All reviews copyright 1984-2009 Evelyn C. Leeper.
RAISED BY PUPPETS by Andrei Codrescu:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/01/2003]
I enjoy Andrei Codrescu's essays on NPR and find them thought- provoking, but somehow when they are put down on the printed page, they seem much more cynical and bitter. The latest of his collections that I'm reading, RAISED BY PUPPETS, certainly has that problem, though I suppose it's possible that the radio essays are bitter and cynical and I just miss it. Codrescu does say in "My Brush with Hollywood" that writing is different than speaking when he writes, "If they're written down, they're literary. When they're on tape [or radio], they're not." (He's wrong about Sabbatai Zevi, however. Codrescu places him around the year 1000; actually Zevi lived in the 17th century. In addition, Sabbatai Zevi and his followers were Jewish; why would they think the world was ending in the year 1000? And for that matter, there was no widespread belief at the time that the world was ending in 1000-- that was a story concocted about six hundred years later.)
To order Raised by Puppets from amazon.com, click here.
CODY'S BOOKS: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A BERKELEY BOOKSTORE 1956-1977 by Pat and Fred Cody:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/26/2005]
Pat and Fred Cody's CODY'S BOOKS: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A BERKELEY BOOKSTORE 1956-1977 (ISBN 0-8118-0140-3) is at times more about Berkeley in that turbulent time than about the bookstore itself. People looking for tips on how to start and operate a bookstore will find some information here, but even that is of more interest historically than practically. When Cody's started as a paperback bookstore, distribution, marketing, and just about every other aspect of book-selling was very different than it is now. (And by paperback bookstore, they seem to have meant primarily trade paperbacks, not mass market.) So far as I can tell, in fact, the store was kept afloat for many years only by the wildly successful European art calendars, in a time when there was not an American calendar industry other than those given away by service stations and such. This book probably has its greatest appeal as a history of those times in Berkeley from someone "on the front lines", so to speak.
To order Cody's Books from amazon.com, click here.
THE LIFE OF THE HONORABLE WILLIAM F. CODY by Buffalo Bill Cody:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/11/2003]
As I said, I got to only one Williams play before I got sidetracked into the autobiography of Buffalo Bill Cody. One might say that Cody's attitude towards Indians was less than currently politically correct, but he was after all a man of his times, and interesting times they were.
To order The Life of the Honorable William F. Cody from amazon.com, click here.
WHO KILLED THE CURATE? by Joan Coggin:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/02/2009]
I had bought a dozen "old" mysteries (from the 1930s and 1940s) re- printed by Rue Morgue Press in nice trade paperbacks. I read the first one (for me, anyway), WHO KILLED THE CURATE? by Joan Coggin (ISBN-13 978-0-815230-44-0, ISBN-10 0-815230-44-5). It was fine *except* for the main character, Lady Lupin, who is a society flibbertygibbet married to a vicar. The back blurb compares her to Gracie Allen, and an apt comparison it is--she is full of apparent non sequuntur, and as the back blurb says, "she literally doesn't know Jews from Jesuits." I never found this type of character either believable or funny, so it was hard for me to enjoy the novel, even though the mystery and supporting players were fine.
(*) Yes, that's the plural of "non sequitur"!
To order Who Killed the Curate? from amazon.com, click here.
is "The Wall Around the World" by Theodore Cogswell:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/16/2004]
My choice for the Retro Hugo for Novelette is "The Wall Around the World" by Theodore Cogswell. Oddly enough, this seems like it would be a fine companion piece for the "Harry Potter" books, with its "scientific" approach to magic. I also liked Philip K. Dick's "Second Variety", though either I remembered it or the ending was obvious. Still, the discussion of war and its methods was what the story was really about.
