I just finished the latest (and possibly the penultimate) Dresden Files novel; “Twelve Months.” So, what should I say about it. I won’t do a synopsis of the plot. You can get that plenty of places but if you haven’t read it, you don’t want the spoilers. And since this is book 18 (or 19 or 20?) of the series you wouldn’t be reading this book if you’re not already caught up on the saga.
So, I think I’ll just give my impressions of the book as a Harry Dresden book. First of all, this book is a reaction to the havoc that the war in the last book “Battle Ground” wreaked on Harry’s life. He lost several close friends and the love of his life so he’s not doing too well. And so, this book chronicles Harry’s recovery from physical, emotional and supernatural wounds that he sustained.
And I would say that this book is much more of an emotional story than most of his earlier books. And that’s not to say that Harry Dresden has just found his humanity in this book. He was always an emotional man but I think the author is trying to emphasize that this older, wiser Harry is less motivated by anger and more willing to use empathy to think his way out of a conflict. He’s even able to reason with a Lovecraftian monster to avoid a lose-lose situation.
And another observation I have is that I think I can see some of the loose ends being tied together. If the next book is the last chapter of the Dresden Files, then he’s going to have to settle the hash of about twenty major characters and a hundred minor ones. And some of these major characters are tied to railroad tracks with locomotives within sight. And there’s no off-ramp for Harry. He’s slowly advanced over the course of the series from an almost comically overmatched novice at magic to one of the top ten powers in the supernatural world. He has friendships, alliances and vendettas with virtually all of the supernatural powers that exist in his crowded and lovingly detailed urban fantasy universe. There is the White Council of Wizards, the Summer Fey, the Winter Fey, Ghouls, Lycanthropes, a Titan, the Black Court Vampires and the White Court Vampires. There aren’t any more Red Court Vampires because Harry killed off the whole clan in an earlier book. How exactly Jim Butcher intends to pull the plug on Harry’s adventures is a complete mystery to me. Killing him off doesn’t seem to make any of the subplots work better and I just don’t see how he “retires.” Too many enormously powerful forces want him dead.
But suffice it to say, if you’ve enjoyed the earlier Dresden Files installments then you will inhale the four hundred sixty odd pages of “Twelve Months” in a couple of days and immediately wonder why Jim Butcher is leaving you hanging waiting for the conclusion. So, who do I recommend this book to? Why, anyone who has gotten this far in the series of course. And for that audience I wholeheartedly recommend it.
“Project Hail Mary” is an sf novel by Andy Weir. It’s currently finishing off a theater run as a motion picture made by Amazon (MGM). And in fact, this is Weir’s second book to be turned into a motion picture (the first one was “The Martian”).
Just to start with the most important question, I think this is an excellent book.
(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)
My review will have spoilers but I think I’ll be cagey about some of the plot elements because they’re pretty important to the way the story unfolds for the reader and I think they shouldn’t be sacrificed for the sake of my plot synopsis.
The book’s protagonist is Ryland Grace; a biology PhD who now teaches Middle School science because a paper he wrote about the possibility of extraterrestrial life in the absence of water was severely criticized. As the story unfolds an autocratic European Space Agency administrator named Eva Stratta whose been given almost unlimited authority commandeers Ryland into a multinational science and engineering project that is studying a mysterious non-terrestrial organism that is absorbing an enormous amount of energy from the sun and threatens to throw the Earth into a cataclysmic ice age.
Ryland discovers that the lifeform (which he names astrophage) has a life cycle which sees it looping around between basking close to the sun in order to store up enormous energy traveling to Venus, reproducing in the atmosphere of Venus and then returning to the neighborhood of the sun. And it travels back and forth in this cycle at speeds approaching c (the speed of light). And the explanation for this capability is that astrophage can convert energy into matter and matter into energy. There’s some hand-waving about neutrino production creating matter/anti-matter annihilation but of course there’s nothing that makes any sense. Anyway, the astrophage is increasing its numbers asymptotically and within thirty years Earth will freeze and mankind will disappear.
And it is discovered that all of the stars in our neighborhood are also dimming because of astrophage. All except one Tau Ceti. So, a star ship will be built by the combined technical skills of humanity and staffed with a crew of three including a scientist trained on the current knowledge about astrophage and hopefully they will discover why Tau Ceti is immune to the dimming and use this to find a cure for our solar system. And the star ship is powered using astrophage as fuel. Well, actually the light that the astrophage produce for motion is the propellant pushing the ship through space. Unfortunately, in the short window they have to create the ship and breed the enormous amount of astrophage needed, they cannot make enough for a round trip. This is a suicide mission (thus the name “hail Mary”).
