All reviews copyright 1984-2009 Evelyn C. Leeper.
PRIME MINISTER PORTILLO AND OTHER THINGS THAT NEVER HAPPENED edited by Duncan Brack and Iain Dale:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/11/2004]
The stories in the anthology PRIME MINISTER PORTILLO AND OTHER THINGS THAT NEVER HAPPENED edited by Duncan Brack and Iain Dale (Politico's, ISBN 1-84275-069-0, #16.99), on the other hand, are almost all about speculations in British politics of the sort that hardly anyone in the United States will follow them. (One is about economic goings-on in the 1970s and led me to observe that had it been about American economics of that time period, it still would have been mostly incomprehensible to me.) They may be well- written, but I can't tell. They are even more incomprehensible than the more obscure episodes of "The Goon Show" or "I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again".
To order Prime Minister Portillo and Other Things That Never Happened from amazon.com, click here.
FAHRENHEIT 451 by Ray Bradbury:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/28/2003]
We just recently heard a radio dramatization of Ray Bradbury's FAHRENHEIT 451 from the BBC and I was wondering how accurate it (or the movie) were to the book. The answer is, sort of. For example, in the movie, everything is done with sound or pictures, with no writing, even in people's personnel files. The implication is that no one can read any more. But this doesn't make any sense when you consider that Montag makes off with books and reads them, and it isn't stated or implied in the book. The radio version has a lot of emphasis on children's nursery rhymes-- in the book there is poetry, but on a much higher level. There is also more of Bradbury's story "The Pedestrian" in the radio version than in the book, though there is some even there. The ending of the radio version is more accurate to the ending of the book (though I don't think the basic idea of how to save books holds up. The idea that people memorize books and then destroy the physical copies rather than burying them somewhere seems just plain foolish. Bradbury also seems to want to declare with a wave of his hand that people have photographic memories and could relatively easily memorize whole books, but I don't think that's the case. However, one point worth noting is that Bradbury specifically says the problem is not that radio and television are inherently worse media than the book, but that their nature as *mass* media makes it more likely that one will find a degraded level of discourse in them.
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/18/2004]
Ray Bradbury's FAHRENHEIT 451 (ISBN 0-345-34296-8), unlike many "topical" books, is still a classic worth reading. The premise might be unlikely, but then so is the premise of (for example) THE SPACE MERCHANTS. The whole idea of speculative fiction is to accept the one premise and see where it leads. (I think it owes a lot to GULLIVER'S TRAVELS, another book full of unlikely premises.) If you've only seen the movie and not read the book-- and what does that in itself say?--you should be aware that the book is richer in detail, less dedicated to a happy ending, and contains an entire sub-plot about how governments making war wage the propaganda battle at home that is as pertinent today as ever.
To order Fahrenheit 451 from amazon.com, click here.
BOOKS AND READING: A BOOK OF QUOTATIONS edited by Bill Bradfield:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/19/2004]
"I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else along the way." --Franklin P. Adams
Dover Thrift Books started out as classics old enough to be in the public domain. Sometimes this took the form of new poetry anthologies, but containing entirely public-domain material. A second form has been added, the anthology of quotations. One advantage of the latter is that you can include quotations from current authors and personalities without having to pay royalties. I just finished BOOKS AND READING: A BOOK OF QUOTATIONS, edited by Bill Bradfield (ISBN 0-486-42463-4), and you will be seeing many of the quotations in weeks to come leading this column.
To order Books and Reading from amazon.com, click here.
FATHER OF FRANKENSTEIN by Christopher Bram:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/05/2004]
Another book made into a film was Christopher Bram's FATHER OF FRANKENSTEIN (made into GODS AND MONSTERS). As is often the case, I wish I had read the book first, as I found myself watching the movie in my head while I was reading it. This was pretty easy, as the book seemed to have been written very "cinematically" and the movie stuck closely to it. The book does have more background information about the making of THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN that the movie was forced to leave out (for time reasons), so I would definitely recommend the book if you are a student of old films.
To order Father of Frankenstein from amazon.com, click here.
THE CAT WHO COULD READ BACKWARDS by Lilian Jackson Braun:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/20/2004]
My mystery discussion group chose Lilian Jackson Braun's THE CAT WHO COULD READ BACKWARDS (ISBN 0-515-09017-4) as this month's selection. It may be good for cat lovers, but I found it rather ho-hum, with the art milieu not really working very well for me either. I think with mysteries what appeals to someone is often very specific. Some authors have wide appeal (e.g., Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie), but there are a lot of authors--and series--that have a much more focused target audience. I wrote a while ago about Peter Tremayne's "Sister Fidelma" series (06/04/04), and Beth Sherman's "Jersey Shore" books (07/23/04). This is probably in that category.
