All reviews copyright 1984-200978 Evelyn C. Leeper.
THROUGH THE ALIMENTARY CANAL WITH GUN AND CAMERA by George Chappell:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/07/2003]
If you have any friends who are doctors, you should point them towards George Chappell's THROUGH THE ALIMENTARY CANAL WITH GUN AND CAMERA, an older novel (or possibly novella) of a tour of the human body written in the style of late 19th century travelogues.
To order Through the Alimentary Canal with Gun and Camera from amazon.com, click here.
THE COMIC STORIES by Anton Chekhov:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/13/2006]
I discovered THE COMIC STORIES by Anton Chekhov (translated by Harvey Pitcher, ISBN 1-56663-242-0) from listening to "Cutting a Dash", a BBC show based on Lynne Truss's writings about punctuation. (She later wrote a book on the subject, EATS, SHOOTS & LEAVES, which I reviewed in the 12/03/04 issue of the MT VOID.) In her discussion of the exclamation mark on the show, Truss quotes from the Chekhov story "The Exclamation Mark". When I went to find this story, I discovered that the various web sites that claim to have all of Chekhov's stories did not have this one, and indeed, this collection is this story's first appearance in English. These stories are not comic in the same way that P. G. Wodehouse or Damon Runyon or even Nikolai Gogol is comic, but they are amusing. My problem is that because I borrowed this from a distant library, I have to read the thirty stories too close together (even with a three-week loan period). Reading too many comic stories too close together is like eating a pound of chocolate at one sitting. So if you have a taste for Chekhov's humor, this book might be better purchased than borrowed.
To order The Comic Stories from amazon.com, click here.
THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH by G. K. Chesterton:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/15/2005]
G. K. Chesterton's THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (ISBN 0-486-43178-9) has no relation to either of the Hitchcock films of that title, but is rather a collection of eight stories about sleuth Horne Fisher, who "knows too much" about the British upper class. The stories have Chesterton's literary flair, but are not as appealing as his "Father Brown" stories, perhaps because Fisher is not as appealing as Father Brown. And I came to this conclusion well before I read the following speech by Fisher: "...if you think I'm going to let the Union Jack go down and down eternally, down in defeat and derision, amid the jeers of the very Jews who have sucked us dry--no I won't, and that's flat; not if the Chancellor were blackmailed by twenty millionaires with their gutter rags, not if the Prime Minister married twenty Yankee Jewesses, ...." (page 71-72) (Yeah, I know--I seem to be seeing this sort of thing everywhere. Trust me, I'm not choosing books *trying* to find these.)
To order The Man Who Knew Too Much from amazon.com, click here.
GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING by Tracy Chevalier:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/28/2003]
Our library group read Tracy Chevalier's GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING. I wish I could say I liked it, but it really didn't do anything for me. People apparently liked the way it evoked that period in Delft, but as someone who reads a lot of "world- building" books (for worlds both historical and fantastical), I didn't think it was exceptional. And in fact, several other people found it not as enthralling as the reviews would make one think. It is popular with reading groups, and I would attribute this to two facts: it's short (233 pages), and its protagonist is a woman (a girl, actually). Since most reading groups are either all-female or mostly female, the books popular with them seem to have a preponderance of female protagonists. I suppose I should suggest some Joanna Russ or James Schmitz (although female authors seem to get extra points also).
To order Girl with a Pearl Earring from amazon.com, click here.
"The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" by Ted Chiang:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/11/2008]
"The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" by Ted Chiang (F&SF Sep) is another story with its roots firmly in the fairy tale/Arabian Nights genre even as it is also a very tightly plotted multiple time-travel story. The less said about before you read it, the better you will enjoy it. Chiang has so far appeared incapable of writing a less than stellar story, and this is no exception.
STORY OF YOUR LIFE AND OTHER STORIES by Ted Chiang:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/29/2002]
I can say that Ted Chiang's new story, "Liking What You See: A Documentary" (in his collection STORY OF YOUR LIFE AND OTHER STORIES), is up to Chiang's usual standards. It reminded me a bit of Greg Egan's "Reasons to be Cheerful" and a bit of Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron," while also being quite distinct from either of them. Chiang takes on "lookism," but doesn't decide for the reader which side he or she should be on. Rather he presents positives and negatives for both sides, and leaves the matter as ambiguous as, say, the matter of faith in his "Hell Is the Absence of God."
