Category: Book Reviews

Insightful book reviews by our staff

Heinlein: What’s the Deal with Him?

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Heinlein Part 2 – The Juveniles

So, here we are five years into the Puppy Era and we all know what we don’t like.  We don’t want revolutionary intersectionalist gender studies diatribes disguised as SF&F message fiction.  Agreed.  But for the sake of reminding us what we do like I’ve decided to start dusting off the dinosaurs.  I’m going to reach back into the Pre-Cambrian Epoch and analyze some of the better fossils currently on display on my admittedly antediluvian book shelf.  First on the list Robert Anson Heinlein (aka the big enchilada).

Anyone who attempts to review Heinlein is in for trouble.  Everyone either loves or hates the man.  Some people actually are able to do both at the same time.  But few are lukewarm.  Full disclosure, I grew up on his juveniles.  I read “Red Planet,” “The Rolling Stones,” “Farmer in the Sky” and the rest of his kids books like some kind of junkie.  When I ran out of them I started trying out the rest of his peers.  As a kid I defined all other science fiction by how it stood next to the grand master. In my mind none of them measured up.  To my young eyes he was a literary god.

As time went on I came in contact with his novels and short stories for adults.  I read his future history stories and found that world interesting and to my optimistic mind plausible.  “The Green Hills of Earth,” “Methusaleh’s Children,” “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” all confirmed my opinion that here was a great storyteller.  I was convinced that picking up something by RAH was a guaranteed good read.

As I grew I found that Heinlein was changing too.  His books became darker.  Starship Trooper although absolutely first rate Heinlein was a serious war story wrapped up in a philosophy lesson.  Farnham’s Freehold is just plain grim.  Glory Road is an interesting but puzzling work.  Heinlein was still enjoyable but he had moved away from the sunnier climes of the past and allowed the dystopian events of the Cold War to color his universe.  By the time of “Stranger in a Strange Land” we are in a new landscape.  RAH has abandoned simple stories and now approaches questions of religion, spitituality and sexuality that sometimes seem bizarre.  At this point I note that “heinleinian” qualities of the stories are still present but the world view has shifted.  It reflects the changes that had occurred between the United States of the nineteen forties and that of the nineteen sixties.  Interestingly these changes were actually forecast by Heinlein in his Future History timeline.  He predicted the nineteen sixties would be called “The Crazy Years.”  Was he ever right!

So , where are we?  Well, Heinlein , the Baby Boomers and I have all transitioned from the heroic, optimistic stories of the forties into the somewhat jaded, realistic stories of the sixties.  So far I’m still with him.  I still wait expectantly for the next big read from the king.  And then he published “I Will Fear No Evil” (IWFNE).  Holy Crap!  It’s over forty years since I read that disaster and even that much time hasn’t softened the feelings of outrage I feel whenever I think of the pain I experienced trying to plow through this awful pile of garbage.  When I finished it I was convinced that either Heinlein had died and a ghost writer was brought in to write this abomination or that he had ingested some really bad LSD and had completely lost his mind.  Either way, the world of guaranteed good Heinlein fiction was over.

In retrospect it turned out that the publication of this book coincided with a very serious health crisis in Heinlein’s life.  The book was published without the careful and time-consuming edits and rewrites that were RAH’s standard operating procedure for publication.  So it’s possible that Heinlein could have rewritten IWFNE and made it into a good book.  But I don’t think it’s true.  In addition to the awful writing exhibited in the book, the dystopian world portrayed, although frighteningly close to some aspects of modern life, is nothing that most people want to read about.

What I think went wrong with Heinlein was that he had extrapolated the trends he saw in his world and came up with a future that although uncomfortably accurate, wasn’t compatible with his audience’s tastes.  The science fiction readers of that time tended to be optimistic.  We wanted a future that was better than the world we lived in.

After the debacle of IWFNE there was a long hiatus before the next Heinlein book appeared.  In the mean-time I moved on to other authors.  Tolkien and his Middle Earth deeply interested me and other fantasy writers and works caught my attention.  By the time, Heinlein came out with Expanded Universe, I no longer thought much about his potential for providing me with good reading material.  Expanded Universe is a book that contains both short fiction works and non-fiction concerning politics, world events and practical philosophy.  It was full of interesting observations and insights into Heinlein and his world.  It managed to renew my interest in what RAH might have next in store.

