Category: Book Reviews

Insightful book reviews by our staff

More Anti-Asimov Ranting

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So, in my last post about Asimov I decried his descent into collectivist propaganda (Foundation’s Edge).

I will continue my diatribe here and show how Asimov devolved from an anthropocentric viewpoint to a proponent of the hive mind.

In 1950 Asimov had a short story called Misbegotten Missionary.   In the story an exploratory mission from Earth visits a world named Saybrook’s Planet that is populated by communal creatures.  Although these creatures take on all the forms needed to make up an ecosystem (microbes, plants and animals) they are all part of one consciousness.  In addition, any one of these creatures has the ability to alter all creatures around it so that all their offspring will be communal creatures too.  The explorers took precautions to protect their ship from contamination by any biological contact.  But unbeknownst to them a solitary creature has stowed away on the ship and is waiting to reach Earth to begin the conversion process.  It somehow realizes that the earth creatures monitor bacteria and the mice that they have on board to detect contamination by an alien life form.  Because of this the creature refrains from altering any of the ship’s life forms to avoid tipping off the crew.  The creature is cryptic and disguises itself as a piece of wire in an electrical circuit on the ship.  By the kind of remarkable luck that only happens in fiction (or the 2016 presidential election) the wire that the creature is connected to is in the circuit to open the ship door.  So instead of converting earth to communalism he gets fried like a death row inmate in Florida.  The conclusion has the crew discover the bullet they dodged and everyone breaths a sigh of relief.

 

Apparently, Asimov was unhappy with this result.  So, 32 years later he corrected this mistake in the Foundation sequel, Foundation’s Edge.  Searching for a mysterious unseen hand in the Foundation universe he follows clues that lead to Sayshell (not Saybrook’s Planet) where he learns of the existence of Gaia, a communal intelligence that not only is composed of all the living things on the planet but also the inanimate components too.  Now of course, this reeks of James Lovelock’s trendy 1970’s theory, The Gaia Hypothesis, that Earth was one big super-organism that had become infected with the human virus (thus the Matrix, thus Al Gore).  Apparently, Asimov had bought into this theory and saw a harmonization (read Borgian assimilation) of humanity by the communal organism as the perfect solution.  And just to make sure no one thinks assimilation is soul extinguishing oblivion, he shows us a human component of the collective who is a cheerful woman who happens to like the protagonist.  So, you see, if you glue a smiley face onto the Borg it’s all good.  And just to make sure no connection to Saybrook’s Planet is possible, the protagonist in Foundation’s Edge is not forced into the hive but gets to choose whether humanity is melted into a collective consciousness with igneous rocks and hydrogen atoms.  You see it’s totally okay!

 

Asimov displays all the symptoms of the proto-sjw that he was.  He dislikes individualism.  He admires the hive.  He desires to remove choice from the currently free.  And he dislikes all this random doing what you want to do (except probably for himself of course).  And finally to hammer home the lesson that humans can’t be left to their own devices we find out that Earth is a radioactive corpse and the whole Gaia situation is a master plan put together by a super-intelligent robot to try to save humans from themselves.

 

So my question is, what the hell happened to this doofus?  And of course, the answer is he just followed the same trajectory as most of the progressives from the thirties who admired the Soviet Union before the Cold War.  Now, Heinlein started out in that camp too.  But when he changed wives and married a conservative he changed course and rejected the hive.  I remember in his novel Methusaleh’s Children Heinlein has a world where a race exists that also possesses a collective mind.  And the humans also had to make a choice.  If they remained they would be assimilated.  Only those who feared death remained.  Obviously, these collective races are the communists.  Heinlein rejected it.  Asimov finally embraced it, much to his detriment as a writer and a man.  But it did finally earn him a Hugo.  So apparently the Hugo had also made the transition by that time.