To order Story of Your Life and Other Stories from amazon.com, click here.
THE AWAKENING by Kate Chopin:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/01/2004]
The general library discussion group chose Kate Chopin's THE AWAKENING (ISBN 0-486-27786-0) for this month. I gather this is a mainstay in courses on feminist literature, but it failed to do much for me when reading it on its own merits. At the time of its publication in 1899, it was considered shocking, and while on an intellectual basis I see why, it fails to engage me emotionally in the main character's feelings. (This is one of that series of Dover "Thrift Editions" I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, which had a spike in sales when amazon.com was offering free shipping on orders of two or more books.)
To order The Awakening from amazon.com, click here.
MICHELANGELO'S NOTEBOOKX by Paul Christopher:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/09/2009]
Three weeks ago, in the 12/19/08 issue of the MT VOID, I wrote about COUNTERKNOWLEDGE by Damian Thompson, and in particular his discussion of pseudo-history. Well, MICHELANGELO'S NOTEBOOK by Paul Christopher (ISBN-13 978-0-451-41186-0, ISBN-10 0-451-41186-2) is another example of this proliferation of pseudo-history. The copyright page of MICHELANGELO'S NOTEBOOK has the usual disclaimer: "This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are use fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is totally coincidental. But at the end is an "Author's Note" which says that certain relationships in the story are "true" and "known". So far as I can tell, this is not the case, and the "Author's Note", while having some facts in it, is as fictional as the rest of the book. (I am avoiding being too specific in case you decide to read the book, though frankly, the "revelation" is predictable and the book is not that good.) While I am no great admirer of the person in question, this claim about what is "true" is really uncalled for. One would think that a mystery/thriller about missing and stolen art works would be sufficiently exciting, but ever since THE DA VINCI CODE, authors have apparently decided that they must include some long-running conspiracy--preferably involving the Catholic Church--by a secret society to conceal the truth about something or other. With a few additions and the right marketing, Michael Flynn could have a runaway best seller with his 1990 novel IN THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND. Interestingly, when I reviewed that book twenty years ago, I mentioned Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln's HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL (upon which THE DA VINCI CODE was based) in the review. But Flynn was honest about his book. He did not pretend in an author's note that his speculations were actual facts, Christopher (and others) seem to think that doing so makes their books better, but it just serves to degrade the public's intelligence. For the people who believe it, it makes them believe things such as that there really is a secret society working to maintain Jesus's bloodline. And for the people who realize that these "Author's Notes" are as fictional as the rest of the book, it makes them suspicious of everything they read. This may not seem so bad, but what it means is that it is impossible to convince them of anything, because any facts they don't like, they can dismiss as mere fabrications. There's apparently a sequel to this (THE AZTEC CONSPIRACY), exposing some other conspiracy, probably also with an "Author's Note". With novels this makes some sense, I suppose, but one wonders why people are not more skeptical of the various claims made by many "non-fiction" writers. Don't people find it peculiar that the same person can manage to uncover hidden secrets in so many diverse areas of history? It's as if in science the same person who formulated relativity than went on to discover DNA. (It could be that the Coen Brothers need to take some blame here, for saying at the beginning of their 1996 film FARGO as "This is a true story." Certainly many people believed it was.)
To order Michelangelo's Notebook from amazon.com, click here.
THE GNOSTICS by Tobias Churton:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/27/2002]
I just finished C. S. Lewis's autobiography, SURPRISED BY JOY. I suggested it for the library book discussion group, but someone wanted me to make sure it was the sort of thing people would like. I'm not sure I can judge that, but I'm finding it quite suitable. (The discussion group has some constraints on its choices--the book must be available in numbers in the library system, not too new, and not too long. The last rules out most recent biographies. The rule about "not too new" is because those books are in too great a demand already.)
