shakespeare telling that story," so I re-read Shakespeare's PERICLES (ISBN 0-140-71469-3), and it was completely different--just the name was retained. Plus Shakespeare had the usual set of anachronisms: references to being within pistol-shot, Latin mottoes on shields, a whole feudal structure of knights that never existed in ancient Greece, a reference to the title page of a book (in ancient Greece?), and so on. But with CORIOLANUS (ISBN 0-140-71473-1) Shakespeare sticks reasonably close to the historical figure.
CORIOLANUS by William Shakespeare:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/25/2011]
This week we watched a BBC production of a political thriller about a politician who thinks he is above the people. The people are clamoring for subsidized grain because there is a shortage due to a recent troop build-up, but he dismisses this as wanting too much of a "nanny state" on their part. All his opponents do the usual thing, mingling with the people, bragging about their military service, begging for the crowd's approval, but he thinks this is pandering and when forced into it, does it very poorly. He rails against making everything into sound bites and special pleadings, but only manages to antagonize so many people that eventually they turn on him, and he goes over to the opposition. After he starts helping them make gains, his original party starts to wish they hadn't driven him out, and eventually his family convinces him to change his affiliation back. At this, the opposition has had enough of these flip-flops and completely destroys him with accusations and slurs.
And the name of this thriller? CORIOLANUS by William Shakespeare (ISBN 978-0-451-52843-8).
To order Pericles from amazon.com, click here.
To order Coriolanus from amazon.com, click here.
RICHARD III by William Shakespeare:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/28/2007]
Our book discussion this month was about RICHARD III by William Shakespeare (ISBN-13 978-0-743-48284-4, ISBN-10 0-743-48284-0). One problem I have with this play is that parts of it are just unbelievable--in particular, Richard's (successful) wooing of Lady Anne. I don't care how charming someone is, it is just not credible that they could kill a woman's husband and father-in- law, and then get her to fall in love with him at the funeral. (Unless, of course, she is not in love with the husband--but that is not the case here.)
[First, the husband and father were not murdered but fell in battle, which is a little bit different. Also the fact that Anne Neville was only 16 and was probably left unprotected might have had something to do with it. (Thank you, answers.com.) By the way, she does not fall in love with him in the play. In one scene she goes from detesting him to merely disliking him. -mrl]
Of course, a lot of RICHARD III is not to be believed, not because it is just unlikely, but because it is actually false. Shakespeare based his characters on the histories written by Thomas More and other Tudor supporters, and these histories were written more to blacken Richard's name than to convey the truth. For example, Clarence was actually disloyal to Edward, and was killed because of that, in spite of Richard's attempts to save him. One of the best expositions of the misrepresentations is Josephine Tey's THE DAUGHTER OF TIME, which is our discussion book *next* month.
However, parts of the play are spot-on even today, such as this description from Act III, Scene 7:
Buckingham: The mayor is here at hand: intend some fear; Be not you spoke with, but by mighty suit: And look you get a prayer-book in your hand, And stand betwixt two churchmen, good my lord; For on that ground I'll build a holy descant: And be not easily won to our request: Play the maid's part, still answer nay, and take it. ... Lord Mayor: See, where he stands between two clergymen! Buckingham: Two props of virtue for a Christian prince, To stay him from the fall of vanity: And, see, a book of prayer in his hand, True ornaments to know a holy man. Famous Plantagenet, most gracious prince, Lend favourable ears to our request; And pardon us the interruption Of thy devotion and right Christian zeal.
Doesn't this sound like some of today's politicians?
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/16/2010]
For the science fiction book-and-movie discussion group, this month's selection was "The Tragedy of Richard the Third" by William Shakespeare, along with Sir Ian McKellen's 1995 film which set the action in 1930s England.
The first thing to note is that Shakespeare calls it a "Tragedy", not a "History". This is often pointed out as an excuse for Shakespeare's presenting such a slanted picture of Richard III, but it probably was supposed to indicate just that it was not quite as accurate as those histories titled "The Life of" (e.g., the plays of the Henriad or "King John").
Reading the original play, I saw a couple of instances where Shakespeare decided he liked his words or structure and so re-used them in "Julius Caesar". For example, in "Richard III" someone refers to the crowd as being "like dumb statues or breathing stones" (Act III, Scene vii, Line 25) and says, "What tongueless blocks were they! would they not speak ...?" (Line 42). In "Julius Caesar", someone addresses the crowd as "You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!" (Act I, Scene i, Line 36).
Also, Richard refuses the crown two times (Act III, Scene vii, Lines 156 and 209), then calls back those offering it (Line 225) so that he can accept it. Caesar refuses the crown three times (Act I, Scene ii, Lines 229, 262, and 234). Interestingly, McKellen splits one speech of Richard's to make three refusals, making the parallel even stronger.