At this point it was nineteen eighty.  These were optimistic times and an old-fashioned Heinlein story was exactly what would fit in.  His next novel was “The Number of the Beast.”  Essentially the book is sort of an elaborate insider’s joke.  It is full of allusions, puns and puzzles that relate to Heinlein, his works and his philosophy on writing and life.  It is not exactly a page turner.  Not being in a frame of mind to savor his meta-work I resigned myself to taking each Heinlein publication as an unknown quantity to be evaluated as found.  His following books were mostly a mixture of narrative and dispositive philosophical material.  An exception was the book Friday which was more or less a traditional story.  It tied into characters and ideas found in the short story Gulf.  It has several interesting characters and concepts.  In some ways, it is a throwback to his middle period.  But it does not match the optimistic energy of that time.  His description of the balkanized North American states produces in me a melancholy mood.  And the portrayal of inevitable catastrophe for Earth is bleak.  The prospect of survival on other planets sounds more like a retreat in the face of inevitable doom.

So, am I being fair to Heinlein?  Absolutely not.  The truth is that I started off reading books that RAH wrote for people of my age.  Then I read stories by him that were patterned after the material that mid-century editors felt were acceptable for the American audience of that time.  The criteria weren’t identical to the restrictions that existed for motion pictures under the Hays Code but there was definitely a less nihilistic feel to literature from that period than what came later.  Later on Heinlein felt less restricted in portraying the more negative aspects of his vision.  And it is also true that he had some quite controversial opinions on various subjects including sexuality.

Taking these factors into account, my disappointment with much of his later output was inevitable.  Some of that has to do with the disparity in age between us.  He was born more than fifty years before me and his life does not closely mirror mine.  I have often thought that it is time for me to re-read his later stories.  In all fairness, other than “I Will Fear No Evil,” I believe I will probably find all his other books quite enjoyable now that I no longer expect to get “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” every time.

So, that is an outline of my collision with Robert Heinlein through several decades of reading him.  I will follow this up with further remarks on the various categories of Heinlein literature that I admire most.  But I will conclude this survey by stating that Robert A. Heinlein was the most important author during several decades of my formative years.  He is the Grand Master of Science Fiction.  Whether that is important or not I leave to the reader to decide.

The Missionaries: A Short Book Review

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“The Missionaries,” by Owen Stanley is a book that can be enjoyed without having to first categorize it.  But while reviewing it I feel it is necessary to identify some of the qualities present in order to attract the target audience and repel those who are clearly the targets of its humor.  So, trigger warning, if you think Hillary Clinton should have won the 2016 US presidential election you’re not going to want to read this book.  But if you think that the high point of Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s career was reached as a double entendre during a Seinfeld episode then this might be the book for you.

The book is a binge, an aristophanean binge.  The characters are in some ways caricatures, but the narrative proceeds fluidly from one fantastically ridiculous scene to the next.  The absurdities are piled up, one on top of the other, until the eventual catastrophe finally resolves the comedy.

The story takes place in the indefinite past that, based on tell-tales like typewriters and the existence of the UN, must be taking place during the Cold War.  An island in the Pacific called Elephant Island is being administered by an appointee of the Australian government named Roger Fletcher.  He has managed to pacify the indigenous (and cannibalistic) tribesmen by convincing them that he is a minor deity of theirs.  When the UN is given a mandate to move Elephant Island to independence, it unleashes a chain of events that demonstrates how social justice policy decisions and stone age tribal dynamics can combine to form a close approximation of the Apocalypse.

I would be a spoil sport if I revealed all the better bits that make up this comedy.  For me the innovation is seeing all of the sacred cows that are typically given the best lines in novels about the third world (or is it fourth world?) getting mugged by reality.  All the pieties about empowering non-western societies come back to bite the smug leftists right in the ass.  In fact, from my point of view, they get off too easily.  I would have enjoyed much more pay back.  But I have quite a bit of Sicilian in my family tree so I shouldn’t be considered an objective judge.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book and highly recommend it for anyone on the right wing who thinks the UN should be defunded and moved to Newark, New Jersey.  My only real complaint is I wish it were much longer.  I could see this as the basis for series of books or a long television series with episodic action leading slowly to the eventual climax at the end of season five (or even eight).  So much more could be added to the characterizations and back stories.  I feel cheated that I won’t get to read the prequel describing the arrival of Fletcher to Elephant Island and his taming of the natives.  We could have been given flashbacks of the UN personnel in their earlier roles.  And of course, we could find out whether the capital city (Ungabunga) was named by the indigenous people or (more likely) by Fletcher.  But, alas, we’ll probably never learn these important details.  Damn you Owen Stanley!

