A Wholly Reluctant Blog

The Holy Spirit must need two things:

1) an editor.
2) a keyboard where the shift key doesn't stick.*

Footnotes:
*Thing 2) can be dismissed if the audiobook requires the narrator to shout all capitalized text. Gilbert Gottfried seems to me the best choice for this task.

If I had to write an abbreviated review of this story I could do it in just 3 words: TAS, FAN, and TIC (thought not necessarily in that order). More savvy readers will want an elaborated review consisting of something between 5 and 10 words, but if I'm going to put that much effort into it, why stop there?

I have a very high opinion of this story, despite the fact that author Chance Maree continues a trend of leaving out a critical story element essential to a reading experience through which the reader can guess at the entire arc of a story simply by reading the first paragraph: the electric trombonist. I'll do my best to avoid sounding like I'm pandering, but if I happen to slip into a state of clear adulation, don't blame me, blame the author.

Maree's narrative has achieved that sought-after balance, giving just enough information without giving too much. The dialogue and plotting is crisp and taut as a bowstring. Maree does not overwrite, or show off, though she is clearly capable of the latter if she chooses, and that kind of restraint tends to make the best stories.

If I had to make a comparison, both in tone and sharpness, it would probably be Joe Haldeman's The Forever War. In both, humanity as a collective is an abrasive and destructive species. In Maree's story, people have exhausted their own world and intend to populate others as hurriedly and perhaps recklessly as possible, resulting in conflict between settlers and natives; in Haldeman's they've come across an alien species they naturally deem hostile when they retaliate after being attacked. Some of Maree's characters have a very strong sense of Manifest Destiny, which is all the more enjoyable when things don't go exactly as planned.

Apart from the greased-lightning pace of the work, Maree begins very early on teasing with a few curious mysteries: a murder, a shared hallucination, a worldwide evacuation, a boy with mysterious powers, and a planet seemingly occupied by, of all things for a group of people searching for a new land to encounter, Native Americans. All of which give additional giddyup to the story. To say these are the only mysteries, however, would be a great disservice.

Like all futuristic sci-fi works, a story has to make some bold projections that can be cynical or optimistic, but ultimately realistic if the work is to remain compelling and believable. If it isn't believable, it's no longer science fiction, it's fantasy, and it may as well have elves and magic, and therefore may as well have a THIS SPELL WINS EVERYTHING conclusion because there's really no boundaries to prevent it from happening. Happily, Undazzled manages its cynicism, optimism, and prognostications very well, raising eyebrows but never creating a moment where the reader thinks: "Oh, well that would never happen in the real world."

Considering the sci-fi aspect of this work, it was also pleasant to see the characters behaving sensibly, motivated by genuine human concerns, and a plot structured around these concerns (or vice versa) in convincing fashion. Not all sci-fi tales are fortunate enough to have Maree as their author.

Perhaps the most hard-to-swallow aspect is the idea of a giant worm-like creature that actually eats tunnels in the space-time continuum, creating wormholes--it is essentially a pun come to life. Of course, the Functional Worm is by now a staple in the sci-fi/fantasy canon.


Not shown: Space-time-continuum-eating worms (e.g., Worm Mole)

Stated as such in a vacuum, that probably seems, at the least, improbable. But details are so well-chosen, the description of the process so visceral and tangible, that it seems entirely possible. After all, technology, while becoming more complex, becomes so as a consequence of finding simpler ways to do complicated tasks. Once, computers filled entire rooms because we needed fist-sized transistors to create on-off values (e.g., 0 or 1) to represent "data" or "no data". One transistor amounted to one "bit". When we realized we could make transistors by passing electrons through silicon, we could fit hundreds, thousands, millions of on-off switches on a chip the size of a fingertip. So it may go with space travel. A colossal quantity of energy might be required to pinch two points of space time together in order to shorten the trip, but what if there was a creature that did so naturally?

Perhaps the strongest component of the story is a subtle undercurrent of profundity. There is a wealth of allusion to digest and dissect in an effort to reach the full meaning of the story. Encampments are named after physicists, astronomers, etc.; the hallucinations are very specific and curiously restricted; the parallels to European colonization of the Americas is hard to miss. Just to name a few. It's possible there is no added meaning to these things, but such is the strength of so many other aspects of the story that you just have to wonder whether or not every piece of the tale is not some carefully chosen note, selected for the specific purpose of filling an important slot in the stave of a fascinating and mind-stretching symphony.

Ultimately, in less deft hands, this tale could have been a mess. Instead, it was well balanced, swift, compelling, and made the machinery of my head pump and smoke as it searched for meaning in every allusion. It's a book that I not only enjoyed and recommend, but one I might spend my limited reading lifetime reading again.

I once spoke briefly with a relative of mine about story construction. His advice, which he followed from Kurt Vonnegut, was to establish the central conflict of the story early (i.e., what is the goal of the story?). In doing so the reader isn't left to wonder why they're bothering to read the book.

