Jurassic Park

Posted on July 2, 2010 by smellincoffee

Jurassic Park
© 1990 Michael Crichton
399 pages

To the south, rising above the palm trees, Grant saw a single trunk with no leaves at all, just a big curving stump. Then the stump moved, and twisted around to meet the new arrivals. Grant realized he was not seeing a tree at all. He was looking at the graceful, curving neck of an enormous creature rising fifty feet into the air. He was looking at a dinosaur.  (p. 80)

Professor Alan Grant has spent his life digging in remote desert environs, looking for fossils that offer clues into the lives of dinosaurs. Carefully extracting specimens from the ground, he pieces the puzzles of anatomy and behavior together. His job is made a little easier by enthusiastic supporters like John Hammond, an eccentric old billionaire who finances dinosaur digs all over the world — although Hammond can be a trifle annoying at times, pestering Grant with questions of what a particular species of dinosaurs might eat, especially as newborns. What possible need could the man have for that sort of information?

When a lawyer in the employ of Hammond visits Grant’s latest dig and offers him a substantial fee to visit a resort of Hammond’s over the course of a weekend, he reluctantly accepts: that much money will go a long way in maintaining his research. What he, his graduate student, and a quirky mathematician find when they arrive at the resort is beyond belief: a theme park the size of an island, where plants and animals dead for 65 million years live again. Advances in genetic engineering and a novel approach to obtaining dinosaur DNA have allowed Hammond to clone dinosaurs and artificially incubate them. His goal is a worldwide empire of theme parks filled with biological attractions, but his first has yet to see the public. He has all the problems of an amusement park and all the problems of a zoo, the latter particularly difficult in that no one has ever maintained hundreds of dinosaurs in captivity. Hammond responds to his investors’ doubt and concerns about the park’s delayed opening by inviting his team of consultants — Grant and company — to take the first tour.  A palaeontologist’s approval will go far in soothing their fears.

As impressive as Jurassic Park may be, a system so complex – being a heavily automated park controlled by central computers maintaining a firm hand on a delicate ecosystem — is doomed to fail at some point, at least in the opinion of Ian Malcolm, the mathematician and chaos theorist invited to tour the park. Malcolm’s cassandra-like warning comes to pass (as such warnings are wont to do) when deliberate sabotage on the park of an employee rendering the park’s security network inoperative coincides with a massive storm, imperiling not only the tourists but everyone on the isle. Grant, Malcolm, and the rest must pit human technology and intelligence against the dinosaurs’ own brute strength, devastating quickness,  surprising array of biochemical defense mechanisms, and intelligence. The struggle for existence is a brutal one — even in the artificially created Jurassic Park.

Jurassic Park is my first read by Michael Crichton, whom I have ignored in the past out of the impression that his works were too technical for reading comfort. I don’t know what gave me that impression, but Jurassic Park was a breeze even while employing more scientific exposition than your usual novel. Although my reading experience was augmented by having watched the movie only a night prior, I enjoyed it to the point that I will be browsing Crichton’s other works. The book’s introduction gives the text the feel of a warning against the dangers of uncontrolled genetic engineering on the part of companies, perhaps an explicit message on Crichton’s part. I’ve not read any of his other works, so I don’t know if he employs his novels as warnings or messages in this manner. We’ll see, for I plan on looking at The Andromeda Strain next week.

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American Nerd

Posted on July 2, 2010 by smellincoffee

American Nerd: the Story of my People
© 2008 Benjamin Nugent
224 pages

First in my class here at M.I.T /
Got skills, I’m a champion at D&D
M.C. Escher, that’s my favorite  MC
Keep your forty, I’ll just have an Earl Grey Tea
My rims never spin, to the contrary
You’ll find that they’re quite stationary 
All of my action figures are cherry,
Stephen Hawkings’ in my library
[…]
Look at me, I’m white and nerdy. 
(“White and Nerdy“, Weird Al)

My local library’s web catalogue offered American Nerd as a result when I searched for titles in popular science, and the premise — a book on nerd culture — hooked me immediately. Author Benjamin Nugent is an ex-nerd, who as boy grew up “boffing” and playing long rounds of Dungeons and Dragons when he wasn’t busy with an NES system.  After opening with an analysis of Wikipedia’s definition for nerd, Nugent gives a brief history of nerd-types, beginning with the characters of Mary Bennet in Pride and Prejudice and Victor Frankenstein in Frankenstein. The most general characteristic of Nugent’s nerds is that they prefer worlds of rationality to physical or sensual stimulation, and that they are out of place in a post-industrial revolution world that increasingly associates reason and rationality with  machinery, not humanity — humanity being represented by emotion and romanticism. Other elements branch from this, as with a preference for Standard English over language replete with slang.

