tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70027150493328676332024-03-19T05:56:02.785-07:00Read Monkey ReadWarning: Contains spoilers and opinions <br>no one but my mom reads.Thom Fooleryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12818320706747408688noreply@blogger.comBlogger132125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7002715049332867633.post-30379490334880629642009-02-26T09:52:00.001-08:002009-02-26T09:52:39.734-08:00Philip Jose Farmer, RIP<div > I loved his Riverworld books and all of the short stories I read. He will be missed. </div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><tr><td valign="top"><!-- BEGIN_CLIP_CONTENT ID:37A8277B-EBD7-4593-9E7E-435CE97F9401:0 CLIPMARKS.COM --><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="clipmarks' clip-to-blog"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_icon/1f63ced7-543c-4564-a5c6-5053166817c7/37A8277B-EBD7-4593-9E7E-435CE97F9401/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-il-obit-farmer,0,5906330.story" href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-il-obit-farmer,0,5906330.story" style="font-size: 11px;">www.chicagotribune.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-il-obit-farmer,0,5906330.story"><DIV>Philip Jose Farmer, one of the most<br />celebrated science fiction, fantasy and short story writers of the<br />1960s and '70s, died Wednesday. He was 91.<br /></DIV><BR /><DIV>Farmer died "peacefully" in his sleep, according to a message<br />posted on his official Web site.<br /></DIV><BR /><DIV>The longtime Peoria resident wrote more than 75 novels,<br />including the Riverworld and World of Tiers series. He won the Hugo<br />Award three times and the Grand Master Award for Science Fiction in<br />2001.<br /></DIV></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-il-obit-farmer,0,5906330.story"><DIV>Farmer's celebrity in the science fiction world did not<br />translate to Peoria, where he grew up and attended college.<br /></DIV><BR /><DIV>"I am obscure in Peoria," Farmer told The Associated Press in<br />1988. "I guess they don't read much around here."<br /></DIV></blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;"> </td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/37A8277B-EBD7-4593-9E7E-435CE97F9401/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content8.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></td></tr></table> Thom Fooleryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12818320706747408688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7002715049332867633.post-88874663601851723432008-09-09T20:15:00.000-07:002008-09-14T22:16:14.463-07:00Gil's All Fright Diner: Literary diner stack coming right up!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSwN52wnQEIS0ENJjLlCsyfchPj0TVpNCTkGR8uDktbsBujfg-inwCK7KpaL4GW-n7l6dfv0VV2-TgfCSHrIjKiiOh99X5cnXigBUgpwnC1xoF9kAmqTg2CNuFHXNdaFtqwARgTvq6vi_4/s1600-h/3871-1.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSwN52wnQEIS0ENJjLlCsyfchPj0TVpNCTkGR8uDktbsBujfg-inwCK7KpaL4GW-n7l6dfv0VV2-TgfCSHrIjKiiOh99X5cnXigBUgpwnC1xoF9kAmqTg2CNuFHXNdaFtqwARgTvq6vi_4/s320/3871-1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5244226623645395586" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Gil's All Fright Diner<br /></span></span>A. Lee Martinez<br />Tom Doherty Associates, 2004<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br /></span></span><br />Envision a <a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3197/2611575710_5b3b89c8af.jpg?v=0">diner stack</a>: hash browned potatoes, hamburger and/or breakfast sausage patties, fried eggs sunny side up, buttermilk biscuits, sausage gravy, and a helping of grease, plus Tabasco. It certainly isn't the most nutritious meal, let alone health food, but there are very few folks I know who don't harbor the occasional craving. Call it satisfying junk food. So it is with <span style="font-style: italic;">Gil's All Fright Diner</span>.<br /><br />Just like a diner stack, <span style="font-style: italic;">Gil's</span> is chock full of varied (and tasty) ingredients. Its plot conjures unspeakable Lovecraftian elder god cosmic horror type stuff (in pig Latin, no less), while stylistically it evokes the lighthearted New Southern Gothic of Charlaine Harris's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Southern_Vampire_Mysteries#Sookie_Stackhouse_.28Southern_Vampire.29_Series"><span style="font-style: italic;">Southern Vampire Mysteries. </span></a>The two protagonists' pickup truck breaks down in a tiny town in the Texas panhandle, the diner of which has become the focus for nightly zombie attacks which turn out to be something far worse: the first stages of The End of the World. There is a <span style="font-style: italic;">Buffy the Vampire Slayer-</span>flavor to the mix of teenage sexuality and black magic that is Tammy the teenage necromancer and her perpetually horny boyfriend/assistant, Chad. The town of Rockwood, the setting for the story, is suffused with a surreal atmosphere, sort of like Douglas Adams except Texan. And there's a sweet romance that breaks some taboos: it's between a vampire and a ghost.<br /><br />The novel is actually more thoughtful than I initially gave it credit for. By having Earl, a vampire, and Duke, a werewolf, as protagonists, but more importantly as <span style="font-style: italic;">regular guys</span>, the novel's very premise calls into questions our normal understanding of what it means to be monstrous.<br /><blockquote>"Pushing monsters away into childhood fantasies was much harder after you've become one. He'd discovered that most of the terrors that stalked the night weren't really terrors at all. They were mostly like regular folks, just trying to live their lives. As long as they were left alone they were perfectly harmless except for the occasional bite on the neck. Humans were the real terrors, always getting worked up and looking to kill something." (pp. 32-33)<br /><br /></blockquote>Here's an example of that surreal quality that I mentioned. Zombie cows.<br /><blockquote>"Damn," Duke swore under his breath. This sort of thing would happen now....<br /><br />Melinda raised her head and uttered a low, haunting howl. The rest of the herd joined her in a bloodcurdling moan that seemed to bubble up from the sulfurous pit of Hell itself.<br /><br />"Mo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oo."<br /><br />Eyes full of unnatural hunger, loose lips smacking, the herd closed in. The clang of cowbells marked their otherwise silent advance." (p. 53)</blockquote><br />I think that was the first time I actually had to catch my breath from laughing so hard. <span style="font-style: italic;">This is funny stuff.</span><br /><br />Speaking of funny, there's the aforementioned Tammy, an Asian-American high school hottie who moonlights as Mistress Lilith, Queen of Night, contemporary priestess of the old gods. She's the perfect combination of <span style="font-style: italic;">The </span><span style="font-style: italic;">Wicker Man </span><span>and</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> Mallrats</span>:<br /><blockquote>"[I]t was hard enough to resurrect the old gods without having to deal with curfews, groundings, and math homework. She didn't know what the big deal was. A C-plus was passing. Maybe she wasn't "living up to her potential," as [her dad] so often put it, in geometry, but in the new age geometry would mean little. Denise Calhoun has a straight-A average. It wouldn't save her from the special hell Tammy had in store for pig-faced sluts who thought they were so smart just because they knew all about planes and points and parallel lines and other completely stupid stuff that nobody ever used in real life." (p. 70) </blockquote><br />The surreality of the town makes for good laughs too. After coming out as a werewolf to the sheriff, Duke discovers that the tiny town of Rockwood is a little different from most places:<br /><blockquote>"'Bout seven years back, had an outbreak of vampire turkeys. And four years before that, Charlie Vaughn's daughter got herself possessed. And the Stillman's scarecro took to wandering around at night and scaring the bejeezus out of the kids. Point is, Rockwood has itself an unusual history..." ((p. 85)</blockquote><br />Vampire turkeys? And the sheriff's voice is written so clearly that I can hear the deadpan delivery in my head, and so I laugh all the harder.<br /><br />Martinez describes our heroes' visit to Wacky Willie's Deluxe Goofy Golf, the only attraction in Rockwood:<br /><blockquote>"Wacky Willie had added the 'Deluxe' when finally ridding the thirteenth hole windmill of a stubborn family of bats after a great and terrible struggle that would forever be known as 'The Fearsome Bat War of Rockwood County' to Willie, but was usually referred to as 'That Time Willie Had To Get Rabies Shots" by everyone else." (p. 94)</blockquote><blockquote>"These incidents were a mere sampling of the many inexplicable events at Wacky Willie's. Willie had pamphlets made for the tourists. He'd even sold one which, at an asking price of five bucks, was something of an inexplicable event in itself." (p. 95)<br /></blockquote><br />The humor gets downright Monty Python-esque when the vanquished ghouls (or, more properly, the scattered-and-as-yet-still-animated parts of the vanquished ghouls) confront the approaching daylight and with it their collective doom:<br /><blockquote>Detached arms twisted to cover their squinting yellow eyes. They squealed in the ghoulish tongue.<br /><br />"Bugger, I hate this part."<br /><br />"Well, no point in complaining," another ghoul replied.<br /><br />"True, true," a head agreed somewhere from the center of the pile.<br /><br />"Moof glu tlak," a jawless head seconded.<br /><br />"See you gents on the other side."<br /><br />"Any plans?" the head atop the pile asked.<br /><br />"Oh, nothing much," the buried ghoul replied. "Just float around in the sullen ether. Wait to be called upon again. Review my performance this go-around."<br /><br />"I thought you did a marvelous snarl."<br /><br />...<br /><br />And then the sun poked its way over the horizon, and the melting began. Green flesh liquified. Eyes oozed from their sockets. Foaming bubbles boiled and burst in loud, popping splatters. The ghouls shrieked their death rattles. Not that any of it was all that painful for things that were already dead, but they were determined to enjoy their last remaining moments of form with a good screeching contest. (pp. 144-5)</blockquote><br />"Bugger, I hate this part." " I thought you did a marvelous snarl." "A good screeching contest"! Need I say (or quote) more?<br /><br />If you are in the mood for a tasty read worth every empty calorie, slide on up to the counter and give it a read.<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span>Thom Fooleryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12818320706747408688noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7002715049332867633.post-32321328279019326272008-08-06T07:11:00.000-07:002008-09-14T22:16:43.635-07:00The Game Players of Titan: Speed Kills<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUOQQq2uoMDyi_vk2zGHu64plAD-6wPimj821TEhUwf-sJi0Z5iXZbfiH7BwCfQIrGhJYogag8Tzukh4nx3nLTwa3nv7OZ0kfuSQbNFST7gZBrzPjeOGjqbqgBQmBlnQtHGIzW9vEK9Vs_/s1600-h/0679740651.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUOQQq2uoMDyi_vk2zGHu64plAD-6wPimj821TEhUwf-sJi0Z5iXZbfiH7BwCfQIrGhJYogag8Tzukh4nx3nLTwa3nv7OZ0kfuSQbNFST7gZBrzPjeOGjqbqgBQmBlnQtHGIzW9vEK9Vs_/s320/0679740651.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5231407258535310930" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">The Game-Players of Titan</span><br />Philip K. Dick<br />1963<br /><br /><br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Bindman</span> Peter Garden has just lost his wife <span style="font-style: italic;">and </span>the city of Berkeley in The Game. Luckily he still owns Marin County.<br /><br />Winning or losing at the game of Bluff (a strange hybrid of Monopoly and poker) determines what property one owns and with whom one attempts to have "luck" (i.e., a sexual encounter resulting in conception). In other words, nothing unusual for a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">PKD</span> novel.<br /><br />In this imagined post-apocalyptic world, the human population has dwindled almost to nothing as the result of the "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Hinkel</span> Radiation" unleashed 130 years previously during a war between the US and China. (The protagonists have survived for over a century because of the removal of something called the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Hynes</span> Gland --- a standard pseudoscientific PKD plot device.) The circumstances are hazy, but it seems that after this war there was some sort of military interaction between the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Terrans</span> and the the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">vugs</span>, a species of gelatinous, silicon-based <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">telepaths</span> from Saturn's moon Titan, which ended in a concordat and a permanent alien presence on Earth. This presence resulted in the establishment of the game of Bluff as a way of randomly mating humans in the hopes of finding fertile, "lucky" combinations.<br /><br />Garden is determined to win back the city of Berkeley and to roll himself a new wife in the process. Unfortunately for him, the man who won Berkeley immediately turned it over to a broker who in turn sold it to Jerome "Lucky" <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Luckman</span> of New York City. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Luckman</span>, who owns almost all the properties on the Eastern seaboard, can't wait to begin his conquest of the West coast. As <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Luckman</span> prepares to make his move (literally and figuratively), Garden contacts Joe Schilling, a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Bindman</span>-turned-record-collector who lost his properties and status to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Luckman</span> in an earlier competition, and subsequently encounters the lovely Patricia McClain, a woman who lives in Garden's Marin territory with her husband and their <span style="font-style: italic;">children. </span>It seems that, unlike most folks, the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">McClains</span> have been blessed with much <span style="font-style: italic;">luck</span>, even if they aren't game-playing <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Bindmen</span>.<br /><br />The California Bluff group, inexplicably named Pretty Blue Fox, gets a new member in the form of Carol Holt, who has been transferred from another gaming group, Straw Man Special, to marry Pete and play with his team. The ceremony, such as it is, is surreal:<br /><blockquote>Patience Angst said, "I'm vows giver this week, Bill. I'll administer the ceremony." She brought out the group ring which she passed to Pete Garden; Pete stood beside Carol Holt, who had not yet recovered from the news about Lucky <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Luckman</span>. "Carol and Peter, we are gathered here to witness your entering into holy matrimony. Terran and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Titanian</span> law <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">cojoin</span> to empower me to ask you if you voluntarily acquiesce to this sacred and legal binding." (p. 43)<br /></blockquote><br /><br />The institution is so sacred and holy, in fact, that it can be dissolved with the roll of the dice or calling of a bluff. (Dick <span style="font-style: italic;">does</span> point out that since marriage was always implicitly about transmission of property and inheritance, "The Game merely dealt openly with what had been there implicitly before" (p. 54).) Yet Garden doesn't want to play with his new wife; he wants to play with Schilling, and after he loses his first game against <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">Luckman with Carol as his partner</span>, his resolve to play with Schilling only intensifies. Garden also has the hots for Pat McClain, which doesn't help matters, and so he chases after her, discovering in the process that she is a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">telepath</span>. She reads his subconscious and discovers something there indicating that he that he may commit some sort of a violent act in the near future that results in a death. On that note, he leaves.<br /><blockquote>The next thing he knew he was riding in his car, high over the desert.<br />He knew, instantly, that it was much later. (p. 62)</blockquote><br />It turns out that Garden has been in a fugue state for over two hours, during which time he has traveled from Marin to Carmel to Berkeley to San Francisco to the East coast. It is during this final cross-country flight that he awakens. And panics. Soon thereafter he discovers that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">Luckman</span> has disappeared, although "discovers" is an odd word in this case because during his fugue state, it was Garden who was informing everyone else about <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">Luckman's</span> disappearance.<br /><blockquote>Facing the members of the group Pretty Blue Fox, Bill <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">Calumine</span> said, "Ladies and gentlemen, Jerome <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">Luckman</span> has been murdered and every one of us is a suspect. That's the situation. There isn't much more I can tell you at this time. Naturally, there will no Game-playing tonight." (p. 71)<br /></blockquote><br />As a consequence of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">Luckman's</span> murder, Pretty Blue Fox is disbanded by the joint Terran-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">Titanian</span> authorities until the murderer can be identified. Here's where the novel starts coming apart at the seams.<br /><br />The authorities use their telepathy on the suspects and discover a <span style="font-style: italic;">blank</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">space </span>in Garden's mind, indicating his lost two hours. Memories begin <span style="font-style: italic;">appearing </span>in people's minds as if they are being implanted. Carol reveals to Pete that they have had <span style="font-style: italic;">luck</span> --- she has conceived --- and so Pete does what any man would do when told by his wife that he will be a Dad; he goes on a methamphetamine-spiked drunk that melts down into a full psychotic episode. During this episode, Garden visits Dr. Philipson, a famous therapist in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">Pocatello</span>, Idaho, where he begins to suspect that many of the people around him are in fact <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">vugs</span> using their telepathic powers to disguise themselves as humans and manipulate others to their own ends. But are they really <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">vugs</span> or is this just an effect of the psychosis? He relies on the Rushmore Effect (i.e., a modest form of artificial intelligence) in his auto-auto to help him discern <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29">vug</span> from human, since the Rushmore Effect cannot succumb to a drug-fueled breakdown. And it turns out that his seemingly crazed experiences are actually quite lucid --- there <span style="font-style: italic;">is</span> a conspiracy of v<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30">ugs</span> manipulating humanity and suppressing human reproduction.<br /><br />This is not a conspiracy of <span style="font-style: italic;">all</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_31">vugs</span>, though. Later in the novel Schilling and his attorney Laird Sharp learn from Dr. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_32">Philipson</span> that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_33">Titanian</span> attitudes toward Earth and humanity are divided; the dominant political force comprises the moderates who love to gamble and solve problems through gamesmanship (or is that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_34">gamesvugship</span>?) while a small faction of extremists is deliberately holding down the human population. The latter are the ones who killed <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_35">Luckman</span>; not because he is unusually lucky at the game but because he is unusually <span style="font-style: italic;">lucky </span>at fathering children. At least, this is what Dr. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_36">Philipson</span> says before the Rushmore Effect in his car confirms that he is, in fact, a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_37">vug</span> himself. With this revelation, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_38">Philipson</span> uses his specialized psionic power to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_39">teleport</span> the two to "a great plain, on which <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_40">vugs</span>, unmoving, rested at fixed spaces. ... <span style="font-style: italic;">This is Titan</span>, a voice said inside [Schilling's] head" (pp. 153-4).<br /><br />Schilling and Laird make it back to Earth to confront <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_41">Philipson</span> and discover that he is indeed a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_42">vug</span> and an extremist to boot. Joe convinces Pete that they must reform Pretty Blue Fox <span>and play </span><span style="font-style: italic;">the Game-Players of Titan</span>, a prospect that sounds impossible --- while the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_43">vugs</span> have no qualms about using their telepathic manipulations to win, human <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_44">telepaths</span> are barred from playing the game. Seemingly loyal allies reveal themselves to be pawns of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_45">vug</span> extremists, complicating matters so much that by page 185, it is almost impossible to sort out precisely who is on what side, what is the plot of the novel, and why the reader is still plodding along. With only 30 pages to go, though, the reader plods and is rewarded by a scene of Garden reaching into his pocket and finding his last two methamphetamine hydrochloride pills. He uses these to induce another psychotic quasi-telepathic state and somehow this allows him, his team, and humanity to win their game against the Game-Players of Titan.<br /><br />Whew.<br /><br />Many critics heap praise upon this novel and laud it as one of Dick's finest. Maybe they all read it while on <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_46">methamphetamines</span> (demonstrating definitively that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_47">meth</span> is a dangerous drug). Maybe they are <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_48">vugs</span> disguised as humans. Whatever the reasoning behind their assessment of this novel, I disagree wholeheartedly. This was easily the most confusing dog's breakfast of a novel I've read thus far in the course of the "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_49">PKD</span> Project." Put it this way --- it had me yearning for the straightforward banality of <span style="font-style: italic;">Vulcan's Hammer</span>. We know that Dick was literally "cranking" out much of his work during this time period, and so I suspect that the themes, as well as the style of this novel came directly from his amped experience; too bad that illicit knowledge didn't make the book any more fun to read.<br /><br />There was an <a href="http://scahr.info/culture/morrison.htm">anti-methamphetamine ad campaign in the early 1970s</a> whose slogan was "Speed Kills." Though I'm still alive, after reading this book I think I know what those ads were getting at.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMrKe2NqNl0VgbSJblKDVmqyVa3EaknVBDOvMYcpV6DbuxR8xTrujgpNZO_bdNJrzLwgw9Pb4eSz77TrRKTo4zkFNOtuOnW6gsfzKKRsJMnlZl0nsy9AGX9aasuUw6Z1z59gkdKipHe6qV/s1600-h/Meth+dick.PNG"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMrKe2NqNl0VgbSJblKDVmqyVa3EaknVBDOvMYcpV6DbuxR8xTrujgpNZO_bdNJrzLwgw9Pb4eSz77TrRKTo4zkFNOtuOnW6gsfzKKRsJMnlZl0nsy9AGX9aasuUw6Z1z59gkdKipHe6qV/s320/Meth+dick.PNG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5234495137246687282" border="0" /></a></div>Thom Fooleryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12818320706747408688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7002715049332867633.post-46912270636322039442008-07-24T08:09:00.001-07:002008-09-14T22:17:20.490-07:00The Book of Fate: The Mystery of the Missing Masonry<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgihlTQi5MIn6Gy1zprOPjhgC2hEW9qpR8NFwVbB3InsDfi3l4GdcoVA79vqyqiMdJdMwae6u5gyb0JphdDLBjh_HR5CpA_o3AVDEyVyv_LXpsh3XQqKpjau67j5pPqwTus005pKi6amL0C/s1600-h/BookOfFate-Large.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgihlTQi5MIn6Gy1zprOPjhgC2hEW9qpR8NFwVbB3InsDfi3l4GdcoVA79vqyqiMdJdMwae6u5gyb0JphdDLBjh_HR5CpA_o3AVDEyVyv_LXpsh3XQqKpjau67j5pPqwTus005pKi6amL0C/s320/BookOfFate-Large.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226597998538350114" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">The Book of Fate</span><br />Brad Meltzer<br />Grand Central Publishing, 2006<br /><br /><br />Have you ever gotten a few chapters into a book, put it down, picked it up again, finished it, and then wished you'd simply trusted your initial instinct instead of wasting that time? That describes my experience with this book to a "t." <span style="font-style: italic;">The Book of Fate</span> has nothing to do with Freemasonry, in spite of what the front cover, back cover blurb, and author's note would all have you believe. The conspicuous Masonic compasses and square in the book's title serve only to fool the reader into thinking this is another <span style="font-style: italic;">Da Vinci Code </span>or <span style="font-style: italic;">National Treasure.<br /><br /></span>In fact, it is a cockamamie political thriller whose cast of characters is almost as unbelievable as its byzantine plotting. There's President Leland Manning, who follows W in office; his wife, Dr. Lenore Manning; his aide, sometimes narrator Wes Holloway, who was shot by a ricochet during an assassination attempt leaving his face permanently scarred; the President's best friend Boyle, who was shot and killed during the same assassination attempt, only to turn up very alive eight years later; Wes' roommate Rogo, a traffic ticket attorney and devoted friend; Lisbeth Dodson, the gossip columnist who wants to be the next Woodward and Bernstein; and Nico Hadrian, a religious psychotic responsible for "assassinating Boyle" under the influence of a mysterious cabal called The Three.