Asimov, Then, Now and Now and Then

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If you’ve been following the Puppy vs Pink SF saga you know that puppies come in at least two denominations; sad and rabid.  The Sad Puppies are the disciples of Larry Correia and wanted to draw attention to the incestuous log-rolling that a clique of sjw inspired authors and fans used to monopolize the results of the Hugo Awards.  The Rabid Puppies are the shock troops of Vox Day who despises these pink science fiction folk with an intensity that would be frightening if it wasn’t so hilarious.  He has spent the last two Hugo seasons stuffing the ballot box for such science fiction gems as “Space Raptor Butt Invasion” by Chuck Tingle and “Alien Stripper Boned From Behind By The T-Rex” by Stix Hiscock.  But lately the Hugo Award has become routine.  To mix things up he has switched targets to concentrate on one of his favorite pink sf targets, John Scalzi.  Mr. Scalzi and Vox are old “friends.”  Scalzi was the president of the SFWA when Vox was ejected for his unsympathetic feelings toward the left wing of sf.  Vox has spent considerable time tweaking Scalzi whenever he sees an opportunity.  Such an opportunity has arisen.

Mr. Scalzi has written an homage to Asimov’s Foundation Series.  It is entitled The Collapsing Empire.  Vox under his authority as editor of the publishing company Castalia House has released a book called Corroding Empire by the interestingly named author Johan Kalsi.  Vox’s book debuted a day or so before the release date of Scalzi’s book and Amazon was forced to withdraw the Corroding Empire title based on its similar title and author name.  Whereupon Castalia has rebranded the book Corrosion and given as the author Harry Seldon (the hero of Asimov’s foundations stories).  From what I’ve read Corrosion is actually doing quite well.  How all this will turn out is anyone’s guess but as a spectator sport it has been highly entertaining.  But what about copying The Foundation story?  Is this heresy?  Should both sides be shunned?  I’ll tell you what I think.

When I was a kid Isaac Asimov was part of “The Big Three” sf writers (Heinlein, Asimov and Clarke).  I’ve written previously about Heinlein and in summary I think he remains a very important writer from the “Golden Age” and an excellent story teller with the usual exception here and there of bad work to prove that he ruled.

Back then I read all the Asimov that was available including his juvenile Lucky Starr books.  I thought he was very good and I thought his robot and Foundation books were among the best sf around.

Fast forward forty, fifty years and rereading some of these classics (specifically the Foundation Trilogy) I find, maybe not surprisingly, that they don’t hold up as remarkably well as the Heinlein books.  While the plot outline of the Foundation books is still engaging, the characters and the construction are kind of flat.  Truth be told, when I reread it I found myself rooting for the petty kings that surrounded the Foundation.  I thought it would make a more interesting story if the Mule not only reconquered the Galaxy but forced the Foundation scientists to fix his sterility and improve his health.  Thereafter he could go on to conquer the Andromeda Galaxy where there were nasty aliens that really needed their asses kicked by a telepathic mutant with a big nose which is what the story needed all along.  Sort of a galactic Game of Thrones with lots of scantily clad babes and plenty of gore.  Or something like that.

In the eighties or nineties Asimov wrote a sequel to Foundation (Foundation’s Edge).  Now remember, at that time I still thought the foundation books had been great.  I bought the sequel, read it in one sitting and was very confused.  It kind of sucked.  Asimov had become a tree hugger.  In the story the protagonist visits a planet that is based on a communal life force.  Every living thing is part of a collective consciousness.  At the end of the book the protagonist is supposed to decide whether the galaxy should be ruled by the First Foundation, the Second Foundation or Gaia (the collective tree-huggers).  He cops out to ensure a sequel but you can tell his heart is with the hippies.  My reaction was that he was a commie all along and I should go purge my collection of all Asimov.  After that he wrote some sequels to his robot books and I think at some point he merged the two series into some kind of fusion of the two.  So, what does all this mean?

It means that John Campbell gave Asimov a very good plot outline to write a story about (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (in space!) and Asimov did a very decent job with a good idea.  What it also means is that not everything from the good old days was all that good.  Asimov was famous for cranking out work at a tremendous rate.  Sometimes it shows.  Also, he doesn’t write people all that well.  Plot progression he handles pretty well.