This is, to say the least, not the strategy employed by Dick. Almost 70 years have passed since the conclusion of the second world war, so the Gasp factor of imagining a world where the allies lost to the axis has diminished somewhat--at least for me. What remains as impetus for the book is shrouded in allusions that gradually become more coherent and forceful as the book progresses, and is actually far more fascinating than the presumption of a tables-turned version of the US and world. That impetus is the existence of a book that, in a metafictional bit of drama that threatens to break the fourth wall, presumes what the world would be like if the US had won.

Dick plays with this assumed book and its narrative vision with comical expertise, deliberately avoiding the history the reader knows for a UK that returns to global dominance. In what I consider the most comical line in the entire story, a character muses why such an alternative history had never been written before--it seemed such an obvious premise. I envision Dick penning this line with a grin on his face and pausing to enjoy it for some time before moving on.

Throughout, Dick is a master at, at the very least, extrapolating perceived WWII Nazi and Japanese motives past the point of an imagined victory. From Nazis bolstered by rare scientific genius and hamstrung by depravities, to Japanese masters of formality, control, and manipulation, yet trapped in a (according to Dick) non-creative cultural stasis.

I have to take a star away only because the story doesn't quite satisfy. Apart from meandering between a few characters that provide opportunities to better explain the nature of their existence in their alternate timeline, they are not central to the main plot, if it can be said that there really is a main sequence of Action. [spoilers removed]

Of course, most striking about the story was the idea that despite these changes, despite control of the world being ceded to what we perceive as one of the most evil regimes in history, there are plenty of parallels to be drawn to the modern world. We still suffer from, what in this political environment seem, high levels of intolerance. We still fret about the destruction of our country or our world for the purpose of an ideology. Perhaps the most poignant line in the story, in light of the election season, was this, following the death of the Nazi regime leader:

"So we presume that the worst, rather than the best, choice will be made. The sober and responsible elements will be defeated in the present clash."

This certainly seems like the perception of the voting parties. To each, the alternative is not just a bad choice, but will bring about annihilation through the profoundest ignorance.

Maybe it is because these are universal, eternal, and sobering truths about humanity, that this story, in spite of its age and twist on history, remains both relevant and disquieting.

I've read enough of Manny's reviews, and understood a handful of them (owing to the fact that I am fractionally as well read as the author and sadly monolingual), so I feel confident in stating this is a book I would enjoy.

Will you enjoy this? In a word, no, unless you are a masochist. Reason: not enough pictures. If you are a masochist, you will find neverending pleasure in this collection.

The reason for the latter being that each time you don't understand a passage, you will receive an electric shock.



I'm not sure how this feature was managed, but I can say imbecile masochists are likely to take the most pleasure from this aspect of the collection, while moderately intelligent folk are likely to find it an occassional distraction.

For my part, I'm neither a masochist nor moderately intelligent, but I managed to understand enough to enjoy the book, even if I now walk with a slight draw to the left.

Took a break from some heavier reading to blow through this book. Having seen the sadly short-lived SyFy Network series, I was looking forward to it. Suffice to say, the series, at least compared to the first book, had the benefit of having the source material to draw from and create an entertaining series. A Good read, but not an Impressive read. If you enjoy stories based upon plot alone, you'll probably like this one. If it takes a little more, such as intellectual dialogue, interesting turns of phrase, and a not-so-liberal use of cliche... well, you can still roar through this story, but you'll feel every bump on the road.

Jim Butcher's book had a lot of promise, but the writing was nothing to get too excited about. Functional, yes. Thought provoking, not particularly. Maybe I expect too much from urban magic stories, but this one fell into a familiar pattern pretty early on. Mainly, meet female character, describe hair, describe body shape, explain attractiveness of said female character, describe mutual efforts to avoid, in most cases, one another's eyes (to avoid soulgazing). These descriptions are never mesmerizing, but tend to be just enough to distinguish one character from another. Of course, we're probably not looking for Laureate-level content, but sometimes variety is welcome and dry can be too dry at times.

I didn't dislike this story. It was a fast and easy read, probably because I never had to think too much about it.

The most compelling aspect of the story, and probably the only thing separating it from being any old hardboiled detective novel, was the inclusion of magic. Not your Harry Potter sort of magic, where things just happen when you point a stick and say a special latinized or Rowlingized version of a normal word (e.g., the magical word to make something move slowly might be Molassesarium--though, to their credit, powerful magicians apparently don't need to say anything to turn an entire room on fire... some form of the word Immolation would be my guess). Rather, this is more a Ursula K. Le Guin-inspired magic. In order to control something, one had to know its true name, or, at least, the magic had some sort of logical underpinnings--magic worked certain ways for a reason rather than existing arbitrarily.