SURPRISED BY JOY is certainly more accessible than the other "religious" book I read at the same time, Tobias Churton's THE GNOSTICS. It's surprisingly difficult to find any sort of basic book about gnosticism, but apparently this was a companion piece to a British television series about it, and so isn't too academic. (What I'm really looking for is one of those "Gnosticism for Beginners" or "Introducing Gnosticism" graphic texts from Totem Books. (These should not be confused with the "for Dummies" series. The "Introducing Kafka" volume is illustrated by Robert Crumb.)
To order The Gnostics from amazon.com, click here.
CHILDHOOD'S END by Sir Arthur C. Clarke:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/05/2003]
As I hinted last week, I was reading Arthur C. Clarke's CHILDHOOD'S END. This was selected for our library's science fiction reading group and turned out to be almost exactly fifty years old when we discussed it. (It was published August 23, 1953; our discussion was September 25, 2003.) The first part had been published previously in a slightly different form, as "Guardian Angel" (which is how I best remember it). Interestingly, just about everyone agreed that they liked that part, but found the rest a bit of a letdown.
I want to comment particularly on the predictive aspects of it, and on the Overlords' advanced technology. Two predictions struck me as being well off the mark. In chapter 6, Clarke predicts that "the patterns of sexual mores [would] be virtually shattered by two inventions, which were, ironically enough, of purely human origin and owed nothing to the Overlords." These were "a completely reliable oral contraceptive" and "an equally infallible method of identifying the father of any child." Clarke describes the effect of these as "they had swept away the last remnants of the Puritan aberration." Clarke seemed to see the sole purposes of "Puritanism" as a method of preventing unwanted pregnancies and verifying paternity. But that view doesn't explain the opposition to homosexuality that is very much a part of this Puritanism, and indeed, though we have both these inventions now, Puritanism is still around, albeit somewhat diminished.
His other prediction that struck me was in chapter 15 someone complains that "*every day* something like five hundred hours of radio and TV pour out over the various channels." That's the equivalent of only twenty cable channels, which these days is considered even less than just basic cable. (And note that Clarke lists radio first.) As someone pointed out at the discussion, this may have been because Clarke didn't think about the technology that would make all our cable channels possible--like the synchronous communications satellite. :-)
The other point is about the Overlords' technology. Clarke seems to provide them with whatever they happen to need for his literary and philosophical purposes. They don't have faster-than-light travel, but they do have some viewer that lets one see any place and time in history. And Clarke claims that in the space of a few days the Overlords could show everyone "the true beginnings of all the world's great faiths." This supposedly would lead to the almost instantaneous abandonment of religion by mankind. As someone pointed out, this seems to imply proving a negative--one would, for example, have not just to show Paul (or whoever) laying down rules of Christianity, but also to *not* show the Crucifixion and Resurrection. But no matter what you show, people could claim that you just failed to show the scenes that happened that would support your belief. There are also a lot of other devices and inventions, many of which are fairly unbelievable. My theory is that Clarke might claim it was just an application of his Third Law ("any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic") but that it's closer to the converse (of his Third Law ("any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology").
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/18/2004]
I read Arthur C. Clarke's CHILDHOOD'S END (ISBN 0-345-34795-1) last October and commented on it then (MT VOID, 10/05/2003). In particular, I have already noted the incorrect predictions for sexual mores and for broadcast media, and the rather unbelievable claims for the Overlords' technology (one is reminded that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"). So I'll comment now on other aspects that bothered me this time around. First, Clarke has this magical technology as a way to enforce world peace. However, given its limitations even in the book I suspect it would not be very useful against a group of terrorists. He also sees the "time-viewing" as putting an end to the world's religions, but many of those religions do not really depend on specific events in history. Clarke also talks about theft disappearing because no one lacks anything--this was obviously written before the corporate scandals of the last couple of decades. The reference to Israel as the last independent country and to the state of race relations in South Africa at the time of the arrival stick out as having missed the mark; when Clarke temporarily updated the first chapter, I don't think he went through and changed any of these, and the first chapter is now restored to its original state anyway.
To order Childhood's End from amazon.com, click here.