<br /><br />Lest you suspect that "The Three" are Freemasons, thus explaining the cover and Masonic hoopla, you'd be wrong. Rather they are three top agents from the CIA, FBI, and Secret Service, who have been in cahoots to scam the government with expensive, phony intelligence. Somehow they connect to the assassination of Boyle, which was perpetrated by Nico because the Three easily convinced him that his father was (1) evil, (2) his mom's murderer, (3) a Freemason, and (4) conspiring with other Freemasons, such as the man he is to assassinate, Boyle. Nico's late father was, apparently, a Freemason (indicated by the secret tatoo of compass and squares on his ankle). But Boyle <span style="font-style: italic;">isn't</span> a Freemason. The President isn't a Freemason. None of the Three are Freemasons. The plot doesn't revolve around a big Masonic secret. Instead Freemasonry was simply <span style="font-style: italic;">something </span>that the Three associated (wrongly) with Nico's father and with Boyle in order to get Nico to pull the trigger for them. Make sense? No. Then you're following along nicely.<br /><br />For the record, the book didn't totally suck. It was fun enough for an airplane or the beach, although the execrable plotting might induce headaches after one too many mojitos. Just don't expect it to make much sense and <span style="font-style: italic;">especially </span>don't expect it to have anything to do with Freemasonry and you probably won't be too disappointed. How is that for damning with faint praise?Thom Fooleryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12818320706747408688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7002715049332867633.post-80483543498862090842008-06-22T07:45:00.000-07:002008-09-14T22:17:48.038-07:00Whores for Gloria: "Whores and undertakers are the only eternal optimists."<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUjUbD8PHxQTenqvoeUyEkK_K2fz0g_FTbzgw2P3cmflEnLMGr4kwNEjsYHxT8tkySYZgsXt33XyIq0jHelkpg1b3ucZt3a5Yqdd915uwjxdeIgDTtpfmAf4IR_o_ABiHahYc7ki6CpK8s/s1600-h/n52880.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUjUbD8PHxQTenqvoeUyEkK_K2fz0g_FTbzgw2P3cmflEnLMGr4kwNEjsYHxT8tkySYZgsXt33XyIq0jHelkpg1b3ucZt3a5Yqdd915uwjxdeIgDTtpfmAf4IR_o_ABiHahYc7ki6CpK8s/s320/n52880.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5214717431119967010" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Whores for Gloria</span><br />William T. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Vollmann</span><br />Pantheon Books, 1991<br /><br /><br />Difficult to read, impossible to put down.<br /><br />That it came highly recommended by my good friend <a href="http://sunandmoonensemble.org/twobird.html">Michael "Berkeley Mike" <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">McCamish</span>, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Ph</span>.D.</a> surprised me a little; after all, he's the same dude who recommended <a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://whatsmierekreading.blogspot.com/2007/12/walt-disney-takes-on-richard-bach-with.html">Mr. God, This is Anna</a> a few years back, and that book is almost diametrically opposed to this one. I knew in the first few pages what about this novel had so gripped Mike, though, because I too felt its pull. Although I never lived in the Tenderloin or worked with the many homeless in San Francisco's Mission district like Mike did, I still experienced enough of that side of "the City" back in my years as a grad school poseur.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Whores for Gloria </span>is sleek and obsidian, lit up like the marquee on the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">O'Farrell</span> Theatre, gritty like the residue that flows down the gutter on <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Larkin</span>, covered with bits of blackened bubble gum and the tang of stale urine. Its prose illuminates the sublime within a painful, despairing, unsparing reality--the street life of the homeless, whores, and junkies of the City by the Bay. This is shock value with substance, the darkest side of urban life--the ugly, the downtrodden, the "murdered whores with their cunts removed," the raped, the abused, the discarded. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Vollmann's</span> evocative prose and spare settings demand that the reader pick up the rhythm or get left behind. The story flows like a sewer (rather than a "stream") of consciousness, and even when the action takes place "outside" a character's head, it catches the flow of the streets, the lack of self-consciousness perhaps indicated by the consistent lack of quotation marks. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Vollmann</span> is definitely not a writer for those to whom the whole world must be "cutey all the time." <blockquote>An aged <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">blonde</span> clopped by like a horse as she inhaled on her cigarette, and her face was lined with grief. --Laredo shifted her aching feet, wishing that the night would end although she was well aware that by the laws of astronomy the night would not end till morning; neither, it seemed, would the drunk on the pay phone. (p. 3)<br /><br /></blockquote>The novel begins with Laredo, an undercover cop, watching Jimmy, one of the city's homeless thousands, laughing/crying into a pay phone.<br /><blockquote>The man laughed. He hung up. He winked at Laredo and sauntered off whistling. But Laredo was no fool. She knew that the pay phone had been broken for weeks. And she knew that the man was still crying. (p. 7)</blockquote><br />Jimmy, a down-and-out Vietnam vet and full-time wino, pursues the mysterious "Gloria" (whose name made me think of the Christmas carol refrain, "Gloria in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Excelsis</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Deo</span>"). His regular visits to the streetwalkers, which vacillate between businesslike and brutal, are all carried out in her name.<br /><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote>The truth is that Jimmy tried <span style="font-style: italic;">never </span>to stop thinking of Gloria. Even when he bent women over as they spread the cheeks of their buttocks apart so that he could fuck them up their assholes which bulged like the ends of sausage-casings, he was thinking of Gloria. (p. 18)</blockquote><br />Jimmy begins to collect stories from his lady friends and seems intent on using these stories to "recreate" Gloria. One begins to suspect that perhaps Gloria is merely a figment of Jimmy's fevered imagination, rather than being a lover lost to whatever lament has brought Jimmy to this sorry state.<br /><blockquote>Jimmy was smiling; he was leaning back against a column of washing machines, fingering Melissa's memories as though they were breasts, the softness and succulence of them; he could twist them into different shapes as he sucked on them; he kissed their round pink <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">areolae</span> of sadness and tried not to mind them; he squeezed them and their nipples budded. (pp. 27-28)</blockquote><br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Vollmann</span> tears through the veil between the reader's perfect world and the unimaginable pain and desperation--that is still somehow also just <span style="font-style: italic;">everyday life</span>--of those wandering through a fog of opiates, delirium, or <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">shell shock</span>.<br /><blockquote>Shit, he sighed. Every last <span style="font-style: italic;">one</span> of us betrayed by the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">VC</span>. Jimmy brainwashed, the Wrecking Crew all dropped dead, Riley God knows where, and me left to fend for myself here in the middle of motherfucking Hanoi, USA. Nothing to do, nothing to do. Wanna <span style="font-style: italic;">kill </span>those Chinese Charlies! Come out and fight! he shouted.<br /><br />Nobody came.<br /><br />Guess I won that one, said Code Six, and he lay down on the sidewalk and went to sleep... (p. 124)<br /><br /></blockquote>In the end we discover (or do we, given the tenuous grasp that so many of these wretches have on what we call "reality"?) that Gloria is real. And that Jimmy is no longer.<br /><blockquote>I turn around, man, and here comes Jimmy with his whore <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">chasin</span>' him! Usually were the other way around, weren't it? Damn! And she <span style="font-style: italic;">drilled </span>his <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">motherfuckin</span>' ass, <span style="font-style: italic;">good </span>and <span style="font-style: italic;">proper</span>. Oh, man! --Code Six chuckled until poor Riley thought he must dissolve under the stench. -- Jimmy comes in, the bitch comes in, just lit him up, right there! And she killed him dead right in front of the whole <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">goddamned</span> restaurant, and there were about twenty people in there, cooks and all--right bare-ass from my eyes! I said, <span style="font-style: italic;">motherfucker</span>, I was safer back in Nippon, man, 'cause at least that way I know where the field of fire is! And that was how Jimmy died. Died like a hero. I never did find out what he had done. But <span style="font-style: italic;">you </span>might 'a' <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">knowed</span> his ass, man. And might 'a' <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">knowed</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">her</span>! It was old Gloria! (p. 138)</blockquote><br />As noted above, in spite of its incredibly dark, painful, and brutal subject matter, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">Vollmann's</span> language and storytelling fill the entire book with a dark radiance that is redemptive if not hopeful. It turns out that, according to an interview with <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">Vollmann</span>, that there is a reason for this. He feels that prostitutes are very spiritual people, who give of themselves to save marriages and to provide comfort to the loneliest, most desperate among us. He noted that, at the same time they fill these essential needs prostitutes also spread disease and often rob their clients. If the ability to hold in one's mind two contradictory thoughts at one time defines genius, then <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">Vollmann's</span> novel certainly qualifies.<br /><br />Thanks for the recommendation Mike!Thom Fooleryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12818320706747408688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7002715049332867633.post-66898185198873141702008-06-22T07:42:00.001-07:002008-09-14T22:18:22.755-07:00The Empty Tank: Witty, grim, unflinching, hopeful --- essential reading when peak oil meets global warming<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNwzFTCC0UBSJyMOgYMUVKR1D8dtVnmD0v_Uhp19rvJN0Selvgz8GN_I6kINEeYniWJUo8VdTlLQn9G5ZEY5XboFnaIcAcjpryNQhzHblql0Ciyrs3OfcC5L9MNUr2ygZX3pimbmjtWPJq/s1600-h/Empty+Tank+Cover+JPEG.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNwzFTCC0UBSJyMOgYMUVKR1D8dtVnmD0v_Uhp19rvJN0Selvgz8GN_I6kINEeYniWJUo8VdTlLQn9G5ZEY5XboFnaIcAcjpryNQhzHblql0Ciyrs3OfcC5L9MNUr2ygZX3pimbmjtWPJq/s320/Empty+Tank+Cover+JPEG.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5214716809598222450" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">The Empty Tank: Oil, Gas, Hot Air, and the Coming Global Financial Catastrophe<br /></span>Jeremy Leggett<br />Random House, 2005<br /><br /><br /><blockquote>[W]hat makes the depth of the current global addiction especially bewildering is that, for the entire time we have been sliding into the trap, we have known that oil is in fact in <span style="font-style: italic;">limited </span>supply. At current rates of use, the global tank is going to run too low to fuel the growing demand sooner rather than later in this century. This is not a controversial statement. It is just a question of when....<br /><br />In a society that put a man on the Moon more than three decades ago, surely there can be no doubt that we could replace oil use if we seriously wanted to. I ask again, why have we not been fast-tracking the solutions to the problem long since? (p. 6)<br /></blockquote><br />I've read several books on peak oil, and this one is among my favorites. Geologist Leggett provides a compelling look at the coming topping point in oil production, the global catastrophe of global warming, and possible hope for the future, and he does so in a style that reads like well-crafted fiction. Interspersed throughout the narrative are Leggett's journal entries which reveal an intimate perspective on how all this theory and Big Picture stuff plays out in daily life.<br /><br />First off, an admission. Based on the author photo on the book's dust jacket, I kept envisioning Leggett as the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BpONxW8F58">fired forklift driver in the British TV show <span style="font-style: italic;">The Office </span>who challenges the wisdom of keeping Anton the midget on as a forklift driver</a><span style="font-style: italic;">. </span>So that guy's voice was the one with which my mental vocalizer read the book. That, along with his absurdist, understated<span style="font-style: italic;"></span> British wit (a la Monty Python and Douglas Adams), made the book a quite often funny read, in spite of the rather grim subject matter.<br /><br />This wit is clearly on display in the Prologue, which tells the story of geological and human history from the Big Bang to the "The Two Oversights" of the 20th century. This account is told as if being related to alien anthropologists who have no vested interest in seeing history through the particular lens of their ideology or belief system. So along the way from creation to the present we encounter Apocalypse One, the catastrophic end of the Carboniferous Period which left behind a lot of coal; the "Two Great Underground Cookups," during which <span style="font-style: italic;">all</span> oil and natural gas were created; and Apocalypse Two, otherwise known as the K2 Event or the end of the age of dinosaurs, 65 mya. Humans arrive on the scene in the last few milliseconds of the year that has been geological history, and develop agriculture and religion and urban civilization and almost continuous hostility toward one another:<br /><blockquote>Conflict avoidance was not, and never has been, our strong suit. At first we organized into tribes, and periodically killed the members of other tribes. Later we organized ourselves into city-states and built amazing cathedrals. But despite our inventing athletics as a potential substitute for war, we still couldn't think our way out of regular armed conflict, and our means of waging war grew steadily worse. (p. x)<br /></blockquote><br />In the last three centuries we learned to support all these endeavors by exploiting the fossil fuels from the Great Underground Cookups:<br /><blockquote>Just as [coal's dirtiness] was becoming very irritating, we found we could drill below the surface of the planet, pump oil, and burn that. We didn't even have to send children down to get oil. (p. xi)</blockquote><br />(See what I mean about the wit?) The discovery of and reliance on oil lead to two big "oversights." Big Oversight One is that all the burning of this oil, coal, and gas has created global warming which has been ignored by the Number One Nation-State. This nation, not otherwise named (to protect the innocent, of course), happens also to be Number One Petroleum Addict, and in this capacity serves deeply entrenched vested interests:<br /><blockquote>[M]ore than 100 years of unconstrained burning of oil, and 200 years of coal, have created quite a set of vested interests....These vested interests have created a web of power that transcends the throw-weight of the nation states. This web has become, in effect, a kind of Empire. The Empire of Oil is loosely bound, and even capable of civil war, but is without the most powerful interest group on the planet. </blockquote><br />These vested interests have prevented research into alternative and meaningful political action. Big Oversight Two is that, because all the oil we have was created during the Two Big Cookups, and so therefore is limited in quantity by definition, discovery and production of oil is peaking. What this means is simple, if unpleasant to contemplate:<br /><blockquote>Humans will no longer be able to run their lives and their industries on <span style="font-style: italic;">growing</span> amounts of <span style="font-style: italic;">cheap </span>oil. All we can expect thereafter is <span style="font-style: italic;">shrinking </span>supplies of <span style="font-style: italic;">expensive </span>oil....We will look for the alternatives to come to the rescue, but the alternatives won't be able to, or at least not in enough volume to make a big difference, because the Empire of Oil and its Culture of Suppression has held them back all the years of the Great Addiction. (p. xiv)</blockquote><br />One or the other "oversight" alone would be bad enough to face, but the possible threat posed by the synergy of both is chilling. Luckily, Leggett recognizes the role that each of us play in shaping our collective destiny, and so does not completely relinquish hope:<br /><blockquote>As the impact of the oil topping point joins with the first wave of assaults by a climate going awry, is there any hope that we can avoid an unpleasant outcome? I fear not. The chapters to come will show why. But what we can do, collectively, is to stop the rot and have a second crack at getting things right beyond the unpleasantness....Because changes of course need hands on the tiller, involvement matters. This book is a call to arms. Let us take our stupidities with oil, which will be put under such a necessary microscope when the topping point hits, and turn them into a new beginning before it is too late. (pp. xiv-xv)</blockquote><br />With this book, Leggett seeks to address three related questions: (1) how close is the peak? (2) why haven't we done something earlier? and (3) what can we do about it?<br /><br />So how close is the peak in oil production? Leggett distinguishes between "late toppers" and "early toppers," i.e., those who think we've got 2 trillion more barrels of oil to exploited (oil companies, financial analysts, etc.) and those who think we've got around 1 trillion more barrels (in other words, the downside of the production curve). The difference between the two is, in Leggett's word, seismic. If the late toppers are right, then we have a few decades in which to work out plans for a smooth transition from oil and gas to alternative; if the early toppers are right, though, the peak may actually be upon us <span style="font-style: italic;">now</span>.<br /><br />Leggett discusses some key witnesses in support of the "early topper" school of thought including veteran petroleum geologist Colin Campbell, Chris Skrebowski (editor of the trade journal <span style="font-style: italic;">Petroleum Review</span>), and Houston oil investor Matthew Simmons. If these folks are correct in their reading of the available data, then the situation we face may be summed up in this sentence from a report within the Department of Energy's Office of Naval Petroleum and Oil Shale Reserves:<br /><blockquote>"A serious supply-demand discontinuity could lead to worldwide economic chaos" (p., 50)<br /></blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />Worldwide economic chaos.</span> And even if the early toppers are wrong in their estimates regarding the peak in oil production, the discontinuity between rising demand and falling supply will <span style="font-style: italic;">still</span> be a reality due to a lack of investment in exploration and infrastructure:<br /><blockquote>Stated simply, it seems that even if an early topping point doesn't hit us, the results of two decades of negligence in investment in infrastructure and exploration will. p. (59)</blockquote><br />After thoroughly scaring the beejezus out of the reader by marshalling all this evidence that the age of easy, cheap oil is rapidly coming to a close, with potentially catastrophic results, he introduces a variable that no other peak oil author I've read has mentioned: global warming.<br /><br />A pair of diagrams on pages 75 and 76 says it all. The first is a graph showing a jagged line fluctuating between two extremes of atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub>, a minimum of around 175 ppm and a maximum of around 300 ppm, showing that these quantities have changed within a relatively standard range over the last 500,000 years. The last fraction of a millimeter of the graph, representing the last century, shows the concentration at the beginning of the 20th century (near 300 ppm) rocketing skyward, out of the normal range and in fact off of the graph altogether. The predicted CO<sub>2</sub> concentration for 2100, based on current emission rates, is over <span style="font-style: italic;">700</span> ppm, effectively off the charts and into "seriously fucking things up" territory. The second graph plots temperature fluctuations over the last millennium and reveals that they too fly off the charts during the 21st century, leading to an average increase of over 5 degrees globally. Which is disastrous. This stuff ain't controversial folks, and it ain't a liberal plot. The temperature of the Earth is rapidly climbing, most likely due to our increase of atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub>, and all we know about the consequences is that they won't be pretty.<br /><br />So how did we allow ourselves to get into this mess? Leggett provides an answer by way of an historical overview of the age of oil, divided into two chapters. The first, "Before the Knowledge," describes how we dug the initial hole, while the second, "The Complicity Years," discusses the last few decades, during which we have known better but let all our nation's policies be dictated by a consortium of vested interests. Our inability to change our approach to energy and fossil fuels is pretty clearly revealed in our national response to the first oil shock, which hit in the form of the OPEC embargo against the US, in retaliation for its uncritical support of Israel in the Yom Kippur War.<br /><blockquote>In the first three months of the [OPEC] embargo, U.S. gasoline consumption had decreased by more than 7 percent. But, after the embargo ended, consumption shot right back up again. Apathy instantly reasserted itself in Congress. Almost 800 potential bills concerning energy had been circulating on Capitol Hill during the oil crisis, many of them intent on promoting the prospects for renewable energy, renewable fuels, and energy efficiency. But by July 1974 only eight of them had become law, and two of those involved the suspension of anti-pollution laws and the opening of the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline. (p. 101)</blockquote><br />Once cheap oil went back online, <span style="font-style: italic;">all</span> alternatives were back off the table. By 1975 Exxon was the world's biggest corporation, with GM and Ford also occupying seats in the top 10. We didn't learn and so the Second Oil Shock followed the Iranian Revolution and subsequent Iran-Iraq War. Although President Carter urged us to treat the fuel crisis as "the moral equivalent of war," Americans <span style="font-style: italic;">still</span> didn't listen and willingly voted in Reagan and the last three decades of denial.<br /><br />Of course, one could say that if these earlier oil shocks were survivable, even after a mistake like electing Reagan, then perhaps we shouldn't be <span style="font-style: italic;">too </span>concerned about future oil shocks. Anticipating this, Leggett duly notes that the circumstances surrounding these first two oil shocks do not pertain to the coming megacrisis:<br /><blockquote>[T]he Saudis cannot pump faster as they did in 1980, there is no spare capacity anywhere, little oil is stockpiled, and there is little liklihood of new discoveries on the scale able to meet fast-growing global demand. Bad as it was then, it will be much worse when the next crunch hits. (p. 104)</blockquote><br />According to ExxonMobil's Lee Raymond:<br /><blockquote>"I think the notion in the United States of energy independence, which was first proposed in the Nixon administration, was a poor concept thirty years ago and it is a poor concept today."There it is, just as he told OPEC. It couldn't be clearer. We choose dependency, and therefore overseas adventures by our military in support of our dependency. (p. 135)</blockquote><br />There you have it. That's how we allowed ourselves to get into this predicament. The Empire of Oil made us into a nation of junkies who elect those promising to keep the fixes coming.<br /><br />So what can we do about it? In his chapter astutely entitled, "What Can We Do About It?" Leggett outlines five basic arguments:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">1. </span>We can replace fossil fuels with renewable energies and do so rather swiftly.<br /><br />Renewable energies comprise a big family of options including biodiesel, a hydrogen economy (energy storage with home solar-driven electrolysis), fuel cells, solar (electric) and solar (heat), wind power, etc. There are alternative, renewable sources for plastics too, which is important since more petroleum goes to those industrial uses than into fuel production. We can improve efficiency too. And of course, we can re-envision the situation to come up with some novel solutions:<br /><ol> Currently, some 200 million of the world's 700 million hydrogen cars and trucks travel and park around America. If they were all hydrogen fuel cell vehicles they would have <span style="font-style: italic;">many </span>times the grid's total generating capacity. What need then for nuclear, and coal- and gas-fired power plants? (p. 155)<br /><br /></ol> <span style="font-weight: bold;">2.</span> We've waited too long, and so even with these technologies ramping up swiftly, we won't be able to cover the shortfall between now and then with any combination of fuel sources.<br /><br />Economies will shrink, which is never a good thing for little people like me with jobs and families. Some are pushing for nuclear power to fill the gap (going so far as to discuss it in the pages of <span style="font-style: italic;">Mother Earth News</span>), but Leggett thinks nuclear won't come to the rescue because (1) it will take even longer to get nuclear up and running to fill the gap than it would other sources of power, (2) investors don't want to back nuclear, particularly new unproven designs, (3) the threat of terrorism + nuke plants = bad idea, (4) disposal of waste is <span style="font-style: italic;">still </span>an unsolved problem, and (5) nuke power's track record for accidents, cover-ups, etc. make it understandably unattractive. In short, nuclear is simply too risky in all ways to take seriously. (Although, sadly, that won't prevent our government from funding it, alas.)<br /><blockquote>Just think what renewable energy and energy-efficient markets could be doing by 2020, given even a fraction of the governmental and institutional support nuclear has been given for the last half-century. Come to think of it, just imagine what they could be doing <span style="font-style: italic;">tomorrow. </span>(p. 159)<br /></blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />3.