The story was also successful in that Harry Dresden-magician was not the sort of magician who could wander at will into any scenario with wand aglow and come out unscathed, buoyed by an array of easily conjured spells. To the contrary. Each encounter is carefully contrived. Harry has to essentially armor up before every confrontation, attempting to plot out the scenario ahead of time. In Harry's words, "Wizardry is all about thinking ahead, about being prepared." This magic is very much a return to the magician in his alcove, brewing spells and studying how magic works to get a fuller understanding of it, not unlike the studious Jonathan Strange of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Not that Dresden's world is entirely gimmick free (though not quite the same level gimmick as seaweed that can alter your genes to allow you, temporarily, to breathe underwater).

Interesting hints are dropped about Dresden's past, the governmental bodies of magic users, yaddah yaddah. All the things a good writer includes that can't be revealed in their entirety during the process of a single case (hello, lucrative series... oh, how publishing companies love series). His approach to magic and convoluted history make him, with more than a dose less experience, angst, and turn of phrase, a nice mock up of Hellblazer: The Devil You Know's John Constantine.

And, of course, there's my favorite character in both book and television, the massively-talented-uber-magician-turned-spirit-tied-genie-like-to-his-own-spell-covered-skull-due-to-some-horrible-magic-gone-wrong Bob. Bob is the magical savant. Bob is the guy magicians go to to learn something about magic. He's the wise man, the librarian, the loremaster, the sage, and as such, he's fascinating because you know he's going to have an answer for everything and it's going to be brilliant. He's the Gandalf/Dumbledore of this story, but held permanently out of the action because if he were the main character there wouldn't be a story. Page 1, mystery arises. Kapoof! Bob solves mystery, resolves loose ends, shoots 10 under par at Inverness, ends series by page 3. Fortunately for Dresden fans, Harry is a lesser sort of magician who consults Bob whenever he has a real brain buster.

Where this story loses points, though, is in the simple fact that while the interesting mysteries, the hints at a larger picture, and the presence of a believable sort of magic, I wasn't overly convinced by Harry. This, ironically, in spite of the fact that he came across as a Normal Guy who just happened to know a great deal about magic. He was my guide throughout this story, and every so often there was something charming about him. His wit was rather flat. His observations frequently banal. Dresden was a good narrator where explanations of magic are concerned and a tolerable one everywhere else.

One gets the impression that Dresden tells the story from retrospect as his observations are from the perspective of (bear with my ingenious prose here) an observer, even in situations where he is directly involved, yet the narrative distance this provides does not allow for any methodical analysis, maybe because Dresden is narrating the story to himself as it happens. In some cases this leads to some silly hyperbolic descriptions. At one point, Dresden is approached by a man with a sword, presumably aggressively. Dresden's description of the sword, which no doubt would have commanded most of my attention as well in a similar situation, was that it had "a blade about ten miles long". This is, understandably, a stressful situation conveyed by an obvious exaggeration, but it reads like Dresden is a total ham. Another, a few pages later, "His fist went across my jaw at approximately a million miles an hour," nearly drew an audible sigh (though he makes up for it with the end of the sentence "and I spun down to the ground like a string-cut puppet"). In most cases, I can imagine the internal dialogue narrated by Paul Blackthorne, and sometimes it passes that litmus test of plausibility. In this situation and numerous others like it, however, it didn't. Maybe Butcher struggled with a good description here and opted for brevity. Dresden comes across as someone who throws ropes with his words rather than weaving tapestries. They get you from point A to point B, but not much else. Maybe that's just another aspect of the hardboiled, plot-driven story that I don't appreciate.

Dialogues came and went without any kind of economy, though some took place under the guise of economy. At one point, Dresden speaks to a bartender of few words. Dresden makes his typical bland observations in what you might think was an attempt to start a conversation (even though the other character was described as someone who didn't talk much), to which the bartender responds with grunts. This thwarted conversation goes back and forth for a bit, not really adding anything to the story and not really serving any purpose other than to confirm what we already knew about the bartender. Dresden just isn't that interesting a speaker, so it's sometimes painful for the reader to endure it. Moreso when other characters feel the same way and want him to just move on.

I realize this is just one BIG complaint in a sea of praise, but for me, this is an important complaint. I'm a glutton for intellectual characters who think in more than just cliches. Again, maybe this is an aspect of hardboiled that must be present and allows readers to rocket through them--you know what's coming, you know it's needless description, you know you'll gain nothing from it, you skip over it, you save yourself 10 seconds of reading.

Harry Dresden is a pretty powerful wizard, a pretty decent sleuth, with a pretty interesting history and lots of connections and experiences. But the guy is pretty bland otherwise, and if I had my choice, I'd have someone else tell me his stories second-hand than let Harry tell me himself.