WANDERING LANDS AND ANIMALS: THE STORY OF CONTINENTAL DRIFT AND ANIMAL POPULATIONS by Edwin H. Colbert:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/10/2007]
As part of our recent trip to the Canadian Rockies (which included various paleontological sites), I re-read parts of WANDERING LANDS AND ANIMALS: THE STORY OF CONTINENTAL DRIFT AND ANIMAL POPULATIONS (ISBN-10 0-486-24918-2, ISBN-13 978-0-486-24918-6) by Edwin H. Colbert. He talks about the fauna of isolated islands, and says (on page 255) that the native fauna of Australia consists of "marsupials, of some monotremes, and of such placental mammals as rodents, bats, and the dingo." If the native fauna of Australia includes the dingo, and "it is obvious that the dingo was brought to the continent by aboriginal immigrants," then doesn't that make the aboriginal immigrants part of the native fauna, and in particular a native placental mammal along with rodents and bats?
One might also note that the "tradition" of a North American invasion into South America which drives many species to extinction is not a twentieth century phenomenon. During the Pliocene (a million years ago or so), the Panama land bridge was re-established between North America and the previously isolated South America, and the fauna of the latter --marsupial borhyaenids, litopterns, notoungulates, ground sloths, and glyptodonts--were decimated by the invading species.
To order Wandering Lands and Animals from amazon.com, click here.
ROAD TO PERDITION by Max Allan Collins and Richard Rayner:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/28/2003]
We picked up Max Allan Collins and Richard Rayner's ROAD TO PERDITION since I was curious to see what graphic novels were like these days. What I discovered, at least in this case, was that the graphics were not very informative or useful to me in understanding the story. I found this strange, because in the film the visuals are very important. Maybe an appreciation of graphic novels is something that requires a lot more background, or practice, or something.
To order Road to Perdition from amazon.com, click here.
SIXPENCE HOUSE by Paul Collins:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/05/2004]
For people who know about Hay-on-Wye, Paul Collins's SIXPENCE HOUSE will be of interest. Collins decided to leave San Francisco with his wife and baby and move to Hay-on-Wye. This sounds like a book-lover's dream, but as Collins discovered, there is reality to deal with as well as the fantasy.
To order Sixpence House from amazon.com, click here.
BARKER STREET REGULARS
by Susan Conant:
MURDER, MRS. HUDSON
by Sydney Hosier:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/05/2003]
A couple of books inspired by Sherlock Holmes are Susan Conant's BARKER STREET REGULARS and Sydney Hosier's MURDER, MRS. HUDSON. The former involves a murder, dogs, and Sherlock Holmes aficionados. The latter is the second book in a series that has Mrs. Hudson as the detective and would be okay except for the fact that Hosier has decided to give her a friend who can travel out of her body. This is presumably explained more in the first book of the series, but I'm not going out of my way to find it.
To order Barker Street Regulars from amazon.com, click here.
To order Murder, Mrs. Hudson from amazon.com, click here.
THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE by Richard Condon:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/16/2004]
I had heard that Richard Condon's THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE was different from the film primarily in that the sexual undertones of the film were made explicit in the book. This is true, and while the book is well-written, I'm not sure it adds that much if you've seen the movie. (By the way, director John Frankenheimer gives a great commentary track on the DVD. There is a new release of the film on DVD scheduled for July 13 with some additional features, but the older release also has the commentary.)
To order The Manchurian Candidate from amazon.com, click here.
MONITOR FOUND IN ORBIT by Michael G. Coney:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/16/2007]
MONITOR FOUND IN ORBIT by Michael G. Coney (ISBN-10 0-879-97132-0 ISBN-13 978-0-879-97132-8) is an old collection of nine of Coney's short stories that I was inspired to read by James Nicoll's review of it as part of his massive overview of DAW books that was posted to Usenet (http://tinyurl.com/2weru7). The lead story of a collection is usually assumed to be the strongest. But here the lead story, "The True Worth of Ruth Villiers", is a "gimmick" story, with the premises rather obviously set up so as to constrain the story rather artificially. "The Mind Prison" is also hard to believe, and predictable. I did rather like the idea behind "R26/5/PSY and I", even if it does not bear much examination, and similarly with "Esmeralda". I agree with Nicoll when he says, "[almost] all of these are competently written at the words and paragraph level even if some of the background assumptions don't seem to stand up to close inspection. This might seem like damning with faint praise but I do not intend to do so. It is a rare modern anthology which has this high a fraction of readable prose, and dodgy world construction is still just as common as in the 1970s."