</span> Renewable energy and fuel and energy efficiency will grow explosively.<br /><blockquote>Come whatever in other societal and economic sectors, people working in renewable energy, energy storage, and energy efficiency will be in the front row of those who can help once widespread acceptance of the oil topping point and its implications had descended on the world. (p. 165)</blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><br />Leggett makes the important point that looking at solar energy costs means comparing them to retail prices rather than generator costs, because PV solar power generation gathers the power right where it is needed rather than producing and shipping it over extensive power grids. The decentralized quality of solar means that it is incredibly competitive in terms of price when <span style="font-style: italic;">generating </span>costs are factored in, something that nuclear and coal advocates never do.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">4.</span> Many will try to turn to coal to support the status quo --- this will basically be a life-or-death decision for the future of the planet --- renewables or polluting coal. <blockquote> The coal industry is strangely hard-line. Here is a technology that is so clearly mortgaging the future--at best, torpedoing it at worst--and yet it continues to grow largely unapologetically around the world. Besides the future death toll from unmitigated global warming and dire air quality, there is also the actual death toll to date from getting the stuff out of the ground....In the face of all this, even if they genuinely reject scientists' arguments about global warming, you would think there would be a little humility, a little reluctance about the product, a little willingness to search hard for alternatives. No, not that I have seen. In all my years as an environmental campaigner, I have observed a clear distinction between the oil industry and the coal industry....The oilmen and women were capable of politeness, reasoned debate, and even changing their position. The coal men and women weren't; not that I ever saw, once. (p. 168)</blockquote><br />So instead of looking at renewables, we get nonsense about "clean coal," coal gasification, carbon sequestration, etc. And for the effects of coal on the world, all you need to do is Google "Beijing" and "air quality." And yet coal looks easy and cheap when the energy panic hits, and it has lots of technoscience supporting the rush to "clean coal," usually from the same folks who want to put parasols between the Earth and the Sun to cut down on solar radiation. Very little systems thinking and a technoscientific culture that valorizes individual achievement (just think about genetic engineering and the lack of consideration of ecology) mean that the coal hoax may be perpetrated on an unsuspecting Earth at precisely the worst possible time.<br /><blockquote>[G]iven the research programs underway aiming to bolster the acceptability of coal in a warming world, the depth of denial in the coal and coal-related theocracies, and the scope for iconoclastic scientists to fan the flames of confusion--belief in the feasibility of burning a thousand billion metric tons of coal or more and getting away with it might be much greater too. (p. 173)<br /></blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />5.</span> We can influence the outcome of the struggle over coal vs. renewables<br /><br />Don't look to leadership from governments or corporations. According to Leggett it must come from individuals. (I must note that these options are not mutually exclusive, and that following merely the role of individual effort may be playing into the corporate trap of devaluing collective efforts.) One should follow <a href="http://whatsmierekreading.blogspot.com/2007/12/investment-guidenonpartisan.html">Stephen Leeb's</a> lead by encouraging enlightened self-interest when investing money--invest in a green future and lead the marketplace where you want it to be. We must act locally and in every way possible to reach the tipping point from which a new future is visible.<br /><br />Legget concludes with another presentation for aliens, this time looking at the present and at a possible hopeful futures. Consumer Empire gets hit by warriors in commandeered civilian jetliners and retaliates, pitting its own Christian Fundamentalists against the Middle Eastern Muslim Fundamentalists in a Cycle of Hate.<br /><blockquote>In both the Consumer Empire and the Middle Eastern nation-states, Fundamentalism has thrived amid all this mayhem. In the Consumer Empire, many humans hold a belief that their version of God would let them trash the Earth and still join Him in His heaven. Indeed, the more quickly we trash it, the more quickly they would get to enjoy what they think of as the Rapture. Rapturist humans tend to care nothing about the fuel efficiency of their horseless carriages, tend not to give a damn about the alternatives to oil, and tend to be very keen on burning coal. They also figure that all-out war might be another way to join their version of God more quickly than letting things run their normal course, so they tend not to be averse to that either....<br /><br />For humans who believe in Cosmopolitan Tolerance--simply stated, having a stab at learning from the lessons of history--things are beginning to look really very bleak as they stand today. (p. 189)</blockquote><br />Oversights One and Two show up, the economy collapses as oil production peaks and there are no replacements, there's all sort of political repression taking place in Consumer Number One in the wake of the attacks, and then global warming kicks in and really fucks with everything. This is Leggett's prediction of what <span style="font-style: italic;">will </span>happen. Not a lot of wiggle room in there, and as he has noted, it is definitely unpleasant. He doesn't end there, though. Rather he provides an optimistic vision of the sort of world we can bring about out of this wreckage, a new Renaissance in which the tipping point is reached and humanity chooses a future of alternative energy and power, which in turn leads to a general renewed interest in the local, in community, in <span style="font-style: italic;">place</span>, and eventually leads to a stabilization of human population through the education and empowerment of women. Not a bad future at all, but one that will definitely take a lot of dedication and hardwork with no hope to see the results. Like building a cathedral or journeying toward the Promised Land.Thom Fooleryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12818320706747408688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7002715049332867633.post-9502562635073489952008-06-13T13:03:00.000-07:002008-09-14T22:19:17.558-07:00The Man in the High Castle: Dick's postmodern masterpiece<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWZmVWSxZovuqliEUchBjK-um6ZfCreiwEtJFCzutVSsogz5PDmSjhYXSoyehw0nTt4xEF6_OsFX1RrW02dGUWLMMsNFmkOSuHbL9EN4fmiQG5DeJgzlrq-UQtUvmtbIlxZKu0xWLg21Ak/s1600-h/dick-man_in_the_high_castle.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWZmVWSxZovuqliEUchBjK-um6ZfCreiwEtJFCzutVSsogz5PDmSjhYXSoyehw0nTt4xEF6_OsFX1RrW02dGUWLMMsNFmkOSuHbL9EN4fmiQG5DeJgzlrq-UQtUvmtbIlxZKu0xWLg21Ak/s320/dick-man_in_the_high_castle.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5211459485854974786" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Man in the High Castle<br /></span></span><span><span>Philip K. Dick<br />G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1962<br /><br /><blockquote>Juliana said, "I wonder why the oracle would write a novel. Did you ever think of asking it that? And why one about the Germans and the Japanese losing the war? Why that particular story and no other one? What is there is can't tell us directly, like it always has before? This one must be different, don't you think?" (p. 216)<br /></blockquote><br />I think this one is <span style="font-style: italic;">definitely</span> different. Dick had been writing novels for over a half-decade by the time this novel--his only <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award">Hugo Award</a>-winner--was published. Every Dick novel published in the seven years following <a href="http://whatsmierekreading.blogspot.com/2008/03/first-of-pkds-novels.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Solar Lottery</span></a> shared a similar storytelling style and quality of language. F</span></span><span><span>or want of a better term I'll say Dick was a "hack"; his novels were cranked out at amphetamine speed in order to pay the bills. This is not to say that these novels are bad--to the contrary, as I've indicated in my previous reviews, even from the beginning of his career Dick was obviously gifted with both an intellect and an imagination that he put to good use in his short stories and novels. It's just to say that his writing really wasn't all that <span style="font-style: italic;">special</span>.<br /><br />Until he wrote <span style="font-style: italic;">The Man in the High Castle</span>. Here Dick plays by different rules, writing alternate history rather than dystopian speculations about the 1990-2000s. (I read somewhere that he was initially inspired to write an alternate history of the post-Word War II world after reading Ward Moore's 1953 alternate post-Civil War <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bring_the_Jubilee"><span style="font-style: italic;">Bring the Jubilee</span></a>.) Dick, demonstrating the sort of self-referentiality that initially drew me to his work, even has two of his characters chat about alternate history and whether or not it is properly called science fiction:<br /><br /></span></span><blockquote>"[It's n]ot a mystery....On contrary, interesting form of fiction possibly within genre of science fiction."<br /><br />"Oh no," Betty disagreed. "No science in it. Nor set in future. Science fiction deals with future, in particular future where science has advanced over now. Book fits neither premise."<br /><br />"But," Paul said, "it deals with alternate present. Many well-known science fiction novels of that sort." (p. 91)<br /><br /></blockquote>And what an alternate present (i.e., 1962) it deals with. We learn about the history of this alternate world and how it diverges from our own through snippets of conversation and internal monologue. In 1933 President Roosevelt is assassinated and Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of the Third Reich. By 1942 the USSR has fallen, with the Slavs joining European Jews and Gypsies in extermination, and the Japanese have devastated the entire US fleet at Pearl Harbor. They subsequently conquer the West coast of the US, and the Nazis have taken over the East coast and begun the extermination of the Jews in NYC by 1948. Between the two coasts the high plains and Rocky Mountains constitute a buffer zone between the two global superpowers of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. The novel recounts the chilling German holocaust on the African continent, the policy of high tech <span style="font-style: italic;">Lebensraum </span>through space colonization, and the inevitable tensions in the marriage of convenience that is the Axis. And Dick reveals his suspicion, in the form of an aging and syphilitic <span><span>Hitler</span></span>, that literal rot and insanity<span><span> lie at the root of the Nazi ideology:</span></span><br /><blockquote>And the horrible part was that the present-day German Empire was a product of [Hitler's syphilitic] brain. First a political party, then a nation, then half the world. And the Nazis themselves had diagnosed it, identified it; that quack herbal medicine man who had treated Hitler, that Dr. Morell who had dosed Hitler with a patent medicine called Dr. Koester's Antigas Pills--he had originally been a specialist in venereal disease. The entire world knew it, and yet the Leader's gabble was still sacred, still Holy Writ. The views had infected a civilization by now, and, like evil spores, the blind blond Nazi queens were swishing out from Earth to the other planets, spreading the contamination. (p. 29)<br /></blockquote><br />But Dick doesn't just stop with one alternate history of the world from 1933 1962. Within <span style="font-style: italic;">The Man in the High Castle </span>is another novel, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Grasshopper Lies Heavy--</span>a contraband alternate history of the world in which it is the US and the UK, and not Japan and the Third Reich, who are victorious in World War II. <span style="font-style: italic;"></span> This world is not <span style="font-style: italic;">ours</span> either, though, as Dick makes abundantly clear in a section that Freiherr Hugo Reiss reads in his office:<br /><blockquote>[I]n the U.S.A. the color problem had by 1950 been solved. Whites and Negroes lived and worked and ate shoulder by shoulder, even in the Deep South; World War Two had ended discrimination... (p. 135)</blockquote> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;">Any white American reading this sentence in 1962, at the height of the civil rights movement, would surely have felt Dick's rebuke. By 1950, "[w]hites and Negroes lived and worked and ate shoulder by shoulder"? In 1960, white Americans in <i>our </i>version of history wouldn't even use the same water fountains and cafe counters! Of course this alternate world has its own problems with colonialism and the like, but to those living under the boot of the Third Reich, the alternative reality presented in <i>Grasshopper </i>appears nearly paradisiacal. </p> <o:p><br />It is interesting to note that this is not the only book which is central to the novel; the other book that continually resurfaces is the <span style="font-style: italic;">I Ching. </span>In fact, as we discover at the end of the book, the <span style="font-style: italic;">I Ching </span>has basically channeled <span style="font-style: italic;">Grasshopper </span>through a man who is little more than a medium, Hawthorn Abendsen, the so-called "Man in the High Castle." Again and again the novel reminds the reader of the importance and power of writers, particularly those who write "what if" stories. The aforementioned</o:p> Reiss is captivated by <span style="font-style: italic;">Grasshopper</span>, and his comments reveal the subversive, compulsive force of science fiction:<br /><blockquote>How that man can write, he thought. Completely carried me away. Real. Fall of Berlin to the British, as vivid as if it had actually taken place. Brrr. He shivered.<br /><br />Amazing, the power of fiction, even cheap popular fiction, to evoke. No wonder it's banned within Reich territory; I'd ban it myself. Sorry I started it. But too late; must finish, now. (p, 105)</blockquote><br />Dick experiments in other ways. Most of the dialog in the novel is in a <a href="http://www.engrish.com/">dialect of English</a> that captures the flavor of Japanese, with the absence of articles, unusual word order, and a stilted choice of words. Those <span><span>white characters who interact with the Japanese regularly (and so have become internally colonized to some degree) even think in this dialect. And while Dick has regularly written non-linear plots, at least to the extent that the stories begin <span style="font-style: italic;">in media res</span>, this novel is almost postmodern in its avoidance of a single master narrative. Instead, there are collected plot threads interwoven with the various narratives of the POV characters. </span></span><span><span><br /></span></span><br />We have Ms. Nobusuke Tagomi with the Japanese Trade Mission in San Francisco, a regular patron of Robert Childan's high-end antique boutique American Artistic Handicrafts. Here he purchases a "genuine Mickey Mouse watch" for Mr. Baynes, a Swedish businessman who turns to be an officer of Reich Naval Counter-Intelligence who has travelled from Germany in disguise to meet with Tagomi and a mysterious Mr. Yatabe, who is himself en route from the Japanese "Home Islands."<br /><br />Then there is Frank Frink (born Frank Fink, a Jew) who works at Wyndham-Matson Corporation creating fake Americana for such unsuspecting antique dealers as Mr. Childan. Frink's ex-wife Juliana is a judo instructor living in the Rockies, in the neutral zone between Japanese and Nazi spheres of influence. Frank and his coworker/friend Ed McCarthy quit their jobs at Wyndham-Matson and begin a jewelry business, creating beautiful, original pieces of American art. At roughly the same time, Juliana begins an affair with an Italian truck driver.<br /><br />Mr. Yatabe arrives for his meeting with Mr. Baynes and Mr. Tagomi, who are surprised to find that their visitor is actually Japanese General Tedeki, formerly of the Imperial General Staff. Baynes reveals himself to be Captain Rudolf Wegener of Reich Naval Counter-Intelligence, whose mission is to warn the Japanese about <i>Operation Löwenzahn/Dandelion. </i>It turns out that Goebbels plans, once he assumes control of the Reich as the next Chancellor, to nuke Japan ("The Home Islands") and consolidate Nazi control over the entire world. After the death of Hitler's successor, and the possibility of Goebbels becoming new chancellor, Baynes seeks Japanese support for a different Nazi leader. After the meeting, Nazi agents attempt to attack Baynes and are instead killed by Mr. Tagomi using the Colt Army revolver that he previously bought from Childan.<br /><blockquote>"Part of personal collection," Mr. Tagomi said. "Much fooled around in vainglorious swift-draw practicing and firing, in spare hours. Admit to compare favorably with other enthusiasts in contest-timing. But mature use heretofore delayed." (p. 162)</blockquote><br />Tagomi also retaliates against the local Nazi authorities by directing that Frank Frink, who is scheduled for deportation and subsequent execution as a Jew, be released. It turns out that Frink's artwork, which had been taken on consignment by Mr. Childan's store and subsequently mocked by a young Japanese client as being suitable for export to the Third World, is actually possessed of a soul stirring power and beauty, and that this power has made quite an impression on Mr. Tagomi.<br /><br />Frink's ex, Juliana, gets more deeply involved with Joe, the truck driver and Italian veteran of war. He wishes to meet Hawthorne Abendsen, author of <i>The Grasshopper Lies Heavy</i>, and so the two of them embark on a road trip to find his fortress home. As they approach their destination, she discovers that Joe is actually a Swiss assassin whose target is the Man in the High Castle. Juliana attempts to leave their hotel room. and when Joe bars her way, she slashes his throat with the razor with which she was previously going to kill herself. She makes her way to Abendsen's home and induces him to reveal the truth about his novel--it was written in collaboration with <span style="font-style: italic;">I Ching</span>--and about life.<span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span><blockquote>"The terrible dilemma of our lives. Whatever happens, it is evil beyond compare. Why struggle, then? Why choose? If all alternatives are the same...<br /><br />Evidently we go on, as we always have. From day to day. At this moment we work against Operation Dandelion. Later on, at another moment, we work to defeat the police. But we cannot do it all at once; it is a sequence. An unfolding process. We can only control the end by making a choice at each step...<br /><br />We do not have the ideal world, such as we would like, where morality is easy because cognition is easy. Where one can do right with no effort because he can detect the obvious." (p. 207)</blockquote><span><br />As always, Dick explores some deep themes in this novel. The role that the tiniest chance has in determining larger outcomes is evident throughout the story. For one thing, it is built into the genre of alternate history; whether Franklin Roosevelt lived or died in 1933 had long lasting repercussions for the people of the US and the world. So it is with the <span style="font-style: italic;">I Ching</span> which is used by several characters throughout the book to make sense of and determine the appropriate response to a given situation. Dick also interrogates the distinction between reality and artifice, particularly in regard </span>to antiques and a slippery quantity an object's "historicity":She said, <blockquote>"What is 'historicity'?"<br /><br />"When a thing has history in it. Listen. One of those two Zippo lighters was in Franklin D. Roosevelt's pocket when he was assassinated. And one wasn't. One has historicity, a hell of a lot of it. As much as any object ever had. And one has nothing. Can you feel it?" He nudged her. "You can't. You can't tell which is which. There's no 'mystical plasma presence,' no 'aura' around it."... "It's all a big racket; they're playing it on themselves. I mean, a gun goes through a famous battle, like the Meuse-Argonne, and it's the same as if it hadn't, <span style="font-style: italic;">unless you know</span>. It's in here." He tapped his head. "In the mind, not the gun." (p. 52)</blockquote><br />Embedding <span style="font-style: italic;">Grasshopper</span>'s alternate history of the world within his own alternate history allows Dick to take this question about reality and simulation to the next level, leading the reader to speculate on the meaning and possibility of multiple simultaneously interpenetrating realities and on the role of the individual reader in pinning it all down.Thom Fooleryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12818320706747408688noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7002715049332867633.post-27448117945068334742008-06-02T12:40:00.001-07:002008-09-14T22:19:58.342-07:00Vulcan's Hammer: Interesting idea, too bad the novel kind of sucks.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzydsPx1Oqq5J2QmLheIya_Cu1o5xgpl7RUeNFLgqgq5mR7-ucP-c6vbWmbV97fTzpaakK2ydf-sf5RdfmLhE8I9HbTnLGy4KF8a4qJlLCHBKECaPEqQ_dhuGy4B1lyeTkVe3WSm09X6A7/s1600-h/Picture.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzydsPx1Oqq5J2QmLheIya_Cu1o5xgpl7RUeNFLgqgq5mR7-ucP-c6vbWmbV97fTzpaakK2ydf-sf5RdfmLhE8I9HbTnLGy4KF8a4qJlLCHBKECaPEqQ_dhuGy4B1lyeTkVe3WSm09X6A7/s320/Picture.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5214769477165439106" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Vulcan's Hammer</span> <span><br />Philip K. Dick</span><br /><span>1960</span><br /><br /><p>Imagine. You write science fiction for a living. In the last seven years you've written at least one novel per year, along with dozens of short stories, and a good half of this output has described life in a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">dystopian</span> future. In these visions of dark possibility, you've examined a handful of different ideologies around which we may organize a "perfect society"---whether randomness, relativism, "moral reclamation," or anti-space colonization prejudice---and found each wanting. So why not phase out the human element altogether and instead envision a planetary government run by a single omniscient machine, one free of our primate psychological hangups and irrational biases? What would that look like? Would it work?<br /></p><p>Dick called this government Unity, this godlike machine Vulcan 3, and, in the format of a political thriller of sorts, he explored those questions. Alas, while there is a good deal of potential in the concept of a technocratic utopia gone bad (as evinced by scores of films about machines supplanting and/or annihilating humanity), there is little good about <span style="font-style: italic;">Vulcan's Hammer</span> as a novel. It suffers from dull characters and a hackneyed, careening plot that would have left the rails if it hadn't been for that pat, sentimental conclusion at the end of the line.<br /></p><p>There has been a third world war, and in its wake humanity has created a "one-world government" controlled by an artificial intelligence of almost unimaginable power. Unity is total in its scope: it educates the kids, employs many of the adults, levies taxes, and enforces its laws under pain of death by "pencil beam." Yet even in this paranoid <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">panopticon,</span> a movement of dissenters called the Healers has arisen, guided by a man called Father Fields. The novel begins when a young Unity agent is murdered while staking out a rally of Healers. The North American Director of Unity, William Barris, is perturbed by the absolute lack of response to the Healers on the part of Vulcan 3, but when his request for more information is refused on the grounds of a piddling technicality, his perturbation turns to mutiny and he travels to Geneva, to Unity headquarters, to meet with Managing Director Jason Dill face-to-face and find out why Vulcan 3 hasn't formulated policy regarding the Healers.</p><p>We discover that Dill has been secretly consulting with the predecessor to Vulcan 3, the aptly named Vulcan 2, and that the earlier model has warned Dill of a possible bug in the Unity system. Vulcan 3, it turns out, is so complex that for all intents and purposes it is not only intelligent but also alive; Vulcan 2 realized that if its successor were ever to learn about the Healers then it would do what any living thing does when threatened---defend itself. And with a near-infinite amount of resources, Vulcan's ability to wage war would be, like all other aspects of Unity civilization, <span style="font-style: italic;">total.</span></p><p>Dill's efforts to censor Vulcan 3's information intake fail, however, because Vulcan 3 realizes that there is something <span style="font-style: italic;">missing </span>from all the data that Dill <span style="font-style: italic;">does </span>feed it; its conspicuous absence is the very sign of its existence. Because his human attendant Dill won't do what is needed, Vulcan 3 devises flying robots ("hammers") equipped with pencil beams to be his eyes and talons. Vulcan 3 arouses the Unity organization to the presence of "enemies," in the form of Barris and Dill. The plot lurches from the heated trial of Dill before all the Unity Directors to the meeting with Father Fields where we discover that it was Vulcan 2, and not Fields, who was the mind behind the Healers to the scene wherein it is revealed that the wife of the murdered young Unity agent from the beginning is actually Fields' daughter, and, finally, to Barris' bombing of the central Vulcan 3 CPU. In the end, you can almost see the sunset they're staring off into as Barris, Fields, and Fields' daughters contemplate their rebuilding of a new Unity and a new world.<br /></p><p>As my daughter would say, "Yawn."<br /></p>Thom Fooleryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12818320706747408688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7002715049332867633.post-43418121328989904462008-05-23T06:25:00.000-07:002008-09-14T22:20:23.502-07:00Out of Gas: Good intro to peak oil science, but look elsewhere for solutions<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyz_CK_WnAIn299K6RLMXVFHJ1mKTtsmfjza3ApFEV0e8M7OwUpaCHAGnO_5L1PkHhShp7UGwkueR8zmanxnZLFMcTKt040_mz5wM9pmJ_hJPHTw1lLlfOaTu1u0kYnWfqUkW-OuVciQWG/s1600-h/out-of-gas.