I recently picked up my (inherited from my father) 36-year-old copy of a 100-year old story thinking I could, based upon my enjoyment of the recent film (a film people seem to really like or really hate), blow through it in a few evenings. How wrong I was.

I really, really, really wanted to like this classic sci-fi/fantasy series starter from one of the "greats", but too many of the reservations that kept me from reading it when I was younger proved to be true. Burroughs had some outstanding ideas, but he was a product of his time, and his prose and characterization suffered for it, and that takes some of the shine off this story from a contemporary setting.

Burroughs apparently read some pulp sci-fi/fantasy early in his career and decided he could do better than that bad fiction, and he probably has, but I can't imagine how tedious a "bad" story might have been in his era.

Ignoring all the (now) ridiculous scientific premises of the time that served as the foundation for speculation that life could exist on Mars (most notably, the canals of Mars), and a life that had flourished for a long, long time, Burroughs puts together an intriguing Man Outside His World, Yet Pretty Much Still in His Element story. John Carter, manly man, is transported from one world of war to another, which suits him.

Unfortunately, the book alternately (and maybe out of necessity) reads like a travelogue of exasperating descriptions and needlessly detailed dialogue. For the better part of the story, there's not much impetus driving it forward, no mission for Carter other than to look about, succumb to a murderous impulse (which he, in a fit of blinding hypocrisy, impugns in the Thark character, though he justifies it as an exhibition of human compassion--even though this is equally a mark of his societal norms as is the cruelty of the Tharks), and record what is happening around him.

Burroughs creates some fascinating creature characters, even though their nature seems to be informed by misconceptions about the mindless savagery of Native Americans and impeccable nobility of European Americans (the former are encountered once and their behavior is mimicked by Martian Thark culture). In some of these characters he boldly paints a few oddnesses, such as a compassionate Thark, which could not have entirely been a mechanism to create a guide since Deja Thoris was clearly as familiar with the world as oddball Thark, Sola. Apart from this, characters are pretty thin.

Carter himself is a man's man's man. He alternates between exasperatingly gentlemanly and abruptly violent, which makes him, from a contemporary point of view anyway, alternatively tedious and quasi-heroish-but-ultimately-too-frequently-impulsive-to-be-considered-a-safely-reasoning-guy.

The story is pretty short, clocking in on my father's 1976 printing at 159 pages, but good heavens it could have been 50 pages shorter on account of ditching some swoony flirting between man's man's man, John Carter, and petulant pay-attention-to-me-without-paying-attention-to-me princess, Deja Thoris, and snooze-inducing formal dialogue that attempts to pack as many words into a single thought as possible.

I did not hate this story, but I did find it frequently tiresome as it clung to the thriftless holdovers of storytelling from the century before (e.g., why use 3 words when you can use 30?), an indulgent style of writing that when used now seems like an attempt by the writer to prove their own verbosity at the expense of the story. Any author who wrote in this fashion would be seen as trying to deliberately alienate themselves from their readers. Writers have since become much more clever in their storytelling (popular writers, who don't understand that you can sometimes cut too much, are another matter).

This story gets points for its classic nature, its imagination, but loses some for its frequent blandness, stereotypical characters, and ship-at-anchor pacing. To Burroughs credit, it seemed clear he had the end in sight from the get-go, I just wish it hadn't taken so long to get there. Respect, Edgar Rice Burroughs. I love the concept, not so much the execution. Maybe the next few will be better.
_____

It behooves me to mention the recent film, (which, to my surprise, I enjoyed a great deal) released on roughly the centennial anniversary of story's 1912 publication. I can say without hesitation that the film improves upon the story in almost every way, largely by cutting out the chaff, providing impetus for the story, removing antiquated mindsets, fleshing out characters (most notably, Thoris is a scientist and accomplished warrior in addition to being a strong-minded and patriotic princess), injecting a bit of humor, and putting greater emphasis on Carter's superhuman characteristics, to the amusement of viewers.

As one with high aspirations for the human race, in spite of its frequently embarrassing stumbles (wars, politics, persistent absence of flying cars, etc.), the premise and final revelation of this tale saddened me somewhat. The Overlords come to Earth, halting millennia of strife and suffering amongst humanity, yet at a price--essentially the end of extraterrestrial human exploration. People become peaceful, happy, and largely sedentary (two of these three points I find, understanding the often determinedly irrational, domineering, and destructive human mind, nigh impossible without some kind of pharmacological intervention), and the explorer spirit is largely quashed with the aim of a different goal for humanity.

If you're looking for rollicking sci-fi adventure, you're never going to find it with Clarke. He's a good, straightforward, but largely tension-free writer. This is not to say that his stories are not enjoyable or don't explore interesting avenues of thought, but you're probably never going to be rushing through a story to keep up with characters racing against a ticking clock. If anything, it will be to learn exactly what is going on (and maybe end up disappointed in the anticlimax... ahem... Rendezvous With Rama).