McKellen also simplified a lot, dropping several characters who would be as easily identifiable to Elizabethan audiences as Jefferson Davies or George Armstrong Custer are to us, but with whom modern audiences would have problems. He also got rid of the concept of sanctuary, which was important in Richard's time, but has no meaning in modern secular states.
And he changes the method used to "infer [imply] the bastardy of Edward's children" from a complicated situation involving a possible prior marriage to "Lady Lucy" (making his marriage to Queen Anne invalid), to the simpler idea that Edward and Anne did not marry until after the birth of the Princes. While that may actually make sense for the older of the two Princes, it seems beyond belief that the King of England would wait *another ten years* and until after the birth of a second son to think, "Gee, maybe I should marry Anne so that my sons might have some claim to being legitimate heirs."
To order Richard III from amazon.com, click here.
To order Ian McKellen's annotated script of Richard III from amazon.com, click here.
ADVENTURES IN YIDDISHLAND: POSTVERNACULAR LANGUAGE & CULTURE by Jeffrey Shandler:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/28/2011]
ADVENTURES IN YIDDISHLAND: POSTVERNACULAR LANGUAGE & CULTURE by Jeffrey Shandler (ISBN 0-520-24416-8) has been mentioned by Michael Chabon in an essay or two, because it takes him to task over his comments about Uriel Weinrich's SAY IT IN YIDDISH. This is a complicated chain of references, so let me explain.
In the 1950s, Dover Books published a series of phrase books for a couple of dozen languages. These were the usual travelers' phrase books, with sentences like "Where is the ticket office?" and "I would like a double room, please." In 1958, they published SAY IT IN YIDDISH edited by Uriel Weinrich (ISBN 978-0-486-20815-2), which had the same sentences as all the others. In 1997 Michael Chabon wrote about it in an essay titled "Guidebook to a Land of Ghosts". Basically, Chabon saw no practical value for the book, while many others (including Dover's president and Shandler) disagree. Shandler says that "Yiddish was widely spoken in Israel in the late 1950s, and there were substantial Yiddish-speaking communities in Paris, Montreal, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, and other places."
I am in the middle here. Like Tevye, I say to Chabon, "You're right," and to Shandler, "and you're right." Yes, there were/are Yiddish-speaking communities, but if someone were visiting these communities specifically, he probably already knew Yiddish, and if he did not, the "national" language (Hebrew, French, or Spanish) would probably be more useful overall, and widely understood in these communities. That is, one can probably manage in the Yiddish-speaking section of Buenos Aires with Spanish, which would also be useful in the rest of Buenos Aires, while Yiddish would not be useful outside that community.
That said, I own a copy of SAY IT IN YIDDISH, and I did take it with me on my trip to Eastern Europe, where I found it to be of no practical use. Our conversations in synagogues and Jewish museums were in English, extremely broken Hebrew, and even in Spanish!
All this is by way of background. The main thesis of ADVENTURES IN YIDDISHLAND seems to be that Yiddish is still a living language (in the sense of having thousands of people who speak it as their first language and teach it to their children as *their* first language), but that it is treated by the non-Yiddish world as a dead or dying language, interesting only as flavoring for English, or as performance art, or otherwise fragmented. For example, Shandler observes that revivals of Yiddish plays are invariably advertised, introduced, and reviewed in English. This seems to be part of the definition of "postvernacularity", so in a sense Shandler seems to be doing the same thing he criticizes in others.
One "criticism" Shandler has is of the National Yiddish Book Center, of which he says, "What, after all, is the nation that the *National* Yiddish Book Center serves?" He continues, "the naming of the NYBC as a "national" institution breaks with a precedent set by older Yiddishist organizations, which more frequently name themselves as ... international, when they wish to articulate broadness of scope." However, I observe that the latest web pages, etc., of the National Yiddish Book Center list it as just the Yiddish Book Center.
To order Adventures in Yiddishland from amazon.com, click here.
SUDDEN FICTION: AMERICAN SHORT SHORT STORIES edited by Robert Shapard and James Thomas:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/30/2009]
SUDDEN FICTION: AMERICAN SHORT SHORT STORIES edited by Robert Shapard and James Thomas (ISBN-10 0-87095-265-2) is both a good idea and a bad idea. I like having a book of very short stories, because they are great for reading when I have only a few minutes. (One suspects this book has ended up in more bathrooms, proportionally, than most any other.) But it is also a book that "jumps around" so much that it is difficult for the reader to decide that their time might be better spent elsewhere. I had the constant feeling that while the story I just finished was not that good, the next one would be better. After a while, though, I decided that modern literary fiction was not my thing, and read only the authors I was interested in (e.g., Ray Bradbury, Tennessee Williams). I think that I prefer this sort of collection within the speculative fiction field.
To order Sudden Fiction from amazon.com, click here.
