All reviews copyright 1984-2008 Evelyn C. Leeper.
CELEBRATED CASES OF JUDGE DEE by Robert Van Gulik:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/09/2005]
CELEBRATED CASES OF JUDGE DEE translated by Robert Van Gulik (ISBN 0-486-23337-5) is the only Judge Dee book available in English that is an original Chinese Judge Dee novel. (All the rest of the Van Gulik books were pastiches written by Van Gulik himself.) Even more interesting than the novel (really three interleaved short stories) is the twenty-three-page preface in which Van Gulik talks about the Chinese detective story, a genre that goes back at least a thousand years. In particular, he describes some characteristics of the Chinese detective story that differ from its Western counterpart. For example, the criminal is usually introduced at the beginning, rather than remaining a secret until the end. (So "Columbo" is very Chinese in that way!) The books also tend to be much longer than Western detective novels, with a lot of background and digressions, and often after a hundred characters (making it more like a modern fantasy novel, I guess). They also have the supernatural as a matter of course and more detail about the punishment. There are many other differences based on the underlying differences between the Chinese and the Western legal systems, and I definitely recommend that you read the preface before reading the novel.
To order Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee from amazon.com, click here.
THE BRONTE PROJECT by Jennifer Vandever:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/17/2006]
THE BRONTE PROJECT by Jennifer Vandever (ISBN 0-307-23691-9) is another book possibly inspired by THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB, though there seems to be very little Bronte content. I will admit that I gave up after a couple of chapters when it seemed to be pretty much a novel of present-day relationships, and not a discussion of the Brontes.
To order The Bronte Project from amazon.com, click here.
THE 60 GREATEST CONSPIRACIES OF ALL TIME by Jonathan Vankin & John Whalen:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/07/2006]
THE 60 GREATEST CONSPIRACIES OF ALL TIME by Jonathan Vankin & John Whalen (ISBN 0-7607-0882-7) sounded very interesting, until I realized that their notion of "all time" was considerably shorter than even the "young Earthers". In fact, as far as I can tell, Vankin & Whalen seem to think "all time" began around 1940, with only two exceptions I could find: "The Lincoln Conspiracies" and "Those Christ Kids" (a.k.a. The Priory of Zion et al). And that brings up another complaint: all the chapters have cutesy titles that often as not given you no clue as to the subject matter (e.g., "Wake Up and Smell the Gas", "The Secret Team", "The Lost Boys"). At least it does have an index. But when it comes to "History's Biggest Mysteries, Cover-Ups, and Cabals" (the subtitle of this book), I am sure they are many better ones if one looks at the other 98% of history.
To order The 60 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time from amazon.com, click here.
SHERLOCK HOLMES & THE GIANT RAT OF SUMATRA by Alan Vanneman:
As an example of too much modernization, Alan Vanneman has his take on one of the most famous asides in Sherlock, SHERLOCK HOLMES & THE GIANT RAT OF SUMATRA, this one with way too much sex (with Watson, not Holmes) to be at all true to the character of the original stories.
To order Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumatra from amazon.com, click here.
MAMMOTH by John Varley:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/24/2005]
John Varley's MAMMOTH (ISBN 0-441-01281-7) is an okay science fiction novel, but more in the line of techo-thriller in its very current setting. There is a time machine, but it's a "one-off" with no other new technology cluttering up the background. The Howard Christian character seems very much Bill Gates crossed with the early Howard Hughes, the mammoths provide a connection to "Jurassic Park" and its ilk, and there are also the obligatory sinister government agents. While it's competent enough, one wonders what happened to the Varley who got fifteen Hugo nominations (and three wins) in the late 1970s and early 1980s for such works as TITAN, WIZARD, MILLENIUM, STEEL BEACH, or eleven shorter stories. Alas, I suppose that a more mainstream novel sells better than a visionary science fiction novel, and I note that none of the categories in the cataloging data given on the copyright page are "Science fiction." Instead we have five fiction sub-categories: woolly mammoths, billionaires, cloning, mummies, and Nunavut. Anyone expecting the older, more edgy John Varley will be disappointed.
To order Mammoth from amazon.com, click here.
