Not the Worst Possible Thing, But Close.

I've done JG Ballard a disservice.

2006-12-05T02:17:00.000Z

The concepts of Empire of the Sun and Crash did nothing for me, so I didn't explore his work for ages, but a while ago a friend of mine gave me Myths of the Near Future and I've just finished reading The Disaster Area. Which of his other short story collections are good, and which of his novels should I read?

Finally gave up on The Once and Future King by TH White.

2006-12-02T16:17:00.000Z

The Ill-Made Knight, being a study of Lancelot and Guinevere's relationship, is far and away better than the other four books in the sequence - The Sword In the Stone, The Witch In the Wood and The Book of Merlyn contain entirely too much preaching from Merlin, and the political references to Nazism and Communism in The Candle In the Wind are similarly heavy-handed. I still don't understand why, when given a myth-cycle with so much scope for allegory and allusion, that White continually felt the need to spell out his message through monologues. To be fair, his ideas about peace were needed at the time, but what was timely and important in the late 1930s is old hat these days. (Yes, we all know war isn't honourable or good, and we all know that the Nazis were bad.)

Also, his anti-Gaelic racism leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

DHL did it again.

2006-11-19T02:34:00.000Z

This time at my house - they flopped a card through the door which was completely blank except for the date and time of their visit and the package number. No indication whether it was the first, second or third visit (and thus what to do next), despite the card clearly being designed to give that sort of information, and no name for the intended recipient.

I used the tracking number to work out that the package came from Leeds and, yes, that was the third visit so whoever it belongs to has a week to go down to the depot at Blackbird Leys with proof of ID to get the package. Shame they didn't specify who the package was for.

Whoever they have working in Oxford, they're paying them too much.

Exterminator! by William S. Burroughs.

2006-11-19T01:43:00.000Z

Nobody can seem to decide if this one is a novel or a short story collection. It certainly reads like the latter, but there's enough common themes and characters and strands that it could be the former, though you can say that about almost everything he wrote from The Naked Lunch onwards. There's less gay sex and heroin in this one than The Naked Lunch and more criticism of Scientology and accounts of his experiences at the 1968 Democratic Convention (but pretty much every writer in the 1960s was there). Also, Dutch Schultz's last words crop up. Robert Anton Wilson seemed to rip off a lot of this in the Illuminatus trilogy, so I suspect he read it while writing that.

I listened to Wolfmangler's latest album while reading this and it was a really good accompaniment.

Gene Wolfe, Pandora by Holly Hollander

2006-11-17T20:56:00.000Z

Gene Wolfe must have occasional urges to branch out into the young adult market - he seemed to be trying it with The Devil In a Forest, and he tried it again with this one. It's also the most straightforward book of his I've read (not counting Operation Ares), in that it is a mystery story with no supernatural elements (although there's an undercurrent of classical myth, because Wolfe cannot resist infusing every novel he writes with classical myth). And lastly, it seems to be the first book in a prospective series, and I'm kind of disappointed there was never enough interest in this one to make sequels.

Victor Dunstan, The Invisible Hand

2006-11-14T01:36:00.000Z

Victor Dunstan - author of Did the Virgin Mary Live and Die in England? - is not a conventional Christian. He refers to God as the "great universal spirit" and believes that the Biblical prophets were telepaths who could talk to God through their mind powers. In The Invisible Hand he presents his own version of the end of the world (due to begin in 1992), a deliciously cracked alternative to the Hal Lindsey version.

Some highlights:

Dunstan believes in the British Israelism theory - the idea that the Anglo-Saxon, British and Celtic peoples are the lost tribes of Israel. At first sight he does not appear to be an anti-semite: he is very much on the side of the Jewish people, and believe that together the Anglo-Saxon and Jewish peoples can bring peace and prosperity to the world. (The British Israel theory did give birth to the anti-semitic Christian Identity movement in the states, however.)
Dunstan, meanwhile, believes that the Anglo-Saxon people - having descended from Joseph, Jacob's favourite son - are the "chosen people", and therefore are pre-eminent amongst the Israelites. As such, they will rule the world after Armageddon and the Jews will have a secondary (though still exalted) role.
As such, he thinks that the USA and the Scandanavian countries should join the British Commonwealth to become a kind of Anglo-Saxon Federation, to accomplish the manifest destiny of all those who have "sprung from the Anglo-Saxon, British, and Celtic stocks". (One wonders what the place of non-Anglo-Saxons in this Federation would be.) By the time that Armageddon happens, this Federation will be recognised as representing the lost tribes, and will unify as a single political unit with Israel, and the King of this magnificent nation will be Jesus Christ returned.
He also asserts that the Druids were Christians, that Jesus was a Druid, and that the Druids worshipped Jesus centuries before he was even born.
Interestingly - unlike every other end of the world writer I've read - Dunstan never mentions Jesus's resurrection (although he makes a lot of the Second Coming) and never talks about spiritual salvation. This would suggest that he thinks that there's no point writing about how to be "saved", and that the resurrection is irrelevant; as such, it implies to me that he believes that the New Jerusalem will be devoted entirely to Anglo-Saxons and Jews, regardless of their actual beliefs and deeds, and that salvation is more a matter of having the right blood than doing the right thing or beieving in the right Jesus.
"Adolf Hitler, Mussolini, Marx and Stalin were all socialists - what else did they have in common?" (The answer, apparently, is that they were all Satanists.)
At the beginning of Genesis, Moses not only propounded the theory of evolution - with greater accuracy than Darwin - he also explained how the Earth formed!
Victor Dunstan does not understand how the AD/BC dating system works. He will occasionally show amazement that, say, the Prophet Daniel in 539 BC predicted something that would happen in 604 BC.
Victor Dunstan does not understand linguistics. He presents as evidence that David predicted the sexual depravity of the Emperor Tiberius the fact that both David (in the Bible passage that supposedly predicts Tiberius) and Suetonius (writing his history of the Roman Emperors after the fact) used the word "vile" to describe Tiberius - except both individuals were writing in different languages with entirely different origins...
Interestingly, he's a post-Tribulationist: he believes that the prophecies of the Tribulation were fulfilled by the Roman sack of Jerusalem. This is in stark contrast to most end-of-the-world kooks.
Meanwhile, Islamists will re-establish the Caliphate (ruling it from Baghdad) and even make headway into France. Before Armageddon, however, this bloc will turn Communist and side with the USSR. The Islamic Empire will be the Beast 666 - but the Satanic power controlling the beast will be Communism. Therefore, Karl Marx was the AntiChrist.
He asserts that the battle of Armageddon will be fought in Israel, between the Anglo-Saxon Federation and Israel on one side, and the USSR, Ethiopia, Libya, Iran and their allies on the other, and that the USSR would be defeated in it. For some reason, this won't trigger nuclear war, because... erm... well, he doesn't explain that part very well.
"The Marxist Socialist will always be prepared to describe any police action designed to protect the innocent as being `Gestapo tactics', whereupon there is a `Public Enquiry' and some old dodderer, having swallowed the bait, shackles the police and brings the day of revolution a stage nearer." In other words, Victor Dunstan supports a brutally strong police force with no oversight whatsoever. Dunstan also has contempt for the idea of civil rights, and generally supports the laws of the Old Testament, both in the economic and criminal spheres; he can be best described as a kind of theocratic Anglo-supremacist socialist.
Socialists control the media and the education system in Britain, apparently.
Hitler was a follower of Gurdjieff, having been a disciple of the Order of the Green Dragon (along with Rasputin).
The Whore of Babylon is the world economic system, which will collapse before Armageddon.

Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

2006-11-09T11:31:00.000Z

I've just finished reading this one - Parts one and three were riveting, but part 2 dragged a little and part 4 focused slightly too much on political questions and social issues which have moved on a lot since the 1860s. I'm left wondering what we're meant to make of the protagonist's fate - I don't know whether Dostoyevsky, in pointing out that there's no place for a genuinely Christian man in Russian society, is condemning Russian society as being anti-Christian or Christian morality as being unrealistic and unworkable.

Lots of bus drivers are perfectly lovely people.

2006-11-09T11:25:00.000Z

Yesterday, however, I had a bad experience with an Oxford Bus Company driver.

I should have known that the guy was trouble when he got onto the bus at the beginning of his shift, relieving the previous driver. I and a bunch of other people were queueing to get on the bus, and yet the scowling, piggish creature before us did not seem aware of this fact. Slowly and leisurely did he fumble away, punching his ID number into their little electronic companion (a process he seemed to take longer than usual on) and idly pouring out baggies of change into the relevant receptacles. Eventually, he beckoned us onto the bus, at which point I put my pass into the scanner.

Which promptly ate it.

I pointed this out to the guy, and he immediately blamed me for having a damaged card (it wasn't damaged at all). Never once apologising in the ensuing exchange for the temperamental nature of the pass scanners on Oxford's bus system, he eventually told me I needed to give him my name and address and the pass would be sent back to me. I had no pen, he had no pen, I had to rely on a kind traffic warden lending me his pen.

I went to the back of the bus and sat down and thought that was the end of the matter. In fact, when we drove off the driver took the time to shout across the bus that another lady had had no problem scanning her pass, so the problem was with my card. (Never mind that the machines will accept a card one minute, reject it the next, and then accept it again ten seconds later.) Rude, brutish bastard. I thanked him for sharing our business with the entire bus and got off at my stop. I wish I could claim that I caught a strong whiff of alcohol from him as I got off, but alas, that would be a lie.

