Reviews by Evelyn C. Leeper

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/23/2003]

FALLAM'S SECRET by Denise Giardina was described to sound like an alternate history, but is really just a time-travel romance. The trick of making the main character a woman trained in Elizabethan drama, including playing some of the male parts, is awfully convenient when she has to disguise herself and pass as an Elizabethan. (Well, somewhat post-Elizabethan, but closer enough.) The theater business was of some interest, but the story on the whole wasn't anything special.

To order Fallam's Secret from amazon.com, click here.

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE by Edward Gibbon:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/07/2003]

I'm currently embarked on one of those projects one can undertake only when retired--I'm reading Edward Gibbon's DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. I've gotten as far as Severus Alexander, and a sorry lot they are. Which is, of course, Gibbon's point.

To order The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire from amazon.com, click here.

THE SEVERED WING by Martin Gidron:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/17/2003]

Well, I started out this week with Martin Gidron's THE SEVERED WING, an alternate history that assumes that we entered World War I earlier and imposed less oppressive terms on Germany at the end, hence preventing the rise of the Nazis and World War II. It is set primarily in New York, which is seen as having a much larger and more vibrant Jewish population and cultural scene (Yiddish is still very widely used). I'm not sure one can extrapolate that this would be the result (most of the Yiddish-speaking immigration had dwindled by 1920 because of immigration restrictions, and one would have to postulate that those would not be in place either), but it's still an interesting view, and the gradual drifting of the main character from that world to this is eeriely done (and reminiscent of a "Twilight Zone" style).

To order The Severed Wing from amazon.com, click here.

HERLAND by Charlotte Perkins Gilman:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/07/2003]

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's HERLAND is a classic feminist Utopia which is by today's standards fairly boring and obvious. Actually, it's not clear to me that it wasn't boring and obvious by the standards of her own time. I suspect this is assigned reading in a lot of feminism courses, but if you don't have to read it, why bother?

To order Herland from amazon.com, click here.

OTHERWERE edited by Laura Anne Gilman and Keith R. A. DeCandido (Ace, ISBN 0-441-00363-X, 1996, 260pp, mass market paperback):

What is clever done once becomes tedious with repetition.

In other words, somewhere between the story about the were-salmon and the were-Republican, my eyes glazed over.

There are fifteen stories in this anthology and a few are actually reasonably good. Had I read them in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction or Asimov's, I would have thought them worthy entries there. But here they are diluted by the lesser stories to the point where they all seem mediocre. And it's not even that I tried to read them all in one sitting--I read them over a period of a month, and that's still too close together.

"Stories of transformation" go back a long way (and at least one story here pays homage to that). These early stories, however, emphasized the mythic elements, and these were also carried forward into such (relatively) modern stories as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. But most of the stories here don't have that aspect. Either the transformation is done for laughs, or it is a transformation without meaning--a person changes into an X because that's what the plot calls for, not because X has some meaning.

I am becoming increasingly disenchanted with theme anthologies. In addition to the repetitiveness, the requirement of filling a book with stories on a single topic usually means that the quality level suffers. If anthologists feel they must have a theme to their anthologies, how about something less restrictive, like stories whose fifth word is "grass" or authors born in June?

To order Otherwhere from amazon.com, click here.

GETTYSBURG by Newt Gingrich & William R. Forstchen:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/17/2003]

Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen's GETTYSBURG, on the other hand, has a lot of detail. Alas, it's all military maneuvers rather than interesting political or social developments. This is the first book of a projected trilogy, so maybe this will come, but I'm not holding my breath. (For that matter, "1945" was the first of a projected series, but it did so poorly that the series was canceled.) Other quibbles include: Lee's horse was "Traveller", not "Traveler". Chamberlain was called "Lawrence", not "Joshua". And *why* do the authors refer to characters sometimes by their first names and sometimes by their last (and in the case of Chamberlain, both those *and* by his middle name as well!), often on the same page? And I'm not talking about in dialogue. Henry Hunt should be either "Henry" or "Hunt", preferably the latter, but not both alternating. (Lee and Lincoln seem to be among the few characters who escape this fate.)

To order Gettysburg from amazon.com, click here.

