ideas and concepts – Page 3 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

It was said that God, in order to test mankind which had become swelled with pride as in the time of Noah, had commanded the wise men of that age, among them the Blessed Leibowitz, to devise great engines of war such as had never before been upon the Earth, weapons of such might that they contained the very fires of Hell, and that God had suffered these Magi to place the weapons in the hands of princes, and to say to each prince: ‘Only because thine enemies have such a thing have we devised this for thee, in order that they may know that thou hast it also, and fear to strike.’

But the princes, putting the words of their wise men to naught, thought each to himself: ‘If I but strike quickly enough, and in secret, I shall destroy those others in their sleep, and there shall be none to fight back; the earth shall be mine.’

Such was the folly of princes, and there followed the Flame Deluge…

In the new dark ages of man following the nuclear apocalypse, an order of Catholic monks preserves the last vestiges of civilization: a shopping list, an electrical diagram, and other assorted scraps of a long-dead world. As mankind rises from the dust, inevitable tensions arise between the church and the world, between Jerusalem and Babylon, Christ and Lucifer.

This book is epic. Epic. I can’t begin to describe how incredible it is. Virtually every page, especially towards the end, is packed with meaning. A cautionary tale of the folly of man in this fallen world, this story held me captivated right up to the chilling final chapter. Bravo.

As I understand it, Walter M. Miller Jr. wrote this book in the late 50s / early 60s, during the height of the Cold War. Science fiction at that time was both sweepingly visionary and frighteningly pessimistic about the future of mankind, and this book successfully captures both extremes. Like Asimov’s Foundation series, it reads more like a collection of elongated short stories, but Miller’s characterization and attention to detail is superior, in my opinion, to Asimov’s.

The most fascinating aspect about this book is the way that Miller hearkens to the past to give us a vision of our future. Many of his ideas are straight out of Augustine and Aquinas–indeed, in several places, the story feels like it’s set in 3rd or 4th century Europe, which only adds to the delicious irony.

Yet, while this book has a strong Catholic feel, I never felt alienated or excluded from its intended audience. Maybe it’s because my Mormon heritage is more compatible with Catholicism than other religious beliefs, but I don’t think it’s just that; the issues in this book are human issues, not just religious issues, and by focusing on that fact, Miller makes the story much more universal.

Even with all the deep, philosophical elements, this story is wonderfully entertaining. Irony abounds, especially in the first section, in which a young novice takes a simple electrical diagram from the pre-deluge world and, completely unaware of its significance (or lack thereof), spends the rest of his life making a beautiful illuminated manuscript of it. Even though the sections were short, I quickly fell in love with the characters in each one, and connected with them almost instantly.

The final scene, in particular, was incredibly touching. I won’t spoil it for you, but let me just say, if you are or ever have considered taking your own life, read this book, just for the final scene. The degree to which the last abbot clings to life, even in the face of so many good reasons to give up, is just incredible. And the final scene, in which…I won’t ruin it for you. Just read it!

A Canticle for Leibowitz is one of the most powerful, meaningful books I have read in my life. It is more than a good read, more than epic. I class it as one of the best works of fiction this genre has ever produced. If you have ever wondered about the destiny of mankind, or the proper relationship between the secular and the spiritual in our modern age–read this book!

Why I love Robert Charles Wilson

From Mysterium, which I plan to review here soon:

“Do you ever wonder, Howard, about the questions we can’t ask?
“Can’t answer, you mean?
“No. Can’t ask.”
“I don’t understand.”
Stern leaned back in his deck chair and folded his hands over his gaunt, ascetic frame. His glasses were opaque in the porch light. The crickets seemed suddenly loud.
“Think about a dog,” he said. “Think about your dog–what’s his name?”
“Albert.”
“Yes. Think about Albert. He’s a healthy dog, is he not?”
“Yes.”
“Intelligent?”
“Sure.”
“He functions in every way normally, then, within the parameters of dogness. He’s an exemplar of his species. And he has the ability to learn, yes? He can do tricks? Learn from his experience? And he’s awarer of his surroundings; he can distinguish between you and your mother, for instance? H’es not unconscious or impaired?”
“Right.”
“But despite all that, there’s a limit on his understanding. Obviously so. If we talk about gravitons or Fourier transforms, he can’t follow the conversation. We’re speaking a language he doesn’t know and cannot know. The concepts can’t be translated; his mental universe simply won’t contain them.”
“Granted,” Howard said. “Am I missing the point?”
“We’re sitting here,” Stern said, “asking spectacular questions, you and I. About the universe and how it began. About everything that exists. And if we can ask a question, probably, sooner or later, we can answer it. So we assume there’s no limit to knowledge. But maybe your dog makes the same mistake! He doesn’t know what lies beyond the neighborhood, but if he found himself in a strange place he would approach it with the tools of comprehension available to him, and soon he would understand it–dog-fashion, by sight and smell and so on. There are no limits to his comprehensions, Howard, except the limits he does not and cannot ever experience.
“So how different are we? We’re mammals within the same broad compass of evolution, after all. Our forebrains are bigger, but the difference amounts to a few ounces. We can ask many, many more questions than your dog. And we can answer them. But if there are real limits on our comprehension, they would be as invisible to us as they are to Albert. So: Is there anything in the universe we simply cannot know? Is there a question we can’t ask? And would we ever encounter some hint of it, some intimation of the mystery? Or is it permanently beyond our grasp?”

This is the kind of science fiction that I love: the kind that brings me right up to the limits of human knowledge and makes me feel naked in the face of the unknown. The kind where the aliens truly feel alien, not like an unusually bizarre race of human beings. I want the aliens to surprise me–I want to feel that there’s something about them that is completely beyond my comprehension. Something sublime, something romantic.

In all of his books that I’ve read, Robert Charles Wilson captures this feeling spectacularly. So does Arthur C. Clarke, C. J. Cherryh, and Orson Scott Card. Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, John Scalzi and Alastair Reynolds are excellent writers, and I’ve genuinely enjoyed their books, but their aliens are too…understandable. Too clear cut, too defined. After a while, you don’t feel that there’s anything left to surprise you, anything that is so alien it’s beyond your grasp.

In some ways, I think this boils down to the author’s worldview. Those with a more positivist worldview believe that the world is fundamentally understandable, and that every phenomenon can be modeled and predicted, provided that we have a sophisticated enough understanding of natural law. The interpretivist worldview, on the other hand, posits that while truth may exist, there are limits to our understanding–that some things are inherently unpredictable and impossible to model.

I used to think that I was a positivist. Then I took Poli Sci 310 with Goodliffe, and it turned my world upside down. Genesis Earth is, in some ways, a product of that personal worldview shift. I don’t think I’m anywhere near on par with my aliens as Wilson, Clarke, and Card are with theirs, but I hope I’m on my way.

Thoughts after finishing Legend by David Gemmell

I just stayed up a bit late, finishing Legend by David Gemmell. Wow.

According to his wikipedia entry, Mr. Gemmell wrote Legend in two weeks while waiting to hear if his cancer diagnosis was terminal. After reading this book, I can definitely see how that influenced the writing.

This book is incredible, one of the most authentic, thought-provoking things I’ve read. It is…just incredible. I’ll articulate my thoughts better when I write the review, but let me just say that reading this book made me a better man.

I want to quote the passage that impacted me the greatest, because it has to do with some of my more existential thoughts about being an aspiring writer–no, being a writer and aspiring to be an author.

“All things that live must die,” said Vintar. “Man alone, it seems, lives all his life in the knowledge of death. And yet there is more to life than merely waiting for death. For life to have meaning, there must be a purpose. A man must pass something on–otherwise he is useless.

“For most men that purpose revolves around marriage and children who will carry on his seed. For others it is an ideal–a dream, if you like. Each of us here believes in the concept of honor: that it is man’s duty to do that which is right and just, that might alone is not enough. We have all transgressed at some time. We have stolen, lied, cheated–even killed–for our own ends. But ultimately we return to our beliefs. We do not allow the Nadir to pass unchallenged because we cannot. We judge ourselves more harshly than others can judge us. We know that death is preferable to betrayal of that which we hold dear.

I don’t want to write books just to entertain. I don’t want to fill pages with words just so I can get paid and take care of my temporal needs. Both of those are important, of course, but I don’t want to write “good reads” that people put down and completely forget about after a few months.

At the same time, I don’t want to write just to express myself either. I don’t think I deserve any special treatment for being a writer, and I don’t suffer under the delusion that I’m somehow gracing the world with my genius (at least, I hope I don’t). The world owes me nothing, and I’m certainly not the most qualified person to be out doing this kind of thing, making the world a better place by telling stories.