To order Monitor Found in Orbit from amazon.com, click here.
LORD JIM by Joseph Conrad:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/28/2004]
I tried to read Joseph Conrad's LORD JIM, this month's selection for the general book discussion group at the library. But it was just too tough going. I know people talk about how Joseph Conrad mastered English so well as a second language, but if one looks at just this novel, one gets the impression that he didn't really have the hang of it. His phrasing, combined with the non-linear telling of the story, made this the sort of book that I decided life was too short to read. (Many people felt this way, though a couple of people did finish it, and one really liked it. That gives it a slight edge over THE SUN ALSO RISES, which no one liked.)
To order Lord Jim from amazon.com, click here.
1901 by Robert Conroy (Lyford Books, ISBN 0-89141-537-8, 1995, 374pp, hardback):
There are two kinds of alternate histories. The first is the kind that assumes some sort of change and then looks at what the world (or part of it) would be like years later. Examples of this are Philip K. Dick's Man in the High Castle, Ward Moore's Bring the Jubilee, and Robert Harris's Fatherland. The second assumes some sort of change and then starts following the affect of this change from that point. Examples of this are Harry Turtledove's Guns of the South and Leo Frankowski's Cross-Time Engineer. I must admit to a preference for the first. In part, this is because while the second can be well done, it all too often is just a detailed description of how the author thinks some war would have gone after the change. 1901 is precisely this sort of book.
The premise is that Germany, jealous of the United States' overseas possessions, attacks us in June 1901. Most of the book is spent detailing the land and sea campaigns resulting from this, with scant time given to what things are like in the areas of the United States not directly involved, or indeed even in the war zones except for a few somewhat perfunctory descriptions of fleeing refugees. As far as I can tell, Conroy does a reasonable job at what he does, though things work out a little too conveniently and pat. His characters are fairly one-dimensional: militarily, they're okay, but the emotionally they are trite and predictable, not to mention incredibly stereotypical. For example, it is the lower-class girl who gets raped, and who starts having "noisy" sex first, while the upper-class girl gets rescued after being merely groped, and who waits longer and then has more discreet sex.
If you are looking for an alternate history that dwells on "what-if" battles and wars, then you will probably enjoy this. The battles have a very World War I feel to them, though they are also reminiscent of Gallipoli, and it is interesting to read Conroy's speculations on how a German-American war would have gone fifteen years earlier, and on the other side of the Atlantic. By positioning the war when he does, Conroy gets to compare the styles of the commanders who fought in the Civil War with those of the commanders who fought in World War I (in our timeline). But if you're looking for a detailed look at a changed society, 1901 doesn't even start to do this.
To order 1901 from amazon.com, click here.
1945: A Novel by Robert Conroy:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/07/2007]
1945 by Robert Conroy (ISBN-13 978-0-345-49479-5, ISBN-10 0-345-49479-2) is an alternate history that takes as its premise that Japan does not surrender after the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but rather that a coup imprisons the Emperor and insists on continuing the war. The premise is fine, the way the story unfolds is reasonable, but the writing style is wooden. Conroy often insists on referring to characters by full name and military rank, even when such usage is awkward, and misuses some words as "decimated". I suppose that military strategists might find this of interest, but I cannot really recommend it for other readers. (Conroy's other books are 1901 and 1862, which are not easily remembered titles, and also liable to be confused with the 1632, 1633, 1634, 1812, 1824, or whatever from Flint and Weber. Actually, I think that Flint and Weber have multiple books titled 1634, differing only in their subtitles.)