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyz_CK_WnAIn299K6RLMXVFHJ1mKTtsmfjza3ApFEV0e8M7OwUpaCHAGnO_5L1PkHhShp7UGwkueR8zmanxnZLFMcTKt040_mz5wM9pmJ_hJPHTw1lLlfOaTu1u0kYnWfqUkW-OuVciQWG/s320/out-of-gas.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5203564114003037138" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Out of Gas<br /></span>David Goodstein<br />W.W. Norton & Company, 2004<br /><br /><blockquote>We can hope, if we are wise, to alter the laws of peoples. But we cannot change the laws of nature. The intent of this small book is to explain the relevant laws of nature. The idea is to sketch out, for those who are not specialists, both the opportunities and the limitations that nature has provided for us. Only if we understand both can we hope to proceed with wisdom. (p. 19)</blockquote><br />To this end Dr. David Goodstein, professor of physics at Caltech, has written a very readable introduction to the imminent peak in oil production and subsequent "end of the age of oil." Alas the book's greatest strength, its relatively narrow focus on the science surrounding fuel and energy, is also its biggest weakness when it comes to proposing solutions. After all, the problem of peak oil has as much to do with "the laws of peoples," or at least their habits and expectations, as it does with the laws of nature and raw technoscientific know-how.<br /><br />He begins by describing something which is now a standard phrase in our household, "peak oil." M. King Hubbert was a petroleum geologist who predicted that the rate of oil extraction for the lower-48 states would hit a maximum value in the early 1970s (i.e., it would peak) and that it would rapidly decline afterward. Although his ideas were roundly dismissed in the shiny-happy 1950s, he found a more receptive audience during the fuel-challenged '70s. His prediction was based on three basic methods: (1) noting that increasing rates of resource use equal increasing rates of resource depletion, (2) assuming that rates of oil production will follow a bell-shaped curve, and (3) recognizing that the curve in production paralleled the curve in discovery, which has already peaked.<br /><br />Goodstein notes that not all geologists heed Hubbert's warning, discussing oil in terms of the ratio of reserves to production (the R/P ratio) and concluding that we have oil aplenty for at least 40 to 100 years. As well, there is little agreement about the total amount of oil reserves left in the earth, and so all calculations based upon this uncertain amount must also necessarily be uncertain. His response is to note that Hubbert's warning is not about running out of oil <span style="font-style: italic;">per se</span>, but about reaching a critical point at which the demand for oil will outstrip production:<br /><blockquote>Given that worldwide demand will continue to increase, as it has for well over a century, Hubbert's followers expect the crisis to occur when the peak is reached, rather than when the last drop is pumped. In other words, we will be in trouble when we've used up half the oil that existed, not all of it.</blockquote><br />He then gives a cursory overview of the other energy sources available to us at this point in time. There are the much-discussed heavy oils, tar sands, shale oils, etc. whose exploitation will be expensive, slow, energy-intensive, and even more environmentally disastrous than conventional oil has been, and those cons are relevant only if we grant that these substances will ever be feasible to produce in quantity to begin with. Natural gas is a possible substitute for the oil on which we depend, but that would require an enormous overhaul of our entire energy infrastructure for a substance whose production will peak in a few decades, based on current demand levels. In other words natural gas is not a long-term solution. Although we have centuries worth of coal in the ground, it is highly polluting, dangerous to mine, and contains only half the energy of an equivalent amount of oil; additionally, to extract the same amount of energy from coal that we currently get from oil, we'd need to mine <span style="font-style: italic;">ten times as much </span>coal as we do today. (To those who think this is reasonable, all I can say is here's your lamp and your pick, start digging.) Barring some crazy advances in technology (oil-based technology, I should add) nuclear fusion is a nonstarter, and nuclear fission, with good reason, is politically unpopular. So what options are available to us? What are the limitations reality imposes on how we can respond to this looming crisis?<br /><br />Before Goodstein answers these essential questions (and because he is, after all, a life-long teacher) he provides crash courses in several areas, beginning with basic terms used in the discussion around energy. Global warming and the greenhouse effect aren't all bad, he says, because if it weren't for those gases and their warming effects, the Earth would be a pretty cold ball of rock floating in space. On the other hand global warming understood as "human-induced catastrophic climate change" is a very bad thing. Nuclear energy isn't all bad either, especially since all the energy we use ultimately comes from nuclear reactions in the sun. He also notes that while around 100,000 men and boys died in English coal mines in the latter half of the 19th century, the total number of deaths attributable to Chernobyl is around 2,500. (It isn't the most compelling argument for nuclear power, but it certainly makes visible the normally unseen human cost of fossil fuels.) We cannot conserve energy, which conserves itself as a fundamental law of nature; rather, we can learn to conserve our <span style="font-style: italic;">fuel</span>. As Goodstein himself notes on p. 48, to say that there can never be an energy crisis "doesn't mean we don't have a problem; it just means we haven't been describing the problem in the correct terms." Because many of the books critical of peak oil use terminological sleight of hand to mislead readers into thinking everything is A-OK, this information helps provide intellectual self-defense against these status quo apologists.<br /><br />The bulk of the book is dedicated to chapters on the history of energy, which describes the various forms of energy (e.g., kinetic, potential, thermal, etc.), the history and characteristics of electricity (a form of energy that is central to contemporary life), and the absolute importance of the idea of entropy, in which a fraction of energy used to do any kind of work will instead become disorganized heat energy. He describes a very vivid demonstration that he uses in his introductory physics lecture courses to underscore the implications of entropy: suspended from a long cord directly in front of his face is a 16-lb. bowling ball. After he releases it, he explains to his class that his confidence in the laws of thermodynamics, and particularly in the inevitability of entropy, allows him to stand in place as the returning bowling ball hurtles toward him. Of course, as should be obvious to anyone whose watched a pendulum, each swing is a little shorter than the last as the energy of the swing is dissipated due to the resistance of the air (i.e., friction, i.e., heat, i.e., entropy). This material was all absolutely fascinating, particularly when explained by such an obviously gifted science teacher, but I still find myself scratching my head about how it all connects to the theme of the book, which is the end of the age of oil.<br /><br />Finally, Goodstein looks at some of our options for fueling the future in his chapter called "Technological Fixes." We could place a giant umbrella in space between ourselves and the sun, which he describes as a foolish idea. Limiting the damage done by our consumption of fossil fuels and the resultant production of greenhouse gas through carbon sequestration is feasible, although it has a variety of serious drawbacks, including the sad fact that there is little economic incentive to do so. (Sad how maintaining human life on Earth does not count as an economic incentive.) Goodstein feels that we might need to reconsider nuclear fission as a primary fuel source, in spite of all the dangers and difficulties with which it is fraught. Yet, even if the world were forced to use nuclear fission in this fashion, it is estimated that there is only enough uranium fuel (U-235) to last five to twenty-five years. And even if we could find more nuclear fuel, the world would have to build one Gigawatt nuclear plant <span style="font-style: italic;">every day for 30 years </span>to supply the amount of energy we currently consume in fossil fuels. The only other option, he argues, is solar power--whether as photoelectricity, solar heat power, or indirectly as wind-generated electricity--and in order to harvest the most solar power, we'd need to do so with solar collectors in geosynchronous orbit, another sizable task. His conclusion, though, does not seem to follow from these premises, which would seem to suggest that we don't have a replacement for the fossil fuels to which we are addicted. Instead he falls back on faith in the "future technological fix" to keep from succumbing to the hopelessness of our present situation:<br /><br /><blockquote>As this brief survey suggest, there is no single magic bullet that will solve all our energy problems.There is no existing technology capable of replacing the oil we will soon be without, nor is there any on the horizon that we can depend on to replace the remaining fossil fuels when they are exhausted. And if we permit them to become exhausted before replacing them, we may place the climate of our planet in grave danger. The best hopes for our civilization lies in technologies that have not yet arisen--possibly based on scientific discoveries that have not yet been made. Most likely, progress will lie in incremental advances on many simultaneous fronts, based on principles we already understand: controlled nuclear fusion, safe breeder reactors, better materials for manipulating electricity, more efficient fuel cells, better means of generating hydrogen, and so on.</blockquote><br />While I don't disagree with his assertion that we need to fund research into these various research programs, I'm hesitant to suggest that we can avert disaster through mere supply-side solutions. In other words, we are going to have to learn to be a lot less individualistic and more communal in orientation, exchange single driver vehicles for mass transit, eat less meat, have fewer children, and in general learn to replace our consumer culture with one that values relationships instead of retail.<br /><br />Earlier in the book, Goodstein provides a best and worst case scenario based on Hubbert's prediction, and I feel this is an appropriate place to end my review of his book. In his best case scenario, we collectively wake up to the dilemma, develop a methane-based economy to bridge the gap to future fuels, and then use a combination of nuclear and solar power while we build an alternative energy infrastructure. In his worse case scenario, which really is worse case, we don't heed the warning, run out of oil, and end up burning lots of coal for energy, increasing the green house gases in the atmosphere, crossing a tipping point, and basically making the Earth unlivable.<br /><blockquote>No matter what else happens, this is the century in which we must learn to live without fossil fuels. Either we will be wise enough to do so before we have to, or we will be forced to do so when the stuff starts to run out. One way to accomplish that would be to return to life as it was lived in the eighteenth century, before we started to use much fossil fuel. That would require, among many other things, eliminating roughly 95 percent of the world's population. The other possibility is to devise a way of running a complex civilization approximating the one we have no which does not use fossil fuel. (pp. 37-8)<br /></blockquote><br />Thus Goodstein sets the stage for our near future. I don't agree with him that these two are the only possibilities, although they do seem to be good endpoints for a continuum of options. According to Jim Kunstler's <span style="font-style: italic;">The Long Emergency</span>, our dreams of running a civilization that approximates our own, particularly our love of automobiles and the infrastructure that supports an automobile culture, are pipe dreams, and nothing more. On the other end of the continuum, while it might not be possible or even desirable to return to an 18th century existence, we can all certainly work on the demand side of the energy equation and learn to live much more simply and in a way that minimizes our energy consumption---using public transportation, eating less meat, walking through the park instead of the mall, etc.<br /><br />In short, this is a great book for explaining the scientific basis for peak oil and the coming fuel/food/transportation crisis. With a lot of voices being well paid to write off "peakists" as whackos, this sort of book is invaluable for providing a solid, reasonable, scientific response. Unfortunately, the technoscientific fixes he provides aren't that compelling, as even he seems to suspect. All in all a good place to start, but not to finish, your peak oil reading.Thom Fooleryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12818320706747408688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7002715049332867633.post-26739550973358892352008-05-17T06:43:00.000-07:002008-09-14T22:20:46.206-07:00Dr. Futurity: Medical profession saves humanity, surfs temporal paradoxes<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWz5dOEYe00c2itIlT8cnzDrDaJ6ycryHL3ioceTve0sEKwsg6AONBGShmV9GRtMgtrI3jRDNiN2qcjkhWSHWVImgwT5uv1stCYN1si5w2FtWFIgKk2RHJrQGH7lop8rVgLnWJ9zBQDHPy/s1600-h/1400030099.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWz5dOEYe00c2itIlT8cnzDrDaJ6ycryHL3ioceTve0sEKwsg6AONBGShmV9GRtMgtrI3jRDNiN2qcjkhWSHWVImgwT5uv1stCYN1si5w2FtWFIgKk2RHJrQGH7lop8rVgLnWJ9zBQDHPy/s320/1400030099.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5201342193173218850" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Dr. Futurity</span><br />Philip K. Dick<br />1960<br /><br /><br />Jim Parsons, MD, 2012, born in 1980 wakes up in a world of foreign spires, colors, and nighttime skies. He has abruptly and involuntarily traveled through time to 2405 after some sort of radiant beam knocked his car off the guide beam and into the far future. There (or it is <span style="font-style: italic;">then</span>) he saves a gravely injured woman's life, thereby discovering that doctors and the entire medical profession are viewed as criminal. In this future society the population has reached a steady state with zero-population growth and no natural births; new embryo formation is triggered only when someone dies.<br /><br />Dick hints at an earlier nuclear war (the H-War) and a subsequent Age of Darkness. He also presents a future in which post-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Columbian</span> global white power has been supplanted by an interplanetary tribal culture and society. Future humans comprise one general ethnic type, a mix of African-American and Native American, and whites have been wiped out or racially integrated. The future's eugenicist culture views death as nature's way of improving the species and so poverty, disease, and other forms of "weakness" have been allowed to die off. In this future death is revered as the source of new, ever stronger life. <p> And so the head of the future government, Chancellor Al <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Stenog</span>, exiles Dr. Parson to Mars.<br /></p><p>His spaceship is intercepted en route (reminiscent of Purcell's kidnapping in <a href="http://whatsmierekreading.blogspot.com/2008/04/man-who-japed.html">The Man Who Japed</a>). Parsons comes to a parched red plain devoid of water and life (except for a single fly!) and so he assumes he is on Mars. In a rather chilling scene, he discovers an extremely weather ed marker <span style="font-style: italic;">with his name on it </span>and instructions on how to operate the time travel controls on the spaceship. Only when he sees the surface of the moon does he realize that this isn't Mars but the Earth and that he has traveled far, far into the future. (Shades of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Time Machine</span>.)<br /></p><p>The marker directs Parsons back to his future and to a tribal lodge whose inhabitants wrongly believed that it was one of <span style="font-style: italic;">their </span>beacons which brought the surgeon. These tribal people, who obviously disagree with the dominant culture's views on death, request that Parsons perform surgery on their wounded leader <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Corith</span>, who has been fatally injured by an <span style="font-style: italic;">arrow</span> wound. Parsons, being a dedicated physician (and also attracted to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Corith's</span> exotic daughter), revives <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Corith</span> after extracting the arrow, only to have it later <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">rematerialize</span> mysteriously in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Corith's</span> corpse.</p><blockquote><p></p><p>Lifting her head, she gazed at him; her eyes seemed to have shrunk so that the pupils gleamed like tiny, burning points, no longer located in space but somehow hovering before him, blinding him almost. "Someone is working against us," she said. "They have it, too. Control of time. Thwarting us, enjoying it..." She laughed. "Yes, <span style="font-style: italic;">enjoying </span>it. Mocking us." Abruptly, with a swing of her robes, she turned away from Parsons and disappeared past the ring of attendants. (p. 94)<br /></p></blockquote> To solve mystery of this second arrow, Parsons and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Corith's</span> relatives travel back to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Corith's</span> previous assignment. The year is 1579, the place is the Golden Gate, Northern California. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Corith</span> has come back in time to kill Sir Francis Drake in order to change history and protect the Americas from European colonization.<blockquote><p></p><p>"My son <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Corith</span> is responsible for the idea. Many years ago, when he was a young man like yourself. He was very brilliant. And so ambitious. He wanted to make everything right, erase the Terrible Five Hundred Years..."</p><p>Parsons recognized the term. The period of white supremacy. He found himself nodding....</p><p>"So my son went back. The the first New England. Not the famous one, but the other one. The real one. In California. Nobody remembers...but <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Corith</span> read all the records, the old books." Again she chuckled. "He wanted to start there, in Nova Albion. But he didn't get very far." ...</p><p>That was their great plan. To change the past by going back centuries, before the time of the white empires. To find Drake encamped in California, helpless while his ship was being repaired. To kill him, the first Englishman to claim part of the New World for England....</p><p>One after another, he thought. Drake would have been the first, and then--<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Cortez</span>? Pizarro? And so on, down the line. As they landed with their helmeted troops, they would be wiped out--the conquerors, the plunderers, and the pirates. Prepared to find a passive, helpless population, they would instead come face-to-face with the calculating, advanced descendants of that population. Grim and ready. Waiting. (pp. 101-2)</p></blockquote> <p>Parsons sees <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Corith's</span> assassination attempt and realizes that Drake is in fact Chancellor Al <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Stenog</span> who is in turn planning to ambush <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Corith</span>. Parsons warns <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Corith</span>, who hasn't met him yet and so doesn't know him, and who thinks he's bad guy (after all, he <span style="font-style: italic;">is</span> white) who has come to attack him. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">Corith</span> leaps at Parsons, they fight, and the doctor Parsons accidentally stabs <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Corith</span> in heart with arrow one number.<br /></p><p>Although they recognize the accidental and ironic nature of the time traveler's death, their sense of tribal justice still demands a punishment for the killing. Parsons is taken through time and stranded in 1597, after whites had departed for Europe, and is rescued after brief while (for him at least) by <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">Corith's</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">hottie</span> daughter Loris, who is pregnant with Parson's child.<br /></p> <p>Parsons realizes that he must be responsible for the second arrow as well and conjectures that he <span style="font-style: italic;">will </span>kill <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">Corith</span> the second time in order to protect himself from the reviving <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">Corith</span>, but being a doctor he cannot bring himself to harm his "patient." As he is prepares to flee, two young people appear from future and kill <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">Corith</span> with second arrow to heart. Parsons realizes that they the children are the children he had/will have with Loris, traveling back to 2405 from an even more distant future.<br /></p><p>After they take him forward to meet Loris again, he decides to return to 2012. back to the same day from which he was swept, to his doting wife. The novel closes with him constructing the stone marker that will eventually save his life on that desolate future Earth.</p>It is an expansion of his earlier short story "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Time_Pawn&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Time Pawn (page does not exist)">Time Pawn</a>", which first saw publication in the summer 1954 issue of <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrilling_Wonder_Stories" class="mw-redirect" title="Thrilling Wonder Stories">Thrilling Wonder Stories</a></i>. Thus far in my "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">PKD</span> Project," this has been the most fun novel to read, in terms of the pacing, the plotting, and the deft usage of tangled <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">timelines</span> and temporal paradoxes. I'd never even heard of this novel before I'd begun my project, and now I would recommend it highly to anyone.Thom Fooleryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12818320706747408688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7002715049332867633.post-44804408799108465762008-05-10T17:04:00.000-07:002008-09-14T22:21:40.348-07:00Time Out of Joint: Some don't accept the reality of the world with which they are presented<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6pQYwnGcosnMiyrFH08qKnF48-yuuXjvKaFUYAnOQWjONs2g6_yTE_aGDxghd0lkEr1zW9-9vnJE1CbFN6S7ba1t2N5P2dMR4GTT_wbBIRcdOyCLzgLesfcWGilQu8uAUBkhT7urIu-LY/s1600-h/5ToJPKDasRagle.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6pQYwnGcosnMiyrFH08qKnF48-yuuXjvKaFUYAnOQWjONs2g6_yTE_aGDxghd0lkEr1zW9-9vnJE1CbFN6S7ba1t2N5P2dMR4GTT_wbBIRcdOyCLzgLesfcWGilQu8uAUBkhT7urIu-LY/s320/5ToJPKDasRagle.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5198904661894337346" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Time Out of Joint</span><br />Philip K. Dick<br />1959<br /><br />Ragle Gumm lives with his sister Margo and brother-in-law Vic, doing little apart from flirting with his neighbor's wife and obsessively playing and winning a nationally syndicated puzzle called <span style="font-style: italic;">Where Will the Little Green Man be Next?</span> Although he appears to be little more than a couch potato, Ragle's puzzle-solving manages to bring more money into the household than does his brother-in-law's honest work at the local grocery store. Little does he know that, in true PKD fashion, his simple life is not at all what it seems.<br /><br />This revelation takes place gradually. Vic has a moment of deja vu when he reaches for the light cord in his bathroom only to remember that the bathroom lights have a wall switch and not a pull cord. Then in the midst of a bout of self-loathing, Ragle watches stunned as a soft drink stand dissolves into emptiness, leaving behind a slip of paper reading "Soft Drink Stand." (This reminded me of the Roddy Piper vehicle <span style="font-style: italic;">They Live</span>, in which everyday objects are revealed to be alien artifacts imprinted with subliminal messages---like this fistful of dollars.)<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKc3P56dxZRl6II4ysAf8oMdGgPV1Z82ju4O2BCqdLtagrSyFn7NHGNhTSki3mlTMSkOjPTCcKRz-1I663iKwfcFPZUZqno5lMraaB_dKY7RAtF_5ecS-7INqkvs0bhlWvtVAqRplKutEM/s1600-h/tl2god.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKc3P56dxZRl6II4ysAf8oMdGgPV1Z82ju4O2BCqdLtagrSyFn7NHGNhTSki3mlTMSkOjPTCcKRz-1I663iKwfcFPZUZqno5lMraaB_dKY7RAtF_5ecS-7INqkvs0bhlWvtVAqRplKutEM/s320/tl2god.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5202564588110300722" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br />Gumm keeps a small metal box in the pocket of his coat in the hall closet, and in this small box the strange slip of paper keeps company with its five predecessors. Thus far Gumm has seen a door, a factory building, a highway, a drinking fountain, and a bowl of flowers disappear in the same way as did the soft-drink stand. "The time is out of joint," he muses, quoting Hamlet as his world begins to fall apart around him. He then discovers that his nephew has also found several similar slips of paper in "the Ruins," a collection of abandoned lots, and on his subsequent journey there Gumm uncovers an odd phone book that references unfamiliar telephone exchanges. In the Ruins Gumm also finds a magazine featuring someone named Marilyn Monroe who is apparently quite famous although no one that Gumm knows has ever heard of her.<br /><br />Of course, at this point Gumm thinks he is losing his mind. His neighbor Bill Black, who knows more about these goings-on than he reveals, suspects something different. He fears that Gumm is becoming sane.<br /><br />This is indeed the case, as Gumm (and the reader) discovers after he and his brother-in-law manage to escape their small town via a stolen truck on the highway. It is not 1959, as Gumm, his family and (all but one) neighbors accept unquestioningly:<br /><blockquote>Anyhow, he thought, we've been out and we've seen that it is 1998, not 1959, and a war is in progress, and the kids now talk and dress like West African natives and the girls wear men's clothing and shave their heads. And money as we know it has dropped out somewhere along the line. Along with diesel trucks. But, he thought with sudden pessimism, we didn't learn what it's all about. Why they set up the old town, the old cars and streets, kidded us for years... (p. 217)<br /></blockquote><br />Then he figures it out. The war is being fought between the Earth--now under the control of the "One Happy World" government--and lunar colonists known as "loonies" or "lunatics."