And in order to keep the crew from killing each other in the tight confines of the ship for four (relativistically speaking) years, they are in a coma state. When the ship reaches Tau Ceti, Ryland is awakened and doesn’t remember who he is or where he is or why. He discovers that aside from robotic presences he is the only living human aboard. His two crewmates have long ago died during their coma states.
Gradually Ryland’s memory returns and he realizes that he must carry out the mission unassisted by the deceased pilot and engineer. Slightly later on he realizes that another star ship is in his neighborhood and he discovers that the inhabitants of another local star system (40 Eridani) have also sent a mission to Tau Ceti to solve the problem of astrophage. The alien is a sort of five-legged giant crab with an outer shell of metallic minerals. His atmosphere is ammonia at twenty-nine atmospheres and 200°C and so Ryland cannot go into his ship but must allow the alien to come to the Hail Mary in a protective suit.
The remainder of the book is a journal of Ryland and Rocky (the name he gives the Eridian engineer who is the only surviving member of the 40 Eridani mission) learning how to understand each other and cooperate to combine their highly complementary skill sets to solve what should be an impossible problem; translating the resistance of the Tau Ceti system to astrophage into a practical solution for Earth’s sun and 40 Eridani. And after many setbacks and several acts of selfless friendship by both partners they overcome the challenges and solve the problems and save Earth and Erid (Ryland’s name for Rocky’s home world). Now Rocky’s ship has an enormous surplus of astrophage and he is able to provide Ryland with enough fuel for a return trip to Earth. But after they separate for their voyages home Ryland discovers that a flaw in a containment tank will mean that Rocky’s ship will be out of fuel and doomed. Ryland reverses course and rescues Rocky and returns him to Erid in the Hail Mary and must therefore abandon his own return to Earth. He is able to send the solution to Earth’s problem (another single cell lifeform that Ryland dubs Taumoeba that eats astrophage and can be inoculated into the atmosphere of Venus) in four robot ships that will return to Earth on their own. In the last scene of the book Ryland is living in a special enclosure on Erid that protects him from the atmosphere, temperature and pressure conditions that would kill him instantly. But he has his friend Rocky around to keep him company and he has returned to his former occupation as a school teacher to Eridian children.
Okay. This guy Weir doesn’t kid around when it comes to detailed scientific descriptions. He’s got two different artificial gravity mechanisms (centrifuge and continuous acceleration/deceleration travel) and he describes their successful and unsuccessful usage in the story. He goes into gory detail to show how his astrophage can be used in a stellar drive. He goes into gory detail to describe his efforts to get Taumoeba to “evolve” into a population that will survive the atmospheres containing nitrogen on Venus and the planet near 40 Eridani. He goes into gory detail to discuss his efforts to isolate and remediate the contamination of his fuel by Taumoeba. This guy love technobabble. But I guess most people reading science fiction love technobabble too so it’s a forgivable sin. The other thing I notice is that Weir writes characters that correspond to millennials. They’re much more touchy-feely and prone to virtue signal than I care for. In other words, he’s writing for a modern audience, not a caveman like me. In fact, even though she’s very much a girl-boss, the character I most closely relate to was the autocratic administrator, Eva Stratta. My verdict is this is a very inventive and entertaining science fiction story and well worth the reader’s time. I highly recommend it.
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.
A while ago I spoke of buying a book I owned fifty-some-odd years ago. So, here’s a story from that book to talk about. The author Fritz Leiber was pretty popular back in the day. So, I don’t intend to rewind the plot here because it’s a short story (twenty-eight pages) and anyone can find it out there in the public domain, I’m sure.
But I just want to give some impressions of the best aspects of the story. This is explicitly a post-apocalyptic world. New York City and Washington DC are craters. And because of the disaster the US government has been supplanted by a regime called the Thinkers. They are frauds who have convinced the populace that they have supercomputers and atomic rockets that go to Mars to commune with the all-wise Martians and something called the “Mind Bomb,” etc., etc., etc. The real scientists have been cowed into keeping quiet and the nominal leader is a guy named Jorj Helmuth who was a publics relations specialist in the before time but now believes his own hype and thinks he’s a master of sleep learning and hypnotism and whatever else he’s made up.