DON JUAN IN HELL by George Bernard Shaw:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/27/2005]
DON JUAN IN HELL by George Bernard Shaw was this month's book discussion group choice. This is the middle part of Act III of MAN AND SUPERMAN (ISBN 0-140-43788-6), and is often performed as a stand-alone play. (Conversely, when MAN AND SUPERMAN is produced, this section is often left out.) Charles Harris (a member of the group as well as a correspondent to the MT VOID) said that having read Oscar Wilde's THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GREY, he had probably had enough of the sort of aphorism that both Wilde and Shaw peppered their works with. I wondered if being an Irishman in England makes one write that sort of aphorism. We couldn't quite define what make them similar--Mark suggested that there must be axioms of metamaximetics waiting to be discovered. I also discovered that while Shaw may be a great dramatist, he is no paleontologist. On page 144 of the 1964 Penguin printing, one character says, "The megatherium, the ichthyosaurus have paced the earth with seven-league steps and hidden the day with cloud fast wings." The ichthyosaurus was more like to swim the sea with seven-league strokes. I did like the writing, aphoristic as it is at times and even though towards the end it starts to bog down.
I'll give an example of what I like, so you can judge your reaction. Don Juan tells the Devil, "Your friends are all the dullest dogs I know. They are not beautiful: they are only decorated. They are not clean: they are only shaved and starched. They are not dignified: they are only fashionably dressed. They are not educated: they are only college passmen. They are not religious: they are only pewrenters. They are not moral: they are only conventional. They are not virtuous: they are only cowardly. They are not even vicious: they are only "frail." They are not artistic: they are only lascivious. They are not prosperous: they are only rich. They are not loyal, they are only servile; not dutiful, only sheepish; not public spirited, only patriotic; not courageous, only quarrelsome; not determined, only obstinate; not masterful, only domineering; not self-controlled, only obtuse; not self-respecting, only vain; not kind, only sentimental; not social, only gregarious; not considerate, only polite; not intelligent, only opinionated; not progressive, only factious; not imaginative, only superstitious; not just, only vindictive; not generous, only propitiatory; not disciplined, only cowed; and not truthful at all: liars every one of them, to the very backbone of their souls." (This is also an example of why theater acting is much harder than film acting. The actor needs to learn this line, word for word--because on the stage, actors are not permitted to change the script at all without the writer's permission--and get it right the first time, performance after performance. No retakes, no editing, no "Can we change 'factious' to 'contrary'?")
To order Don Juan in Hell (Man and Superman) from amazon.com, click here.
BLUE-EYED CHILD OF FORTUNE by Col. Robert Gould Shaw:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/12/2004]
After I saw the film GLORY fifteen years ago, I decided I wanted to read the book of Robert Gould Shaw's letters, BLUE-EYED CHILD OF FORTUNE. But because I didn't want to spend the price charged by the specialty publisher who had it in print, I started looking for a used copy. I somehow managed to miss the trade paperback edition when it came out, but I did eventually run across a used copy a year ago. (This gives you some idea how large my backlog is!) I think I'm glad I didn't buy this new. The letters are certainly of interest, but I was not happy with the footnoting. It was extensive, but was almost entirely identifying the people named in the letters (e.g., the full name of someone Shaw refers to as "Aunt Jane"), and very little commenting on events mentioned by Shaw, or giving a wider perspective when he talks about what he hopes will happen or such. I realize that was the decision of editor Russell Duncan, not to "intrude" on Shaw, but given that close to a third of the book is the footnotes I felt it could have helped. My other regret is that Shaw spent so little time writing about the 54th Massachusetts--most of the letters are before he takes command of the regiment. However, for those who want more, I recommend Luis E. Emilio's A BRAVE BLACK REGIMENT--Emilio was the highest ranking officer to survive the attack on Battery Wagner. (Contrary to what you might think from the name, Emilio was not from the American Southwest or Mexico--his parents were immigrants from Spain and he was born in Salem, Massachusetts.)
To order Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune from amazon.com, click here.
READING THE OED: ONE MAN, ONE YEAR, 21,730 PAGES by Ammon Shea:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/25/2009]
My first question about READING THE OED: ONE MAN, ONE YEAR, 21,730 PAGES by Ammon Shea (ISBN-13 978-0-399-53398-3) is, "Just what is Shea living on while he does this?" He apparently spent eight hours a day on the reading, and there is no mention of even a part-time job. I suppose it could be that Shea's girlfriend was so inspired by his project that she agreed to support him through it, but I'm not putting money on it.
One problem with the book was that the parts about the reading of the dictionary were fairly skimpy, so Shea needed to pad it out with a sampling of words from the OED. He has previously written two books about obscure words, so it was an obvious thing to do, but it makes this more just another book about obscure words and less distinctive in its subject. (The book is about half narrative and half words.)
To order Reading the OED from amazon.com, click here.
SHELF LIFE by Suzanne Strempek Shea:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/21/2005]
I ran across SHELF LIFE by Suzanne Strempek Shea (ISBN 0-8070-7258-3) while I was looking for another book about life in a bookstore. I'm somewhat surprised none of my western Massachusetts friends mentioned it, because it is about the author's first year working in Edwards Books in Springfield, Massachusetts. Shea talks not only about that bookstore, but about other notable independent bookstores, such as The Tattered Cover in Denver or the Odyssey in South Hadley. (The latter is less world-famous, but is certainly notable in the western Massachusetts area.) This book is of some interest to fans of bookstores, but of particular interest to Massachusans.
