The Good Guy

Posted on October 16, 2010 by smellincoffee

The Good Guy
© 2007 Dean Koontz
400 pages

“Good guys finish last, Tim.”
“Maybe not if they stay in the race.”

Tim Carrier’s just an honest working man who enjoys relaxing at a local bar in the evenings, exchanging insults with his friend the barkeep and drawing eccentric strangers into interesting conversations. Only…the last conversation ended with him being given an envelope containing $10,000 and instructions that he would receive the rest once the woman was dead.  Tim’s been mistaken for a hitman.

Being mistaken for an assassin is odd enough, but then the actual hitman takes for Tim for his new boss. Thinking quickly,  Tim tells the man that his services are no longer required: the job is off, but he’ll still be paid. The ruse works long enough for Tim to escape and find the woman whose life hangs in the balance. Soon both he and she are on the run from a talented killer with vast resources.

A friend of mine has persistently recommended Dean Koontz,  and after reading The Good Guy I can understand why. Koontz is an effective horror writer: alternating chapters tell the story from the vantage point of both Tim and the hitman, who is one of the most disturbing characters I’ve ever encountered.  He’s a genuine sociopath, and while in his head Koontz uses small details to creep the reader out. The flowers that Tim notes for their smell are seen and dismissed by Krait reflexively as not being useful; they’re nontoxic.  The plot advances quickly, and Koontz’s writing constantly hits the reader — his descriptive prose and dialogue are evocative, and every paragraph made putting the book down more difficult. I read it in one sitting, not being able to resist the feeling of “Just one more chapter…” until well after midnight, when the story ended for these characters who had so ensnared my attention.

Koontz is a compelling author, and will remain of interest for future reads — though, like King, I wouldn’t be surprised if I avoided him given the creepiness factor. Suitable reading as we approach Halloween, though.

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Distant Shores

Posted on October 16, 2010 by smellincoffee

Distant Shores
© 2005, ed. Marco Palmieri
390 pages

Only hours after the onset of its first mission, the USS Voyager was thrust across the galaxy into the Delta Quadrant — a distance so great that even at maximum speeds,  returning home would take at least seventy years. Rather than giving into despair,  Voyager duly set a course for home, determining to search for new technologies and shortcuts on the way while still fulfilling Starfleet’s directive to explore space and seek out new life. Seven years later, having blazed a trail of new discoveries, alliances, and repeated victories snatched from the jaws of defeat, Voyager emerged from her long exile. Distant Shores celebrates the show’s tenth anniversary with a twelve-story anthology featuring now-familiar authors like Christopher L. Bennett, Kirsten Beyer, and Keith Decandido with many others. While a few authors write their stories around episodes from the show,  other stories are completely new or examine parts of the Voyager story that the show ignored — the integration of the Maquis and Equinox crews into Voyager’s ranks, or the effect of the ship’s disappearance had on the friends and family of her crewmembers.

The stories are arranged chronologically by season, with a slight concentration on the fifth and sixth seasons, and every member of the ensemble cast has a story in which he or she dominates. The book as a whole assumes some familiarity with the show,  which is understandable given that it’s written for fans of the show who want to take a nostalgic look back ten years after the story began. Lay readers can piece together the details of what happened with the Equinox from the two stories that feature their difficult integration with the crew, but they’d be better off looking up the episode in question. There are no disappointments here, and even though I had no intention of reading the book this week, I found putting it back down once I’d read the introductory story to be difficult; I read most of the book through in one sitting.

Although not essential for enjoying the Voyager Relaunch books, Kirsten Beyer did build on certain elements introduced in this collection when writing Full Circle and Unworthy. The collection is also perfectly enjoyable on its own, both for general Trek readers and those with a particular fondness for Voyager.

