On My Bookshelf: The Office of Mercy

I never completed The Hunger Games. But from my daughter’s description, I think I came close when I recently finished Ariel Djanikian’s first novel, The Office of Mercy.

I think I could recommend this book to the young miss. It has one foot in YA, and another in post-apocalyptic adult fiction. It’s a pretty tame book. But it’s about a society four centuries in the future that has tamed the practice of genocide. Genocide is now an act of “mercy,” hence the book title.

Inside the dome, people are decanted like they were in Brave New World. Outside the dome, human beings scratch together what life they can after the collapse of civilization. Inside the dome, people live an antiseptic existence as human science pushes individuals toward immortality. Outside the dome, people who wander too close are incinerated by a device called a “nova,” in order to spare them future suffering. Inside, it’s all very polite, and there’s even a tolerance for dissent–within reason. Outside, there are plots to take over the inside. And inside, the powers-that-be have ways to get their way, which is why they’re so calm and nice and serene. And they’re already more than three centuries old. Which means they are invested in the long run. That could be played for more creepiness, but it’s not until the last forty pages that we get our first look at the “Alphas.”

By the end of the novel, we’ve lived through several months of a young woman’s life. She finds secrets outside, inside, and up the ladder of command. She vacillates as she discovers shocking truths about herself, her society, and the man she loves. She is an accessory to grievous crimes, but there’s a surprise at the end. A few surprises, actually.

This book isn’t quite strong enough to be a character study, which would have been interesting. I think the ending (something of a cliffhanger) could be justified if we went a bit deeper into Natasha.

As a study of a future post-civilized Earth, this book isn’t quite strong enough, I think. There are some flaws in believability. Some ideas struck me as a bit too derivative of post-apocalyptic fiction. Other authors have covered this ground, though hardly ever from a woman’s point of view.

Ms Djanikian plots well, and gives us one interesting character. The book moves along at a good pace and gives the reader a few fakes and feints along the way. I think a Catniss fan would like this book. I liked it too. But I wouldn’t put it on the level of excellent.

 

More Solar System Drama

My second Solar System science fiction book in the past four months: Blue Remembered Earth by Alastair Reynolds. I first read two or three of his early novels about a decade ago. Last appearance on my bookshelf was about five years ago. The author seems to be flying in a more literary orbit these days. Blue Remembered Earth is more character-driven than I remember his other novels, which were more about science fiction ideas. Which isn’t to say this book doesn’t have ideas. It does–and very good ones.

The book bounces back between brother and sister Africans who live 150 years hence on an Earth where China, India, and Africa are the preeminent powers and North America gets one mention in the whole book. Or maybe two. They are members of a powerful and wealthy family that has made its fortune in space exploration. They are also the black sheep in that they care for elephants (brother Geoffrey) and art (sister Sunday) more than they follow the familyline pushing back the frontiers of space, and especially amassing more wealth, prestige, and power.

The action begins when the family matriarch dies. Geoffrey is bribed by his powerful smart-a** cousins to leave his elephant research and go to the moon. There, he finds a spacesuit glove in his grandmother’s safe deposit box. He visits his sister and from there each sets off on largely separate adventures to get to the bottom of some mysterious clues left by the deceased. The reader joins them for some exciting trespass into the Chinese-controlled area of the moon, the ocean floor off the coast of East Africa, Phobos (moon of Mars), the Martian surface, and eventually the Kuiper belt beyond Neptune.

It’s an interesting travelogue. Like the future solar system of Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312, it seems to move ahead too fast in terms of technology. But like that book, it also paints an optimistic view of the future. Human beings are able to pull the planet back from the catastrophes of climate change, war, and self-destruction. And if the societies don’t seem to be “free” in the sense we know freedom, you don’t find many people living in the wreckage of the Worst Case Scenario. Maybe that’s good. Maybe not.

I wanted to like Blue Remembered Earth more than I did. At times, the characters seemed forced into moods, feelings, and even discoveries. A few surprise elements pop up–these are interesting. The surprise on Mars rescues Sunday, but doesn’t contribute to the big arc that aims the human race into the stars. And that development is telegraphed from the beginning of the novel–I just wondered how they were going to get to it.

The various adventures eventually get to Geoffrey, and by the three-quarter mark of the book, he’s a changed man. I’m still not sure why he did change, other than he was wowed more toward the end by his experiences than he was by flying to the moon and diving into the ocean depths.

The sister is interesting, but not really essential to the book. She seems like a drop-in woman character. The villains, including the cousins, seem cardboard to me. This novel could have been a one-man-show, with a good supporting cast.

Like I said: I wanted to like this book more than I did. There are two surprises at the end that wrap things up, plus a childhood experience remembered that ties up the emotional loose ends. I have a sense Mr Reynolds can write a better book. Clearly, he can handle the Big Ideas of good science fiction. I give him an A-plus for that. He can generate conflict for good characters. But this book could have been more tightly plotted. And if it had been, I think I would have really loved it.

 

Tau Ceti Musings: Interstellar Obsolescence

With the discovery of five planets orbiting the star Tau Ceti, does this mean all the sf literature on that system is now obsolete?

My take is that Asimov, Clarke, Niven, and others will eventually pass into the realm of Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs. These guys were skilled authors with great imaginations. Memorable characters, too. But eventually the factual truth about the universe–in this case other planetary systems–will come out. And we’ll be left to entertain ourselves by the quality of the writing. From the Universe Today site:

(T)his new discovery is the closest single sun-like star that we know of to host of an entire system of planets. The five planets are estimated to have masses between two and six times the mass of the Earth, making it the lowest-mass planetary system yet detected. The planet in the habitable zone of the star has a mass around five times that of Earth, making it the smallest planet found to be orbiting in the habitable zone of any Sun-like star.