My only other thoughts on Asimov is that he really thought robots were the solution to everything.  Once back in the late 1980’s I went to a lecture at Boston University.  The topic was the future and humanity.  Two of the speakers were brilliant physicists Freeman Dyson and Murray Gell-Mann.  Dyson had revolutionized quantum electrodynamics and Gell-Mann hypothesized the quark level of particle physics.  These guys were almost Einstein level geniuses.  Their discussion on the possibilities of human endeavor in the far future were dizzying.  Dyson was speculating on how humanity could engineer an escape from the entropic death of the universe and Gell-Mann discussed the possibilities for power generation based on the fine structure of particle physics.  The third speaker was Isaac Asimov.  He got up and said that the most important human endeavor was the creation of advanced robots.  He said when robots had the intelligence that a dog displays when it catches a ball in mid-air then all of humanity’s problems would be solved.  The other two speakers made polite noises and said that was very interesting.  But it seemed like they were embarrassed to be on the stage with this nut.  In retrospect, it’s interesting to remember that Asimov’s New York Yiddish accent made him sound a lot like Larry David.  It probably would make a fairly funny SNL skit if anyone cared about Isaac Asimov that much.  But it cemented my impression of Asimov as a doofus.  After all a robot is a tool.  No different from the invention of fire or the wheel.  It will be used and it will be abused but humans adapt to their environment and that includes the parts of our environment that we ourselves induce.

So Vox and Scalzi borrow away.  Asimov is not divine and his story was stolen from Gibbon first and handed to him by Campbell so what’s to steal?

The Economic Laws of Scientific Research by Terence Kealey: A Short(ish) Review (Part 1)

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Now, during the week I toil on the engineering plantation so when I’m released from bondage every Friday the last thing I want to do is think (or read) about scientific research or the economic laws that govern it.  I want to read about galactic overlords or underlords or possibly space princesses in space bikinis.  When I’m feeling particularly engaged with reality I like to read about the local Galactic Overlord Trump skewering interplanetary morons from the failed newspaper The New York Times.  But someone I’ve known forever and who is extremely smart sent me this book and told me to read it.

Well, with all the good grace of a man walking to the gallows I acquiesced and read the damn thing.  So, I am shocked that I not only read this book but that I’m glad I did.

I do not recommend reading this book unless you’re interested in the financing of research and development.  Instead, let me tell you what this book says and why it’s interesting and important.  Then if it seems like something you want to delve into, have at it.

This first post will deal with the preliminaries.  The first substantial chapter is called Francis Bacon and Adam Smith.  Basically, he states that there is a dichotomy of opinion in the scientific world about how knowledge, technological innovation and economic growth are related.

Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626) who was revered by the intelligentsia of his and following generations proposed the following model:

Government Funded Academic Research → Pure Science → Applied Science (or Technology) → Economic Growth

Adam Smith (1723 – 1790) who wrote “The Wealth of Nations” is still revered today for his views on capitalism.  He disagreed with Bacon’s model (based on the evidence of innovation in his own time) and his model can be outlined as:

 

That Adam Smith is right and Francis Bacon is wrong is the premise of this book.  Kealey also gives some details about Bacon’s life that pretty conclusively prove that Bacon was the biggest tool of the Elizabethan era.  As Attorney General under Elizabeth I he apparently personally supervised the torture of defendants to elicit confessions.  He also back-stabbed his own patron Robert Earl of Essex when it was convenient.  Now your knowledge of classic Hollywood films of the thirties will remind you that Bette Davis and Errol Flynn were the eponymous stars of “The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex.”  Donald Crisp played Francis Bacon in this epic and history has obviously pronounced its verdict against Bacon with this casting.  So, I will say no more.

The last topic for this first post is the Chapter entitled, “Research and Development in Antiquity.”  I am sort of an antiquities fan.  All things roman and greek are of interest to me.  So I was surprised to find that this chapter opened my eyes to a way of looking at the difference between ancient and modern life.  I had often wondered that such intelligent and inquisitive peoples as the Greeks and Romans never moved past primitive muscle powered methods of life into something more dynamic like steam power.  After all, Alexandrian science of Ptolemaic Egypt had used steam power to propel toys for the king’s court.  Why had they never made the leap to using it to power more useful engines for industry or commerce?  I found the answer here.  They didn’t apply it because nobody wanted the application.  The Macedonian kings of Egypt and the Roman emperors after them employed these geniuses like Archimedes to build toys (or at best design war engines).  These royal patrons assembled the brightest minds of the age and lavishly funded their researches into everything from pure mathematical study to astronomy, physics and medicine.  They sponsored this research out of love of knowledge and vanity to out-compete their rival kingdoms.  But practical commercial applications were not desired.  Designing manufacturing improvements would merely displace slaves who tilled the fields and rowed the galleys and dug in the mines.  The king and emperor had more than enough slaves to make him as rich as anyone (even a god/emperor) could want to be.