To order 1945 from amazon.com, click here.
AUGUSTINE FOR ARMCHAIR THEOLOGIANS by Stephen A. Cooper:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/02/2007]
And speaking of Augustine, I also listened to AUGUSTINE FOR ARMCHAIR THEOLOGIANS by Stephen A. Cooper (read by Simon Vance) (ISBN 0-664-22372-9, audiobook ISBN 1-596-44188-7). This is much longer (about six hours) and aimed mostly at Catholics, I suspect, but I found it interesting nonetheless. There were a couple of points I thought worth mentioning. First, Cooper talks about how Augustine "proves" the existence of "natural law". Augustine argues that stealing is against natural law, because even thieves do not believe it is right that people should steal from them. As such, this seems to be an application of Kant's categorical imperative centuries before Kant formulated it. And Cooper says that Augustine had tried to read the Bible when he was young but gave up, but not because it was too difficult. Cooper pointed out that Augustine was educated in a classical manner, and read elegant Latin works. However, the Latin translation available to him was aimed at the average person (I got the impression that the modern English equivalent would be the "Good News Bible"), and Augustine found it very inelegant and vulgar. I think this was probably the "Vetus Latina", not the Vulgate.
To order Augustine for Armchair Theologians from amazon.com, click here.
LEAVE ME ALONE, I'M READING: FINDING MYSELF AND LOSING MYSELF IN BOOKS by Maureen Corrigan:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/10/2006]
LEAVE ME ALONE, I'M READING: FINDING MYSELF AND LOSING MYSELF IN BOOKS by Maureen Corrigan (ISBN 0-375-50425-7) is about her experiences in reading, both as a girl growing up in Queens, and as a book reviewer in her adult life. Corrigan focuses on three categories of books, as she says: "I especially want to look at men's and women's lives as they've been depicted in three mostly noncanonical categories of stories: the female extreme-adventure tale, the hard-boiled detective novel, and the Catholic-martyr narratives." By "female extreme-adventure tale", Corrigan does not mean women mountain-climbers, but women who endure domestic abuse, societal mistreatment, etc. Examples she gives include Anne Bronte's THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL, or for that matter, almost any Bronte novel. Interestingly, though Corrigan talks a lot about the women in the Brontes' novels, she does not even mention any of George Eliot's female characters, though Eliot's Dorothea Brooke in MIDDLEMARCH and Dinah Morris in ADAM BEDE are very memorable. (And it's not even clear that Eliot's characters would contradict any of Corrigan theories.) "Catholic-martyr narratives" was perhaps a bit more central to Corrigan's life than to other readers since she attended pre-Vatican II Catholic schools. They include such books as KAREN (about Karen Killilea, though perhaps as much about the author, her mother Marie) and Dr. Tom Dooley's memoirs. KAREN rang a bell--I'm sure I read it back in school over forty years ago, indicating that that sort of inspirational book was probably promoted as much in public schools as in parochial ones. Corrigan's reminiscences of growing up reading will strike a wonderfully familiar and nostalgic chord with anyone for whom books were a major part of their childhood, as well as providing an interesting perspective on these categories.
To order Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading from amazon.com, click here.
"Early Retirement" by Mat Coward:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/13/2002]
One story I liked was Mat Coward's "Early Retirement" in the September 2002 issue of INTERZONE. As someone who worked for a company that sponsored these "team-building" exercises, I could appreciate it perhaps more than others. (Though I will admit that I personally never went on one.)
