All reviews copyright 1984-2008 Evelyn C. Leeper.
EMPIRE OF THE ANTS by Bernard Werber (translated by Margaret Rocques) (Bantam, ISBN 0-553-09613-3, 1998 (1991), 256pp, hardback):
Almost everyone who describes this says it's like Watership Down, except with ants instead of rabbits. Yes, it starts out that way (though with far more central and developed human characters as well), but it goes somewhere that Watership Down doesn't.
In the near future, Jonathan Edwards inherits his uncle's apartment, with the instruction, "Above all, never go down into the cellar." It doesn't take a rocket scientist (or even an entomologist) to figure out that going down into the basement is precisely what the human characters will do.
The book's strength is in its depiction of an alien lifeform: ants. One can argue that Werber's ants have more consciousness and intelligence that is possible given their brain mass, but then the same could be said of the rabbits in Watership Down. If one is willing to suspend disbelief, the mental processes and motivations of the various ants--and there are several different varieties--are fascinating. Werber apparently spent years researching ants, and it has paid off in his description of ant life. He has the external appearance (actions, etc.) of the ant colonies down pat. His extrapolation of the motivations is, as I have said, unlikely, but as a theory they have the advantage of fitting and explaining all the facts.
The human characters are not as interesting or believable. Like the characters in so many horror movies, they are all attracted by the forbidden cellar, and head down there, with very few precautions or even (apparently) concerns.
This was a best-seller in Europe, and while it almost definitely won't achieve that status here, it is worth reading if you are interested in reading works from an alien point of view.
To order Empire of the Ants from amazon.com, click here.
ANARCHAOS by Donald Westlake:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/16/2005]
Donald Westlake is known primarily as a crime writer, tending toward the farcical. He has also written a series of humorous science fiction stories, published in "Playboy" and available at http://www.donaldwestlake.com/wks_ss6_intro.html. (I reviewed these in the 01/16/04 issue of the MT VOID.) However, ANARCHAOS (ISBN 0-7278-6096-8) is anything but humorous. (It was actually written in 1967, under the pseudonym Curt Clark.) Rolf Malone, the protagonist of the novel (one hesitates to call him a hero), goes to a planet to find out what happened to his brother. This eponymous planet is politically an anarchy, and driven in large part by corporate greed. Malone begins his stay there by murdering the taxi driver he hires and stealing his taxi. This behavior is perfectly legal (or at least not illegal). This novel is political science fiction, and somewhat more realistic than a lot of that genre, though I am still not convinced that such a total anarchy would survive. Then again, I suspect it is not all that different from the West before the Army and the lawmen moved in.
To order Anarchaos from amazon.com, click here.
"Starship Hopeful" stories by Donald Westlake:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/16/2004]
I also read Donald Westlake's science fiction, five short stories published in "Playboy" between 1981 and 1988. These are about the voyages of the Starship Hopeful, which sets out in 11,406 after the Master Imperial Computer discovered that 500 years earlier, a clerical error had erased from the computer's memory more than 1000 colonies. Its mission is to find these lost colonies. Each one has apparently become an exaggeration of its initial settlers, so one is given over to gamblers, another to an acting company, and so on.
These stories are available at http://www.donaldwestlake.com/wks_ss6_intro.html
BORN TO KVETCH by Michael Wex:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/27/2006]
BORN TO KVETCH by Michael Wex (ISBN 0-312-30741-1), a book about the Yiddish language, turned out to be too academic for me, with (for example) a lot of time spent tracing the origin of the term "bove-mayse/bube-mayse". But there is no index, which means if you want to go back and look this up, there's no good way to do it! Probably I would have enjoyed this more if I knew more than a "bissel yiddish."
To order Born to Kvetch from amazon.com, click here.
THE SWEET AND SOUR TONGUE by Leslie What:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/17/2004]
Leslie What's THE SWEET AND SOUR TONGUE (ISBN 1-58715-158-8) is a
collection of fourteen stories, one original and the rest
reprinted from sources ranging from well-known magazines to hard-
to-find anthologies. All are Jewish fantasy, either in the sense
of being based in Jewish legend and theology (such as "Those Who
Know") or because the main characters are Jewish (such as "The Man
I Loved Was an Elf"). Even in the latter, though, the Jewishness
is a major part of the story. Obviously, this limits the market
somewhat, but that is probably why it was published by Wildside
Press instead of (say) Tor Books. For those unfamiliar with
Wildside Press, it is a small print-on-demand press. It is *not*
a "subsidy publisher" or "vanity press". Its books are of
professional quality, both in content and in physical production.