To order The Cat Who Could Read Backwards from amazon.com, click here.
FOUNDATION AND CHAOS
by Greg Bear:
FOUNDATION'S TRIUMPH
by David Brin:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/24/2003]
I finished the third book of the new "Foundation" trilogy, which comprises FOUNDATION'S FEAR by Gregory Benford, FOUNDATION AND CHAOS by Greg Bear, and FOUNDATION'S TRIUMPH by David Brin. Of the three, Bear's book captures the feel of the original trilogy the best, and hence was the one I liked the most. I had some problems/complaints with the structure of the Benford, and while it could be that Brin's was more accomplished than Bear's, my feeling is that the goal should be to "mimic" Asimov more closely. (Which is not to say I didn't like Donald Kingsbury's PSYCHOHISTORIC CRISIS, but that was doing something else. Insert obligatory Walt Whitman quote here.)
To order Foundation and Chaos from amazon.com, click here.
To order Foundation's Triumph from amazon.com, click here.
KILN PEOPLE by David Brin (Tor, ISBN 0-765-30355-8, 2002, 460pp, $25.95):
I started my Hugo nominee reading with David Brin's KILN PEOPLE. (*) Now, a few months ago, I reviewed Frances Sherwood's THE BOOK OF SPLENDOR, featuring the Golem of Prague. And that it in turn was very similar to Lisa Goldstein's THE ALCHEMIST'S DOOR (which I had read a couple of weeks previously). And I added that apparently when it's time to golem, we golem. Well, evidently Brin had also decided it was time to golem. His premise is that in the future, people will be able to transfer their minds/personalities/souls (take your pick) into clay copies of themselves. These clay creatures do have the power of speech, but are called "golems" (as well as "dittos"). They also last only a day. There is a murder mystery involving the head of Universal Kilns. Their logo is a "U" and a "K", each in its own circle. Cute, right? But wait, there's more. The head of UK is Yosil Maharal, and other characters are named James Gadarene and Aeneas Kaolin. (There are competing golem producers named Tetragram Limited and Fabrique Chelm as well.) All this is very distracting, particularly when it turns out that Yosil Maharal chose that name for its connections, but (apparently) Kaolin and Gadarene did not.
The main character is a detective, who uses this new technology to create copies of himself that can go off and work for/as him, returning to "inload" their memories of the day into him before collapsing into a lifeless heap of clay. There would seem to be all sorts of philosophical questions that these copies might ask-- let's start with, "Why should I go off and investigate this crime instead of sitting in the sun all day?" (This is especially true for those copies created which end up with no chance of inloading their memories.) But instead we get four points-of-view investigating a murder mystery, and the points-of-view are the detectives and three copies of the detective. It's different, but I found it ultimately too confusing, and also eventually boring-- somewhere about three-quarters of the way through the book, I didn't care what the big secret was, or who committed which crime, or how to manipulate the "Standing Wave" that was apparently one's consciousness. There seemed to be some good ideas here, but they were ignored or downplayed to make room for the mystery and the whole multiple point-of-view technique.
So I have to say that while Brin raises some interesting questions, he doesn't deal with them well enough to suit my tastes.
(*) Well, actually I had already read THE SCAR by China Mieville. Or rather, I had started it, but gave up partway through because it was not my cup of tea. And I had read Kim Stanley Robinson's THE YEARS OF RICE AND SALT, which I did enjoy and think worthwhile. It is an alternate history, though frankly, its virtues are not that of alternate history per se. [-ecl]
To order Kiln People from amazon.com, click here.
THE DA VINCI COD by Don Brine:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/30/2005]
As Adam Roberts, he was a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. As A3R, he wrote STAR WARPED. As A. R. R. R. Roberts, he wrote THE SODDIT and THE SELLAMILLION. As the Robertski Brothers, he wrote THE MCATRIX DERIDED. And now as Don Brine, he has written THE DA VINCI COD (ISBN 0-06-084807-3, or 978-0-06-084807-3). I haven't read the others (though THE SODDIT is on my shelf), but I suspect they are of similar style and quality to THE DA VINCI COD. Two things I'll say about that book--it's much shorter than THE DA VINCI CODE, and the conspiracy in it is almost as convincing. (The one problem is that it ultimately relies on a hitherto-unknown painting, while THE DA VINCI CODE relies on existing works of art, albeit often mis-described.) Brine/Roberts carries the parody through to every part of the book, including the disclaimer, the prologue, and so on. (I was reminded of Robert Sobel's alternate history FOR WANT OF A NAIL, which had a supporting bibliography and even a copyright page maintaining the alternate world.) I suspect people who found THE DA VINCI CODE convincing won't find this as amusing as I did.
To order The Da Vinci Cod from amazon.com, click here.
