Reviews by Evelyn C. Leeper

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/27/2004]

Michael Shaara's THE KILLER ANGELS was a big hit with the "original" book discussion group--everyone thought it was wonderful. We ended up with a discussion split between the book and the Civil War itself, especially its causes.

To order The Killer Angels from amazon.com, click here.

ARROWDREAMS: AN ANTHOLOGY OF ALTERNATE CANADAS edited by Mark Shainblum and John Dupuis (Nuage Editions, ISBN 0-921-833-51-2, 1997, 191pp, trade paperback)

This is a book for a fairly small audience, but one reason I'm reviewing it is because even that audience might not hear about it. (When I looked for it in the Toronto branch of Chapters, a Canadian superstore, no one there could find it. I eventually found it in short story collections, having checked the "Canadian Interest," "Canadian Fiction," and science fiction sections.)

It is, as the subtitle suggests, an anthology of alternate history stories whose focus is on Canada: Canadian history, Canadian personalities, Canadian sensibilities. I am (I hasten to point out) not Canadian, so several of them simply went over my head.

Anthologies usually start out with their strongest story, so I can only conclude that hockey is vastly more important in Canada than any sport is in the United States, because Edo van Belkom's "Hockey's Night in Canada" did nothing for me. Nancy Kilpatrick's "Gross Island--The Movie" is not even what I would call alternate history--a movie company is filming a historical drama about an epidemic and being very inaccurate about it. There is no historical speculation going on here. (Had this appeared as a straight story somewhere else I would say it was an interesting look at the film industry, so it's not badly written, just not alternate history.)

"Health in Us" by Paula Johanson is also about an epidemic, but it is alternate history and at least competently done, if a bit short. Paul Scott's "On the Edge" is a post-apocalyptic story with the "apocalypse" being the secession of Quebec in 1995. It's barely alternate history, the more so because a secession tomorrow could result in much the same story.

Michael Skeet's "Near Enough to Home" is set in a different United States Civil War, the result of us having lost Louisiana to the British and making Canada much more a force to be reckoned with. The main game here seems to be "spot the stars," but it's not too bad.

Derryl Murphy's "Cold Ground" has Louis Riel escaping execution through black magic. If I actually knew who Louis Riel was, it might have meant more.

"Misfire" by Shane Simmons has Richthofen surviving World War I and leading Germany to greater air power than in our timeline, and this survival is attributed to a jammed gun on an airplane flown by a Canadian. This is a tenuous connection to Canada at best, and the fact is that we have no idea who shot down Richthofen in our timeline anyway. In spite of this, the speculation on the effect of Richthofen's survival makes this worth reading.

My prediction is that Jews will enjoy "The Last of the Maccabees" by Allan Weiss and Gentiles won't. It seems in many ways a sort of in-joke which reminded me of the tribe in "Joe Versus the Volcano." Not that "The Last of the Maccabees" is a humorous story, but having "Indians" wearing tzitzit and payes, and speaking Hebrew is by its very nature somewhat risible. The fact that their discoverers are from the Roman Commonwealth, and the French seem to be Buddhists just adds to the mix, and there's even more I won't tell you. (Weiss does slip at least once and have the Indians speak Yiddish instead of Hebrew.) I enjoyed this more than most of the other stories, but then it really is more an "alternate Judaism" story than an "alternate Canada" one.

"The Coming of the Jet" by Eric Choi assumes Canadian supremacy in the aerospace industry. I suppose techno-types will appreciate it, but it was only slightly above the hockey story for me. Dave Duncan's "For Want of a Nail" assumes a French victory on the Plains of Abraham an is not related to Robert Sobel's novel of the same name (which dealt with a British victory at Burgoyne).

Glenn Grant's "Thermometers Melting" takes the familiar approach of taking well-known people and looking at them in an alternate timeline. In this case Grant uses Hemingway and Trotsky, and adds an additional bonus at the end. It's a bit hard to follow at times, since it is supposedly excerpts from a longer work, but one of the better stories nonetheless.

And finally is "The Case of the Serial 'De Quebec a la Lune' by Veritatus" by Laurent McAllister (pen name for Yves Meynard and Jean-Louis Trudel). I think it is a (fake) academic article on a (non-existent) serial patterned after Jules Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon" but written by a Canadian and possibly set in its own past. Are you sufficiently confused? If not, read the story and you will be. Some people like this sort of thing, which is why Connie Willis won a Hugo for "The Soul Selects Her Own Society ...," but this is so dry as to rive away all but the most confirmed academic.