If I don't get my pass back tomorrow I'll be complaining. It shouldn't be hard for the Oxford Bus Company to work out who he is, given that I know the route, the time, and the fact that he was going onshift.

This is terrible.

2006-10-31T16:17:00.000Z

A list of reviews from Amazon.com of great works of literature. The reviewers, at best, don't quite seem to have grasped the point...

The Divine Comedy, Oxford Brookes, October 30th.

2006-10-31T15:58:00.001Z

Fantastic, incredible show. The support act, Duke Special, were entertaining, but are a bit more engaging onstage than on CD (mainly because of the percussionist's insane home-made devices for making banging and crashing noises). The Divine Comedy themselves were awesome - they played all the songs I'd been hoping from from their earlier albums and the best tracks from the new one, and my respect for Neil Hannon has grown immensely now that I've seen proof that he can pull off the songs live. And he even did a Prince cover!

The setlist:

Mother Dear
The Light of Day
When the Lights Go Out All Over Europe
Becoming More Like Alfie
Bad Ambassador
Your Daddy's Car
A Lady of a Certain Age
The Plough
Generation Sex
Threesome
Don't Look Down
Something For the Weekend
Little Red Corvette
Our Mutual Friend
Tonight We Fly
National Express (Encore)

Sleeping beside the road: apparently safe in Oxford.

2006-10-31T15:40:00.001Z

So, my girlfriend and I were going home from the Divine Comedy concert. Oxford Brookes' campus is at the top of a fairly steep hill; at the base of the hill, a guy was lying prone on the grass verge.

He wasn't a vagrant - he was a student (probably a first year) who was drunk and had decided to lie down and go to sleep by the road instead of climbing the hill to his accomodation. Within 5 minutes of us turning up we, three other pedestrians, and a minicab driver had stopped to check that he was alright. This was at midnight, so that was just about everyone who happened to go past in that time. Eventually, we convinced him that sleeping beside the road is something he would regret and he should let some of his fellow students bring him back to his place on campus.

So, apparently if you fall asleep beside the road in Oxford passers-by will tend to help you instead of robbing, raping or killing you. That's reassuring.

Apparently DHL are also useless

2006-10-30T18:15:00.000Z

Went around to my girlfriend's place on the Oxford Brookes campus today, and when I got there there was a DHL "We called, but you weren't in" card leaning on the buzzer.

To be fair to DHL, they didn't have much choice about leaving the card outside - in their infinite wisdom, Brookes don't put letterboxes on the front doors of their blocks of flats. (They expect all mail to be placed in students' pigeonholes... but won't sign for student's parcels and packages. Geniuses!)

What made this situation difficult was that they did not specify on the card who the package was for. In fact, they didn't even specify the flat number.

There's 8 flats in this block. 6 rooms per flat. So any one of 48 people could be due a parcel, and DHL don't specify who.

Couriers: exclusively idiots, or only 99% idiots?

Roger Zelazny, The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth

2006-10-30T00:04:00.000Z

would be better titled A Rose for Ecclesiastes, since that story is far away the best in the collection. (The cover artist seems to agree with me.) In fact, the title story is pretty much the only one in the selection that left me cold, because the rest of this is fantastic. I especially liked Love is an Imaginary Number, a clear predecessor to the Amber series that exhausts Amber's premise in less than a dozen pages.

Parcelnet: the Worst Couriers.

2006-10-29T19:09:00.000Z

So, I got a Christmas present for a family member delivered from Amazon this week, and found out that they don't use Royal Mail anymore to deliver their parcels - they're using an outfit called Parcelnet.

How do I know this? Well, it happened that this time nobody was in to take the package, so they left behind a card telling me what they'd done with it. "What a bother," I thought. "They must have taken it back to the depot - I'll have to phone them to arrange redelivery, or go along to the depot and pick the thing up."

But no! For when I checked to see where they'd left the package, it said "Under car".

Under car?

Yes, under the front of my housemate's car.

Fucking geniuses. It's just lucky that the car wasn't leaking oil (which would have ruined the package), and it's even more lucky that my housemate didn't just drive off, not checking under the car for random packages - why would she? - and left the package sitting there in broad daylight for anyone to stroll up and steal.

Come to think of it, there's been a couple of times when I've found Amazon orders just left sitting outside the front door without an explanation. Maybe Parcelnet have actually improved their service by coming up with brand new ways to get your package lost, stolen, or ruined, and leaving notes explaining exactly how they did it.

It seems that my experience isn't an isolated incident. (Read the comments there, there's some incredible examples of Parcelnet stupidity, including one of their couriers trying to defend the company.) Be aware and be careful when ordering from Amazon.