"Dr. Ox's Experiment" by Jules Verne:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/18/2003]
Jules Verne's "Dr. Ox's Experiment", published as a novel with illustrations, is really only a novella, and a fairly predictable one. There's some attempt at social satire and commentary, but Verne is better at the "techie" stuff (in this case, a gas that causes aggression), while Wells was the sociologist.
To order Dr. Ox's Experiment from amazon.com, click here.
JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH by Jules Verne:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/28/2006]
I read Spanish (somewhat), but not French (except minimally). So if the most readily available English translation of Jules Verne's JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (the 1872 one that turns "Lidenbrook" into "Hardwigg") is horrendous and completely unfaithful to the original, would I be better off reading a Spanish translation? In other words, how important is a faithful translation?
But luckily, my library had a decent English translation of JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (translated by Robert Baldick, ISBN 0-7838-0319-2), so I read that instead. Every once in a while I would compare the Baldick version, the 1872 version, and the Spanish version (uncredited, published by Editorial Universo, Lima, Peru), which each time re-enforced my feeling that Baldick is fairly accurate, and the 1872 is completely off.
For example, here are several versions of the section describing Lidenbrook's stammer:
Verne's French: "Mon oncle, malheureusement, ne jouissait pas d'une extrême facilité de prononciation, sinon dans l'intimité, au moins quand il parlait en public, et c'est un défaut regrettable chez un orateur. En effet, dans ses démonstrations au Johannaeum, souvent le professeur s'arrêtait court; il luttait contre un mot récalcitrant qui ne voulait pas glisser entre ses lèvres, un de ces mots qui résistent, se gonflent et finissent par sortir sous la forme peu scientifique d'un juron. De là, grande colère. Il y a en minéralogie bien des dénominations semi-grecques, semi-latines, difficiles à prononcer, de ces rudes appellations qui écorcheraient les lèvres d'un poète. Je ne veux pas dire du mal de cette science. Loin de moi. Mais lorsqu'on se trouve en présence des cristallisations rhomboédriques, des résines rétinasphaltes, des ghélénites, des tangasites, des molybdates de plomb, des tungstates de manganèse et des titaniates de zircone, il est permis à la langue la plus adroite de fourcher. Or, dans la ville, on connaissait cette pardonnable infirmité de mon oncle, et on, en abusait, et on l'attendait aux passages dangereux, et il se mettait en fureur, et l'on riait, ce qui n'est pas de bon goût, même pour des Allemands. S'il y avait donc toujours grande affluence d'auditeurs aux cours de Lidenbrock, combien les suivaient assidûment qui venaient surtout pour se dérider aux belles colères du professeur!"
Baldick: "Unfortunately for him, my uncle had difficulty in speaking fluently, not so much at home as in public, and this is a regrettable defect in an orator. Indeed, in his lectures at the Johannaeum the professor would often stop short, struggling with a recalcitrant word which refused to slip between his lips, one of those words which resist, swell up, and finally come out n the rather unscientific form of a swear-word. This was what always sent him into a rage. / Now in mineralogy there are a great many barbarous terms, half Greek and half Latin, which are difficult to pronounce and which would take the skin off any poet's lips. I don't want to say a word against that science-- far from it--but when ones finds oneself in the presence of rhomohedral crystals, retinasphaltic resins, gehlenites, fangasites, molybdenites, tungstates of manganese, and titanite of zirconium, the nimblest tongue may be forgiven for slipping."
Ward, Lock, & Co. 1877: "To his misfortune, my uncle was not gifted with a sufficiently rapid utterance; not, to be sure, when he was talking at home, but certainly in his public delivery; this is a want much to be deplored in a speaker. The fact is, that during the course of his lectures at the Johannæum, the Professor often came to a complete standstill; he fought with wilful words that refused to pass his struggling lips, such words as resist and distend the cheeks, and at last break out into the unasked-for shape of a round and most unscientific oath: then his fury would gradually abate. / Now in mineralogy there are many half-Greek and half-Latin terms, very hard to articulate, and which would be most trying to a poet's measures. I don't wish to say a word against so respectable a science, far be that from me. True, in the august presence of rhombohedral crystals, retinasphaltic resins, gehlenites, Fassaites, molybdenites, tungstates of manganese, and titanite of zirconium, why, the most facile of tongues may make a slip now and then."