SHAKESPEARE IN THE MOVIES by Douglas Brode:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/01/2003]
Douglas Brode's SHAKESPEARE IN THE MOVIES is worth reading, even if I disagree with him on just about every movie I was familiar with. For example, Brode thinks Laurence Olivier's RICHARD III is better than Richard Loncraine's (Ian McKellen's). Not only that, but he attributes this in part to the idea that Olivier has more sex appeal than McKellen. I find this such a bizarre notion that I'm hard-pressed to accept it as serious: Olivier is totally unappealing, while McKellen has a dangerous edginess that is strangely attractive. Brode also dislikes Julie Taymor's TITUS and likes both the recent A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM and Kenneth Branagh's LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST. He also places Baz Luhrmann's ROMEO + JULIET in Miami rather than southern California. While the angle of the sunlight (and the weather) during the beach scenes would seem to support this, the desert location of Romeo trailer argues rather strongly against it, and the milieu of both the city and the beach also indicate southern California. (Yes, I know Giacomo Puccini had a desert outside of New Orleans in the opera "Manon Lescaut"; it was wrong there too.)
To order Shakespeare in the Movies from amazon.com, click here.
INTRODUCING AMERICAN POLITICS by Patrick Brogan and Chris Garratt:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/03/2006]
INTRODUCING AMERICAN POLITICS by Patrick Brogan and Chris Garratt (ISBN 1-840-46098-9) was written in 1999 by two Brits primarily for a British audience. It is clearly not impartial; talking about internal party divisions, they say, "This ideological woolliness never strikes Americans as in any way odd." They also say that before 1947 "black athletes [baseball players] had played only in black teams against each other." First of all, at the very beginning of baseball, there were integrated teams. And secondly, even during segregation, there were exhibition games where black teams played against white teams. I suppose it is worth reading this to see what some British think of American politics, but a bit misguided to be read as an accurate look.
To order Introducing American Politics from amazon.com, click here.
PEOPLE OF THE BOOK by Geraldine Brooks:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/20/2008]
PEOPLE OF THE BOOK by Geraldine Brooks (ISBN-13 978-0-670-01821-5, ISBN-10 0-670-01821-X) is a novel about the Sarajevo Haggadah. Brooks uses a style that I identify with James Michener's book THE SOURCE (also about Jewish history). This style involves discovering a lot of objects connected with the central focus of the novel (in Brooks, the Haggadah, in Michener, an archaeological dig), and then giving the history of each one. In both novels, the description the main characters in the framing story give is occasionally incorrect. One difference is that Brooks focuses on the women in the history, at times to the detriment of verisimilitude. I had a particular interest in this, since we have been to Sarajevo and have a facsimile copy of the Haggadah, but neither of these are pre-requisites. (Looking at a copy of the illustrations on-line might be helpful, though.)
To order People of the Book from amazon.com, click here.
YEAR OF WONDERS by Geraldine Brooks:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/21/2007]
Our book discussion group chose YEAR OF WONDERS by Geraldine Brooks (ISBN-13 978-0-142-00143-1, ISBN-10 0-142-00143-0) for this month's discussion. The book is about a plague village in England that voluntarily seals itself off from the outside world in an attempt to prevent the spread of the plague. This is based on an actual village that did this, and many characters are based on actual people. (But not all--the end note discusses some specific fabrications.) In my opinion, the book is a little too much "female empowerment"--there are long sections about the old wise woman midwife with her herbal cures, etc. I haven't read DOOMSDAY BOOK by Connie Willis in a long time, but that is the obvious comparison, and I think the Willis is better.
To order Year of Wonders from amazon.com, click here.
THE DA VINCI CODE by Dan Brown:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/07/2005]
I finally managed to borrow a copy of Dan Brown's THE DA VINCI
CODE (ISBN 0-385-50420-9). Given that the wait list at the
library is ridiculous, I expected something better. It is full of
the Fibonacci numbers, the Mona Lisa, and Leonardo da Vinci, it is
not a difficult book to read, and it at least somewhat works as a
thriller, but I cannot see what the fuss is over it as some sort
of great revelation. Or rather, if it were a great revelation, I
could understand the fuss, but it is a work of fiction. The
puzzles seem alternately too obvious or so arcane that no one
could ever figure them out. For example, the knight's burial was
obvious. For other puzzles, it's as if you had a sequence
1,2,3,5, and were asked for the next number. It could be 8 (if
it's a subset of the Fibonacci sequence), or it could be 7 (if it
is numbers not divisible by any other number), or it could be 6
(if it is numbers whose representations can be written as a single
curve without crossing a point previously drawn), or it could be
something else entirely. Also, despite what most readers seem to
think, the premise is not new (HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL by Michael
Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln is probably the best
known book about the subject). And as many have noted, what Brown
presents as fact is not. (For example, amazon.com reviewer Penn
Jacobs points out that the interpretation of the Council of Nicea
and the history of the early Church is just plain wrong. And
artist Shelley Esaak discusses da Vinci's "Last Supper" at
To order The Da Vinci Code from amazon.com, click here.