Why on Earth don't couriers just leave parcels with people's neighbours? It's not as if you can get away with stealing someone else's parcel when the paper trail points right to your house, after all.

Le Carre is a wonderful writer.

2006-10-26T11:37:00.000+01:00

I just got finished reading Smiley's People and it reminded me why I liked him so much. I've only read the Smiley books so far, and The Honourable Schoolboy put me off a little since it outstayed its welcome.

Someone's noticed me.

2006-10-24T16:42:00.001+01:00

I'd thought that my review of Survivors had been long forgotten, but no! One of the Jesus Christians has sprouted from the woodwork to comment on it! Stay tuned and see how things develop.

I've just finished reading Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon.

2006-10-21T19:38:00.000+01:00

His preface makes it clear that the book is meant to be a meditation on the mutability of the human spirit, as opposed to a serious effort at prophecy, which is a good thing since his predictions are a mixture of astute guesses and utter nonsense. He predicts peak oil, America emerging as the sole superpower, and Mussolini getting lynched by his own people after a disasterous war in the same chapter that he espouses the idea that Bolshevik Russia will become dependant upon American finance, assumes that the League of Nations would survive another major European war, and relies on some decidedly one-dimensional national caricatures. On the other hand, the stereotyping is almost universally applied, so I think we're meant to assume that the Neptunians of thousands of years in the future have only a hazy idea of how nation states even worked, never mind the accuracy of national stereotypes. After all, they seem to regard we First Men as tribal savages. I find it difficult to tell whether the reader's supposed to regard the Last Men as the hyper-civilised apex of the human race or a group just as provincial as all of their predecessors.

He's certainly fond of H.G. Wells, and often lifts themes from Wells shamelessly. The world of the Second Men consists, in its early stages of a human race divided into a tall, beautiful intelligent breed (the Second Men themselves) and hideous cannibalistic barbarian dwarves (the remnants of the First Men), and then after the Second Men have put down the last of the First Men Martians invade. There's a passing mention of a First Man scientist specialising in cross-breeding men and animals. Even Wells' and Stapledon's politics seem to coincide nicely, both Wells and Stapledon advocating a sane and sensible world government that would work for the good of all (although Stapledon seems to have grave doubts as to mankind's psychological readiness for such a government). I could almost believe that Stapledon hadn't read any SF except for Wells' material before writing this. Where Stapledon distinguishes himself from Wells is in his imagination and his gift for hyperbole. The various permutations of mankind are striking and vivid, and Stapledon never kills off a thousand people when he can kill a billion instead.

Then again, maybe Wells was also a Stapledon fan, since The Shape of Things to Come seems to follow closely the structure of the early part of the novel (but has a less pessimistic view of man's future and the destiny of a world government), and I was surprised to find it was published three years after Last and First Men. I can almost imagine Robert Heinlein writing a very similar book (there's even a reference to cannibalism-as-sacrament, as seen in Stranger In a Strange Land), but only almost - it's a rare talent that can pull this sort of book off without making it sound like a dull textbook in parts, and Stapledon doesn't always succeed.

Book Review: Eye of Cat by Roger Zelazny

2006-10-15T20:00:00.000+01:00

I bought this along with 6 other slim Zelazny paperbacks from the local Oxfam bookshop for £2 each, and if they're all as good as this one I'll be well pleased. Eye of Cat riffs on Navajo religion and mythology just as Lord of Light was inspired by Hinduism and Buddhism, and just like with Lord of Light you can tell that the man's done his research. It's well-written, it doesn't drag on for too long, and it doesn't have nine sequels driving the central premise into the ground, so I'd highly recommend it.

Also, the title character is a one-eyed shapeshifting telepathic rock.

Book review: The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson.

2006-10-12T17:44:00.000+01:00

So, here's how an average chapter of The Night Land would go if you took out all of the (absolutely miserable) attempts to write like a 17th Century gentleman:

I woke up and ate a couple of food pills. I had a drink. I walked for such-and-such a length of time. I went to sleep. I woke up and ate a couple of food pills. I had a drink. I walked for such-and-such a length of time. I had a bad feeling, but it passed. I went to sleep. I woke up and ate a couple of food pills. I had a drink. I walked for such-and-such a length of time. I thought about my soulmate. I went to sleep. I woke up and ate a couple of food pills. I had a drink. I walked for such-and-such a length of time. I fought a monster. I went to sleep. I woke up and ate a couple of food pills. I had a drink. I walked for such-and-such a length of time. I thought I could sense my soulmate trying to psychically contact me, but the moment passed. I went to sleep. I woke up and ate a couple of food pills. I had a drink. I walked for such-and-such a length of time. I went to sleep.