Interestingly, though the final story is about a (fictional) French-language story, none of the stories in this Canadian anthology appear to have been written in French. (At any rate, I saw no translator credits.) This in itself seems to imply an alternate Canada, one in which there is no French-language science fiction. (I note that the one Quebec secession story implies a negative result.)

If you are Canadian and enjoy alternate histories, you probably want to seek out this book. For those of us south of the border (or over the seas, or for that matter west of the border in Alaska), this is probably not going to appeal to you unless you are a student of Canadian history or culture.

To order Arrowdreams from amazon.com, click here.

PERICLES and CORIOLANUS by William Shakespeare:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/18/2005]

When I finished Plutarch's life of Pericles, I said, "I don't remember Shakespeare telling that story," so I re-read Shakespeare's PERICLES (ISBN 0-140-71469-3), and it was completely different--just the name was retained. Plus Shakespeare had the usual set of anachronisms: references to being within pistol-shot, Latin mottoes on shields, a whole feudal structure of knights that never existed in ancient Greece, a reference to the title page of a book (in ancient Greece?), and so on. But with CORIOLANUS (ISBN 0-140-71473-1) Shakespeare sticks reasonably close to the historical figure.

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RICHARD III by William Shakespeare:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/28/2007]

Our book discussion this month was about RICHARD III by William Shakespeare (ISBN-13 978-0-743-48284-4, ISBN-10 0-743-48284-0). One problem I have with this play is that parts of it are just unbelievable--in particular, Richard's (successful) wooing of Lady Anne. I don't care how charming someone is, it is just not credible that they could kill a woman's husband and father-in- law, and then get her to fall in love with him at the funeral. (Unless, of course, she is not in love with the husband--but that is not the case here.)

[First, the husband and father were not murdered but fell in battle, which is a little bit different. Also the fact that Anne Neville was only 16 and was probably left unprotected might have had something to do with it. (Thank you, answers.com.) By the way, she does not fall in love with him in the play. In one scene she goes from detesting him to merely disliking him. -mrl]

Of course, a lot of RICHARD III is not to be believed, not because it is just unlikely, but because it is actually false. Shakespeare based his characters on the histories written by Thomas More and other Tudor supporters, and these histories were written more to blacken Richard's name than to convey the truth. For example, Clarence was actually disloyal to Edward, and was killed because of that, in spite of Richard's attempts to save him. One of the best expositions of the misrepresentations is Josephine Tey's THE DAUGHTER OF TIME, which is our discussion book *next* month.

However, parts of the play are spot-on even today, such as this description from Act III, Scene 7:

Buckingham:
	The mayor is here at hand: intend some fear;
	Be not you spoke with, but by mighty suit:
	And look you get a prayer-book in your hand,
	And stand betwixt two churchmen, good my lord;
	For on that ground I'll build a holy descant:
	And be not easily won to our request:
	Play the maid's part, still answer nay, and take it.
...
Lord Mayor:
	See, where he stands between two clergymen!
Buckingham:
	Two props of virtue for a Christian prince,
	To stay him from the fall of vanity:
	And, see, a book of prayer in his hand,
	True ornaments to know a holy man.
	Famous Plantagenet, most gracious prince,
	Lend favourable ears to our request;
	And pardon us the interruption
	Of thy devotion and right Christian zeal.

Doesn't this sound like some of today's politicians?

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DON JUAN IN HELL by George Bernard Shaw:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/27/2005]

DON JUAN IN HELL by George Bernard Shaw was this month's book discussion group choice. This is the middle part of Act III of MAN AND SUPERMAN (ISBN 0-140-43788-6), and is often performed as a stand-alone play. (Conversely, when MAN AND SUPERMAN is produced, this section is often left out.) Charles Harris (a member of the group as well as a correspondent to the MT VOID) said that having read Oscar Wilde's THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GREY, he had probably had enough of the sort of aphorism that both Wilde and Shaw peppered their works with. I wondered if being an Irishman in England makes one write that sort of aphorism. We couldn't quite define what make them similar--Mark suggested that there must be axioms of metamaximetics waiting to be discovered. I also discovered that while Shaw may be a great dramatist, he is no paleontologist. On page 144 of the 1964 Penguin printing, one character says, "The megatherium, the ichthyosaurus have paced the earth with seven-league steps and hidden the day with cloud fast wings." The ichthyosaurus was more like to swim the sea with seven-league strokes. I did like the writing, aphoristic as it is at times and even though towards the end it starts to bog down.

