All reviews copyright 1984-2008 Evelyn C. Leeper.
IN THE BEGINNING: TALES FROM THE PULP ERA by Robert Silverberg:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/09/2006]
Robert Silverberg is one of the great science fiction icons of our time. But while he is known now for his erudition and literary qualities, the sixteen stories in IN THE BEGINNING: TALES FROM THE PULP ERA (ISBN 1-59606-043-3) are from his earliest period, in the years during and shortly after when he was a student, and are a small part of his prodigious output for the pulps of the 1950s. Given that there were several times when he had *four* stories in a single issue of a magazine (under different pan names, of course), this can provide just a small sample. However, the fact that none of these have been previously reprinted means that this is a must-read for those interested in the early career of one of the great science fiction writers. Admittedly, at $40 for the signed, numbered limited edition, it is pricier than most other hardcover books but, content aside, the physical book is also much better constructed, with lovely textured end papers, good typography, and high-quality paper.
To order In the Beginning from amazon.com, click here.
STARBORNE by Robert Silverberg (Bantam Spectra, ISBN 0-553-10264-8, 1996, 304pp, hardback):
Robert Silverberg's latest novel takes a lot of familiar science fiction ideas and combines them in a story that keeps promising to go somewhere, but manages to make even the transformation of mankind unexciting.
The spaceship Wotan has been launched with its crew of fifty by an Earth so bored with Paradise that this is the only excitement they can think of. While it travels through hyperspace to discover a planet that can be colonized, the ship stays in touch with Earth through telepathic twins. The crew explores a couple of planets, with somewhat familiar perils, learns that the twins' link seems to be weakening, and moves on to a climax that rings remarkably flat.
While I was reading this I kept feeling that just a few pages more and it would catch fire, that it was on the verge of something. But it never quite delivered on that, and looking back over it, it seems to have been a book about petty squabbles and personality conflicts more than about exploring the universe. Given that society as a whole is filled with boredom and ennui, I suppose it isn't too surprising that the characters often seem to display these characteristics. For example, there is supposed to be a new captain every year. But after the first year, no one else will take the job, so the same person continues in that position. (This sounds like a lot of organizations I've been in.) The problem is that reading about bored characters is, well, boring. Trying to keep track of who's sleeping with whom doesn't really provide much interest.
As in several of Silverberg's recent books (in particular The Face on the Waters and The Kingdoms of the Wall), the framework is a quest-like journey in which the diversity of characters is really what is supposed to hold your interest. Like many books with such a journey, the arrival is a bit of a let-down, and the problem here is that the characters are not interesting along the way either.
To order Starborne from amazon.com, click here.
TIME IS THE SIMPLEST THING by Clifford Simak:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/15/2006]
TIME IS THE SIMPLEST THING by Clifford Simak (ISBN 0-020-82075-5) is an older book (first published in 1971), but unfortunately its theme of prejudice and persecution seems to be forever current. At the time, I am sure people read Simak's story of the hostility towards "PKs" (paranormal kinetics) as a parable of the then- current attitudes of many towards blacks. (In fact, one sheriff in the novel talks about a "boy who came across the border and got himself tanked up. Figured he was as good as white folks.") Then later it was probably seen as a parallel to society's treatment of gays. ("Persecuted when they should be given all encouragement. They have abilities at this very moment that [we], also at this very moment, needs most desperately." I suspect those words will come back to me the next time I read about the Army discharging translators of Arabic because they are gay.) Now I am sure some people will see parallels to the anti- Muslim sentiment we are seeing. What with all this underlying message, it is easy for the other part of the novel--Simak's attempt to portray an alien intelligence--to get lost in the shuffle.
It is also interesting to see that Simak projected a rise in interest in the supernatural on television, in ouija boards, and so on--though he had these be the result of the discovery of PK powers rather than whatever less obvious cause has brought it about in our times.
To order Time Is the Simplest Thing from amazon.com, click here.
ILIUM by Dan Simmons:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/30/2004]
Last week I said I gave up on one Hugo nominee, and this week it was another. I had started Dan Simmons's ILIUM a while ago and decided it wasn't my cup of tea, but felt I should give it another try. Well I did, and gave up just about the same place as last time. (In part it was the idea that after finishing these six hundred pages that I wasn't enjoying, I would still have read only half the story.)