I want to get to that “habitable zone” in a bit. But first, a thought that Tau Ceti may be more appealing than twentieth century guesswork in the books:

- As you can see above, when compared to the sun (left) Tau Ceti is bit smaller, less spotty, and more orange than our home star. If God decided to pull a cosmic switcheroo and give our solar system Tau Ceti one morning, we’d be deep in an ice age within a few years. Earthlike planets will need to huddle closer to that star.

- Tau Ceti is thought to be older than the sun. Generally speaking, astronomers think lower metal content in a star implies a formation farther back in time, before as many supernovae blasted as much iron, nickel, gold, etc. into the cosmos. One presumes that Tau Ceti’s planets will have less iron and rock, and more lighter elements and compounds: carbon, nitrogen, water, methane, ammonia, etc..

- Astronomers have detected about ten times as much “debris” around Tau Ceti. Amateurs are surprised to find out that it is easier for Earthlings to detect dust belts, gas clouds, and debris than it is to find planets. Ten times more asteroids, comets, and space dust swirl in Tau Ceti orbit. Given these new planets are so close in (inside the orbit of Mars in our system) I wonder if all the debris isn’t orbiting a bit farther out. I wonder if astronomers have fine tuned the location of all that junk.

- Astronomers have ruled out a Jupiter-sized planet, unless it’s way, way out from the other five. Jupiter is thought to protect Earth from too many comets and asteroids because it has swallowed up so many over the past billions of years. But on the other hand, without a Jupiter, Tau Ceti’s inner planets may be relatively safe from the occasional asteroid perturbed into an inner system visit.

Here’s why I’m a skeptic on habitable zones. Planets and moons can be warmed by things other than sunlight. Radioactive decay warms the Earth’s interior to the temperature of the sun. Tides of the moons of Jupiter keep rock molten and subsurface oceans liquid.

There is another reason that habitable planets are probably never going to be relevant for human travel in space, if we ever make it to the stars. It will take a ship thousands of years to travel the interstellar gulf. That ship will probably be the size of an asteroid or small moon, and will carry all the creature comforts of home. Even if Tau Ceti travellers were to find a nice planet on arrival, a large portion of the human occupants might prefer to stay on board ship. Why disembark to a planet with lots of unknowns?

 

Indulgent 2312

I’m going to begin with what’s good about Kim Stanley Robinson’s new novel 2312. Ideas. Not all are original to the author, but that makes them no less awe-inspiring.

On Mercury, close to a half million people live in a mobile city that stays just in the shadow of the sun. How? It rolls on tracks around the planet.

On Venus, a shield in space blocks the sun’s energy, freezes out the atmosphere and enables China’s colony there to shovel frozen carbon dioxide around into piles so new continents can be built up by depositing rock on top of the dry ice.

On Earth, the globe has warmed, the ice caps have melted, and Manhattan is the new Venice.

On Mars, maybe there are artificial intelligences walking around in human bodies. But nobody seems to like the Martians much anyway. Decades ago they raided Saturn’s moon Titan for half its nitrogen.

You get the ideas. It’s only three-hundred years in the future and Earth’s thirty-seven space elevators have made interplanetary travel fun and accessible and full of wonders for everybody. Except the 47%. Or maybe the 99%. People book flights between Mercury and Saturn and places in between without a hint of a charge card or a satchel of gold-pressed latinum. And I wonder why the lower class in half-swamped New Jersey can’t do the same–order up a ticket to Jupiter. This is a futuristic culture seemingly without money. But there’s money afoot–make no mistake. Some people have it. Others don’t–including a young Jersey hood who makes it into space as a favor for saving the main character’s butt when she wanders off into dangerous territory for an evening stroll.

I thought Robinson did a fantastic job with Red Mars and its two sequels. An ensemble cast of complicated characters struggle to colonize Mars, then turn it into a paradise. The key there was the characterization of a handful of interesting people and how they interacted over decades. The Mars trilogy had great ideas, too. Most of the ideas have been tried elsewhere in science fiction. What made these books exceptional was that they were fine novels. The future science was just part of the background scenery.

2312 suffers from too many ideas and not enough people. Robinson has enough material and imagination to distill a dozen novels from this one book. I would have preferred a story about the people colonizing Mercury, And the people who hollow out an asteroid and turn it into a park. Or how the Chinese developed the chutzpah and technology to steal one of Saturn’s moons. Then let the characters fly out of one of those tales.

Instead, we get a somewhat pedestrian murder mystery set in the early 24th century. The mystery itself could have been rendered in a book one-fourth the size of these 550-some pages.

Robinson gets a lot of credit for great ideas. But not all of them are original to this book. He himself has done the sun shield/magnifier in the Mars trilogy. Space elevators–that too. Hollowed-out asteroids? I read about those in Roger MacBride Allen in the 80′s. The narrative is interrupted a few dozen times so the author can trot out a list or a piece of “future” history. A better writer could have woven that into the narrative and left the rest on the cutting room floor. Or, if you want to imitate Tolkien, put it into an appendix with some family trees.

Here and there Robinson’s science is a bit of a clunker. A high-speed interplanetary voyage using Mars for a gravity assist? With people traversing the inner solar system in a few weeks, that’s just bad physics. The faster a spacecraft travels, the less relevant a gravity assist can be. Later in the novel, Robinson describes a ship that just powers its way from planet to planet in just days. Just go with that.

I suspect most of what the author describes in this novel will happen. But three centuries is way too soon.

The other moment of disconnect was in the writing of one-hundred thirtysomething Swan Er Hong as a spoiled and arrogant little princess. Her 200-year-old grandfather comes off as a wisdom figure. One would think that thirteen decades of life would inspire an end to adolescence at some point. And Swan does develop as the pages turn. Otherwise, she is not a very likeable character. I enjoyed the romance that changes her in good ways. There’s no point in writing Swan as an indulgent and immature soul in a rejuvenated, but old body. Another good novel would be what humanlife and relationships are like when one lives for two centuries.

