Category: Book Reviews

Insightful book reviews by our staff

McGuffin Magic

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I’ve been reading Andy Weir’s book “Project Hail Mary” and I’ll finish it soon and put out my review (which will be quite favorable).  But while working my way through it I was impressed by how the improbability of some of the “science” in a story doesn’t spoil the enjoyment garnered by its use.  After all, the premise of the story requires that Earth send an interstellar mission twelve light years away in order to move the story forward.  So, the “MacGuffin” has to be accepted to go forward with the story.  But what’s the formula for inventing an acceptable MacGuffin?

I suppose there are several methods.  The simplest is don’t explain anything.  Figure out a way for the main character to be unaware of any of the “technical” details for the MacGuffin.  Maybe he’s a completely non-technical individual; a grade school dropout or a literal caveman.  Or the technology is owned by an alien race that we can’t interrogate.

A more common way is to build up some technology based on a breakthrough in physics and other sciences.  And because it’s fictitious the main requirements and advantages of the explanation would be that it’s self-consistent and allows some very convenient short cuts in the plot.  This is the avenue Weir goes down.  His MacGuffin is both the problem and the solution to the problem.  He has built up a scenario that creates an existential catastrophe but also provides a mechanism for solving the problem and also turning the danger into a potential boon.

And that’s what’s extremely clever about this plot he’s invented.  It mimics the idea of the double-edged sword that some new discovery can be, for example, nuclear energy.  That was something that both threatened human extinction and promised the solution to the energy crisis.

As much as the mechanism Weir invents for his MacGuffin is intensely improbable, still, once accepted as fact, the rest of the story follows logically and satisfyingly from this premise.  He has this new “fact” introduced into the world and then spins that world around on it until he gets the wild ride that ensues.

So now he has interstellar travel at a respectable fraction of the speed of light, a reasonable excuse for an intelligent alien first encounter and throws that together with a likable protagonist who is swept along against his will by this cosmic catastrophe.  What’s not to like?

But what I realize is that I’m going to have to up my game when I write my sequel.  I’ve never fleshed out the rationale behind how Connors’ mining drone is able to do what it does.  I just sort of waved my hands around and said “abracadabra!”  Weir is careful to count up the zeros when he describes the amount of energy that his “astrophage” is able to store and discharge as the basis of his star drive.  Sure, attributing a neutrino-based energy storage system to a one-celled animal living in the hard vacuum of space in the vicinity of a star is pure nonsense.  But he does acknowledge the magnitude of the nonsense.  And that does make it fun.

29MAY2026 – OCF Update – This’N’That

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So, I’m a week in on the Kindle Unlimited program and I’ve got about a thousand pages sold.  Now that’s like five books worth.  Which is not much but the curve has been increasing for the last five days so I’ll keep an eye on this for a few weeks to see if it goes anywhere.  If any of you guys currently uses Kindle Unlimited explain how it works.  Do you read it on the website one page at a time or how does it work?  It seems kind of clunky to me.

So, Camera Girl and I went to the Dunwich Spring Middle School Concert which includes both band and chorus sections at both the upper and lower levels.  This is a remarkable experience because the range of accomplishment varies from fairly good to nonexistent.  But realizing that the teacher has managed to get these children to even organize into an orchestra is almost inconceivable.  The choral songs aren’t mostly to my taste.  They tend to try to introduce a foreign language song that doesn’t translate to an American audience.  One exception was Wimoweh (The Lion Sleeps Tonight).  The Tokens version is a favorite of mine so I was excited.  But something went wrong with the arrangement.  As is typical in these school choruses the ratio of girls to boys is seven to one.  So, the deeper voices are always practically missing in the song.  But Wimoweh famously has a towering falsetto section and of course all those girls should have been able to translate it into a powerful soprano part.  But instead, they had the three boys with their barely audible tenor voices whispering through this part.  Oh, the pain.