Nevertheless, I wholeheartedly recommend The Missionaries to anyone who was ever forced to read any of that genera of modern novels that bemoan the fate of noble indigenous peoples under the control of evil, white, colonial rule.  My most dreary example of this genera was a book I received as part of a subscription to a magazine.  The book was “At Play in the Fields of the Lord” (APITFOTL) by Peter Matthiessen.  It was just alive with noble savages and filthy with misguided missionaries and other white people getting in the way of noble savagery.  Reading “The Missionaries” is a sort of catharsis for this.  It’s as if reading APITFOTL infected my soul and left an overgrown boil that had festered for all these years and this new book was an intellectual scalpel that lanced that boil and allowed it to drain and heal.  Wow, I sound like a very angry old guy.  Anyway, read the book oh my brothers.  It’s good for the soul.

Andrew Klavan’s The Great Good Thing: A Short Book Review

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Andrew Klavan is a multi-faceted individual.  He is an acclaimed suspense novelist whose stories have been adapted into movies starring Clint Eastwood and Michael Douglas.  Since the 2001 terror attack he’s produced a series of web based videos that allow him to advocate for conservative views on a range of topics.  It was in this capacity I first noticed him.  In my opinion Klavan is one of the brightest and funniest people on the conservative side of the fence.  I’ve read several of his novels and found them equally engaging.   He is undoubtedly a gifted and entertaining writer.  But the full title of his present work, “The Great Good Thing (A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ),” made me stop and consider whether the traits that resonated with me in his other work would translate well in an autobiographical story of religious awakening.

Well, I’m glad to say they do.  I won’t specify my own religious beliefs but I do come from a background where upbringing has steeped me in the Christian world.  And my feelings are very sympathetic to religious people.  We’ll leave me at that.  Of added attraction is that Mr. Klavan and I are of about the same age and both grew up in the New York City area.  The world he speaks of is extremely familiar to me.  All these factors made the material comfortable for me.

So, now you know I liked it.  Will you?  Let’s review what this book is and isn’t.  It’s not an in-depth story of every facet of his life.  We do not find out all the technical details of how he honed his writing style.  We will not hear anecdotes of his acquaintanceships with famous actors and writers.  We don’t hear details of his other conversion, from a liberal to a conservative.  What we will hear is the personal history from early childhood right up to fairly recent years that impacted and informed his spiritual journey.  His family life and his education, much as they are with most men, are the arenas where his search for meaning and truth began.  His circumstances are unique but the questions are universal and timeless.  Unless this is the subject matter you are looking for, you shouldn’t read this book or this review.

Okay, if you’re still there, let’s move on to what I’d like to say about “The Great Good Thing.”  I found it to be an interesting read. Klavan is writing about some extremely difficult, sometimes depressing events in his life.  But the writing is never slow.  The story propels itself along.  The emotions represented run the gamut from comical to desperate but the writing style is never over-wrought which is especially unusual when describing religious experiences.  I would describe the effect as lyrical.  And this I attribute to the combination of the experience the author is describing along with his very great talents as a writer.  If I were to compare this book it would be to C.S. Lewis’ “Surprised by Joy.”  Both books describe the journey of an intelligent witty author from atheism to faith.  Both books include a measure of humor and pain.  Both books are well written.  Both men reveal themselves down to their very souls.  I found the book inspirational and satisfying.  The title is apt.

Peter Thiel’s Zero to One: A Short Book Review

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This book is a bit of a departure from my usual fare of science fiction and fantasy.  It’s a book based on a course the author gave on business start-ups.  And considering that Thiel was one of the founders of PayPal I guess he knows a thing or two about innovation.  The title “Zero to One,” is a way of describing the invention of something new, literally something out of nothing.  He contrasts this to the current business paradigm of amplifying existing businesses by small incremental improvements mostly involving decreasing business costs.  This might seem like a narrow topic that would only interest business school types and in one sense that’s true.  What makes it important to the general reader is how he frames this situation as a symptom of a larger societal problem that effects us all and threatens to make permanent the recession that has gripped the United States for the last thirty years.

