All reviews copyright 1984-2007 Evelyn C. Leeper.
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/28/2007]
And some comments on a film rather than a book: We saw IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON recently, and a few things are worth mentioning:
The decision to change Apollo 8 from an earth orbital to a lunar orbital mission was a last-minute one, made because it was believed that the Russians were planning a lunar orbital mission. As Jim Lovell said, "It was a bold move. It had some risky aspects to it. But it was a time when we made bold moves."
Regarding Kennedy's famous speech. one of the astronauts said that there was a clear and simple mission statement: "Where? The moon. When? By the end of this decade." It would be nice if all corporate mission statements could be this clear.
Today's miracle is tomorrow's commonplace.
Charles Duke said, "My father was born shortly after the Wright brothers. He could barely believe that I went to the moon. But my son Tom was 5--and he didn't think it was any big deal." It sounds as though the astronauts' parents were amazed that twelve men went to the moon; the astronauts' children, that *only* twelve went.
As ABC News pointed out, of the 12 who walked on the moon's surface, only nine are alive today, and the youngest is 71. The astronauts who took part in this documentary were Buzz Aldrin, Alan Bean, Eugene Cernan, Michael Collins (who circled the moon but did not walk on it), Jim Lovell (who was on the Apollo 13 flight and hence did not walk on the moon either), Edgar D. Mitchell, Harrison Schmitt, Dave Scott, and John Young. Noticeably missing form the documentary was Neil Armstrong. Three "moon-walkers"--Pete Conrad, James Irwin, and Alan Shepard--died before the film was made.
NEVER LET ME GO by Kazuo Ishiguro:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/20/2005]
Kazuo Ishiguro's NEVER LET ME GO (ISBN 1-4000-4339-5) is a science fiction novel (and an alternate history novel), but is not going to be found in the science fiction section of your bookstore or library. (I say it's alternate history because it takes place in the late 1990s and we find out that the technology diverges from our world's some time in the 1950s, but its alternate history content is minimal, and it could just as easily have been set in the near future.) Ishiguro doesn't reveal this technology or his premise until well into the book, but by now most reviewers have talked about it. If you want no spoilers, stop now. Okay, if you're still reading, here goes. Ishiguro posits a sub-class of donors (and carers) who are actually clones raised for the purpose of donating organs. Ishiguro seems to understand cloning, and also knows all the *mis*-understandings that the public seems to have. He uses the first to construct his characters, and the second to construct the public policy that drives the world these characters live in. As a science fiction book, this is remarkably spare in its technological details, spending its time looking at the social effects of technological advances. And so it is perhaps a purer science fiction novel than many which have a lot of technology, but very little about the effects of that technology. "A story which could not have taken place without the scientific content." Yep, that about describes it.
There are, of course, parallels to slavery and other oppressions which attempt to justify themselves by making their victims less than human. But those arguments no longer carry as much weight with the population as a whole, at least as literally taken, while Ishiguro's premise (alas) does. And Ishiguro presents a solution to this, when the main character accuses another, saying, "[Marie-Claude] never liked us. She's always been afraid of us. In the way people are afraid of spiders and things." To which another character replies, "Marie-Claude has given *everything* for you. She has worked and worked and worked. Make no mistake about it, my child. Marie-Claude is on your side and will always be on your side. Is she afraid of you? We're *all* afraid of you. I myself had to fight back my dread of you almost every day I was at Hailsham. There were times I would look down at you all from my study window and I'd feel such revulsion . . . . But I was determined not to let such feelings stop me doing what was right. I fought those feelings and I won." This, it seems to me, is the ultimate answer to prejudice, the bridge between the generation that can feel such revulsion and future generations that do not.
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