Some stories of note:

  • “Command Code”: when Captain Janeway is put out of action soon after integrating Chakotay and other Maquis members into her crew, the newly-appointed First Officer Chakotay and Tuvok have a face-off on the bridge amidst a crisis when Tuvok doubts Chakotay’s judgment and suspends his just-minted command access.
  • “Letting Go” takes place across the opening seasons Voyager, as the loved ones of Voyager’s missing and presumed crew try to adjust to the thought of their spouses, friends, and children being gone forever — and try to move on with their lives.
  • “Eighteen Minutes” gives the Doctor’s side of “Blink of an Eye”, wherein in the course of eighteen minutes he experiences years of life on the surface of a planet wherein time passes a bit differently. 
  • “Isabo’s Shirt” explores Janeway and Chakotay’s friendship and gives J/C shippers something to squee about. 

Related:

  • Prophecy and Change, Deep Space Nine’s own ten-year anniversary anthology which also features some of the authors that worked on Distant Shores, including Christopher L. Bennett. I think maybe I’m going to be re-reading it in the future.
  • Distant Shores on Memory Alpha
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Rapt

Posted on October 15, 2010 by smellincoffee

Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life
© 2009 Winifred Gallagher
256 pages

 You’re sitting comfortably in your favorite chair, reading, when out of the corner of your eye your brain registers movement, and you automatically turn to look for its source. You spot a green anole lizard, which crept in through an open window. You try to pick it up, and it scurries from the arm of the couch onto the end table nearby.  When you focus on the lizard in an attempt to sneak up behind it, you realize that the lizard’s tail is brushing your lost keys — keys which are sitting in plain sight, but which have escaped your passive gaze for hours.

Such are some of the curiosities of attention. The book’s title caught my eye while browsing the library catalogue, and such is my interest in the workings of the human brain that I checked it out. The author introduces the book by pointing out there are two different kinds of attention: “bottoms-up” attention, wherein your instinctive brain automatically focuses on an objects that may be a potential threat (as in the moving lizard) and top-down attention, which we ourselves consciously control what our brains are focused on (as when tracking the lizard and noticing the keys as they entered the sweep of attention).

Rapt is more a social science work than hard science, replete with studies but no neurological maps. Instead, the author addresses attention’s role in morality, creativity, personal relationships, and health. Buddhism and cognitive theory are present, and both Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus are mentioned by name.  The author believes that people can move toward greater health and happiness by being mindful of what we pay attention to — taking charge of our own minds —  and practicing mental focus through exercises like attention or by engaging in leisure activities that encourage it (painting, say).

This is easily one of the most interesting books I’ve read this year. I was disposed to enjoy it, of course, given my interests in Stoic philosophy. I know full how attention can alter our mental state, but the chapters on art and morality were pleasant surprises. Gallagher is quite readable, and if you’re interested in psychology or mindfulness I recommend it.

Related:

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Booking through Thursday: Rewrite

Posted on October 14, 2010 by smellincoffee

Booking through Thursday (via Joy) asks: If you could rewrite the ending of any book, which book would it be? And how would you change it?



John Grisham’s The Appeal is notable for its disheartening ending. The novel’s subject is political corruption: more specifically, a company in legal troubles over its criminal negligence (poisoning a community’s water table to the point of increasing cancer rates by a substantial amount) decides to buy a judge. They find a candidate and bankroll his election campaign, slandering his opponents as being too soft on Democrats, intellectuals, and homosexuals. They win; their boy dons the black robes and gets the case.  This kind of corruption is depressing by itself, but The Appeal is cruel in making the reader think the judge’s moral crisis (following the death of his son from another company’s negligence) will see him turn against the business, or at least step down. But no. He throws the entire community under the bus despite having sufficient motive to do the right thing.


I’d like to see it rewritten so the ending is…..at LEAST ambiguous. Have the judge declare a mistrial and step down — give us hope of SOME kind.  







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Unworthy

Posted on October 14, 2010 by smellincoffee

Unworthy
© 2009 Kirsten Beyer
384 pages

These are not the friendly stars of the Federation. The unknown and the unexpected are the everyday.