The story is basically the maneuvering of Jorj, his cronies, the scientists and a few other actors on stage. Leiber lays out the story and the characters in broad strokes but very skillfully and it’s fun to recognize the Soviet (and American) propaganda playbook being run to fascinating effect. It’s a cautionary tale about idealism and chicanery and power politics and the danger of believing in your own lies. And even thought this story was written in 1951 it reads the same as if it was written today or tomorrow.
And it has a great villain who just exudes realpolitik and a feme fatale and even a twist ending to make sure you don’t forget that it’s from the golden age of science fiction. And even the title of the story is the punchline.
All these same people inhabit our present world. The lies and make believe from then is no different from the BLM or Antifa grifts that we see all around us. Probably the closest thing would be the climate change scam that has bankrupted Europe and exacerbated the monetary problems we’re experiencing.
So, that was fun. There are a few more stories in the book that I’ll highlight in later episodes of this book review. But I’ll say that “Poor Superman” is the crème de la crème of the entire collection. And since it’s the last story in the book you finish it off with a smile on your face. See, that Bob Heinlein really knew the trick to editing an anthology. Make sure the last story leaves them wanting more.
So, who remembers this story or at least remembers the name Fritz Leiber? Surely, I’m not the only old science fiction fan here and I’d love to get some other opinions. After all, I’m just one man. And I’m not even superman.
“And then, quite suddenly, summer was over. He knew it first when walking downtown. Tom grabbed his arm and pointed gasping, at the dimestore window. They stood there unable to move because of the things from another world displayed so neatly, so innocently, so frighteningly, there. “Pencils, Doug, ten thousand pencils!” “Oh, my gosh!” “Nickel tablets, dime tablets, notebooks, erasers, water colors, rulers, compasses, a hundred thousand of them!” “Don’t look. Maybe it’s just a mirage.” “No,” moaned Tom in despair. “School. School straight on ahead! Why, why do dime stores show things like that in windows before summer’s even over! Ruin half the vacation!” ― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
“June dawns, July noons, August evenings over, finished, done, and gone forever with only the sense of it all left here in his head. Now, a whole autumn, a white winter, a cool and greening spring to figure sums and totals of summer past. And if he should forget, the dandelion wine stood in the cellar, numbered huge for each and every day. He would go there often, stare straight into the sun until he could stare no more, then close his eyes and consider the burned spots, the fleeting scars left dancing on his warm eyelids; arranging, rearranging each fire and reflection until the pattern was clear… So thinking, he slept. And, sleeping, put an end to Summer, 1928.” ― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
As I mentioned a day or two ago, I’ve finally finished my story about the sniper. Of course, it still needs a spell check and another read through for errors and any “infelicities” of style that I may find. But for the most part I’ve brought it to a close.
But now comes the really hard part. Self-publishing versus traditional publishing. And for me it’s especially difficult because the story is unacceptably “right wing” from the point of view of anyone in the traditional publishing industry except for one or two houses like Baen Books who cater to stories from our side of the great political divide.
I have just begun doing my research on some kind of order of operations to maximize my chances to publish the book so that the largest number of people will hear about it. And my level of knowledge of the whole publishing process is pretty darn close to absolute zero. I’ve only reached out to one guy I know of who writes in the same general universe with me but I think I’ll have to feel my way around by reading and watching content that is meant to educate the public about trad publishing vs. self-publishing and then get a better handle on what writers on the right generally do.
So far all I’ve read makes the whole process seem incredibly slow and painful and chock full of interactions with gatekeepers and unsympathetic literary agents who will never return any of my correspondence but will dismiss me as a talentless hack.
But maybe I’m completely mistaken and instead I’ll be embraced by the publishing world as the next Cormac McCarthy and be showered with accolades and surrounded by business agents fighting one another to get me to sign book and movie deals. Within months I’ll be quoted by millions of readers who will flood my website with messages of delight about my brilliant writing and demands that I “take their crowdfunding money” for my next writing effort. The millions of dollars will pile up in Camera Girl’s sewing closet (she likes cash) and I will become a recluse and start wearing outlandish clothes to reflect my new status as a global phenomenon. I can hear it now. The crowds chanting at DragonCon, “photog, photog, photog!”