GREETINGS, CARBON-BASED BIPEDS! by Sir Arthur C. Clarke:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/28/2003 and 05/09/03]
I'm in the process of reading GREETINGS, CARBON-BASED BIPEDS!, Sir Arthur C. Clarke's collected essays from 1934 through 1998. It is a bit confusing to read: at the start of each essay is an introductory paragraph, printed in centered italics and presumably written by editor Ian T. Macauley. This followed not by the essay itself, but *another* introductory few paragraphs by Clarke, written in the same typeface as the article. There is then a two- line break, followed by the article itself. Unfortunately, one finds similar breaks within the introductory paragraphs (which sometimes go on for a couple of pages), so one isn't always sure when one has actually started the essay. And to make it worse, sometimes there is no introductory paragraph at all! Better editing or different typeface choice or even different font size would have made it easier going.
Anyway, I was struck by one thing he said in his review of Chesley Bonestell and Willy Ley's "The Conquest of Space". In reference to Bonestell's color plates, he says, "We have known cases of people who mistook them for actual color photos taken on the spot and were mildly surprised that they had read nothing about the matter in the papers!"
Another selection I just read was a speech that Clarke gave to the Smithsonian Institution on April 24, 1990, for the Marconi Symposium. Speaking of innovation, he said, "I'm even tempted to say that large organizations not only can't make major innovations, but shouldn't attempt to . . . . Of course, there are exceptions--see for example Bell Labs and the transistor. . . . But Bell Labs was deliberately set up to encourage creativity, not to manufacture things."
How hath the mighty fallen!
To order Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds! from amazon.com, click here.
"I Remember Babylon" by Sir Arthur C. Clarke:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/25/2003]
A couple of years ago, when The History Channel starting running "The XY Factor", a series about sex throughout history (and mythology and legend), I re-read Arthur C. Clarke's "I Remember Babylon". In that, it is suggested that if the Chinese managed to put up a communications satellite, they could undermine Western civilization by broadcasting all sorts of shows then unavailable, including such outrageous things as images of the sexually explicit carvings on Indian temples and scenes of torture--all supposedly as educational documentaries. Well, it was when "The XY Factor" ran its show on sex in Asia and *did* show those carvings that I re-read the story, and now I see that The History Channel has a documentary on "punishment" through the ages. Clarke was wrong about only one thing--it isn't the Chinese.
"The Nine Billion Names of God" by Sir Arthur C. Clarke:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/16/2004]
Some people think "The Nine Billion Names of God" by Arthur C. Clarke is too thin a story, but the concept is interesting and the ending perfect.
TIME'S EYE by Sir Arthur C. Clarke & Stephen Baxter:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/20/2004]
Sir Arthur C. Clarke & Stephen Baxter's TIME'S EYE at least has the advantage of being the first in a trilogy. But the premise seems so artificial that I cannot work up much enthusiasm for it. The premise is that something (from "out there") has patched together a new Earth by taking wedges from various time periods of the old one. (The question of what has happened to the area/volume occupied by these wedges on the original Earth--or Earths, depending on your point of view--is pretty much ignored.) So we have a peace-keeping force from 21st century Afghanistan ending up only a few miles from an 1890s British frontier station on the Northwest frontier of India, along with the crew of a 1980s Soviet space capsule that happened to be orbiting over a wedge that was selected in its time frame. And they all end up tangled up with Alexander and Genghis Khan, who just happened to be in the wedges selected from *their* respective time periods. And perhaps in response to such series as Stirling's "Nantucket Trilogy" and Eric Flint's "1632" series, Clarke and Baxter recognize that their 20th and 21st century castaways cannot build an industrial society in a couple of weeks. Indeed, the best they can do is to use their knowledge of the historical "surprise" tactics of Alexander and Genghis Khan to come up with ways to counter them. But as I said, the whole premise seems so contrived that even I had a hard time suspending my disbelief.
To order Time's Eye from amazon.com, click here.
THE LAST THEOREM by Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/14/2008]
I wanted to like THE LAST THEOREM by Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl (ISBN-13 978-0-345-47021-8, ISBN-10 0-345-47021-4)--I really did. I've been reading Clarke and Pohl since Hector was a pup, and was hoping for the old magic. Plus of course it was about mathematics, and that's pretty darn rare. Alas, either their writing or my tastes have changed. What is wrong? Well, first of all, there's an awful lot of expository lumps. And there's an awful lot of convenient occurrences and coincidences. And of course Sri Lanka is great and the United States isn't. And I cannot say that I find either the mathematical or the socio- political premises very likely.