Not five years after the good ship Voyager returned home from involuntary exile in the Delta Quadrant, Starfleet wants her to return to the stomping grounds of the Kazon, Hirogen, and other such ferocious species. She won’t be going alone this time, but accompanied by six other vessels. Their mission is to see what, if anything, remains of the Borg collective,  mend fences Voyager had to leave broken in her haste to return home, and seek out new life and civilizations. Although the Voyager family has felt the strain of recent years — most of the ensemble has gone their separate ways — the Delta Quadrant is destined to bring them together again.

The first sight anyone from the Voyager family sees upon arrival in the Delta Quadrant is a massive cube, hanging in space as if expecting their arrival. Onboard are the bodies of various species from throughout the quadrant — offerings made to the Borg by a culture that reveres them. Contact with this multi-species civilization is destined to be interesting. Unworthy offers mystery and is clearing laying the foundation for several more books to come, but Beyer shines most in character development and related drama, and there’s much to be had. Seven is still adjusting to life as a post-Caliar ex-Borg,  Tom and Harry are on the outs,  and at least four characters struggle to find their place  on this new Voyager. While I tended to find the televised version of Chakotay a bit…uninspired, Beyer’s Chakotay is believable and sympathetic. Beyer’s provocative Counselor Cambridge* (introduced in Full Circle)  is especially adept at drawing this out of his patients.  Cambridge is also the source of much of Unworthy‘s humor, not that it lacks elsewhere: Beyer incorporates more humor into her novels than any other Trek author I’ve read, recently or in the past.

Unworthy makes me hope that PocketBooks and CBS keep Beyer in the captain’s chair of the new Voyager.  The characters are strong and the path ahead promising. Although the book’s sequel is not yet published, Beyer contributed a story to the Voyager anthology Distant Shores, so I’m looking forward to that.

Related:

  • Voyager Relaunch at TvTropes. I recently discovered that Tropes, one of my favorite websites, has extensive articles on the Trek lit universe.
  • Unworthy at Memory Alpha
  • Kirsten Beyer at Memory Alpha

*According to TrekBBS, Beyer had Laurie in mind when she wrote Cambridge.

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These Weeks at the Library (28 Sept – 13 October)

Posted on October 13, 2010 by smellincoffee

Two weeks ago at the library, I…

  • …started with Spook, Mary Roach’s investigations into tales of the afterlife.
  • Stephen Fry in America, the titular British humorist’s account of his state-by-state tour of the United States, followed that. 
  • Christine by Stephen King proved to be a fun horror story about a possessed car. 
  • The Life of Greece brought up the rear. The book was second in Durant’s Story of Civilization, and covered Greece from its original settlers to the death of Alexander and rise of Rome. Heavy on literature and poetry, and reminded me how little people change in politics.

This week, I started off with:

  • Mary Roach’s Packing for Mars, a playful history of human space flight and which is replete with information on how humans adjust to living without gravity, blue skies, and flushing toilets.
  • Full Circle,  the first Voyager book in a few years, introduced a new author to the Voyager Relaunch series, closed off the old plots, caught Voyager’s family up with Destiny, and set the little ship that could off to new adventures in the Delta Quadrant. 
  • Caesar and Christ by Will Durant followed that. I didn’t think I’d finish it so quickly, but I do like my Romans. The book is dominated by Rome’s political history.
  • My last complete read was The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, enjoying “Self Reliance” in particular. The book is of most interest to those interested in Emerson and Thoreau’s Transcendentalism. 
  • I also  read from Full House: the Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin by Stephen Jay Gould. Gould was one of the United States’ big names in popular science, but I’ve never read from him. The central premise of this book — that increasing complexity in evolution is not the norm, but rather an exception and that modern animals are merely the results of evolution so far, not the fore-told promise of life — is one I’m familiar and agree with. My interest started waning during an extended section on baseball statistics. 

