Book review: With a Strange Device

Eric Frank Russell, who I've very vaguely heard of (aah: Wasp). The story starts in a top-secret govt research lab, with a loving description of its many levels of security, and then a fade-out to "but there was a flaw...". Switch to: someone resigning, unexpectedly. Our Hero, discussing this and others who have left recently. And then... Our Hero overhears two worker-types talking, and his repressed memories of killing Arline twenty years ago are triggered. Oh noes, he must run! But he doesn't, quite. In the end (skipping over some tolerably but not very interestingly described detective-y stuff) it turns out that evil Foreigners have devised a machine able to imprint memories, and they have been doing this to knock out govt scientists, thereby crippling the national effort.

Remind you of anything? Yes: The IPCRESS file. Which is 1962. This one is 1964. TIF is also far better written and in all respects superior.

Minor: for most of the book the country it is set in (UK or US) is unclear. Gradually it becomes the US. But it would have been nice and a nod to IPCRESS's unnamed protagonist for it to have remained unclear.

Book review: Mickey 7

This is OK; indeed, better than the modern average. Reasonably well written, decent starting idea and plot, but a bit pedestrian. This review says some other things, some of which I agree with.

The basic idea is that people can be replicated. To get round the obvious problem - rich people would use this to copy themselves - takes a bit of not terribly plausible gymnastics, and we're left with social taboos against replication, so that only low-level Expendable folk are replicated, to do dirty jobs that will kill them. For no obvious reason Our Hero is left alive between jobs - on a resource-poor colony with food in short supply why would you do that?

Due to errors, he gets re-instantiated while still alive. No-one notices, which is weird because they all have implants. Never mind. There's then some rather desultory attempts at philosophy - are they the same person? Is #7 the same as #6 the same as... but there is no solution, of course (see some prior discussion in Derek Parfit, Ex-Philosopher). We see all this from the perspective of #7, whose relations with #8 are strained (they're both on the same, short, food ration; and short of space too) but there's no hint they feel any bond to each other. In the end (spoiler) #8 dies and #7 doesn't give a toss.

The "enemy", in true Forever War style, turns out to be a hive entity which gives not a toss about the loss of individuals, and so doesn't understand the human's worry about the death of some of its individuals. Our Hero somehow can talk to them, and so ends up as a sort-of ambassador, which resolves his status. Until the inevitable sequel, obvs.

Our Hero suffers at the hands of The Boss, sometimes being literally killed. In the story, of course, we just sympathise. But if this was reality, we'd wonder if there shouldn't be some kind of checks and balances. A frontier colony needs stern discipline, obvs; but nonetheless you'd expect some constraints on power. Although that would get in the way of the story.

Food is in short supply, because their agriculture is a bit shonky. But they have a machine that can transform goo into humans. Why not transform goo into food? That would take energy, obvs, but as we discover towards the end, they have available starship-engine amounts of energy, so that's no excuse.

An oddity, which is forced upon the book by what-the-book-is-about, is that in the end we do indeed discover that the "Creepers" are sentient. And what do our characters do with this info? Nothing, other than persuade them not to attack, and to split territory. Do they converse, exchange ideas, world-views? Good grief no this isn't even thought of. FFS.

Book review: The Forge of God

Greg Bear again. Against my better judgement I bought this from Oxfam on Saturday, and read it quite quickly, but with the expected mounting frustration.

Amusing point: about 2/3 of the way through, the science journo / scifi author re-reads one of his old books, skimming through the makeweight character-building stuff he was obliged to put in, in order to get to the ideas.

The plot: Europa disappears, and then aliens arrive in America to say "I'm sorry there is bad news" and in Australia to say "we're here to help". Investigating this takes up half or more of the book. Eventually it turns out that these are decoys; that the Earth will be destroyed, by special planet-destroying aliens (distinct shades of Across the Sea of Suns), by a combo of a delayed neutronium - anti-neutronium collision in Earth's core, and a pile of fusion bombs along the mid-atlantic ridge. Meanwhile, helpful aliens turn up and rescue what they can, amidst some poorly-described war-in-the-asteroid-belt between the nice and nasty aliens.

None of this really makes any sense, and feels like multiple ideas got mashed together unfinished.

The initial crashed spacecraft, with the "I'm sorry" alien, is nicely done. The problem is that its a complete waste of time, and goes nowhere. The novel writes it off as a decoy, designed to distract us from forming an effective response; this makes no sense, as we could have no possible response to 100 million tons of neutronium / anti-neutronium. Which, also, feels like massive overkill. And there's no reason why it would be delayed. And that's without the second kill mechanism, whereby ocean water is being split into H and O, and the H being taken for H-bombs, to an extent that the atmospheric O2 level is seen to rise. Which is also massive overkill. Also the first two alien spacehips are found on Earth, having apparently just materialised there inside fake geological features, which makes no sense either: if they were decoys, they would have been seen landing, as spaceships. Other than invoking supa-speshial-tech, none of these things get any kind of how-did-they-do-it explanation.