This chapter demonstrated that technological innovation only occurred away from empires.  So, the earlier small city states of Phoenicia and old Greece were a hot bed of innovation.  Here were found merchant cities that traded with all the corners of the Mediterranean and invented the convenient alphabet rather than the sacred hieroglyphics and coined gold and silver as a way of spurring trade.  Ship building and navigation were important technologies and other innovations were learned from all corners of the sea.  The use of iron, improvements in the plow were learned during their trading activities.  And they were capitalistic states.  They were in the poorest of farming lands and they survived (and greatly prospered) by trade.  But as soon as Greece discovered its strength and consolidated into larger states and expanded into the larger world, slave labor became the answer to all its problems.  And once Alexander conquered the Persian Empire, the template for how an empire would be run was established.  From that point it was basically the same system as all the Fertile Crescent empires that had come before and innovation was a problem not a solution.  Plow your field, give a third to the temple, a third to the King and hope the new barbarians don’t burn the town down when they come through.   The Romans followed the same pattern.  Early independence and innovation (although much less ambitious than the Greeks) followed by imperial control of all facets of life with precious little need for innovation because of the realities of a slave labor economy.

I will quote from the last two paragraphs of the chapter to summarize.

“The empire collapsed not for a lack of Hellenistic science – there was plenty of that – but because it abandoned capitalism.  It was a plunder empire not a market empire.”

“The fall of the Graeco-Roman hegemony teaches that the government funding of academic science will not generate useful technology in the absence of an appropriate capitalist economy.”

This guy Kealey is pretty smart.  He answered something that’s puzzled me for many years.  Why those intelligent folks never invented the steam engine.  It also shows the fallacy of that Star Trek episode “Bread and Circuses.”  The Romans would never have had automobiles.  But they would have had TV eventually.  It would keep the slaves happy.

The Pink Beetle – A Short Book Review

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The Pink Beetle is a novella (it says it’s about a hundred pages) published independently by author Caspar Vega. It’s listed in the sf&f category but I think I’d call it a noir or mystery story. Mr. Vega is on Gab and I’m interested in things that aren’t sanctioned by the mainstream institutions so I figured I’d give it a try.
Well, it’s definitely different. I think the best way to describe this story is staccato. There is no attempt to use smooth transitions between scenes in the story. There are no bridge elements between the wildly different sections of the book. Beyond this the writing style is extremely spare. The scenes are like sketches. It is minimalist.
With respect to influences on the story I’d say noir is the strongest. Who is this book for? Well I can say who it’s not for. Anyone who is looking for a refined, highly structured literary story does not want The Pink Beetle. This is more like a two-reeler that went before the main attraction at your local movie house when my parents were kids.
So, did I like it? Yeah, I did. He’s got three other books in “The Young Men in Pain Quartet Book Series” and I think I’ll try another one soon. But this is definitely one of those yes or no things. If you don’t go in expecting something that’s more than a little odd and different, you’ll be disappointed. And who knows, even if you are it still might not be your cup of tea.

The Eclectic Prince by Caspar Vega – A Short Book Review

Rolf Nelson’s Back From the Dead – A Short SF Book Review

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I just finished this first volume in a series named “The Stars Came Back” and I’m sure I’ll be reading the sequel when it appears.  The back cover says that the series “combines military science fiction with the classic space western” and I will agree.  The universe that this book inhabits has humans spread out on over a thousand planets.  These worlds were terraformed during an expansion era that ended with a supernova occurring nearby that disrupted faster than light (FTL) travel for an extended period of time and threw these new worlds on their own devices to survive (or perish).

The various inhabited planets we see or hear about contain bits and pieces of one or more Earth cultures.  One of the problems that seems to exist in most of the locales we see is a bureaucracy that preys on the citizens using stifling regulation to punish citizens monetarily and otherwise.  The tone of the book shows a preference for more personal freedom and less government interference.