To order Ilium from amazon.com, click here.
THE GEORGE ELIOT MURDERS by Edith Skom:
Though Edith Skom's book is titled THE GEORGE ELIOT MURDERS, the only connection with Eliot is some parallels between MIDDLEMARCH and the murders. This is just your basic "take-to-the-beach-junk- food" mystery--not very well written, a bit obvious in spots, a bit contrived in spots (okay, a lot contrived in spots), and having the completely unbelievable setting of a midwestern professor vacationing at a *really* expensive Hawaiian resort. In spite of all this, though, I must admit it as a "guilty pleasure," probably because people in it were talking about George Eliot, "Middlemarch", and even Mark Twain.
To order The George Eliot Murders from amazon.com, click here.
SINS FOR FATHER KNOX by Josef Skvorecky:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/11/2005]
On another topic, Father Ronald Arbuthnott Knox wrote some mysteries, but his enduring fame is due to his "Ten Commandments" for mysteries, which are, summarized:
1. The criminal must be mentioned, but his thoughts not given 2. No supernatural 3. Not more than one secret room or passage 4. No previously undiscovered poisons 5. No "Chinaman" (a common ploy when Knox wrote) 6. No accidental solution 7. Not the detective himself 8. No clues unrevealed to the reader 9. The "Watson" should not conceal his thoughts 10. No twins or doubles
[The full list may be found at many places, including http://www.thrillingdetective.com/trivia/triv186.html.]
Now, many authors have written very good and very successful stories which violated some of these rules. Agatha Christie broke at least two of them, and Doyle violated at least three in his Sherlock Holmes stories. But only Josef Skvorecky took it upon himself to break all ten, in SINS FOR FATHER KNOX (translated from Czech by Kaca Polackova Henley, ISBN 0-393-02512-8). Alas, in part what he proves is that while a great author can "get away" with breaking these rules, the mere breaking of them by a lesser author doesn't guarantee a good story. Some of Skvorecky's stories are good, but many are weak *because* they violate one of the rules. Having a hitherto-unmentioned person be the culprit in a "puzzle"-type mystery just doesn't work. (If the story is more a slice-of-life of the detective, and it turns out that someone not even mentioned turn out to be the criminal, then that would probably work.) The stories are an interesting exercise to Knox's implicit challenge, but work more to support Knox's thesis than to refute it.
To order Sins for Father Knox from amazon.com, click here.
THE BOOK GROUP BOOK by Ellen Slezak:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/23/2004]
In an attempt to get some ideas of how to rejuvenate our book discussion group(s), I read Ellen Slezak's THE BOOK GROUP BOOK. While the descriptions of the various groups were interesting, they were not very helpful. First of all, most of the groups described were all-woman groups (or even more specifically, all- woman feminist groups). Our group is not an exact even split, but of the eight regulars, three are men. (Supposedly, one test of a group is to ask if they want to read Ernest Hemingway. The assumption is that even in a mixed group, the women will veto him. I'll have to try this, although I seem to recall our group reading THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA a few years ago.) Our biggest problem currently is picking books that the library has enough copies of, since the group formed on the supposition that people would not have to buy their own books. Currently, our tentative plan for the general book discussion group is to read books off the summer high school reading lists during the school year, and wing it somehow over the summer when these are tied up. The mystery reading group seems more successful in getting copies of books (though I couldn't get this month's selection). The science fiction group has a major problem in that library culling has resulted in very few books being available in more than one or two copies in the entire library system. (If anyone is in a reading group, I would be curious as to the size and make-up of the group, as well as what it reads and how it chooses it.)
To order The Book Group Book from amazon.com, click here.
TO WALK THE NIGHT by William Sloane:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/28/2003]
William Sloane's TO WALK THE NIGHT is a classic horror novel, but as with many older classics, it will probably seem predictable to today's readers. (Personally, I found myself wondering if the film UNEARTHLY STRANGER was somewhat inspired by this.) While the writing style is good, the familiarity probably works against this book for modern readers.
To order To Walk the Night from amazon.com, click here.