GRANT COMES EAST by Newt Gingrich & William F. Forstchen:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/28/2005]

Newt Gingrich and William F. Forstchen's GRANT COMES EAST is the middle book of a trilogy (assuming it ends at three) and suffers from the usual flaws inherent in that position. But I didn't much like the first one either, because it consisted almost entirely of battle movements. Some may like this, but it's not my cup of tea. On a more minor level, someone decided to use the Presidential Seal to flag the sections centering on Lincoln, but the Presidential Seal did not come into existence until Rutherford B. Hayes--twenty years later. (The Great Seal of the United States did exist in Lincoln's time, but did not say "Seal of the President of the United States" around the border. It also had the eagle facing towards its left until 1945, when it was changed to regularize it with the Great Seal.) You may be asking why I read this if I didn't like the first one. As a Sidewise judge, I have to read whatever is eligible to give it a fair chance.

To order Grant Comes East from amazon.com, click here.

1945 by Newt Gingrich & William R. Fortschen (Baen, ISBN 0-671-87739-9, 1995, 382pp, paperback):

I suppose it's only fair to state up front that Newt Gingrich is not one of my favorite people. I still think I can be objective about this review, but I thought I should at least say that.

It's also worth noting up front that on page 382, the book says "To Be Continued...," and indeed ends rather abruptly in the middle of events, though the jacket does not indicate anywhere that this is the first book of the series. This leads people to ask where Gingrich is going to find the time to write the sequel, which in turn leads them to ask how much of this he actually wrote. Who knows? He was a professor of history, so he does have the background for developing the concept, but it's not unreasonable to assume that most of the actual writing was Forstchen's.

The premise of this alternate history is that at the time of Pearl Harbor, Hitler was in a coma from a plane crash and so could not declare war on the United States. As a result, the Pacific War was quickly won by us, while Germany overran Europe, leaving only England standing against it. This could be a fascinating examination of the world that would have resulted, but instead it's an excuse for long descriptions of armaments and the use of incredibly stale cliches ("The film [of the death camps] had run counter to everything he had ever thought he knew about a culture that could produce Goethe, Beethoven and Schiller."). And it falls into the trap of preaching: "There were times when a man had to lay his life on the line, and that meant not just his physical life--most servicemen understood and accepted the probability that from time to time they must step in harm's way--but his career as well, which far too many were afraid to risk." And on top of everything else, what puts our country at risk? The fact that the government has taken away the guns of people in a certain area. Who is going to save the day? The good ol' Southern boys who still have guns.

The one positive thing I can say is that while the famous excerpt about the "pouting sex kitten" turning into "Diana the huntress" is still here--and indeed is the prologue to the book--the rest of the book is not in that style. (And a good thing it is, too, since that style is very un-1940s: it is very jarring to read a historical novel in too modern a style.) In fact, the whole "subplot" of that prologue is somewhat unnecessary, at least in this volume, and appears only once more, and then briefly, making the whole thing appear like a crash publicity stunt to gain attention for the book.

For me, the appeal of alternate history is to see what sort of world, what sort of society, might develop if something were different. As I noted, though, we see next to nothing of the world--almost the entire book is spent in government offices, on military bases, or in battles. There's no description of how life is different in the United States, no description of how life is different in Germany, and next to nothing about the result of the quick war in the Pacific. In short, there's nothing that I can recommend here.

To order 1945 from amazon.com, click here.

PEARL HARBOR: A NOVEL OF DECEMBER 8TH by Newt Gingrich & William R. Forstchen:

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

I slogged my way through PEARL HARBOR: A NOVEL OF DECEMBER 8TH by Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen (ISBN-13 978-0-312-36350-5, ISBN-10 0-312-36350-8), only to discover that it *ends* with a different version of Pearl Harbor. At this point I read through the long description on the book flaps to discover that this "inaugurates a dramatic new Pacific War series." I am sick of multi-book series, and sick to death of multi-book series that do not announce on the front cover of the books that they are just part of a larger work. Shame on Gingrich, Forstchen, St. Martin's Press, and anyone else responsible for this deceptive marketing.

To order Pearl Harbor from amazon.com, click here.

THE TIPPING POINT by Malcolm Gladwell:

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

There's also THE TIPPING POINT by Malcolm Gladwell, read for our library's book discussion group. His premise is that one can achieve large results with small efforts strategically placed (shades of another Greek, Archimedes!) and one of the things he examines is the decline in crime in New York City as (possibly) brought about by a concentrated effort to wipe out graffiti. For the original article from "The New Yorker", go to .

To order The Tipping Point from amazon.com, click here.