The main characters become involved in a project to rehabilitate an unusual transport ship that brings together military and civilian personnel in an interesting cooperation that slowly unfolds some puzzling characteristics of this odd “Flying Dutchman.”  The cast is a mixture of men, women, a child and even an AI who runs the ship.  The military component of the story I found most engaging.  The interaction of the NCO with the recruits and his officers is familiar and adds the familial attachment and common cause aspects of the story that makes mil sf so enjoyable for many.  There are several battles both on planet and off that I thought were well done.  I found most of the characters engaging.  It will be interesting to see how the various interpersonal dynamics work themselves out over the course of the series.  And, of course, the secrets of the ship will be interlaced with them.

So, I’ll give an enthusiastic endorsement to “Back from the Dead” and recommend it to anyone who enjoys classic sf and especially mil sf.

Brings the Lightning by Peter Grant: A Short Book Review

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Peter Grant’s “Brings the Lightning” is a western.  It is the story of a confederate soldier who heads west after the war to make a fresh start.  Of course, this is well mapped territory.  Recently I reviewed the movies and novel called “True Grit” and that broadly falls into this sub-genre.  But a time-tested plot can still be entertaining.  What is required is the ingredients of any good story.  The action needs to be interesting, the characters engaging and the writing style appropriate to the intended readers.  For instance, if you intend to attract the extreme literary type reader to a tale of the west, then you probably select a highly introspective confederate protagonist.  This will be the sort of hero who, when faced with danger, falls into a reverie and expounds (either to himself or to his companions) about the philosophical and theological ramifications of the action at hand.  An extreme example of this would be the epic poems of Homer or Virgil.  In these stories a hero will interrupt a battle to discuss his ancestry with the enemy.  Doubtless there is some charm in this approach.  This is not the style taken by Grant in the present book.  The story tracks the progress of Walter Ames as he goes from cavalry soldier, to post-war civilian in the occupied south, to westbound settler.  And the form of the narrative resembles the character of the protagonist.  The approach is straightforward and direct.  Ames encounters the altered reality of his new life and determines a plan for escaping it and overcoming his circumstances.  He shows himself resourceful and flexible (as any good protagonist should) and proceeds to pick up the interrupted thread of his life and direct it where the great drama of the American West is being written.  During this action, we will become acquainted with the paraphernalia of settler life.  We learn about how the great army surplus of the Civil War is made available to civilians (either legitimately or through bribery) and details of the weapons and transport equipment enlisted into the settlers’ quest.  We meet all sorts of people.  There are riverboat gamblers, army officers and NCOs, tradesmen, craftsmen, thieves, murderers and schoolmarms.  We meet trail scouts, freed black slaves, indian braves and outlaws from North and South.  By the end of the story Ames has navigated from the Old South to the Rocky Mountains and gone from a young soldier in retreat to a tested and respected individual on the frontier.

On the cover, we see the subtitle, “The Ames Archives Book One.”  So, this is a series.  And the stage has been set for expansion of the plot in several directions and dimensions.  It can be anticipated that several of the characters will have added importance later on and some unfinished business will resurface.  All these things are expected and even necessary to expand the scope of the story to encompass some of the larger themes that exist within the western genre.  But it’s important to tell the potential reader what he’s letting himself in for, more volumes.  It’s an episodic story in a planned series.

Now for my opinion.  I like it and recommend it.  The prose is clean and uncluttered.  The characters are sketched sufficiently and enjoyably.  The subject matter is interesting and the plot contains enough excitement to justify its inclusion in this genre.  It’s a good western.  But just to be perfectly clear, you’re not getting James Joyce or Thomas Mann.  This is more in the mold of Charles Portis.  It’s an adventure story.  If that is what you are looking for and you have similar tastes to mine, you may be happy with this book.  If you’re looking for Hamlet, move on.

True Grit – Part 2, Rooster Redux

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True Grit: The Duke, The Dude and the Dutiful Daughter; Part 1

So, who’s the better Cogburn?  Of course, there’s no answer to this.  If I were to guess on the consensus among the populace, I’d speculate that voting would be strongly divided by age.  Anyone under the age of forty (I’m guessing) would be more likely to be in the Bridges camp.  Anyone over the age of fifty would favor the Duke.  Chronologically then, I should be in the Wayne camp.  But it’s not that simple.

These are both fine films.  And even though I have fond memories of enjoying the older film over the years, I found the Coen Brothers film incredibly entertaining.  And it’s going to be hard to separate my judgement on the comparative virtues of the Cogburn portrayal from my overall feelings for the two movies.  But that is what I will be trying to do here.