So, should you read this book? I would read the interludes that describe asteroid development. Skip the lists. The rest? If you like KSR, you will possibly like this book. For me, it felt a bit off. If you’ve never read him, tackle the Mars books instead: red, green, and blue.

 

More Foundation Novels

When the “second” Foundation trilogy came out in the late 1990′s, I was looking forward to the reads with great enthusiasm. I enjoyed the original novels, certainly. And while the original author was now dead, the Asimov estate had engaged three fine writers to pick up the task.

Gregory Benford I respected for his fine novel Timescape as well as his six-novel series of a future humanity harassed to near-extinction by machine intelligence. Greg Bear‘s impressive first novel Eon had some enjoyable follow-ups. He also penned a great novel Moving Mars, which I thought held its own against the many Mars books published in the past twenty years. David Brin‘s uplift series was hugely enjoyable for me.

I’ve been reducing the contents of my basement bookshelves the past few weeks. A lot of books are bagged for donation, and I paused as I fingered these volumes of Foundation:

It’s off to the donation pile for the last hardcover science fiction books I ever purchased.

I started to reread them earlier this week, and I think my disappointment today is deeper than when I read them for the first time. Mr Benford introduces a lot of fluff to produce a story that lodges in between Asimov’s first (in sequence)/ last (to be written). Introducing simulated electronic intelligences, robots, and human immersion in the consciousness of chimpanzees (pans, as they are known) doesn’t do a lot to forward the story as an addition to the Foundation universe. It’s weird, and just not up to par for him.

Mr Bear’s efforts center on the robots working behind the scenes. Granted, Asimov himself brought robots into his Foundation novels with the last three books he wrote in the 80′s. But these “new” ideas don’t get handled very well by him or by Mr Brin.

Mr Brin is my favorite of these three authors, and as for the last book in the series, I wanted to like it. I tried hard. But no go.

If one is presumptuous enough to tread on what sf readers consider sacred ground, one should strive for the discipline to tell a story within the confines of the “universe.” Asimov treats well the idea of free will, a galaxy-wide civilization, and the overarching concept of the Foundation, a force to ameliorate the decline of an empire that, while corrupt and in deep decay, still is better than the barbarian alternative. American foreign policy in southwest Asia might take note.

Mr Benford throws in some interesting ideas that, one, he doesn’t handle with much interest to a reader, and two, seemed so foreign to the Foundation universe that his co-authors chose to mostly ignore it.

As for the other two authors, too many robots and robot intrigue. And too much Earth at the end.

David Brin is well able to handle the space opera subgenre. It would have been far more interesting to see him write a Foundation novel set in the era of the independent traders, before the Mule. Foundation explorers rediscovering the galaxy: that would be interesting. Until 1987, Asimov himself only wrote two short stories about Hari Seldon, the scholar who develops the science to predict human behavior via mathematics. Amazingly intriguing idea. But the idea might be better handled by seeing how it affects everyday people in the Foundation. Does predictability imprison people, taking away their free will? More importantly, if it’s all going to be decided by equations, where’s the human motivation to do one’s best, to strive for a dream, or even to search for a better future than the Foundation?

I don’t know about you, but I would want that in my life: a certain freedom to pursue a goal that might not, but just might, be a possibility long after I’m dead.

If you are a Foundation freak and have never read these books, go to mu local Goodwill to pick them up next week. There are interesting things in them. But if you have a lot of other good books, good science fiction to read, I have to suggest you look elsewhere for inspiring fiction.

 

Further: Beyond The Threshold

About three-quarters of the way through Chris Roberson’s Further: Beyond The Threshold I got the distinct impression I was reading a pilot episode for a Star Trek copycat: a starship with a crew of very unlike people thrown together to see what happens in the mix. Mind you, the Trek formula is excellent, and Mr Roberson did a fine job setting this up, giving us the captain’s backstory in bits and pieces, and assembling a diverse and interesting crew.

The only problem is that this novel starts out with a totally different science fiction formula, also well-trod: a man from the past lands in a distant future. So we get to explore the worlds of wonder through the eyes of a more relatable protagonist. Isaac Asimov did it in Pebble in the Sky. And Mr Roberson does it well here. Just about as talky as Mr Asimov, but with more wonder and physics. How a twenty-second century explorer gets to helm a 15th millennium ship is the biggest suspension of disbelief in the book. But it works because Mr Roberson does such an excellent job with characterization, the reader wants it to work.

The good news: this is an enjoyable read. Especially if you want a nice dish of sorbetto after a heavy plate of pasta.

The bad news: Amazon’s venture into science fiction publishing (47North) has done Chris Roberson wrong. The editing is poor. The cover is unimaginative compared to the future described on the pages. But they sure want you to know the author is a “New York Times bestselling author” and is praised by another “New York Times bestselling author.” Really?

There’s a howler of an error on the back cover which proclaims:

“Welcome to the Thirty-Fourth Century.”

Nope. Sorry. Asleep at the wheel on this one. Protagonist RJ Stone experienced deep space hibernation for twelve-thousand years. That’s 120 centuries. Add that to his Earth departure in the late 2100′s, and we’re talking the 142nd century, give or take.

Call me a nitpicker if you wish, but if you’re going to appeal to sf fiction fans, you’re going to have to fix those errors. There are other mistakes in the book, small ones I concede, that a good editor would have spotted. Seriously, if I didn’t have a day job, I’d email 47North and tell them to hire me as an editor. Heaven knows they need one if they’re serious about publishing original fiction. Real editors read real books. They don’t rely on spell-check. And they don’t mistake 12,000 for 1,200.