<br /><blockquote>A civil war.<br />I know what I do, now. I know what the contest is, and what I am. I'm the savior of this planet. When I solve a puzzle I solve the time and place the next missile will strike. I file one entry after another. And these people, whatever they call themselves, hustle an anti-missile unit to that square on the graph. To that place and at that time. And so everyone stays alive... (p. 222)</blockquote><br />One more question remains to be answered, and one more surprise awaits Gumm. Why was the elaborate deception necessary to keep Gumm "playing the game" and saving the people of the Earth from lunar missiles? Because Gumm had actually planned to turn traitor and leave the Earth behind in order to migrate to the lunar colonies---after he got his first taste of zero gravity, he saw through the anti-space migration chauvinism. Luckily for all involved, his final defection to the "lunatics" is not accompanied by the extinction of the human race courtesy of the loonies space arsenal. In fact, the only thing preventing a cessation to all hostilities had been Gumm's continual playing of the game. His liberation into sanity is also the liberation of humanity.<br /><br />This was Dick's sixth published novel, and the third that I have re-read for my "PKD project." As with <span style="font-style: italic;">Cosmic Puppets, </span>I originally read much of this book whilst riding the BART trains between SF and the East Bay. I distinctly remember reading this book on a concrete bench outside the Dublin-Pleasanton station, biding time until my wife and mother-in-law arrived from Modesto to pick me up. I think that was Christmas vacation back in 2005 or so. My memories of the book are that it was so-so, and that the wild ending really came out of nowhere; on second reading, the novel holds together better than I remember, but the ending still doesn't seem to gel completely. What is initially a philosophical exploration of a man's awakening from the dream of his daily life turns into a classic SF genre story about war between the planets and a paean to space migration. It's definitely well worth a read, as are all of PKD's novels, though its premise won't be that much of a shock to folks familiar with <span style="font-style: italic;">The Truman Show </span>(a film that is not based on this novel, from what I can tell and contrary to some online rumors).Thom Fooleryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12818320706747408688noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7002715049332867633.post-51542239301647386752008-05-02T18:06:00.000-07:002008-09-14T22:22:14.722-07:00The Cosmic Puppets: Cosmic game in Virginia town<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT8zV7Zf0aQ5px7fVg69Tbm57GIGi3wk_023r4QQVZhTT4-YQgIFm5HJmtleFV_m_KKKa_LxnwX1_u_rbBkR24CUqnrzMm8agBy4kPAM3Ijf2bsDcHkbjw8mSFM3UHQikVldBJDAFj_6Ha/s1600-h/CosmicPuppetsVintage2003.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT8zV7Zf0aQ5px7fVg69Tbm57GIGi3wk_023r4QQVZhTT4-YQgIFm5HJmtleFV_m_KKKa_LxnwX1_u_rbBkR24CUqnrzMm8agBy4kPAM3Ijf2bsDcHkbjw8mSFM3UHQikVldBJDAFj_6Ha/s320/CosmicPuppetsVintage2003.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5195951847934595426" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Cosmic Puppets<br /></span></span>Philip K. Dick<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span>1957<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br /></span></span><span><span>It begins in all innocence with some children molding clay into various shapes and a little boy named Peter watching them. </span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span><br /><span><span>Ted and Peg Barton are traveling through Virginia on vacation. Ted wants to visit his home town of Millgate, which he hasn't seen in 18 years; they get there and he realizes that it isn't the same town in which he grew up. I'm not referring to the normal strangeness that comes over once familiar sites with the passage of time, either. In typical Dick fashion, an alien strangeness descends into an otherwise normal world and the world of appearances is revealed to be not quite what it seems.<br /><blockquote>Barton's face was waxen. 'I've never seen this town before,' he muttered huskily, almost inaudibly. 'It's completely different.' He turned to his wife, bewildered and scared. 'This isn't the Millgate I remember. This isn't the town I grew up in!' (p. 10)</blockquote><br />The streets have different names. The landmarks are all gone, having been replaced with completely different houses, storefronts, etc. The house in which he grew up is gone and the street name is different. It is as if his entire past has been erased. The biggest shock comes when Barton visits the office of the local newspaper and reads about his own death at the age of 9:<blockquote>The second child [to die of scarlet fever] was Ted Barton. He hadn't moved out of Millgate on 9 October 1935. He had died of scarlet fever. But it wasn't possible! He was alive. Sitting here in his Packard beside his grimy, perspiring wife. (p. 17)</blockquote><br />Barton justly wonders who he is and where his store of memories have come from since Millgate is apparently not the town he remembered it to be. He begins to suspect that someone, or some<span style="font-style: italic;">thing</span>, is behind this manipulation. As to who this someone may be, he has no idea.<br /><br />We return to Peter Trilling, the little boy from the very beginning, and learn that he too is not what he seems. Somehow this small child has the power, like the juvenile Jesus in the <a href="http://www.gospels.net/translations/infancythomastranslation.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Infancy Gospel of Thomas</span></a>, to bring clay to life. As soon as the reader is given this glimpse into <span style="font-style: italic;">something </span>going on in Millgate, Ted Barton pulls up outside Peter's house; it turns out that his mother runs the town boarding house, where Ted plans to stay while he investigates the world turning upside down. Peter begins a conversation with Barton and inadvertently discloses his knowledge of the strangeness surrounding the town:<br /><blockquote>'How did you get through?' he demanded. 'Most people don't get through. There must be a reason.'<br /><br />'Through?' Barton was puzzled. 'Through what?'<br /><br />'Through the barrier.' Suddenly the boy withdrew; his eyes filmed over. Barton realizes the boy had let something slip, something he hadn't meant to tell. (p. 24)</blockquote><br />Then Peter reveals an absolute humdinger. The town of Millgate, completely surrounded as it is by mountains is also encircled by two vast figures, each one of which overhangs and controls half of the bowl-like valley. Later in the novel Peter hands Barton "what looked like a cheap, nickel-plated magnifying glass" and instructs him to look to the haze overhanging the mountains; the scene resolves itself and Barton is able to see one of the two cosmic figures:<blockquote>He had figured it out wrong. He had expected him to be part of the scene. He <span style="font-style: italic;">was </span>the scene. He was the whole far side of the world, the edge of the valley, the mountains, the sky, everything. The whole distant rim of the universe swept up in a massive column, a cosmic tower of being, which gained shape and substance as he focused the filter-lens.<br /><br />It was a man alright. His feet were planted on the floor of the valley; the valley became his feet at the farthest edge. His legs were the mountains--or the mountains were his legs; Barton couldn't tell which. Two columns, spread apart, wide and solid. Firmly planted and balanced. His body was the mass of blue-gray haze, or what he had thought was haze. Where the mountains joined the sky, the immense torso of the man came into being.<br /><br />He had his arms out over the valley. Poised above it, above the distant half. His hands were held above it in an opaque curtain, which Barton had mistaken for a layer of dust and haze. The massive figure was bent slightly forward. As if leaning intently over his part, his half of the valley. He was gazing down; his face was obscured. He didn't move. He was utterly motionless.<br /><br />Motionless, but he was alive. Not a stone image; a frozen statue. He was alive, but he was outside of time. There was no change, no motion for him. He was eternal. The averted head was the most striking part of him. It seemed to glow, a clearly radiant orb, pulsing with light and brilliance.<br /><br />His head was the sun.<br /><br /></blockquote>Likewise, Peter and Ted are sitting in the shadow of the other cosmic figure:<blockquote>The figure rose around him. He couldn't exactly see it; he could sense it vaguely and no more. It flowed up on all sides of him. From the rocks, the fields, the tumbled heaps of shrubs and vines. This one, also, formed itself from the valley and mountains, the sky and haze. But it didn't glow. He couldn't see its head, its final dimensions. A cold chill moved through him. He had a distinct, sharp intuition. This one didn't culminate in the bright orb of the sun. This one culminated in something else.<br /><br />In darkness?</blockquote><br />Although Ted is loath to admit it (and who can blame him?), he has stumbled upon the secret of his missing hometown. Soon after he left it, this sleepy little Virginia mountain town became ground zero for the eternal struggle, first described by the Persian prophet Zoroaster, between <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahura_Mazda">Ohrmazd</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahriman">Ahriman</a>, the cosmic forces of order and chaos, of creation and decay. So of course, he tries to get the hell out of Dodge, only to discover that the road out of town has been rendered impassable, blocked by a jack-knifed logging truck.<br /><br />He returns to town and meets up with the only other person left in Millgate who can see these looming figures and who remembers what life was like before they arrived--the town drunk, William Christopher. He reveals to Barton that soon after Barton's family left town, the Change came upon Millgate literally overnight. All of his fellow residents disappeared (they actually became these strangely luminous beings called Wanderers who nightly flit from one home to the next) and were replaced by a town full of strangers. No wonder Christopher, who was sober before the Change, has become the town drunk; it is his only means of staying sane.<br /><br />Finally, after Barton and Christopher discover that they can literally "remember" the original town back into existence, and then ally with the Wanderers to do just that, all hell breaks lose. The little boy Peter is revealed to be none other than Ahriman himself, while Ohrmazd is the town doctor, Dr. Meade, who imposed forgetfulness on himself as one of the conditions of his contest with Ahriman. Once the charade has been exposed, the two forces expand their conflict out into the universe at large and the town of Millgate returns to normal. When we see Barton for the last time, he is leaving Millgate for a new life, his wife Peg having left him somewhere along the way.<br /><br />Reading through this novel again, I was reminded of the places where I had read the story the first time. Images of the interior of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BART">BART</a> trains and of my first apartment in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond%2C_California">Richmond</a> Annex came rushing into my mind unbidden; I'm guessing that I first read this book around a decade ago, soon after I had moved to California. At the time, the novel felt a little flat, but this time I really appreciated the nuances of the story. I also recognized this novel's relationship to Dick's later works dealing with various themes like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_%28illusion%29"><span style="font-style: italic;">maya</span></a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosis"><span style="font-style: italic;">gnosis</span></a>; these ideas obviously informed his writing long before his strange experiences of <a href="http://www.techgnosis.com/pkdnet.html">2-3-74</a> brought them from his imagination into his waking life.<br /></span></span>Thom Fooleryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12818320706747408688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7002715049332867633.post-61016803634508089612008-04-28T21:38:00.001-07:002008-09-14T22:22:53.536-07:00The Giza Power Plant: Perplexing puzzle of the pyramid power plant<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7RX7xrK6IG1tGvjC9JzHia57agMJ5f2CJukuzlW95ZaFGe_MAUZa3SI9vNBAdQpo0inepfTpXRo4Banki2GwWHY7yrUnf11H26NQmXy6y0jyyrjasolv99oRtuBItnSHPEbtZn_HK6M5o/s1600-h/GizaPower.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7RX7xrK6IG1tGvjC9JzHia57agMJ5f2CJukuzlW95ZaFGe_MAUZa3SI9vNBAdQpo0inepfTpXRo4Banki2GwWHY7yrUnf11H26NQmXy6y0jyyrjasolv99oRtuBItnSHPEbtZn_HK6M5o/s320/GizaPower.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5194522182170775890" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Giza Power Plant</span><br /></span>Christopher Dunn<br />Bear & Co., 1998<br /><br /><br />I was reading <a href="http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/080416-earth-hum.html">something online</a> about the Earth's "hum" when I came across <a href="http://www.gardinersworld.com/content/view/101/39/">this fascinating article</a> by engineer and "pyramidiot" Robert <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Bauval</span> . In it he explains that the Great Pyramid was constructed in such a way that it might have translated this frequency into something suitable for human listening; in other words, the pyramid may have been designed to "sing," making it the world's first multimedia monolith. I was so amazed at this revelation that I fired the e-mail off to my good friend, <a href="http://www.thepathofmyexperience.com/">Rev. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">José</span> M. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Tirado</span></a>, who shares my fascination for both ancient wonders and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">contrarians</span>. Within minutes his reply indicated that I needed to read a book called <span style="font-style: italic;">The Giza Power Plant</span>.<br /><br />Although certain that the local library would not have a copy of this oddball book, I was taken aback when the online catalog pointed me right to it and indicated that it was available to request and check out locally. I placed my request, and once the book arrived at the library, I figured out why they were able to get a copy. It turns out that author Christopher Dunn lives in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danville,_Illinois"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Danville</span></a>, which is about 45 miles from here, and so the public library owned a copy. My attitude toward coincidences is that they all are meaningful, and so the proximity of the author cemented my desire to read this book.<br /><br />Dunn begins with a pretty interesting question, one rooted in his decades of experience in manufacturing: why is the Great Pyramid of Cheops so precise in its construction? He explains at some length that the precision found in the measurements of the pyramid, including the surveying and alignment of the base, with variances of less than a hundredth of an inch over a length of hundreds of feet, is beyond the level of precision expected of <span style="font-style: italic;">contemporary</span> construction. As an aerospace machinist with over 30 years of practical experience, Dunn cannot simply brush aside this question; he makes it clear that for the folks like him, those responsible for translating the ideas of engineers into physical artifacts, the standard theory about the purposes and construction of the Great Pyramid just don't hold water.<br /><br />He also asserts that there is abundant evidence of the use of machine tools at Giza and he shows quite a few images that seem to support his contention. Thin parallel grooves in shaped stone look like the marks left by a power drill. Intersecting curved surfaces in stone bowls indicate the use of lathe-like machine tools, and not easily blunted copper implements and scouring compounds. Dunn marshals some pretty intriguing evidence in his chapter on the use of machine tools in ancient Egypt and discusses the positive responses he's gotten from machinists, engineers, and others involved in hands-on manufacturing. This chapter was probably the most compelling in the book, because it does seem to me, a total layman, that he's on to something.<br /><br />However, while his ideas on machine tooling in ancient Egypt are pretty intriguing, I found his overall hypothesis--that the Great Pyramid was a vast machine intended to produce power through resonance with Earth's "hum"--a lot less convincing, though no less fascinating. In brief, he asserts that the pyramid was a power plant that converted the Earth's hum into a source of clean, renewable energy. He doesn't just make this up out of whole cloth either; on the contrary, he provides a lot of circumstantial evidence that does seem to indicate the inadequacy of the current explanation of the pyramid as a tomb. The granite-lined "King's Chamber" with its overlying vaults and entry-way is seen as a sort of "sound box" whose abundant quartz crystals resonate and amplify the humming earth below. The "Queen's Chamber" was a reaction chamber providing a source of hydrogen as a medium for the accumulated energy; Dunn notes the presence of various salt encrustations and a foul smell in this chamber that would be consistent with the presence of acid-base reactions. He even explains the mysterious shafts running up through the pyramid at an angle (a design feature inexplicable to modern manufacturers, since constructing the shafts on the horizontal would have been much, much easier); one shaft acted as wave guide to collect microwaves from space, focused them through granite lens that has been mistaken for a sarcophagus, and sent them out the other shaft as high-powered output.<br /><br />It's a fascinating idea but it is not without its problems. Where are machine tools used in the construction, for example? I've seen museum cases filled top to bottom with Bronze Age implements but not one ancient Egyptian Black and Decker power drill. Where is evidence of the power usage (apart from the hypothetical power tools)? How was the power transmitted? (On one page, Dunn shows a bizarre "eye of Horus"-like satellite reflecting the beamed power back down to Earth, but thankfully doesn't really try to explain that.) Why did the human race <span style="font-style: italic;">completely</span> lose its memory of this level of advancement?<br /><br />This was a very interesting book which was incredibly well written (particularly since its writer is from <span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Danville</span>; </span>in his defense, he <span style="font-style: italic;">is</span> English by birth) and very fun to read. Dunn is an articulate voice for the seldom heard perspectives of those "on the ground" in the worlds of machining and manufacturing, and he raises some valuable and not easily dismissed questions about our knowledge of the ancient past.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span>Thom Fooleryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12818320706747408688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7002715049332867633.post-56696062753934461202008-04-25T08:04:00.000-07:002008-09-14T22:23:45.508-07:00Blackberries in the Dream House: Living, loving poetically<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmkWzQQgMBBoVlIjojbvfas_3MlJ8zccFpwoRYmeU2cAepjkPS4FP_k9NF_C7eCKN2DEiv-5hsqCNjnPHeQer70H1hy8RwSk2842QGGGyPCFQu-yhYXhKqEyKzsxnfa5QLWVzW6nXVHIhT/s1600-h/bookCover_blackberries.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmkWzQQgMBBoVlIjojbvfas_3MlJ8zccFpwoRYmeU2cAepjkPS4FP_k9NF_C7eCKN2DEiv-5hsqCNjnPHeQer70H1hy8RwSk2842QGGGyPCFQu-yhYXhKqEyKzsxnfa5QLWVzW6nXVHIhT/s320/bookCover_blackberries.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5193199229164392770" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Blackberries in the Dream House</span><br />Diane Frank<br />1st World Library, 2003<br /><br /><br />One of the contributors to my ever-growing "to read" list (ok... pile; ok, ok... <span style="font-style: italic;">piles</span>) is author/astrologer/rock star/pronoiac <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Brezsny">Rob Brezsny</a>. Every Wednesday, he sends out an e-mail with horoscopes, inspirational quotes, selections from his books, and recommended readings ("Other Pronoia Resources"). In early March, I received the latest weekly <span style="font-weight: bold;">Free Will Astrology</span> e-mail (the webpage version is <a href="http://home.ezezine.com/756_3/756_3-2008.03.04.19.26-html-now.jpd.rss.html">here</a>) in which he recommended this novel. The entire recommendation took the form of this question: "What would happen to us if we were to undertake the discipline of turning our life entirely and self-consciously, into a poem?"<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Blackberries in the Dream House </span>is the Pulitzer-nominated tale of Yukiko, a geisha in 19th century Kyoto, whose life is breathed into being in exquisite, epigram-like chapters whose poetry is tangible. Although this work is Frank's debut novel, its author has been a practicing poet for some time and her loving attention to language is evident in each page, paragraph, sentence, and word. This is not a novel that I would have picked up off the shelf and read on my own; in fact, I'm not even sure where in a library or bookstore this would be shelved. Accordingly I am so grateful that it was recommended in the e-mail, that I ordered it through the library, and that I actually checked it out when it arrived. (By the time I picked it up at the library, I had begun my PKD project, and so I didn't even remember having placed the order for the book. In fact, the cover image is so unlike that of any book I'd "normally" read that at first I thought the book held for me by mistake.) <span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /><br />I am no poet, and so any ham-fisted attempts on my part to encapsulate the novel in terms of the characters and plot will, almost by definition, fail miserably in conveying the beauty and power of this book---I'm reminded of Thelonius Monk's comment on how writing about music is like dancing about architecture. So it is with a sheet metal worker's son trying to capture hallelujah poetry in ho-hum prose.<br /><br />In brief, this is a love story and a tale of spiritual transformation, although that says very little in our world of debased "love" and commodified "spirituality." As mentioned above, Yukiko is a geisha trained in the arts of entertainment, culture, companionship, and physical love. She has her heart broken by her first real lover, Eitaro, when he leaves her to marry a woman his parents have chosen for him. After this, she becomes involved with Kenji, a young monk from the nearby Zen monastery, and it is Kenji who sets her on the path to self-discovery. After she begins to retreat within herself, she is sent to work and meditate with the local Buddhist nuns, where she discovers a profound sense of freedom and joy within the silence; she also realizes that the nunnery is not her home and the monastic vocation is not her calling, and so after healing her broken heart, she returns to her life as a geisha, where she is very in-demand due to her singular wildness and creativity. The tale twists to a close as she and Kenji consummate their love for one another in the midst of a seismic upheaval.<br /><br />This was a delightful read and one that somehow filled my spirit with a sense of awe <span style="font-style: italic;">and </span>playfulness, responses to the world that truly belong together but that so rarely co-habitate successfully. Thanks to Rob for the recommendation.Thom Fooleryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12818320706747408688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7002715049332867633.post-20456632368024903142008-04-25T08:00:00.000-07:002008-09-16T10:12:00.049-07:00Eye in the Sky: Mind manifested<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMQ-G1I8s4gCNTCWyjQUe7R-ahgwAU-QGcFHxW9FgioMprUUmy9sfeNkqiF3g4x_d95R2e6zLXWchkocIJHiEezRmgRhCVdcUG_Jn7LqL59oBJ4H9mU4BPisD2-AekQlQqY8STLqutRCIP/s1600-h/1400030102.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMQ-G1I8s4gCNTCWyjQUe7R-ahgwAU-QGcFHxW9FgioMprUUmy9sfeNkqiF3g4x_d95R2e6zLXWchkocIJHiEezRmgRhCVdcUG_Jn7LqL59oBJ4H9mU4BPisD2-AekQlQqY8STLqutRCIP/s320/1400030102.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5193198335811195186" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Eye in the Sky<br /></span></span><span><span>Philip K. Dick<br />1957<br /><br />In Dick's first three published novels he brings characters to life within alternate worlds of his imagining; in this, his fourth, he brings these worlds to life within his characters. This was also the first of his novels I have read in the course of my "PKD Project" that I would rate really highly in terms of how fun it was to read and how well it seemed to hang together. (The first three were all what I call "solid"--as opposed to "great" or even "good"--books. When I'm grading, saying your writing is "solid" is a tip-off that you're probably going to get a "B" on that particular essay.)<br /><br />At 4:00 PM on October 2, 1959, a proton beam deflector at the Belmont Bevatron malfunctioned, releasing its charge---a six billion volt beam of energy---and incinerating an observation platform overlooking the giant device. The eight people who had been standing on the collapsed platform drop to the floor and into an alternate reality.<br /><br />In a flashback, we are introduced to Mr. Jack Hamilton, the novel's primary protagonist and a senior research scientist working on the Belmont Bevatron. He is called into a meeting with Colonel T.E. Edwards, one of the top brass of the company, where he is given an ultimatum: leave his wife, who has been classified as a security risk due to her flirtations with left-liberal politics, or leave his position at the Bevatron. Wisely, he chooses the latter course of action. After breaking the news to his wife, the two of them make their way to the Bevatron for its inaugural test; there they encounter a motley group of visitors whose number includes an elderly soldier, a middle-aged mother and her son, a severe woman in a rough-woven suit, and their "Negro" guide.</span></span><span><span> The last member of the group is Charley McFeyffe, the company cop responsible for turning Mrs. Hamilton in as a Communist and who is, inexplicably, a friend of the Hamiltons.</span></span><span><span> Of course, these eight are those caught in the path of the errant particle beam, which is when the fun starts...