My only objection is that the charming cover art is uncredited. I
recommend this collection to people with an interest in Jewish
fantasy. (Leslie What also has a story in the current issue of
"Strange Horizons" at
To order The Sweet and Sour Tongue from amazon.com, click here.
ARCANUM
by Thomas Wheeler:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/07/2005]
ARCANUM by Thomas Wheeler (ISBN 0-553-38199-7) is a mystery where the sleuths are Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle, H. P. Lovecraft, Marie Laveau (the Second),
and Harry Houdini. This is a bit of overkill, especially when
Wheeler adds William Randolph Hearst into the mix. Also,
Wheeler's research could have been better. The story is set in
1919, yet one character "poured himself a generous Jim Beam."
While the bourbon was around then, it was still called something
like "Old Jake Beam's Sour Mash"--it did not adopt the name "Jim
Beam" until the 1940s. Lovecraft is supposedly living at 1414
Delancey Street--there is no such number. Tarrytown is described
as "only forty minutes outside Manhattan." The actual trip the
characters make is from Bellevue at 29th Street, which would be
about twenty-eight miles--forty minutes today maybe (without
traffic), but not in 1919 by horse-drawn carriage. And, in a
minor slip, Doyle sets fire to a spider's web--which I believe
are not flammable. The language also has some jarring words
(e.g. a reference to a "meet-and-greet") that shatters the period
feel.
To order Arcanum from amazon.com, click here.
THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING
by T. H. White:
Continuing with recommendations from James Cawthorn and Michael
Moorcock's FANTASY--THE 100 BEST BOOKS, I read T. H. White's THE
ONCE AND FUTURE KING. I will readily admit that I didn't look up
every unfamiliar word, or it would have taken me weeks to get
through it. For starters, I would have had to use the Oxford
English Dictionary--the standard desk dictionary simply doesn't
have all the specialized terms needed to describe British royal
hunts during the Middle Ages. (Here's a list of words on just
page 142: chine, singulars [of boars], skulks [of foxes],
richesses [of martens], bevies [of roes], cetes [of badgers],
routs [of wolves], os, argos, croteys, fewmets, and fiants. A few
pages later we get huske, menee, alaunts, gaze-hounds, lymers,
braches, austringer, and lesses. Some of these are not in the OED
either.) (Hint: surely someone could do an annotated ONCE AND
FUTURE KING. Then again, I'm still waiting for the annotated "A
Dozen Tough Jobs" by Howard Waldrop.)
Most people are familiar with the Arthur story as told by White,
even if they've never read THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING (or even the
first section, THE SWORD IN THE STONE). White, for example, was
the author who came up with the idea of Merlyn living backwards.
And White also goes directly from Arthur pulling the sword from
the stone at the end of Book 1 to King Arthur waving Excalibur
around at the beginning of Book 2, which has probably served to
reinforce most people's belief that the two were actually the
same.
What most people seem not to be familiar with is White's anti-war
stance. This is no doubt due in large part to the British
experience in World War I, and the gathering clouds of World War
II. Arthur's experiences in the animal kingdom are such that he
comes to respect the most the animals that are the least
aggressive and warlike. And his joy in battles (where of course
he has been victorious) is tempered by Merlyn's reminder than
while the knights in their armor all survived with little more
than bruises, the peasants who fought for them died in great
numbers. These days, were White an American, he would probably
end up labeled a traitor for expressing these opinions. Yet he
was by no means a complete pacifist--Merlyn is very specific that
defensive war is justified and even necessary, but war is never
glorious. In fact, a check around the web shows White labeled an
anti-Fascist rather than a pacifist, and in addition to his
description of life among the ants emphasizing the fascism as much
as the warlike aspects, he has Merlyn explicitly commenting on
Hitler as well as on the Boer War, and then at the end a
description of Mordred's goings-on that are clearly a parallel
with the Nazis.