What I do want to do, however, is write books like Legend, or Mistborn, or The Neverending Story, or Ender’s Game, or Spin, or any number of other books. Books that you read and remember, because they changed or inspired or impacted you in some profound way. Books where you read the last hundred pages in a breathless sprint, because you connect with the story in a deep and personally moving way. Books that help people to understand the world better, to appreciate its beauty, to see the people in your life in a new light, and connect with them in new ways.

I can tell you exactly when I crossed the threshold from childhood to adolescence, down almost to the very day. I crossed that threshold by reading a book: Absolutely Normal Chaos by Sharon Creech. For what I was going through at that pivotal time in my life, that book had a profound, formative impact. It helped me to see my family members in a new light, to understand a little bit better the changes I was experiencing in my own life, and to get through an emotional period that was particularly rocky. When I read that book, I changed as a person.

That’s the kind of stuff I want to do as a writer: pass something on. Something meaningful. Something that will make this world a better place by connecting with someone, anyone, on a deeply personal and intimate level. Something that will help peope to stand tall and live their lives more fully.

I don’t know if I’m getting this across effectively, but those are my thoughts at this time. Legend is a damn good book. It’s in good company, along with all the other books that have just made me go “wow.” Someday, I hope something I write will be up there on the same level for someone else.

Spin by Robert Charles Wilson

What would you do if you knew that the world was going to end in the next thirty years? That one day, before the end of your natural lifespan, the oceans will boil and the forests burst into flames, and life on this planet will come to an end? That you, your children, and even humanity itself have no future–that everything will end with you?

When the mysterious beings known as the Hypotheticals encase Earth in a temporal warp field that causes years to pass outside for every second on Earth, that is the uncomfortable question that all of mankind must confront. In five billion years–less than forty years on Earth–the sun will burn up its hydrogen and expand into a red giant star. When that happens, the sun will swallow the Earth and every living thing will die.

Some people turn to religion for answers. Some turn to Science. Some put off the question, living their lives as if the end will not come. But as the years pass and the unavoidable apocalypse looms nearer, humanity begins to spiral out of control, and civilization itself looms on the verge of collapse.

The year the stars fell from the sky, thirteen year old Tyler Dupree discovers that he is in love with his best friend (Jason Lawton)’s sister, Diane. The dynamics of the friendship between the three, however, make it impossible for Tyler to express his true feelings–and, in any case, Diane doesn’t seem interested in being anything more than a friend.

When the Spin hits, all three of them find themselves on radically different and sometimes conflicting paths. Diane turns to evangelical Christianity and the frenzied religious outporing the Spin inspires. Through his father, Jason rises to become one of the most influential scientists and directors in the Perihelion Foundation, the premier aerospace agency and Spin-related policy forming body in the US.

Tyler, however, pursues the same middle class life he probably would have followed anyway–medical school, followed by a career as a doctor. Still, his undiminished feelings for Diane and his frienship with Jason draw him into the center of the Spin hysteria and behind the scenes in the circuitous Spin-era politics.

Diane, now married to a fervent believer in a free love fundamentalist cult, comes to rely on Tyler as her only link to the outside world. Meanwhile, Jason Lawton pursues perhaps the most grandiose and ambitious project mankind has ever attempted; the terraformation of Mars.

With the temporal distortion of the Spin, millions of years of evolution turn Mars into a verdant green world in only one Earth year. When Jason launches the first manned mission to the planet, barely a week passes before the the first Martian-born human returns to mankinds ancestral home–a descendant of a civilization millenia older than our own. This small, dark-skinned, wrinkled man comes with a tantalizing message that may prove the key to finally understanding the Hypotheticals and the Spin itself.

But all of this may be too late, because the Spin membrane is finally beginning to show distressing signs of failure, and the sun has already grown hot enough to boil the oceans and scorch the planet.

I loved this book. Honestly, I have to say it is one of the best science fiction books I have ever read. Better even than Ender’s Game, better even than Foundation or any of the other classics. No other book that I’ve read has done everything that I believe a good science fiction book should do. I would highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone.

Like Clarke and a lot of the older classics in the science fiction tradition, Spin addresses some of the grand questions with which science and humanity have always wrestled. What is the ultimate end of mankind? The ultimate end of evolution? Are we unique in this universe? What is our place in the cosmos? What is transcendence, and can we as a mortal species achieve it?