I’ll start by comparing both film portrayals to the novel.  It is fair to say that both films depart in places from the book.  Overall, I’d say that the newer movie diverges by adding additional plot elements while the older film removes some elements that give the book a harsher plot.  These differences in part, exist because of the differences that exist in film-making practices between 1969 and 2010.

Perhaps the most significant difference between the novel and the 2010 film portrayal of Rooster is the greater animosity between Cogburn and LaBoeuf.  In the 2010 movie LaBoeuf and Cogburn have such a major falling out that the joint expedition is ended not once but twice.  A subtler difference is the increase in the amount of bantering mockery that Rooster heaps on the Texas Ranger.  Although the tone and even the flavor adheres to the book’s character it is an amplification of the actual text.

The obvious change to the story line between the book and the 1969 movie is the conclusion of the story.  In both the book and the 2010 movie, we read that after the desperate ride to save Mattie from the snake bite, Mattie loses her arm to the venom.  Also, she never sees Rooster again.  In the 1969 movie, she makes a full recovery and Cogburn meets up with her at her family home shortly after her recovery.

Taking into account the conventions that existed in 1969 against grittier subject matter, I do not feel either portrayal can be shown to excel the other in fidelity to the spirit of the book.  And I would say they both are excellent translations of the book to cinema.

But that’s a cop out.  Somebody has to win and someone has to lose.  Surprisingly, I’m choosing Bridges.  Events in the last few decades have prejudiced me in favor of tougher portrayals of the world.  I find the more realistic version of things more useful and more honest.  And even though it has more to do with the Coen Brothers skills as film makers than Bridges acting skills in the scene, I greatly admire the affect produced by the scene where Cogburn rides and carries Mattie to save her life.  So, even though the Duke is an iconic figure and his Rooster Cogburn was one of his best parts (and won him his only Oscar), I’m giving the prize to the Dude.  He definitely abides.

The First Urban Fantasy:  A Christmas Carol

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Merry Christmas to all from the management of Orion’s Cold Fire.  Now the title of this post is admittedly a stretch.  But it is a ghost story and it does take place in an urban center.  I guess it would be adding insult to injury to claim steampunk status too, so I won’t.  I gladly confess I’m a huge fan of this tale.  I first remember running into it as a boy when my older cousin played Mr. Fezziwig in a grammar school production.  I don’t remember much about that production other than the fact that Fezziwig was actually wearing a gray wig.  Since then I’ve read the short book and attended several professional and amateur stage productions.  But the most substantial proportion of my involvement with this story is the hundreds of viewings of the various film versions that have been made over the decades.  Discounting such travesties as the episode made as part of the old television series “The Odd Couple” and the one starring the cartoon character Mr. Magoo, I have watched at least seven separate films.

 

Among the few versions that I still watch, the oddest one is the musical from 1970 starring Albert Finney.  With Alec Guinness as Jacob Marley it includes a scene of Scrooge being installed in Hell by his long dead partner.  I’m not particularly fond of musicals and Finney hasn’t really got a singing voice so there any number of painful moments in this film but the comical aspect of Scrooge is highlighted and allows this version to serve when children are present and might otherwise become bored.

 

Until recently I was of the opinion that the best version was the 1951 edition starring Alistair Sim.  It had a good British cast and possessed a script that amplified the meager details of the novel with some dramatic details of the back story between Scrooge and his sister on her death bed.  It also fills out the history of Scrooge as a businessman and shows us some details of Marley’s death.  It remains in my reckoning a very good film.

 

But as with all other things in life, age alters our opinions and our point of view even about Dickens’ masterpiece.  Of late, I have come to favor the 1984 television version starring George C. Scott.  The balance of the cast is British with Scott the only American.  The script is relatively close to the novel although there are a few touches having to do with Scrooge’s nephew and wife that are innovative.  But in several aspects I find this later version to be the best.  First is the character of Marley.  The actor portraying this ghost is the best of any that have acted the role.  The feeling and meaning he puts into his lines is perfect for that part.  Next is the child playing Tiny Tim.  He is without a doubt the most diminutive and fragile looking child imaginable.  He enhances the reality of what we know is Tiny Tim’s probable fate.  And finally, there is Scott’s part.  He is a powerful man who displays his ruthlessness openly.  George C. Scott was a very good actor and it shows.  He interacts with the spirits as an equal.  He defends his point of view as you might imagine a rational egoist would.  You feel his gradual awakening to the error of his world view as a visceral experience and not just a logical progression.  He captures the transformation that Dickens was portraying.  It’s well done.