"The Last Question
by Isaac Asimov:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/05/2008]
Bud Webster's column in the latest "Helix"
(>) is about Frederic
Brown, and as part of it he compares "Answer" by Frederic
Brown with "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov. Webster
points out (rightly, I think) that Brown covers the same
material in 250 words that Asimov takes 2500 to do. And he
also notes that what most people remember as the last line of
"Answer" is actually three sentences from the end. But I
think he is wrong that people think that Asimov wrote the
Brown story, partly because the last line of the Asimov story
is even more memorable than the "last line" of the Brown.
(Both stories have been anthologized many times; see
http://www.isfdb.com for a list.)
WHAT BECKONING GHOST
by Douglas G. Browne:
In Douglas G. Browne's WHAT BECKONING GHOST (1947) the mystery
is whether the supposedly supernatural happenings are really
supernatural (a mystery that to some extent implies its own
answer), and a chase through the London sewers that might have
inspired Graham Greene's THE THIRD MAN.
To order What Beckoning Ghost from amazon.com, click here.
WARRIORS OF ALAVNA
by N. M. Browne:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/07/2003]
As a judge for the Sidewise Award for alternate history, I get a
lot of alternate history books. I also get some that the
publisher thinks *might* be alternate history, or at least might
be construed as such. (And, as Patrick Nielsen Hayden noted at
Boskone, if a particular category is popular, publishers will do
what they can to market marginal material in that category.) So
I received N. M. Browne's WARRIORS OF ALAVNA as part of a
three-book shipment from England's Bloomsbury Press, none of
which were precisely alternate history. All were what I would
describe as young adult historical fantasy. In WARRIORS OF
ALAVNA, the two protagonists, teenage students on a field trip
to Hastings, get drawn back in time to Roman Britain, but also
over to a parallel world in which magic works, and the
historical characters are slightly different (though not
noticeably). As a young adult historical fantasy, it's fine for
twelve- to fourteen-year-olds, though perhaps better for Britons
who understand the early history of their island than for
Americans. (In passing, I will note that while I find it
unlikely that the female protagonist could pass herself off as
male for several days while marching and camping with a half-
dozen male warriors, there is at least an implied explanation of
why she can carry this out for a much longer time without other
feminine issues intruding.)
To order Warriors of Alavna from amazon.com, click here.
MURDER IS NO MITZVAH
by Abigail Browning:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/13/2005]
MURDER IS NO MITZVAH (ISBN 0-312-32506-1) edited by Abigail
Browning has twelve crime stories on Jewish themes. (The subtitle
describes them as "Short Mysteries about Jewish Occasions", but
that is not at all accurate.) Of these, I had already read three
in MYSTERY MIDRASH edited by Lawrence W. Raphael's MYSTERY
MIDRASH: "Bread of Affliction" by Michael Kahn, "Kaddish" by
Batya Swift Yasgur, and "Mom Remembers" by James Yaffee. In
addition, both have stories by Ronald Levitsky, although not the
same one. This overlap indicates to me that either these stories
are classics or that the pool of possible stories for a Jewish
mystery anthology is fairly small. "Mom Remembers" is from 1967,
so it may be a classic, but the other two are a bit too recent
for that claim yet. The stories are generally good, which is not
surprising when you realize that eleven of them were previously
published in either "Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine" or "Alfred
Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine". (The twelfth, "The Jew's
Breastplate" by Arthur Conan Doyle, is apparently in public
domain, not a Sherlock Holmes story, and not all that good. It
is probably included on the basis of the cachet that Doyle's name
has, and it is at least centered around a Jewish object.) I
think that MYSTERY MIDRASH is marginally better than MURDER IS NO
MITZAH, but if this is more available to you, it's a reasonable
choice.
To order Murder Is o Mitzvah from amazon.com, click here.
THE SUN, THE MOON, & THE STARS
by Steven Brust
(Orb, ISBN 0-312-86039-0,
1996 (1987c), 210pp, trade paperback):
I've liked everything Steven Brust has written except for what
people like the most. This probably says more about me than about
his writing, but his Dragaeran novels leave me cold. On the other
hand I loved To Reign in Hell and Agyar, and I loved this.
Why?
Well, for starters, it's only about two hundred pages long. Brust
understands that it is possible to write a good--a very good--book
without making it a doorstop requiring construction equipment to
lift. For another, he uses words carefully. ("We were in one of
the newer dorms, all shiny and tiny and boring and beige.") Come
to think of it, the two are related. Many authors seem to use
words like a blunt instrument, the more the better. Brust uses
them like a rapier.
