Robots and Empire

Posted on July 9, 2011 by smellincoffee

Robots and Empire
© 1985 Isaac Asimov
383 pages

In Isaac Asimov’s robots novels, Earth is home to some eight billion people living in vast underground complexes known as Cities or “caves of steel”. In his Empire novels, those billions have vanished: large patches of land are radioactive, and the few who remain hold on bitterly to memories of Earth’s past glory.  How did Earth fall from being the heart of humanity to passing out of memory entirely in the Foundation series? Its decline, and the rise of the Galactic Empire, begin in Robots and Empire — a fantastic novel which uses a plot of political mystery to seamlessly knit together Asimov’s series.

Two hundred years have passed since famed Earth detective Elijah Baley died, but his legacy is strong and growing. Baley helped the people of Earth to look again to space, to build civilizations away from the tired old Earth from which they sprang.  Humans had looked outward before, settling some fifty planets, but the people there used robot labor to create lives of leisure for themselves. They ceased to grow, to expand — and they regarded their less-advanced Earth ancestors with disdain.  It was their power and Earth’s fear of change that Baley defeated with the help of others, but now both Baley and his allies are dead.  There are those among the “Spacers” who do not want to see Earth expand again…and they will strike at the planet itself if that is what it takes. They work their plans in secret, but Baley’s old partner R. Daneel Olivaw is determined to thwart their plans.

Robots and Empire functions as both an SF political thriller and a  bridge between Asimov’s series. He’s written other books to serve the same function, and together they tell a story which lasts for thousands of years. Although there are still some loose threads (What happened to the Cities during the Empire novels?), Robots and Empire reveals how Earth decayed and why robots (present in Robots, absent in both the original Empire and Foundation novels)  fell from use. His central character here, and consequently the Robots-Empire-Foundation meta series, is the robot Daneel Olivaw, who is driven by a vision from his friend and partner Elijah Baley that will see its final fruit in the last Foundation books. Still, Robots and Empire is more solidly a Robots novel, featuring Elijah Baley (in flashbacks) and his other associates, the Solarian woman Gladia and a telepathic robot named Giskard, who has his own role to play. It reminds me much of Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation, both in style and in the measure that I enjoyed it.

This is an obvious recommendation to anyone who has enjoyed Asimov’s various series. While having read the rest of the books isn’t a requirement, catching the multitude of little references added to my appreciation. I would suggest reading the Robots novels (The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, The Robots of Dawn) first, since the relationship, history, and culture differences between Earth and the Spacer worlds provide the central conflict here. 
Posted in Reviews, science fiction | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

This Week at the Library (8 July)

Posted on July 8, 2011 by smellincoffee

Between the Fourth of July and hospitalized relatives, this has been a poor week for reading. I typically read and review a book around the Fourth about the American Revolution: this year’s read was and still is The First Salute, which focuses on European politics during the war. Various continental states found the idea of curbing Britain’s growing power attractive, among them France and Holland. I’m interested in Dutch history, particularly of the Dutch republic’s days as a commercially powerful  entity which contributed mightily to science and the growth of knowledge, so Tuchman’s partial history of Holland here has been a treat.  I’m almost done with The Third Chimpanzee and would be so if I hadn’t misplaced it. In the meantime, I’ve been reading Robots and Empire by Isaac Asimov for leisure.

While I still have two pending science reads (Radiation and Modern Life; Creations of Fire: the History of Chemistry), I’ll have to return to them next week or the week after, as next week marks Bastille Day and as such I’ll be doing some France-themed reading. I’m expecting Seven Ages of Paris by Alistair Horne in the mail over the weekend, and if it’s anything like La Belle France I don’t imagine I’ll have problems getting into it before the 14th. I may also pick up The Three Musketeers by Dumas at the library, though given that I also want to pick up Altar in the World: The Geography of Faith by a retired Episcopalian priest and a book on human spaceflight in commemoration of the last shuttle launch earlier today, I may be preparing too full a plate.

Posted in Reviews | Tagged | Leave a comment

Top Ten Rebels, Revolutionists, and Iconoclasts

Posted on July 5, 2011 by smellincoffee

Top Ten Rebels in Literature

1. Ernest Everhard (The Iron Heel, Jack London)

With a name like that, he’s either a hero from a more innocent time, or a star in a certain branch of the film industry. Everhard is leading a revolution against a proto-fascist state, the result of corporate takeover, but he’s not just an angry man with a gun. He’s an angry intellectual with a gun, and The Iron Heel is a fantastic Marxist critique of society.