 

So, now why do I enjoy this story?  I believe that Dickens’ story captures some essential truth about what it means to be human.  He is trying to show us that in order to save ourselves we have to save those around us.  And not through some social construct (“are there no prisons, are there no workhouses”), but by touching the lives of those around us and lending a hand to the weak.  As a right wing fanatic this is an important lesson to remember.  If you object to the idea of the socialist state then you must instead reach out to the people around you and make things better yourself.

 

So for me this story is a cautionary tale.  Don’t forget that the people out there are real and they are someone’s children.  And they can hurt.  Watch out for them.

 

I’ll end this on a happy note.  As Tiny Tim said, “God bless us, every one.”

Heinlein Part 2 – The Juveniles

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Heinlein: What’s the Deal With Him?

The Juveniles.  That is where it all began for me, and I was probably typical.  Exploring the science fiction shelf in the kid’s floor of the library I found and read “Red Planet.”  Fantastic.  The characters were intelligent (well the good guys were) and the story combined adventure, humor and a young protagonist that we could root for.  As I worked my way through the series I had no idea that most science fiction (especially juvenile sf) was nowhere near as good.  And I didn’t know why I liked these books so much.  But I do now.  Heinlein had identified something important in how Americans of my generation viewed ourselves and the future.  We believed it was time for humans to push the frontier beyond Earth.  Heinlein had translated the Western into science fiction.  His heroes are easily seen as descendants of the pioneers who pushed across the plains and forests of North America in the 19th Century and colonized a continent.  His families (and they often came as families) were colonizing the Solar System.

Consulting my on-line encyclopedia (specifically Infogalactic) I find the following chronology:

Rocket Ship Galileo, 1947

Space Cadet, 1948

Red Planet, 1949

Farmer in the Sky, 1950

Between Planets, 1951

The Rolling Stones aka Space Family Stone, 1952

Starman Jones, 1953

The Star Beast, 1954

Tunnel in the Sky, 1955

Time for the Stars, 1956

Citizen of the Galaxy, 1957

Have Space Suit—Will Travel, 1958

 

Interestingly, Rocket Ship Galileo was always the weakest (in my mind) of the novels both in terms of plot and character development.  In fact, it’s the only one I’ve never re-read.  I can see that he had not quite come up with the formula he later perfected.  And just to personalize this, here is my list in order of personal preference (top being favorite):

Have Space Suit—Will Travel

Citizen of the Galaxy

Starman Jones

The Rolling Stones

The Star Beast

Farmer in the Sky

Red Planet

Tunnel in the Sky

Space Cadet

Between Planets

Time for the Stars

Rocket Ship Galileo

Of course, I probably could move around anything other than the top and bottom entries depending on mood.  But this tells you more about me than about the author.

So, as I approach sixty why do I consider these children’s books interesting or relevant?  Was it the extraordinary prose style or absolute unique character of the protagonists?  Not at all.  Heinlein was a very capable writer and wrote clean prose but he was no Faulkner.  And many of his young adult characters are almost interchangeable.  The real reason was because these novels combine all the components of good fiction.  The plots are lively and interesting.  The characters are engaging, sympathetic and admirable.  To my mind, Heinlein in this series is the heir to Kipling’s “Kim” and Stevenson’s “Treasure Island.”  You recognize in them a voice that isn’t confused about the rightness of the endeavor his characters are engaged in.  There’s very little of the moral ambivalence that became the defining characteristic of the 1960s and beyond.  This was the spirit of the post-WWII optimism.  This was the high noon of the American Century and it was beautiful.  We would get another taste of this spirit when Ronald Reagan brought back American optimism in the 1980s.  We’ve had precious little of it since.

I’m of the opinion that adopting the same kind of feel to sf today would be popular.  For this reason, I think the Heinlein juveniles (and some of his better adult stories and novels) have value as a template for what to look for in a sf story today.  Lately I’ve seen the beginning of this idea occurring and I see that as a hopeful sign.  If this return to optimistic story style coincides with some kind of a Trump resurgence in American optimism in general it could be a fortunate thing for the sf fans of my grandsons’ age.  So, hat’s off to RAH (and his editors) for producing a set of young adult sf novels that could last a hundred years without aging at all.  I think I’ll re-read “Have Spacesuit Will Travel” for Christmas.