1872: "There was a reason, and it may be regarded as a good one, why my uncle objected to display his learning more than was absolutely necessary: he stammered; and when intent upon explaining the phenomena of the heavens, was apt to find himself at fault, and allude in such a vague way to sun, moon, and stars that few were able to comprehend his meaning. To tell the honest truth, when the right word would not come, it was generally replaced by a very powerful adjective. / In connection with the sciences there are many almost unpronounceable names- names very much resembling those of Welsh villages; and my uncle being very fond of using them, his habit of stammering was not thereby improved. In fact, there were periods in his discourse when he would finally give up and swallow his discomfiture--in a glass of water."
Spanish: "Mi tio no gozaba por desgracia, de una gran facilidad de palabra, por los menos cuando se expresaba en publico, lo cual, para un orador, constituye un defecto lamentable. Efectivamente, durante sus clases se detenia en lo mejor, luchando con una recalcitrante palabra que no queria salir de sus labios; con una de esas palabras que se resisten, se hinchan y acaban por ser expedidas bajo la forma de un taco[*], siendo este el origen de su colera. / Hay en minerologia muchas denominaciones semigriegas, semilatinas muy dificiles de pronunciar; nombres rudos que desollarian los labios de un poeta. No quiero hablar mal de este ciencia, esta lejos de mi semejante profanacion. Pero cuando se trata de la cristalizaciones romboedricas, de las resinas retinasfalticas, de los tungstatos de magnesio y los titaniatos de circonio, bien se puede perdonar a la lengua mas expedita que tropiece y se haga un lio."
[*] No, not the food--"taco" here means "oath or swearword".
It is, by the way, not true that in Iceland in June and July the sun does not rise or set (Chapter 13 [Chapter 10 in the 1872 translation]). It sets about 1AM and rises about 4AM. I suspect what is meant is that it never gets dark. And leprosy is not hereditary. (These are both incorrect in the original Verne, so one cannot blame the translators.)
[Apropos of all this, Reuters reports: "Brendan Fraser has boarded "Journey to the Center of the Earth," a contemporary, 3-D update of the Jules Verne classic. The story revolves around a scientist who is stuck with his nephew as they embark on a trip to Iceland to check on a volcanic sensor. During a storm, they get trapped in a cave and the only way out is through the center of Earth." This sounds even less faithful than the 1972 translation.]
To order Journey to the Center of the Earth from amazon.com, click here.
THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND by Jules Verne:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/08/2003]
Mark recently gave me the new translation of Jules Verne's THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND. Now, this was one of my favorite books when I was young--at age thirteen I read my family's Scribner's edition over and over until it fell apart. But would I still like it, years later, in a different translation, with all the cuts restored?
[Spoilers follow. Page numbers are from the Wesleyan University Press edition.]
Yes, it turns out, I would. I enjoyed even though as an adult I could see that it was not a very realistic novel. The island seems to be populated with a much bigger variety of animals than one would expect for an island that small and isolated. How did they (or rather, their ancestors) all get there? And how would they have a large enough breeding population (particularly the larger predators who would need more territory per animal)? It has all the necessary minerals, as well as an assortment of useful plants. All on a island described as the size of Malta (122 square miles, though Smith's perimeter of a hundred miles would seem to contradict this.)
And all the characters would make Heinlein proud--they know everything and can do everything. Smith knows what the longitude of Washington, D.C. is, and very conveniently Spillett's watch never stopped running, nor did he forget to wind it.
I also had forgotten just how much "infodump" was present in this novel. Had I retained it all, I would make a capital botanist, zoologist, or metallurgist today! (Although the repeated use of the word "amphibian" to describe seals, and other similar errors, must be considered errors.)
And of course, as an adult I also see a lot of "goofs" that I don't remember noticing or being aware of then. The best-known one, of course, is that Nemo manages to predecease himself by dying in 1869 here and showing up quite alive years later in TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA. Actually, even in this one book the dates are clearly off: On page 592, Nemo talks about having picked up the castaways (in TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA) in November 1866 and their escaping on June 22, 1867. Nemo then "lived for many years" cruising beneath the sea, eventually coming to Lincoln Island and living there for six years before the castaways in THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND show up--in 1865! And though I'm unfamiliar with CAPTAIN GRANT'S CHILDREN, that also ties in with this story and the dates don't match up either.