DISCOVER YOUR INNER ECONOMIST by Tyler Cowen:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/25/2008]
The notion that people are too concerned with the origins and expert opinions of art and not enough with their feelings about it ties in with comments made by Tyler Cowen in his book DISCOVER YOUR INNER ECONOMIST (ISBN-13 978-0-452-28963-5, ISBN-10 0-452-28963-7). He was discussing the best way to see an art museum. Interspersed with suggestions such as to skip the first room entirely (because it is always the most crowded), he observed that most people spend more time reading the labels than looking at the art. When you enter a gallery, he said, look around, pick the one item that you like the most or find the most intriguing, and spend your time looking at that.
To order Discover Your Inner Economist from amazon.com, click here.
AMERICAN INDIAN VICTORIES by Dale R. Cozort (Booklocker.com):
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/18/2003]
Dale R. Cozort's AMERICAN INDIAN VICTORIES (published by Booklocker.com) is an odd book. It is not, strictly speaking, alternate history, but rather a discussion of how the conquest and colonization of the Americas went, and a discussion of a set of historical changes with brief suggestions of possible results of these changes. As alternate history it seems like taking the easy way out--coming up with a list of ideas for stories without actually writing the stories. But as history, this is perfectly acceptable, and I would recommend this to people interested in the historical aspects of that period. (By the way, this in general is a period well before the "Indian Wars" of the 19th century, so there are no alternate Custers et all here.)
To order American Indian Victories from amazon.com, click here.
THE OXFORD BOOK OF ENGLISH DETECTIVE STORIES edited by Patricia Craig:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/08/2005]
THE OXFORD BOOK OF ENGLISH DETECTIVE STORIES edited by Patricia Craig (ISBN 0-192-80375-1) is a 1990 collection of the classics of that genre. It is a great collection, even if the people who are most likely to be interested in it are also the most likely to have read many of the stories already. It might make a good gift for someone who has just discovered the English detective story, though, and needs a sampler to see which authors he might like.
To order The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories from amazon.com, click here.
FIFTEEN DECISIVE BATTLES OF THE WORLD by Sir Edward S. Creasey:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/09/2007]
Written in 1851, FIFTEEN DECISIVE BATTLES OF THE WORLD by Sir Edward S. Creasey (ISBN-10 0-306-80559-6, ISBN-13 978-0-306- 80559-2) is a classic.
The battles are (briefly):
490 B.C.E.--The Persians defeated at Marathon.
413 B.C.E.--The Athenians defeated at Syracuse.
331 B.C.E.--Darius III defeated at Gaugamela (Arbela).
207 B.C.E.--The Catheginians defeated at Metaurus.
9 B.C.E.--The Romans defeated in the Teutoberg Forest.
451 C.E.--Attila the Hun defeated at Chalons.
732 C.E.--The Moors defeated at Tours.
1066 C.E.--Harold defeated at Hastings.
1429 C.E.--The English defeated at Orleans.
1588 C.E.--The Spanish Armada defeated.
1704 C.E.--The French defeated at Blenheim.
1709 C.E.--The Swedes defeated at Poltava.
1777 C.E.--Burgoyne defeated at Saratoga.
1792 C.E.--Foreign armies defeated at Valmy.
1815 C.E.--Napoleon defeated at Waterloo.
One thing that is noted by everyone is that all of these are very Eurocentric choices. But even more than that, they are all battles that reinforced (western) European dominance. Even Teutoberg is seen by Creasy as leading directly to the establishment of the British peoples. Creasy chooses Tours as critical in halting the Arab invasion of Europe. But he ignores the recapture of Jerusalem by Saladin in 1187 or the capture of Acre in 1291, either of which could be cited as halting the expansion of Europe into the Middle East and Asia. He ignores the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. He ignores the defeat in the Battle of Koan of the Mongols invading Japan in 1281.
[He also does not include Yarmouk in 636 which brought Islam
flooding out of Arabia and is arguably the most important. See
One might think that Creasy's critical turning points would have
generated various alternate history stories, but one would be
only partly accurate. Yes, there are stories based on most of
the early ones (though with Alexander, Carthage, and Joan of Arc
they are more general than based on specific battles) and for
Saratoga and Waterloo, but nothing for Syracuse, Tours, Blenheim,
Poltava, or Valmy.