White also skips over a lot of the "canonical" Arthurian story,
often saying (in effect), "Well, if you want to know about thus-
and-so, read Malory, because he describes it better than I would."
So in some sense he assumes a previous knowledge of the story.
However, while I have some familiarity with the story, I am not an
Arthurian scholar, and I still had no problem following what was
going on.
THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING consists of four books, written over a
twenty-year period. A fifth book, THE BOOK OF MERLYN, is
supposedly even more anti-war, but I decided to stop (for now)
with these.
To order The Once and Future King from amazon.com, click here.
WISE MEN AND THEIR TALES
by Elie Wiesel:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/17/2005]
Elie Wiesel's WISE MEN AND THEIR TALES (ISBN 0-8052-4173-6) also
has a thread of cynicism, or at least a way of looking at the
"heroes" of the Bible and finding them less than perfect. For
that matter, God does not get off scot-free either. For example,
in the story of Sodom, Wiesel concludes that everyone--Abraham,
Lot, Lot's wife, and even God--do wrong. Only Lot's two
daughters appear to be blameless. And why do we revere Sarah
when she treated Hagar and Ishmael so badly? Why does Aaron get
a pass even though he built the Golden Calf when so many others
were killed? Wiesel searches the Torah, the Talmud, and other
midrashic sources in an attempt to explain these and many more
cases. Or rather, he attempts to tell us how the rabbis and
scholars explained them. He points out, though, that sometimes
these explanations seem to be have made up just to justify what
the Torah said, and there is no basis for them. And he doesn't
always accept them as sufficient justification. You'll have to
make your own decisions.
To order Wise Men and Their Tales from amazon.com, click here.
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
by Oscar Wilde:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/28/2005]
This month's book for our library discussion group was Oscar
Wilde's THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY (ISBN 0-486-27807-7). (I'll
add that this is the general group, not the science fiction one,
since it could be either.) One observation I (and others) had
was this seemed to be over-stuffed with aphorisms and epigraphs
(even to the extent of duplicating some from other Wilde works).
Someone also asked how Alan Campbell got rid of Hallward's body.
The "smell of nitric acid" gave the answer, which led us to a
discussion of disposing of bodies. One of the earliest stories
along these lines was Melville D, Post's "The Corpus Delecti",
written in 1896. In that, the murderer uses sulphuric acid to
destroy the evidence of his crime, and the judge is compelled to
acquit him because at the time, the law required either a body or
an eye-witness. This is the most famous of Post's "Randolph
Mason" stories--Mason is an unscrupulous lawyer who uses such
technicalities to get his guilty clients acquitted. According to
the jacket copy on the 1973 Oswald Train edition of the
collection THE STRANGE SCHEMES OF RANDOLPH MASON, it made such an
impression that the laws in many states were changed to prevent
just such a miscarriage of justice. (The Train edition has no
ISBN; a later one has ISBN 0-899-68200-6.)
To order The Picture of Dorian Gray from amazon.com, click here.
To order The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason from amazon.com, click here.
THE LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE
by Laura Ingalls Wilder:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/23/2003]
Last week our library book discussion group did Laura Ingalls
Wilder's THE LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE. I never read this while
I was growing up, and I suppose it's difficult to judge it as a
children's book when I'm first reading it now, but it seemed as
though it was full of all the virtues of its time (1930s, when it
was written) but not of today. Children were supposedly to always
obey their parents and not even *think* about disobeying (even
though one can clearly construct a scenario when releasing the dog
*would* have been the right thing to do), and never disturb their
parents when they are busy, and so on. This does not even address
the rather negative portrayal of the Indians (even though this is
not absolutely universal), but I will note that there is a very
positive black character, the doctor, and this was probably fairly
unusual at that time. On the other hand, children might find the
descriptions of how one builds a house or makes a chair
interesting, and I suppose that if a child today didn't find the
children in the book too "goody two-shoes", he (or more likely
she) might enjoy the book.
To order The Little House of the Prairie from amazon.com, click here.
CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF
by Tennessee Williams:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/16/2004]
Tennessee Williams's CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF is another work where
the sexual content is more explicit on the printed page. Though
for this work, stage performances would also maintain this. It's
only the classic film with Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, and Burl
Ives that turns the explicit discussion of homosexuality into
veiled references. Such was Hollywood in 1958. On the other
hand, plays are meant to be seen rather than read, so read the
play but see the movie. (I haven't seen the newer version with
Jessica Lange and Treat Williams.)