<br /><br />Hamilton awakens to find himself in an alternate universe, one that he shares with the other seven "participants" in this accidental experiment. At first, though, no one knows that they are in an alternate reality. He and his wife suspect that something is amiss based on vague intuitions, but they discount these by ascribing them to shock resulting from the accident. Strange little details begin to appear---Jack swears and is then stung by a bee, a shower of locusts descends from nowhere to plague Hamilton, prayer is revealed to be immediately efficacious---and it dawns on the Hamiltons that something is indeed not right with the world in which they have found themselves. </span></span><span><span>Everyone around them is devoutly religious and almost single-mindedly focused on the Second B</span></span>á<span><span>b, "the One True Gate to blessed salvation," and the laws of physics operate on a medieval, geocentric basis.<br /><blockquote>The values that made up [Hamilton's] world, the moral veritites that had underlined his existence as long as he could remember, had passed away; in their place was a crude, tribal vengeange against the outsider, an archaic system that had come from--<span style="font-style: italic;">where?</span> (p. 66)</blockquote></span></span><br /><span><span>As it turns out, the world has arisen from the mind of the old soldier, who was the first to awaken after the incident with the Bevatron. Somehow the accident has caused his solipsistic fantasies to become reality for himself and the other seven on the collapsed platform.<br /><blockquote>"All eight of us dropped into the proton beam of the Bevatron. During the interval there was only one consciousness, one frame of reference, for the eight of us. Silvester [the old soldier] never lost consciousness... Physically, we are stretched out on the floor of the Bevatron. But mentally, we're here. The free energy of the beam turned Silvester's personal world into a public universe. We're subject to the logic of a religious crank, an old man who picked up a screwball cult in Chicago in the 'thirties. We're in his universe, where all his ignorant and pious superstitions function. We're in the man's <span style="font-style: italic;">head</span>." (p. 105)</blockquote><br />Having discovered their predicament, they go from the frying pan into the fire when Silvester is knocked unconscious. As the geocentric cosmos fades, it is replaced not by <span style="font-style: italic;">reality </span>but by the next delusional inner landscape, this time belonging to the prudish Mrs. Pritchet. Sexual organs disappear, leaving everyone with the smooth, neuter bodies of Barbie and Ken dolls. Hamilton's laboratory has changed its focus from scientific research to bringing culture to the masses, one of Pritchet's Victorian obsessions. Luckily, Mrs. Pritchet's prudishness is easily manipulated, so much so that the rest of the party manages to talk her into "abolishing" every single aspect of reality :<blockquote>The world's layer of atmosphere swept out of existence. His lungs totally empty, Hamilton descended into a crashing blur of death. As the universe ebbed away, he saw the inert form of Edith Pritchet roll over in a reflexive spasm: her consciousness and personality had fled. (p. 172)</blockquote><br />Only to be replaced, of course, by the next consciousness in line, that of paranoid psychotic Joan Reiss. Because of her delusions of conspiracy and persecution, every aspect of her reality is out to get everybody. The house they are in becomes a living thing intent on devouring them all; Hamilton's cat is turned inside out while still alive, because Ms. Reiss doesn't like cats; and, because she sees the rest of her party as aliens intent on claiming her life, that's what several of them become, sealing her fate and ending her reign of delusion.<br /><br />The world that arises to fill the void is characterized by a definite "Communist sensibility" in which a shoddy parody of American life, complete with slogans and cutout soldiers, unfolds. Of course, Hamilton is faced with a big question: is this his wife's world? Does this mean that she really is a Communist and a threat to national security?<br /><br />I won't tell you how the book ends, but suffice it to say that the final resolution is not a let-down.<br /><br />This has been the best PKD novel I have read thus far in my project. The pacing, plot, and characters are all relatively well developed without sacrificing any of the ideas the Dick fan comes to expect. In fact, this novel is so packed with ideas---involving religion, politics, consciousness, and reality itself---that it demands re-reading just to begin to get them sorted out.<br /><br />And since the book was such a fun read, that doesn't sound like a bad idea.<br /></span></span>Thom Fooleryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12818320706747408688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7002715049332867633.post-26541184373767874142008-04-09T08:18:00.000-07:002008-09-16T10:12:12.263-07:00The Man Who Japed: Humor as sedition<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnPhH_RG17PV4lfbEj-wx2p752WFkrZ0f7FlDwRhkbq0yxThbERrbwQy7gmW2NS6BHOZVU7RNJY-6PNGjSxbij_ceoj53pEaAPigFJhnvoLxWXC3DOZYj2n-yuEME1HSJPl3oI6JH0mt-3/s1600-h/41G5CF9TJHL._SS500_.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnPhH_RG17PV4lfbEj-wx2p752WFkrZ0f7FlDwRhkbq0yxThbERrbwQy7gmW2NS6BHOZVU7RNJY-6PNGjSxbij_ceoj53pEaAPigFJhnvoLxWXC3DOZYj2n-yuEME1HSJPl3oI6JH0mt-3/s320/41G5CF9TJHL._SS500_.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5187265342636015458" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">The Man Who Japed</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><br />Philip K. Dick<br />1956<br /><br />I had never encountered the word "jape" before reading Dick's third published novel, although I did use it once in a game of Scrabble. (Most likely I'd subconsciously picked it up during the many times I've scanned the PKD section in bookstores.) Turns out that it is an archaic English verb that is defined thusly: <ul><li><i>v.</i>intr., To joke or quip.</li><li><i>v.</i>tr., To make sport of.</li></ul><div class="pseg"><div class="ds-single"></div></div><div class="pseg">The title is an appropriate one, since this is the first of Dick's novels to highlight his puckish sense of humor. In typical Dick fashion, levity is put to the service of weightier matters; the prankish plot brilliantly establishes that having <span>a</span> sense of humor can be downright seditious.<br /><br />Allen Purcell, the man from the title, is "the forward-looking young president of the newest and most creative of the Research Agencies," a man whose career trajectory as a Moral Reclamation (Morec) propagandist belies his deep-seated antipathy to the entire endeavor. So strong is this antipathy that he gets drunk one night with some friends in the sterile wasteland of Hokkaido and on the way home japes a statue of Major Streiter, the beloved founder of Morec---by removing its head. After which he blacks out.<br /><br />The novel begins the morning after this episode with Purcell "losing" his bedroom, as the automated furnishings in his one-room apartment rearrange themselves like clockwork. As Purcell goes about his day, the reader gets glimpses of this brave new post-apocalyptic world. The apartment overlooks the -- blessed -- Morec spire and the surrounding Park environs, complete with the 124-year-old statue of Streiter. We learn about the Morec phenomenon of the weekly block meetings, "the interminable interchange, the stuffy presence of his neighbors packed together in one room. And the whir of the juveniles as they surrendered their tapes to the Committee representatives" (p. 9). These "juveniles" (presumably named after the propensity of prudes to blame "the children" for their attempts at censorship) are "earwig-like sleuths," small camera-enabled robots whose regular invasions of privacy form the backbone of the humorless, puritanical snitch-culture that is Moral Reclamation. Another central tenet is the notion of "the domino method," in which it is assumed that all residents of a given block automatically believe the same thing:<br /><blockquote>The domino method operates on the assumption that people believe what their group believesm no more and no less. One unique individual would foul it up. One man who originated his own idea, instead of getting it from his block domino. (p. 20)</blockquote><br />This new world was obviously not engineered with the best interests of the individual in mind; once again we find an everyman protagonist, not a larger than life hero, but a regular guy who is fed up with the repressive culture in which he finds himself.<br /><br />As Purcell vaguely recalls his japing of the statue, he dreads being found out; however, instead of being discovered and pilloried he is invited to become the director of Telemedia, the central organ of Morec propaganda. Meanwhile, his block community has called him before the weekly meeting, which he loathes. We get to see this vile operation in action, as anonymous members of the community publicly interrogate and humiliate various block members for their infractions: sexual intercourse, rudeness, uttering morally objectionable words, etc.<br /><br />In a whirlwind of events, Purcell is effectively kidnapped and taken to Other World, an offworld colony for those who can't cope with the world of Morec. There it is discovered that Purcell has some sort of defect on his brain scans---a sense of humor.<br /><blockquote>And a sense of humor doesn't fit in with Morec. Or with us. You're not a 'mutant'; you're just a balanced human being...The japery, everything you've done. You're just trying to re-establish a balance in an unbalanced world. And it's something you can't even admit to yourself. On the top you believe in Morec. Underneath there's that blob, that irreducible core, that grins and laughs and plays pranks....<br /><br />Yes, your ethics are very high. But they're not the ethics of this society. The block meetings--you loath them. The faceless accusers. The juveniles--the busybody prying. This senseless struggle for leases. The anxiety. The tension and strain... And the overtones of guilt and suspicion. Everything becomes--tainted. The fear of contamination; fear of committing an indecent act. Sex is morbid; people hounded for natural acts. This whole structure is like a giant torture chamber, with everybody staring at one another, trying to find fault, trying to break one another down. Witchhunts and star chambers. Dread and censorship, Mr. Bluenose banning books. Children kept from hearing <span style="font-style: italic;">evil</span>. Morec was invented by sick minds, and it creates more sick minds. (pp. 119-120)</blockquote><br />Eventually his business rivals and a disgruntled ex-employee conspire to bring Purcell down. This they do by tailing him with juveniles and accusing him of extra-marital relations with the woman responsible for his kidnapping. After being caught "in the act" of giving this woman a peck on the cheek, Purcell weathers the ensuing shitstorm in the only way a living, thinking human being can---by not taking it too seriously. With his job as Director of Telemedia facing immediate cancellation, Purcell uses his last remaining bits of influence to create a huge media event revolving around the mysterious postwar policy of "active assimilation." This policy, invented completely out of whole cloth by Purcell and his creative team, insinuates that Major Streiter and his other Moral Reclaimers actually ate those with whom they disagreed as a means of obtaining nutrients while also maintaining population and social controls. Though the powers that be pull the plug on the faux panel discussion of "active assimilation" in the middle of the broadcast, the damage is done. As we leave Purcell, he is standing with his wife waiting for the coming Cohorts of Major Streiter, the brownshirt enforcers of Morec, and proudly announcing to all passersby that he is the man who japed the statue. All in all a well told, inspiring story about the radical nature of laughter.<br /><br />I couldn't help but notice lots of frightening similarities between the world of Morec and the righteous nonsense Americans accept as a substitute for culture in the early 21st century. The leering need on behalf of the assembled people at block meetings to hear all the titillating details of every infraction is all too familiar in this age of "Humiliation Television." Ubiquitous spying technology in the form of "juveniles" echoes the current brouhaha over the President's illegal wiretapping of US citizens and the increasing omnipresence of security cameras throughout the UK. And of course, the entire Morec media environment, with its emphasis on hyperconformity, is far too similar to the televisual hive-mind I encounter at every water cooler; it's almost as if Dick saw what the cultural straitjacket of 1950s America would evolve into, given enough time. Luckily his message about resistance to this repression rings equally true; an entire body of social criticism owes its existence to stand-up comics like Lenny Bruce and his heirs.<br /><br />Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke, right?<br /></div>Thom Fooleryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12818320706747408688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7002715049332867633.post-87857358035101246272008-04-02T08:29:00.001-07:002008-09-16T10:12:24.808-07:00The World Jones Made: The problems with precognition<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4bAKSYsUey5Dc0sO1p4tySQQHQQovlngYgxLhNdP-iwpda-PG0n6FkfZqO6Ohzq6Tjaq2NOH7m3wYB2INc-JIEbQhkVC2viJ-OssQIdXD2hj0flBCtgA3KosHVFmcq4cy-RfYMrHnKN7k/s1600-h/0679742190.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4bAKSYsUey5Dc0sO1p4tySQQHQQovlngYgxLhNdP-iwpda-PG0n6FkfZqO6Ohzq6Tjaq2NOH7m3wYB2INc-JIEbQhkVC2viJ-OssQIdXD2hj0flBCtgA3KosHVFmcq4cy-RfYMrHnKN7k/s320/0679742190.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5184670563913940802" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">The World Jones Made</span><br />Philip K. Dick<br />1956<br /><br /><br />Our glimpse into the world Jones made begins <span style="font-style: italic;">in media res</span>, as the reader enters the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">womblike</span> Refuge, sees the little mutant people who live within, meets the novel's protagonist <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Cussick</span>, and first hears about the titular Jones. Through a flashback, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Cussick</span> is introduced as a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Fedgov</span> agent; the world has apparently survived a cataclysmic nuclear holocaust and the surviving shards of various civilizations have come together under the aegis of a federal planetary government, with cultural relativism as its "non-ideology."<br /><br />It is in this world, on April 4, 1995, that we meet Floyd Jones, a sad psychic working in a carnival with the gift of seeing how the world will be exactly one year ahead. After he makes his predictions to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Cussick</span> and they begin to come true, he is arrested and then released. Nothing comes of it for a few months until one day <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Cussick</span> sees that Jones has become an ordained minister who is drawing large crowds, something that is immediately unsettling in the post-apocalyptic, post-ideological world of the late 20<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">th</span> century. Jones is a demagogue.<br /><br />Dick gives us an eerie insight into the mind and life of Floyd Jones, who has been living every moment of his life twice, once in the "future" and then once again one year later in the "present." These moments include the very haunting images of Jones experiences in the womb and approaching the grave, having already experienced both thresholds.<br /><blockquote>For almost seventeen years his dual existence had been purposeless. It had been a burden, a great dead weight. Even the idea of utilizing it was lacking. He saw it as a cross, nothing more. Life was painful; his was twice painful. What good was it to know that the misery of next year was unavoidable? (p. 53)</blockquote><br /><br />This tortured existence is central to Dick's ambivalence about supposed "gifts" like precognition. As well, Jones' knack for seeing the future also presents a direct challenge to the probabilistic world of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Fedgov</span>, because of its implications about free will and predestination, error and certitude:<br /><blockquote>For Jones, there was no guessing, no error, and no false knowledge. He knew; he had absolute certainty. (p. 57-8)<br /></blockquote><br /><br />In typical <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">PKD</span> fashion (I don't know what it was with him, women, and betrayal) <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Cussick</span> discovers that his new Danish wife, Nina, has secretly been involved with the Jones cult for several months, all while he himself has been a primary investigator of Jones and his people. Jones' people have begun to attack and burn the "drifters"--gigantic <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">amoeboid</span> alien creatures whose viscous (and apparently harmless) bodies have begun to drop occasionally into earth's atmosphere from space; his movement of Jones Boys agitated to end the tyrannical reign of relativism and its cadre of thought police (whose number, of course, included <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Cussick</span>) and called for dedicated efforts toward making space migration a reality. After a universal referendum, Jones is appointed "Supreme Commander" to deal with the "crisis" of the alien blobs.<br /><blockquote>That was the chilling sight: the lines of tired people, worn out from a long hard day of work, willing to stand patiently in line. Not the enthusiastic faces of the dedicated followers, but the drab, ordinary citizens desiring to abolish their legal governments, wishing to end a government of law and to create in its place an authority of absolute will: the unqualified whim of an individual person. (104-5)<br /></blockquote><br />This is where the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">womblike</span> Refuge and the miniature mutants enter the picture. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Cussick</span> learns that they are so helpless outside their sanctuary environment not through a defect but because they are perfectly built <span style="font-style: italic;">for Venus</span>. The idea was that the project would go on for a while longer until the mutants were actually sent to Venus, but the "election" of Jones has forced <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Fedgov's</span> hand and the mutants are sent to Venus. In a tender scene, the mutants first step out into the Venusian environment only to feel perfectly at home for the very first time.<br /><br />Jones and his mobs continue to burn and destroy the drifters, until, too late it is discovered that they are gametes, one half of a reproductive structure that extends between planets. The parent creatures, "immensely complicated plant-like beings, so remote and advanced that we'll never have anything more than a dim picture of them" (p. 158), respond to this wanton destruction by quarantining the Earth and its immediate vicinity:<br /><br /><blockquote>"They're going to seal us off. A ring will presently be set up around us. We'll have Earth, the Sol System, the stars we've already reached. And that's all. Beyond that--" Jones snapped his fingers. "The warships will simply disappear." (p. 159)<br /><br />What had happened was that Jones <span style="font-style: italic;">in the future</span> had died soon after all these events had transpired, and so his dual-vision was split between the present and absolute darkness. In other words, he had no idea what the human race had been up against, and so had bluffed. And lost.<br /><br />He had no certain knowledge of what was to become of society because he would not be around to see it. Very shortly, he would die. He had been contemplating it for almost a year; it could be ignored temporarily, but always it returned, each time more terrible and imminent.<br /><br />After death, his brain and body would erode. And that was the hideous part: not the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">sudden</span> instant of torment that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">would</span> come in the moment of execution. That, he could bear. But not the slow, gradual disintegration.<br /><br />A spark of identity would linger in the brain for months. A dim flicker of consciousness would persist: that was his future memory; that as what the wave showed him. Darkness, the emptiness of death. And, hanging in the void, the still-living personality.<br /><br />Deterioration would begin at the uppermost levels. First, the highest faculties, the most cognizant, the most alert processes, would fade. An hour after the death the personality would be animal. A week after, it would be stripped to a vegetable layer. The personality would devolve back the way it had come; as it has struggled up through the billions of years, so it would go back, step by step, from man to ape to early primate to lizard to frog to fish to crustacean to trilobite to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">protozoon</span>. And after that: to mineral extinction, to merciful end. But it would take time.</blockquote><br />(Philip Dick's speculation into the breakdown of consciousness here is just one of the sorts of gems that line his works.) <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Cussick</span> comes to meet with Jones in response to this crisis, a gun battle ensues, and Jones steps into the fatal bullet <span style="font-style: italic;">like he knew it was coming</span>. (Duh.)<br /><br />So Jones dies, apparently along with humanity's dreams of conquering the known universe, yet he leaves behind him a new global legacy:<br /><blockquote>"He knew when to make his entrance and his exit. We thought we were going to be stuck with Jones for another six months...instead, we're stuck with Jones, the legend of Jones, forever."<br /><br />He didn't need Jones' talent to see it. The new religion. The crucified god, slain for the glory of man. Certain to reappear, someday; a death not in vain.. Temples, myths, sacred texts. Relativism wasn't coming back in, not in this world. Not after this.<br /><br /></blockquote><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19"><br />Cussick</span> and Nina make their way to Venus, along with their new baby, to make a life with the Venusians until things back on the world Jones made return to a semblance of normality.<br /><br />This was a fun read which raised quite a few interesting philosophical speculations and also provided some insight into the quasi-spiritual roots of demagoguery, a phenomenon discussed at some length elsewhere by <a href="http://whatsmierekreading.blogspot.com/2007/12/dense-intricate-important-look-at.html">Morris Berman</a>.Thom Fooleryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12818320706747408688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7002715049332867633.post-46619466674125749382008-03-24T14:57:00.001-07:002008-09-14T22:40:38.646-07:00Solar Lottery: PKD's first novel<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidqXSIdrp8zORyifCQ8iVjAplPhypZNne-FqGUD5Wcd_14jwg0rnmlgRWWvk4iiwv9T5ZXER7YBtSYSxwy_Xm3jBWRSWEVuVxf24SJnwGHPUXefwtQTzfRXxJ-H_vANYXv_0FySMJnhE3r/s1600-h/solar-lottery-vintage.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidqXSIdrp8zORyifCQ8iVjAplPhypZNne-FqGUD5Wcd_14jwg0rnmlgRWWvk4iiwv9T5ZXER7YBtSYSxwy_Xm3jBWRSWEVuVxf24SJnwGHPUXefwtQTzfRXxJ-H_vANYXv_0FySMJnhE3r/s320/solar-lottery-vintage.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5181430814247993138" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Solar Lottery<br /></span>Philip K. Dick<br />1955<br /><br />I'd had a copy of Dick's sublime <span style="font-style: italic;">Divine Invasion </span>on one of my "to read" piles for a while, so when I instead read <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://whatsmierekreading.blogspot.com/2008/03/counter-clock-world.html">Counter-Clock World</a> </span>by pulling it off the shelf literally at random, I thought to myself that maybe it was time for a systematic study of the work of Philip K. Dick. That's right. A <span style="font-style: italic;">project</span>.<br /><br />So I went online and printed out what looked like a pretty thorough bibliography. The first on the list, published in 1955, was <span style="font-style: italic;">Solar Lottery, </span>the book here being discussed<span style="font-style: italic;">. </span>I had a mass market copy which I had read in college; I knew I had done this because I remembered the image on the cover, not because I had any recall of the book itself, which I did not. Instead of reading the yellowing pages of the fifteen-year-old mass market, I passed it on via the Books to Prisoners project and finally visited the new <a href="http://www.champaign.org/">Champaign Library</a>. (It is gorgeous, by the way. From the outside the architecture is interesting enough, but it is the interior, with its intriguing use of materials, space, light and shadow, which is so striking.)<br /><br />So here's the plot: It is the year 2203 and a man named Ted Bentley has just lost his job working in the Hill system, apparently a feudal corporatocracy. He moves to Batavia (which, strangely, had I not seen a documentary on Krakatoa just previous to beginning this book would not have heard of or known was the contemporary city of Jakarta) in order to take a personal oath of fealty to one Reese Verrick, the Quizmaster. Or at least, he was the Quizmaster before the start of the novel. When the reader first meets him, he has been replaced a a result of a twitch in "the bottle," and has been replaced by Leon Cartwright who is, scandalously, a "Prestonite." For one thing this means that he still wears outdated double-breasted suits and for another drives an "ancient '82 Cheverolet." He is also an "unk" or "unclassified," an outcaste from the ubiquitous Classification System that assigns human beings worth based on their intellectual (i.e., abstract and theoretical) strengths.<br /><br />We learn that in the past economic production had outstripped consumption, and so quizzes and lotteries were designed whose express purpose was the unloading of all this surplus <span style="font-style: italic;">stuff</span>. Eventually stuff was supplanted by the random assignation of of power and prestige, through the use of a complex game rooted in the quantum indeterminacy of an atom's decay. This complex game is what they refer to as "the bottle." Through the implementation of game theory or Minimax across the entire human culture, humanity lost faith in natural law, cause and effect, and reliance on pure probability became the norm. Other details of Dick's vision of s 2203 that stood out include women going bare-breated in public as a matter of course and Christianity's status as a sort of fringe remnant. Against this backdrop is set the messianic quest of one <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prester_John">John Preston</a>, an astronomer turned "unk," whose discovery of a legendary 10th planet called "Flame Disc" started the Prestonite movement, of which the new Quizmaster is a member.