Okay good. Now I’ve got that out of my system. I’ll go back to finding out whether the “hybrid” publishers I’ve read about that cater to right and libertarian authors are legit or really the infamous “vanity press” scam artists that take all your money and ship a few boxes of print-on-demand paperbacks and tell you to, “Go market the damn things yourself!”
Well, I wanted to try writing a book. Now I’ve done it and I better find out how to get other people to know it exists without spending a million dollars doing it. And that’s another thing. Now that AI can draw covers maybe I can save some money by using it. Of course, I understand that I’ll anger all of the artistic community that does book covers for a living. Hmmm. Maybe I should find out what it costs. There are already so many people mad at me in the world, adding to that number sounds like a bad idea. Well, we’ll see.
“Inherit the Wind” was a famous fictionalized account of the Scope’s Monkey Trial of the early twentieth century. It centered on a young school teacher who was arrested and put on trial for teaching the theory of evolution in the Bible Belt where laws had been passed to forbid it.
Dr. Schantz has managed to swap out transgender orthodoxy for fundamentalist creationism in his story and crafted a courtroom drama that captures all of the nuances of our present-day retreat from reality that calls sexually mutilating adolescents, “gender-affirming therapy” and allows grade school teachers to conspire with social workers to perform these procedures on minors despite parents’ horrified resistance. A high school biology teacher is accused of teaching the biological facts of human sexuality and this throws him in conflict with a state law that forbids a teacher from challenging a student’s “selected gender identity.”
For those familiar with the movie version of “Inherit the Wind,” some of the plot twists will reappear in a new analog. But this isn’t a rehash of the old story. This is a very in-depth look at the illogic and fallacies of the transgender narrative and the way different parts of the government, the medical profession, media and academia pander to the delusions of confused children and frighten their parents into allowing terrible things to be done to their children.
The story is inhabited by a cast of characters that interlock at multiple points. Small town politics and society mesh with national political figures who have their own agendas but seize upon the trial as the perfect battlefield to win a victory for their side. Both sides are portrayed believably. The woke activists aren’t just straw men but sound quite close to what their real counterparts sound like in news clips. The details of the trial sound extremely close to what the transcript of a trial would consist of.
So, what did I think of the story? I think the story takes a while to get going. There is a set-up needed to get all the pieces in position for the trial. During this period the reader will have to be patient. Once the trial gets going the story finds its stride and becomes a courtroom drama. And I found the ending satisfying without being overdone. As with its predecessor it doesn’t attempt to write a conclusion to the clash going on in the story but rather capture the flavor of the two opposing sides and show how each side attempts to paint itself and its opponents using the weapons that each prefers. The Left fixates on emotions and idealism while the Right points to logic and reality.
Who is this book for? Well, first off, people of the woke persuasion will not be amused. Despite being reasonably accurate in his portrayal of the woke side they don’t come off as sympathetic characters. So, this leaves moderates and people on the Right. Also, this book is a courtroom drama and folks who read these are its intended audience. Personally, I liked the book. I liked the defense attorney and I despised the prosecutor. This made the courtroom battle satisfying for me. But you’ll have to make up your mind based on what I’ve described whether this is your kind of story.
When I was an undergraduate, I participated in an intensive summer program in Classical Greek language and one of the sections of the course was to read one of Plato’s dialogs (Ion) and sections from the Republic. And that was interesting because after having read a bunch of Plato in translation I always wondered if maybe it lost something in translation. It seemed that the stuff Socrates said was a bunch of nonsense. Maybe if read in the original it would seem less silly. But that summer I was disabused of that hope. Nothing was lost in translation. It was goofy stuff.
All of Socrates intellectual opponents in these dialogs are straw men who are set up to allow Plato to go through his dialectical arguments proving that no one knows anything but Socrates and therefore the world should be ruled by philosopher-kings that have been trained by Plato and his fellow philosophers at the Academy.
Okay, I’m pretty dismissive of the father of Western philosophy. But there really is no other position I can see. But by the same token he is also the man who attracted Aristotle to Athens and thereby brought him to the attention of the world. So, building the first western university did have many positive effects. After all Aristotle was Alexander the Great’s tutor and Alexander is responsible for building Alexandria in Egypt and Alexandria became a great center for learning and science under Ptolemy; one of Alexander’s successors. So, good for you Plato.
Having never systematically studied Plato’s life I read this book to see what incites might be hidden there. Unfortunately, there is not much esoteric knowledge that a scholar can add to the corpus of Plato’s work. Most of what’s there is the common legend and what’s added by conjecture doesn’t really matter to anyone but possibly a specialist who wants to speculate whether the Republic was written in which range of years and before or after some other dialog such as Gorgias.