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/26/2008]
Anyone who has seen the movie CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF with Elizabeth
Taylor and Paul Newman should read the original play by Tennessee
Williams (ISBN-13 978-0-811-21601-2, ISBN-10 0-811-21601-2) to get
some idea of how restricted filmmakers were in 1958. Among other
things, one could see the entire movie without understanding why
Scooter committed suicide. On the other hand, we recently watched
AIRPLANE!, a movie that got a PG rating in 1980, and would probably
get an R rating now!
To order Cat on a Hot Tin Roof from amazon.com, click here.
NIGHT OF THE IGUANA
by Tennessee Williams:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/11/2003]
Our recent trip went through some of the South that I associate
with Tennessee Williams--like Tennessee (although I suspect he
wrote more about New Orleans, which we didn't get to). So I
decided to read some of his better-known plays.
Now, "Suddenly Last Summer" is probably his most genre-related
play, but I hadn't picked up a copy of that at the various book
sales this year. And while his first published story was
published in "Weird Tales", I didn't have that either. What I did
have were "Night of the Iguana", "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", "A
Streetcar Named Desire", and "The Fugitive Kind". Of course, so
far I've managed only one, but I will get to others eventually.
At LoneStarCon II (Worldcon 1998), there was a panel titled "It's
All SF: Science Fiction/Southern Fiction" whose description ran:
"Why are so many Southern writers drawn to SF and fantasy? Are
there distinctly Southern themes that appear in their works? What
is the tradition of Southern SF that they draw upon (Wellman,
Wagner, Leinster, etc.)? In what ways are SF and Southern
literature not only compatible but natural allies?" Southern
fiction was considered to be based on a set of tropes including
the legacy of the Civil War, segregation, integration, civil
rights, family, history, land, climate, and eccentricity. And the
latter was considered to be best shown in Southern Gothic--Edgar
Allan Poe, William Faulkner, and Tennessee Williams.
One person quoted Eudora Welty as saying that she heard family
stories as a child which she didn't understand, but she knew there
was passion, importance, and power in them. And when Faulkner won
the Nobel Prize in 1950, he said, "The only subject matter worth
the agony of creation is the human heart in conflict with
itself." These certainly apply to Williams. And someone said
that the South had a commonality in "Gothic and guilt," a phrase
that certainly covers Williams's work.
"Night of the Iguana", for example, is set in a sleazy Mexican
hotel run by a woman of (seemingly) low character. But she has
hidden depths that become apparent as a priest with a weakness for
young women brings his busload of tourists to the hotel just as
everything in his life is completely falling apart. Also there is
an old man with his spinster granddaughter, who provides aid and
comfort in a way that Faulkner could appreciate.
To order Night of the Iguana from amazon.com, click here.
"The Green Leopard Plague"
by Walter Jon Williams:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/25/2004]
And I have to admit that I found "The Green Leopard Plague" by
Walter Jon Williams unreadable. By this I don't mean it was in
some strange stylistic mode, but that I couldn't manage to get
into the story enough to keep reading.
WHO WAS THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK? AND OTHER HISTORICAL MYSTERIES
by Hugh Ross Williamson:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/14/2008]
WHO WAS THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK? AND OTHER HISTORICAL MYSTERIES
by Hugh Ross Williamson (ISBN-13 978-0-141-39097-0, ISBN-10
0-141-39097-2) also begins with a somewhat anti-rational notion:
that we can never really know history. At least Williamson does
not go as far as some, and claim that there is no such thing as
true history; he merely says we can never know everything that
really happened, or understand it. This is particularly true of
history according to the "Great Man" theory, he notes--since that
theory assumes events are shaped by extraordinary individuals,
there are no generalizations that one can make (e.g., "a decrease
in the real value of money will bring about a revolution").
It is worth noting that the historical mysteries that Williamson
discusses are almost all British, and often fairly obscure, at
least to Americans. If you don't know who Perkin Warbeck
purportedly was, his actual identity will be less than
fascinating. And at least one--who murdered the Princes in the
Tower?--has been discussed in great length elsewhere, not least
of which is Josephine Tey's novel, THE DAUGHTER OF TIME.