Chris Roberson is a very talented writer with lots of ideas. My own sense from this book, and from his short fiction I’ve read is that he’s a bit undisciplined and loose with his craft. He could be much better. The final third of the book, essentially an adventure for Captain Stone and his crew, is a pedestrian encounter with religious fanatics who, in their last war, killed about a billion people. The horror of that isn’t well developed enough, and as bad guys, the Iron Mass comes off more like cartoons. There is no real menace from these creeps. Captain Stone and his crew triumph with some difficulty, but overall, it’s a pretty easy victory. The dead are restored to life by putting their memories into new bodies. That’s a problem when loss isn’t permanent and real.

Maybe that’s why the fish-out-of-water portion works so much better. RJ Stone sleeps for 12,000 years and you know he’s irrevocably lost friends, family, culture, crew, and his ill-fated mission. That’s poignant and thoughtful. Space-and-shooting adventures, not so much.

 

On My Bookshelf: In War Times

I’ve just finished Kathleen Ann Goonan’s thoughtful and optimistic novel, and I’m not quite sure how to describe it, or exactly what to say about it.

On one level, it reminded me of Connie Willis’ Blackout/All Clear. It’s clear that Ms. Goonan is in Ms Willis’ league when it comes to WWII research. She has inserted portions of her father’s own WWII diary into the pages of this novel. The portrayal of 1940′s Europe seems very real and bombed out, and everyone’s a chain smoker. So that must be right, eh?

On the other hand, I found an emotional distance from the characters. You really only get inside Sam, and that’s mainly through Ms Goonan placing her father’s voice/journal entries into the character’s mouth/pen. Twice toward the end of the book, Sam has a Cat’s-In-The-Cradle moment, “When did my kids grow up?” And the reader wonders about it, too. Why were we introduced to these kids, and why does it take thirty years for people to stop fumbling around with the mysterious device that incorporates physics, biology, and time and actually do something?

In War Times explores one great idea–my own definition for a science fiction starting point. Building on the familiar territory of alternate universes, Ms Goonan weaves in supporting themes of jazz, conspiracy, and mainly a wistfulness about living in an ideal world. The jazz is close, but not quite note perfect. The conspiracy elements are not quite menacing. You know the main characters are being watched. But the watchers don’t seem to care very much. The pacing of the novel is quite largo. As a reader, I wondered where it was going. The idea was fascinating enough that I was hooked to see how the novel would unfold. But impatient readers are not going to wait.

The fantastic sequences hit the reader fast, and a few pages later, as the characters, especially Sam, are wondering if it really happened, I found I was wondering too. I would turn back a few pages and try to catch more of what I just read. That didn’t seem to work, and it’s a credit to Ms Goonan’s literary skill that you just have to go slowly as you progress through this novel. Then hold on for the interruptions.

The conclusion comes quick. It gets set up well. But it’s rather predictable. And optimistic to the extreme. And that’s all I’ll say about it.

 

On My Bookshelf: Foundation Novels

Isaac Asimov generally abdicated writing much science fiction for many decades in the middle of his life. Apparently by the 1980′s, he and/or his publisher were finally convinced that hardcover sf books would be very profitable, especially if they could cash in on the perceived public appetite for sequels. That perception remains with us today. Really: when was the last time you heard of a movie that wasn’t either a sequel or based on a comic book? For a genre that prides itself on originality, brash and intriguing ideas, and big wonder, have you ever wondered?

For some reason, I found myself inspired to revisit Asimov’s Foundation fiction for the first time in about twenty years. What have come to be known as his first Foundation novels, the original trilogy, are actually four short stories and four novellas published separately in the 1940′s. He added a first “chapter” for the first book, introducing readers to the mathematician Hari Seldon himself. And it was all packaged into three “novels.”

When this emerged in the early 1950′s, it was generally well-received, but not unanimously so. Some critics think he’s a clunker on characterization. And for writing in a big wide galaxy, I have to say his prose doesn’t communicate awe and wonder. I rate Asimov as an A-plus when it comes to ideas. And he is a genius at the surprise ending–no wonder his mystery sf novels are probably his best works.

About three-hundred years into the Seldon Plan (the blueprint that will reduce a galactic dark age from three-hundred centuries to just ten), a mutant enters the fray. The Mule is able to manipulate minds, and he sways enemies. He touches minds, and changes foes to allies. By doing so, a fragile man is able to throw the Foundation off its course and conquer it. This happens in the second half of the second book, Foundation and Empire. The Mule is eventually thwarted by–surprise!–a woman. A Foundation woman who is anti-traditional (she gets married and smokes cigars) no less.

It is up to the Second Foundation to defeat the Mule, and attempt to put the Plan back on track. A culture’s first military defeat, a conquest no less, has damaged their pride and sense of destiny. By halfway through book three, Second Foundation, the First Foundation is reeling psychologically, and the Plan’s chance of success is only about one in five. The small novel that concludes this third book is one of the strongest entries in the series. And it has an intriguing main character. For circa 1950, you have a teenage girl as a protagonist–amazing to ponder that Meg Murry (aka the girl nobody would publish) was still ten years in the future in real-life culture.

That brings me to the book I finished last night, Prelude to Foundation. No question it starts off with a bang. Intrigue and curiosity force the young Hari Seldon on a madcap tour of the capital world of Trantor from about page 15.

Along the way, he meets his future wife, future adopted son, and a most intriguing character who has appeared in other Asimov novels. Asimov also lets out dribbles about things he never wrote about before: the mythical origin planet, different human races, poverty and injustice.