The book itself is similar to the other books in the "Fairy Tales"
series (of which it originally was a part): a retelling of an old
fairy tale in a modern setting. Brust interleaves the original
fairy tale with the modern one (following a pattern used by some of
the other authors in the series, as well as by Cecil B. DeMille in
his original silent version of The Ten Commandments). (Or perhaps
setting the pattern; I'm not sure where his book falls
chronologically in the series.)
The one thing that would have helped would have been a note on
Hungarian/Romany pronunciation. The fact that Csucsk ri was
hyphenated two different ways (pages 23 and 143) didn't help. This
is, of course, a very minor quibble.
So bravo to Brust for writing this, and bravo to Tor for
re-publishing it after its rather brief initial appearance in 1987.
To order The Sun, the Moon & the Stars from amazon.com, click here.
FREEDOM & NECESSITY
by Steven Brust & Emma Bull (Tor, ISBN 0-312-85974-0, 1997, 444pp, ):
I have mixed feelings about Freedom & Necessity. On the one hand,
it captures very well the feel of the nineteenth century epistolary
novel (or first-person narration in general). On the other, it is
slow-moving and hard-to-follow, in part because the various
characters who are narrating are either concealing information from
each other, or are simply mistaken about what is happening.
The story is set in England of the mid-nineteenth century.
Although several reviews have hinted that this is some sort of
alternate history, it really seems at most a secret history, if
that. Yes, there are real historical figures interacting with the
main (fictional) characters, but that does not an alternate history
make. So in this historical England, we discover that James
Cobham, whom his family thought drowned --in fact, saw drowned--is
in fact alive, though without any memory of what has happened in
the months between his "death" and his re-appearance. Though he
doesn't actually re-appear in a flourish, but only in secret and to
his closest friends.
In addition to trying to solve the mystery of James's absence, and
avoid a more permanent demise, the characters also discuss Kant and
Hegel and the British class system.
One might ask at this point why this book is being promoted a s
science fiction (or perhaps more accurately, fantasy). The answer
is--I don't know. It seems more because Brust and Bull are known
as SF authors than because of any inherent SF aspect to the novel.
(I suppose that in itself may constitute a bit of a spoiler.) There
are certainly goings on that have fantastical origins, meanings, or
referents, but they are (so far as one can tell) completely mundane
in actuality.
And while there were aspects of the plot that held my interest, the
resolution is too pat, too dependent on people acting in seemingly
irrational ways, too dependent on people depending on people
acting in irrational ways. Or, strangely enough, on people acting
rationally when one would expect them to act irrationally.
Ultimately, I think my problem with Freedom & Necessity is that it
imitates the nineteenth century style without completing achieving
its content or characterization. I like authors such as the
Brontes and George Eliot, but while Freedom & Necessity captures
some of their style, it doesn't quite capture their essence for me.
(I realize that some might say that complaining that Brust & Bull
are no George Eliot is an unfair comparison, but there you have
it.)
To order Freedom & Necessity from amazon.com, click here.
GALLIMAUFREY TO GO
by J. Bryan, III:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/28/2005]
GALLIMAUFREY TO GO by J. Bryan, III (ISBN 0-440-20775-4) is a
medley (which is what "gallimaufrey" means). One chapter talks
about half a dozen eccentrics, another has a set of quotations
about Christmas and descriptions of various customs for it, and
yet another has notes about nature. Each quotation or
description is very short, making this an ideal bathroom book.
There are two questions Bryan asks in the "Information, Please"
chapter that I'll ask here. One is "When was the last time there
was no airplane in the skies anywhere?" And the second is "Has
any important invention or discovery ever come from the southern
hemisphere?" [Yes, the discovery of the South Pole. -mrl] I
know Sir Ernest Rutherford came from New Zealand, but he made his
discoveries elsewhere, so they probably don't count. [Actually.
Roald Amundsen came from Norway, but I believe he was in the
Southern Hemisphere at the time he discovered the South Pole.
The view of the Pole is much better from the Southern Hemisphere.
-mrl] I think that Gandhi's civil disobedience in South AAfrica
might be one (although not the type of invention/discovery that
Bryan is thinking of), or the Australian boomerang. (I asked
this at a discussion group meeting, and Charles Harris suggested
Christian Barnard's heart transplant technique.)
To order Gallimaufrey to Go from amazon.com, click here.
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE THUNDERBOLT KID
by Bill Bryson:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/17/2006]
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE THUNDERBOLT KID by Bill Bryson (ISBN
0-767-91936-X) is Bryson's memoir of growing up in Des Moines in
the 1950s and 1960s. (As someone who lived in Rantoul, Illinois,
from 1959 to 1964, I find a lot of what he writes about familiar.