But the highlight of the evening was the band giving their rendition of the theme to “Jurassic Park.”  And the kids did a serviceable job of John Williams’ Fanfare for the Common Dinosaur.  But the funniest thing was a kid sitting behind me.  He must have been three years old and he started exclaiming loudly, “Giraffic Park, Giraffic Park!!!” at the top of his lungs and all the parents in the front rows started laughing.  But the Conductor/Music Teacher never missed a beat and her band performed the miracle of producing a recognizable version of the popular melody.

I’ve started reading “Project Hail Mary.”  My oldest grandson has loaned me his copy and I’m treating it with kid gloves since I remember what it was like when I had a mint hardback copy of an sf favorite.  I’m a hundred pages in and it’s interesting.  It’s definitely a millennial book.  There’s a difference in the voice.  It’s a kindler, gentler voice.  There’s much more emotion.  Now the protagonist is a Middle School teacher so you can say this is just the consequence of this particular character.  But the choice of the character is part of this younger generation of readers and writers.  Well, the book is good so far.  It’s inventive and well-paced and has an interesting manner of unfolding the story.  It starts in the middle and flashes back to the beginning but one flash at a time.  Weir has come up with an interesting twist on an interstellar drive.  It dovetails with the crisis that is forcing the need for a trip to Tau Ceti.  Now I don’t think it’s a particularly plausible mechanism but it is entertaining for sure.

Well, that’s enough.

Relevant Science Fiction – Part 1

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In the 1960’s and ‘70’s the science fiction that seemed to be the most interesting was as much about inner space as outer space.  And even space stories like “Dune” were as much about human social interaction as they were about technology.  Altered consciousness and new social norms in stories like “Stranger in a Strange Land” were what was in the air.  As a kid and young man, I was more interested in science (meaning star ships and time travel!) but now that I’m old and disillusioned by how messed up our government has become, I think the kind of speculative fiction I’m interested in now is social science.

I’ve always made fun of Plato’s Republic because listening to him construct straw men and then knock them over with arguments that don’t hold water seemed beyond ludicrous.  But I think we’re somewhat back to where the Greeks were sometime around the time of the Peloponnesian War.  We’ve managed to lose social cohesion and the institutions and methods we use for choosing leaders and making laws have completely failed us.  It’s not hard to see that we’re not far away from a crack-up that could do horrendous damage to our economy and the lives of everyday people.

I think it’s probably time for speculative fiction writers to start taking a few swipes at either predicting the future or at least providing cautionary tales about it.  And that’s what I’m thinking of concentrating on in some of the stories I’m outlining right now.  I’m interested in imagining what kinds of new arrangements people can organize to make their lives better.  For instance, when local, state or federal governments start failing to secure the basic requirements of safety from theft and bodily injury for the citizens they supposedly serve, private entities could step in to secure these services.  And once these non-governmental corporations start branching out the current arrangements we’re used to could cease to exist in ad hoc areas of the country without any formal acknowledgement of the change.  This is not that different from what happened in the later Roman Empire.  When Gaul started slipping away to the Franks the authority of the “Caesar” over the “Legions” who were mostly Franks became almost farcical.

So, I need to think a little bit about what kinds of new social and economic arrangements might be interesting and novel in the “world” I’m imagining.  I’ve poked some holes in the American Empire and now I want to see what kinds of new things might grow up inside these holes.  So, I have a locus of power (Connors’ network of enterprises and human assets) and someone running it who thinks on a larger basis than just building up tech monopolies to monetize what’s left of the American people’s legacy capital.  What I want to see is if I can come up with some believable innovations that would lead people to rearrange their allegiances and social and commercial actions in ways that build something new and better than what we’ve been stuck with for the last fifty years.

What I’m trying to decide is whether Connors will try to control several states under his umbrella without outwardly absorbing these political jurisdictions.  After all, voting for the interests of the company you work for is nothing new.  Remember “What’s good for GM is good for America.”  So that’s what I’m working on.  The problem is I’m making it up as I go along.

I, Robot Author

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I was just reading about the second serious scandal concerning AI generated fiction being published by experts in the world of publishing.  In the last scandal Hatchette bought a self-published book because the author managed to attract a very large number of readers on her own.  After they republished the book, it was discovered that there was a lot of very obvious AI generated content in it.