There’s a very good surprise ending, but one gets the idea–at least I did–that Seldon is being “handled” carefully in all this. Instead of a legendary figure at the head of a Plan, he comes off as a very ordinary human being. With a hidden talent for the martial arts, to be sure. And he telegraphs he’s thinking hard about something during all his travels. So you know some intellectual prize awaits at the end of this book, despite Seldon’s insistence that predicting the future with mathematics is impossible. And at book’s end, the reader is told the whole purpose of the story is to move the main character around and inspire his ideas. Mission accomplished: here comes the next book.

With the last four Foundation novels (chronologically, numbers 1, 2, 6, and 7 in the series), Asimov neatly tied together all the various mystery and galactic-scale science fiction he had written. Which is to say, most of everything. It’s clever. But when your publisher is clamoring for best sellers, perhaps clever is the best one can do. Even given Asimov’s select talents as a writer, he could have done better than writing what is essentially good fan fiction.

I’m not sad I reread these novels. But I think I’m going to stop at this point and find something new.

 

Foundation On Screen

It’s been a curious things the past few days. I had a thought to reread Asimov’s Foundation books–at least the “trilogy” (actually nine separately published short tales assembled into books around 1950). But I’ve been feeling ornery around rereading stuff. There’s just too much good writing around to “waste” book time on a rerun. But I’m glad I did.

I woke up a few mornings ago with a whole Foundation idea in my consciousness. There’s not a prayer it will ever be done the way I would imagine it, but here’s a try …

The “heroic” age of the Foundation (ca. 100-300 F.E.) would be the early struggles to maintain control of a sphere of influence on the edge of the galaxy. That is where I would see the anchor or the beginning of a long-lived series. I think a series would be of the most appeal to fans. It gives a certain quantity of material, and a large palette on which to explore the abiding Asimov themes. I see three important ones …

First is the place of the individual in the galaxy-wide spread of humanity, and especially in the thousand-year span of the Seldon Plan to restore civilization to the Milky Way. People struggle against the Foundation, and in all the centuries, only one mutant manages to conquer it. Otherwise, ordinary people function in the Plan. Do they lack free will? Or are they able to flourish and be honored as Foundation heroes only to the extent they cooperate with the system, and put their own intelligence and cunning to work to further the Foundation’s goals. This one piece has huge implications for drama, and for individuals who love the Foundation above all else, or who resent it, or who work within or outside the Plan for their own ends.

Another theme is Asimov’s use of religion as a pacifying and civilizing force within the early Foundation Era. Asimov was Jewish by upbringing, but considered himself a non-believer. Very telling is this statement from his 1995 memoirs:

If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.

I don’t think the religion aspects of the Foundation come off very well. Asimov paints less a picture of authentic religion than a set of superstitions based on the perception of magic and an arbitrary galactic spirit. But perhaps there is more to explore in the idea of religion as a tool to conquer barbarism. Certainly the idea of trimming 29,000 years off a Dark Age is a highly moral undertaking. No doubt, religious practitioners in the Foundation would be across the spectrum–those who would lead virtuous lives and those who patterned their words to impress, and naturally, those in between.

Asimov does think very highly of the clever. And it is illustrative that a random act of mutation almost levels the Foundation. A gesture of great sacrifice eventually puts the Plan back on track in Second Foundation. In a way, the original three books establish a trilogy of human expression. The clever are triumphant at the end of Foundation. In Foundation and Empire, the Plan is nearly demolished by a mutant, an unforeseen glitch in the sweep of history. The Plan is restored in the final book of the original trilogy by a singularly sacrificial act. Intelligence, individuality, and selflessness: not a bad trio to explore.

If a thousand-year stretch of history is impossible to explore in a film (two hours) or a series of movies (ten to twenty), it would be easier to do it justice in a television series (say about 100 hours). Just because Asimov was less skilled in characterization, doesn’t mean an adaptation of Foundation couldn’t or shouldn’t explore that. There was also a surprising lack of wonder in the setting of the Foundation. If you’re going to throw this story up on a screen of any size, you really need eye candy to make it appealing. Give the characters a universe worth saving, worth living and dying for, and it will be more convincing than mere conversation about it.

My thinking would be to establish the story in the second or third centuries of the Foundation Era more from the perspective of the Foundation’s traders and explorers. Introduce the elements of Hari Seldon and the early Mayors through flashback. Then leap forward to tell the concluding narratives in the final ten hours of the filming. I would even consider going off-book, and introducing wholly original characters who will experience the themes of economics, politics, religion as well as the human struggles with individuality, sacrifice, and the search for meaning. That said, the couple Toran and Bayta Darell provide something of a human center to the whole series. They would be a fascinating lens through which to tell the “history” of the Foundation’s three centuries, plus the scope of the Mule Crisis.

Isaac Asimov’s great gift was his ideas. It would be cool to see those ideas explored on a larger canvas than a simple film, however much money it would be liable to amass for our corporate masters.

 

On My Bookshelf: Books With Ideas

I’m still reading a lot of science fiction this year. Mike Flynn spoiled me. After I finished In The Lion’s Mouth, I wanted more. So I picked up Leviathan Wakes. Okay. I’m spoiled after reading some good literary science fiction. I started rereading Asimov’s Foundation trilogy the other night, and I’m still thinking I’m spoiled.

Let me get to the new book first, then explain my title above a bit more. This tome is well-reviewed on Amazon, and a notable writer, George R.R. Martin praises it. And it does have its good points. There are about five or six big battles/confrontations in the book. And every one is set up with a nice swell of the plot. And then we move on to the next hurdle.

But it’s obviously written by guys who are not deep into science fiction. They seem like they’re deep into television, like a mini-series. And that’s okay, but it doesn’t make for excellent writing.

Leviathan Wakes reads like a tv show. Biggest flaw are the stock characters: a divorced, alcoholic police detective (who’s not nearly the character Jerry Orbach played on Law & Order), a hotshot captain (like James T. Kirk, among others, but we never really get into his head), the woman in love with a guy who doesn’t know she exists (as a woman), etc.. Bad guys (and corporations) are bad. Good guys (and military leaders) are good. And the police detective is really troubled.