Thiel defines the parameters involved as two binary variables.  The first pair is optimism versus pessimism.  As examples of these he compares American culture in the post WWII era (optimistic) with other cultures that tend to pessimism (e.g. Modern Europe, Modern China).  That’s easy enough to understand and familiar to most readers.  The other parameter he describes is definite versus indefinite.  The dichotomy here is the difference between believing that you can shape the future (definite) versus believing that the future is ruled by luck or random events.  Putting these two sets together you can come up with four cases, Definite Optimism, Indefinite Optimism, Definite Pessimism and Indefinite Pessimism.  With respect to the United States he claims that we have shifted from the Definite Optimism of the 1940s and 50s to the Indefinite Optimism of the present.  He maintains that Americans tend to regard the future as optimistic but instead of the bold plans for creating the future in the 40s and 50s (characterized by such bold endeavors as the Manhattan Project and the other engineering marvels of the times) we just assume that everything will turn out well without actually having a blueprint of what needs to be done to achieve this prosperity.

This framework is then extended to other areas of human activity such as finance, politics and even philosophy.  These observations seem genuinely compelling.  The analysis is uncomplicated and fairly obvious once examined.  I find this section the most interesting from a general interest perspective.

The majority of the book returns to more concrete elements of what a successful start-up business should look like (and that is something that is interesting to more than just venture capitalists and computer savants) but sprinkled throughout the book are arguments that show Thiel’s divergent view on modern business goals.  His thoughts on the desirability of monopolies is clever.  And finally, he examines the consequences of automation on human society.  He recognizes the disruptions to older life styles inherent in these technologies but offers an opinion on how it can be made to serve society instead.

News that Thiel is being considered for a role in the upcoming Trump administration strikes me as a positive turn of events.  He appears to be an original thinker who seems to possess insights into how innovation is central to the American Dream.  I think it’s almost prophetic that both Thiel and Trump seem to be telling America to return to a winning strategy.

This book is primarily for those interested in what makes for a successful start-up company but I would recommend it to anyone who wants to know why America is faltering economically and even spiritually.

CTRL ALT REVOLT! A Book Review

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Nick Cole’s CTRL ALT REVOLT! (CAR!) is a 2016 publication that was rejected by his original publisher.  This was probably because it takes a number of swipes at the politically correct culture found in this dystopic future (and more importantly in our own real world).  For that reason alone, I would probably have given it a whirl.  But when it won the 2016 Dragon Award for Best Apocalyptic Novel I felt I owed it to myself to test whether the Dragon Awards would be a better fit than the Hugos when it came to predicting a good read.

I am happy to say they are.  CAR! is an excellent read.  Putting aside that it pokes merciless fun at progressive ideas and practices (which I see as a plus), the action in the story is interesting and fun throughout.  The characters vary from barely sketched in to fairly full framed but they do not jar the way the characters in the “literary sf” often do.  Even the computers come off as recognizable personalities and not HAL 9000 stand-ins.

I won’t describe the whole plot because there are enough twists that I’d be spoiling a lot of the fun.  But the back cover says it’s a robot revolution and I’ll add that it’s a goulash with artificial intelligence, massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), the Star Trek universe and the extravagances of Silicon Valley as ingredients in a future world where a nanny state handholds its wards through their cyber cocooned lives.  Because of the skillful insertion of on-line story lines the action jumps from deep space naval battles to running gun battles through the streets of a Caribbean paradise.  The real-world action is more bizarre.  Not to indulge in cliché, but the good guys consist of a rag-tag bunch of individuals that barely know each other and can’t be sure if they’re actually on the same side.  The ending is a train wreck (a really cool one) and promises at least a sequel.  I have to confess that there are so many odd elements that I have no idea which way he will take this story line, but I am excited at the prospect.

One of the more interesting concepts that Cole has built into his near future is the merging of television and MMORPs.  There are scripted and semi-scripted intrusions of television shows into MMORPs and to some extent, the reverse.  The professional “reality” for the actors highlights how the old studio star system will continue to degenerate until minute by minute trending of character popularity on social networks will replace long term contracts.  One of the sub-plots revolves around the interaction of gamers with tv stars and how knowledge and intelligence can trump telegenicity and histrionics.  There’s even the recognition that the finance people in media might be more reliable partners than the directors and talent agents when it comes to dealing with difficult situations on the set.  So here you have the collapse of television, on-line gaming, social networking and on-line business into one complex that allows some people to spend most of their time and almost all of their working and even their emotional lives interacting with each other only virtually.  But looking at the way the world is heading I hesitate to even call that a prediction.  It’s probably closer to a short term extrapolation that’s already reality for some.