True Grit: The Duke, The Dude and the Dutiful Daughter; Part I

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“I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man.” When was a better line ever uttered in a Western?

What red-blooded American male doesn’t love True Grit? I liked everything about the old movie (other than that truly awful song Glen Campbell sings).  I like everything about the new movie (except for the awful politics of the actor who plays LaBoeuf).  But until recently I had never read the source novel.  Now, having done so, I have a renewed admiration for the film makers.  The differences between the novel and movies are creative choices that must have required a bit of reflection on the differences between reading and watching.  All in all, I’m hard pressed to claim that the films are less than the book.  They are each excellent.  But ultimately, the book provides more of the protagonist’s inner voice.  Mattie Ross is the fictional autobiographer here.  It’s her story and she tells it from her very idiosyncratic point of view.  If the main facts of the plot are outlined (young woman goes forth to avenge the murder of her father) it would seem obvious that enormous sympathy should exist for the heroine.  But she’s not the most sympathetic character.  She takes advantage of her formidable lawyer to bully an innocent tradesman into paying her for damages he did not cause.  She is pathologically self-righteous and judgmental.  And she lacks any tact or charm.  Basically, she’s a jerk.  But at the same time, she possesses courage, fortitude, energy and intelligence.  She has worked out the situation around her father’s murder and planned a campaign to redress it.  She has not spared herself (or anyone else for that matter) and follows through with it without concern for pain, weariness or danger.  She is a very original and convincing character.

All through her odyssey Mattie meets up with a number of characters, some barely sketched, others carefully fleshed out. Most vivid of course is Rooster Cogburn. but others, Ranger LaBoeuf, Lucky Ned Pepper, Colonel Stonehill and even Tom Chaney, are fully drawn and interesting personalities.  And here is where the movies don’t let us down.  The portrayals of Stonehill and Pepper in both movies are excellent.  The actors are given a very small window to work in, just a couple of scenes.  But both convey the personality we are meant to see in a specific setting  that reveals interesting components of his character.  At almost all points the plot mixes humor and drama in believable measure.

The Texas Ranger named LaBoeuf (pronounced by him “LaBeef”) is the foil for both Mattie and Cogburn. At every turn his opinion and motivations are at odds with one or the other or both of them.  This allows for Mattie and Cogburn to develop some solidarity.  The scene where LaBoeuf attempts to switch Mattie to force her to abandon the search confirms the respective places for each of these characters.  In a strange way they resemble a family, with Cogburn as a sort of father and Mattie and LaBoeuf as younger daughter and older son.  Now granted this would be a particularly dysfunctional family but considering the status of Mattie to her recently deceased father it is not unreasonable.  It is this dynamic in the story that I think is chiefly responsible for the appeal of the story for women, but of course that is just one man’s opinion.

And finally (at least in this first installment) we come to the climax of the action. The Duel and the Catastrophe.  If there is in all western cinema a closer analogy to a knightly duel I haven’t seen it.  The hero no longer needs to confront his enemy.  The damsel is rescued, the aim of the quest (the capture of Chaney) is accomplished.  But he is honor bound to conquer or die.  A more perfect tableaux for the American West, I cannot imagine.  And then the reversal, and another reversal, and another.  By the time Rooster is carrying Mattie back to town and doctor we have reversed the journey from adventure to real life.  Chaney’s fate is no longer important, Ned Pepper and the other outlaws are debris on the field.  Even Mattie’s beloved pony Blackie is expended in Cogburn’s single-minded endeavor to save her life.  And here the new movie adds to what the original left out.  The rattlesnake bite costs Mattie her arm.  She recovers and grows up to be a wealthy spinster.  And the last act of the book has her belatedly trying to meet up with Rooster at a Wild West Show that he has ended up in.  Cole Younger, one of his fellow “exhibits” informs her that Rooster had died several days previously.  She has his remains moved to her family plot.  Thus completing the idea that Cogburn had become something of a father figure to her.

I intend to discuss some other features of the True Grit movies and book in future posts.

 

True Grit – Part 2, Rooster Redux