So much for that. But the human responses don't make sense either. The first crashed space ship is barely examined. One bloke climbs up a tunnel and has a brief look around. That's it. They don't attempt to unbury it from the cinder cone it was found in, or investigate its structure in any way. Perhaps this is because the author knows it is just a fake decoy, and so can't be bothered to write it; or perhaps he has no idea what the spaceship should look like.

There's a sub-plot in which the POTUS goes a bit rogue with religious mania, but all that turns out to be totally irrelevant as the human response doesn't matter a fig, since the destroying aliens are so supa-powerful.

Oh, and Europa: was broken up by the nice aliens, so they could (a) refuel and (b) send 100-km-size chunks off to impact Mars and Venus, thus starting the terraforming process. But... I doubt that would appear as Europa disappearing suddenly; it would more naturally look like... Europa being broken up. My suspicion is that the book started with the Europa disappearing idea, he kept writing hoping to fit it in somewhere, and eventually couldn't.  Also there's not a word about the orbits of the other moons of Jupiter being minutely examined for gravitational influences of Europa fragments, which would be the obvious thing to do.

Meanwhile... the book takes the nice aliens at their word as rescuing fragments of Earth (cue now-rather-amusing stacks of CDs representing the Library of Congress; see-also October the First is Too Late). But the nice aliens' explanation that, very regrettably, they were just a little bit behind the nasty aliens is not very plausible, coincidence-wise. A more parsimonious explanation is only one set of aliens, who wish to destroy Earth and save a bit of it.

The nice aliens have a Law (with a capital letter, so you aren't allowed to question it) that aliens who destroy other alien's planets must be destroyed themselves, even if they've subsequently seen the error of their ways. This seems so desperately heavy handed that I can't wait not to read part two.

Book review: the Incandescent Ones

By Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle. Who have form; I liked Fifth Planet, though you may struggle to deduce that from my review. And I fondly recall The Black Cloud from my childhood. 

However this one is weird, and not in a good way. Perhaps reading the plot on Wiki will give you some idea of why. Goodreads doesn't like it, but has few reviews, which is also telling. It is also more novella than novel.

It is set (like 5P!) in the distant future, whose social mores and political context are, unsurprisingly, exactly those that F+G grew up with. It is weirdly obsessed with skiing, as though they've just started watching Ski Sunday or summat.

Briefly: Our Hero has been recruited to Moscow by shadowy presumed intelligence services to do something on a given trigger; that trigger occurs, as does a succession of following events. That Our Hero, a Westerner in a Cold War Moscow / Soviet Union, gets to move around so freely seems odd. He meets up with his long-presumed-dead father, but is in no way surprised, who is carrying a super-battery of alien tech, which they use to melt water for tea (faint shades of The Left Hand of Darkness). They cross a border, some skiing happens, he has brushes with intelligence, is sent off into space on a ship the book can't be bothered to describe to be at a conference on Mars, changes ship to go to Jupiter instead, arrives at an empty space station, is told he is really a robot and surfs off into Jupiter to enter a glowing ball of light (rather more than just shades of 2001).

If that plot sounds disconnected, it is: the book feels like it is missing bits. For example, on leaving Earth he is heading for Mars to take an unspecified intelligence role at an Earth-Aliens conference. For no obvious reason this plan gets cancelled (actually even that implies too much: the plan is never cancelled, its just that a new thread takes its place) and he is dragged off to Jupiter instead.

The sudden assertion that Our Hero is a robot is another: he accepts it with no thought, yet he is at the very least a biological robot: he has grown from childhood to adulthood; he eats, drinks, pisses, shits, bruises and fucks. Nor does it have any particular consequences. Mind you, before that he thought he was an Alien, and Outlander, and yet his biology differed in no visible way from human.

Hard Sci-Fi books are often written around a core of a genuine idea: Fifth Planet, of the idea that solar systems move and could intersect. Here, the skiiing (surfing?) down Jupiter's magnetic field feels like the original core, but unfortunately there's nothing built "on top of that"; instead it just trails into that at the end.

Book Review: Revolt in 2100

Revolt in 2100 is a charmingly jejune work, at least stylistically, I can't be bothered to check if it is so chronologically. Wiki has an article.

To be fair, the plot itself is decent enough and fairly well told in traditional RAH style, considerably better than what one might get from a number of others.

It can be read as one of his "political" works I suppose; in it we discover that theocracy is bad, who could possibly have guessed. Our Young Naive Hero is slowly disabused of his naivity by both experience and his Hard Bitten Room Mate; he joins the rebellion, which seems implausibly well-organised as well-resourced, and which eventually suceeds. The End.

There are two mini-novellas afterwards: Coventry, in which a Naive Young NotReallyAHero discovers that without the Civil Sword, no compacts and hence no civil society is possible, who could possibly have guessed, certainly not the author of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, oops. And The Misfit, which records RAH's rather tedious fascination with instantaneous calculator type folk.

Refs

* Scifi and Fantasy reviews

Bad beekeeping, autumn 2023

A little late, but I've been away, I decide to go and wish the girls a happy over-winter.