To order Shelf Life from amazon.com, click here.
CITIZEN IN SPACE by Robert Sheckley:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/27/2011]
CITIZEN IN SPACE by Robert Sheckley (Ballantine, 1962, no ISBN) was Mark's choice for this month's science fiction discussion group. Mark is a fan of the "Golden Age" of science fiction, particularly Robert Sheckley, and though this collection has long been out of print, luckily there were copies available on the used market. (It has also been put on-line illegally on a server in Russia that seems to be working at putting a *lot* of works on-line.)
The first story, "The Mountain Without a Name" seems like it is going to be just another "Earthmen invade another planet and get their come-uppance from the 'backward' natives." It isn't.
"The Accountant" is one of those "reversal" stories. Usually the parents want the child to follow some practical career and the child wants something off the wall. Here the parents want the child to be a wizard, but the child wants to be an accountant. Move along, nothing to see here.
"Hunting Problem" is yet another reversal, with an alien "Scouter" hunting "mirashes", which we find out very early on are humans. And because we find this out early, we are expecting some other twist at the end of the story.
"A Thief in Time" might almost be the inspiration for "Paycheck"-- the protagonist in "A Thief in Time" is told by a time traveler that he will invent a time machine. He ends up traveling to the future and discovering that (on a previous trip?) he has stolen an odd assortment of items: lifebelts, shark repellant, micro-copies of world literature, hand mirrors, carrot seeds, .... Naturally, as the story progresses, we (and he) discover why these items were necessary.
"The Luckiest Man in the World" is another fairly predictable story, and as such seems to go on much longer than it needs to.
"Hands Off" is a combination "first-contact" and slapstick story. Humans try to operate an alien craft they have found (well, stolen) with somewhat less success--but more realistically--than the Americans had with U-571 in the movie of the same name.
"Something for Nothing" is a story about the dangers involved in relying on credit and a good credit rating to acquire what you want. Alas, the main character cannot just declare bankruptcy and start over.
At forty pages,"Ticket to Tranai" is the longest of the stories.
While there is much to like in its depiction of a "utopia" with no
crime, no poverty, and hardly any government, I cannot help but
note that the characterization of women in it leaves a lot to be
desired. I can understand how the rationale Sheckley gives for
their attitude might seem reasonable, but only based on 1950s
assumptions.
And as you might suspect, the "no crime, no poverty, and hardly any government" aspects of Tranai turn out to be not what Goodman expects.
Sheckley seems a bit prescient regarding the current decline of public services, and the concurrent enrichment of the few:
"Marvin Goodman had lived most of his life in Seakirk, New Jersey, a town controlled by one political boss or another for close to fifty years. Most of Seakirk's inhabitants were indifferent to the spectacle of corruption in high places and low, the gambling, the gang wars, the teen-age drinking. They were used to the sight of their roads crumbling, their ancient water mains bursting, their power plants breaking down, their decrepit old buildings falling apart, while the bosses built bigger homes, longer swimming pools and warmer stables. People were used to it."
I really liked "The Battle", but I have a fondness for theological science fiction: science fiction where the "what if?" is "what if Christianity [or some other religion, but it is usually Christianity] is literally true?" In this case, the question is, what will happen during the Final Battle between humanity and the minions of Satan, particularly if humanity brings its advanced technology to bear? It's not what you think.
"Skulking Permit" is almost the flip side of "A Ticket to Tranai": there is a utopia which has been out of contact with Earth for generations, and now that contact has been re-established the colonists want to do their best to prove how normal and conformist they are, including creating a jail and a criminal. The story is just a bit too twee, though, and the ending is just too convenient and unbelievable
The title story, "Citizen in Space", is about ubiquitous government surveillance. Written during the McCarthy era, it still (or perhaps again) has relevance in a world where the FBI attaches GPS units to people's cars and you need to have a full body scan to fly to Grandma's house.
And the final story, "Ask a Foolish Question", is not even really a story at all, but a philosophical musing on the function of background in illocutionary acts. If you don't understand what that means, well, that's the point.
To order Citizen in Space from amazon.com, click here.
"Seventh Victim" by Robert Sheckley:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/16/2004]
Robert Sheckley's "Seventh Victim" (made into the film TENTH VICTIM perhaps because there was already a different film called SEVENTH VICTIM) was also somewhat predictable, and the game doesn't bear close examination (in particular the "bootstrapping" process of how it got started), but the world Sheckley describes seems at least reasonably well imagined.