I'll give an example of what I like, so you can judge your reaction. Don Juan tells the Devil, "Your friends are all the dullest dogs I know. They are not beautiful: they are only decorated. They are not clean: they are only shaved and starched. They are not dignified: they are only fashionably dressed. They are not educated: they are only college passmen. They are not religious: they are only pewrenters. They are not moral: they are only conventional. They are not virtuous: they are only cowardly. They are not even vicious: they are only "frail." They are not artistic: they are only lascivious. They are not prosperous: they are only rich. They are not loyal, they are only servile; not dutiful, only sheepish; not public spirited, only patriotic; not courageous, only quarrelsome; not determined, only obstinate; not masterful, only domineering; not self-controlled, only obtuse; not self-respecting, only vain; not kind, only sentimental; not social, only gregarious; not considerate, only polite; not intelligent, only opinionated; not progressive, only factious; not imaginative, only superstitious; not just, only vindictive; not generous, only propitiatory; not disciplined, only cowed; and not truthful at all: liars every one of them, to the very backbone of their souls." (This is also an example of why theater acting is much harder than film acting. The actor needs to learn this line, word for word--because on the stage, actors are not permitted to change the script at all without the writer's permission--and get it right the first time, performance after performance. No retakes, no editing, no "Can we change 'factious' to 'contrary'?")

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BLUE-EYED CHILD OF FORTUNE by Col. Robert Gould Shaw:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/12/2004]

After I saw the film GLORY fifteen years ago, I decided I wanted to read the book of Robert Gould Shaw's letters, BLUE-EYED CHILD OF FORTUNE. But because I didn't want to spend the price charged by the specialty publisher who had it in print, I started looking for a used copy. I somehow managed to miss the trade paperback edition when it came out, but I did eventually run across a used copy a year ago. (This gives you some idea how large my backlog is!) I think I'm glad I didn't buy this new. The letters are certainly of interest, but I was not happy with the footnoting. It was extensive, but was almost entirely identifying the people named in the letters (e.g., the full name of someone Shaw refers to as "Aunt Jane"), and very little commenting on events mentioned by Shaw, or giving a wider perspective when he talks about what he hopes will happen or such. I realize that was the decision of editor Russell Duncan, not to "intrude" on Shaw, but given that close to a third of the book is the footnotes I felt it could have helped. My other regret is that Shaw spent so little time writing about the 54th Massachusetts--most of the letters are before he takes command of the regiment. However, for those who want more, I recommend Luis E. Emilio's A BRAVE BLACK REGIMENT--Emilio was the highest ranking officer to survive the attack on Battery Wagner. (Contrary to what you might think from the name, Emilio was not from the American Southwest or Mexico--his parents were immigrants from Spain and he was born in Salem, Massachusetts.)

To order Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune from amazon.com, click here.

SHELF LIFE by Suzanne Strempek Shea:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/21/2005]

I ran across SHELF LIFE by Suzanne Strempek Shea (ISBN 0-8070-7258-3) while I was looking for another book about life in a bookstore. I'm somewhat surprised none of my western Massachusetts friends mentioned it, because it is about the author's first year working in Edwards Books in Springfield, Massachusetts. Shea talks not only about that bookstore, but about other notable independent bookstores, such as The Tattered Cover in Denver or the Odyssey in South Hadley. (The latter is less world-famous, but is certainly notable in the western Massachusetts area.) This book is of some interest to fans of bookstores, but of particular interest to Massachusans.

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"Seventh Victim" by Robert Sheckley:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/16/2004]

Robert Sheckley's "Seventh Victim" (made into the film TENTH VICTIM perhaps because there was already a different film called SEVENTH VICTIM) was also somewhat predictable, and the game doesn't bear close examination (in particular the "bootstrapping" process of how it got started), but the world Sheckley describes seems at least reasonably well imagined.