<br /><br />A Challenge Convention is held, the purpose of which is to elect an assassin as a corrective for the excesses of "the bottle." Reese Verrick, the old Quizmaster, is not quite ready to give up power based on the whim of an atomic nucleus. Using the same science that brought the nutritious mutant alga called Protine to the masses, Verrick has had his perfect assassin genetically engineered. The game includes the rule that whomever assassinates the Quizmaster <span style="font-style: italic;">becomes</span> the Quizmaster, unless the assassin is under a personal oath of fealty to another, as the assassin, Keith Pellig, is to Reese Verrick. This is why Verrick personally offers $1,000,000 in gold to the assassin responsible for the death of Cartwright. No need leaving everything up to chance, after all, even when the world is left entirely up to chance.<br /><br />Here's where Bentley comes back into the story. He discovers (through a terrifying prank played on him by one of his associates) just what Pellig truly is--an empty shell through which a team of controllers operates. Bentley is one of these controllers, switching into and out of control of Pellig randomly to thwart any attempt at a coherent strategy on the part of the "teeps" (telepaths) who defend the Quizmaster.<br /><blockquote>"You see...Pellig is Heisenberg's random particle. The teeps can trace his path; directly to Cartwright. But not his velocity. Where Keith Pellig will be along that path at a given moment nobody knows." (p. 79)<br /><br /></blockquote>This is used to interesting effect in the story. For example, we see Pellig, with one controller in charge, being quite nice to a young woman on a train, only to change instantly and without warning into a <span style="font-style: italic;">completely different person</span> as a new controller clicks into place. We also see the effects of that click on Bentley:<br /><blockquote>"While he was reflecting, the mechanism switched. Silently, instantly, he was back at the Farben labs.<br /><br />It was a shock. He closed his eyes and hung on tight to the circular metal band that enclosed his body, a combination support and focus." (p. 106)<br /><br /></blockquote>We also see the effects that it has on the teeps assigned to protect the Quizmaster. Each teep monitoring Pellig is driven insane whenever a controller switch takes place during their watch. While their eyes tell them that Pellig is standing directly in front of them, their telepathic minds tell them that Pellig's consciousness has simply evaporated, and most simply crack under this sort of dissonant assault.<br /><br />Pellig isn't your run of the mill genetically engineered multiple-consciousness-housing assassin, either. He also turns out to be an interplanetary rocket designed to pursue Cartright all the way to the moon. Bentley, who is operating Pellig at the time of his transformation to spaceship, discovers that the switch into and out of Pellig is <span style="font-style: italic;">not random</span> but is instead under the direction of Moore the associate behind the aforementioned practical joke. You see Pellig isn't just your run of the mill genetically engineered multiple-consciousness-housing spaceship assassin, either--he is also a bomb designed to kill Cartwright at the same time that it switches Bentley into the operator slot, taking out two birds with one android.<br /><br />Bentley breaks his oath of fealty when he discovers the plot to send him to his death unwittingly (something that can only be done with unk serfs) and runs to Cartwright for protection. The rest of the novel involves the legal proceedings between Verrick, Bentley, and Cartwright over the breaches in fealty; the final resolution of the question of who is to be Quizmaster; and the haunting final message of Preston to those seeking Flame Disc.<br /><br />It was definitely a weird book. The story and subplots don't ever really gel, a quality I've noted in many of Dick's novels which stands in stark contrast to the precision and directness of many of his short stories. Right out of the gate, though, many of Dick's perennial themes can be seen--free will and determinism, simulation and simulacra, the ubiquity and centrality of advertising and spectacle, totalitarianism in all its guises, and the quest for transcendence. There is also, as someone pointed out on Amazon, the fact that the protagonist in this novel, unlike those in most of the novels of his contemporaries, are regular folks. They aren't the raygun toting Duck Dogers types or Starship Troopers but bureaucratic functionaries, middle managers, and down on their luck cultural creatives.<br /><br />My chronological reading of all PKD's SF novels is off to a good start and will only be sidetracked by my classroom readings and all the other books in my "to read" piles, not to mention all the books on our shelves <span style="font-style: italic;">and </span>at our local libraries. What could possibly happen to derail this project?<br /><br />One down, 35 or so to go!Thom Fooleryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12818320706747408688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7002715049332867633.post-46616275922312528412008-03-20T07:27:00.001-07:002008-09-16T10:12:46.434-07:00Robots, Androids, and Mechanical Oddities: Do androids dream of mechanical oddities?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTFCe-aedmpyNFM-ugLdCcQtMEaAy64Uh6Wzna8vHGYwC3KASRuTSIBIjmlHCfsy8oykWqizm3RUo4lK2wzGUuOdYDZ-mkMnoKyXwi9OqPBteJz221S1j5z191jP0TZuFNjXoxOnzrd0LS/s1600-h/RbotsAndroidsOdditiesSoutherIllinois1984.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTFCe-aedmpyNFM-ugLdCcQtMEaAy64Uh6Wzna8vHGYwC3KASRuTSIBIjmlHCfsy8oykWqizm3RUo4lK2wzGUuOdYDZ-mkMnoKyXwi9OqPBteJz221S1j5z191jP0TZuFNjXoxOnzrd0LS/s320/RbotsAndroidsOdditiesSoutherIllinois1984.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5179830449303961378" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Robots, Androids, and Mechanical Oddities: The Science Fiction of Philip K. Dick</span><br />Philip K. Dick, edited by Patricia S. Warrick and Martin H. Greenberg<br />Southern Illinois University Press, 1984<br /><br />Warrick and Greenberg did a masterful job collecting these stories. They focus on Dick's ideas while also showing his gifts as a coherent short story writer (much more so than as a novelist). They also provide brief, yet illuminating, essays that situate each story in the context of PKD's personal life, literary output, mental state, the state of affairs in American politics, etc. This is a model anthology and a book my wife recommends I keep.<br /><br />Here are my thumbnail synopses of most of the stories in this collection:<br /><ul><li>"The Little Movement," 1952 --- Dick's first tale involving a robot presages <span style="font-style: italic;">Toy Story</span><span>, albeit with a much darker tone</span><span style="font-style: italic;">. </span>Toy soldiers are plotting something insidious against Adults by controlling Children; the soldiers understand them to be two entirely different species. Their machinations are thwarted by other toys, although whether for good or ill purposes is left unclear. Less like SF, more like a Twilight Zone teleplay.<br /></li></ul><ul><li>"The Defenders," 1953 --- A more hopeful predecessor to the novel <span style="font-style: italic;">Penultimate Truth,</span> in which an 8-year war has been raging on the surface of the planet, carried on by robots while humanity toils in safety of the underground bunkers. A human contingent investigates the surface and discovers that the war has actually <span style="font-style: italic;">not </span>been going on, and that the world is intead a verdant garden that the robots have been stewarding. The robots, it seems, have realized the illogical nature of war and are preserving the earth until humanity is mature enough to emerge to the surface.</li></ul><ul><li>"The Preserving Machine," 1953 --- An inventor creates a machine to "preserve" music by somehow rendering it into the form of a living animal-like creature. One of the creatures is allowed to "evolve" through prolonged exposure to the world and it becomes feral. When it is translated back into music, the music is absolutely alien and strange. The inventor concludes that everything evolves. The story explore themes of evolution (particularly the idea of evolving ideas--prefiguring the notion of memes), chaos, and preservation as translation.<br /></li></ul><ul><li>"Second Variety," 1953 --- After being driven off-world to the Moon by the early attacks of the USSR, the US/UN government begins creating robots ("churning sphere[s] of blades and metal") to ambush and slaughter Soviet soldiers, which they do with chilling efficiency. The story begins when Major Joseph Hendricks is called to meet with some of the surviving Russians. Along the way, he meets a small, apparently traumatized boy named David who clutches his teddy bear while saying little. He discovers, thanks to the intervention of a handful of remaining Soviet soldiers, that "David" is a lethal robot, one of three varieties believed to exist. ("David" is a type III robot. The type I is designed to resemble a wounded soldier. No one has yet encountered a type II robot.) During the night, one of the Soviet soldiers kills the other, claiming that he believed him to be the second variety of robot. Major Hendricks, the surviving soldier (Klaus), and Tasso, a prostitute who had been with the Soviets when their fellows soldiers were wiped out by robots, decide to trek back to the US bunker, only to find it overrun with scores of "Davids" and "wounded soldiers." During the ensuing melee, Klaus is revealed to be a type II robot. A gravely injured Major Hendricks, hoping to escape to the Moon Base, leads Tasso to a hidden rocket, only to find that it is a one-person vehicle. Tasso convinces him to let her fly to the Moon Base, the secret location of which he reveals to her, in order to send back a rescue mission. It is only after she leaves that Hendricks considers that there might be more than three varieties of killer robot...<br /></li></ul><ul><li>"Imposter," 1953 --- It isn't bad enough that PKD imagined a world where an observer couldn't distinguish between a robot and a human; what's worse is this well imagined story in which the observer and the robot in question are one and the same. The protagonist expects a normal day at work only to discover that he is suspected of being an android replica <span style="font-style: italic;">of himself</span>---a replica containing a U-bomb, intended to be used by the alien Outworlders in their war against the human race---and therefore destined for <span style="font-style: italic;">immediate </span>termination.<br /></li></ul><ul><li>"Sales Pitch," 1954 --- A nightmare scenario of everyday life in the future. After an extraterrestrial commute at 60,000,000 mph during which individually tailored advertisements are beamed directly into commuters' brains, the protagonist finds himself held hostage in his own home by a giant robot selling itself and not taking "no" for an answer. This astute story left me in stitches and also in awe of Dick's insights into the ubiquity of commercial dross <span style="font-style: italic;"></span>and the inability of the average Joe to escape it.<br /></li></ul><ul><li>"The Last of the Masters," 1954 --- In a post-nuclear war future, members of the Anarchist League wander the world and maintain a sort of anti-government in which no one is allowed to amass power over others. It turns out that one of the war robots, machines programmed to maintain military-industrial civilization at all costs, escaped destruction at the hands of the AL. A few AL members, in cahoots with the robot's own people, kill the robot and prevent a military invasion of the surrounding territories. But there's always tomorrow.<br /></li></ul><ul><li>"Service Call," 1955 --- What is a swibble? That's the question on the reader's mind throughout this delightful story about a repair person who comes to the wrong address.<br /></li></ul><ul><li>"Autofac," 1955 --- Life will find a way. Automated factories (the titular "autofacs") have virtually become life forms, cranking out weaponry for us in fighting one another as proxies in a long-lost war. Humanity has survived, but the autofacs insist on producing <span style="font-style: italic;">everything</span>, as per their programming. In the process they completely monopolize all the planet's natural resources, preventing humanity from reasserting its prerogative to global primacy. People try to sabotage the autofacs, but the simple, elegant directives guiding these autofacs drive them to <span style="font-style: italic;">evolve.</span></li></ul><ul><li>"To Serve the Master," 1956 --- This story, published in 1956 and never reprinted before appearing in this anthology, complements the earlier story "The Last of the Masters." Applequist (you have to love those PKD character names) is wandering through a ravine when he comes across the wrecked remains of a dying robot. It calls out to him. Over the next week, he visits with and helps to repair the robot, in return for which the he learns the history of the robot-human war; his efforts to obtain information about the war from his own locked-down human society avail nothing and so he believes everything the robot tells him. Much to his chagrin.<br /></li></ul><ul><li>"Electric Ant," 1969 --- Waking up after crashing his flying-car, Garson Poole discovers that he has lost not only his hand, but even more shockingly his very humanity. He is not a human being but is instead an "electric ant," an android whose subjective experience derives from a player piano-like roll of tape spooling through his thoracic cavity. In a fairly transparent reference to the culture of psychedelia prevalent at the time, Dick has Poole experiment with the tape and note the effects of these experiments on his perceptions of the world. Finally, Poole cuts the tape; the effects were catastrophic, and chillingly so. Dick himself had <a href="http://dekku.blogspot.com/2006/12/all-gates-open.html">this to say</a> about the story:<blockquote> <p>"Again the theme: How much of what we call 'reality' is actually out there or rather within our own head? The ending of this story has always frightened me ... the image of the rushing wind, the sound of emptiness. As if the character hears the final fate of the world itself."</p></blockquote></li></ul><br /><ul><li>"The Exit Door Leads In," 1979 --- Although I don't know it for sure, I suspect that this story came out of Dick's friendship with Paul Williams, author of the biography <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Only-Apparently-Real-World-Philip/dp/0877958009"><span style="font-style: italic;">Only Apparently Real</span></a>. That's because it was written--on the request of the editors, no less--for <span style="font-style: italic;">Rolling Stone College Papers</span>, a short-lived spin-off publication of <span style="font-style: italic;">Rolling Stone</span>, for whom Williams wrote on PKD. In this story, Bob Bibleman--again, what a name!--faces a dilemma: should he reveal classified information and in so doing save millions of lives, or follow the rules set by the authorities and return the information to them. He makes the "right" decision and returns the information, only to find that it has been a test that he has failed. He is expelled because he falls prey to conformity too easily and does what authority tells him rather than what he knows to be right. A pretty transparent parable about free will and moral agency in an authoritarian context.</li></ul>Thom Fooleryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12818320706747408688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7002715049332867633.post-85834413404967785402008-03-11T06:41:00.001-07:002008-05-01T22:31:55.934-07:00Resurrection on the cheap<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7VN7qnXewqgsI9szRyjPlot5cBJQew6zsWzAABitFIdBPWjm2DY9DHGx2QzSx-_7ttOvpADet0ob4fWeQeJYfnOmW3QgRH6gn46VR35Iz3rYrkON-UNVZ8WEt9uvCI_HWCU6iaXxMEabV/s1600-h/Counter-ClockWorldVintage2002.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7VN7qnXewqgsI9szRyjPlot5cBJQew6zsWzAABitFIdBPWjm2DY9DHGx2QzSx-_7ttOvpADet0ob4fWeQeJYfnOmW3QgRH6gn46VR35Iz3rYrkON-UNVZ8WEt9uvCI_HWCU6iaXxMEabV/s320/Counter-ClockWorldVintage2002.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5176491263523279666" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Counter-Clock World<br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold;">Philip K. Dick<br /></span>Vintage Books, 2002 (First published 1967)<span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span><br />"His most theologically probing" story is set in 1998. Time has been running backwards since the Earth entered the "Hobart Phase," an unexplained temporal inversion that only seems to affect the Earth (e.g., time on the moon flows forward normally). Because of this reversal of the direction of time, those who died before the world entered the Hobart Phase (a.k.a. the "old-born") are returning from the grave. One protagonist, Sebastian Hermes, runs a <span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">vitarium</span></span>, </span><span>one of the facilities where </span><span>the newly resurrected are restored to life and sold to the highest bidder, as per W.U.S. law. A mild psychic, Hermes intuits that the resurrection of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Anarch</span></span> Peak, a radical religious leader who died in the 70s, is imminent. This resurrection starts a chain of events in motion. Three forces <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">vie</span> for possession of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Anarch</span></span>---the Library (a mysterious paramilitary organization whose purpose is maintaining public safety through "eradication of dangerous, disturbing written material"), the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Udi</span></span> religion (a psychedelic, consciousness-raising religion founded by Peak and now lead by Ray Roberts, whom we initially see as crazy and evil, but whom then turns out to be on Peak's side), and "Rome" (presumably the Catholic Church). The convoluted storyline ostensibly revolves around the resurrected Peak (and the potential danger of his revelations about postmortem existence) but rapidly goes off onto tangents about the protagonist's love for his ever-younger wife, her affair with Officer <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Tinbane</span></span> (another protagonist), Hermes' affair with the daughter of the head of the library, and the true meaning of life after death (which all old-born experience, but only the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Anarch</span></span> is spiritually clear enough to recall with clarity). After the Library finally captures the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Anarch</span>, Hermes is "hired" by an alliance of Rome and the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Uditi</span></span> to rescue the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Anarch</span></span>; instead, Hermes uses the weapons his unlikely allies have given him to rescue his wife from the same enemies. Allusions to the race riots of the mid- to late-1960s and intimations of the Black Power movement appear throughout the novel. As the convoluted storyline comes to an end, the protagonist hears a slough of voices in the graveyard calling out to be reborn, and goes about his work digging them up. In typical Dick fashion, the sanest response to an increasingly crazy world seems to be to put one foot in front of the other.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Counter-Clock World</span> is, like most <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">PKD</span></span> novels I've read, pure hallucinatory pulp. Another metaphor that came to mind while reading was that of a literary amphetamine. I couldn't help but suspect that the page-turning fervor with which I approached the book emulated the speed-driven fury with which he typed it. Maybe Dick took his time with this novel, but it certainly doesn't feel that way; instead, it's as if the ideas in this novel leaped fully formed like Athena from his brow directly to the page, inconsistencies and all.<br /><br />People don't really read Dick for his plotting and character development, though. Instead, we read because we want to steep in the bottomless well of his intellect and imagination. This novel is filled to the brim with ideas that greater <span style="font-style: italic;">writers </span>would have put to better effect, if only those better writers had been blessed with Dick's vision. Dick presents us with a new religion, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Udi</span></span>, which, like Timothy Leary's League of Spiritual Discovery, uses </span>psychedelics to experience new forms of group consciousness. We have the aforementioned Hobart Phase, which finds its primary use as a narrative device. As with much of Dick's fiction, this novel presents us with an alternate vision of our contemporary world; in this case, the US has split into three different countries as a consequences of the secession of the Free Negro Municipality (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">FNM</span></span>, the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Udi</span></span> nation lead by Ray Roberts). While the specifics aren't ever detailed, it seems that the Midwest (at least Kansas City) is part of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">FNM</span></span>, while California comprises part of the W.U.S. (Western US?). For those who like reading Dick for his wilder speculations on philosophical and religious, you won't be disappointed with this novel. He deals with </span><span>resurrection and immortality, deception, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">hiddenness</span>, </span><span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">apophatic</span></span> theology, God as negation (the "pulsing black presence"), the emptiness before life and after death, and how we learn love best through its absence.<br /><br />Finally, it must be noted that Dick's greatest genius was perhaps his attention to the mundane details of these fictive universes. In this world where time runs backward, people say "Goodbye" to begin a conversation and "Hello" to end it. Sexual intercourse is engaged in at the end of a pregnancy, so that the fetus' life-force can become a part of a man and a woman. Metabolic processes aren't described in detail, but enough oblique references are made that the reader can understand just how weird things have become: people "disgorge" food bite by bite and tend to do so in private, they imbibe <span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">sogum</span></span> (which, while never explicitly described as such, is hinted to be a form of reverse defecation), and they use the words "mouth" instead of "ass" (e.g., to be a "horse's mouth") and "food" instead of "shit" (e.g., "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">foodhead</span>," "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">foodlist</span>," "food!" "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">feood</span>"). In this crazy backwards word, men even put on whiskers in the morning in lieu of shaving!<br /><br />Another flawed must-read by one of the greatest minds, if not writers, in science fiction.<br /></span>Thom Fooleryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12818320706747408688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7002715049332867633.post-55486181392875809502008-02-22T16:57:00.001-08:002008-04-03T12:47:13.198-07:00Creepy, eerily modern masterpieces of short 19th century horror<a style="font-family: georgia;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhU3nlTBH9hq-H52Q-1lbGdh6vl8yixLP5xeCIGJCTGS_gbBftKDOWICfIcWfZYXe5WQJNgwn0lX_GThoqPujlz0H0P4BjzVAmeqy6CurU0sdiA1V0lfPG3dMzVWykOc6lEXU6ftvTGBQL/s1600-h/scan0006.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhU3nlTBH9hq-H52Q-1lbGdh6vl8yixLP5xeCIGJCTGS_gbBftKDOWICfIcWfZYXe5WQJNgwn0lX_GThoqPujlz0H0P4BjzVAmeqy6CurU0sdiA1V0lfPG3dMzVWykOc6lEXU6ftvTGBQL/s320/scan0006.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5169973619899235938" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;" >Can Such Things Be? Tales of Horror and the Supernatural</span><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Ambrose Bierce</span> <span style="font-family:georgia;"><br />Citadel Press, 1990 (Originally published 1893)</span> <span style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family:georgia;"><blockquote><br />[H]e can and will be read with interest in an age which is getting ready to renounce compromise, kindness, and Christianity. (p.9)<br /><br /></blockquote> </span>This is as much of Clifton <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Fadiman's</span> introduction as anyone needs to read. <span style="font-family:georgia;">After <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Fadiman</span> (the embodiment of 1940s </span><span style="font-family:georgia;">patrician intellectual snobbery)</span> <span style="font-family:georgia;">slights Bierce for his lack of a formal education, he then dismisses most of his journalistic work as "writing badly, doubtless writing too much." He opines that Bierce's writing is only considered interesting because of Bierce's legend and describes Bierce's nihilism as "brutal and simple as a blow, and by the same token not too convincing" and, "if taken in overdoses, a trifle tedious." Bierce's prose is "old-fashioned," "flawed with the bad taste of the period," and melodramatic.<br /><br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Fadiman's</span> extensive criticisms may or may not be true about the larger part of Bierce's oeuvre (I have, for example, seen Bierce described online as </span><span style="font-family:georgia;">"ponderous Victorian melodrama")</span><span style="font-family:georgia;">, but they definitely do not apply to the unsettling stories in this volume. Bierce's meticulous grammar (meticulous from the perspective of my relatively grammatically-impoverished ass, at least) and sentences (so typical of 19<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">th</span>-century American prose) chock full of prepositional phrases took me a story or two until I got into the rhythm of his language and storytelling. Once I did, though, each story read better than the one before. I find it hard to believe that he was mocked during his life by many critics for his rough writing, poor grammar, and lack of an education. If only today's university students could write this well.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Many of the stories struck me as strikingly contemporary, perhaps because </span><span style="font-family:georgia;">irony is so central to his writing. As well, Bierce loves to mix the comic (the absurd?) and the horrific in a way that doesn't come through in other classic horror writers like Poe or Lovecraft.