From there, Nugent devotes chapters to individual elements in the “nerdy” spectrum: the old-fashioned Steve Urkel types, the Renaissance Faire enthusiasts, video gamers, ‘hackers’, anime buffs,  science fiction or fantasy fiction fans, and those who pretend to be nerds to be seen as controversial and nonconformist.There are also “case studies” in which Nugent focuses on his childhood friends; the most memorable case study was that of a refuge from Mormonism, who saw the rule-governed world of Dungeons and Dragons as a redoubt against his mother’s violent and unpredictable religiosity.

It’s an interesting book, best received by confused parents and loved ones of nerds who don’t particularly understand why their child or friend likes dressing up as a feudal knight, spending hours at a time exploring ‘dungeons’ on paper occupied by figurines, or animatedly discussing competing operating systems. Nugent’s approach strikes me as casual, cavalier — and sometimes careless. He identifies a passage from a forum as being a prime example of “leet speak”, for instance, but the passage in question only contains one word (pwn) associated with “leet speak”. The rest is the kind of butchered English associated with twelve-year olds using instant messaging for the first time, more accurately known as “AOLspeak“. In another instance, he characterizes The Big Bang Theory as two nerds’ quest to win the heart of a girl, which…it isn’t.

Fairly entertaining and a little sloppy, but it may be of use to someone who wants to understand the nerds in their midst.

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Contact

Posted on July 2, 2010 by smellincoffee

Contact
© 1985 Carl Sagan
432 pages

“We could be in the middle of an intergalactic conversation — and we wouldn’t even know.” – Michio Kaku, “Our Place in the Universe“.

Dr. Eleanor Arroway, known as “Ellie” to her few intimates, is long accustomed to being marginalized. She’s a woman in a field dominated by men, and her interest in using radio telescopes to search for intelligence life in space further isolates her. Even those who take note of her brilliance do so only to suggest that perhaps she’s wasting her time looking for “little green men”.

And then….the signal. Steadily pulsing, it cannot be tracked to a satellite in Earth orbit, nor is the region of space it appears to emanate from a source of pulsars. This signal comes from outside — and it comes with purpose. The initial signal contains prime numbers, but as Ellie and her coworkers begin to dissect the data, they find a recording of the first signal from Earth to find its way into space — and then, The Message, a massive transmission of data that unites the world’s scientific, political, and economic authorities as they search for the Message’s meaning.

While Contact is in part a science fiction tale that depicts humanity’s first contact with extraterrestrial life, Sagan also offers a story about the human search for meaning. He does this by bouncing the nonreligious Ellie, who finds meaning in science, off of Christian guru and television personality Palmer Joss,  who sees a transcendental deity and revealed truths as the source of ultimate meaning. Later, Sagan puts Ellie into the position of defending what might be called a religious experience.

To my knowledge, Contact is Carl Sagan’s only fictional work.  I first read it in 2005 or 2006, and Sagan’s depiction of radio astronomy changed the way I thought about extraterrestrial life. In the years since, my readings in astronomy and physics have convinced me that Sagan’s Contact scenario is more likely than say First Contact. Contact is among the more interesting novels I’ve read, and it’s one I can recommend. While the opening premise is interesting by itself, the role of scientific wonder and the advocation of the human spirit make it all the better.

“She had studied the universe all her life, but missed the clearest message: for small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.” – 429

Related:

  • Contact, a film adaption of the book that stars Jodie Foster. Although it takes a few liberties with the plot , the visuals are solid and the acting makes even the more despicable characters fun to watch. The intro, in which the camera soars through space, following the advance of Earth’s oldest television transmissions, is particularly memorable. 
  • The Symphony of Science videos, all starring Sagan in part. “Our Place in the Cosmos” has a line that neatly refers to the pretext of Contact. 
Are we all alone, or are there others standing by.
Waiting to see what we will do, how hard we’ll try?
It costs a lot to live, even more to fly.
Kindly send a prayer my way while I shoot up in the sky.
We’ll send the best from Earth, to find out what it’s worth.
We’ll send the best from Earth, to find out what it’s worth.
– “Others Standing By”, Prometheus Music
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Chainbreaker’s War