2. Uhtred of Bebbanberg, (the Saxon Stories, Bernard Cornwell.
Uhtred of Bebbanberg is a man torn between two worlds — Anglo-Saxon by birth and Viking by sympathies. Kidnapped from his family’s estate by the Vikings who razed it, Uhtred delights in the Norse’s unapologetic rivalry and despises the pious misery of the Anglo-Saxons. Service to the English king (Alfred the Great) is his only path to reclaming those family lands, however, and so he exists as a man truly loyal to no one but himself.  Given the treachery to be found on either side, that’s probably the best thing to do.

3. Alexander Til (The Revolutionist, Robert Littel)

Xander Til was just a boy when his parents and he emigrated from Russia, but now as a passionate young man he’s on his way home. America is not the promised land for Til and his neighbors, and back at home the people are rising in fury against the Tsarist government. Til becomes a leading Bolshevik, but quickly realizes the drivers of this revolution are just as corrupt as the men they fight against.

4. Jefferson Davis Bussey (Rifles for Watie, Harold Keith)
Jefferson Davis Bussey is, contrary to his name, a Union man. His family is sternly anti-slavery, and he lies to the recruiting office in order to don the Union blue and fight against  the wretched men who want to bring slavery to Kansas. When a scouting mission goes awry and Bussey  is forced to pose as a Confederate soldier to save his life, he learns that the men who fight for the legendary general Stand Watie are fighting not to expand slavery, but to establish their own nation — for Watie is a Cherokee.

5. Sirius Black (The Prisoner of Azkaban, Goblet of Fire, Order of the Phoenix; J.K. Rowling)

Raised to be a hateful aristocrat, Black rejected his family in favor of hanging out with his half-blood friends, one of whom was a werewolf. He remains one of the series’ favorite characters as a foster parent to young Harry.

6.Charles Croker (A Man in Full, Tom Wolfe)

Charlie Croker turned his back on a life of wealth and influence to become a Stoic evangelist, which is odd enough that I think I’ll just leave it there.

7. Michael Brock, The Street Lawyer. John Grisham

Michael Brock is your standard overworked, overpaid, unhappy lawyer until a homeless man takes him hostage. After the man is shot by a police sniper and leaves portions of his brain on Brock’s new coat, he’s bothered to the point that he begins serving the needs of the poor and homeless as a lawyer working for a nonprofit. In short time he loses his wife, but gains a lot more.

8. Huckleberry Finn (The Adventures of, Mark Twain)
“All right, then. I’ll go to Hell,” Finn says after being forced to choose between doing the human thing (being loyal to his friend) and the social/culturally-accepted thing of turning his friend Jim in as an escaped slave.

9. Richard Sharpe (Sharpe’s Series, Bernard Cornwell)
I almost feel like I’m cheating because I’ve used one of Cornwell’s figures before. but Sharpe is a lovable loose-cannon character who remains a soldier because he’s good at it — not because he thinks King George deserves his service. Indeed, he’s liked many of his enemies more than his bosses.

But I just had to include him because he’s Richard Sharpe. 

10. Scout Finch, (To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee)

Looking back on this list I realize I read far too few books with female heroes, but I’m happy to include Scout. Despite being raised in a culture that encourages subordination and meekness among its women, Scout is marvelously pugnacious and self-willed. She’s a real credit to her father.

Posted in General | Tagged | 4 Comments

Sharpe’s Prey

Posted on July 2, 2011 by smellincoffee

Sharpe’s Prey: Denmark 1807
© 2001 Bernard Cornwell
288 pages

Richard Sharpe has fallen from grace — or rather, the Lady Grace, his love, has fallen from him, perished in childbirth along with his child.  His Indian fortune has been legally stolen from him by Grace’s family, and now Sharpe is heartbroken and penniless. After settling a childhood score and running for his life, Sharpe is saved from further ruin when an old friend asks him to escort an admiral’s aide to Denmark on a mission of utmost importance. Sharpe — professional rogue — has become a spy, intent on convincing the Crown Prince of Denmark to send his ships to Britain for safekeeping against the threat of Napoleon. When the mission is destroyed through treason and Sharpe stranded in Denmark to fend for himself, he’s forced to choose between love for an innocent woman and her country, and his duty to Britain — for since Sharpe’s mission to secure the Danish fleet has failed, the British navy must destroy it least it be seized by Napoleon 