Please.

Write some characters not so predictable.

As for the science, I was thinking of Mr Spock’s advice to Kirk in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. He reminds his captain that Khan’s intelligent, but inexperienced. One key plot idea in Leviathan Wakes seems to assume that an advanced alien race thinks in two dimensions. They lob something into the solar system, but it gets caught in Saturn’s orbit instead of reaching Earth. Stupid aliens and lucky us.

Any alien race of sufficient technology that wants to take over the Earth is not going to lob something in on us along the plane of the solar system’s planets. They will drop something onto our north or south pole and make sure obstacles are minimal. They might even think to plant it personally. Even 21st century Earthlings know there are a boatload of giant planets in the universe. They tend to scatter comets and asteroids and small planets into interstellar space.There are ways to avoid them.

The authors (James S. A. Corey is a pen name for Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) have done enough homework to know that when you hollow out an asteroid and spin it, you get the Coriolis effect playing with human dizziness and such. But they haven’t done quite enough homework to write convincingly of other aspects of the science of human space settlement. Intelligent guys I’m sure, but inexperienced.

Let’s get back to characters. I think there are some great characters on television. I liked the way the NCIS writers and Mark Harmon played Gibbs on the early seasons of that show. This dude was a little unnerving, how obsessed he was to find Ari. I like a protagonist that has a little bit of creepiness about him. Just to make me wonder. The Captain in Leviathan Wakes has his issues, as well he should. But they write him a little too straight, and a little too cosmetically. Not nearly enough depth on him or his companions.

In contrast, I’ve started reading the Foundation Trilogy for the first time in decades. Isaac Asimov is not the most literary writer. He’s big on talk and super on ideas, but minimal on characterization. And let’s be honest: not much wonder in his stories in terms of the descriptions of human experience on a galactic scale.

I was trying to think of why the Foundation stories are so superior. I suspect it’s because of the ideas behind them.

Foundation is Asimov’s treatment of the fall of the Roman Empire, only set fifty millennia in the future. The Fall of Rome is a big cultural anchor for western civilization. To top it off, the whole idea of psychohistory, of being able to predict the development of human societies, toys with the idea of self-determination.

If the Seldon Plan is so sound, does an individual human being have any leeway in living her or his life? Are we all pawns of a greater god? Or God? Is it all about us being carried to the ocean in a very swift stream? And thanks to the geniuses in charge, we’re powerless to alter the big picture.

Even reading a book for which I know the ending, I’m drawn in and I’m thinking. Again. Much more enjoyable than a sf book with more sex and shooting. But face it: Leviathan Wakes has one idea. War. Yawn. We had that watching Everybody Loves Raymond with Ray’s wife and mother-in-law tussling. At least Orson Scott Card gave us an original twist to the conduct of war in Ender’s Game. That was original, thoughtful, and something you could ponder for days after you finished the book.

I’m thinking that good science fiction, at least sf that appeals to me, has to have a Big Idea working for it. It has to be bigger than war. Bigger than sex. Bigger than most of what passes for sf in the movies and on television.

I hear that somebody has bought the rights to film Asimov’s Foundation. I have a few ideas on what I’d hope to see, if I were producing such an effort. But that’s a post for later this weekend. Stay tuned.

 

On My Bookshelf: In The Lion’s Mouth

Michael Flynn serves up enjoyable reads, if you like science fiction with great characters to accompany world building and slowly-unfolding plots that surprise. His latest, In the Lion’s Mouth, is the third novel set in a series that explores intrigue and human adventure thousands of years in the future. It strikes me as his most accomplished book to date, and the best in an ottherwise very good series.

Flynn’s human future includes the adventures of operatives of two interstellar empires. They battle it out, sometimes in space with ships, more often in hand-to-hand combat, and occasionally in the living room while attended by a butler. This book opens in the latter setting. Super-agent Bridget ban, a junior associate named Graceful, and Bridget’s daughter Méarana await the homecoming of the Méarana’s father, another agent/double-agent. What they get instead is an agent from a rival empire, who tells how the missing man has got himself embroiled in a power struggle. They and the readers are drawn into a story with enough plot twists and intrigue to keep everyone guessing until the second-to-last page. Then we are given a cliffhanger, and now a two-year wait for the next story.

I recommend reading these books in order. The current read does stand alone. But I would start with The January Dancer (2008) and proceed Up Jim River (2010). The first book is an excellent read, lots of space and shooting and stuff. What some call space opera (think soap opera), and much beloved by fans. I think I was less impressed with the second book, in which Méarana and her father go in search of her then-missing mother. I’ve sort of spoiled the plot point, but just erase from your brain what I wrote and read the book anyway. In the Lion’s Mouth is a superior sf novel. The pace is slow and steady, but the action unfolds well. The settings are fantastic, but believable. It’s nice to have a hard-to-put-down book in one’s hands.

Two observations. One is about world building. This is the craft by which a writer creates a world (or in this case, a region of the galaxy) and develops a culture complete with history, technology, politics, maps, and characters. The stars are vaguely familiar, Edacass is Eta Cassiopeia, 19 light years away; the Century Suns are nearest stars Alpha Centauri A and B and maybe C; Epsidanny is Epsilon Eridani; Serious is the Dog Star, Sirius. Tsol is our own sun. But Terrans (Earthlings) have become the riff-raff white trash of the galaxy. Book four promises a trip to Old Earth–I can hardly wait.

More on world building and especially language–there’s a lot of Celtic people in space in ten thousand years. In their empire, they speak Gaelactic. Cute. Law enforcement folks are magpies and riffs (sheriffs). Some Chinese stuff is going on, too. As is the serving of an ancient dish, hoddawgs and zorgrot. (Get it?) Flynn has a fascinating universe and plays around with language enough to distract me.