THE AMAZING DR. DARWIN by Charles Sheffield:

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

Remember a few weeks ago I was talking about von Kempelen's chess-playing "Turk"? Well, Charles Sheffield's THE AMAZING DR. DARWIN talks about it in one of the six stories contained in it. These stories, which are effectively Sherlock Holmes pastiches, but with Erasmus Darwin and his friend Jacob Pool as the Holmes and Watson characters. A mystery is presented, inplying some supernatural agency, and rationalist Darwin investigates it and proves how it's all natural and rational after all--think "Adventure of the Sussex Vampire". (This isn't a real spoiler if you know anything about Darwin, or Sheffield.) The book looks padded out, with fairly large type and wide margins, but is actually about 100,000 words long. Even so, though the stories are enjoyable enough as puzzles, it's hard to justify paying a hardcover price for this. (I got my copy from the library.)

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TOMORROW & TOMORROW by Charles Sheffield (Bantam Spectra, ISBN 0-553-37808-2, 1996, 368pp, trade paperback):

This is an expansion of Sheffield's novella "At the Eschaton," and deals with the life of a man and of the universe. It does this by setting up a situation in which our protagonist Drake Merlin (catchy name, that) is cryogenically preserved along with his wife, who has just died of a rare disease. The plan is that they will be revived when science has progressed enough to resurrect and cure her. However, Drake finds himself revived ahead of time to solve first one problem, then another that only he can solve, while science still has not found a cure. It's almost as if we are reading something like Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men, but with a single observer throughout. There is a real sense of wonder, and of the sweep of history, and Sheffield on the whole does a good job of making this all convincing, although some events are just downright unbelievable. (For example, at one point Drake is rebuilt by creatures with no previous knowledge of human physiology.)

On the downside, Sheffield's writing tends toward the straightforward rather than the poetic, and occasionally make odd missteps. At one point he offers the following: "'Hubris,' he said, in English." I suppose "hubris" is an honorary English word, but still.... On page 183, Tom says to Drake, "Our Galaxy is being invaded by something from outside." On page 187, Drake says to Tom, "This galaxy is being--" and then stops. According to Sheffield, "Now Drake had to pause. He wanted to say 'invaded,' but that word had apparently vanished from the language." In four pages?

These are, I suppose, minor quibbles. For those who love Stapledon and such other works as John Brunner's Crucible of Time, or for anyone wanting a look at a far future vision, I recommend this book.

To order Tomorrow and Tomorrow from amazon.com, click here.

THE LAST MAN by Mary Shelley (Bantam Classic, ISBN 0-553-21436-5, 1826 [1994], 499pp, mass market paperback):

While everyone else was re-issuing Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to coincide with the release of Kenneth Branagh's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (and indeed there was even Leonore Fleischer's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the novelization--think about it), Bantam published Shelley's other science fiction novel, The Last Man. My suspicion is that not a lot of people ran right out and picked it up. First of all, it was in Bantam's "classics" series, so if bookstores ordered it at all it was put in the "Fiction" section, or the "Literature" section if they subdivide it further. (How do they determine what is literature and what is "merely" fiction?) And then its cover had a small reproduction of a painting of a pastoral English countryside, rather than a hideous monster with stitches and bolts glaring out at you. And finally a quick flip through would show that the specific science fiction element--a world-wide plague--doesn't even appear until most of the way through the book. (On the up side, if Mary Shelley is checking her sales from the astral plane, her books are quite popular in women's studies courses, so there is a market.)

The book starts in 2073. We know this because Shelley (in the voice of the narrator) tells us this. Otherwise we would have no idea, because the world that Shelley describes is that of 1823 when she was writing it. Oh, there are a few changes. People travel in airships (the Montgolfiers had already flown their balloons by 1823). And someone goes as ambassador to the "Northern States of America" (page 254). (Mark claims this last is pretty impressive in predicting the Civil War, but I suspect people could see it coming even then.) But the social structure of England is as it was in 1823, with power held by the monarch rather than by Parliament and elected officials. And people still get around on horses. And while having a war in the Balkans may sound very 21st Century these days, the war Shelley describes is the same war that Byron fought in, with the noble Greeks trying to gain their independence from the evil Turks. (And the war is fought in the same way, with the families of the officers following the troops to Greece and then staying at nearby villages while the troops marched off to formal battles.)