What I did enjoy was the sections of the book that reviewed the history of Athens and other parts of the Hellenic world in Plato’s time. Plato lived during the end of the Peloponnesian War and the defeat of Athens. He lived under the reign of the Thirty Tyrants. In fact, several of his family members belonged to that regime which he eventually denounced. Of course, the following regime that restored democracy to Athens also condemned his mentor and friend Socrates to death so Plato’s political and partisan feelings were early on buffeted by harsh reality. But the facts of the times are interesting and useful for consideration. Plato’s later dabbling with practical politics when he attempted to convert the notorious tyrant Dionysus II of Syracuse into a philosopher-king is almost farcically unrealistic. The fallout from this attempt should have been enough to single-handedly destroy Plato’s reputation as a practical philosopher but time heals all wounds.
I guess I’m of two minds as to how to recommend this book. If someone is interested in Plato’s work and his philosophical ideas then this book will be of interest. If someone is interested in the very important time period after the end of the Peloponnesian War until right before Alexander the Great there is some interesting insights here. But unless both apply, I think most readers will have to pick and choose through the sections of the book.
For instance, I find Plato’s Theory of Forms utter nonsense. The idea that there is an ideal form of a tree or a shoemaker or a door seems to me the working of the mind of a doofus. Even the idea of the ideal of a geometric shape like a sphere or a cube seems an unnecessary addition to reality. So, the section on this doctrine holds no interest for me. And in fact, I find most of Plato’s philosophical doctrines not very useful for human life. But that’s how I’ve judged most of philosophy. Although Aristotle seemed to have had a more practical view of the world and the things in it. Maybe I should have looked for a new biography of Aristotle. Oh well.
“And then, quite suddenly, summer was over. He knew it first when walking downtown. Tom grabbed his arm and pointed gasping, at the dimestore window. They stood there unable to move because of the things from another world displayed so neatly, so innocently, so frighteningly, there. “Pencils, Doug, ten thousand pencils!” “Oh, my gosh!” “Nickel tablets, dime tablets, notebooks, erasers, water colors, rulers, compasses, a hundred thousand of them!” “Don’t look. Maybe it’s just a mirage.” “No,” moaned Tom in despair. “School. School straight on ahead! Why, why do dime stores show things like that in windows before summer’s even over! Ruin half the vacation!” ― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
“June dawns, July noons, August evenings over, finished, done, and gone forever with only the sense of it all left here in his head. Now, a whole autumn, a white winter, a cool and greening spring to figure sums and totals of summer past. And if he should forget, the dandelion wine stood in the cellar, numbered huge for each and every day. He would go there often, stare straight into the sun until he could stare no more, then close his eyes and consider the burned spots, the fleeting scars left dancing on his warm eyelids; arranging, rearranging each fire and reflection until the pattern was clear… So thinking, he slept. And, sleeping, put an end to Summer, 1928.” ― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
Kurt Schlichter’s novel, “People’s Republic – A Novel” is an action-adventure story set in a near future where the United States has fractured into two separate countries. The People’s Republic of North America encompasses the west coast and the Great Lakes and east coast down to about half of Virginia. The remaining states are still called the United States of America. There was at least some combat between the two groups of states but at the time of the story it has settled into a bickering of guerillas at the borders.
(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)
Now the story is not about the civil war or the current relations between the two countries. Rather it is an adventure story about an undercover operation by a family to rescue a woman who foolishly defected to the People’s Republic. The main protagonist is a former special forces soldier who earns his living by smuggling people across the closed border from the People’s Republic to the United States.
Together with the woman’s brother who is also a veteran they go on an odyssey to reach Los Angeles and rescue the girl and also carry back a data base full of the names of spies currently working in the United States. Along the way we see the results of the radical progressive agenda in the People’s Republic and the growing discontent with the extreme economic hardships that exist there.
The book is liberally seasoned with fights, gun fights and escapes. This is solidly in the action/adventure genre and provides a fast paced and well-written story. There is a fair bit of progressive bashing built into the plot but being a progressive-basher myself I enjoyed it pretty consistently. I would happily recommend this book to anyone on the right side of the political divide who enjoys action-adventure. Progressives will definitely not enjoy how the Left is characterized. Oh well.