WHAT JUST HAPPENED: A CHRONICLE FROM THE INFORMATION FRONTIER by James Gleick:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/06/2005]

James Gleick's WHAT JUST HAPPENED: A CHRONICLE FROM THE INFORMATION FRONTIER (ISBN 0-375-71391-3) was published in 2003, but is a collection of articles over the preceding decade. As such, a lot of the articles about the Internet, the Web, electronic funds, and so on, are more nostalgic than cutting- edge. It's a little like the feeling one gets when watching DIE HARD 2 and seeing a woman on the airplane carrying a taser in her purse. (Actually, I suspect even back in 1990 people could not carry such items on board.)

To order What Just Happened from amazon.com, click here.

"The Cold Equations" by Tom Godwin:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/25/2005]

Our science fiction discussion group discussed several stories from THE SCIENCE FICTION HALL OF FAME, VOLUME I, edited by Robert Silverberg (ISBN 0-765-30537-2). The story that generated the most discussion was, not surprisingly, Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations". As part of my preparation for the meeting, I read the article on "The Cold Equations" in wikipedia.com I also read Andy Duncan's article ("Think Like a Humanist: James Patrick Kelly's 'Think like a Dinosaur' as a Satiric Rebuttal of Tom Godwin's 'The Cold Equations,'") in "The New York Review of Science Fiction," June 1996. And then afterwards I re-read two other stories written in response to Godwin--"The Cool Equations" by Deborah Wessel (UNIVERSE 2, edited by Robert Silverberg and Karen Haber) and "The Cold Solution" by Don Sakers ("Analog", 1991)--and also watched the "New Twilight Zone" episode based on the Godwin story. (There was also a made-for-television movie which I did not see, but my feeling is that the story does not bear extension to a feature-length movie. Even the "Twilight Zone" episode seemed padded.) For those unfamiliar with the story, the premise is this: On an emergency spaceship, a stowaway is found. The rules insist all stowaways be jettisoned, because emergency ships do not carry enough fuel for the additional weight. But this stowaway is a teenage girl trying to visit her brother. I will start by saying that the story is engrossing, and has not lost its effect in the half century (!) since it was written. It clearly affects readers in a way that a badly written story would not. But there are still some major flaws in it. From a literary standpoint, the characters are one-dimensional and the writing uninspired. But even more interesting--considering its popularity among hard science fiction fans--are the technical faults. Richard Harter has done a long analysis of the Godwin story in which he says, "The trouble with this story is this: From the internal evidence of this story the heroine did not die because of the cold equations of nature; she was the victim of criminal bureaucratic stupidity. . . . The flaw in the story is that a failure in government, in administration, is tacitly treated as though it were a law of nature." Specifically, even though stowaways will be killed, no particular precautions are taken to keep stowaways out (other than a fairly standard "Keep Out! Danger!" sign which does not indicate what the penalty is), and in fact the penalties for stowing away are kept secret from society in general. In addition, no one even bothers to check for stowaways before taking off. Another flaw, as Hal Clement said ("Analog", July 1991), is that "it is the height of irresponsible engineering to build an emergency ship with so little, if any, margin of safety. The slightest fault in any subsystem could destroy the ship and the people its mission was to save." And there seems to be a lot of superfluous material in the ship that could be jettisoned instead of a stowaway. In fact, this latter problem is the basis for both the "response" stories. Of the two, Saker's is clearly the more serious of the two, but is spoiled by a "trick", where some fairly critical information is not given to the reader until the very end. Wessel's is more light-hearted, but ironically treats the situation much more rigorously. If you haven't read "The Cold Equations", you really must. It is part of the basic vocabulary of science fiction the way that a story like "The Purloined Letter" is part of the basic vocabulary of the detective story. Even stories that don't respond directly to it have references that readers are expected to recognize. And if you have read it, seek out Saker's and Wessel's stories as well.

To order The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume I from amazon.com, click here.

DEAD SOULS by Nikolai Gogol:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/24/2003]

I recently read DEAD SOULS. No, this is not a new horror novel, but the Nikolai Gogol classic. I had put it on my list of books to read because Robert Silverberg recommended it in a column in ASIMOV'S about a year ago, and on the basis of this and of his recommendation of H. D. F. Kitto's GREEK TRAGEDY at some point before that, I have concluded that I should definitely pay attention to what he recommends. Warning: If you are reading the Signet/NAL edition of DEAD SOULS, do not read the introduction, which somewhat spoils the revelation of Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov's motivation. Gogol writes (at least in that translation) in a very conversational style, talking directly to the reader, and also manages to have a level beneath that of Gogol implicitly commenting on the narrator's prejudices and biases. And before someone complains about "long Russian novels," I'll note that it is under three hundred pages.