"The Wind Is Rising" by Robert Sheckley:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/03/2011]
We watched the Disney film SECRETARIAT the other day, and watching the re-creation of the Belmont Stakes race, I found myself thinking of the science fiction story "The Wind Is Rising" by Robert Sheckley. In both cases the observers are sure they understand what is going on and what comes next. And in both cases (no surprise here) they are wrong.
THE AMAZING DR. DARWIN by Charles Sheffield:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/18/2003]
Remember a few weeks ago I was talking about von Kempelen's chess-playing "Turk"? Well, Charles Sheffield's THE AMAZING DR. DARWIN talks about it in one of the six stories contained in it. These stories, which are effectively Sherlock Holmes pastiches, but with Erasmus Darwin and his friend Jacob Pool as the Holmes and Watson characters. A mystery is presented, inplying some supernatural agency, and rationalist Darwin investigates it and proves how it's all natural and rational after all--think "Adventure of the Sussex Vampire". (This isn't a real spoiler if you know anything about Darwin, or Sheffield.) The book looks padded out, with fairly large type and wide margins, but is actually about 100,000 words long. Even so, though the stories are enjoyable enough as puzzles, it's hard to justify paying a hardcover price for this. (I got my copy from the library.)
To order The Amazing Dr. Darwin from amazon.com, click here.
HOW TO SAVE THE WORLD edited by Charles Sheffield:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/03/2011]
HOW TO SAVE THE WORLD edited by Charles Sheffield (ISBN 0-312-85577-X) was well-intentioned, I suppose, but the stories are disappointing. The themes seem pretty familiar. For example, consider the first three stories. Things are not what they seem ("Zap Thy Neighbor" by James P. Hogan, which at first glance seems similar to Robert Sheckley's "A Ticket to Tranai", but isn't). Power corrupts ("The Meetings of the Secret World Masters" by Geoffrey A. Landis)--though the solution seems a bit inspired by Hogan's story. (I'm sure it is a coincidence.) And changes have unexpected consequences ("Choice" by Lawrence Watt-Evans), though I am not convinced this would be the effect, since it does not seem to be going in that direction now. Unfortunately, these are the best stories. The others tend to be even more unlikely, or preachy, or both.
To order How to Save the World from amazon.com, click here.
TOMORROW & TOMORROW by Charles Sheffield (Bantam Spectra, ISBN 0-553-37808-2, 1996, 368pp, trade paperback):
This is an expansion of Sheffield's novella "At the Eschaton," and deals with the life of a man and of the universe. It does this by setting up a situation in which our protagonist Drake Merlin (catchy name, that) is cryogenically preserved along with his wife, who has just died of a rare disease. The plan is that they will be revived when science has progressed enough to resurrect and cure her. However, Drake finds himself revived ahead of time to solve first one problem, then another that only he can solve, while science still has not found a cure. It's almost as if we are reading something like Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men, but with a single observer throughout. There is a real sense of wonder, and of the sweep of history, and Sheffield on the whole does a good job of making this all convincing, although some events are just downright unbelievable. (For example, at one point Drake is rebuilt by creatures with no previous knowledge of human physiology.)
On the downside, Sheffield's writing tends toward the straightforward rather than the poetic, and occasionally make odd missteps. At one point he offers the following: "'Hubris,' he said, in English." I suppose "hubris" is an honorary English word, but still.... On page 183, Tom says to Drake, "Our Galaxy is being invaded by something from outside." On page 187, Drake says to Tom, "This galaxy is being--" and then stops. According to Sheffield, "Now Drake had to pause. He wanted to say 'invaded,' but that word had apparently vanished from the language." In four pages?
These are, I suppose, minor quibbles. For those who love Stapledon and such other works as John Brunner's Crucible of Time, or for anyone wanting a look at a far future vision, I recommend this book.
To order Tomorrow and Tomorrow from amazon.com, click here.
CHEAP: THE HIGH COST OF DISCOUNT CULTURE by Ellen Ruppel Shell:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/15/2010]
I've read several books on thrift/cheapness/pricing lately, of which the most interesting was CHEAP: THE HIGH COST OF DISCOUNT CULTURE by Ellen Ruppel Shell (ISBN-13 978-1-594-20215-5). One example Shell uses throughout the book is that of watered milk. Assume that a fair price for milk sells for $1 a quart, but some people cannot afford that and so watered-down milk sells for 80 cents a quart. If everyone knows which is which and they are priced accordingly, there is no problem--everyone can buy whichever they prefer at a fair price. But if the two sorts of milk are packaged identically, then no one is willing to pay more than 80 cents a quart for any milk. This in turn means that it is no longer economically feasible to sell unwatered milk and it will disappear from the market. The end result is that the only product available is the low-quality one.
Shell also discusses IKEA at great length. She observes, for example, that while IKEA makes a big deal of using "ecologically sound" materials and processes, they also position their stores such that people need to use a lot of gasoline to get to them (and to return for missing parts, etc., which is apparently very common). IKEA also encourages the idea of discardable furniture rather than items built to last.
To order Cheap from amazon.com, click here.