Selected Passages:
“And I know Admiral Nechayev agrees,” Janeway went on, ‘though frankly I was incredibly shocked when we arrived at our meeting stark naked.”
“Right.”
“Admiral Montgomery didn’t seem to notice,” she went on. “I guess things at Starfleet Command have changed quite a bit since we left…”
“Hm-mm,” Chakotay murmured, then paused as her words finally pierced his internal musings. “What?” (Full Circle, Kirsten Beyer. )

“Power dements more surely than it corrupts.” – a paraphrase of Will Durant, Caesar and Christ.

“Protestantism was the triumph of Paul over Peter. Fundamentalism is the triumph of Paul over Christ.” – Durant, Caesar and Christ.

“Historians divide the past into epochs, years, and events, as thought divides the world into groups, individuals, and things; but history, like nature, knows only continuity amid change: historia non facit saltum — history makes no leaps. ” (Will Durant, The Life of Greece)

Civilization does not die, it migrates; it changes its habitat and its dress, but it lives on. The decay of one civilization, as of one individual, makes room for the growth of another: life sheds the old skin, and surprises death with fresh youth. Greek civilization is alive; it moves in every breath of mind that we breathe; so much of it remains that none of us in one lifetime could absorb it all. We know its defects — its insane and pitiless wars, its stagnant slavery, it s subjection of women, its lack of moral restraint, its corrupt individualism, its tragic failure to unite liberty with order and peace. But those who cherish freedom, reason, and beauty will not linger over these blemishes. They will hear behind the turmoil of political history the voices of Solon and Socrates, of Plato and Euripides, of Phidias and Praxiteles, of Epicurus and Archimedes; they will be grateful for the existence of such men, and will seek their company across alien centuries. They will think of Greece as the bright morning of that Western civilization which,  with all its kindred faults, is our nourishment and our life. (Will Durant, The Life of Greece)



Potentials for Next Week:

  • Unworthy, the follow up to Full Circle by Kirsten Beyer. I just finished a few minutes ago, actually.
  • Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life, which I’m a dozen or so pages away from completing.
  • The Roman Way, Edith Hamilton. Reading Durant’s Roman book reminded me that I’ve never read The Greek Way’s ‘sequel’. 
  • The Good Guy, Dean Koontz. A friend has reccommended the author to me several times, and after looking up the plot summaries of my library’s Koontz holdings, this novel about a man who is mistaken for a hitman and paid to kill a stranger sounds the most interesting. 
  • The World is Flat, which appears to be on the effects of globalization. I thought about reading this on Columbus Day just for laughs — a persistent fiction that Columbus probed to the intellectual elite of Europe that the world was around lingers in the United States — but was more interested in my Romans. 
  • The Seventy Great Mysteries of the Natural World, which is a big ol’ book on science I would’ve missed had I not been sitting on the floor looking for an obscure introduction to Latin. It’s a gorgeous-looking book, and I expect great pleasure from reading it.
  • I also have The Age of Faith checked out, but it’s a right monster of a book (1100+ pages of elegant prose  in a diminutive font)  and I’m taking a brief recess from the Story of Civilization to give my mind a break before I start reading about the Byzantine empire, medieval Europe, and the rise of Islam.
  • I’m also going to be perusing Teach Yourself Latin, largely out of interest for its rules of grammar. Durant often quotes the Latin and English translations side by side, and the different sentence structure makes me curious.
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The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson

Posted on October 12, 2010 by smellincoffee

The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson
©  Edited 1987, Alfred Ferguson
378 pages

Two summers ago I began to read Thoreau, and as I continue to find him philosophically compelling I wanted to read the works of Thoreau’s contemporary and like-minded friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson.  They’re available online, incidentally, and may be freely accessed here.  My volume contained “History” through to “Politics”, and the nineteen essays between those two book ends have similarly austere titles that belie their far more flowery contents. Having mulled over them for four weeks, I come away feeling that most of the essays have escaped me entirely. “Self Reliance” riveted me, and as soon as I finished it I enthusiastically recommended it to several friends, and from other essays I gleaned a sense of Emerson’s inner life and of the Transcendental worldview.