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/31/2003]

I'm in two book groups at our public library, the "original" group (which does all sorts of books), and the science fiction group. So almost every month I have a couple of books chosen for me by other people.

But this month I think I chose both of them. I think I may have chosen Robert J. Sawyer's CALCULATING GOD, and I know I chose Nikolai Gogol's DEAD SOULS, because who else would have suggested it? And why had I read it? Because Robert Silverberg recommended it in a column in ASIMOV'S a few months ago. (Some of this I discussed in an earlier column that ran on 01/24/03.) Given that, you're probably thinking that it must have something to do with horror (since you know that while Gogol didn't write science fiction, he did write horror stories). But you'd be wrong. The title refers to serfs who were dead. In particular, a landowner in 19th century Russia was responsible for taxes on all the serfs he owned as of the last census until the next census, even if they died in the interim. Into town rides Chichikov, who offers to buy these "dead souls" from landowners at very reasonable prices. I won't tell you why, but the reason is not the main point of the novel. Rather, it is what some call a "picaresque" novel, full of episodes and characters to entertain you without necessarily having a strong plot, similar to some of Charles Dickens's works. Most people found it surprisingly amusing, except for one woman who said she sat down all set for a heavy Russian novel and never got out of that mindset. (When I was reading some of what I thought were the funnier descriptions, she asked if I could come over to her house and read the book to her!)

To order Dead Souls from amazon.com, click here.

CARTER BEATS THE DEVIL by Glen David Gold:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/28/2003]

Since I had mentioned recently really liking Christopher Priest's THE PRESTIGE, a friend recommended Glen David Gold's CARTER BEATS THE DEVIL. For some reason, I found this more confusing and less interesting--the whole subplot of Philo T. Farnsworth and television seemed one plot too many, and rather drove the President Harding plot into the background at times. I would recommend the Priest over this, but if you are interested in novels about magicians (which seems to be a specific genre), this isn't bad.

To order Carter Beats the Devil from amazon.com, click here.

THE SEASON by William Goldman:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/13/2004]

In 1967, William Goldman decided to write a book about the Broadway theater by covering everything that was opening in the 1967-1968 season, and he called the book (not surprisingly) THE SEASON. As part of discussing the various plays, he also explains what producers do, how plays are put together, how theaters are selected, how tickets are sold, and so on. Or rather, how these things *were* done back then, thirty-five years ago. At the time, for example, theaters were just starting to allow credit card purchases of tickets (rather than requiring cash at the box office). Goldman seems to have correctly predicted that the audience demographic was changing, and that the theaters did not seem to want to try to re-capture the people they were losing. The only drawback to the book might be the unfamiliarity of readers with most of the plays discussed (although Goldman's comments on "homosexuals in the theater" seem glaringly dated).

To order The Season from amazon.com, click here.

WALKING THE LABYRINTH by Lisa Goldstein (Tor, ISBN 0-312-85968-6, 1996, 254pp, trade paperback):

Lisa Goldstein is an author who does not follow the more heavily traveled roads of fantasy, but tends to set off in her own direction, sometimes along a lesser-known path, sometimes blazing her own trail. So the title of this work is perhaps as descriptive of her work as a whole as of this work in particular

Molly Travers is a modern woman with modern concerns until she discovers that her family were had a vaudeville act in the 1930s, doing magic. And not just illusion, it seems, but real magic. Molly travels to England to find out more, where she discovers hidden books, secret relationships, and, in the basement of an English country house, a labyrinth that is more than it first appears.

My main complaint with the book is not even anything Goldstein had control over: the typeface. It's a thinner line than the "standard" typeface, hence lighter appearing and, for me at least, harder to read. It did have a light fantasy feel, probably the idea, but ....

Now, given that is my main objection, you can guess I liked the book. Goldstein's work has often been called "magical realism," and I guess that description is as accurate as any. Walking the Labyrinth is set more in real places--London, Oakland, and so on--than her works set in the mythical land of Ahaz. (That is, unless you agree with Gertrude Stein about Oakland: that "there is no there there.") But it still has that feel of being just slightly askew from reality that one finds not only in her other works, but also in those of Garcia Marquez and Amado. I am not saying she is their equal--that would be like comparing a playwright of today with Shakespeare. But she seems to be their quite worthy literary descendent. and I recommend this highly.