Posted on June 29, 2010 by smellincoffee

Chainbreaker’s War: a Seneca Chief Remembers the American Revolution
© 2002 ed. Jeanne Winston Adler
224 pages

On the eastern seaboard, young militia men marched around their town squares, tea-chests floated in Boston Harbor, and the bells of war tolled. Only a few hundred miles away in upstate New York and in Michigan, the six nations of the Iroquois lived quiet and enjoyable lives separated from the ruckus. They hunted, met together in congress to discuss matters between the tribes and their neighbors, and saw to their families — and then the emissaries arrived.

Officials from both Great Britain and the newly-formed United States send word to the Iroquois that there is war on the coast. The royal government ask the Iroquois to avoid being drawn into the conflict: the colonials request assistance from the Iroquois. The Six Nations are divided: some believe their neighbors to be insolent for rebelling against their Father nation. Others believe that the Americans are the victims of a great injustice. Years of peace and prosperity fall to war as the nations choose sides. The Seneca support Great Britain, and a young Seneca named Chainbreaker leads his brethren in combat against the Americans. Fighting chiefly with traditional weapons, he engages in bloody battle with the colonials,  engaging in tit-for-tat village- and town- razings against George Washington, the “Devourer of Villages”. After the war, the Iroquois attempt to return to their former lifestyle, but both unity and territory have been lost in the war.

This is the tale told by Chainbreaker in his old age, recounting the lives of the Iroquois amidst the war. The book proper has a conversational, almost rambling style, and is supplemented by sidebars quoting from related sources that add greater context or explain obscure references. The editor also supplied in-text illustrations depicting the homes, clothing, tools, and weapons of the Six Nations.

Chainbreaker’s War made for an interesting read, although the amount of useful information is limited. Diplomacy and politics kept my attention more than the descriptions of battle: most remarkable for me was the respect Chainbreaker obviously held for Washington — during the war as a general, but afterwards as a man. This memoir offered at the start a look into Iroquois culture, and it has whet my appetite for both learning more about the Iroquois and the role native Americans played in the Revolution. Although Chainbreaker’s recollections of the Iroquois motives seem shallow,  tribes losing ground against aggressive colonial expansion would have had a vested interested in supporting the monarchy, which restricted expansion to avoid retaliation on the part of the displaced natives. I’m curious as to what motives would have driven tribes to support the departure of the monarchy.

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Teaser Tuesday (29/6)

Posted on June 29, 2010 by smellincoffee

Teaser Tuesdays are out of this world, from ShouldBeReading.

With deliberate composure, Ellie left the assembled group crowded around the consoles and returned to her office. She closed the door very carefully behind her.
“Holy shit!” she whispered. (Contact, Carl Sagan. p. 79)

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The Man with the Iron Heart

Posted on June 26, 2010 by smellincoffee

The Man with the Iron Heart
© 2008 Harry Turtledove
532 pages

On 27 May 1942, Reinhard Heydrich barely escapes death at the hands of a Czech hitman, his life being saved by the assassin’s weapon jamming.  Although the misfire does not much alter the course of the war, it changes the peace dramatically, for Heydrich refuses to stop fighting even after the death of Hitler, the destruction of Berlin, the total occupation of Germany, and the formal surrender of Nazi officials. As early as 1943, Heydrich began storing munitions and training troops discreetly to carry on the fight in the event that the Reich lost, and no sooner has the dust settled over the bombed cities of Europe than do Heydrich’s Werewolves begin the Resistance. Their goal is to force the Allies and Russians to end their occupation through whatever means possible.

What follows is a clear allusion to the Iraq War and resulting insurgency: the tactics are the same, as are the arguments from either side of American politics in arguing for or against staying in Germany. Heydrich’ tactics mirror those of al-Queda terrorists, including the propaganda use of captured Allied soldiers. While most of his warfare is attritive — targeting groups of soldiers with car bombs and the like — his German Freedom Front occasionally launches larger operations to poison large crowds, destroy symbolic buildings, and obtain supplies. In the US, a Cindy Sheehan stand-in leads an anti-war movement, tacitly supported by ambitious Republicans who see the Heyrich insurgency as a good club to beat the Democratic administration over the head and gain political power. President “Give `em Hell” Harry Truman insists on finishing the job in Germany, although he’s not one to hide away in the White House or a ranch in Texas: Truman dishes out abuse as good as he gets it and speaks personally to protesters marching in D.C. While the United States grapples with unpredictable German tactics, the Soviet Union merely shrugs as it shoots or deports hundreds of Germans with every attack.