Mixed in there, of course, will be a lot of descriptions of the scenery - equally repetitive, but occasionally interesting - a few essays on life in the Night Land, and the occasional flicker of a startlingly powerful imagination. Some of the monsters described are incredible, others are dull; similarly, the imagery Hodgson plays with is frustrating in that the flashes of genius are polluted by a lot of mediocrity.

My advice to anyone interested in The Night Land: don't read chapter 1. It's worthless and pointless, and reads like an attempt to summarise a Jane Austen novel. Start with chapter 2. The opening description of the fucked-up landscape of Earth after the Sun has died is absolutely incredible, despite the clunky language. The book remains engaging until Our Hero sets off into the Land itself; then you should begin skimming. With practice you can glance at a page and see if anything interesting is happening on it or not. This skill at skimming becomes incredibly useful when Our Hero meets up with his soulmate, because then the average chapter goes something like this:

We woke up, kissed and hugged, and ate a couple of food pills each and had a drink. We walked for such-and-such a length of time, kissing and cuddling on the way. We found somewhere to sleep, my soulmate acted like a naughty child as opposed to an utterly traumatised woman stuck in the middle of the most hostile territory mankind has ever faced. I indulged her and played along. We woke up, kissed and hugged, and ate a couple of food pills each and had a drink. We walked for such-and-such a length of time, kissing and cuddling on the way. We found somewhere to sleep, my soulmate acted like a naughty child as opposed to an utterly traumatised woman stuck in the middle of the most hostile territory mankind has ever faced. I indulged her and played along. We woke up, kissed and hugged, and ate a couple of food pills each and had a drink. We walked for such-and-such a length of time, kissing and cuddling on the way. We found somewhere to sleep, my soulmate acted like a naughty child as opposed to an utterly traumatised woman stuck in the middle of the most hostile territory mankind has ever faced. I decided that enough was enough and BEAT HER TO WITHIN AN INCH OF HER LIFE WITH HER OWN BELT. She kissed me and submitted to her punishment. We woke up, kissed and hugged, and ate a couple of food pills each and had a drink. We walked for such-and-such a length of time, kissing and cuddling on the way. We found somewhere to sleep, my soulmate acted like a naughty child as opposed to an utterly traumatised woman stuck in the middle of the most hostile territory mankind has ever faced. I indulged her and played along.

I think Hodgson's novels are worth reading if you're at all interested in the history of fantasy/SF literature, since he influenced so many superior writers (heck, Lovecraft looks like Shakespeare next to him), but I won't be holding onto them.

Book Review: The House On the Borderland by William Hope Hodgeson.

2006-10-05T00:55:00.000+01:00

Like House of Leaves, but with less sly postmodern winking and overflowing footnotes and more astral projection and piggies.

Book Review: House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski

2006-09-12T00:29:00.000+01:00

Just finished reading this one, and while I did enjoy it (until the lacklustre end quarter) I'm not sure whether it's the wonderful postmodern literary classic it's held up to be or a bunch of intertwined stories which might have thrived a little better on their own and don't add up to much.

It's not necessarily the footnotes that I'm unsure of - they actually work quite well. (I especially enjoyed the chapter where the footnotes go completely insanse, crawling all over the page and nestling in the margins and bouncing the reader between themselves like a ping-pong ball; as efforts to turn a book into a maze go, it's kind of nifty, but I'm glad the schtick wasn't maintained for the rest of the novel.) I was more irked by how in some sections

Danielewski uses very few words per page

sometimes an entire paragraph

often merely a sentence

occasionally just a word

to create this odd kind of pacing. I don't know whether that pacing, fun as it is, is an effective literary technique or a cheap trick designed to cover the fact that his prose style is a bit clunky and isn't entirely suited to action sequences. I think on the whole the work could afford to be slimmer than it is by a few hundred pages - lose the letters Truant's mother from the lunatic asylum, since they really don't show any details that don't come out in Truant's rants, stop the silly spacing, trim back a few of the ludicrously long lists of references that Zampano indulges in, and drop the awful (and irrelevant) Pelican poems. Perhaps also drop some of Johnny's tales of sexual conquests, because they get kind of repetitive after the first few.

Also, the narration of the fourth expedition loses its impact due to the way it's narrated - first it's described from the point of view of the guys at the base camp, then you get a description of the mission itself and how it gets into trouble, then you get an account of the rescue mission (which overlaps a lot chronologically with the previous account), then you get an account of the guy the rescue mission left behind to keep contact with home, and then you get a narrative from home, and then you get another narrative from the rescue mission... and there's a large number of incidents that you end up reading through twice, without really getting much more information. This is, again, kind of boring and repetitive.