Second observation: religion is absent here. I guess the Irish bishops crisis of the 21st century was enough to drive every Celt out of the Church by the 121st. Not many sf writers handle religion well. Most, including the more conservative folks, tend to avoid it entirely. Maybe we’re better off for it. But it makes for an intriguing thought. Suppose you were transported to the far future, ten or twenty thousand years. And you found no Christianity there. What would you make of it? Would you still read the Bible and pray the Hours? Would you attempt to evangelize? Would you look for an underground and hidden Church? Would you give up?

One of the things I’ve done since I was a boy was to put myself in the setting of the stories I read. I’ve imagined myself a Borrower, in Middle Earth, and living in the Foundation. Easily enough, I can imagine myself making and serving food with the elusively rare spice coriander in Flynn’s future. But I always come up short with wondering about how I would live my faith if I were the last Christian in the universe. Maybe that’s a worth a book.

Meanwhile, read Michael Flynn’s books. I really enjoy this series. In order, I would rate these books four stars, three-and-a-half, and four-point-five in that order.

 

The Adjustment Bureau

When most of the people had left the staff Christmas party last night, our host cracked out last year’s well-regarded The Adjustment Bureau.

I thought it started off pretty well. One fantasy/science fiction premise from Philip K. Dick is nicely developed: a mysterious team “adjusts” things when the world is close to going off the plan. So far so good: the key to great science fiction or fantasy is to find a good twist and ride it for all its worth. What’s the plan? Who knows, but I can be patient for it to get sorted out. I thought this movie rode fast and hard for the first hour.

The adjusters struck me as interfering aliens who seem menacing at first, but clue in David (Matt Damon) and convince him to go along with their plan. Nice twist, I thought. No merciless bad guys. clone of The Matrix. He plays along, but he’s still on the lookout for the beautiful, tart, and intriguing Elise (Emily Blunt). These two shouldn’t get together, according to the bureau, but we don’t know why. I was looking forward to finding out. This romance seems a good and inspiring thing for a politician and a modern art dancer.

I thought the film ran off the rails in the final third. When David presses too much, he’s told that Elise will end up teaching six-year-olds instead of being a world-renowned dancer. The bureau “adjusts” with setting her up for a sprained ankle during a performance. We’re then expected to believe that David goes with the plan for almost a year till he sees a wedding announcement. These dudes sprain his girlfriend’s ankle, and they’re not capable of lying? Too much glad-handing with corporations: this guy is way too trusting. Then suddenly he goes rogue, snatches up Elise minutes before her appearance before a judge and leads the mysterious men in black on a chase through a series of “doorways” that open into different places in New York.

I was fine with the happy ending for the romance. All couples in love should end up together in the end.

I was less okay with how the filmmakers got there. This is a weaker movie than The Lake House because it takes a second f/sf to resolve the story–the mysterious doors. Third, if you count the layered notion that water impedes the aliens’ ability to communicate and manipulate events. The doors are a cool idea, but two or three ideas to resolve one narrative dilemma is lazy writing.

Elise”s best destiny is not teaching children how to dance? When they were setting up this conundrum in the film, I thought, “Cool. One of her students will become the world-renowned artist.” But no. According to the filmmakers, individual personal destiny/stardom/the cult of celebrity wins out over a selfless good.

One of the movie characters (I forget who) suggests the agents are like angels. And they wonder if the “chairman” is God. I prefer the interpretation of interfering aliens. God doesn’t send angels to prevent love’s fruition and manipulate life. Authentic love enriches people who are near the lovers. My pastor frequently preaches at weddings that sacramental marriage reveals God’s love, and that a graced marriage draws and welcomes people: children, guests, friends, the poor.

To be a great film, this one needed some adjustments. I agree with Roger Ebert that this is …

a smart and good movie that could have been a great one if it had a little more daring. I suspect the filmmakers were reluctant to follow its implications too far. What David and Elise signify by their adventures, I think, is that we’re all in this together, and we’re all on our own. If you follow that through, the implications are treacherous to some, not all, religions. In the short term, however, the movie is a sorta heartwarming entertainment.

Mr Ebert’s three stars are generous. I would say 2 1/2. It’s sorta good science fiction. If it’s meant to touch on religion, it misses sacramental Christianity by a mile. The adjusters, if they’re really out for humanity’s better interests, should be spending time thwarting drug deals and wars and corporate raids.

 

The Lake House

My wife has her third round with the flu. With tonight’s descent of bitter winter on central Iowa, we enjoyed a movie we picked up a few weeks ago and hadn’t gotten around to seeing: The Lake House.

The young miss has determined Sandra Bullock is one of her favorite actors, so it sort of supplements one of her Christmas gifts–a movie four-pack of comedies. Tonight’s film, however, is definitely not a comedy.

My wife warned me that this had better not be a sad movie. Honestly, I wasn’t sure. I had heard very little about it before pressing the play button. I knew the premise: two people correspond despite being separated by two years in time. It plays out fairly well in the beginning. It keeps a logical flow throughout. It takes one premise outside the realm of the known, namely that two people can correspond though separated by two years in time. It doesn’t clutter up that notion with any other fantastic ideas; it only explores the consequences of just the one.

The Rotten Tomatoes people didn’t get it. But I’m not as cynical as most movie reviewers, especially when I’m watching a romantic film with my wife. That said, I also viewed it with a science fiction eye, and I’m going to offer some dissent from the groupthink of the sf world as it addresses so-called time paradoxes.

There is no such thing as a time paradox. Let me say it again:

There is no such thing as a time paradox.