(That Starlog magazine can say, "Goldstein's work does not remind the reader of other books: it is truly original and has a clear, distinct voice of its own," would seem to indicate more the narrowness of the books it knows about than Goldstein's position in literature. That she is part of such a rich literary field as magical realism is not to be considered at all a bad thing. After all, it is not just in science that "standing on the shoulders of giants" is the way new accomplishments are achieved.)

To order Walking the Labyrinth from amazon.com, click here.

THE FRIAR AND THE CIPHER by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/07/2005]

THE FRIAR AND THE CIPHER: ROGER BACON AND THE UNSOLVED MYSTERY OF THE MOST UNUSUAL MANUSCRIPT IN THE WORLD by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone (ISBN 0-7679-1473-2) is of the same ilk as their earlier OUT OF THE FLAMES--the story of a book (or here, a manuscript) and the people who affected its creation and survival. In this case, it is the Voynich Manuscript, which Mark wrote about in the 03/18/05 issue of the MT VOID. The Goldstone's book centers primarily around the theory that Roger Bacon wrote the manuscript in code, but along the way they discuss the history of universities, the theology of the Catholic Church, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle, the scientific method, Albertus Magnus, Dr. John Dee, Rudolph II, cryptography, and Francis Bacon (no relation). (How they missed including Rabbi Loew is a mystery, to me since he was active in Prague at the same time as Rudolph II and Dee.) As with all the Goldstone's books, this is a book highly recommended for book-lovers.

To order The Friar and the Cipher from amazon.com, click here.

OUT OF THE FLAMES by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/31/2004]

Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone's previous books have been about books, book-selling, and book-collecting. OUT OF THE FLAMES: THE REMARKABLE STORY OF A FEARLESS SCHOLAR, A FATAL HERESY, AND ONE OF THE RAREST BOOKS IN THE WORLD (ISBN 0-767-90837-6) is a little about a book, but more about an important forbear of the Unitarian movement, Michael Servetus. The book was his "Christianismi Restitutio" ("Christianity Restored"), all copies of which were supposedly burned with him in 1553. However, three copies survived, and they bear witness to the fact that he not only led the way for a religious movement, but also understood the circulation of blood in the human body decades before William Harvey (who always gets credited with this discovery) wrote about it. This is a fascinating history of religion, science, and the interconnections between the two. My only complaint is the really long title. :-)

To order Out of the Flames from amazon.com, click here.

USED AND RARE by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/18/2003]

USED AND RARE is the first volume by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone (whose WARMLY INSCRIBED I wrote about earlier). This one is the story of how they got started in collecting books. A couple of key moments were discovering that an Arkham House first edition of H. P. Lovecraft could go for $10,000, and a first edition Tarzan novel was similarly valuable. The book covers their education in the terminology (first edition versus first printing, points, condition, etc.), and in the process gives the reader a similar education while providing entertaining stories about booksellers, auctions, and collectors. (There is a bookstore in New York that does not come off very favorably, but from what I've heard elsewhere, the Goldstones are probably fairly accurate.)

To order Used and Rare from amazon.com, click here.

WARMLY INSCRIBED by Nancy and Lawrence Goldstone:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/21/2003]

Another book in a series was Nancy and Lawrence Goldstone's WARMLY INSCRIBED, the third in their series of books about book collecting and the used book trade. (The first two are USED AND RARE and SLIGHTLY CHIPPED.) This deals with a lot of topics, the centerpiece of which is the "New England forger," who forged authors' signatures in first editions for a long time before he was finally caught. The story of why it took so long is the interesting part: law enforcement officials kept saying it wasn't in their jurisdiction, dealers hesitated to accuse another dealer of such dishonesty without firm proof, and dealers who had been deceived and had resold the books thinking they were authentic were generally not eager to contact their old customers and admit they had been deceived. (And refunding the money to customers was not necessarily easy for dealers who did not have a lot of ready cash.) But the story of the Goldstone family visit (including young daughter) to the Library of Congress and the Folger Library is also enjoyable, particularly for book people. And why would you be reading this article if you weren't a book person?

To order Warmly Inscribed from amazon.com, click here.