In the present scandal a prestigious contest that accepts fiction from amateurs living in the countries of the British Commonwealth had three of the five winners flagged by readers as being AI generated by a capable software used for this function.

Here’s a sample of the text:

“Wilfred’s rum-shop leaned into the road like a rotten tooth. Inside, boards blackened by smoke and sweat, the air sweet with cane and forgetting. Coins meant for rice or kerosene slid across the counter and came back white rum hot as apology. One drink opened the chest, two turned fear into courage’s cheap cousin, three steadied the hand enough to write the future in invisible ink.”

Okay, what the hell does “white rum hot as apology” mean?  It doesn’t mean anything.  It’s AI slop that it thinks sounds “poetic.”

Now five “Experts” picked this gibberish and declared it worthy of a prestigious award.  Why?  Well, the only thing I notice that both scandals include are woke publishing “experts” selecting the work of minority writers without bothering to see if it’s any good or even written by human beings.

The most hilarious aspect of the latest scandal is that the contest judges refuse to admit that they’ve been made to look like fools and the stories are still up on their site as the winners.

I watched a YouTube video by a young woman who considers herself a seasoned editor and although she agrees that the text is extremely unlikely not to be AI slop she does add the obligatory warning that we should remember that minority writers must not be singled out as more highly suspect just because they always seem to be the ones whose work slips through the editors who are afraid of being called racists if they look too closely at their work and find it’s not very good.

I guess it’s not enough that the publishing world gives precedence to any writer who isn’t a straight white man.  Now they add robots as long as they’re not straight white male robots or at least not working under one of their names.  Well, be that as it may, today I officially began work on the sequel to my book.  I began the outline by writing out a bunch of plot lines to choose between.

Plot Threads

  • Update on Bogey and his life
  • Update on Grace and her boys
  • President Chastain’s crises
    1. Constitutional Convention
    2. Seceding States
    3. Potential Military Insurrection
    4. Personal Problems (health)
    5. Relations with Connors’ Group
  • Connors’ crises
    1. Disaffected Groups with His Organization
    2. Relations with federal and state officials
    3. Connors’ indecision and doubts
    4. Disagreements with Cutter and others
    5. Personal Problems (Grace, Bogey)
  • America’s Crisis of Instability
  • World’s Crisis of Instability
  • Technical Instability

So that’s a lot of stuff.  I’m not sure all of these will be included but it’s always best to start with the kitchen sink and pare it back.  Well, take that Chat GPT.

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 25MAY2026 – Dystopian SF

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My experience with PKD through The Man In The High Castle is similar. It is beautiful prose and a fascinating idea but the sheer unpleasantness of the reading experience is off-putting. This is not to say I totally hate Dystopias. I think one of the most beautiful pieces of Science fiction (let alone Dystopias) is Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle for Liebowitz . With it’s Sarcastic Humor, and it’s crazy story that interweaves (Spoiler to a 60+ year old story the Wandering Jew wanders through all three sections and it MAKES SENSE) all sorts of mythology and Catholic and Christian trivia into a very odd resolution it is very compelling. I reread it, but not too often, it tears at the soul. Both PKD and Walter Miller (who later commits suicide likely due to PTSD from being a B-17 gunner in WWII in the raids on Dresden) were clearly troubled men. They are also very skilled writers. Their writing, to some degree, drags you into their madness, and this can be a very uncomfortable place to go. I do not find The Man in the High Castle compelling enough to experience the discomfort where A Canticle For Liebowitz seems to ultimately yield some release,

Learning to Love Hopeless Gloom

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So, I wrote that review last night about “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.”  And afterwards, I was surprised at just how negative my review was.  I went to great lengths to stress that I thought it was a well written story.  But I couldn’t disguise how little I liked the reading experience.  I characterized the problem as being a matter of story type.  It was an extreme example of dystopia where all the characters reflected a dismal outlook and nothing happy or positive intruded on the gloom.