Historian Joseph B. Mitchell has five more battles since 1851:
For alternate histories, Vicksburg has been almost ignored, while
Gettysburg has inspired dozens of stories. Sadowa? Nothing.
The Marne? Most World War I alternate histories focus on either
the assassination or some obscure German corporal. And it seems
as though there are only a couple of stories on Midway and none
on Stalingrad. (One might argue that Mitchell should have chosen
Pearl Harbor, since without that we might have "sat out" the war,
and things would be very different now.)
By the way, in his chapter on Saratoga, Creasy quotes Alexis de
Toqueville, who had written fifteen years earlier. Even by
Creasy's time, it was a picture of the United States that was not
accurate, and certainly as a prediction of what would come was
fairly far off: "The time will therefore come when one hundred
and fifty millions of men will be living in North America, equal
in condition, one race, owing their origin to the same cause, and
preserving the same civilisation, the same language, the same
religion, the same habits, the same manners, and imbued with the
same opinions, propagated under the same forms. The rest is
uncertain, but this is certain; ...." (The United States
population was 150,000,000 in 1950.)
Creasy himself repeatedly refers to "Anglo-Americans", and says
things like, "They, like ourselves, are members of the great
Anglo-Saxon nation", and "our race is one, being of the same
blood, speaking the same language, having an essential
resemblance in our institutions and usages, and worshipping in
the temples of the same God." Again, even in Creasy's time this
was not accurate--even before the massive influx of immigrants in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the United
States had a fair percentage of German (almost 10% of the
population during the War of 1812), Scots, and Irish. And of
course there was a very large percentage of African-Americans,
which both he and de Toqueville ignored.
To order Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World from amazon.com, click here.
THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN
by Michael Crichton:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/16/2009]
The newly formed science fiction discussion group in Middletown
(NJ) chose THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN by Michael Crichton for the January
meeting. (Each month we choose a book and the movie made from it--
we read the book ahead of time, then watch the movie for the first
half of the meeting, then discuss the two for the second half.)
A few observations about the book: It is a massive expository lump
(or as Mark said, "an expository lump with trimmings").
A couple of weeks ago I talked about novels that blurred the line
between fiction and fact. Crichton did that forty years ago--the
"Acknowledgements" at the beginning and the "References" at the end
are both made-up. Even the opening quotes after the title page are
made up, attributed to characters in the book.
Crichton cites Lewis Bornheim's definition of a crisis: "a
situation in which a previously tolerable set of circumstances is
suddenly, by the addition of another factor, rendered wholly
intolerable." Then he says, "At the time of Andromeda, there had
never been a crisis of biological science...." What about the
bubonic plague, the introduction of European diseases to New World,
or the 1918 Influenza Pandemic?
He also claims that "1-101-1110" is "a perfectly reasonable
telephone number". No, it wasn't at the time (1969) and probably
not even now. Exchanges (the "101" part) could not start with a
"1", because that signaled long distance.
On page 201 he has the characters discussing "what is life?" One
definition they give is, "All living organisms in some way took in
energy--as food, or sunlight--and converted it to another form of
energy, and put it to use. (Viruses were the exception to this
rule, but the group was prepared to define viruses as nonliving.)"
Then someone claims three items stretch this too far: a black cloth
(in sunlight, it converts radiant energy to heat), a watch with a
radium dial (radioactive decay produces light), and a piece of
granite ("It is living, breathing, walking, and talking. Only we
cannot see it because it is happening too slowly.") While one may
agree with the first two, I have no idea what he means by the last.
But the classic test case that is usually given is fire--it
consumes fuel, outputs waste, etc.
To order The Andromeda Strain from amazon.com, click here.
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/14/2003]
As part of my alternate history reading I read CRIMSON SKIES, a
tie-in to the game. It's three novellas (or perhaps novelettes)
rather than a single novel, and the first and third stories are
at least entertaining, if not great literature.