Bryson brings his usual dry humor to this topic, which is enough
of a recommendation for those familiar with his work, but for
those not, I would compare this to Jean Shepard's tales of his
childhood in Hammond, Indiana, of a slightly earlier time.
(Bryson writes about Fig Newtons and Shepard has a book called A
FISTFUL OF FIG NEWTONS, so there are definitely cultural
similarities.)
To order The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid from amazon.com, click here.
A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING
by Bill Bryson:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/26/2003]
And the "something blue"? Well, Bill Bryson's A SHORT HISTORY OF
NEARLY EVERYTHING had a blue cover. It could equally well have
been titled LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING, since it is about
how the universe and our solar system came about, and how life
arose and developed. Of course, the latter title was already
taken. The book lacks much of the humor of Bryson's travelogues,
thought there are a few witticisms scattered throughout. Bryson
spends a lot of time talking about the people who actually made
the great discoveries first, but then failed to achieve
recognition, either by not publishing or by publishing in the
wrong place or at the wrong time. All in all, it's a very
readable history of, well, nearly everything.
To order A Short History of Nearly Everything in hardback from amazon.com, click here.
WRY MARTINIS
by Christopher Buckley:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/15/2004]
I did manage to sandwich in Christopher Buckley's book of humorous
essays, WRY MARTINIS (ISBN 0-06-097742-6). As with all humor
books, this is best taken in small doses, and not every essay
worked for me. But some are great reading, especially the four-
essay series on Tom Clancy and Buckley's recounting of the "Lenin
for Sale" fiasco. Many of the rest have a political bent, but are
fairly even-handed and, more importantly, funny.
To order Wry Martinis from amazon.com, click here.
WHO?
by Algis Budrys:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/15/2008]
WHO? by Algis Budrys (ISBN-13 978-1-587-76010-5, ISBN-10
1-587-76010-X) was one of the books chosen for discussion by the
Worldcon this year. I have read this before, but decided to re-
read it.
It has a New Jersey connection: Lucas Martino comes from Milano,
NJ, which is supposedly near Bridgetown (also spelled Bridgeton).
Milano doesn't exist, but Bridgeton does, and at the location
described. And because it was written in 1958 and set in the
1960s, the book has some anomalies. Martino goes to "Mass Tech"
(also called MIT). More seriously, there is no Vietnam War, and
the result is a very "alternate history" feel to it.
The premise is that an American scientist has been injured in an
industrial/experiment accident near the Russian border, and has
been repaired by the Soviets (who were closer than the Western
doctors), but now has a metal head and one metal arm. The
question facing the United States government is whether the man
returned to them is Lucas, or whether he has been replaced. One
problem with the book is that no one seems to take into account
the possibility that the man is Martino, but that he has been
brainwashed. Budrys eliminates fingerprints by saying that if
they could attach a metal arm to a man, they could attach another
man's arm instead. I'm not sure this is true, but even so,
wouldn't Martino's footprint as a baby be on file? (Maybe not--
it's possible that this is a more recent procedure.)
The real problem is that it seems as though Budrys has
pre-determined that it will be impossible to tell whether the man
is Martino or not. Any possibility they come up with, they also
come up with a reason why it won't work. Admittedly, the metal
head rules out dental matches, but what about identifying marks
or scars? Nope, he doesn't have any. Memories? He could have
done research. And of course this was written before DNA
analysis. In fact, what Budrys has given us is an example of
non-falsifiability.
To order Who? from amazon.com, click here.
CETAGANDA
by Lois McMaster Bujold
(Baen, ISBN 0-671-87701-1, 1996, 302pp, hardback):
Some of Bujold's "Miles Vorkosigan" stories are serious
examinations of deep issues. Cetaganda is not. It's a murder
mystery.
Miles Vorkosigan and his cousin Ivan go to Cetaganda to attend a
state funeral. When they arrive, they are mysteriously attacked;
then there is a murder. The rest of the novel is basically Miles
solving the murder, along with unraveling a plot involved genetic
engineering banks and a possible coup. As such, Cetaganda seems to
be written for people who are already fans of the series; if you
haven't read any of the other stories, you will probably not find
this one anything special, and you will undoubtedly wonder what all
the fuss is about the series. This is, I believe, the first
Vorkosigan novel to be published in hardback, and I find that a bit
ironic, since it is a fairly lightweight entry. It's enjoyable
enough, but you might as well wait for the paperback unless you're
a collector of first editions. (And why did they decide to use a
cover so similar to that of Mirror Dance? I mean, the two heads
facing each other made sense there, but for this book they are
meaningless.)