And that got me thinking.  Maybe my dislike of this genre was short-sighted.  Possibly I was shutting myself off from treasures that lurked around every corner.  And in agreement with that idea, I remembered how I had never been able to get myself to finish 1984.  I skimmed through it several times but always got bogged down by just how depressing and irritating I found all the characters and plot.

So apparently, I am a literary lightweight.  My guess is that I read fiction for enjoyment.  And apparently, I don’t enjoy being depressed.  That must explain why I gravitate toward action/adventure and scientific razzmatazz.  I like reading stories where things happen and even if the bad guys are winning the good guys don’t roll over and play dead.  Even better, I like it when the good guys are also the smart guys and win in the end.  But either way I want there to be someone I can empathize with.  And no one can empathize with someone whose highest aspiration is to own a sheep (living or mechanical) and have it live on the roof of his apartment building.  PKD’s world is made up of mental cases of one type or another and while you may pity some crazy people, they’re really no fun to read about.  Unless they’re somehow funny.  And these people weren’t.

Maybe that makes me shallow but that’s where I stand.  If I was writing 1984, I’d have an underground that did more than just exist as a shadow.  I’d have them organize and expand and then one day rampage through the politburo and have Big Brother’s head nailed to the highest flag pole in the capitol.  Or even if they fail, I’d have them go down fighting, not meekly cower under their beds waiting for the thought police to drag them off to the dungeon.

But I do wonder whether that puts me in the majority or the minority.  Possibly I’m in the majority among my age group but in the minority among the current cohort of readers.  So, I’m very interested in how the rest of you out there come down on this question.  Are dystopias fun or not?  And I’m talking about the real dreary, hopeless worlds.  No shreds of joy or hope.  Just misery and dysfunction as far as the eye can see.  Tell me what you think and list a few examples of the various levels of joyless horror and how you would characterize the experience.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick – A Science Fiction Book Review

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I won’t give a synopsis of the plot.  If you’ve seen the movie “Blade Runner” then you have an approximate idea of the world and the action of the story.  Rick Deckard is a bounty hunter who kills androids that break free of their service as bond slaves for humanity on Mars.  He lives on an Earth where a remnant of humans remain who haven’t emigrated off-Earth.  The Earth is contaminated with radioactive fallout called “the dust’ that is slowly mutating and killing every living thing.  And many species have gone extinct and there is an almost cult-like love for animals that is expressed by owning farm animals like sheep and goats.  And the extension of this cult is something called Mercerism that expresses empathy for all living things (except androids).

Let me give my impressions of Philip K. Dick’s writing and style.  He is a very effective writer.  His characters are sparingly but clearly represented and his narrative is interesting and cleverly crafted.  He has carefully thought out many details of how this strange world works.  The interpersonal interactions between Deckard and his wife, his boss, the androids, the other people in his surroundings are all consistent and keep you immersed in the story.  He is a very talented science fiction writer.  And if this book is representative of his type of story, he is not for me.

If I would sum up this book in one word it would be “dystopia.”

Everything in this book is downbeat.  Deckard is depressed.  His wife is practically suicidal.  His boss is bleak.  The owner of the corporation that makes the androids is harried.  And finally, the androids are schizophrenic.  The only ones who seem cheerful are the tv comics meant to sedate the populace and the pet salesmen who sell overpriced animals and fake animals to the desperate remnant of Earth’s human population.

So, here’s the thing.  I think PKD is a major talent and I’m sure his reputation as a talented author is well deserved.  And I’m sure there is a large audience for his type of fiction.  Unfortunately, I’m not a part of that audience.  I’m not a hopeless dystopia kind of guy.  That doesn’t mean I need utopia.  I don’t mind crises and catastrophes.  But a story that has absolutely no one to root for just doesn’t inspire me to keep reading.  If everyone in the story is a neurotic basket case and no one can summon the will to try and overcome the awful things that are happening in the story; or if morally speaking, the “good guys” are completely indistinguishable from the “bad guys” then why the hell should I care who wins or loses?