(Note: Verne has the arrival and departure dates of the castaways be the same, March 24. Verne died thirty years after writing THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND--on March 24, 1905. Add that coincidence to Shakespeare's birth and death, and the death of Cervantes, all on April 23, and the deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson on July 4, 1826.)
But even internally there are problems. On pages 4 and 5, the castaways slash the ropes to cut the basket away from the balloon. But they had previously thrown everything out to lighten the load, "even the most useful objects," and later "the last objects that still weighed them down, several provisions they had kept, everything, even the knick-knacks in their pockets." And later they have no knife until they break Top's collar. So what did they cut the ropes with? (And how did Smith snap a tempered steel collar into two pieces?)
On pages 9-11, we find out that Cyrus Smith from Massachusetts got Neb as a slave in his estate, but emancipated him. This is not just unlikely, but impossible, since Massachusetts abolished slavery in 1783, thirty-seven years before Smith was born. Clearly Verne, as a Frenchman, didn't bother to find out what the various laws in the United States were.
And even the editor notes that Union prisoners of war in Richmond were not given the freedom of the city (page 12).
By page 121, they have pottery wheels, with no clue as to how they managed that. (Which is doubly interesting when you consider that quite a while later, on page 298, there is mention that they built a potter's wheel!)
Still, this is being picky. I would recommend this edition, not only because it is complete, but also because it includes all the original illustrations. And it's shorter than the latest "Harry Potter".
To order The Mysterious Island from amazon.com, click here.
PARIS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY by Jules Verne (translated by Richard Howard) (Random House, ISBN 0-679-44434-3, 1996, 222pp, hardback):
This is not Verne's best book. But it has a certain charm that is lacking from Verne's other works, a certain sparseness of prose that gives the appearance of an intentional style. Of course, it may be just the translator's doing, or it may be unintentional awkwardness, but for me, at least, it worked.
The story takes place in 1960. Much has been made of the
predictions Verne made, many fairly accurate, others amusingly off.
I suppose one could consider this a sort of alternate history of
the steampunk ilk, but that is technically inaccurate. It's more
like all those stories from the pulp era that wrote about the
marvels of the 1960s which somehow never came to pass, and it's
only the fact that it's newly published that gives one pause.
As I said, this is not a great novel, but it will be on my Hugo
nomination ballot. I will admit that a part of that is that the
idea of seeing Jules Verne win a Hugo (or even just be nominated
for one) has a certain appeal that is hard to resist. And somehow
this year I haven't read a whole lot of novels which are really
that much better.
To order Paris in the Twentieth Century from amazon.com, click here.
TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA
by Jules Verne:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/01/2006]
TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA by Jules Verne (ISBN
0-870-21678-3) has a reputation as a children's adventure book.
This is mostly because a lot of the characterization and detail
that Verne put in was removed by Mercier Lewis, the translator
whose English translation has been the most widespread (in the
United States at least). For this occasion I re-read the book in
Walter James Miller's annotated version (for which the ISBN is
given), and Miller includes his translations of the parts that
Lewis had omitted, as well as noting the many places where Lewis
mis-translated Verne. If Lewis was not writing that the density
of steel was "from .7 to .8 that of water" where Verne had said
that it was "7.8 that of water," then he was having Nemo talk
about "jumping over" an island where Verne says "blowing up" (the
same word in French, but Lewis completely misses the meaning).
In fact, Lewis consistently gets the numbers and calculations
wrong. He frequently confuses the French "six" (6) with "dix"
(10), and substitutes English measures for metric. The latter
would be almost close if he substituted "yards" for "metres," but
he sometimes substitutes "feet" instead! When you read this
book, use either Miller's annotated version or a newer
translation. (If the fourth paragraph mentions Cuvier and other
naturalists, it is undoubtedly a newer translation.) Verne has
both a lot more technical detail and a lot more politics and
philosophy than Lewis included.
To order Twenty Thounsad Leagues Under the Sea from amazon.com, click here.
THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
by Gore Vidal (Random House, ISBN
0-375-50121-5, 1998, 260pp, ):
Just as with Vidal's earlier Live from Golgotha, I will be
nominating this for a Hugo. Which is to say that, just as with
Live from Golgotha, I will be throwing away a vote, because the
chances of enough nominating fans 1) reading The Smithsonian
Institution, and 2) considering it as eligible for the Hugo, is
vanishingly small. But hope springs eternal, they say, ...
Just to clear one thing up: The Smithsonian Institution is
definitely science fiction. There is time travel, there is
alternate history, there is cloning (of a sort), and there is
transplantation of personality into, well, robots (for lack of a
better term). There is also sex, hence the rather outre cover
which is supposed to parody the typical romance novel cover rather
than seriously place this in that genre (though I think reversing
the two figures would have been even better). One does have the
feeling that the artist at least read the book, though.
T. is a thirteen-year-old student at St. Albans when he is summoned
to the Smithsonian on April 7, 1939. War clouds are gathering, and
he apparently is the one person who can save the world. But first
he must meet the inhabitants of the Smithsonian, including all the
Presidents and First Ladies as well as various anthropological
representatives, all of whom come to life after hours a la the
Twilight Zone episode. While he can't convince anyone to use his
bomb that will destroy buildings but not people (politicos and the
military prefer things the other way around), he also has some
ideas for how to get the world out of its current crisis, which he
foresees as leading to total nuclear war.
It isn't giving anything away to say that T. does change
history, but that things don't turn out exactly as planned. Vidal
does a lot of hand-waving about the various time paradoxes
involved, but no more than many other authors. He also spends a
fair amount of time having the various Presidents give their views
on the world situation, what got them into it, and what they should
do about it. As an observer of American historical thought, Vidal
shows us the differences in philosophy among the Presidents: the
isolationists, the expansionists, and so on. Decisions are not
made in a vacuum in this book, but as the result of argument and
discussion among the various philosophies. (One is reminded of the
musical "1776.") Another reviewer has said that Vidal's work is
"all style, no substance, and a pretty boring read," contains a
"long droning narrative on the essence of time," and postulates an
unlikely alternate history. Let me respond to this.
So?
I find the concepts of "all style" and "pretty boring" a bit
contradictory, but in matters of taste there can be no argument, as
they say, so let me just say that if you haven't liked Vidal in the
past you're unlikely to like him here. He concentrates as much on
how he says something as on what he says. This certainly sets
his work apart from much of the alternate history which is being
written today. This is probably the crux of the dispute here, in
fact. If you want to read this strictly as an alternate history
novel, well, yes, you might say there is not enough of what happens
to change this or cause that. But I tend to dislike that sort of
novel, often full of detailed descriptions of battles, but with
nothing of either characterization or literary style. I love to
wallow in Vidal's excesses of style!
I also found Vidal's narrative on the essence of time not boring at
all, but an interesting explication, if not completely
scientifically rigorous. (It was at least as sensible as Kage
Baker's in The Garden of Iden.) And as for the fact that "a lot of
it is the kid talking with dummies," as I said, I found the main
character's discussions with the ex-Presidents, and the discussions
among the ex-Presidents and other characters to be one of the
book's strong points. If you'd rather think of it as having
somehow downloaded their personalities into androids, maybe that
will help. It's an artificial set-up, true, but no more so than
finding God's corpse in James Morrow's Towing Jehovah or having
Dr. Frankenstein's creation as a baseball player in Michael Bishop's
Brittle Innings. I don't demand hyperrealism of my alternate
histories. (The last person to do that well was Robert Sobel.)
What I look for is an alternate history that tries to say something
about us. At Intersection in 1995, Harry Turtledove said that
alternate history doesn't have to be believable to be good; there
can be a "gonzo" story that was still good, and that in any case,
we do not write about alternate worlds--we write about our world,
and alternate history gives us a different mirror. I find enough
content in what Vidal is trying to say in The Smithsonian
Institution that I am willing to overlook the question of strict
plausibility.
I highly recommend this book to fans of time travel, alternate
history, or sharp commentary on United States history. [-ecl]
To order The Smithsonian Institution from amazon.com, click here.