THE LAST MAN by Mary Shelley (Bantam Classic, ISBN 0-553-21436-5, 1826 [1994], 499pp, mass market paperback):
While everyone else was re-issuing Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to coincide with the release of Kenneth Branagh's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (and indeed there was even Leonore Fleischer's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the novelization--think about it), Bantam published Shelley's other science fiction novel, The Last Man. My suspicion is that not a lot of people ran right out and picked it up. First of all, it was in Bantam's "classics" series, so if bookstores ordered it at all it was put in the "Fiction" section, or the "Literature" section if they subdivide it further. (How do they determine what is literature and what is "merely" fiction?) And then its cover had a small reproduction of a painting of a pastoral English countryside, rather than a hideous monster with stitches and bolts glaring out at you. And finally a quick flip through would show that the specific science fiction element--a world-wide plague--doesn't even appear until most of the way through the book. (On the up side, if Mary Shelley is checking her sales from the astral plane, her books are quite popular in women's studies courses, so there is a market.)
The book starts in 2073. We know this because Shelley (in the voice of the narrator) tells us this. Otherwise we would have no idea, because the world that Shelley describes is that of 1823 when she was writing it. Oh, there are a few changes. People travel in airships (the Montgolfiers had already flown their balloons by 1823). And someone goes as ambassador to the "Northern States of America" (page 254). (Mark claims this last is pretty impressive in predicting the Civil War, but I suspect people could see it coming even then.) But the social structure of England is as it was in 1823, with power held by the monarch rather than by Parliament and elected officials. And people still get around on horses. And while having a war in the Balkans may sound very 21st Century these days, the war Shelley describes is the same war that Byron fought in, with the noble Greeks trying to gain their independence from the evil Turks. (And the war is fought in the same way, with the families of the officers following the troops to Greece and then staying at nearby villages while the troops marched off to formal battles.)
Much of the first two-thirds of the novel is a study of the social structure and attitudes of Shelley's own time, and works only if one reads it as a historical novel set in Shelley's time rather than a novel set in our future. But when the plague arrives, the novel becomes as convincing as a futuristic tale as such other "disaster" novels as Earth Abides and On the Beach. The style is still that of the early nineteenth century, of course, but the images of death and the decline of civilization are as vivid and enthralling as in any modern novel.
Is The Last Man as good as Frankenstein? In the sense that the latter has been continuously in print in inexpensive editions for as long as I can remember (and quite possibly for over a hundred years before that) and has had an inestimable effect on science fiction (and horror), while the former has been almost inaccessible for much of that time and has had no identifiable effect, the answer has to be no. But if read without considering the context of subsequent authors, and considering the books as mainstream fiction rather than science fiction per se, The Last Man is certainly a more polished, more considered, and more mature work than Frankenstein, and well worth the reading. I have to wonder what Shelley's other novels (Valperga, Lodore, and Falkner) are like, but since they are not science fiction, they are probably totally unavailable.
To order The Last Man from amazon.com, click here.
"Stars Seen Through Stone" by Lucius Shepard:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/11/2008]
I suppose "Stars Seen Through Stone" by Lucius Shepard (F&SF Jul) is well-written, but I seem to have a blind spot (deaf spot?) when it comes to fiction based on music, especially on rock music.
DEAD MAN'S FLOAT by Beth Sherman:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/23/2004]
Beth Sherman's DEAD MAN'S FLOAT (ISBN 0-380-73107-X) is the first of a series set on the Jersey shore, specifically in Ocean Grove and Asbury Park. While some of the descriptions of the area were recognizable, I guess I'm not as familiar with that part of the shore as people who grew up here. If you are a longtime shore- goer, you'd probably enjoy them, but I can't really recommend them for others.
To order Dead Man's Float from amazon.com, click here.
URBAN NIGHTMARES edited by Josepha Sherman and Keith A. DeCandido (Baen, ISBN 0-671-87851-4, 1997, 278pp, mass market paperback):
The problem with theme anthologies is, well, the theme.
I mean, if I'm reading a story in a general anthology, or in a magazine, and the point of the story is that the main character is a vampire, then the author can tell me that when s/he wants to. But if I'm reading a vampire anthology ... well, you get the idea.
So here we have an anthology based on urban legends. These are all those things that you've heard somewhere that happened to "a friend of a friend." In fact, these are so common that they even have a Usenet group (alt.folklore.urban) and a whole set of abbreviations (e.g., FOAF). So if you're reading a story in this anthology in which a fur coat is involved, and you know anything about urban legends, you know snakes will start appearing in the coat.
Because of this, the authors pretty much have to tell you early on which urban legend they are working with, and then do something original with it. This is not unlike what was done with the "Fairy Tale" series of books, so it is possible.
Of course the problem is exacerbated by my position as a reviewer--I need to read this book in some reasonable period of time. Marketing being what it is, mass-market books tend to disappear after a few months. If I read a story a week, this book will be long-gone before you can read the review. There are twenty-five stories, an unusually high number. The longest story is sixteen pages long. In fact, the biography section is longer than some of the stories.