 Emerson is a poet at heart, a mystic; he values the inner voice of intuition more than beliefs based on thought-out syllogisms. Only the heart can realize the ‘Oversoul’, a vaguely pantheistic view of God. His prose reads  as poetry: “Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus.”  Emerson can write pointedly, but the poetic influence in some essays imparts a subjective feel, as you would find in a collection of poetry. Having the essays available online is a boon, and I intend to keep chewing on them for a while longer.

For the moment, though, if you’ve an interested in Stoic philosophy or anarchist political thought, “Self Reliance” is an essay worth reading. Also,those few souls interested in Thoreau and Emerson’s worldview (American Transcendentalism) will find “The Over-Soul” of most interest.

Related:

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Caesar and Christ

Posted on October 12, 2010 by smellincoffee

Caesar and Christ
© 1944 Will Durant
752 pages

Ave, Caesar!

Athens’ grip on my imagination is rivaled only by Rome — Rome, navel of the world; Rome, which established the languages laws, and religion of western Europe. Like Our Oriental Heritage and The Life of Greece which proceed it, Caesar and Christ is epic in scope. Durant begins with the first civilization of Italy, the Etruscans, and after shifting to a little town on the banks of the Tiber falls it to Constantine. This grand history is partially interrupted by a hundred pages on Jesus and the first three hundred years of Christianity,  neatly introduced by a section on “Rome and Judea”. Because Roman history is political history, politics is the backbone of Caesar and Christ despite the numerous sections on culture, architecture, and philosophy. The end result is just as thorough as preceding volumes, but more focused.

In Oriental Heritage,  Durant noted that civilizations constantly rise and fall in a philosophical pattern. Civilizations emerge over hardship through determination, strength, and cultural cohesion, cohesion typically established by a highly moralistic and hard-nosed religion. As these civilizations gain in power, prosperity sees a decay in values which leads to eventual decline and collapse. To Durant, Rome is a case in point for this view, and his concluding analysis of why Rome fell simply condenses the book into a couple chapters: the book is in a sense an extended explanation of Rome’s decline and fall. In essence, he sees Rome’s economic success as dependent on slavery undermining it. Slavery destroyed Roman citizen-farmers, which sapped the Roman political system dependent on such citizen-farmers, leading to an overall decline in public sentiment  and culture-wide decay that was slowed, but not stopped by religious rivals and the growth of Stoicism.  As Greece passed the torch of civilization to Rome in its dying days, so does Durant see Rome pass the torch to its successor — Christianity. He makes the point that Christianity didn’t so much as defeat Rome as inherit it, for medieval Christianity was the Roman church, all that remained of the German state.

Durant’s views on Christianity are interesting; they appear to be in line with Marcus Borg’s, who views the major religions of the world as being created by humans in response to a divine impulse. Durant appears to share this cheery universalism, and like Borg regards Christianity as his favorite, referring to it as the most attractive religion ever created and embracing it despite knowing — and detailing — its creation by people within a specific historical context.  While seating Christianity firmly among apocalyptic religions at first, Durant tracks its evolution into a general-purpose morality-building system of thought that breathed new life into the decline of civilization. He’s a curious blend of skeptic and believer who probably discomfits fundamentalists more reliably than nonbelievers.

Caesar and Christ is the most thorough history of Rome I’ve read, and the scope is useful in understanding Rome’s long-term trends and problems. Lay readers will benefit from being able to place Caesar into the context of his times, seeing him as an inevitability rather than a Palaptine-esque villain who single-handedly destroyed the Republic by sheer ambitious genius.Will Durant’s elegant prose makes for enjoyable reading,  and I’d generally recommend the book to those interested in Rome, although those who are completely unread on the subject may want to whet their appetites with shorter histories aimed at casual audiences.