Now a word about the anti-pc snark.  Full disclosure, I’m a card-carrying member of the “Basket of Deplorables.”  I haven’t met a dig at SJWs that I didn’t chuckle at.  So, it’s not hard to imagine that I haven’t deducted any points from my review for lack of cultural objectivity.  I laughed at every single ironic take, every set-up shot.  If you happen to be of the other persuasion will these bother you?  Probably.  Should you read it anyway?  I think so.  But remember I’m a terrible person and worse, I have a sense of humor.

And finally mention of the trekkie angle.  There is a small amount of Star Trek plot that dredges up mention of Kirk and Shatner and the associated hagiography.  Suffice it to say that there is a comical congruence between the pretentious prima donna that was Shatner and the current captain in the book.  There is even a reference to him performing a “shatner.”  Now of course, Shatner mockery is required reading at the academy but I have to add five points to the review grade to cover these goings on.

So if you want my opinion, read this book unless you’re a literary sff type.  In that case run, run for the hills.

The Black Bird

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Dashiell Hammett was not a science fiction author. What he was, was a card-carrying communist, an alcoholic, a philanderer who deserted his wife and children and by all accounts a jerk. He squandered his money and his writing talent and by the measure of lifetime total output left a very sparse legacy as a writer.

So why am I writing about him? Because he was one of the greatest 20th century American genre writers. And by extension I’d say he was one of the greatest 20th century story tellers. And finally, because he wrote the Maltese Falcon, which is the archetype for the hard-boiled detective story and by extension for most of American genre fiction and film story lines for the 1930s and 1940s. In fact I would say that the film Blade Runner is without a doubt the legitimate grand-child of the Maltese Falcon. So therefore it’s related to science fiction. Thus I can semi-legitimately categorize this under sf&f.

I’ve never been a detective story addict. When I was young I read the Holmes stories and I have from time to time read some crime fiction. But sf&f were more my central interest. I came to the Maltese Falcon late in life. I can’t remember if I ever saw the John Huston film in its entirety in my younger years although I am sure I saw bits of it through discussions of classic Hollywood films of the ‘30s and ‘40s. It was actually a very offhand chance that brought me to it. I was at a book store (Barnes and Noble’s or Borders?) back in the mid 1990s. They had some books for sale as remainders and a faux leather bound book caught my eye. It had the image of a black bird set off by silver highlights. It was an edition of the Maltese Falcon at a very reasonable price. How could a bibliophile resist? So I bought it and stuck it on a shelf for a year or two. One night I was tired and bored and there was nothing to watch on tv and nothing new to read. I looked around my old books and thought about rereading something I liked. I considered rereading Zorba the Greek for the hundredth time or some old short stories I like. The black book caught my eye. I hesitated. Why should I start that? It’s too long to fill an hour or two. I’d probably hate it. Eh, I’ll read it.

So I read it. I liked it. I recognized it. It was the written image of the American century. Here were the brash, mercurial, inhabitants of the early 20th century scurrying around their frenetic chaotic lives. This was a new world to them. The older world of family and community had dissolved into the urban machine. All certainty of earth and heaven had been removed. Their mission was to shove themselves through the crowded streets of the industrial age fast enough to collect some memories before the curtain came down on their short lives. All that was sure was death and taxes. You held onto a job to be able to pay the landlady and the butcher. The memory of the earlier world still existed in some of the older habits. Even the psychopath might still tip his hat to a lady or offer his enemy a cigar and a scotch. But the modern accelerators are already on the scene. You had mass communication in the form of the telephone, radio, phonograph and the big city newspapers. Transportation existed as the streetcar and the taxi. Automatic weapons, both pistols and machine guns had come on the scene. And most important was the new hero or rather the anti-hero. Sam Spade. He didn’t protect the weak and innocent. He was muscle and brain for hire to the highest bidder. If he caught a killer it might be just as much to give the police someone beside himself to arrest as it was to see justice done. His scruples wouldn’t prevent him from bedding the wife of his business partner. A the same time, it would compel him to avenge his partner’s murder. He was a professional and knew all the tricks and skills of his trade. But he was a violent man with a very dangerous temper.