Alas - for my ease and comfort, but happily for my honey supply - it turns out that they have had a good summer. All five supers are full. Or so I assume, I only went through the top three. I decide to compromise, and leave them the bottom three, and take the top two off. I'll return them in a few days, or next weekend, which will leave them stores for the winter and space for the spring. A closer view of the hive-after, with only the three supers on it.

And so the two full supers - in N's wheelbarrow, thankfully for the state of my back - go to the car, and back home, for processing.

There I discover that the frames are a little laden with rape residue, probably a hangover from the spring recolte, or even the year before. I compromise, and after spinning off both, melt down one of them. Or actually, half of one of them. How much can I actually be bothered to fix up?

 

Update: in the end I ony melted down about four frames. It is very messy and I didn't really have time for more. That left other frames outside, which neighbouring bees inevitably found. And so in the end I ended up with nines tolerable frames I could put back, so I ended up with four supers on the hive, one currently empty. And I discarded some frames I decided to call unsalvegeable. So I need to order some more frames, since breaking down the old ones is more trouble than its worth, when they get old enough; and they break.

Refs

* Bad beekeeping, spring 2023.

Book review: Pride and Prejudice; Sense and Sensibility; Mansfield Park

By Jane Austen. Classics, as you're doubtless aware. In the unlikely event of your being unfamiliar with the Austen oeuvre, see Wiki for P+P; S+S; MP. I enjoyed reading them, which is why I read all three². They are well written, athough in inevitably somewhat dated form, but occasionally charmingly so in the spelling: people for example do not choose, they chuse.

To an extent the books blur together in my mind: young ladies - genteel young ladies, of course - floating in society with thoughts of matrimony to suitable - and of course suitably moneyed - men are the subject of all of them.

Wiki calls P+P a novel of manners and this seems fair of all; whilst one can still see that many of the judgements would still be valid today, for example of Mr Crawford's character in MP, nonetheless the suffusion of bowing to social convention is far stronger that could be entertained now.

In all the books a central driving force is money, or estate, in the sense of marrying for it, this being the only way that a poor but genteel person could hope to become rich or even well off. There is a delightful fragment in one of PoB's where Mrs Williams worship of fortune is excused, on the grounds that neither she nor any of her friends would be able to earn even pin-money from their own talents. And one feels that none of the central characters in Austen ever display much in the way of skills that could ever earn them anything¹. Perhaps even in this theme there is a lot of excuse: her real theme is people's emotions and characters and development under stress; impending marriage is her chosen stress; and estate merely drives the plot conveniently. What stratum of society are these people? I find it hard to know. By their houses ye shall know them? In which case they are near the top, in that they occupy the largest of houses, at least in their neighbourhoods. And so I think I do not know any people like them today, and so perhaps I don't know whether marriage-for-money still applies, in today's analogues.

As well as stories the books are intended to be, and are, instrunctional, moral. We learn what behaviour will lead to ultimate rather than short term happiness. We see flashy fashionable characters reproved by steady and more sensible ones; even excessive sensibility is criticised. Good sense, sound judgement, quiet reflection, continence in speech are all praised.

On the relativity of morality

A question that could be asked is, "how much is Austen arguing for morality, in the sense of person's being guided by the one known to a given society, as against arguing for one particular morality - the one she herself knew?" Phrased like that the question doesn't really work because I doubt she ever considered it, being so sure that the one she knew was the only possible one; but phrased as "as illuminated by the stories she tells" it would make sense.

I think I could make a case for her being in favour of the former. Her principle desire seems to be family and sociable stability, and reputation, and decourous and honourable behaviour, all of which are satisfied by obedience to whatever code of morality is currently present.

Obviously, the plot devices would have to be different: our own code can hardly conceive that putting on a play might be immoral.

Refs

* Book review: Ancillary Sword.

Notes

1. To be fair, the lawyer in S+S is sympathetically described; Austen herself feels no need to look down upon him.

2. As well as them being available on Gutneberg for free for Kindle, of course.

Book review: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Read Wiki or Goodreads if you will; you'll get what you expect, I expect.

As a space-opera type story it's good: poor oppressed ex-convicts revolt against evil bureaucratic oppressors to form the Free State of Luna, with the aid of a sentient computer. And as usual for RAH, there's the political philosophy: in this case, anarcho-capitalism (not Libertarianism, I think). He doesn't make any attempt to indicate why A-C is a good idea here, whereas limited-franchise democracy was a good idea in Starship Troopers. And by the end of the story we have a Congress elected by univeral suffrage with law making power, so I'm not really sure there's a lot of consistency in his thoughts.

The expounding-of-ideas is too irritatingly didactic, more Glory Road than ST. The vision of "law" that he presents us with, as being of the choose-your-own-judge sort, doesn't seem entirely plausible; and the narrator's insistence that there are no laws, just customs, is dishonest. We're presented with one example of law in action, where the right answer is achieved, but that does not convince.

I'm not sure why he felt the need to kill off the computer in the end; perhaps because it would have been left all to obviously in charge otherwise?