Related:

  • The Roman Mind, M.L. Clarke
  • The Roman Way, Edith Hamilton. I’ve never read it, but Hamilton is generally impressive.
  • Rubicon, Tom Holland
  • The Assassination of Julius Caesar, Michael Parenti. Parent places particular emphasis on Rome’s class war, and the role that had in destabilizing Rome’s politics. Parenti sees the assassination of Caesar as being similar to that of the Gracchai brothers in being motivated by crass economic motives instead of lofty Republican idealism. 
  • Asimov’s Guide to the Bible: Volume II, The New Testament; Isaac Asimov. I’ve owned this for over a year but haven’t quite gotten around to reading it. 
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Teaser Tuesday (12 October)

Posted on October 11, 2010 by smellincoffee

Teaser Tuesday — going boldly where no man has gone before, except for last Tuesday.

“For the next few hours I don’t wish to be disturbed by anything less than the arrival of a Borg armada in Earth orbit.”

“If you’d like, I could contact the Borg directly and ask that they postpone any imminent actions so as not to disturb your evening,” Decan said deadpan.

(p.44, Full Circle.  Kirsten Beyer.)

But the moment she reached the door and activated its sensor, [Torres] found herself facing Counselor Cambridge. 

“Is this a bad time?” he asked.

“Actually, it is,” Tom said.

“Excellent,” Cambridge said, stepping inside.

(p. 163, Full Circle.)

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Full Circle

Posted on October 11, 2010 by smellincoffee

Full Circle
© 2009 Kirsten Beyer
576 pages

Following the success of the Deep Space Nine relaunch, both The Next Generation and Voyager‘s crews received new life in the form of book series. Voyager‘s series stalled after four books, but her characters have continued to make appearances in TNG as it and DS9 went boldy forward to Destiny. Now Voyager is sailing once more with a new author, who is tasked with catching a four-year-old story up with the new Destiny arc and advancing it further.

Full Circle begins before Nemesis, concluding the story arcs of the early relaunch books. The most notable arc is that of a Klingon religious conflict which ensnares the life of young Miral Paris, who is declared to be a Messiah figure by two obscure but well-armed religious sects. Her birth heralds the collapse of the Klingon Empire, and when she is kidnapped her parents must call upon their old Voyager crew mates to help them find and rescue her from death at the hands of fanatics.

While Klingons usually bore me*, Beyer makes this story come alive — and yet it is only background for the rest of the novel, which sees the close-knit family of Voyager struggle against individual and collective problems in the wake of their beloved captain’s death. Janeway perished in the early days of the last great Borg conflict, and through the use of flashbacks she haunts a story that is set in the aftermath of Destiny. Beyer is at her best portraying character drama, particularly for Captain Chakotay and Commander Tom Paris. Chakotay sinks into anger and depression following the death of his old friend and budding partner, and Paris is tasked with keeping his captain’s spirits up and Voyager intact while the great powers of the Alpha and Beta quadrants are savaged by the Borg and his wife is on the run with Miral, hiding from Klingon zealots hell-bent on murder. Voyager’s crew is put through hell, but there is hope that their mutual support of one another will see them through some of the darkest days of Federation history.

Like Destiny, Full Circle is a prime example of the increasing quality of Trek books. There’s action to be had here, but it adds to the story without dominating it. Beyer’s work is about her characters, and even her Chakotay is likeable. Tom Paris’ various woes were most compelling for me, and I enjoyed seeing how the puckish ne’er-do-well  from the television show has grown into a family man and first officer of Voyager. While Full Circle is impressive as novel in its own right, considering that Beyer had to mesh two stories together and make the finished product her own speaks volumes of her talent. She closes off the old story neatly and sends Voyager and her slowly-healing crew into the future, where grand adventures await them.  Even Trek readers who dislike Voyager should give Beyer’s opening voyage a try.

Related:

*Except for their ships and marriage vows. The funstarts at 3:54.

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