THE APPARITION TRAIL by Lisa Smedman:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/10/2004]
Lisa Smedman's THE APPARITION TRAIL (ISBN 1-894063-22-8) is a fantasy set in the Pacific Northwest in the late 19th century. The main premise is that native magic works, or works again, since the striking of the moon by a comet seems to have brought it back. It also seems to have made perpetual motion machines possible and changed the moon's rotational period (though Smedman keeps talking about how the "dark side" is coming around to face Earth). The native magic aspect would have been sufficient--I have no idea why Smedman felt she had to add the rest and they really detract from the story. I suppose it is possible that she thought they would set the book apart from all the straight fantasies about Native Americans (or, since she is Canadian, First Nations). However, if you concentrate on the main story, about the coming of the "Day of Changes", it works fairly well.
To order The Apparition Trail from amazon.com, click here.
CHASING SHAKESPEARES by Sarah Smith:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/28/2003]
Coincidentally (really!) to the whole theme of historian as detective that I wrote about earlier (Robin W. Winks's The Historian as Detective), I read Sarah Smith's CHASING SHAKESPEARES. The main characters are literature researchers trying to determine (you guessed it) who wrote Shakespeare's plays. For those who accuse science fiction of having too many "infodumps", I commend this work (although one might claim that it's only one giant infodump). Josephine Tey pulled this sort of thing off in THE DAUGHTER OF TIME, but I found CHASING SHAKESPEARES too confusing to follow completely.
To order Chasing Shakespeares from amazon.com, click here.
TURNABOUT by Thorne Smith:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/11/2003]
A while ago, I read James Cawthorn and Michael Moorcock's FANTASY- -THE 100 BEST BOOKS. (The title is a bit of a misnomer---it is limited to books originally written in English, so no Homer, or Dante, or Goethe.) Some of the books didn't sound all that interesting. Others I started but gave up on after a few pages. (These included Harold Walpole's CASTLE OF OTRANTO, William Beckford's VATHEK, and William Hope Hodgson's THE NIGHT LAND, though I may give the last another try.) And some were actually readable, if not necessarily great.
One of these was Thorne Smith's TURNABOUT, in which a squabbling couple finds their bodies swapped one night by Mr. Ram, an Egyptian statuette who is tired of each claiming they could do a better job in the other's place. This book (written during Prohibition) is full of cocktail parties, wife swapping, and other such goings-on, with a strange sort of earnest raciness in a very refined style. It could have been turned into a good film--and may have been, since there was a 1940 film made from it. Unlike the films based on Smith's "Topper" stories, however, it has not shown up anywhere for years, so it may not be that good. (I realize there have been a lot of other movies with similar plots. I suspect Smith may have been the first to write it, since of the sixty-two "sex-change" movies listed in the IMDB, TURNABOUT is the earliest.) In any case, as words on a page, it seems stilted. A lot of the humor will be dated--most of the women's clothing styles the husband has to contend with as a woman have been abandoned by women in the interim. (And very sensibly too, in my opinion.) Nevertheless, TURNABOUT is at least moderately enjoyable, and certainly more refined than a movie--or a book--on the topic would be nowadays. Miss Manners would probably approve.
To order Turnabout from amazon.com, click here.
DARKER ANGELS by S. P. Somtow (Tor, ISBN 0-312-85931-7, 1998, 381pp, hardback):
Walt Whitman. Zombies. Abraham Lincoln's funeral. Voodoo. Lord Byron. A panther woman. Edgar Allan Poe. And who better to write about all this but a Thai writer?
Only in America.
Well, yes, but all this makes Darker Angels a hard book to review. I liked it a lot, but much of that may be due to the presence of Walt Whitman as a character. I find Whitman fascinating, not just as a poet, but as an observer of the Civil War. And Darker Angels has a lot of that sort of observation of the Civil War, even if it is leavened with voodoo.
But if you're not a Whitman fan, I'm not sure how you'll react to this. The structure is very complex with Griffin Bledsoe telling Tyler telling Jimmy Lee Cox telling Zachary Brown telling Mrs. Grainger about the strange goings-on. (Or something like that--I can't be sure this was quite this nested. There may have been some pops on the stack I missed.) The atmosphere is there, but the late appearance of Lord Byron and Edgar Allan Poe was in some way the straw that broke the camel's back, and I have to say that there's just too much going on here to make a satisfactory novel for most people.