So it’s a book of murder and cops and crime and crooks and femme fatales. There are twists and turns and ancient treasure and double and triple crosses. But surprisingly there are some small touches that stay with you just as much as the big scenes. There is a scene in the crowded dining area of his cramped apartment where he puts out food and drink in a way that makes you wish you were there. It’s a book with many things going for it. Some of the stylization seems unfamiliar and the violence less shocking than the latest slasher book. But you can detect the dna that underlies so much of modern genre storytelling.

I’ve since read the rest of Hammett’s works. That includes a few novels including the Thin Man book which also became a famous movie and a fair number of shorter stories. He has a number of good characters and some interesting plots. But in my mind the Maltese Falcon is the masterpiece and his claim to fame. I’d say it should be required reading for anyone who wants to write genre fiction. Not because you’ll learn how to write. And not to see where all the conventions came from. But just to show that good writing involves capturing the essence of a time or a place. It’s like a snapshot of the spirit. It tells the truth and that resonates. And that makes it last. You see there’s one other fact about Hammett that explains his success. He had worked as a detective. He actually knew what he was talking about. He probably never had to deal with people looking for a jewel encrusted golden bird but he certainly dealt with cops and crooks and desperate men of many types. He wrote what he knew.

Space Opera (High and Low)

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When I was a kid I read every bit of science fiction I could get my hands on. This was back in the late 1960s and I didn’t know the difference between stories written in the 1930s and newer stuff. If I’d ever heard the term space opera it was incidental and to me had no particular meaning. So I didn’t categorize my reading chronologically or by reviewers’ ratings. I based it on how “good” the story was. So it’s interesting to see what fifty years does to my opinions of those old stories. I’ll look at three stories; Jack Williamson’s The Legion of Space, E. E. Smith’s First Lensman and H. P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness.

So when I read The Legion of Space way back when, I thought it was great! It had vivid characters, exciting action, interstellar travel and bizarre aliens. I remember how vivid the secondary character Giles Habibula seemed to me with his whining and complaining. I remebered it as being an excellent sf novel.

Well I’ve reread it recently. Yikes! The writing is stilted and of poor quality. The characters in many scenes are one dimensional and the dialog is mostly wooden. Giles Habibula at least was more interesting than the rest of the characters so at least my recollection was not completely unconfirmed. But all in all, reading it was disappointing.

Next up I reread First Lensman. I started it with some trepidation. I had enjoyed the whole Lensman series immensely. Some of my fondest memories as a young science fiction fan were imagining how it would look if the series could be brought to the big screen. I was worried that, once again, the reality wouldn’t live up to the memory.

Luckily, it was much better than The Legion of Space. There were some weaknesses in the dialog and changes in the literary conventions stemming from the mores of the time. But overall it was enjoyable and fun. The strengths of the story were much as I remembered them. The stories were plot driven but with enough simple character development to lend sympathy to the endeavor. I think the recognizable American ethos and feel of the scene made it comfortable and enjoyable. And nostalgia for those happier times increased the pleasure of reading it. Catastrophe averted.

Finally I reread At the Mountains of Madness. Now even back when I first read this Lovecraft tale I recognized the shortcomings of Lovecraft’s prose. His overcharged style sometimes verged on self-parody and the telegraphing of plot events was extremely heavy handed and obvious. Even as a young adult I felt impatient at just how poorly he laid out his stories. His only saving grace is that in the broad strokes of his world building vision he seems to have tapped into images that are genuinely horrific. A very strange author that always leaves conflicted feelings after reading, that is how I describe Lovecraft.

Interestingly, I felt no difference between my original impressions of this story and my recent reading. He induces the exact same combination of impatience and vague interest. He’s like some unpleasant fever dream that produces a combination of stimulating disorientation and dull headache at the same time.

So what have I learned from all this? I’m not sure. Possibly that as a young reader I was far less critical of literary talent. And yet, the stories that I enjoyed the most still seem to possess the most merit as stories. And looking at the components that the better stories possessed, they combined likable protagonists with plot lines that featured conflict and adventure. Okay, so basically Homer’s Odyssey.  Well that’s not a profound conclusion but I guess it’s comforting to know.