If it were possible to go back in time and change the future, a time traveler could do it. There is no magic wall around “what was supposed to happen” and if an architect wants to plant a tree for a woman, it’s darn well going to appear over her when she needs it. Case closed.

I was distracted by the “conversation” between the two correspondents until I remembered that there is an early scene in which they banter back and forth through the lake house’s mailbox. Problem solved. The screenwriter and the director carry it off well. They’re not going to sit Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves in front of a mailbox when all of architectural Chicago beckons. The conversations were filmed the way they needed to be filmed. What’s important is to show (not tell) the lovers communicated, and they did. Case closed.

That reminds me: the cinematography was excellent.

Roger Ebert nails my sense of it all:

Enough of the plot and its paradoxes. What I respond to in the movie is its fundamental romantic impulse. It makes us hope these two people will somehow meet.

Of course. One science fiction idea: communication through time. Two people in love. Case closed.

My science fiction mind would probably discredit this movie as sf. It’s really a fantasy. Same genre as It’s A Wonderful Life. More playing with time: what if a person had never been born. I don’t think audiences and critics got that film at first, either.

As for this movie, I enjoyed it as a romance. No problem with the science fiction fantasy aspect, either. It made perfect sense to me. As a film it was enjoyably filmed and soundtracked. Solid recommendation, especially with the one you love.

 

On My Bookshelf: The Weapon Shops of Isher

My libertarian and anarchist friends might be interested in the concept in this novel. American Second Amendment folks might enjoy the most quoted line in the book, as advocated by the mysterious weapon shops:

The right to buy weapons is the right to be free.

The author posits a situation in which (let’s say it) magical guns are offered for sale, much to the consternation of the governing empire of a far future Earth. The idea is intriguing and probably outpaces the material van Vogt gives it in this book, which is a patched-together novelization of three distinct short stories. The short stories are better, if you have access to them, by the way.

A weapon shop appears out of nowhere. Police and military personnel cannot enter the shop. But any other citizen can. Once inside, a merchant describes the nature of the guns they sell. They may be used only for self-defense. They extend a protective shield around the owner impervious to energy weapons, but not bullets, spears, or presumably, punches. The guns are amazingly inexpensive. They are not for passive individuals. When one client finds himself swindled by a bank in collusion with a corrupt rival company, the weapon shop folks counsel him to be polite but to resist the actions taken against him.

If you want to use a weapon shop product for hunting, there is an approved list of animals. Newbies to gun purchasing are amazed there is nearly a perfect implementation of gun ethics. One guy tries to turn a hunting rifle on a weapon shop merchant–the psychological profile drawn from the aggressor when he entered the shop prevents the gun from working. He is easily subdued without injury, and turned out into the street.

Another sf author, Arthur C. Clarke once posited:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

The weapon shops of Isher are a magical counterweight to the cruelties and indifference of a ruling empire. There is no hard science behind them in the books. Nothing explained, that is. I suspect many people around the world would wish they had such a fantasy come true for them. One of the interesting aspects of weapon shop ideology is that they do not interfere in the larger picture of politics. They tolerate a corrupt government, knowing that the rulers cannot take the final step toward totalitarianism because of the access citizens have to their weapons.

One of the things I look for in science fiction is an intriguing idea. I can overlook (especially in a 160-page book) an author’s ideology (van Vogt is reported to have been a monarchist, though the emergence of 20th century totalitarianism was extremely distressing to him). I can pass on concepts like sexism or things happening with little apparent reason (like why on Earth did the weapon shop woman marry the country rube?) because a good idea will latch on, and I’ll be thinking about it days later.

As for my next book, it’s back to non-fiction for me. I’ll take my ideas straight with no ideology for the next few books. But if any of you conservatives out there want a quick read that spins you back to the 50′s, and want to chime in on the weapon shops, knock yourself out.

 

On My Bookshelf: Echo and Firebird

Jack McDevitt offers up two enjoyable reads –his latest novels Echo (2010) and Firebird (2011). They feature the intrepid archaeologist/mystery solver Alex Benedict and his assistant (and narrator) Chase Kolpath.

I’ll tell you upfront these books are recommended for those who like good novels. They’re well-written. Like a good mystery, they provide you with enough misdirection to keep you guessing. I hesitate to say these are pure science fiction novels, despite being set several millennia in the future with spaceships. They each function more as a mystery: the main characters are trying to unravel a puzzle. There is a lot of on-the-ground sleuthing. When the action gets into space, then I think things get exciting.

In the far human future, people wonder if they’ll ever find aliens in the universe. Granted, in McDevitt’s future, one alien race has already been found. But one isn’t enough, it seems.

Echo deals with a mystery artifact: is it alien-made, or is it from a lost human colony? A deeper mystery unfolds in the last third of the book, as Benedict and Kolpath stumble on a few human survivors of a world mysterious for having “primitive” technology (gas street lights and suspension bridges). So why are hired killers after the heroes, and why did a well-regarded space pilot and businesswoman commit suicide? It all gets figured out in the end, though there’s a shocking bit of gratuitous news (my opinion) at the end of the volume.

I liked Firebird a bit more. It explores a flying-dutchman-in-space concept. It’s a bit more science fiction than its predecessor. When the main characters attempt a rescue, it has some heartbreaking consequences for some of the people involved. That’s good science fiction, in my opinion. You take an idea of something that is beyond our present experience, and you place real human beings in the way. Good sf makes you think: What would I do? What would the moral response be?

Neither of these is a perfect book. My main complaint about Mr McDevitt’s sf novels is that they seem too much like modern America with a way, way overdone media coverage. Curious that characters know some aspects of “ancient history,” like Billy the Kid, but thousands of years into a computer era, whole human space colonies can somehow get lost.

For good writing, I can ignore little things like that. His novel Seeker won the 2006 Nebula for best sf novel. Same characters. Another good read.