But I can't un-recommend this either. Ultimately, all I can is that here is what this. If you think it sounds interesting, give it a try. If you think it would give you a headache, give it a miss.
To order Darker Angels from amazon.com, click here.
[From the MT VOID, 01/30/2009]
When I first studied Spanish, "The University of Chicago Spanish- English English-Spanish Dictionary" was *the* dictionary, at least if one did not want to spend mucho dolares for an academic volume. My old Cardinal edition saw much use and was starting to fall apart, so when I saw a more recent [third] edition (1981, ISBN-10 0-671-50853-9) in the thrift shop for a dime, I jumped at it. Shortly before this I had bought "The American Heritage Spanish Dictionary [Second Edition]" (which is also Spanish-English and English-Spanish) (2000, ISBN-10 0-618-04873-1) there, also for a dime. Initially, I did not like the American Heritage one, partly because it alphabetized both English and Spanish sections according to the English alphabet, and I had finally gotten use to looking thing up according to the Spanish alphabet. In Spanish, "ch" is considered a single letter following "c", and "ll" one following "l", so "chiste" would be after "comprar" and "llama" after "luz". But not in the American Heritage edition. ("ñ" does come after "n", probably because it is clearly a single letter, although I believe the tilde on top started out as a second "n".) Lest you think this a trivial complaint, I'll point out that since I have one dictionary in the den, another in the bedroom, and a third in the living room, this quirk on the part of the American Heritage edition means that I have to keep thinking about which dictionary I am using in order to look up some words.
However, I rapidly changed my mind about the editions. This was perhaps influenced by the fact that the University of Chicago edition I bought was missing a signature of pages, including most of the words starting with the letter "a". But even ignoring that, the American Heritage had many more words. All too often I would go to look up a word in the University of Chicago edition only to find that it was not there, and that I had to turn to the American Heritage edition instead. (One example was "tatarabuelo", meaning "great-great-grandfather").
The bottom line is that if I had to recommend one of these, it would be the American Heritage edition.
And a side-note on using dictionaries in other languages: I never quite realized how much I take for granted in using an English dictionary. For example, when looking up a word starting with "n", I know I have to look slightly more than halfway through, while "f" is maybe 20% in. But in another language, all this changes.
For example, the halfway point in my English disctionary is "masthead", while in Spanish it is "gotera". And while the words starting with "a" are 6% of the English dictionary, they are 11.5% of the Spanish one.
(In English the letters' frequencies are in the order "etaonrishdl": in Spanish, "eaosrnidlc".)
THE COMFORTERS by Muriel Spark:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/21/2007]
I read THE COMFORTERS by Muriel Spark (ISBN-13 978-0-140-01911-7, ISBN-10 0-140-01911-1) because a film reviewer noted that the basic idea of STRANGER THAN FICTION--that someone suddenly starts hearing a voice narrating what they are doing and thinking and realizes that they are a character in a novel--was taken (without credit) from THE COMFORTERS. This appears to be true, but I found THE COMFORTERS strangely un-engaging. Maybe it was because the novel that the character was in was not very good.
To order The Comforters from amazon.com, click here.
DON'T EAT THIS BOOK: FAST FOOD AND THE SUPERSIZING OF AMERICA by Morgan Spurlock:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/06/2008]
I recently listened to DON'T EAT THIS BOOK: FAST FOOD AND THE SUPERSIZING OF AMERICA by Morgan Spurlock (read by Morgan Spurlock) (ISBN-13 978-0-143-05731-4, ISBN-10 0-143-05731-6; book ISBN-13 978-0-435-21023-9, ISBN-10 0-425-21023-5). In this book he briefly describes the inspiration and making of his film SUPERSIZE ME!, but spends most of his time attacking "Big Food" (e.g., Kraft, McDonalds, etc.), which he compares in power and effect to "Big Tobacco". While on the whole I agree with him, he makes enough errors in fact or logic to make it hard to endorse the book wholeheartedly.