In what might be a mild spoiler, I found myself disappointed in the resolution of the tale, which ended up being nigh spiritual, and a justification of many popular pseudosciences over the years (telekinesis, ESP, clairvoyance, etc.--all of which, I feel, are slightly less bunk than UFOs, ghosts, etc.). I understood it, and I thought Clarke's explanation was successful, but I'd prefer a science fiction novel have humanity succeed without transcending humanity. With that said, I didn't deduct any stars, since that's just a personal preference. In Clarke's defense, he did provide a disclaimer at the beginning of the book which read "The beliefs expressed in this book are not those of the author." And why should you have to believe everything you write? That would be rather limiting, wouldn't it?

I did deduct a star because it was, though much less than others, a hum-drum (yet concise and effective) telling of extraterrestrial contact. Still, that's what you get with Clarke, who is ever the even-keeled pragmatist, and it's a less tedious story than some others. Clarke isn't really a writer you get excited about (Yeah! An alien spaceship entered the solar system, then just kept going, because it was just using our sun to propel it onward!), but you feel like you've broadened your mind a bit by having read him. He's a highbrow writer who manages to write probing stories without coming off as condescending or forcing his intellect down your throat by beating you over the head with his scientific knowledge or highly literate background. He writes without an overly heavy hand on subjects that could very easily bury the common reader. Perhaps that is part of Clarke's larger appeal.

Please don't interpret this story as a condemnation of Arthur C. Clarke, I feel he's a very good writer of speculative fiction, but his approach is so pragmatic and without... urgency... that he doesn't quite generate the same amount of enthusiasm in me that, say, Isaac Asimov's Foundation series might.

All in all, a good story. Go into it if you're interested in a look at how humanity may turn out for the better, or if you're up for a more grim interpretation, end.

All right, full-page Goodreads ad, you win...

At last! This review is the culmination of a long and tragic period during which I wanted to read on, but could only peel away time for it in frustrating slices. If my review is disjointed and nonsensical, I blame Time for its failure to properly encompass all my responsibilities and leave room for reading as well.

To start, I enjoyed Maree’s writing style. That’s actually a pretty big component to my enjoyment of a story. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy a variety of styles, from the sparse and speedy style of Ernest Hemingway (though I didn’t so much enjoy his stories themselves) to the more elaborate and clever meanderings of a William Shakespeare, or the atypical writing of E Annie Proulx (The Shipping News).

Alexios has a nigh-formal descriptive style and characterization to it that, in the world of writing, tends to go one of two ways: bland and tediously overwritten, in the fashion of 18th and 19th century writers (not to short change contemporary pedants who are just as tedious); deep and meaningful in detail, as in the case of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (which, oddly enough, many found overwritten—that happens when your footnotes can fill a page—but I found mesmerizing in the stories in each detail and within stories). While Alexios doesn’t quite boast the mesmerizing features of Susanna Clarke’s masterful tome, it certainly doesn’t fall into the dull world of literature from the 1700s and 1800s (sorry, Leo Tolstoy, I did love War and Peace, but not every contemporary writer was as good at making huge stories interesting—some were just huge).

The story itself is one that tells multiple, seemingly unrelated tales, while pulling the bowstring more and more taut as we approach a final revelation. Though the tales of the individuals are interesting, and hint at structural ties (each seems to involve a kind of nameless mystic identified only by their title, each distinctly mystical, yet each with a different level of connection with the ethereal) that suggest the stories are somehow related as opposed to completely arbitrary, it is the promise of the coming reveal that invariably drives a reader on. Who is Alexios? How does it tie into the theme of DEATH/NEAR-DEATH???

The answer to that question is a pretty stunning swing into the surreal and ethereal that would be shameful and rude of me to spoil for you. I will tell you that you will likely view the ending in one of two fashions: fascinating or mind-breaking.

If I were to ask myself to find a weak point in the story (I am… right now), it would be to complain that it lacks a feature it isn’t necessarily supposed to have (What!? No Laser Dragon Ships? No Sentient Air Horses? No banana-powered submarines? Expectation Fail! No stars!). What seems to be lacking for the typical reader is a hint about what the payoff might be right away. In pulp fiction books, the conclusion is often easy to spot immediately in the summary or the opening chapter, so the reader knows exactly what they’re building toward:

“Johnny Jimson, long-haired rock god and private investigator, had to be on stage for his concert in 1 hour. But someone had kidnapped his Electric Trombonist. Oh Nohs! He must find his trombonist or all his fans will be sad.”

Oftentimes an author can get away with leaving out cardinal directions if the reader is confident the author knows what they’re doing, trusting the story won’t simply meander from place to place before slumping into an arbitrary conclusion that doesn’t tie anything together. My purpose in bringing this up, oh potentially mutually concerned reader, is to indicate that isn’t the case here—there’s an obvious relationship between the characters due to the similar structure of their adventures. And there’s certainly a payoff, so don’t be put out when it’s not immediately apparent where the story is headed because no one mentions a missing Trombonist right off the bat.