To order The Last Theorem from amazon.com, click here.
THE ARSONIST'S GUIDE TO WRITERS' HOMES IN NEW ENGLAND by Brock Clarke:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/18/2008]
I picked up THE ARSONIST'S GUIDE TO WRITERS' HOMES IN NEW ENGLAND by Brock Clarke (ISBN-13 978-1-565-12551-3, ISBN-10 1-565-12551-7) in part because it was set in Amherst, Massachusetts, and the surrounding area. Since I come from there (Chicopee, with four years at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst), I thought the local setting would make it more interesting. There are two sorts of ways to use local settings for color. One is to get all the minutiae correct. Allen Steele has done this with the same area. When he mentions characters going to a barbecue place on the Route 116 bypass, for example, you know he means Bub's. The other way is to mention a few main roads, and make up the rest. That seems to be Clarke's method. The result is that instead of enjoying the local references, I found myself constantly saying, "What is he talking about?"
There is no Chicopee Street in Amherst, and no state prison in Holyoke. There is an Our Lady of the Lake College, but it is in Louisiana, not Springfield, Massachusetts. (Clarke may be modeling this on Elms College in Chicopee, formerly Our Lady of the Elms College.) Similarly, there is a Pioneer Packaging, but not in Agawam. The Student Prince is indeed a German restaurant in Springfield, but not owned by anyone named Goerman (the owner's name is Scherff). Also, the Student Prince is at least five blocks from Court Square, so the entrance to it could not be in an alley just off Court Square.
There are no superstores on Route 116 near Amherst (they are all on Route 9), and no Book Warehouse or Pioneer Valley Mall. It is not a half-hour commute from Amherst to Agawam (even the optimistic Google says it is 41 minutes). There is no Super Stop-N-Shop in Chicopee, and the ordinary Stop-N-Shop is not in a neighborhood of older homes, and is a mile and a half from the Edward Bellamy House, not just a few blocks.
An even more interesting question is *when* this is taking place. The narrator supposedly burned down the Emily Dickinson House, served ten years in (the non-existent Holyoke) prison, and has been out of prison for another ten years, yet the technology, cars, and so on are present-day. So is this some alternate history (since in our present world the Emily Dickinson House was not burned down)? I suppose that would explain some of the differences from our reality, but not really why there would be a Super Stop-N-Shop right near the Edward Bellamy House in Chicopee. The Paramount Theater in Springfield stopped showing movies around 1970.
Now I'm sure that many people would consider all of this beside the point, that I am missing the main ideas of the book for this trivia. It may be an attempt to bring science fiction reading protocols to a mainstream literary work. In science fiction, one is expected to get one's facts right. If someone gets in a rocketship and flies away from the sun, they should not arrive on Venus. But while a mainstream author is allowed to make up some details of setting, he is still supposed to maintain a certain level of accuracy. A character in Manhattan should not cross the East River to reach New Jersey. I think my feeling here is that if Clarke has chosen to use a very particular real town as his setting, he should hew as closely to that town as possible.
To order The Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England from amazon.com, click here.
ENGLAND UNDER HITLER by Comer Clarke:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/28/2003]
A few months ago, there ran on some PBS stations something called "Hitler's Victory." It was promoted as alternate history, but there was only about twenty minutes of fictional alternate history. The rest (over an hour) was an discussion of documents discovered describing the German plans for after a successful invasion, and interviews with people about what plans had been laid in place on both sides. Well, the whole thing could have been based on Comer Clarke's ENGLAND UNDER HITLER, though it apparently wasn't. Clarke's book is precisely this discussion of documents, interviews, and extrapolations from German actions in other conquered countries, and in the occupied Channel Islands. Clarke's book is over forty years old, but it didn't seem like the TV movie/documentary added much new to the story.
To order England Under Hitler from amazon.com, click here.
JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL by Susanna Clarke:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/15/2004]
The main book I read this week was Susanna Clarke's JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL (ISBN 1-58234-416-7). (At 800 pages, it is not surprising that it is the main book I read.) This has gotten a lot of press, almost all positive. It was even mentioned as a shoo-in for nomination for Britain's Booker Prize. (It didn't make it.) I will say that it is a shoo-in for Hugo nomination next year, especially since the convention is being held in Glasgow, giving a much higher number of British nominators.
So I will undoubtedly seem like a bit of a spoil-sport when I say that I do not think this is a great book. That may be because I am not a big fan of Regency novels and this has been described as a fantasy Regency novel. The premise is that at one time magic was rife in England, but has fallen into disuse. At the start of the novel Mr. Norrell seems determined to prove that magic still exists, but only he can do it. Then Jonathan Strange comes along to challenge him, and to try to train new magicians. (This is, I suppose, a thinly veiled parallel to the general conflict between the notions of aristocracy and democracy that was occurring at that time.) But for all the magic, not much seems to happen, or rather, things happen at a much slower pace than in most books. This is fine if you want the texture of the era, the Napoleanic Wars, magic, and everything else, but not if you are looking for a story.
Now all this probably sounds as though I'm looking for all "all- action" plot with only the barest layer of characterization and writing over it. This is not the case, but I will admit to preferring poetry in smaller doses than this book. (Russell Hoban's work, for example, usually has more emphasis on poetic writing and atmosphere--but HER NAME WAS LOLA was only 207 pages long.) But I will acknowledge that for people who read the huge fantasy series coming out these days, the length will not be an issue, and JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL is a well-written novel set in a fascinating world.
(Along with others, I have to wonder at Clarke's division of Britain into England, Scotland, Wales, and Elsewhere [Faerie]-- where is Wales in all this? And why is it called "English magic" when it clearly includes Scotland? And does anyone else have magic?)
And one final note: this is being marketed as mainstream, not fantasy, so 1) it will be in a different section of the bookstore, and 2) it will be priced a little higher than most fantasy novels. The chains have pretty much decided that they will not stock mid- list fantasy priced above $25, but mainstream novels do not have any such ceiling that I know of. This is priced at $27.95, certainly a good price when compared with a lot of the EFP ("Extruded Fantasy Product") selling for $24.95 these days, or for that matter when compared to mainstream pricing in general. (Note: I just saw it at Costco for $15.99, so it is probably being heavily discounted elsewhere as well.)
To order Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell from amazon.com, click here.
THE LADIES OF GRACE ADIEU by Susanna Clarke:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/24/2006]
THE LADIES OF GRACE ADIEU by Susanna Clarke (ISBN 1-596-91251-0) is a collection of stories by the author of JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR NORRELL. The stories are set in the same milieu as that novel, with some of the same characters. If you liked the novel, you will like these, and if you found the novel too intimidating due to its size, these provide a more manageable introduction to that world.
To order The Ladies of Grace Adieu from amazon.com, click here.
PAPA by Susy Clemens:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/25/2003]
A more interesting literary biography [than Aldiss's] was PAPA, the biography of Samuel Clemens written by Susy Clemens when she was thirteen years old. Her spelling is quite outrageous, but her descriptions of Twain are pretty much spot-on.
To order Papa from amazon.com, click here.
MISSION OF GRAVITY by Hal Clement:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/18/2004]
Hal Clement's MISSION OF GRAVITY (ISBN 0-345-00993-2), unlike the Asimov, did not seem to age well. Maybe my tolerance for pages of world-building infodump has decreased, because I seem to remember that when I first read it about thirty years ago it was great.
To order Mission of Gravity from amazon.com, click here.
NEEDLE by Hal Clement:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/27/2004]
I re-read Hal Clement's NEEDLE as a stroll down Memory Lane, and concluded that it is really a "young adult" novel. And though Hunter talks about the clues that give the fugitive's host away, when I flipped back through the book, I couldn't really find where they were revealed to the reader, somewhat marring the mystery aspect. (Hal Clement died October 29, 2003, for those who have not heard. -mrl)
To order Needle from amazon.com, click here.