For example, he says that he suddenly realized at one point that during his month-long McDonalds diet he would not be eating any fresh fruit. "No peaches. No pears. No lemons. No limes." (I may have the exact fruits and/or order wrong--it's really hard to flip back through an audiobook to get an exact quote!) But I'm not sure that is true. If McDonalds serves tea, they may very well have lemon wedges for it. (Then again, they may have just pouches of lemon juice. However, I don't go to McDonalds often enough to check before this appears.)
He also uses "soda" and "soft drink" to mean sugared cola. For example, when he says someone has a soft drink, he talks about how much sugar and phosphoric acid (found only in colas) they are getting. He does say that some people ask, "What about sugar-free sodas?" but then goes on about how bad aspartame is. But what about (for example) root beer, lemon-lime sodas, or ginger ale? If he means colas he should say colas.
He also responds to critics who say that what he did was extreme by saying what he did was consistent with people's eating habits. This is based on somewhat questionable logic. For example, because some people eat at McDonalds several times a week, he extrapolates that they must be eating junk food all the rest of the time. But this is not necessarily true. For example, in my town I see a bunch of mail tracks clustered around Wendy's at lunch time. It's a fast, convenient place to eat, and one that one can get a large group to agree on. This does not mean when these mail carriers go home they eat junk food. They may very well eat wonderfully at home. (To some extent, I think Spurlock has a skewed view of all this because 1) he lives in Manhattan, and 2) he works by himself and on his own schedule.) And I still think that always supersizing when asked is cheating. Let's face it, while it may be true that there are people who do, clearly not everyone answers "yes" when asked.
Spurlock criticizes the food lunch program for serving what big agriculture is pushing rather than what is healthy, but I do find his negative attitude toward milk a little peculiar. He seems to think that schools should not be serving milk. Yes, milk, though he thinks it's great that schools have vending machines that sell bottled water. If you want to look at a useless "food product" that's been pushed onto consumers by "Big Food" advertising, you don't have to look any father than bottled water.
In another example of how Spurlock seems to have been taken in by the very advertising he decries, he speaks of not eating red meat more than a couple of times a month, and then talks about how good pork is, as if it were not red meat.
One problem with audiobooks is that expressions which look okay on the page don't always sound good. Spurlock uses a lot of "mmm" (meaning "yummy") constructions ("Pesticides in your food? Mmmm!"). As I said, these look fine on the page, but read aloud, they sound very lame. It's possible that a better actor could deliver the lines better, but I wouldn't count on it.
To order Don't Eat This Book from amazon.com, click here.
YEAR ZERO by Brian Stableford:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/26/2004]
Brian Stableford's YEAR ZERO (ISBN 0-7862-5333-9) is all about UFO abductions and Elvis sightings, yet still manages to work in Stableford's abiding interest in evolution and biology. It's a somewhat lighter book than many of Stableford's works, but still well worth reading.
To order Year Zero from amazon.com, click here.
THE NEPTUNE FILE: A STORY OF ASTRONOMICAL RIVALRY AND THE PIONEERS OF PLANET HUNTING by Tom Standage:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/14/2004]
Tom Standage's THE NEPTUNE FILE: A STORY OF ASTRONOMICAL RIVALRY AND THE PIONEERS OF PLANET HUNTING (ISBN 0-802-71363-7) is a history of the discovery of Neptune (as well as Uranus, the asteroids, and Pluto). It focuses on John Couch Adams, but covers the other contenders who might claim the title of "Discoverer of Neptune" as well. As with all too many scientific quests, it is as much a tale of competition, pigheadedness, and ineptitude as of the search for knowledge.
To order The Neptune File from amazon.com, click here.
THE TURK: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE FAMOUS EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CHESS-PLAYING MACHINE by Tom Standage:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/14/2003]
Well, there's THE TURK: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE FAMOUS EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CHESS-PLAYING MACHINE by Tom Standage, which is the story of "The Turk," the famous . . . . Standage doesn't reveal the secret of "The Turk" until almost the end of the book, but I suspect most readers will either be familiar with it, or guess the secret. What's interesting is the career of "The Turk," including playing against Napoleon at one point.
To order The Turk: The Life and Times of the Famous Eighteenth-Century Chess-Playing Machine from amazon.com, click here.