Even making allowances for all this, I think four prosthetic arm stories and four alligators/crocodiles-in-the-sewers in one anthology is a bit much, though I did like the literary allusions in Bill Crider's piece.
If you are familiar with all the urban legends referenced here, and like bizarre twists on them, you will probably like this book. But if you don't know what "The Hook" is, or find a whole sequence of twists on them more repetitious, you should skip this book. Me, I find the psychology of the urban legend interesting, but don't see them as a great literary source.
To order Urban Nightmares from amazon.com, click here.
SCIENCE FRICTION by Michael Shermer:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/07/2005]
SCIENCE FRICTION: WHERE THE KNOWN MEETS THE UNKNOWN by Michael Shermer (ISBN 0-8050-7708-1) is a sampler of various aspects of science (and the public perception of science), history (ditto), and other topics. The chapters of most specific interest to science fiction fans, though, might be "What If?" and "The Hero on the Edge of Forever". Both are about counterfactuals and alternate histories, and both discuss what Shermer calls "contingencies" and "necessities". These are pretty much parallels for "The Great Man" and "The Tide of History" theories. The former was championed by Thomas Carlyle, who wrote, "Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at the bottom the history of the great men who have worked here. Worship of a hero is transcendent admiration of a great man." The latter was supported by Friedrich Engels, "That a certain particular man, and no other, emerges at a definite time in a given country is naturally a pure chance, but even if we eliminate him there is always a need for a substitute, and the substitute . . . is sure to be found." Like so many dichotomies, the truth probably lies between the two, which Shermer calls "the model of contingent-necessity: In the development of any historical sequence the role of contingencies in the construction of necessities is accentuated in the early stages and attenuated in the later." Shermer then applies these ideas to the Neanderthals, the development of agriculture, Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder", and "The City on the Edge of Forever" (Gene Roddenberry's, Harlan Ellison's, or a combination of the two?).
To order Science Friction from amazon.com, click here.
THE CUBS AND THE KAbBALIST by Byron L. Sherwin:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/06/2010]
THE CUBS AND THE KABBALIST by Byron L. Sherwin (ISBN 978-0-976- 48740-1) is okay, I suppose, but had a few problems. First of all, the story involves a lot of Jewish ritual and so on. Now, when someone write a book that involves a Catholic mass, she doesn't usually explain everything to the reader--she assume that either he already understands it, or that he will figure it out on his own. But all too often, an author writing about Jewish rituals feels obliged to explain it all in infodumps. And so it is with Sherwin. In fact, he is so thorough (obsessive?) in explaining that at one point Rabbi Jay Loeb (his main character) explains to his *Jewish* guest the meaning of Succoth, the sukkah, and everything else. Connected to this (call it first-and-a-halfly), Sherwin also has massive infodumps of baseball history.
Secondly, Sherwin seems to have an agenda similar to other Jewish- oriented science fiction or fantasy (e.g., PLANET OF THE JEWS), in that it is not just about the magic but about becoming more religious. In THE CUBS AND THE KABBALIST, the rabbi does perform some "magical" rituals, but he also insists that the players must repent of their sins, give more to charity, etc.
And lastly--and this is true of a lot of authors--Sherwin is a bit sloppy with details. He needs to have someone who has no identification get from Chicago to New York. He apparently recognizes this is a problem, but then just says, "Luckily, none of the airline personnel asked Greenberg for a photo ID, as he didn't have one." Even if he is a well-known sports figure, I cannot imagine the staff at O'Hare would just let the ID requirement slide. Sherwin also seems to think that the mayor of Chicago can proclaim a city-wide day of prayer for the Cubs (First Amendment, anyone?), and what's more, get *all* the religions to agree to it.
(Oh, and the subtitle of the book--plastered across the cover-- gives away the ending. That is, of course, assuming there was ever any doubt about it.)
On the whole, then, this is probably of some interest to Jewish Cubs fans, but they will find a lot of unnecessary explanations (sort of like if in a current science fiction novel about space exploration the author felt it had to explain gravity and a detailed history of the space program). I suppose a really diehard non-Jewish Cubs fan might enjoy it and find the Jewish explanations useful, but I doubt a Jewish non-fan would find it at all interesting.
Interestingly, at just about the same time (late 2005/early 2006) Harper Scott's book HOW I HELPED THE CHICAGO CUBS (FINALLY!) WIN THE WORLD SERIES. I haven't read this; the reviews seem more negative than those of Sherwin's book. The synchronicity may have been because of the 2003 incident where the Cubs' almost guaranteed pennant win was taken from them by, of all people, a Cubs fan who interfered with the ball in an attempt to catch it. [-ecl]
To order The Cubs and the Kabbalist from amazon.com, click here.