To order Crimson Skies from amazon.com, click here.
"A New Refutation"
by John Crowley:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/06/2006]
As with so many works these days,
"A New Refutation" by John Crowley (subtitled "Hommage a
J.L.B."), written for the Readercon 17 Souvenir Book,
suffers from a lack of editing. In it Crowley talks about
computers generating texts, and talks about "the long-standing
problem of how few colors a mapmaker would need to construct a
map where no two contiguous countries or regions would be the
same color" and says, "a computer . . . has proven that three
colors are in fact enough." No, it is *four* colors. What is
disturbing about this is that an author would be embarrassed to
have written that France is in Asia, or that Herman Melville
wrote DAVID COPPERFIELD, but I suspect that if this mistake were
pointed out, the response would be that no one would notice. (I
will not accept as valid the suggestion that the story is set in
an alternate universe where three colors suffice.)
THE TRANSLATOR
by John Crowley:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/04/2003]
I had seen John Crowley's THE TRANSLATOR in a new bookstore and
resolved to try the library, but when I saw a copy at Half-Price
Books, I figured it was probably as good a way as any to use some
of my store credit. Unlike his other books, this has no overt
fantasy element, but is the rather straightforward story of an
exiled Russian poet and a college student during the Cuban missile
crisis. Crowley has his characters spend a lot of time not just
writing poetry but explaining why they chose this word instead of
that word, and how this phrase was a reference to that other
quotation, and so on.
To order The Translator from amazon.com, click here.
A SLIGHT TRICK OF THE MIND
by Mitch Cullin:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/03/2005]
Mitch Cullin's A SLIGHT TRICK OF THE MIND (ISBN 0-385-51328-3) is
not a Sherlock Holmes pastiche in the usual sense of the term. There are
a couple of mysteries involved, but the focus is not so much on
solving them as on Holmes as an old man, ninety-two years old and
dealing with both the physical and the mental infirmities that so
often accompany old age. He can no longer take in a scene at a
glance and remember it perfectly. As he expresses it, "Over
time, I have realized my mind no longer operates in such a fluid
manner. . . . My means for recall--those various groupings of
words and numbers--aren't as easily accessible as they were.
Traveling through India . . . I stepped from the train somewhere
in the middle of the country . . . and was promptly accosted by a
dancing, half-naked beggar, a most joyous fellow. Previously, I
would have observed everything around me in perfect detail . . .
but that rarely happens anymore. I don't remember the station
building and I cannot tell you if there were vendors or people
nearby. All I can recall is a toothless brown-skinned beggar
dancing before me, and arm outstretched for a few pence. What
matters to me now is that I possess that delightful vision of
him; where the event took place is of no account. Had this
occurred sixty years ago, I would have been quite distraught for
being unable to summon the location and its minutiae. But now I
retain only what is necessary. The minor details aren't
essential--what appears in my mind these days are rudimentary
impressions, not all the frivolous surroundings. And for that I
am grateful."
I'm sure some will complain of this "aging" of the story. After
all, most people get hooked on the Sherlock Holmes stories when
they are fairly young, and A SLIGHT TRICK OF THE MIND has lacks
any of the adventure of THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, or any of
the detection skills shown in A STUDY IN SCARLET. In science
fiction, a fair number of people have taken up the complaint that
the "sense of wonder" is vanishing, replaced by stories about old
age and downbeat futures. And this story may indicate a similar
trend in other fields (though the downbeat world here is not the
future, but a bombed-out post-WWII Japan.) Twenty years ago, we
had YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES, looking at a childhood (patterned more
after Indian Jones than Sherlock Holmes, one suspects), but now
we get what is in essence "Sherlock Holmes--The Twilight Years".