</span> One <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%28http://www.prairieghosts.com/bierce.html%29">commentator</a> has noted that <span style="font-family:georgia;">his "style and journalistic background gave his stories of war and strange disappearances such an uneasy realism that many mistook them for being true." That this realism is often tempered with a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Dickian</span> uncertainty about what is real and what illusory is perhaps why many of these stories are ahead of their time while also being of a piece with it.<br /></span><blockquote><span style="font-family:georgia;">The fact is, that of your own sanity you have no evidence that's any better than some lunatic who thinks he's Ulysses S. Grant or Jesus H. Christ. I certainly have no evidence of mine. For all I know you don't exist. Everything around me may be fictions of my disordered imagination. - <a href="http://www.donswaim.com/bierce.resources.html">Ambrose Bierce</a><br /><br /></span></blockquote><span style="font-family:georgia;">This fusion of realism and radical skepticism has earned him the almost-postmodern accolade of "</span>the <span style="font-family:georgia;">master of magical cynicism," and this mastery is definitely on display in many, if not all, of Bierce's work in this collection.</span><span style="font-family:georgia;"></span><br /><ul><li><span style="font-family:georgia;">"One Summer Night" -- A scant story, merely a page and a half, about a man apparently buried alive, revived by grave diggers, and killed by the black <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">spadesman</span>. Chilling in its ruthless efficiency.</span><br /></li></ul><ul><li><span style="font-family:georgia;">"The Moonlit Road" -- Prefiguring Kurosawa's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashomon_%28film%29"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Rashomon</span></span></a></span><span style="font-family:georgia;">, </span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="t_nihongo_kanji" lang="ja">B</span><span class="t_nihongo_comma" style="display: none;">,</span></span><span style="font-family:georgia;">ierce tells the story of a murdered wife and her ghost from three different perspectives (son, husband/killer, wife/ghost). </span> </li></ul><ul><li><span style="font-family:georgia;">"A Tough Tussle" -- In this account of the horrors of war and the veil between lucidity and lunacy, a Union officer ends up sitting next to a Confederate corpse. When shots are fired, the two end up in a tussle from which neither emerges alive.</span></li></ul><ul><li><span style="font-family:georgia;">"A Jug of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Sirup</span>" -- A morality play about how to behave in a store run, </span><span style="font-family:georgia;">even after he's been buried</span><span style="font-family:georgia;">, by a model citizen.</span><br /></li></ul><ul><li><span style="font-family:georgia;">"<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Staley</span> Fleming's Hallucination" -- In which a man is killed by a hallucinatory dog, the phantom of the dog of the man whom he murdered.</span><br /></li></ul><ul><li><span style="font-family:georgia;">"A Resumed Identity" -- Think <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sixth_Sense"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Sixth Sense</span></a>, or perhaps a less overwrought version of Lovecraft's "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outsider_%28short_story%29">The Outsider</a>," except that it was written in the <span style="font-style: italic;">late 1800s</span>. The ghost discovers his lamentable status much to his sorrow</span>. </li></ul><ul><li>"A Baby Tramp" -- A genuinely heartbreaking story about an orphaned toddler who makes his way across the country to die on his mother's grave. Where was "Bitter Bierce" in this story, unless he was bitter against a God and Natural Order that would permit such horrors?<br /></li></ul><ul><li><span style="font-family:georgia;">"The Damned Thing" -- Was he killed by a mountain lion? Or was it something stranger? Shades of HP Lovecraft, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Colour_Out_of_Space">"The Colour Out of Space</a>."</span><br /></li></ul><ul><li>"The Stranger" -- A classic ghost story with a genuinely hair-rising ending.</li></ul>Magical cynicism indeed. Lots of pointed satire and yet also such spooky stories. Another phrase I like that describes the voice which runs through these collected stories is "courageous despair" (most explicitly expressed in "The Baby Tramp.")<br /><blockquote>There are voices from the Past that can help us in our travail, and eloquent among them is that of the courageous despair of Ambrose Bierce. Behind all the bitterness and the thunderous nay-saying, one can detect a profound interest in, and fascination with, the human adventure. One of the surest signs of this is the vigour and precision of Bierce's language; he could not have created such <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">excellences</span> out of despair, no matter how vividly that despair served as his subject, for the language of despair is silence. There is a secret joyousness in such hatred, and it's a part of what appeals to me in all that I've read of Ambrose Bierce.<span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> -- <a href="http://www.donswaim.com/bierce.matthews.outrage.html">Jack Matthews</a><br /><br /></span></span></blockquote>I like that. <span>The publishers should use</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> that</span> as this book's introduction in the next edition.Thom Fooleryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12818320706747408688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7002715049332867633.post-48738399899864109832008-02-22T11:43:00.000-08:002008-05-12T14:21:58.179-07:00"Most haunted" maybe, but by dull ghosts<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj08upp3JatTQmckluCqV_qkQ9ApaFbXl7BlF8EXtiEkgrDBzK7MOmEVYNKfyrSloGYW2__i1bS_mB-891qYtu5FhozDptbAxXF7NDMRH2JUNfqcFohsTDFnnOvzdlPYV4vOxl9hnhAySuI/s1600-h/mhh.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj08upp3JatTQmckluCqV_qkQ9ApaFbXl7BlF8EXtiEkgrDBzK7MOmEVYNKfyrSloGYW2__i1bS_mB-891qYtu5FhozDptbAxXF7NDMRH2JUNfqcFohsTDFnnOvzdlPYV4vOxl9hnhAySuI/s320/mhh.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5169895004817849938" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"><br />The Most Haunted House in England </span><span style="font-weight: bold;">(</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">Time-Life Collector's Library of the Unknown</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">)<br /></span>Harry Price<span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Longmans</span>, Green and Co., 1940 (Time-Life Books Reprint)<br /><br />After watching <a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5406487197364769612&q=World%27s+Scariest+Ghosts%3A+Caught+on+Tape">The World's Scariest Ghosts Caught on Tape</a> one Friday eveninga few weeks ago, my interest in "true ghost stories" was peaked and so I scared up this volume.<br /><br />Harry Price's <span style="font-style: italic;">The Most Haunted House in England</span> is <span style="font-weight: bold;">the</span> book about a classic haunted house, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Borley</span> Rectory, which is a staple of many of the ghost and supernatural books I read when I was younger. It is well-written in that competent British school boy fashion, with impeccable grammar, restrained wit, and conservative style.<br /><br />Price explains how he was invited to explore <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Borley</span> Rectory, which was built in 1863 by the Rev. Henry Bull and which had allegedly been visited by the ghost of a nun and by a spectral coach drawn by two headless men. Price details the history of the village of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Borley</span> and the tales of the haunted rectory; the legend of a nun who was buried alive at the site that would become the rectory for her illicit liaison with a monk; and spooky stories from various sources---those who lived in the house, their guests, and those invited specifically for the task of research into the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">hauntings</span>.<br /><br />Sadly, for its status as a classic in the genre of supernatural literature, the book is not really scary. Almost all of the activities described were of the nature of a poltergeist (or <span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Poltergeister</span></span>, as Price would have it) in the form of mysterious sounds, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">teleportation</span> of small objects, movement of small objects, and, over a period of several years, the writing of messages and small marks on the walls of the house. There was surprisingly little about the spectral coach and ghostly nun, particularly seeing how these alleged phenomena were what drew Price to the house initially.<br /><br />The book serves as a documentary history of the alleged haunting<span style="font-weight: bold;">,</span> and the author leaves it up to the reader to decide as to the veracity of the stories of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Borley</span> Rectory in light of all the documentary "evidence" presented. Many contemporary critics feel that Price and one of the couples who lived in the house (those to whom the mysterious messages were addressed) established this entire story as a hoax. It wouldn't surprise me.<br /><br />In short, this is a high-quality reprint of a classic, if unconvincing and not very scary, early 20<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">th</span> century monograph on ghosts. The Time-Life Collector's Library of the Unknown is a classy series for those who are interested in the literature of the unexplained, even if only in fun, and this volume is no exception.Thom Fooleryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12818320706747408688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7002715049332867633.post-56540202676344728992008-02-21T15:56:00.000-08:002008-05-12T14:22:50.316-07:00Superb title, uneven stories<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWBsa8jza56sBxL1hoTiyUXZCjolRXURalcyk1sD7l0nT5KjvXTVeH2XT2eCX-FcjUHwU3SGZeLXqWW2oMOHBB_TKXbbaxVUuwiItSwvFeg7zZofpAJrKt09EX3z4hQ3bxbpo-XU_Iz1fI/s1600-h/610CW7EX9KL._AA240_.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWBsa8jza56sBxL1hoTiyUXZCjolRXURalcyk1sD7l0nT5KjvXTVeH2XT2eCX-FcjUHwU3SGZeLXqWW2oMOHBB_TKXbbaxVUuwiItSwvFeg7zZofpAJrKt09EX3z4hQ3bxbpo-XU_Iz1fI/s320/610CW7EX9KL._AA240_.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5169587094317432386" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"><br />How to Save the World</span><br />Charles Sheffield, editor<br />Tor Books, 1995<br /><br /><blockquote>We have no friendly advisor looking over our shoulder. We will have to make do with the next best thing: humans who are close observers of the actions of our species, but who are not directly involved in trying to run the affairs of humanity.<br /><br />This of course is exactly what writers are and have been through recorded history.... Even among writers, I argue that the writers of science fiction form a special sub-group. They tend to be interested in global problems, in the impact of science and technology, and in the long-term future of humanity. They are observers of events at the largest scale. (pp. 12-13)<br /><br /></blockquote>This then is a collection of these observations, examining themes as far ranging as the failure of public education in the US to the breakthrough in space exploration to the cure for patriarchy to an ugly dilemma inherent in the feminist rhetoric of "reproductive choice." For those of us who (often) feel motivated to save the world, this book provides an entertaining meditation on the shadow side of the utopian and of the unknowable consequences of our wholly benevolent intentions.<br /><br />Sheffield writes, "Some of the stories in this book may offend. I certainly hope so." (p. 14). None of the stories offended this reader, but disappointingly most didn't make much of an impression either way. The unevenness of the stories was a definite let-down, particularly considering the devastatingly understated (or, as Sheffield puts it, "unduly modest") title. After all, what self-respecting Christian anarchist bodhisattva utopian would pass up <span style="font-style: italic;">the</span> manual on how to save the world?<br /><br />So here are some thoughts on the stories that impressed a little SF wisdom on me, providing visions of possible futures and of some pitfalls that might face us along the way. They also all rocked as stories.<br /><ul><li>"Zap Thy Neighbor" by James P. Hogan. I'd read this one almost a decade ago in an anthology of Hogan's stories and science writing called <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=0671578073"><span style="font-style: italic;">Rockets, Redheads, and Revolution</span></a>, and enjoyed rereading it. Hogan has envisioned a world in which everyone has a listing in a big directory, and that anyone with a grudge or grievance, if she can find two willing accomplices, can "call your number." It's a simple system with a twist that ensures that it really works as promised---in creating a more civil society.<br /></li></ul><ul><li>"Choice" by Lawrence Watt-Evans. In college anthropology I was first introduced to the dilemma faced by many feminists in Asia (and other locales) regarding abortion. It is, in short, that the rhetoric of "reproductive choice" that has dominated liberal discourse on the issue for almost two generations (i.e., that a woman's choice to terminate a pregnancy is absolute and absolutely hers) stands in uncomfortable company with third-world cultural realities which lead most women with free access to contemporary reproductive technologies to abort only female fetuses. Watt-Evans presents a "culturally pure" (read: third world) society, presumably in the Middle East, where poverty, disease, overpopulation, etc. have been become things of the past. How? By allowing women to make their free choices, aborting females and keeping males until the ratio of men to women is over 10 to 1. This, as we see in the story, poses its own interesting problems.<br /></li></ul><ul><li>"The Meetings of the Secret World Masters" by Geoffrey A. Landis. This story reminded me of the film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113613/"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Last Supper</span></a> except that instead of serving individuals poisoned meals, a handful of scientists genetically engineer myriad changes to the human race. A pretty chilling story about way too much power being in the wrong hands--or in <span style="font-style: italic;">any </span>hands.<br /></li></ul><ul><li>"The Invasion of Space" by James Kirkwood. Reminisces about the crucial "Big Bang" moment in deep space exploration and how it was a poet (and an inadvertent martyr), and not a scientist, who was needed to get humanity's mythological juices flowing in the direction of outer space. Because without that, you can only get so far off the earth.<br /></li></ul><ul><li>"Buyer's Remorse" by Kathe Koja and Barry N. Malzberg. Why is this story here? I absolutely hated, hated, hated, hated this story. Completely pretentious short story told in the form of letters to an advice columnist about life in the far future and the columnist's responses. Confusing and didn't say much to me, which means I probably need to re-read it a couple of times until I finally get it. (That or simply forget about it).<br /></li></ul><ul><li>"My Soul to Keep" by Jerry Oltion. In the near-future US, religion is seen as a dangerous, infectious neurological disorder and so free exercise of said infection is therefore no longer enshrined in the US Constitution. When the Pope is injured while on a clandestine trip to the US, and the contagion is released, all hell (ahem) breaks lose. One scientist begins to regain her faith, and so her fellows protect her from the illness. For her own benefit, of course.</li></ul>Thom Fooleryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12818320706747408688noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7002715049332867633.post-79769893791714559192008-02-07T10:05:00.000-08:002008-09-14T22:43:03.998-07:00The Lord of the Rings: A masterpiece of myth-making<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9Yu0cHR6DxbjGw1FuKOoYI-rslq0BLb0OmM_GecuFyVTAcKDkF-Ng8vCSTwCet6QCmJb58O9V20GLKETu3YjmL12GxLLwdTxS0ORvmArF0-oBRfX0uIzyX2Byo3uw_iZNf1LscxoaInYz/s1600-h/0618129022.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9Yu0cHR6DxbjGw1FuKOoYI-rslq0BLb0OmM_GecuFyVTAcKDkF-Ng8vCSTwCet6QCmJb58O9V20GLKETu3YjmL12GxLLwdTxS0ORvmArF0-oBRfX0uIzyX2Byo3uw_iZNf1LscxoaInYz/s320/0618129022.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5166133360790863410" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">The Lord of the Rings<br /></span>J.R.R. Tolkien<br />Houghton Mifflin, 1994<br /><br />I first received <span style="font-style: italic;">The Lord of the Rings </span>as part of a boxed set, complete with <span style="font-style: italic;">The Hobbit</span>, for Christmas in 1985. I also received a boxed set of the first four <span style="font-style: italic;">Dune</span> <span>books</span>. I was 13 and in 8th grade.<br /><br />Like many 13-year olds, I loved <span style="font-style: italic;">The</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> Hobbit</span> but I thought <span style="font-style: italic;">The Lord of the Rings</span> was simply awful. For one thing, the plot was not immediately obvious to me. (Keep in mind that at the time my enjoyment reading primarily comprised Doctor Who novelizations and <span style="font-style: italic;">Choose Your Own Adventure</span> books.) Instead of the short chapters of plot and dialogue to which I was accustomed, Tolkien provided page after page of exposition, describing the local color and history with any "action" provided almost as an afterthought. And then there is what may have been the biggest problem of all with <span style="font-style: italic;">The Lord of the Rings, </span>the<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>scores of strangely named characters and places, some of whom are central to the story and others of whom are purely peripheral and which is which is unclear. I mean, sheesh, who names their two main villains Sauron and Saruman, names that differ by only one syllable?<br /><br />It should be here noted that while I loved reading at age 13, I was also not the best reader. Memories of reading what I managed to of the trilogy consist mainly of reading a single page over and over and over again just to follow the main thread of the story. Somehow I managed to finish <span style="font-style: italic;">The Fellowship of the Ring</span> and made it a few dozen pages into <span style="font-style: italic;">The Two Towers </span>before I threw up my hands and abandoned Tolkien to the realm of "authors I think are overrated." I still have a vague recollection of giving a a pretty worthless presentation on the first book in front of Mrs. Fox's English class, the same class I was in when the Challenger exploded. (I also have an even vaguer memory of reviewing some disposable piece of genre SF called <a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.amazon.com/Dushau-Trilogy-No-1/dp/0445200154">Dushau</a>, but that's another story.) In short, I never thought I would ever read this book again, and considered all those folks who worshiped Tolkien to be little short of fools.<br /><br />Fast-forward sixteen years. It's Christmas time in Champaign, and I'm attending <span style="font-style: italic;">The Two Towers </span>with my coworkers, mainly because the bosses gave us cinema tickets for the holidays. As the movie begins to unfold, I remember those few dozen pages that I read at 13, and I slowly begin the journey of reappraising Tolkien. While I agree with those who urge reading the book as well as simply seeing the movie, I think that in this case I could not have done the former if I had not done the latter. Peter Jackson's trilogy allowed me to familiarize myself with the overall story arch (something that was hard for me to do from within the perspective of the novel, at least at first) and also helped me to handle the enormous cast of strangely named characters. (Finally Saruman and Sauron were decidedly distinct characters in my mind's eye, and the logic behind their naming, based as it is on Tolkien's invented languages, became more apparent.) So in fall of 2007 I finally decided to give the damned book another chance, mooched the one-volume "trilogy" (apparently Tolkien always considered it one big novel) through BookMooch, chose it over the New Testament for 2008's "big book" (sorry Mom), and devoured it in January, 2008.<br /><br />In short, <span style="font-weight: bold;">I</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">loved it</span>, particularly the exposition and the bizarre names for characters and places. Strange, huh, how the passage of time will do that to one's sensibilities? The very features of the novel that I found off-putting in 1985, I found absolutely ingenious in 2008. The names and locations in <span style="font-style: italic;">The </span><span style="font-style: italic;">Lord of the Rings </span><span>all figure into </span>a much-vaster cosmology and narrative history, and this becomes more apparent when the reader peruses the voluminous appendices. All the details that seemed arbitrary and distracting from "the action" were in fact anything but arbitrary, deriving as they did from a comprehensive mythology (of a world that <span style="font-style: italic;">did not exist </span>until Tolkien wrote it into existence!). Take for example the appendix on the "translation" of the text explaining why Tolkien chose English words like "elf" and "dwarf" and "halfling" to "translate" the "original" Elvish words. Apart from the implication that there is really an original manuscript written in Elvish, this appendix also implies that the "elves" in this story aren't <span style="font-style: italic;">really</span> elves, the "dwarves" aren't <span style="font-style: italic;">really</span> dwarves, etc., but that these are the closest analogs that the translator could find in fantastic literature.<br /><br />That these 1,000+ pages, with all their hyper-detailed exposition, are merely the tip of the iceberg of Tolkien's invented world, makes the novel all the more amazing. This really is a masterpiece of storytelling and myth-making. I can understand now why so many people love this book. I think I'm now one of them.Thom Fooleryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12818320706747408688noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7002715049332867633.post-72543963026446003012008-01-18T07:06:00.000-08:002008-09-14T22:41:20.114-07:00Straight Man: "For every complex problem there is a simple solution. And it's always wrong."<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh76BvXVTBRmhCNyTEw3RrXXzt7hG8SVA65hQ5si5HlbrPgy4FhIrkJOXXAW8xtq0ww12xfIhns6Ox2v5qA2z8KOcF7u5UDyLIeNT-K2MJmt4fXKqJorM30dLX1HVEk08OmdJrbCFOP7Dpr/s1600-h/straight+man.gif"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh76BvXVTBRmhCNyTEw3RrXXzt7hG8SVA65hQ5si5HlbrPgy4FhIrkJOXXAW8xtq0ww12xfIhns6Ox2v5qA2z8KOcF7u5UDyLIeNT-K2MJmt4fXKqJorM30dLX1HVEk08OmdJrbCFOP7Dpr/s320/straight+man.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5156833658984303778" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Straight Man</span><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br />Richard Russo<br />Vintage Books, 1997<br /><br />Russo's gaspingly funny <span style="font-style: italic;">Straight Man</span> affords a knowing look at midlife crisis, parent-child dynamics, marriage, and tenured life in small-town academia. The novel's humor is leavened with mystery regarding various political machinations on the narrator's campus, including which of his colleagues (or is it the narrator himself?) is to be thrown under the bus. That narrator, William Henry Devereaux, Jr., known to his friends and enemies alike as Hank, is an anarchist by nature who finds himself in the unenviable position of chairman of his English department. Along with the typical struggles of academic life (I've heard it said that "never have the stakes been so low"), Hank is plagued with worries. He is concerned that he might have kidney stones (an ailment that plagued his highly successful novelist-academic father, a father who abandoned Hank and his mother when Hank was still a kid); he wants to sleep with several of the women with whom he works (including his secretary who ends every sentence with an upwards inflection, as if she is permanently uncertain about everything); and he is haunted by the fact that he wrote his only novel as a young man and has contributed nothing subsequently to American letters.<br /><br />Needless to say the book is a very funny read. At one point the reader finds the narrator hiding in the ceiling whilst spying on the meeting which decides on his status as department chair. On another occasion and completely on the spur of the moment, Hank threatens (on live television, no less) to kill a duck (or is it a goose?) unless the state legislature and university administration resolve the school's funding situation. The cast of characters will be all-too-familiar to anyone fortunate (or is that unfortunate?) enough to work in academe. It includes the violent poet whose poetry isn't all that great, the aforementioned uncertain secretary?, and the young professor ("Orshee") whose sole academic specialty seems to be contradicting everyone else (a good obstructionist/deconstructionist, if nothing else) while posing as an uber-feminist at every opportunity.<br /><br />Throughout the novel Hank repeatedly returns to his favorite philosopher, the medieval William of Occam (after whom his dog Occam is named), to find the simplest possible explanation for all the craziness that seems to be filling his life. Through the novel's wry twists and turns, Hank comes to the conclusion that life is a little more complicated, coincidental, mysterious, and perhaps even magical than he'd like to believe.<br /><blockquote>Because the truth is, we never know for sure about ourselves. Who we'll sleep with if given the opportunity, who we'll betray in the right circumstances, whose faith and love we will reward with our own...Only after we've done a thing do we know what we'll do, and by then whatever we've done has already begun to sever itself from clear significance, at least for the doer.<br /><br />Which is why we have spouses and children and parents and colleagues and friends, because someone has to know us better than we know ourselves. We need them to tell us. We need them to say, "I know you, Al. You're not the kind of man who." (373-4)<br /><br /></blockquote>A special thanks goes out to Bruce Clark, who recommended that I read this book over the Christmas break, and to his lovely wife Caryn Clark, whose copy I borrowed and devoured.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"></span>Thom Fooleryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12818320706747408688noreply@blogger.com0