So, yeah, this is a good book.  But it’s not for me.  I’ll probably read a few more PKD “masterpieces” to see if there’s anything for me.  If they’re all like this then I’m going to assume that the author was an extremely unhappy man and if I don’t want to end up that way myself, I should move on to greener sf pastures.

Some Thoughts about Philip K Dick

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I was listening to an interview that Philip K Dick (PKD) made back in May 1979.  Now I’ve never read any of his stories.  Of course, I’ve seen Blade Runner and I have heard him described as one of the best science fiction writers of all time so I’ve always meant to get ahold of a few of his books and read them but between work and wife and kids and life I’ve just never had a chance.

So, when I saw this YouTube audio-file I listened to it.  It’s two hours long and some of it is kind of hard to believe.  But it is extremely interesting.  I would say PKD was a very intelligent man but I’m pretty sure his grasp on reality was extremely tenuous on certain subjects.  He believed that at one point he was possessed by some kind of spirit or intelligence that controlled him and fixed a lot of his financial and even health problems.  And listening to him describe this chapter in his life it’s hard not to assume that either he was dealing with some kind of split personality or he was suffering from schizophrenia.

Now based on what I’ve read about PKD’s fiction he was intrigued with the idea that reality wasn’t what we think it is.  That different people experienced radically different perceptions of reality and maybe none of these perceptions were particularly accurate.  And so, with this type of belief I could see how he might accept versions of reality that most people would find absurd.

Now, in the audio-recording he is asked by the interviewer about his use of drugs and their impact on his mind and writing.  PKD goes to great lengths to deny that he used LSD more than once.  He claimed that the drug he abused was an amphetamine that he used to be able to produce prodigious amounts of fiction writing.  The implication was that his drug use did not affect his writing by altering his mind.  And maybe this was true.  But listening to this man I got the distinct impression that even if LSD wasn’t the source of his delusions, that he was indeed substantially untethered from reality in a lot of his beliefs about the world around him.  In short, I think he was in some sense insane.

So, how does this jibe with his undeniable creative talent?  I think that both these things can be true at the same time.  Look at Vincent van Gogh.  He was undeniably a creative genius in his field of art but he was also a tortured madman who finally killed himself to escape his mental anguish.  So, whether PKD was driven insane by his drug use (of whatever substances) or whether his mind was damaged for whatever other reasons there might have been, his grasp on reality (or lack thereof) did not stop him from producing very entertaining science fiction.  And perhaps it was his delusions that actually made his stories so interesting.  Strange man.  Well, I’ll start with “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” and see how I like it.  Maybe I’ll read some more.

How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall from Here – Practice, Practice.

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Dystopias seem to be the dominant science fiction type in the last decade or two.  And the dopiness of the ones ending up on the large and small screens doesn’t encourage much hope in the genera.  We have the ever popular “Handmaid’s Tale” that bangs away at the female victim of the evil patriarchy trope.  And then there’s the “Hunger Games” which I suppose reflects the idea that somehow resources on Earth are about to collapse and a zero-sum game will emerge where we all will be fighting for our lives to get a loaf of bread.  Wow!  Who knew science fiction could be so much fun?

I’ve recently heard that horror is becoming a big genre with young men (apparently written stories and video and also video games).  But that doesn’t alarm me.  I think this is wrapped up with the popularity of video games and I think that is more a matter of the desire to work through puzzles and shoot monsters with guns (which is always a good thing!).

I have a theory that the current science fiction publishing model will not endure much longer.  I don’t think they can make enough money from selling romantasy porn and feminist dystopia much longer.  Of course, it’s possible that AI writing will completely destabilize all fiction writing.  In that case the whole thing becomes academic.  That would leave us just downloading AI slop at virtually no cost.  But either way the world will be changing to resemble nothing like what we old-timers remember from the before time when books were an industry and grammatical sentences actually existed.