The book uses Turtledove’s typical approach of relying on a panel of viewpoint characters: a housewife turned political activist, Heydrich himself, and various American or Russian soldiers. Also typical of Turtledove is the generous use of Russian, German, and Yiddish phrases, particularly profanity. The book also abounds in historical, cultural, and political in-jokes.

“Well, if that don’t beat all,” Benton said disgustedly. “If I do me a crappy job, I get my sorry ass blown up. If I do me a great job, they make me stick around — so’s I can get my sorry ass blown up.” He spat on the filthy floor. “Ought to be a name for somethin’ like that, where you get fucked over comin’ an’ goin’.”

“Yeah, it’s a heller, all right. One of these days, I bet there will.” Lou got a strange kick out of thinking like an English teacher instead of a counterintelligence officer. “A guy who’s been through the mill will write a story or a book about it. He’ll hang some kind of handle on it, and from then on everybody’ll call it that.”

The book’s connection to the Iraq War is obvious enough to be mentioned on the inside cover as a selling point for people who are interested in Turtledove’s “profound insight into contemporary affairs”. Although I  am aware of war weariness at the end of the Second World War, I doubt that events concerning Iraq since 2003 would repeat themselves so neatly in 1945-1948 Germany. Although Turtledove’s villains are much more effective than al-Queda or related groups, the development of the anti-war movement and the stances of American characters are taken too directly from contemporary newspapers: the occupation of Nazi Germany, which declared war upon the United States after savaging its commercial shipping cannot be so easily equated to the invasion and occupation of Iraq,  which lacked consistent explanation for motive. In addition, the novel lacks a German perspective beyond Heydrich’s, which isn’t exactly nuanced. Turtledove might’ve used a German citizen turned insurgent to explore the effects of Soviet tactics in polarizing civilians to take up arms.

For whatever its weaknesses, I enjoyed this bit of alternate history. Throughout, I wondered what the Nazis would try next — and what the end result would be. Would Soviet-occupied Germany become completely void of Germans? If the Americans did leave, as Republican congressmen urged, would Russia try to annex the vacated portion and instigate a war between itself and the western democracies? The beginning of the end had me on the edge of my seat.  I can recommend this to Turtledove fans specifically, and cautiously to alt-history readers or those interested in the premise.

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The Summons

Posted on June 26, 2010 by smellincoffee

The Summons
© 2002 John Grisham
373 pages

When Professor Ray Atlee returned to his family home in Clanton, Mississippi to discuss his ailing father’s will, he found two surprises waiting for him. His father, an elderly judge who even in retirement remained a pillar of the community, lay dead in his study — only two hours parted from life. The judge left dozens of boxes of legal files, enough Confederate memorabilia  to stock a museum, and over three million dollars stashed away in boxes. The untimely death and the discovery of the money are staggering to the professor, who knows his father to be both grossly underpaid and as great a philanthropist as any man:  the judge gave money to anyone who needed it, so how did he manage to acquire such an immense fortune? And why isn’t that fortune in the bank — why is it hidden in these boxes away from public view?

His father’s latest will named Ray the executor of the estate, but he’s not willing to reveal the millions to the world, for the cash stinks of some kind of impropriety. Where could it have come from?  He begins to discreetly investigate the matter, hoping to find that his father earned this fortune legitimately through trading on the stock market or even gambling in casinos — but the money remains inexplicable. No one else seems to know anything about the money, but Ray soon begins receiving threatening mail and phone calls and his home is ransacked. Someone else wants the money — and they want it enough to kill.

The Summons is more of a mystery thriller than a legal thriller, although the law is an irreplaceable element of the plot. Set partially in Grisham’s Ford County and partially in Charlottesville, North Carolina,  the book offers character drama, an interesting mystery — how does an honest  judge get three million dollars? — and a little moralizing on the effect of large amounts of cash on human behavior: Ray has no intention of reporting to the IRS, and not just because he’s concerned for his father’s reputation. The book is also a teaser of sorts for Grisham’s The King of Torts, one of my favorites. I enjoyed re-reading The Summons: like The Brethren, it’s an interesting diversion from Grisham’s usual legal fare, and the setting is an old favorite.