Unlike much of the older works, however, Spin addresses these questions through solid, developed, rich characters and a human drama that is as engaging as anything in any other genre. When I read this book, I felt connected with these characters. I genuinely cared about them. They were real, distinct people who changed and grew based on their choices and experiences. Furthermore, their struggles and conflicts echoed my own. It felt true. Tyler’s unrequited love was not only utterly believable, it kept me just as engaged as the grand ideas and the science fiction elements.

As science fiction, the ideas in this book were some of the most original and eye-popping ideas I’ve ever seen. There was definitely a sense of wonder, as thick and beautiful as Clarke or Heinlein or Asimov. The thing that made these ideas so great, however, was the eminent believability that accompanied them. Robert Charles Wilson thought out the implications of everything, and showed them through concrete, human details. His Martian landscapes were as real and believable as his picture of the New England countryside. I not only felt that I was there, I felt that I was in this world, where the end-of-everything panic had set in, causing all sorts of bizarre, almost post-apocalyptic (pre-apocalyptic?) social changes. It was truly fascinating.

But it wasn’t just the storytelling that engaged me: Robert Charles Wilson’s prose is among some of the best that I’ve ever read. Reading this book really was like eating cheesecake. The writing not only flowed, it shined, yet in a way that illuminated the meaning behind the words rather than drawing attention to the words themselves. Wilson’s metaphors were not only rich and beautiful, they expressed the meaning behind the text so clearly that in each case, I don’t think he could have gotten across that particular impression, that feeling, in any other way. Everything was calculated, and I would read pages and pages of text without even realizing how far I’d come. Incredible.

I did have one issue with my first readthrough, back in July of last year: the Martian civilization, while grand, didn’t feel grand enough. I mean, in 0nly four thousand years of history, look how far we’ve come here on Earth–all of our religions, all of our science, all of our discoveries and everything else. We can hardly even remember what it was like, four thousand years ago–yet in Spin, the Martians know all about the reasons why Earth spawned their civilization, all of the questions that the Earthers have been asking about the Hypotheticals, etc. I almost think that the Martians would have a more mystical view of Earth; that their understanding of us would be steeped in legend, and that they would have forgotten who we really are.

In my second readthrough, however, this was less of an issue to me. Wilson really does make the Martians seem alien, a separate, distinct culture with a long, rich tradition. His Martian citizen is very distinct from any of the Earthers, and notices some very small things that we always take for granted. So, even though there could be more of a feeling of grandeur, Wilson already paints a very believable, very grand view of the Martian civilization he invents.

I am not exaggerating one bit when I say that this is probably the best science fiction book I have ever read. I would recommend it above and beyond anything else I’ve reviewed here on this website. If you haven’t already, pick up this book and read it.

Downbelow Station by C. J. Cherryh

“The stars, like all man’s other ventures, were an obvious impracticality, as rash and improbable an ambition as the first venture of man onto Earth’s own great oceans, or into the air, or into space.” Thus begins Downbelow Station, an epic tale of man’s future beyond Earth.

The outer colonies of Earth have rebelled and are fighting a long, ferocious war against the Earth colony. Mazian’s fleet, the main battle fleet aligned with Earth, has been out of contact with their superiors for so long that Earth company no longer controls them. As they fight their losing war against the Union of outer stations, they leave wreckage and destruction in their wake, determined not to give Union forces anything that could be used against them. One by one, the stations that serve as stepping stones to the Beyond fall into destruction in this terrible, senseless war of attrition.

Pell is the last major station before Earth, the nexus point between the two warring sides. It is also the only station orbiting a marginally habitable world with sentient life–the peaceful and primitive Hisa, who worship the sun and dream of traveling one day to the stars. The Konstantin family is determined to do everything they can to maintain Pell’s neutrality, but with the war coming closer and floods of refugees bringing crime and disorder, that proves increasingly difficult. It is made even more difficult by power players within the station who, unbeknown to Mazian or the Konstantins, are seeking to strike a deal with Union.

This story won the 1982 Hugo award. Since I like to write science fiction, specifically epic space opera much like this, I was very interested in reading this book and seeing what Cherryh’s vision of the far future looked like.

Her worldbuilding in this book is really, really cool. In the first chapter, she outlines how human history takes mankind to the stars–through commercial means and business interests, not government expansion. Each station serves as a jumping off point for the next expedition to the next star system, with independent merchanters hauling the profits back to Earth and conducting trade between the stations. As humanity expands, however, communication between Earth and the Beyond becomes more and more difficult, and when the Earth company tries to impose taxes on the outer stations, they rebel and form the Union.