GOLEMS AMONG US by Bryon L. Sherwin:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/21/2006]
GOLEMS AMONG US by Bryon L. Sherwin (ISBN 1-56663-568-3) begins
with a discussion of the legend of the golem in Jewish mysticism,
and then proceeds to apply the theological and ethical
implications given by rabbis and scholars over the years to
modern questions of artificial intelligence, reproductive
technology, and corporations. Sherwin's coverage of the Golem
legend extends beyond that of the Golem of Prague (which turns
out to be a recent "invention"), and it is good to see an ethical
analysis of these modern issues that is not based on Protestant
fundamentalism or Roman Catholicism (or indeed on Christianity at
all). I recommend this as providing a counter-balance to what is
usually presented as "the" religious opinion of these issues.
[-ecl]
[For those unfamilar with golems, there is an article about them
at
To order Golems Among Us from amazon.com, click here.
THE BOOK OF SPLENDOR
by Frances Sherwood:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/29/2003]
My primary reading was Frances Sherwood's THE BOOK OF SPLENDOR, a
book set in 17th century Prague and centering around Rabbi Loew,
John Dee, alchemy, and the golem. If this sounds a lot like Lisa
Goldstein's THE ALCHEMIST'S DOOR (which I read a couple of weeks
ago), all I can say is that apparently when it's time to golem,
we golem. The Sherwood was published in July and the Goldstein
in August, so it's unlikely either was copying the other. (Perhaps
both were inspired by Michael Chabon's THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF
KAVALIER & CLAY, or Pete Hamill's SNOW IN AUGUST.) However, what
is interesting is that the Sherwood is positioned as a mainstream
literary novel, while the Goldstein is marketed as fantasy, even
though they are really very similar. And I enjoyed them both and
recommend them. And I just finished re-reading Ted Chiang's
"Seventy-Two Letters". Is it possible that just as there was an
amazing explosion of alternate history stories a few years ago, t
there will be a burst of golem stories now?
To order The Book of Splendor from amazon.com, click here.
VINDICATION
by Frances Sherwood:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/16/2004]
Frances Sherwood's VINDICATION is a novelization of Mary
Wollstonecraft's life. This is Mary (Wollstonecraft) Shelley's
mother, not Mary Shelley (as I think I claimed in an earlier
column). While Wollstonecraft was an early campaigner for women's
rights, there was still a bit too much of it in the novel for my
tastes. I suppose I have become so tired of seeing it in
completely fictional novels, that when it actually makes sense--
particularly if the situations described by Sherwood are
accurate--I still find it annoying.
To order Vindication from amazon.com, click here.
SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY
by Gary Shteyngart:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/14/2011]
SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY by Gary Shteyngart (ISBN 978-1-4000-6640-
7) is one of those "stealth science fiction" novels, written by a
mainstream/literary author and marketed as a mainstream/literary
novel. But it is definitely science fiction, and if Charles Stross
or some other science fiction author had written it, it would be
marketed as such.
I choose Stross because this is a novel of future economics. The
United States is falling apart, because people are so busy
following media people who are streaming shows about fashion,
entertainment, and each other that they have no time to follow
anything having to do with the real world: economics, science,
politics, or even reading and writing. Books are dead (even
e-books) and everything is video. (Shades of FAHRENHEIT 451!)
China, Canada, and Norway (if I recall correctly) are the new world
powers, and the United States is basically a police state trying to
hold up a failing system. In the midst of all this Lenny Abramov
is working for a life extension company (where everyone is
obsessed with extending their lives and youthfulness) when he
meets Eunice Park, a young Korean woman who has a very different
attitude about, well, everything, than Lenny.
It is a sign of my age, I suppose, that I found the sections
consisting of Eunice's (and others') text messages very hard to
read. I must be the only person on the planet who texts in full
sentences with whole words, punctuation and everything. (On the
other hand, I have probably sent fewer than two dozen text messages
in my life.)
The resolution of SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY seems a bit weak, but
the picture of what America could become is worth the read.
To order Super Sad True Love Story from amazon.com, click here.
VINLAND THE GOOD
by Nevil Shute:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/25/2003]
Everyone knows that Nevil Shute wrote ON THE BEACH, and a lot of
people know he wrote A TOWN LIKE ALICE, but not many people are
familiar with his "Vinland the Good". This is written as a
screenplay, though it was never made into a movie (nor do I think
that Shute necessarily expected it to be). It starts in the then-
present, with a demobbed soldier returning to his British public
school to teach United States history, but most of it is about how
the Norse discovered America. What is most interesting is that
Shute seems to emphasize the parallel origins of these first
American "settlers" and the early Australian settlers. That is,
the first few scenes set in the past are of Eric the Red picking
fights and becoming outlawed, first from Norway to North Iceland,
then from North Iceland to South Iceland, and then finally from
South Iceland to Greenland. It's true that Eric got to transport
himself and his family rather than being transported, and also
that he tries to provide some defense for what he did (though
rather unconvincingly), but the outlaw origins are there
nonetheless.
To order Vinland the Good from amazon.com, click here.
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