To order Who Was the Man in the Iron Mask? from amazon.com, click here.
"All Seated on the Ground"
by Connie Willis:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/11/2008]
"All Seated on the Ground" by Connie Willis (ASIMOV'S Dec) is yet
another sentimental Christmas story from Willis. This one
appeals to me even less than the earlier ones--the notion that a
single line from a Christmas carol is the key to inter-species
communication leaves me cold. (Surely one can find similar lines
in popular songs--why not those?)
To order All Seated on the Ground from amazon.com, click here.
BELLWETHER
by Connie Willis
(Bantam Spectra,
ISBN 0-553-56296-7, 1996, 256pp, mass market paperback):
Though Willis has been saying at conventions that her next book
would be a time travel story set in the late 19th century, this is
not that book. Rather, this is a story set in the present, with
statistician Sandra Foster researching fads. As part of this
Willis, starts each chapter with the description of a fad of the
past: hula hoops, the jitterbug, diorama wigs, etc.
I say that this is the present for two reasons First, there is the
statement that it's Monday, October the second--which makes it
either 1995 or 2000. Second, the fads described as being current
(Power Rangers, the Lion King, and angels) are active now, but
probably will have been supplanted by the year 2000. In fact, this
isn't really a science fiction novel at all, but more in line with
Willis's other "social satires." (Many people have said that her
"In the Late Cretaceous" is not science fiction either.)
One thing that adds to the realism in Bellwether is Willis's
description of how the corporate culture works, even in hi-tech
environments. She ranks with Scott Adams (creator of the "Dilbert"
comic strip) in capturing the insanity of many corporate
philosophies. For example, in a brain-storming session on
objectives for "Guided Resource Intuition Management," one person
lists:
When asked by Foster how she did that so fast, she replies that
those were what she always wrote down. I figure that this list
alone will save me hours at work.
The problem with Bellwether is that while individual parts are
funny and pointed, the whole doesn't seem to go anywhere. Willis
writes very good novellas, and for me this might have been better
at that length. As it is, it seems drawn out--drawn out, mind you,
not padded. (They're not the same thing.) I like the writing, and
I like the humor, and maybe I'm looking for more point than a short
humorous novel is supposed to have. But when I finished Bellwether
I felt vaguely dissatisfied.
To order Bellwether from amazon.com, click here.
FIRE WATCH
by Connie Willis
(Bantam, ISBN 0-553-26045-6, 1998, 336pp, mass market paperback):
The collection, first published in 1985 and long out of print,
contains twelve stories--eleven reprints and one story original to this
volume. The fact that not only is a publisher willing to publish a
single-author collection, but to reprint one that was published thirteen
years ago, is an indication of Willis's stature in the field. Nominated
for 17 Hugo awards and 11 Nebula awards, and the winner of six Hugos (for
Doomsday Book, "Fire Watch," "The Last of the Winnebagos," "Even the
Queen," "Death on the Nile," and "The Soul Selects Her Own Society ...")
and six Nebulas (Doomsday Book, "Fire Watch," "A Letter From the Clearys,"
"The Last of the Winnebagos," "At the Rialto," and "Even the Queen"),
Willis has opportunities other authors just dream of.
The Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning "Fire Watch" is the story of one
history student's time travel project to the London Blitz. Well-deserving
of its awards, it is doubtless the best story in the book, and in many
ways a precursor to Willis's Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the
Dog.
But other stories are worthy of note also. "Lost and Found" and "Daisy,
in the Sun" are both strange apocalyptic tales, though in very different
ways. "All My Darling Daughters" (the one new story) is a bizarre little
piece--it's easy to see why this had difficulty finding a market, but it
has become a classic. "The Sidon in the Mirror" was also nominated for a
Hugo and a Nebula and its alien feel is an interesting juxtaposition to
the "just plain folks" feel of most of Willis's other works. There is, of
course, some fluff of the sort Willis has become known for: "The Father of
the Bride," "And Come from Miles Around," "Mail-Order Clone," and "Blued
Moon." The last, in particular, is highly recommended; it has some of the
funniest scenes I've seen in print, and did garner a Hugo nomination.