Sharpe’s Prey is almost a complete departure from Cornwell’s usual fare, turning his hero into a spy far removed from the battlefield.  Weakened by his recent losses, Sharpe still has to command his usual strength and wiliness to survive the debacle he’s been thrown into.  I enjoyed the novel’s Danish setting, centered in the exquisitely beautiful city of Copenhagen. Since the novel is a prequel to the core of the Sharpe series — the fighting in Europe against Napoleon — I knew Sharpe wouldn’t truly decide to stay in Denmark and seek  a quiet life, but watching him almost yearn for peace after all of his battles, victories, and losses, makes him a more sympathetic character. The villain is an odd duck: I wasn’t sure if he was a devious, sociopathic creep or just affably self-centered. Prey is an excellent spy adventure which leads right into Sharpe’s Rifles, where poor Sharpe is still a miserable quartermaster…the fate he tried to escape earlier on in Prey. 


I think Sharpe’s Prey shall rank among my favorite in the series.


Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Sharpe’s Trafalgar

Posted on July 2, 2011 by smellincoffee

Sharpe’s Trafalgar: Spain 1805
© 2001 Bernard Cornwell
301 pages

Richard Sharpe did well for himself in India, rising in the ranks from private to Ensign,  as well as finding love and fortune. But while Sharpe has been helping Britain grow powerful in India, an ambitious man named Napoleon has turned France from a nation divided by civil war into a power which dictates the fortunes of all of Europe. Only Britain’s small navy stands between it and invasion by the new French Empire’s grand fleet. When Ensign Sharpe sails home to Britain, he’s caught between an epic naval confrontation  and thrown into the furore of one of the Napoleonic War’s most decisive battles: Trafalgar

Bernard Cornwell notes in the novel’s afterword that a soldier such as Sharpe has no business in a naval battle like Trafalgar, but it’s not Sharpe’s fault that his ship was seized by a French privateer en route to join France’s fleet. Aside from a little derring-do on shore, where Sharpe brings a dead man to life and makes a steadfast friend in an English naval captain, Trafalgar takes almost entirely aboard ship — making Trafalgar a case of “Richard Sharpe meets Horatio Hornblower”. Instead of focusing on naval maneuvers, however, Cornwell uses Sharpe   to tell the story of the Marines, who, given Britain’s preference for close combat, and Admiral Lord Nelson’s desire to capture the enemy fleet — have an important part to play. The battle itself is the climax of a plot rich in mystery and treason, where Sharpe’s fortune and future are placed in jeopardy.

Trafalgar is yet another strong title in Sharpe’s Series, one which offers a refreshing change from land battles and gives our hero a new ally, one who I was glad to see return in Sharpe’s Prey.

Related

Posted in historical fiction, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

The Final Storm

Posted on June 28, 2011 by smellincoffee

The Final Storm
© 2011 Jeff Shaara
446 pages

The Final Storm is an appetizer served in lieu of a main course: tasty, but unsatisfying. As fine a story as it is, it’s a frustratingly disappointing treatment of the Pacific War.

Jeff Shaara has penned three prior novels set during the Second World War, all set in the European theatre. Shaara borrows his father’s intimate writing style, which combines traditional narration with a stream-of-consciousness approach that conveys the thoughts and emotions of his lead characters. In the case of the Final Front, “lead character” is a more accurate expression, for this novel distinguishes itself among Shaara’s work by focusing heavily on one character: Clay Adams, Marine. Adams is among the ranks of the men who are expected to pray the Japanese army from Okinawa and set the stage for the greatest, bloodiest battle ever imagined: the Invasion of Japan.

The Final Front picks up in spring 1945, when Japan is defeated, but defiant: despite the lack of naval and aerial support, the Japanese soldiers on Okinawa fight ferociously and cost the American marines and infantry dearly. Battle is inevitably gruesome, but the island battles of the Pacific War are exemplars of the horrors of combat: Eugene Sledge’s stomach-churning details of Okinawa  (“hell’s own cesspool“) still linger with me over a year after reading his memoirs, and Shaara’s account brought those memories into sharper focus.  While the Battle of Okinawa is meant to depict the difficulties, cost, and savagery of the Pacific War as whole, the fourth act — relatively minor — offers Adams and the reader some relief by promising to bring the war to a swift conclusion through the use of the atomic bomb.