To order Cetaganda from amazon.com, click here.
PALADIN OF SOULS
by Lois McMaster Bujold:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/23/2004]
And one non-review: I am working my way through the Hugo and
Retro-Hugo nominees. I read 150 pages of Lois McMaster Bujold's
PALADIN OF SOULS before giving up. (And, yes, I had read the
first book in the series, THE CURSE OF CHALION.) I understand
that a lot of people liked this, but for me it was the Eight
Deadly Words Effect that killed it: "I don't care what happens to
these people."
To order Paladin of Souls from amazon.com, click here.
"Winterfair Gifts"
by Lois McMaster Bujold:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/10/2005]
"Winterfair Gifts" by Lois McMaster Bujold (in the anthology
IRRESISTIBLE FORCES) is another Miles Vorkosigan story. Way back
when, when I was young, and most of you probably not born yet,
"Galaxy" magazine ran a back cover on which the left column was
the start of a Western story, and the right column was the start
of a science fiction story which was identical to the left column
with just a few word replacements (e. g., "blaster" for "six-
shooter"). And at the bottom, it said that "Galaxy" was going to
have real science fiction, not just Westerns tricked up as science
fiction. "Winterfair Gifts" is a romance/mystery tricked up as
science fiction, and another mystery is how it got nominated for a
Hugo.
To order Irresistible Forces from amazon.com, click here.
A PRINCESS OF MARS
by Edgar Rice Burroughs:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/25/2003]
The book for our science fiction group was much better [than "The Aspern Papers"]: A PRINCESS
OF MARS by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Now I'm sure to many people the
notion that A PRINCESS OF MARS is a better book than a Henry James
novella is heresy. And there is a fair amount of cliche,
repetition, and stereotyping in PRINCESS. But at least it moves
along.
To order A Princess of Mars from amazon.com, click here.
"Decisions"
by Michael A. Burstein:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/17/2005]
"Decisions" by Michael A. Burstein ("Analog" 01-02/04) is yet
another Burstein story with memory as an important, if not
central, aspect. As with many of the stories nominated this
year, there was a certain self-congratulatory note (for the human
race, not for Burstein personally). It does seem as though there
is a bit of a formula for getting nominated for a Hugo: say
something positive about readers, or writers, or humanity, and
you get an extra boost. I found the ending of this a bit hard to
accept, in a couple of ways.
"Paying It Forward"
by Michael Burstein:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/09/2004]
And "Paying it Forward" by Michael A. Burstein doesn't just verge
on the overly sentimental; it crosses the line. A touching tale
of a budding author who gets advice from the spirit of a well-
established, but recently deceased, author via the Internet, it
seems designed to appeal to writers more than the general
audience, and to some extent plays on the feeling of loss we have
for dead authors.
"Seventy-Five Years"
by Michael A. Burstein:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/19/2006]
"Seventy-Five Years" by Michael A. Burstein (ANALOG
Jan/Feb 2005)] is another story which had (to me) a fairly
obvious "twist", and was heavy on the "message" element. I liked
this sort of story back when I first started reading science
fiction short stories--in many ways it is reminiscent of some
of Isaac Asimov's or Arthur C. Clarke's stories--but now I think
I want a bit more.
"TelePresence"
by Michael A. Burstein:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/19/2006]
"TelePresence" by Michael A. Burstein (ANALOG Jul/Aug 2005) is in
many ways the quintessential ANALOG story--and why I stopped
reading it. Here, technology is wonderful, in spite of a few
problems, and the message is hammered home in the most obvious
lecture I have seen in a science fiction story in a while.
"Time Ablaze"
by Michael A. Burstein:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/10/2005]
"Time Ablaze" by Michael A. Burstein ("Analog" 06/04) is a
competent enough story, but nothing new or special. The entire
plot was predictable from the beginning, and I have no idea why
this made the ballot when there are so many more original stories
around. This story does continue a theme I've seen in a lot of
Burstein's work, that of memory and remembrance.
JULES VERNE: THE DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY
by William Butcher:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/28/2006]
JULES VERNE: THE DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY by William Butcher (ISBN
978-1-56025-854-4 or 1-56025-854-3) has a definite agenda: Jules
Verne has been completely misunderstood, mis-interpreted, and
mis-translated by everyone except (apparently) Butcher. One
point he claims is that Verne did not write science fiction.
That Butcher is not clear what this means is clear from the fact
that he refers to PARIS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY as an "anti-
science fiction novel". Anti-science, perhaps, but then all
novels are "fiction novels". No, Butcher must think that being
negative on technology makes something "anti-science fiction", or
"anti-science-fiction". Butcher seems to think that because
rudimentary submarines existed when Verne wrote TWENTY THOUSAND
LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, that novel was not science fiction. (At
least he makes no such claim about the spaceship in FROM THE
EARTH TO THE MOON.) A further irony is that in spite of
Butcher's protestations that Verne is not a science fiction
writer, the introduction for this biography is by Arthur
C. Clarke, and the back blurb is by Ray Bradbury--two authors
best known as science fiction authors.