"Samaritan" covers some fairly old ground, though the characters do hold
the reader's interest through it. I thought, though, that "Service for
the Burial of the Dead" and "A Letter from the Clearys" were just average.
In 1985, I said that the $14.95 the trade paperback would cost seemed
a bit steep and people might want to wait for a paperback edition. Since
the paperback edition was thirteen years in coming, this was probably bad
advice, even if it is somewhat cheaper now. Willis's more recent works
can be found in the 1994 collection Impossible Things, also from Bantam
and even still in print (ISBN 0-553-56436-6). The eleven stories
in it share seven Hugo nominations (with two wins) and five Nebula
nominations (with three wins). At the time it came out, the re-issue of
Fire Watch was promised, but that took four years.
To order Fire Watch from amazon.com, click here.
To order Impossible Things from amazon.com, click here.
INSIDE JOB
by Connie Willis:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/03/2006]
INSIDE JOB by Connie Willis (ISBN 1-59606-024-7) is described on
the jacket as being "a tale of spiritualists, seances, skeptics,
and a love that just might be able to rise above it all." This
makes it sound like a love story. It isn't. And while Connie
Willis is arguably "the master of the science fiction novella,"
this is not one of the best examples of that. It has what I
consider a major underlying flaw, which I cannot describe without
spoiling the story. (Email me if you really want to know.)
Subterranean Press has done a very nice job with this book, with
cream-colored pages and dark blue (rather than black) print. Of
course, at $35 for a hundred-page hardcover, they should. (I
hope it's acid-free paper!) If, like me, you can check this out
of your library, then I can recommend it. (All praises to my
public library in Old Bridge, New Jersey, for getting books like
this rather than just the major releases of the big publishers.)
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/12/2006]
I already reviewed INSIDE JOB by Connie Willis (ISBN
1-596-06024-7; also ASIMOV'S Jan 2005) in the 03/03/06 issue of
the MT VOID. I did, however, fail to note that it had been
published in ASIMOV'S as well as by a small press in a limited
edition. And now it is available on-line (at least temporarily to
Hugo voters), as are all the other short fiction nominees.
To order Inside Job from amazon.com, click here.
"Just Like the Ones We Used to Know"
by Connie Willis:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/25/2004]
"Just Like the Ones We Used to Know" by Connie Willis is yet
another of Willis's Christmas fantasies, this time about what I'm
sure someone has called "the perfect storm." This one had a bit
more science fiction and a bit less overt religiosity, so I
enjoyed it more than some of her earlier ones. I have nothing
against religious content, per se, and Willis is certainly
entitled to include it if she wants. But since I don't share her
religious background, it is often hard for me to get into the
story in the way that I think she expects her readers to. So
maybe with a lot of her works, as with Madeleine L'Engle's A
WRINKLE IN TIME (which I discussed a while ago), I am just not the
target audience. In any case, there is starting to be a certain
repetitiveness to them, but I'll give this one a nod.
PATRIOTIC GORE
by Edmund Wilson:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/23/2004]
Edmund Wilson's PATRIOTIC GORE (ISBN 0-393-31256-9) is an
overview of American writing connected to the Civil War--fiction,
non-fiction, and poetry; before, during, and after the War. Given
that it has 816 pages, I cannot even list all the authors covered,
so I will just mention a couple of interesting points.
One is a discussion by Confederate Vice-President Alexander H.
Stephens of some of the actions taken by Lincoln during the War
Stephens, in his "A Constitutional View of the Late War Between
the States; Its Causes, Character, Conduct and Results Presented
in a Series of Colloquies at Liberty Hall", quotes Supreme Court
Justice Benjamin R. Curtis (of Boston) as having said, "No citizen
can be insensible to the vast importance of the late proclamation
and orders of the President of the United States.... It has been
attempted by some partisan journalists to raise the cry of
'disloyalty' against anyone who should question these Executive
acts. But the people of the United States know that loyalty is
not subserviency to a man, or to a Party, or to the opinions of
newspapers; but that it is an honest and wise devotion to the
safety and welfare of our country, and to the great principles
which our Constitution of Government embodies, by which alone that
safety and welfare can be secured. And when those principles are
put in jeopardy, every true loyal man must interpose according to
his ability, or be an unfaithful citizen. This is not a
government of men. It is a Government of laws. ... The second
Proclamation, and the Orders of the Secretary of War, which follow
it, place every citizen of the United States under the direct
military command and control of the President. They subject all
citizens to be imprisoned upon a military order, at the pleasure
of the President, when, where, and so long as he, or whoever is
acting for him, may choose. They hold the citizen to trial before
a Military Commission appointed by the President, or his
representative, for such acts or omissions as the President may
think proper to decree to the offences; and they subject him to
such punishment as such Military Commission may be pleased to
inflict." (page 417) This still (again?) seems pertinent today.