ME & SHAKESPEARE by Herman Gollob:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/11/2005]

Herman Gollob's ME & SHAKESPEARE (ISBN 0-385-49818-7) is accurately titled--it is as much (or more) about Gollob as about Shakespeare. After a while his digressions from Shakespeare into his experiences (such as meeting Frank Sinatra at a party) seem self-indulgent. His comments on the plays are occasionally thought-provoking, though they are extracted from classes that he taught or took and frequently lack enough context. However, his on-going analysis of "King Lear" as a Judaic play is engaging--I wish he would write just that book.

To order Me & Shakespeare from amazon.com, click here.

RUNAWAY TIME by Deborah Gordon (Avon, ISBN 0-380-77759-2, 1995, 404pp, mass market paperback):

Sara Maravich goes back from our future to 1865 to try to save Lincoln. She arrives late, however, and instead falls in love with Tyson Stone (a.k.a. Thomas Jefferson Reid). This is basically a historical romance; the alternate history aspect is dealt with mainly by people from the future returning to the past and talking about it. (Apparently, anyone who sees a time traveler go back remembers both the "original" future and the changed one.)

There was one glaring anachronism: Reid talks about Maravich sleeping like a vampire in the daytime. While there was some notion of vampires at that time, the concept did not achieve widespread popularity until after Bram Stoker wrote Dracula at the end of the century.

The two alternate history romances I reviewed earlier at least had the virtue of showing the reader a changed world. (One was Maura Seger's Perchance To Dream, in which the Confederacy wins the Civil War; the other was Seger's Fortune's Tide, in which the American Revolution fails.) This one is just a time-travel romance set in the post-Civil War period with a few references to possible changes somewhere down the line, and is not recommended for alternate history fans.

To order Runaway Time from amazon.com, click here.

AMPHIGOREY ALSO by Edward Gorey:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/11/2006]

AMPHIGOREY ALSO by Edward Gorey (ISBN 0-15-605672-0) is yet another collection of books by Gorey originally published as small individual volumes. This contains seventeen works, which is an average of fifteen pages each. This is achieved by sometimes having two pages from the original on a single page here, which I assume means that even though the original books were small, they are still shown in a reduced size here. Not surprisingly, the artwork loses in the process. One could, I suppose, use a magnifying glass. The positive side is that you can actually afford to get these works, since seventeen Gorey first editions would run you a pretty penny. (Other omnibus volumes include AMPHIGOREY and AMPHIGOREY TOO.)

To order Amphigorey Too from amazon.com, click here.

THE FINE ART OF MURDER edited by Ed Gorman, Martin H. Greenberg, and Larry Segriff, with Jon L. Breen:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/19/2005]

THE FINE ART OF MURDER edited by Ed Gorman, Martin H. Greenberg, and Larry Segriff, with Jon L. Breen (ISBN 0-88184-972-3) is a massive collection of over a hundred articles and lists such as "Why Cozies?", "Does Anybody Love a Researcher?", "Humorous Crime, or Dead Funny", and "Some Notable Religious Mysteries". While some are outdated (a 1993 article on mystery bookstores is almost entirely of only historical interest now), and various others not of great interest to some readers (I, for example, have little interest in true crime or serial killer stories), but with so much ground covered, there is bound to be more than enough for readers with some interest in mysteries.

To order The Fine Art of Murder from amazon.com, click here.

KALPA IMPERIAL by Angelica Gorodischer (translated by Ursula K. LeGuin):

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/11/2008]

KALPA IMPERIAL by Angelica Gorodischer (translated by Ursula K. LeGuin) (ISBN-13 978-1-931-52005-8, ISBN-10 1-931-52005-4) was billed as being in the style of Jorge Luis Borges (as well as that of Italo Calvino and Franz Kafka). While there is some truth to this, it seems far more in the style of LeGuin. That is perhaps partly due to LeGuin's translation, but it is more likely that LeGuin was drawn to the original work because she saw in it something with which she could relate.

One major difference I see is between Gorodischer's writing and Borges's is that Gorodischer's stories have characters--perhaps minimally drawn, but characters nonetheless. Borges's stories frequently have no characters, or only one character. Gorodischer's are mythic at times, but nevertheless interact with each other in at least somewhat realistic ways. On the other hand, Gorodischer's descriptions of *places* (for example, in "Concerning the Unchecked Growth of Cities") are very Borgesian. Consider the following passage:

"The streets and buildings and balconies and facades are all mixed up together, factories stand next to mansions, shops next to embassies. Very few of its inhabitants know all its streets and ways. I won't go so far as to say it's a labyrinth. [...] The mountains are buried under walls, balconies, terraces, parks; a square slants down, separated from a steep drop by stone arcades; the third floor of his house is the basement of another that fronts on the street above; the west wall of a government building adjoins the ironwork around the courtyard of a school for deaf girls; the cellars of a functionary's grand mansion become the attics of a deserted building, while a cat-flap, crowned with an architrave added two hundred years later, serves as a tunnel into a coalhole, and a shelf has become the transept for a window with golden shields in the panes, and the skylight doesn't open on the sky but on a gallery of waterwheels made of earthenware."