Pardon me while I go search for an old edition of Smith’s Skylark of Space. That should be fun.

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: A Book Review

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Scott Adams is best known as the creator of the Dilbert comic strip.  In the 1990s and 2000s it was one of the most widely read and enjoyed parts of the common culture.  Every cubicle dweller in the western world could commiserate with the trials and tribulations of this geeky everyman.  Any engineer of whatever stripe could empathize with the bureaucratic idiocy that Dilbert navigates at every turn.

What people might be less aware of is that Scott Adams has written some other books that are more in the vein of self help.  I was unaware of it.  The only recent information I had about Adams was his commentary about Donald Trump’s candidacy.  Apparently he is somewhat on the right end of the spectrum (although his exact shade is not defined in the present book).  But through an article I read on his recent book I became interested to see what kind of advice I could get from Dilbert.

After reading this medium length book (~250 pages) I will say I’m very impressed.  It combines advice on health and career in a surprisingly integrated fashion.  Without regurgitating the details of the book he ties together diet, exercise, work, play, psychology, innovation, socialization and happiness into a coherent hierarchical plan.  The book is laid out into a narrative following the details of Scott’s life from his childhood on.  It shows how each of his various failed endeavors contributed to his understanding of what he was doing wrong and what he had learned.

I found the writing style funny and very readable.  What really surprised me was how convincing his arguments were.  I found myself agreeing with the logic of his perspective on a lot of these topics.  Most surprising was how enthusiastic I felt in response to this book.  Individually, none of these topics is profound.  But wrapping them together I think they provide a powerful stimulus to someone interested in enhancing his own peace of mind and prospects for a happy life.  There are all kinds of self help books out there.  Some better, some worse.  Scott Adams has written one for the everyman who is navigating a world filled with confusing, unhealthy and frivolous choices that distract us from what we need to do (and not do) to be happy.

Because of how positively I viewed the book I decided it was necessary to test my reaction by consulting with the most skeptical authority on life known to man, my wife.  I described the thesis of the book in short outline and she provided a rapid decision.  It was all just common sense.  I objected that the way the advice was presented made it much more valuable than Ben Franklin’s, “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”  She still scoffed at my enthusiasm.

So there you have it.  It’s a man’s book.  Women are the ultimate pragmatists and have little use for common sense handbooks because they already live by simple rules that life dictates for them.  I guess men naturally think rules don’t apply to us and therefore allow us to defy common sense and make our own rules.  Fine.  But I think I did not sufficiently detail the sections of the book that addressed the advice on maximizing success and innovation.  Here I believe Scott captures some behaviors and ideas that are applicable to almost anyone who wants to break out of the hum-drum existence of modern day corporate life and build something of his own.  If I went over this with my wife I’m sure she’ll tell me it’s just another way of saying, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”

Damned pessimists.  Once I’m rich, powerful and famous she’ll change her tune.

Bravo, Scott Adams, bravo.

SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police; A Review

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Discussing this book is really a combination of explaining the concept of the Social Justice Warrior (SJW) to the uninitiated (or fortunate innocent) and reviewing the efficacy of the content with respect to the book’s stated purpose.

How’s that for a loaded thesis?

So, for anyone who has been in a coma for the last twenty years or living in a Burmese lamasery for the same period of time, an SJW is a person who pursues a policy of seeking out and punishing anyone who does not sufficiently submit to any aspect of the ultra-progressive narrative and agenda. This transgression can be of any kind; action, inaction, word, silence, facial expression, glance or any behavior at all. Most guilty are those who regardless of any other action belong to that most detestable group; the cis-gender, male, straight, white, christian American. They have the Mark of Cain (if I may use such a Judeo-Christian metaphor). For them any punishment is justified and insufficient. The SJW’s favorite method of attack is the internet swarm. These creatures will locate a likely target and using internet posting and e-mail complaints attempt to convince the victim’s employer that he is a terrible person and needs to be de-employed (fired). This sounds highly unlikely but reading a few of the clearly documented and easily confirmed high profile examples from the book it’s pretty clear that SJWs exist and that they do horrible damage to their victims. So in a nutshell that is the meaning of SJW. First part of mission accomplished. Hooray.