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This Week at the Library (23/6)

Posted on June 23, 2010 by smellincoffee

From the past two weeks….

  • Memories of Old Cahaba dates to the start of the 20th century, and is the recollections of a woman who lived in Alabama’s first state capital (now a ghost town) as a teenager. I checked out the book to guide me as I toured the few remains of the town, once one of the grander towns in pre-industrial Alabama. Fry’s memoir depicts a heavily romanticized view of the town, but was useful during my visits there.
  • I also finished a collection of essays by Isaac Asimov titled The Roving Mind. Most of the essays were scientific in nature, with a few on skepticism and the future. There’s also some satire, which is unusual for Asimov. Enjoyable, of course, and worth any Asimov reader’s while. 
  • Next, I re-read The Other Side of Selma, a collection of anecdotes about my hometown (Selma, Alabama) during the fifties and sixties. Most of the anecdotes are pitched as humorous, although a few recount the kindness of people long dead. Its appeal is limited, naturally, but as a Selma native I enjoyed it. The stories are very informal.
  • Lev Grossman’s The Magicians is a coming of age story set against a fantasy background.  Quentin Coldwater is an isolated and lonely young man who frequently escapes from the boredom and meaninglessness of the real world into the fantasy world of Fillory. When he discovers that the world of magic is real — and is invited to join the ranks of magic-users by abandoning dreams of college for a private magic academy —  Coldwater finds meaning and adventure, but realizes too late that a life of excitement comes with a price.  Grossman starts off charming and funny, but grows darker as Coldwater matures into a angsty twenty-something.
  • Mark Twain’s Weapons of Satire collects Twain’s various works criticizing American imperialism, specficially the war against the Phillipines. Twain sees expansionistic war as dooming the the Republic to authoritarianism, and mourns the perversion of patriotism into merely “supporting the troops”.  Enjoyable and applicable for today, I’d reccommend this most of all the books I’ve read this week.
  • Tales of the Dominion War collects stories by various Trek luminaries set during the Dominion War. The stories’ characters come not only from the television and movie canon, but from the expanded universe of Trek literature. The stories are not just about ship-to-ship combat: a few are set on planets being attacked and concentrate on civilians or on low-ranking Starfleet members, while others go outside the Federation and tackle Romulan politics and Klingon honor. Great read for Trekkies.
  • Hornblower and the Hotspur tells the tale of Commander Horatio Hornblower, recently appointed the peacetime captain of the Hotspur, assigned to survey France’s coast and keep a wary eye out for antagonistic activity. Such activity is assured given the rise of Napoleon, and Hornblower is soon busy blockading ports and sacking convoys. Although this book has many great Hornblower moments, I struggled through it.
  • Most recently I read The World Through Maps: A History of Cartography, a brief summary of map-making history replete with gorgeous illustrations of maps. Short’s narrative provides many tidbits and a little context for understanding the maps, but it’s far from comprehensive and focuses a bit much on the United States. 

Pick of the Week: Weapons of Satire, Mark Twain.

Selected Quotations:

“Patriotism is merely a religion — love of country, worship of country, devotion to the country’s flag and honor and welfare. In absolute monarchies it is furnished from the throne, cut and dried, to the subject; in England and America it is furnished, cut and dried, to the citizen by the politician and the newspaper.” – Mark Twain

“He was either going to punch someone or start a blog. Personally, I’m glad he clocked you.” – Paraphrase from The Magicians.

Upcoming Reads:

  • The Adventures of Robin Hood, Paul Creswick. I’m not sure about this one: the first four times I tried reading the opening chapter, my eyes glazed over. On the fifth try, it clicked. We’ll see what happens.
  • The Man with the Iron Heart, Harry Turtledove. What if hardline Nazis refused to stop fighting after Hitler’s defeat? 
  • Chainbreaker’s War: A Seneca Chief Remembers the American Revolution, ed. Jeane Winston Adler. 
  • I may finish a Grisham re-read, and I’ve got some Star Trek books I could read as well…
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The World Through Maps

Posted on June 23, 2010 by smellincoffee

The World Through Maps: A History of Cartography
© 2003 John Short
224 pages

Cartography has interested me ever since elementary school, when I read that Christopher Columbus worked in a cartographer’s shop. The idea that people made maps fascinated me, and I wondered what what it entailed, thinking of men sailing the coasts of islands and pain-stakingly portraying what they saw. I enjoy enjoy older maps, or those included in fantasy books, as art, for they tend to be charmingly illustrated.