Is this because authors are getting older, or because readers of
books are getting older, or (possibly) not even an accurate
description of the current state of writing? In any case, I am
also getting older, and so at least for me this book was a
thoughtful change from the vast number of books set during
Holmes's prime. (Has anyone ever tried to take all the pastiches
and fit them into a timeline? I suspect that, like "M*A*S*H" on
television, or Bernard Cornwell's "Sharpe" series, there are more
stories than time to fit them into. And Mark has noted that
James Bond forty years after DR. NO still seems to be the same
age, so the timeline there is obviously off as well.
To order A Slight Trick of the Mind from amazon.com, click here.
THE GOSPEL PROBE
by Myron Curtis:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/26/2006]
I recently read THE GOSPEL PROBE by Myron Curtis (ISBN
0-595-36327-X), published by iUniverse. iUniverse publishes
books that cannot find other publishers; it is what used to be
called a "vanity press" (though I am sure they would protest the
term). The book was sent to me as an alternate history, and there
is indeed an alternate history aspect (which I will not reveal
here). But it is minimal, and--the book is mostly a time travel
story of representatives from what is apparently the Roman
Catholic Church in the future going back to 30 C.E. to check on
the accuracy of the Gospels (and others trying to stop them,
etc.). It then also has a secret history aspect at the end. I
found the plotting disjointed, but it is also technically poorly
written. It is full of typographical errors ("Ok" for "OK" or
"Okay" [page 8]), spelling errors and/or wrong homophones
("effect" where "affect" is meant [page 37], or "in a lighter
vain" [page 53]), and just bad writing. For example, Curtis
defines acronyms *within* direct speech, e.g.:
He also coins the name "Palistisraelia", where "Palestisraelia"
is more likely (if either could be considered likely!). And he
gives long Latin or Italian names for committees, objects, and
such, immediately translates them, and then never uses the Latin
or Italian again.
It did make me realize that however bad I think proofreading as
become in major publishers' books, it is close to non-existent in
publishers like iUniverse.
To order The Gospel Probe from amazon.com, click here.
REVISIONS
edited by Julie E. Czerneda and Isaac Spzindel:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/01/2004]
All too often, alternate histories focus on battles or military
maneuvers. So it was encouraging to see Julie E. Czerneda and
Isaac Spzindel's REVISIONS (ISBN 0-7564-0240-9), whose premise was
alternate histories based on changes in scientific discoveries.
Not all lived up to this, though. For example, "The Resonance of
Light" by Geoffrey Landis has the scientific discovery, but then
it gets all wrapped up in an assassination. It's not a bad story,
but it falls into the same sort of track as so many others.
Others fail because they make some unjustified assumptions, or
because they fail to show how the alternate world is different
from ours. There are some good stories mixed in, however. Some,
like "The Ashbazu Effect" by John G. McDaid, work because simply
they have an interesting scientific premise and follow through on
it. Others, like Mike Resnick and Susan R. Matthews's "Swimming
Upstream in the Wells of the Desert", work because they give the
reader a well-drawn picture of the alternate world. And at least
one, James Alan Gardner's "Axial Axioms", is very good in spite of
the fact that it doesn't work as an alternate history story at
all. In fact, it's not even a story, but more an alternate
mathematical philosophy, or alternate philosophical mathematics,
or *something*. (Read it, and then *you* try to define it.)
Though the overall quality of this anthology is spotty, the fact
that there is at least at attempt to look at alternate history
from a different basis makes this worth looking at.
To order ReVisions from amazon.com, click here.
1863--Confederates defeated in the Vicksburg Campaign.
1866--Austria defeated at Sadowa in the Seven Weeks' War.
1914--German forces defeated at the Marne.
1942--Japanese defeated at Midway.
1942--Germans defeated at Stalingrad (now Volgograd).
"You must understand ...," said the secretary.
"If we make no effort to satisfy the Lobby for
Judeo-Christian Traditions (LJCT) which is
pressuring the council, ...." [page 18]
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