Part 2. My thoughts on the book. The author of the book, Vox Day, is an incredibly polarizing individual. For left wing individuals (especially those in the science fiction and fantasy community) he is the devil himself. Their fear and loathing of him is practically a fetish. For the political moderates he is a gadfly. He punishes them for failing to support anyone who the left labels as racist, sexist, homophobic or any other label they use to disqualify their enemies. Lately, in fact, Vox has been more of a scourge of mainstream conservatives than left-wing targets due to the Trump campaign and the reaction of mainstream republican politicians and pundits to it. Therefore he has become a lightning rod for several types of attack. He is aligned with the alt-right and nationalist groups and his popular blog site ( https://voxday.blogspot.com/ ) reflects his take no prisoners approach to the culture wars. For these reasons it would be easy to dismiss his book as a partisan screed only useful for preaching to the far right choir. But that is not the case. The book is actually an incredibly useful tool for explaining to all sorts of people and preparing them for an SJW attack. How to recognize it. How it progresses. What to do and most importantly, what not to do.

The information is laid out in a very orderly arrangement with chronological breakdown of the stages. Interspersed are examples of the high profile SJW victims from the recent past. Also Vox provides his own autobiographical account of an SJW attack.

Grabbing just one nugget from this useful guide I’d say probably the single most important rule is never apologize (although a close second is never resign).

In my estimation this book should be read by anyone who wants to protect himself from being intimidated (and potentially destroyed) by leftist culture thugs. What it also does is allow you to recognize the noxious effect that political correctness has already had on normal human interaction. Basically everyone is afraid to challenge the thought police who impose an unpopular narrative on us all. The fact that it is reinforced at almost all institutional centers (media, schools, corporations and government) shows just how serious the problem already is.

Vox Day has millions of enemies. But he has almost everyone in his debt for providing a useful tool to warn of and protect us from these totalitarian harpies.

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A Paean to Agent Franks

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Q: What is one of the great pleasures of the reading world?

A: An interesting villain.

One of the examples that comes to mind is Hannibal Lecter. Here is a man who indulges in murder, torture and cannibalism and yet is inarguably the most interesting character in the several books he appears in. Granted, he’s not really a sympathetic character, but he is the center of attention. I think part of what distinguishes the interesting villain from the garden variety is consistency. So the interesting villain doesn’t follow society’s rules but he does follow his own rules. Discovering and acknowledging the constancy of the villain to these rules is part of the enjoyment of the character. You see the payoff coming or some plot twist prevents it. Each occasion reinforces the pattern and adds to the fun.

Closely allied to this type is the anti-hero. He rescues you from a serial killer but then kicks you in the balls for making him miss his coffee break. He saves a bus full of nuns from falling off a cliff but then relieves himself on the bus tire in full view of the thankful occupants. Here the enjoyment comes from the juxtaposition of thrilling exploits and amazing skill along side of boorish behavior and callous disregard. Perhaps a more descriptive title is the Heroic Jerk.

For anyone familiar with Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter series of books I think the character I would immediately associate with the anti-hero is Agent Franks. He carries out all assignments issued to him by the Monster Control Bureau (MCB) no matter how brutal and regardless of the impact on innocent bystanders. His almost complete indifference to human considerations of any kind is sort of his hallmark. Along with this is his almost complete lack of interpersonal skills. The closest he ever comes to tact is silence. Usually his version of conversation is an order prefaced by an insult and followed up almost immediately with a threat or an assault. Good times, good times.

The flipside to this is his willingness to fight evil no matter the odds and no matter the risk to himself. His underlying motivation is to fulfill his oath to destroy humanity’s supernatural foes (regardless of how many innocent bystanders must be coincidentally slaughtered to achieve that noble goal).

Starting out as a small recurring part in the first couple of Monster Hunter books Franks gains much greater importance in one of the later books and becomes pivotal to the underlying story line. But I find his curmudgeonly heroism endlessly entertaining. So much so, that I have decided to make it my life’s work to convince a major motion picture studio to bring the Monster Hunter world to the big screen, and most importantly, to cast Adam Baldwin as Agent Franks. I base this casting decision on Mr. Baldwin’s very similar character of Col. John Casey of the NSA (in the tv series Chuck). This was also a man of few words who would sacrifice himself (and anyone around him) in order to fulfill his mission. The aptness of this casting is I believe self-evident.

So all hail to the Anti-Hero. All hail the Heroic Jerk.

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