If you’re looking for a story to rank highly in terms of Strictly Plot-borne Gripping Adventure, this likely isn’t for you—that’s not how this story works, necessarily. Maree does a splendid job providing anxious moments to keep the reader engaged as we build toward the conclusion. Fortunately, different stories require different grading scales, and this story ranks pretty highly on the Thoughtful-Well-Written-Tale Scale, which, as you might have guessed from the score, and me being a reasonably sensible person, is the scale I decided to use.

UNRELATED SIDE NOTE

As a completely unrelated side note that is nonetheless integral to Chance’s success as a writer, I feel compelled to point out that the author’s name, if not contrived, could hardly have been better chosen as a Catchy Author Name. In my experience, I’ve known few people with better “writing names” (the champion, of course, goes to a classmate of mine from Bowling Green: Bradley Wolfenden III). It sounds good, and no doubt looks good on the spine of a book, on which, after reading this story, I believe it has earned a place.

Let me begin with a deep and heartfelt apology: Dogget Mann has been sitting on my shelf, unread, for a long, long time. For that reason alone I am ashamed for not having told the world about it sooner. I don’t think the slightly increased knowledge of this story would have improved the world noticeably in the past few years, but perhaps exponentially as the years passed for certain. I feel a genuine sense of guilt for not adding my voice to the support of this book, author Lester Milton, and to the bright but hapless Dogget Mann himself, who seems to find himself everywhere but the right place in the right time.

Dogget’s matter-of-fact view of the world lends to some amazing insights about human behavior—it’s easy to warm to him quickly, particularly contrasted to the chilly nature of the world in which Dogget lives. Dogget loses his parents early in life, and escapes still others along the way, all the while searching not for adventure, but for an existence the content take for granted. Naturally (otherwise this would be a considerably shorter story), he is unable to find either.

Lester Milton’s storytelling is wry and breezy, and may come off as deliberately simple to appeal to younger readers, but, in the end, his story might be too smart for them. Here and there the story is dotted with poignant life lessons, drawn all the sharper by Dogget’s clarity of thought, offhandedly breaking down behavioral problems, and solutions, in the space of a paragraph addressed to the family members he is escaping. His conclusions about the behavior of those around him are simple, straightforward, plain, and yet these easy solutions to glaring character flaws had, to the instant of Dogget’s analysis, escaped them. Viewing the world through the unclouded lens of a child’s eyes is always fascinating, and opens our own to the ease with which we ought to be able to rectify our interpersonal ills, which makes our inability to correct them even more profound and perplexing as individuals and observers.

The biggest tragedy, or at least a close second compared to the adventuresome events in the life of a boy who is simply looking for stability, is that this book has been overlooked for so long. Again, because of my neglect, I feel partially to blame for this. Dogget’s story is an amazing and striking one that deserves your attention, but, like the boy himself, has nevertheless remained lost despite all his efforts.

I'm sorry, Lester, that I haven't written this sooner--I'm also sorry that the rating system ran out of stars.

A reader, like the main character, Chiyu (whose name I pronounce in my head like the latter portion of an explosive sneeze), is likely to begin this story a bit disoriented. Here we have a perfectly normal woman in her night clothes inexplicably surrounded by the gristle and blood of broken bodies, soldiers in tunics hacking medievally at citizens, and two invincible warriors resisting them.

Holy beans! (or something equally, if not more profane) you think to yourself. Where on God’s green Earth are we? How do I return to whence I came? Nevermind that. Let’s get out of here.

Chiyo obediently follows this same train of thought, linking up with fleeing citizens, the two warriors guiding them to safety. Pretty standard stuff that proceeds about as much as you might expect. Then, after all of their efforts, the two epic heroes do something shocking (a euphamism that with any more detail would be considered a spoiler) and at the same time we learn about a fairly striking prophecy. At this point the story takes off.

From this point on I enjoyed this story. Not that I didn’t enjoy the story leading up to this unexpected turn of events and important reveal, but this is the point where the tale entered fabled New Territory, piquing my interest as it had not before. Suffice to say, characters we anticipated might be archetypal and bland were abruptly not so. I’ll spare readers any further detail outside of this small tidbit: the title fits, as you might expect.

As an added bonus, I enjoyed the tidbits of scripture, or what have you, provided at the outset of each chapter, giving us an insight toward a prevailing religion and shaping the ensuing story. As a fan of Watership Down and The Shipping News, this can be a remarkably effective device if done well, and if the author is either studious enough to locate an appropriate quote, or clever enough to invent one of their own. Forsythe gets the nod on the latter (assuming the religious text she quotes doesn’t actually exist).