Another was George Washington Cable's analysis (in his book "The
Negro Question") of why the North, having fought to free the
slaves, was so willing in the last part of the 19th century to let
their condition in the South be reduced almost back to that level,
and why the South, having made such a fuss about states' rights
before and during the War, was so willing to rejoin the Union and
cede many of those rights. Cable's answer is that the North was
really fighting for Union, and that freeing the slaves was merely
an excuse--they didn't care about the condition of the Negroes (to
use Wilson's term). And the South was really fighting for
slavery, and states' rights was merely an excuse. Whether this is
actually true I don't know, but it certainly explains a lot of
otherwise odd behavior. (Note: The vast majority of the Acts of
Secession passed by the Southern states did in fact mention
slavery as one of the reasons for their secession.)
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STILL WEIRD
by Gahan Wilson:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/03/2003]
I finished Gahan Wilson's STILL WEIRD, a collection of his
macabre cartoons. There's no one like him. Perhaps the fact
that he was born dead and is a descendent of P. T. Barnum
(*and* Willing Jennings Bryan) has something to do with it. The
only artist even close to his style is Edward Gorey, and Gorey is
far more formal and restrained.
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THE HISTORIAN AS DETECTIVE
by Robin W. Winks:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/28/2003]
I recommend to everyone the article "A Medley of Mysteries: A
Number of Dogs That Didn't Bark" by Jacques Barzun and Henry
F. Graff (from "The Modern Researcher"), reprinted in THE HISTORIAN
AS DETECTIVE (edited by Robin W. Winks). Its discussion of how to
judge the truth of what one reads, and how to investigate
statements further, is one that people could benefit from. It
would prevent believing in spurious speeches purported to be from
"Julius Caesar" that don't even scan like Shakespeare. Or that
Seabiscuit got more press coverage than either Roosevelt or
Hitler. Or that a billion people watched the Oscars one year. Or
that Senator Tom Daschle doesn't know which hand to put over his
heart to salute the flag. These are all claims we have seen in
recent months.
Or consider the following story recounted in an article about Hal
Clement in the Readercon Program Book: Clement was a bombardier
during World War II. The article says that at the Heidelberg
World Science Fiction Convention, someone asked him if he had ever
been to Heidelberg before. Clement supposedly responded, "No, but
I've been within a few miles of here" (meaning up above the city
in a B-24). The main problem with this story, according to
Clement, is that he wasn't *at* the Heidelberg Worldcon, as a
check of the membership list would show.
I also referred last week to an essay that said (in passing) that
Sabbatai Zevi and his followers feared the end of the world in
A. D. 1000. As I noted, this is wrong on three counts: 1) Zevi
lived in the 17th century. 2) He and his followers were Jewish
and didn't care about A. D. 1000. 3) Pretty much no one else
cared about A. D. 1000 either; the notion that there was any sort
of widespread belief that it signaled the end of the world first
surfaced about six hundred years later.
Barzun and Graff also recommend a perpetual calendar, which will
tell you that a statement that talks about "Saturday night,
December 31, 1959," is just flat-out wrong. (Luckily, I have Mark
for this--he can do this sort of calculation in his head and tell
me when fake newspaper dates in movies get it wrong as well.)
Barzun and Graff state at one point, "No interesting or important
question, though, can be settled without detailed knowledge, solid
judgment, lively imagination, and the ability to think straight."
And as Hal Clement said in his Guest of honor interview at
Readercon, a lot of his stories came because, as he put it, "I had
already developed the notion that whenever I heard the words 'of
course', I should immediately be suspicious."
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THE STRANGE SCHEMES OF RANDOLPH MASON
by Melville D. Post:
Go to Evelyn Leeper's home page.