"The Cookie Monster"
by Vernor Vinge:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/25/2004]
"The Cookie Monster" by Vernor Vinge is my first choice. However,
the appreciation of it is probably somewhat dependent on
understanding something about computers (it's not surprising this
was an "Analog" story). Still, Vinge's idea of a possible
direction for technological employment and how he develops it make
this the clear winner for me.
A FIRE UPON THE DEEP
by Vernor Vinge:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/02/2004]
Our science fiction discussion group got tired of reading classics
chosen primarily because the library system had many copies, and
wanted to read a relatively recent book, preferably a Hugo winner.
Because all the libraries in the system seem to "weed" their
collections with a rather heavy hand, there weren't any "in
stock," but the person organizing the reading groups is also the
person in charge of science fiction acquisitions and he said that
he could certainly justify buying half a dozen copies of a
mass-market edition of a Hugo-winning book. (It's about the price
of one hardcover, and certainly cheaper than the audiotape version
of a recent Robert Jordan that the library seems to have
acquired.) And a half a dozen copies would be sufficient--the
group is small and some of us would have the book already anyway.
So we picked Vernor Vinge's A FIRE UPON THE DEEP as being the hard
science fiction that people wanted (as opposed to soft science
fiction like FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON) or fantasy.
The book met with mixed reactions. One person gave up after a
hundred pages because she found Vinge's technique of throwing out
ideas (and words) without explaining them very confusing. Another
person agreed that Vinge did this, and felt it indicated a
disregard for his readers, but he enjoyed as much of the book as
he could read before the meeting and hoped to finish it at some
point in the future. I thought the technique, rather than showing
a *disregard* for the readers, showed that Vinge expected his
readers would be able (and willing) to work to figure out the
details.
One interesting observation made was that Vinge threw a lot of
different ideas into A FIRE UPON THE DEEP: the nature of the
Flensers, the concept of the Slow Zone, the structure of
interstellar trade, and so on. This was like Robert J. Sawyer did
in a previous discussion book, CALCULATING GOD. But one person
said that while in CALCULATING GOD it just seems like a jumble of
ideas thrown together, in A FIRE UPON THE DEEP it appears as a
well-structured tapestry.
The "original" reading group has a policy of choosing books that
are three hundred pages or less. The other groups (mystery and
science fiction) have not adopted this policy, but given that I
was the only one to finish this six-hundred-page book, we will
probably try to stick to something a bit shorter in the future.
Unfortunately, this probably rules out most of the recent Hugo
nominees.
To order A Fire Upon the Deep from amazon.com, click here.
QUANTUM MOON
by Denise Vitola (Ace, ISBN 0-441-00357-5, 1996,
279pp, mass market paperback):
At first, this sounded like a really cobbled-together idea--a
werewolf detective in a future of a world-wide dictatorship (the
United World Government). But strangely enough, it works.
Ty Merrick is a detective in a rather run-down future, or at least
run-down for the masses of the people. The rich are. of course,
still rich. The title might make you think this book uses some
high-tech physics concept, but it's really just a reference to a
new drug called quantum. Okay, so that makes this just another
drug-running story, and telling any more of the story is perhaps
unnecessary, but the twist of having the detective be a werewolf,
and a female werewolf at that, gives it just enough of a twist to
make it worth reading. It's not great, but as a first novel it
shows promise.
To order Quantum Moon from amazon.com, click here.
THE SIRENS OF TITAN
by Kurt Vonnegut:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/28/2008]
This month's science fiction discussion book was THE SIRENS OF
TITAN by Kurt Vonnegut (ISBN-13 978-0-385-33349-8, ISBN-10
0-385-33349-8). The point of the book is the pointlessness of
human existence, and so far as I can tell, Vonnegut tried to
demonstrate this with the book. Very little seems to happen, and
one doesn't get very involved with the characters either.
And it is good that Vonnegut is not an author who attempts to
predict the future: "According to figures released by the Bureau
of Internal Revenue, Fern was the highest-paid executive in the
country. He had a salary of a flat million dollars a year--plus
stock-option plans and cost-of-living adjustments." Magnetically
suspended furniture, rocket travel, etc., yet executives make
less than a million dollars a year. Oh, if only it were so.
To order The Sirens of Titan from amazon.com, click here.
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