Butcher also leaves loose ends. He writes, "Verne is the most
read of all writers--nine times as much as the next Frenchman."
The citation for this is Charles-Noel Martin's Ph.D. thesis, but
I would like to know what this statistic is based on--and who the
next Frenchman is. The citations are done in an academic style
that makes them hard to decipher; the index has errors. (At
least one title I looked up was supposed discussed on page 225,
but I cannot find anything on that page or either of the adjacent
ones.) No one disagrees that most of the translations of Verne
until very recently have ranged from poor to execrable. But
Butcher is so adamant about how everyone was unjust to Verne that
even though it is all true, it becomes tiresome. In fairness, I
should add that also tells how unfair Verne was, with so many
stories of plagiarism, racism, anti-Semitism, and general
obstreperousness that one finds it hard to gather a lot of
sympathy for Verne either.
Butcher also spends a lot of time detailing all thirty-three
addresses where Verne lived, every trip he ever took, and so on.
I suppose for a Verne scholar this might be a valuable book, but
for the average reader, your money would be better spent buying
some of the recent, accurate translations of Verne's works from
Oxford, Weslyan, and others.
To order Jules Verne: The Definitive Biography from amazon.com, click here.
STEINBECK'S GHOST
by Lewis Buzbee:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/27/2009]
This is the time of year when I find myself reading several
alternate history novels as part of the Sidewise Award judging. I
vow to keep up through the year, but some books don't look that
good, and I hope other judges will read them first and let the rest
of us know we can skip them. Others are unavailable at the
library, and the publishers somehow wait until the "last call" to
send copies. So here I sit with a book about dragons fighting the
Napoleonic Wars (book 4 for a series), a book in which several
communities are all flung back in time to the Cretaceous (obviously
book 1 of a series, and distantly related to another series as
well), a book about a different geography (book 2 of a series), and
a few books that actually seem to stand on their own. But it's
hard to bring myself to read those, when I can read a really
enjoyable book like STEINBECK'S GHOST.
STEINBECK'S GHOST by Lewis Buzbee (ISBN-13 978-0-312-37328-3,
ISBN-10 0-312-37328-7) was probably inspired by the announcement in
late 2004 that the Salinas Public Library was going to close
because of lack of funds. Salinas was John Steinbeck's hometown,
the town he wrote about the most, and for many years now has housed
a very impressive John Steinbeck museum which draws a lot of
tourists. So the closing of the library was not just sad, it was
ironic.
In STEINBECK'S GHOST, teenager Travis Williams has just moved to a
new neighborhood, hardly sees his parents because they have started
working late every night, and then discovers that they are closing
his favorite place--the library. On top of all this, he starts
seeing characters out of Steinbeck's stories around town, and
someone--Steinbeck's ghost?--in the upper window of Steinbeck's old
house.
I would like to believe that someone who obviously loved books and
libraries as much as Travis would receive the acceptance that he
does rather than be considered a dork. To be fair, he at least is
concerned about this, but the book does really show this as a
problem. In fact, in spite of video games and cell phones, the
Salinas of this book seems like a town from twenty years ago, or
more. All the books that Travis loves are older books: A WRINKLE
IN TIME, SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES, and so on. There was
some mention of Harry Potter for Halloween costumes, but no one
seems to be reading the "Ender" books or anything else recent.
However, if you can exercise a willing suspension of disbelief, the
book is a delight for people who love books, and writers, and
readers, and libraries. (It is no coincidence that Lewis Buzbee
has also written the non-fiction book THE YELLOW-LIGHTED BOOKSHOP.)
(Oh, and not to leave you in suspense: when word of the library's
imminent closing appeared in the press, Salinas was pretty much
shamed into keeping it open.)
To order Steinbeck's Ghost from amazon.com, click here.
THE YELLOW-LIGHTED BOOKSHOP
by Lewis Buzbee:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/07/2007]
THE YELLOW-LIGHTED BOOKSHOP by Lewis Buzbee (ISBN-13
978-1-55597-450-3, ISBN-10 1-55597-450-3) is a paean to the
bookstore, through the ages and in the present. Buzbee worked in
several bookstores in the San Francisco area, and has shopped in
many more. While I suspect that the description of various
bookstores in the last chapter may already be out of date, the
book as a whole is something all bookstore lovers will want to
read.
To order The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop from amazon.com, click here.
"Answer
by Frederic Brown:
Go to Evelyn Leeper's home page.