Of course, this is a hell of a time for me to become an author.  But in a sense, it may be the best time for me to write.  The barrier to getting published doesn’t exist.  The only barrier is figuring out a way to let the reading public know my book exists and what it’s about.  But that’s far from a trivial problem.  Key words and algorithmic search engines and Amazon ad management are complicated and confusing topics and I’ll confess that I know next to nothing about any of that.  But I’m slowly picking up some practical and painful experience.

For instance, so far today my Amazon ads have 23,417 impressions.  I believe that means, that number of people had the chance to see my ad on the search pages they viewed on Amazon.  Out of those thousands, only 16 people clicked on my ad.  Out of those 16 people only two bought my book (e-book version).  And that was with the e-book discounted to $0.99.  So, there was $1.98 worth of sales.  Of which I only get 30% (~$0.59).  Now currently the cost per click is $1.71.  Which means so far today I’ve been charged 16 X $1.71 = $27.36!

Obviously, this isn’t the way to become rich through writing.  But it is a very educational exercise to understand how the current self-publishing model leaves quite a bit to be desired.  But I still have few more ideas to try before giving up on my dream of becoming the next great science fiction author.  Excelsior!

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler – Some Observations on the Book

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So, I had so much fun comparing the book and movie for “The Thin Man” that I to read Chandler’s “The Big Sleep” so that I could compare it to its movie too.  And once again I’m reading it from the Library of America edition that I already have.  The book came out in 1939 and the movie in 1946.  The pre-war and post war difference probably is significant.  But we’ll just leave that alone.

And let me state for the record that this review is full of spoilers.

First off, I’ll state for the record that although I’ve always enjoyed the movie immensely, I found the book much more interesting and satisfying as a story.  The biggest difference between the book and movie is the characterization of the Sternwood daughters Vivian and Carmen.  In the movie the role of Vivian is a mostly sympathetic character who becomes the love interest for the Marlowe character.  But in the book, she is almost as reckless as her unbalanced sister Carmen.  And whereas in the movie Carmen is an exhibitionistic spoiled woman-child in the book she is truly psychotic.

And allowing the Sternwood daughters to be pathological individuals they are, simplifies the details of the story that in the movie have to be sanitized in order to fit the Hays Code.  So, we can be told that Geiger’s “book store” lent out pornography to its customers and Carmen was being photographed naked by Geiger at the time when the Sternwood chauffer came in and killed Geiger and stole the exposed film of Carmen.  And so on with other parts of the story that don’t make sense in the movie because the seediness of the plot elements prevented their being openly stated instead of subtly implied.  So, we don’t have an explicit statement that Eddie Mars is not only aware of Geiger’s racket but also uses it to blackmail customers.

But the biggest difference between the two versions of the story is the disappearance of Rusty Regan (called Sean Regan in the film).  At the end of the movie Eddie Mars claims he saw Carmen kill Regan.  But because Mars didn’t even know what Carmen looked like Marlowe seems to reject this version of the facts.  This leads the audience to believe that Mars had Regan killed by Canino out of jealousy over Mars’ wife’s relationship with Regan.  But in the movie Marlowe suspects Carmen of the murder and he tests the theory.  After he had rejected Carmen’s sexual advances one night, the next day he tests her sanity.  He returns her pistol and tells her it’s loaded and she asks for him to teach her how to shoot.  After leading Marlowe to a secluded location, she uses the opportunity and angrily fires all six shots at him.  Of course, he had the gun loaded with blanks and after disarming her she goes into an epileptic fit.  And after bringing Carmen back to the house to receive medical attention Marlowe tells Vivian that he knows that Carmen must have murdered her husband after a similar refusal by Regan to sleep with her.  And Vivian admits to the truth of the killing.

I find this a much more satisfactory ending.  We’ve been shown the Sternwoods as a very sinister and dysfunctional clan and the idea that Vivian is somehow a sympathetic or admirable individual despite all the evidence to the contrary just rings false.  Chandler’s story is a grim tale that lacks the happy ending of the Hollywood movie that pairs Bogart and Bacall as a romantic couple.  But it’s a better ending and in my opinion much more satisfying.