All in all, an excellent story that, once I crested that first mount of “where am I and what exactly is happening here and… oh! That was unexpected!” I cruised along to the wholly satisfying conclusion.

Why, oh why deduct a star, then? The missing star lends entirely to preference. There are several different styles of writing, and I tend to prefer tight narratives, where this story tended to offer descriptions that bordered on excessive, such as using two sentences to describe something where one might suffice. (e.g., “She couldn’t breathe. Her breath came in sharp uncontrollable gasps.” “…panicking and uncertain of what to do…”) That said, to each their own, and Forsythe gets full marks for all but the Personal Preference category, which is completely subjective, but something that weighs heavily in my opinion of a story’s enjoyability.

This isn’t a romp, or a happytime joystory full of girlish frolicking and adventure, and I think that is the story’s biggest strength. A good story is a convention turned on its head, and this story demonstrates some skillful acrobatics.

Thomson’s novel is rich in detail that fills the story with a sense of historical authenticity without falling into the sci-fi trap of impractical “wouldn’t this be cool” and smacks of William Gibson’s classic, Neuromancer. In that same respect there is a very real danger of becoming hopelessly lost in the foreignness of a world so far removed from our own, the reader is enfiladed by foreign terminology with roots just firm enough to get a grasp on them without being completely lost, but Thomson preserves a few human foibles that allow us to anchor ourselves while we familiarize ourselves with the rest of the universe. For the curious and persistent, like a good sci-fi reader, you’ll settle in.

Mixed into the tale are a few unobtrusive observations about smoking and a book-long theme of the class system of the future, of which the main character, named with tongue in cheek, Smith, and the self- and surrounding-destructive nature of an obsessively hedonistic and predictably escapist human race controlled by megabusinesses.

The Process Server is decidedly anti-big business, or at the very least, the main character is, rightly laying blame for the slow environmental destruction of Earth at the feet of the Big-6 corporations and capitalism-at-all-costs that supplanted government—the culmination of a capitalist’s wet dream.

Apart from the jarring experience of acclimating oneself to a new reality, to which sci-fi readers learn to welcome that moment of epiphany when the new environment begins to click comfortably, the story breezed along smoothly and kept me interested once I understood (fairly early on) what Bob Smith, the process server, intended to do.

This is a story of discovery, about where humanity finds itself in the future, and is fascinating in learning how things shake out. It is a universe in which conservative, capitalist, and hawkish ideology wins out, for the most part, and depending on your perspective this may seem a utopian or dystopian outcome. From the point-of-view of the main character, a disrespected member of the lower caste who assesses the state of things with a tone of grim resignation, it’s clearly the latter, and like most folk in his situation in the present and the past, his goal is not to try and change the world to suit him better, but to get by in it as best he can.

Thomson has created a fascinating (or forbidding) future, populated it with a few gritty, Sisyphus-like characters with varying levels of addiction to alternate-reality escapism, whose primary goal is to survive, not unlike the crew of Serenity. The dialogue is sharp, the descriptions snappy, the conclusions sensible, and the story wholly engaging. It isn’t often that I enter a world that has not been heavily critiqued and seasoned for a few decades, but with those reservations in mind, this is a world I leave that was well worth the time to get to know before everyone else had a chance to tell me to check it out.

Trevor Cloud is a reclusive genius who has invented a machine that can go anywhere, endure any environment, and is powered by any energy expended around or upon it. His focus on the development of his extraordinary machine, an egg-shaped contraption he calls The Cloud, has left him only dimly aware of the fact that the clouds of Earth are curiously in absentia. It isn’t long, however, before Trevor, and his less reclusive brother, Russell, learn the nefarious source of the missing clouds—an extra-terrestrial agent that is siphoning away Earth’s vapor for reasons unknown.

Brother Russell Cloud could not be more different from his brilliant sibling: athletic, outgoing, upbeat, philosophical, and perhaps somewhat prescient. Nevertheless, the two brothers confide and trust in one another completely.

The story meanders a bit as Trevor and Russell explore the fascinating capabilities of the Cloud, here and there unveiling some new (but invariably important) function, but this is mere winding of the crank before the brothers come into contact with the aliens. Soon circumstances require them to deal with the threat. Indeed, after witnessing the technological capabilities of the visitors’ machines, and the paltry attempts humanity makes to thwart them, Trevor and Russell realize they and their machine may be the only thing that can stop the aliens.

James Field has created a fascinating exploratory device in the Cloud and novice adventurers, the Cloud brothers. Who wouldn’t want to test the capabilities of a nigh self-sustaining machine that could go anywhere and guarantee the safety of its inhabitants? Best of all, improbable as it may seem, Trevor describes the function of his machine and its many failsafes with a scientific literacy and tone that makes the device seem entirely probable.