There's a bit where the author meditates on the meaning of boredom, so again this may not be intentional. But it's kind of a jerky thing to do. I can't help but picture Danielewski as being a very clever but terribly smug individual: the book's a real grab-bag of interesting and clever bits and silly tricks.

And sometimes he just makes bad decisions. The way the last expedition into the maze, in which Navidson goes in alone, is set up pretty much eliminates any chance of tension, because he tells us what the result of the expedition is going to be before it happens. He makes sure a chapter or two ahead that we are advised that after Navidson returns to the house that [SPOILER]Navidson gets out alive, the house becomes just a house again, and everyone feels much better about the whole experience[/SPOILER]. The expedition itself plays yet more silly spacing games with the text, and nothing much happens during it.

Conclusion: Stephen King doing a parody of postmodern art criticism is a schtick which could make an excellent short story. It can't make a really satisfying novel, especially when there is so little actual substance to get to grips with.

PS: Is it just me, or is the madcap bit where the walls start slamming into them and the guy falls down the suddenly-appearing pit seem a bit too violent, compared with everything else we see of the house's nature? The gear shift from brooding menace and haunting long corridors to mash-smash-bash-and-eat is jarring.

Book Review: Pavane by Keith Roberts

2006-06-21T02:12:00.000+01:00

Pavane seems to be the only book by Keith Roberts which is still in print these days. It's not so much a novel as a series of interlinked short stories, with a prelude and a coda to put them all in context.

It's an alternate history novel, whose central conceit is that Elizabeth I was assassinated in 1588. This led to a backlash against English Catholics, which in turn led to English Catholics becoming militant, which in consequence led to the success of the Spanish Armada. The conquest of England by Spain spells the beginning of the end for Protestantism; the social reforms sparked by the Renaissance and the Reformation are rolled back, and by the mid-twentieth century (the time the novel is set in) we are living a decidedly medieval lifestyle, with the Church in a place of incredible power. Worse still, without the threat of Protestantism forcing the Church to reform and clean up its act, this is very much the Church of Innocent III, the Borgias, and the Inquisition.

At least, that's the theory. In practice, it's hard to see how some of the social trends noted in the novel fit the alternate history as presented. For example, the racial distinctions between Saxon, Celt, Gael and Norman are propagated by the Church in order to "divide and rule", but I'm not sure how prominant those distinctions really were at the time of the Spanish conquest - and really, if the Spanish had conquered England wouldn't Welsh, English, Scottish and Spanish be a more sensible division? Furthermore, England seems to be an independent nation - albiet subject to the Pope, along with the rest of Europe. I get the impression that Roberts simply wanted to write stories set in a medievalised twentieth century, and then came up with an explanation later.

Fortunately, it's not the history of this alternate world which is the true focus of the novel - rather, it is the lives of the people there, and the rebellion against the Papists which brews over the course of the novel. An apparent supernatural element is introduced in the form of the fairies, which seem here to be based on the old theory of a swarthy, diminutive race of human beings who lived in pre-Celtic England and still lurk in the wilderness and worship Wotan and the other Germanic gods of the pre-Christian Saxons - although the final explanation for them is decidedly technological. You've also got the occasional religious vision and interesting technologies which have had to grow up around the limitations set by Papal edicts. The end result is a book which straddles alternate history SF, fantasy, and literature, and it's really very good indeed.

Book Review: The Republic by Plato.

2006-05-24T02:04:00.000+01:00

Well, I just finished reading this and I'm trying to put my thoughts in order. Far cleverer people than I have spent millennia debating this one so I'm hesitant to form any firm opinions, but here's some things I noticed:

It really is very readable, being - as it is - a series of imagined conversations between Plato (cosplaying as Socrates) and various Athenians, and as such it's less daunting than I'd normally expect a philosophical work to be.
I kept being reminded of Gene Wolfe's prose - whether he and I have read the same translation, or whether this is something inherent in the text, I'm not sure. I did get the distinct impression reading Latro of the Mist that Wolfe was consciously emulating the style of various ancient Greek writers, as part of evoking the setting, but I also noticed that Horn engages in a lot of Socratic dialogues in The Book of the Short Sun. (I can't remember whether Silk also did so in the Long Sun, but I wouldn't be surprised.) Also, Wolfe's use of the term "Whorl" in the Long and Short Suns could potentially be a reference to Plato's cosmological analogy of the Spindle of Necessity.
The translator in my edition (the Penguin Classics version translated by HPD Lee) does an excellent job of adding notes to the text to show where he has had to make a difficult choice in translating a particular passage.
It's actually kind of funny in places - especially when Plato-as-Socrates is slapping down a particularly objectionable opponent in debate. Idiots on internet forums use the same logical fallacies that idiots did back in Greece.
He is angry at the idea that people would say stuff like "God Hates Fags" or "AIDS is God's punishment" or "The Gods/Greys/fairies/Illuminati lurk amongst us in human form" - mainly because he feels this gives a deceptive idea of what God/the Gods is/are actually like, but also because he thinks that it is ultimately harmful to the community for people to say such things. I could go along with that, but he'd censor a heck of a lot of great literature (as well as third-rate fantasy offerings) if he had his way.
In fact, when he starts in earnest to describe his ideal state - and, in particular, the upbringing and training of the Guardians who will rule it and serve as its military - Plato gets downright authoritarian, to the point where he advocates casting out and reimagining the entire basis of Greek religion for the good of the state, stated that the rulers of a state are allowed to lie to the citizenry for the good of the state, and argued for revision of the Iliad to gloss over Achilles' less noble acts. So that's religious intolerance, state censorship and propaganda, and historical revisionism all in one tasty package (there's also a healthy dose of eugenics). He even suggests that certain musical instruments should be banned, since they are capable of playing inappropriate music.
On the other hand, in a weird twist he advocates all this repression only for the Guardians, his ruling class, who are apart from the manual labourers and writers and actors and poets and the rest of society. The idea that if anyone should work under tight legal restrictions it's the rulers of a society, not necessarily its people, is still with us today (it's what the US Constitution is based on, after all). Plato does, however, seem to be advocating a ruling caste chosen from birth to rule and trained accordingly. One of the first postulates Plato espouses is that specialisation is vital to society, to the point where each person must devote themselves to one career and one career alone, and social mobility is simply unthinkable.
On the third hand, Plato firmly forbids the literature and drama he has deemed unsuitable for the education of the Guardians from his ideal state. The restrictions oppressing the Guardians tend to oppress everyone - with exceptions. (For example, the Guardians are not allowed to have personal property and, indeed, are encouraged to not desire it, so that they don't end up putting personal considerations before the public good - although in the other classes wealth is redistributed to prevent pockets of great wealth or great poverty developing.)
When an objection is raised that the Guardians can't be very happy in their situation, Plato responds that his philosophical model is to do with the happiness of the entire community as opposed to the ruling class, and moreover it is suggested that if the Guardians have been educated properly then chances are they will be happy despite their Spartan lifestyle. This seems to miss the point; if a particular part of the community is oppressed for the good of the rest, that is hardly a moral or a just community in my mind, and if a Guardian is unhappy in his work how can he be expected to love that work? Plato handwaves and says that the Guardians should be encouraged to love and enjoy their work, but doesn't seem to provide them with any incentives to do so.
According to Plato, an elder man dating a youth is free to kiss his boyfriend and touch him "as a father does his son", but it is a sign of poor moral character to go further than that.
His ideas about war are rather quaint - he suggests that the children of the Guardians should be sent out on horseback, with a few elders to look after them, to watch the Guardians at war, so that when they grow up they are more prepared for battle. The idea that any general would devote his best horses to allow the nation's children - the best possible hostages the enemy can hope for - to watch the war is ludicrous. (Also, the prize for soldiers who excel themselves is kisses from all the other soldiers, male and female.)

Book Review: There's a New World Coming by Hal Lindsey

2006-05-18T01:17:00.000+01:00

This is a real treat, from a kook-spotting perspective: one of the series of books on Biblical prophecy by Hal Lindsey, whose works include the bestselling The Late Great Planet Earth and influenced Jack Chick as well as innumerable other scholarship-light, brimstone-heavy theologians. It's out of print now - presumably because so many of its claims are hilariously wrong and out-of-date. It is structured as a verse-by-verse commentary on Revelations, and is evidently Hal's idea of a scholarly deconstruction of the book.

Some of the best examples of Hal's lunacy:

Hal calls the Rapture "the Great Snatch". Hurr hurr hurr.
Hal is gay for Jesus.
"I'm not sure of all the reasons why Jesus still has His wounds, but personally, I'm very glad He does. I want to look at those scars and touch them often..."

"Every opportunity these angels and Elders get, they drop on their faces and praise the Lord. Perhaps you've heard it said that the angels in heaven rejoice when one sinner is saved. I'm sure they're happy for the sinner that has been redeemed, but I have a suspicion that the real reason for their joy is that it gives them another opportunity to ~~go down on Jesus~~ fall down on their faces and praise the One who made the sinner's salvation possible."

"...God Himself will wipe away every tear. One of the tenderest memories an adult has is that of his mother kissing his sore finger and wiping away the tears from his eyes. Oh, what we have to look forward to in Heaven!"