The fourth act seemed more like an epilogue than anything else: ultimately this is a novel about the Battle of Okinawa. Clay Adams is the predominate character,  relegating almost everyone else to the sidelines until the final pages when Truman and bomber pilot Col. Paul Tibbets take priority. The focus on Adams  may be a sign that Shaara is developing his own style (moving away from his father’s use of multiple viewpoint characters from all sides), but it means that this is NOT a book about the Pacific War as a whole. Shaara is perfectly capable of penning a  grand Pacific trilogy, one beginning in 1941 and following key characters,  through to Okinawa and beyond, doing justice to the Marines, airmen, and sailors who fought,  but apparently his publishers are in a hurry for him to write a Civil War trilogy to be published next year in time for several anniversaries.

While it’s a fine story, I’m hard-pressed to recommend it. This isn’t a suitable tribute to the Pacific War, and those wanting to read about Okinawa would be better served reading Eugene Sledge’s With the Old Breed. 
Posted in historical fiction, Reviews | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

This Week at the Library (26 June)

Posted on June 25, 2011 by smellincoffee

This week at the library…

I checked out:

  • Sharpe’s Trafalgar, Bernard Cornwell
  • Creations of Fire:  Chemistry’s Lively History from Alchemy to the Atomic Age,   Cathy Cobb and Harold Goldwhite
  • and The Final Storm, Jeff Shaara, the finishing touch on his World War 2 novels which takes place in the Pacific. 

I’m still reading Radiation in Modern Life, which is proving to be an eye-opener, though I had to return The Age of Faith and The Cat Who Walks through Walls because of a library computer error. I’ll pick Age of Faith back up next week: the library’s computer system has a problem with my account in which it fails to register which books I have checked in and out. I like to think I’ve checked out so many books at the library in my life that I’ve overwhelmed the system.   I also have Jared Diamond’s The Third Chimpanzee which I bought a week or so ago.  I’m anticipating making a couple of purchases next week (a couple of new Star Trek novels, and my Bastille Day read).

Posted in Reviews | Tagged | Leave a comment

God is Not One

Posted on June 24, 2011 by smellincoffee
God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Rule the World and Why Their Differences Matter
© 2010 Stephen Prothero
400 pages

Despite the promises of modernity to drive religion out of the human mind, the New York City skyline bears witness to its continuing relevance. While religion can serve as a force for good,  it’s a master at nurturing the darker sides of human nature, and the good religions have achieved is often a testament to the moral courage of humans who have fought to push these systems of thought beyond their origins.  Some have gone so far as to say that the differences between religions are unimportant, that they are merely different paths up the same broad mountain which arrive at the same place. Stephen Prothero says different.  None of this tearing-down-the-walls-that-divide-us nonsense for Prothero, he intends to prove that religions are all rigidly disconnected boxes, and that while we may choose to shake hands with or shake fists at the fellows in the other boxes, we can only do it through tight little windows.

I looked forward to grappling with this book, largely because my own mind is so divided on the subject: while I believe that all religions were created by human beings to understand the world and perhaps to better themselves,  I also know that some religions are so defined by their aggressive assertions that they cannot easily find peace with other.  I found God is not One to be an unsatisfactory sparring partner, however, being  frustratingly simplistic, and ultimately disappointing.  In the first eight chapters, Prothero analyzes eight  of the the world’s major religion’s through  four-points:

  • a problem
  • a solution
  • a technique
  • an exemplar

He believes each of these religions (Islam, Confucianism, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Yoruba, Taoism, Hinduism) attempts to address one of eight different problems in human nature, and offers eight fundamentally different approaches to life based on that problem.  This analysis is entirely too simplistic for the problem at hand, however. While it’s possible to identify characteristics within a religion that make them unique, those characteristics do not constitute the religion. This eight religions, eight boxes organization ignores the more fundamental similarities religions might have:  the constant cycle of life/death/rebirth in Hinduism and Buddhism, for instance, and the hateful split between the material and spiritual worlds that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are so keen on convincing us of.