To my surprise, despite the variety of experiences and entities we encounter on our journey with the Cloud brothers, the most interesting of all were the inanimate characters: the Cloud ship itself, seemingly invincible, infinitely adaptable, and all but unstoppable, and a gadget that identifies itself as Aidme. Part of the fun in reading this story is learning how Trevor will tweak his ship with a few hours of coding to navigate the latest challenge.

This is the maiden voyage of the Cloud and the Cloud brothers, and their first adventure was a doozy. It might be difficult to top, but I hope it isn’t their last.

Before a proper summation can be given, one first has to understand the Why of The Mismeasure of Man. The Why being hundreds of years of conservative, white-folk-do-well-because-they're-smartest ideology supported by "science", and the more recent belief in the existence of an inherited IQ number by which all humans can be ranked, culminating in The Bell Curve, by Herrnstein and Murray (1994). It is a book that asserts poor people are, in short, intellectually inferior to the non-poor, and thus can never rise above their status (barring some fluke) to achieve the success that wealthier people enjoy.

The book was roundly criticized as sloppy, statistically inaccurate, and pandering to a conservative audience that wanted to believe the poor were not worth the money spent on them, with Gould as one of its loudest critics.

In sum, Gould's book is a admonishment of The Bell Curve and the willingness of social scientists to shape their findings to fit their narrative over the past centuries of anthropological research. In essence, they found what they set out to find (support for white, Europeans being more intelligent than others), in spite of clear evidence to the contrary--thus the title of the book. He debunks the methodologies and findings of ideas such as: mental capacity is determined by cranial volume, and how those who used these methods tried to fit their beliefs to their findings and preserve the idea that Wealthy White People have earned their status because they are more intelligent (this became a problem when some African skulls, and even some female skulls *gasp!*, had greater volume than their caucasian counterparts), as well as the notion of a measurable IQ. For those with a mathematical bent, the latter portion of the book explains the error of Herrnstein and Murray's calculations, and the continuing trend of partiality toward specific data that proved their hypothesis while ignoring data that might disprove it.

The latter part of this trend is what Gould finds disheartening and enraging at the same time. It is symptomatic of Bad Science. That being when scientists find an abundance of evidence that points in a different direction from what they expected, yet cling to their preconceived expectations anyway, and search for a way to manipulate their data to confirm the existing bias. Imagine if Newton had at first insisted his laws of motion were based upon the energy inherent in apples, and never allowed his findings to alter his opinion. In the far future these notions of gender- and race-based intellectuality will be long behind us and we will look back in incredulity. But if not for Gould, this book, and others like him, we might never take those steps forward.

If you take anything from the book, or at least the idea of the book if you choose not to read it in its entirety, it should be 1) always approach an idea with some degree of skepticism, and 2) consider the possibility of an agenda behind a proposal--even when offered by something so noble and ideal as the scientific community.

Rachael's tales are a vivid and resonating romp through the places we know best, smallish towns and the giant hopes of the big-hearted, but underappreciated, highlighting the quietly magical and miraculous things we would otherwise have missed, and each tale, bittersweet or triumphant, resounds with a universal trueness. Passing up this compilation would be akin to a nestling accepting the world as just a dull ring of twigs, never venturing outward, never learning how to fly.

This work gets all its stars simply for providing me with insight on what was purportedly excised from the Bible during the assembly process over the course of several ecumenical councils in the early centuries CE. Whether these books were not included because they are fallacious or because they didn't fit the narrative the early church sought likely depends on the depth of your belief.

Most interesting and horrifying of the stories in this compilation was the depiction of Child Jesus as a violent toddler vested with the powers of life and death that he wielded as recklessly and carelessly as one might expect from a child of that age who has been told he is the son of God: arrogant, pitiless, selfish, and shockingly devoid of any value for life considering his destiny. Everyone is rightly terrified of him, and it's no surprise early church leaders decided to remove this episode of his existence. Who would believe God was just and loving to send down his only son to Earth and have that child turn out to be a nightmarish and unstoppable warlock?


If you never read another thing about Jesus, this is what you would expect him to become by age 30.

Much of the other material was less noteworthy and probably removed because it didn't fit well with the narrative or because it was so steeped in symbolism as to be impenetrably ponderous--made moreso because the narrator not only pointed out the symbols, but went on to explain them, which is rather indicative of a poor symbol. The best example of this would be the vast allegory in which a castle is constructed during an apostolic vision supplanted by Revelations in the New Testament, and absolutely everything has some meaning, from the different materials bricks are made of to the color of the workers' clothing. In a word: exhausting.


"Every element in this image means something. We'll start at the top left and work our way to the bottom right."
--The Apocryphal Bible

This is by no means an omnibus of all the works the various councils decided not to include, but it is a good collection, and it includes excerpts that denote exactly why these stories were not included as well as approximate dates of authorship and guesses at authors as well.