Much of the first two-thirds of the novel is a study of the social structure and attitudes of Shelley's own time, and works only if one reads it as a historical novel set in Shelley's time rather than a novel set in our future. But when the plague arrives, the novel becomes as convincing as a futuristic tale as such other "disaster" novels as Earth Abides and On the Beach. The style is still that of the early nineteenth century, of course, but the images of death and the decline of civilization are as vivid and enthralling as in any modern novel.

Is The Last Man as good as Frankenstein? In the sense that the latter has been continuously in print in inexpensive editions for as long as I can remember (and quite possibly for over a hundred years before that) and has had an inestimable effect on science fiction (and horror), while the former has been almost inaccessible for much of that time and has had no identifiable effect, the answer has to be no. But if read without considering the context of subsequent authors, and considering the books as mainstream fiction rather than science fiction per se, The Last Man is certainly a more polished, more considered, and more mature work than Frankenstein, and well worth the reading. I have to wonder what Shelley's other novels (Valperga, Lodore, and Falkner) are like, but since they are not science fiction, they are probably totally unavailable.

To order The Last Man from amazon.com, click here.

"Stars Seen Through Stone" by Lucius Shepard:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/11/2008]

I suppose "Stars Seen Through Stone" by Lucius Shepard (F&SF Jul) is well-written, but I seem to have a blind spot (deaf spot?) when it comes to fiction based on music, especially on rock music.

DEAD MAN'S FLOAT by Beth Sherman:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/23/2004]

Beth Sherman's DEAD MAN'S FLOAT (ISBN 0-380-73107-X) is the first of a series set on the Jersey shore, specifically in Ocean Grove and Asbury Park. While some of the descriptions of the area were recognizable, I guess I'm not as familiar with that part of the shore as people who grew up here. If you are a longtime shore- goer, you'd probably enjoy them, but I can't really recommend them for others.

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URBAN NIGHTMARES edited by Josepha Sherman and Keith A. DeCandido (Baen, ISBN 0-671-87851-4, 1997, 278pp, mass market paperback):

The problem with theme anthologies is, well, the theme.

I mean, if I'm reading a story in a general anthology, or in a magazine, and the point of the story is that the main character is a vampire, then the author can tell me that when s/he wants to. But if I'm reading a vampire anthology ... well, you get the idea.

So here we have an anthology based on urban legends. These are all those things that you've heard somewhere that happened to "a friend of a friend." In fact, these are so common that they even have a Usenet group (alt.folklore.urban) and a whole set of abbreviations (e.g., FOAF). So if you're reading a story in this anthology in which a fur coat is involved, and you know anything about urban legends, you know snakes will start appearing in the coat.

Because of this, the authors pretty much have to tell you early on which urban legend they are working with, and then do something original with it. This is not unlike what was done with the "Fairy Tale" series of books, so it is possible.

Of course the problem is exacerbated by my position as a reviewer--I need to read this book in some reasonable period of time. Marketing being what it is, mass-market books tend to disappear after a few months. If I read a story a week, this book will be long-gone before you can read the review. There are twenty-five stories, an unusually high number. The longest story is sixteen pages long. In fact, the biography section is longer than some of the stories.

Even making allowances for all this, I think four prosthetic arm stories and four alligators/crocodiles-in-the-sewers in one anthology is a bit much, though I did like the literary allusions in Bill Crider's piece.

If you are familiar with all the urban legends referenced here, and like bizarre twists on them, you will probably like this book. But if you don't know what "The Hook" is, or find a whole sequence of twists on them more repetitious, you should skip this book. Me, I find the psychology of the urban legend interesting, but don't see them as a great literary source.

To order Urban Nightmares from amazon.com, click here.

SCIENCE FRICTION by Michael Shermer:

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

SCIENCE FRICTION: WHERE THE KNOWN MEETS THE UNKNOWN by Michael Shermer (ISBN 0-8050-7708-1) is a sampler of various aspects of science (and the public perception of science), history (ditto), and other topics. The chapters of most specific interest to science fiction fans, though, might be "What If?" and "The Hero on the Edge of Forever". Both are about counterfactuals and alternate histories, and both discuss what Shermer calls "contingencies" and "necessities". These are pretty much parallels for "The Great Man" and "The Tide of History" theories. The former was championed by Thomas Carlyle, who wrote, "Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at the bottom the history of the great men who have worked here. Worship of a hero is transcendent admiration of a great man." The latter was supported by Friedrich Engels, "That a certain particular man, and no other, emerges at a definite time in a given country is naturally a pure chance, but even if we eliminate him there is always a need for a substitute, and the substitute . . . is sure to be found." Like so many dichotomies, the truth probably lies between the two, which Shermer calls "the model of contingent-necessity: In the development of any historical sequence the role of contingencies in the construction of necessities is accentuated in the early stages and attenuated in the later." Shermer then applies these ideas to the Neanderthals, the development of agriculture, Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder", and "The City on the Edge of Forever" (Gene Roddenberry's, Harlan Ellison's, or a combination of the two?).

To order Science Friction from amazon.com, click here.

GOLEMS AMONG US by Bryon L. Sherwin:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/21/2006]

GOLEMS AMONG US by Bryon L. Sherwin (ISBN 1-56663-568-3) begins with a discussion of the legend of the golem in Jewish mysticism, and then proceeds to apply the theological and ethical implications given by rabbis and scholars over the years to modern questions of artificial intelligence, reproductive technology, and corporations. Sherwin's coverage of the Golem legend extends beyond that of the Golem of Prague (which turns out to be a recent "invention"), and it is good to see an ethical analysis of these modern issues that is not based on Protestant fundamentalism or Roman Catholicism (or indeed on Christianity at all). I recommend this as providing a counter-balance to what is usually presented as "the" religious opinion of these issues. [-ecl] [For those unfamilar with golems, there is an article about them at . Modesty forbids me giving a fulsome but accurate recommendation of this article. -mrl]

To order Golems Among Us from amazon.com, click here.

THE BOOK OF SPLENDOR by Frances Sherwood:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/29/2003]

My primary reading was Frances Sherwood's THE BOOK OF SPLENDOR, a book set in 17th century Prague and centering around Rabbi Loew, John Dee, alchemy, and the golem. If this sounds a lot like Lisa Goldstein's THE ALCHEMIST'S DOOR (which I read a couple of weeks ago), all I can say is that apparently when it's time to golem, we golem. The Sherwood was published in July and the Goldstein in August, so it's unlikely either was copying the other. (Perhaps both were inspired by Michael Chabon's THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY, or Pete Hamill's SNOW IN AUGUST.) However, what is interesting is that the Sherwood is positioned as a mainstream literary novel, while the Goldstein is marketed as fantasy, even though they are really very similar. And I enjoyed them both and recommend them. And I just finished re-reading Ted Chiang's "Seventy-Two Letters". Is it possible that just as there was an amazing explosion of alternate history stories a few years ago, t there will be a burst of golem stories now?

To order The Book of Splendor from amazon.com, click here.

VINDICATION by Frances Sherwood:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/16/2004]

Frances Sherwood's VINDICATION is a novelization of Mary Wollstonecraft's life. This is Mary (Wollstonecraft) Shelley's mother, not Mary Shelley (as I think I claimed in an earlier column). While Wollstonecraft was an early campaigner for women's rights, there was still a bit too much of it in the novel for my tastes. I suppose I have become so tired of seeing it in completely fictional novels, that when it actually makes sense-- particularly if the situations described by Sherwood are accurate--I still find it annoying.

To order Vindication from amazon.com, click here.

VINLAND THE GOOD by Nevil Shute:

[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/25/2003]

Everyone knows that Nevil Shute wrote ON THE BEACH, and a lot of people know he wrote A TOWN LIKE ALICE, but not many people are familiar with his "Vinland the Good". This is written as a screenplay, though it was never made into a movie (nor do I think that Shute necessarily expected it to be). It starts in the then- present, with a demobbed soldier returning to his British public school to teach United States history, but most of it is about how the Norse discovered America. What is most interesting is that Shute seems to emphasize the parallel origins of these first American "settlers" and the early Australian settlers. That is, the first few scenes set in the past are of Eric the Red picking fights and becoming outlawed, first from Norway to North Iceland, then from North Iceland to South Iceland, and then finally from South Iceland to Greenland. It's true that Eric got to transport himself and his family rather than being transported, and also that he tries to provide some defense for what he did (though rather unconvincingly), but the outlaw origins are there nonetheless.

To order Vinland the Good from amazon.com, click here.

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