Short begins by explaining the language of maps — perspective, scale, orientation, the like — and commenting on their uses before diving into the general history. Short’s book begins with rock-art maps steeped in mythology, then moves to Babylonian maps on wax tablets that portray landowners’ plots in an irrigation zone. Sections following these tend to be short — two pages — and roam the world. Short places emphasis on the idea that maps portray what cultures deem most important, and points out religious and political elements within maps as they come. Although every other culture in the book receives a scant few pages, Short devotes several sections to the mapping of North America and specifically the United States. I expect this disproportional emphasis on the US reflects the target audience — Americans.  Although he drops plenty of trivia, the book isn’t comprehensive: reading the sections on Islamic or Chinese maps gives the reader a glimpse of what they might’ve been like, but the effect is kin to trying to enjoy the plot of a fictional novel by reading the plot summary on the back. Still, the illustrations of maps are fetching, especially the Renaissance works that depicted their cities with a near-isometric perspective. The effect is more a work of art — the illustration of a city — than a map.

More a severe summary of cartographic history than an actual history, this book was enjoyable more for the art and less for the text, although the limited background information did come in handy when trying to understand older maps, especially medieval works.

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Hornblower and the Hotspur

Posted on June 22, 2010 by smellincoffee

Hornblower and the Hotspur
© 1962 CS Forester
344 pages

Young Horatio Hornblower flourished as an officer in the King’s service during the general European war against the fledgling French republic, the war having given an ambitious and intelligent officer like himself plenty of opportunities for promotion. Hornblower rose swiftly through the ranks owing chiefly to his keen mind and penchant for taking risks, but he is able to call upon neither strength in civilian life: struggling to survive on a commander’s half-pay, Hornblower is roped into marrying a young woman whom he does not love. He has sprinted across mast-heads without a net and bearded French lions in their dens innumerable times, but he does not have the courage to break a young woman’s heart.  News that France is now ruled by a swaggering little man from Corsica who fancies himself an emperor comes as a great relief to him, and the newlywed commander is all-too-happy to accept his first real command, the sloop Hotspur. At his side is the implacable Mr. Bush. What’s more, he will once again be serving under his beloved captain from his midshipman days, Commodore Edward Pellew.  Although my own experiences watching the television series have undoubtedly influenced my judgment, I  was just as happy as Hornblower to see Bush and Pellew again.

France’s First Republic is steadily replaced by its First Empire as Napoleon gathers more power around himself, and Hornblower is ordered to troll the French coast for fisherman to bribe, seeking news of the French fleet. These initial orders become more aggressive as Napoleon readies for war with Europe: Hornblower and the fleet his Hotspur is part of blockade certain port cities and are eventually told to sack the annual Spanish delivery of gold from the New World: Spain intends to use the money to assist France in a newborn alliance. Hornblower and the Hotspur contains many of the legends told about Hornblower in his later years — how he discreetly showed mercy on a man by allowing him to escape to the USS Constitution, or how he picked up a not-yet exploded shell and threw it back into the water,  saving his ship. Despite this, I struggled through the book, forcing myself to march ahead:  this book more than any other is dominated by the act of sailing the ship. It’s hard to enjoy details when there are so many of them.

For Hornblower, the book is a coming-of-age: he begins the book as a young man just about to be married, and looks on Captain Pellew almost as son. By the end of the book, Pellew has been promoted to the admiralty,  removing him from Hornblower’s service life for the most part — although he did appear in the last book of the series, Lord Hornblower.  Hornblower receives his own promotion to post-captain, and begins the next phase of his life as the master of his own series of ships throughout the Napoleonic wars.

Of the Hornblower books I’ve read, I enjoyed this the least, although my own reception of the book seems to differ from other Hornblower fans. I would not recommend first-time readers to the series to start with this one.

Ioan Gruffuld as Horatio Hornblower, Robert Lindsay as Edward Pellew. 
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