(Sort of a half Borges, half Escher description, don't you think?)

I notice that the blurb on the back cover says that LeGuin has received the PEN/Malamud and World Fantasy Awards, but does not mention her five Hugo Awards or five Nebula Awards. (Those are relegated to the longer biographical paragraph on the final page of the book.)

To order Kalpa Imperial from amazon.com, click here.

ADAM'S NAVEL by Stephen Jay Gould:

OTHER INQUISITIONS by Jorge Luis Borges:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/06/2006]

One finds references to Jorge Luis Borges in the oddest places. I was reading the title essay in ADAM'S NAVEL by Stephen Jay Gould (ISBN 0-146-00047-1), in which Gould discusses (and refutes) Philip Henry Gosse's OMPHALOS: AN ATTEMPT TO UNTIE THE GEOLOGICAL KNOT. Gosse's theory was that the world had been created by God out of nothing, but that there was a timeline before creation, implied but just as real as that after creation, and that Adam's navel, fossils in stone, and implications of growth and evolution before the time of Creation are all necessary to testify to this pre-Creation timeline. In a postscript, Gould writes that after the essay first appeared, he learned that Borges had written a comment on Gosse in "The Creation and P. H. Gosse" (OTHER INQUISITIONS, ISBN 0-292-76002-7). I find it amusing, if not downright bizarre, that the blurb on the back of OTHER INQUISITIONS from the "Saturday Evening Post" says, ". . . the word that best describes these essays is manly." I have seen many adjectives applied to Borges's writing, but up until now "manly" has not been one of them. ADAM'S NAVEL is one of those delightful "Penguin 60s" created for the 60th anniversary of Penguin Books.)

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WONDERFUL LIFE by Stephen Jay Gould:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/10/2007]

I re-read WONDERFUL LIFE by Stephen Jay Gould (ISBN-10 0-393-30700-X, ISBN-13 978-0-393-30700-9) as part of our recent trip to the Canadian Rockies, which included Yoho National Park, home of the Burgess Shale. (We got to see the area, but only from a few miles away, from across a lake several thousand feet below.) One reason that Gould is so readable is that he is not a narrowly focused scientist. He can write about the translation of Milton's PARADISE LOST for a German opera, and use the poetry of the Bible to illustrate a point: "The sources of [evolutionary] victory are as varied and mysterious as ... the way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid." [Proverbs 30:19; WONDERFUL LIFE, page 236]

The Royal Tyrrell Museum (of Paleontology) had the usual display on the descent of the horse from Hyracotherium (Eocene), Mesohippus (Oligocene), Merychippus (Miocene/Pliocene), and finally Equus (Pliocene/Holocene). Gould talks about how this is a rather poor example of evolution, since it implies to many people a directed progression, rather than (for example) the diversification of Darwin's finches. Gould sees the single descendent of the Hyracotherium as an example of failure, not success.

Gould also talks about how Charles Doolittle Walcott (the discoverer of the Burgess Shale) attempted to "shoehorn" the creatures of the Burgess Shale into existing groups of arthropods. While Gould says it is in part the difficulty of looking at things in a new way, there was a more basic philosophical reason. Walcott said, "It is a sublime conception of God which is furnished by science, and one wholly consonant with the highest ideals of religion, when it represents Him as revealing Himself through countless ages in the development as an abode for man and in the age-long inbreathing of life into its constituent matter, culminating in man with his spiritual nature and all his God-like power." Gould then says, "If the history of life shows God's direct benevolence in its ordered march to human consciousness, then decimation by lottery, with a hundred thousand possible outcomes (and so very few leading to any species with self-conscious intelligence), cannot be an option for the fossil record. The creatures of the Burgess Shale must be primitive ancestors to an improved set of descendants." But why? Walcott was willing to accept that Tyrannosaurus rex existed, yet T. rex left no improved set of descendants (that we know of).

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