"Jesus offers Himself as the thirst-quenching Water of Life. When a man drinks of this fountain, he never again thirsts in the depths of his soul.... All you need to do is 'Come'."
The song that the heavenly hosts sing in praise of the Lamb which opens the Seven Seals will be a country-style ballad.
After the Rapture happens, precisely 144,000 Jews will convert to Christianity. They don't get to kick back in Heaven and relax during the Tribulation like the rest of the faithful - no, they'll have to suffer through the Tribulation and evangelise the world during it. A lot of the people they convert will be executed by the Antichrist, but the 144,000 don't get to rest until the Tribulation ends and Jesus comes back - while they'll suffer torture, hunger, plague, persecution, imprisonment and pain, God won't let them die. Meanwhile, the other Jews will make a pact with the European and Jewish Antichrists (or the Roman Antichrist and the False Prophet, as Lindsey sometimes calls them).
Two entire tribes of Jews - Dan and Ephraim - will be excluded from the above because Ephraim provoked the civil war between Israel and Judah back in Old Testament times, and because the Jewish Antichrist (distinct from the European Antichrist) will come from the tribe of Dan. No tribes of Israel are lost, none at all.
The European Antichrist is alive as of the time of writing (1973).
Hal is gay for Jews, in a totally patronising way.
"Most of us know that when a Jewish person determines to do something, it usually gets done."
The legions of the demon Apollyon will fly Cobra helicopters out of hell and fire nerve gas at people, but will not succeed in killing anyone.
Communist China will invade everyone, at the bidding of its four demonic masters.
Hal knows nothing about history.
"It's also interesting to note that throughout history there's never been a great invasion of the West by the East."
Communist Russia leads the world in the study of witchcraft.
Satan resided in outer space after he was kicked out of Heaven, but will be forced down onto Earth at the end of days.
At the time of writing, the EU (or the European Common Market as it was then known) had only 9 member-states. Hal asserted that when the 10th member state joined, the European Antichrist would take over the EU.
In order to pave the way for the New Heaven and the New Earth, God destroys the old universe by cancelling the weak and strong nuclear forces, causing every atom in the old universe to explode.

Book Review: My Life In Orange by Tim Guest

2006-05-10T02:17:00.000+01:00

From the age of 4 to 10 Tim Guest lived in communes of the Osho-Rajneesh movement in the UK, India, Oregon and Germany. His mother - and later his father - had been attracted by the group's promise of spiritual enlightenment without asceticism, but were ultimately disillusioned. The thrust of Tim Guest's memoir is his experience as a child growing up in a community which - it becomes rapidly clear - simply didn't have much time for children.

Followers of Baghwan Rajneesh were encouraged to get vasectomies and hysterectomies, Guest tells us, because according to the Bhagwan anyone qualified to have children would not want to have them anyway. Frequently, Tim shows us how he and the other children of the cult members (and this book falls very much into the cult confessional genre) were simply left to their own devices. A recurring theme of Guest's is his relationship with his mother: he frequently tells us about his efforts to get her attention when she (as far as the reader can tell) simply wasn't interested. Even when Tim receives his new name from Rajneesh (all devotees received new names) and rushes to show her, she's too busy with a meditation group to give him any time.

At the same time, though, Guest has clearly done his research on the movement to fill in the gaps; there are details which a 6 year old couldn't have ever picked up on mixed in with his childhood reminiscences, and these tell the story of the latter days of the movement, and his mother's doomed task to build a Rajneesh city (yes, a whole city) in Britain. The book is not just a product of Guest's strange childhood, but his attempt to reclaim the childhood (since his mother burned all photograph and records of that part of her life when she and his father left the cult). While the context provided is certainly useful, the long chapters describing the trials and tribulations of the movement aren't quite integrated enough with the rest of the text, and tend to break up the flow.

Unlike other cult confessionals, My Life In Orange doesn't at first regale the reader with stories of coercive techniques to keep members in line or to punish those who leave the sect, and on that level it's tempting early on to see the Rajneesh movement as a relatively harmless group - the meditiations are certainly gruelling, but that's true of monastic prayer and contemplation in many religious symptoms (although dark hints of child abuse, financial wrongdoings, and cult persecution are present from the beginning). Tim shows us a religious community which simply sidelined and ignored children and reinforced the bad habits of their parents, encouraging them to spend more time in meditation or indulging in free love than in being with their children. Later on in the book, the group begins to spiral out of control, as Sheela - Rajneesh's gun-toting assistant - ousts Rajneesh's previous secretary and steers the group down a paranoid, authoritarian path.

Tim's unique perspective makes this book a refreshing change from melodramatic, harrowing stories that provide the substance of other cult confessionals: this is an sometimes hilarious, sometimes sad story of a boy's strange childhood, in a community where every adult was expected to be a parent to him and nobody ever was. The Guardian did a "condensed in the style of the original" summary of it here which is a fair assessment.