A second problem with this is one Prothero tip-toes around: although the eight religions he identifies here do have many varied differences, they are not necessarily hostile.  Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism have all existed in China together for centuries, for instance: they each have different offerings, and people happily sample beliefs and practices from each table, cafeteria-style, arriving at a worldview that meets their needs. Prothero speaks of religions ruling the world like hostile nation-states, but not all religions are as imperialistic (and therefore, conflict-prone) as the dominant forms of Christianity and Islam.  The Asian triplets point out the greatest problem with this book, Prothero’s sinister attitude about the relationship between humans and religion.  He would have us owned by religion, forced to live within that particular religion’s box. In the beginning, he snorts that attempts at interfaith dialogue which ignore the walls of differences are “disrespectful” of religion. I say poppycock. Why should we be respectful of religion and let it lie like a dusty rug? We should pick it up, bring it into the sunlight, and then beat it vigorously until all the dirt has fallen away and nothing but beauty remains. Why should we, the living, be content to breathe the dust of our ancestors?

Although Prothero’s thesis never grows legs to stand on here, the book may have some use for those interested in learning about other religions. He shows no bias toward one religion over another, though I advise nonreligious readers to steer well clear. He is bizarrely hostile toward humanists and atheists, dedicating an entire chapter to calling the ‘New Atheism’  a religion and its advocates hypocrites and plagiarists. This is stupidity, of course: religions are organized systems of beliefs, while atheism is a single belief — and Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are no more plagiarists for making the same criticisms of religious assertions that Bertrand Russell did than is the second man in the crowd who dared to say the emperor had no clothes on.

I’m ultimately disappointed with this book: while it has its uses for comparative religion readers, there are assuredly superior books out there on that subject. I daresay even The Complete Idiot’s Guide to World Religion or some similar work would be better. I despise the spirit that sees the maintenance of religions as more important than the good we might do by overcoming our differences.

Related:

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Sharpe’s Fortress

Posted on June 24, 2011 by smellincoffee

Sharpe’s Fortress: India 1803
© 1999 Bernard Cornwell
294 pages

There’s nothing quite so miserable as a good sergeant who’s been made into  purposeless officer. Mister Richard Sharpe is a man with a mission — the defeat of renegade-murder Dodd — but as an ensign in his majesty’s Royal Army, he’s stuck behind the lines supervising the bullock train in the company of his worst enemies. Leave it to Sharpe to get himself into more trouble than he’s ever been in, though: Sharpe’s Fortress could have just as easily been titled Sharpe’s Peril.  Rejected by the other officers and betrayed by his comrades, Ensign Sharpe is left alone to prove himself still a soldier against impossible odds — resulting in one of Cornwell’s more fantastic endings.

Sharpe’s Fortress takes place in 1803, as Sir Arthur Wellesley’s tiny army moves to crush the remnants of the Mahratta Confederation, commanded partially by the traitor Dodd, who has taken refuge in the fortress Galwighur. For him and the Mahrattas resisting British colonial expansion,  the forthcoming siege will lead to victory or death: there is no escape from this citadel upon the high cliffs.  Sharpe’s Fortress is one of the better Sharpe novels I’ve read up to this point: and not only for the ending battle and Sharpe’s usual heroics. While they carry the novel, a new villain provides considerable comedy. I’m not sure if Cornwell intended this, but I delighted in every scene the man was in.  The Indian trilogy overall has been superb, and I think I shall continue to read the series in chronological sequence.


Posted in historical fiction, Reviews | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Booking through Thursday: Soundtrack

Posted on June 23, 2011 by smellincoffee

Booking through Thursday asks: What, if any, kind of music do you listen to when you’re reading? (Given a choice, of course!


In general, I find that classical music is an excellent complement to reading — softer pieces, generally, nothing bombastic. However,  when reading some specific genres and books, I like to take advantage of my diverse music collection and play appropriate tunes.  While reading Bernard Cornwell’s Napoleonic adventures, for instance, I’ll play the fife-and-drum version of The British Grenadiers and other period marching tunes. I listened to nothing but fifties/sixties hits while reading Stephen King’s Christine, and the fact that I played only the songs Christine played went far to make my reading experience all the more creepy. Jazz plays if I’m reading police novels (“Harlem Nocturne” is so very noire), a pairing I tried for the first time while reading the Harry Bosch mysteries, since Bosch is obsessed by jazz. There are other obvious matches: Star Wars/StarTrek novels get music from the movie soundtracks, and “La Marseillaise” plays during any work set in France. It helps that I keep my music organized by genre, though my particular way of sorting music (“Eighties Pop”, “50s/60s/70s Pop and Rock”,  and “Rock” are three different folder I use) may confuse others.

Posted in General | Tagged | 4 Comments