Stationers and merchanters have distinct cultures, with the stationers feeling much more rooted to one place, trusting more in bureaucracy, and feeling more of an allegiance with Earth and the company. Merchanters, on the other hand, are much more nomadic and independent, putting more credence to family names than port of origin, and tend to have single-parent families (to keep the population from becoming inbred, merchanter women remain single, obtaining their children through short-lived relationships whenever they come into port). Two of the main characters (Damon and Elene) are a stationer-merchanter couple, and the cultural differences really come out in the way they interact with each other.

At the same time, it’s a story of first contact and what happens after first contact. The Hisa are a distinct race of sentient beings, creatures who don’t understand the ways of the humans, especially war. Their presence adds a degree of tension, especially when you consider how disastrous the war could be on Human-Hisa relations. The Hisa, however, are very clever, and the humans come to realize that they have a lot to learn from this peaceful race of furry little creatures. One of the viewpoint characters is a Hisa, and it’s really interesting to look at the station, the world, and the humans from this alien perspective. Cherryh did a good job creating a believable, complex alien race.

Overall, this story is more about grand ideas and concepts than it is about individual characters, so while Cherryh did a fair job with her characterization, her point of view was always a bit distant and I never felt extremely close to any of her characters (except perhaps Mallory–more on that later). That made it a bit hard to read the story as I got deeper and deeper into the story. There was a lot of setup before the action really started to break, and because I wasn’t very close to the characters, I didn’t feel as engaged by the story.

The action, too, was very difficult to visualize. I never really understood how faster-than-light travel worked in this book, and because all of the space battles happened partially inside warpspace, I never knew what was going on. That was a little frustrating, and kept me from really understanding or getting the tension. The gunfights and hand to hand combat was good, but it was almost always chaotic mobs against lines of armed police and/or soldiers, and never really described all that concretely. Cherryh didn’t really describe what the soldiers were wearing, what they looked like, what their guns were like, what the mobs looked like, sounded like, etc. Distant viewpoint, more conceptual than immediate.

The political situation, however, was very interesting and complex. There were a lot of different players, each with their own distinct goals and interests. There is the Company, whose chief spokesman in the beyond is Ayres, a diplomat whose delegation essentially becomes prisoner to the Union; the Union, lead by Admiral Azov, a shrewd, effective military commander; there’s Pell, led by the Konstantin family (Damon, Emilio, Angelo); but then within these three main parties there are all sorts of other divisions, such as Mazian’s fleet (and within Mazian’s fleet there is another division, with Mallory and her ship as a sort of loose cannon), the merchanters, the Lucas company (Konstantin’s main rivals within Pell), the refugees of Pell (known as “Q,” for quarantine), etc etc.

With some of these groups, you know clearly who is good and who is evil. With others, however, you’re not so sure. Mallory was a fascinating character to me–fascinating because even though I hated what she was doing to everyone else, I really admired the way she ran her ship, the way she respected and took care of her troops, and the way she was always on top of things. She earned my respect, despite that I spent a good portion of the book hating her, and of all the characters, she was the one I felt closest to. She always did what needed to be done, even if it meant getting her hands bloody, and though she was a bit arrogant, she made up for it by being an excellent, top-rate leader. She was by far the most interesting character, the wild card, and Cherryh played her very well.

Cherryh’s writing is very dense and abstract; this book took me a lot longer than I thought it would. It’s not for everyone, and I wouldn’t be surprised if ended up quitting midway through. I almost did that, but I forced myself to read through it until the plot really took off. Cherryh’s vision of the future, however, is really fascinating, something complex, futuristic, and yet very believable, from the way she connects everything together. A fascinating world, and a vision that is, for all the war and horror, satisfyingly hopeful in the end.

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

Welcome to Mars, a magical world of ancient ruins like giant glass chess sets and canals of wine and sandy desert seas. A world inhabited by golden eyed people who can telepathically project hallucinations–some of them still live up in the hills. A desolate, empty world, the next frontier for a new generation of pioneering spirits, each with different dreams, different reasons, different goals and outlooks on their new life in the new world. Some come with respect and reverence to the ancient world, while others come to exploit it. But no matter why they come, everyone is deeply and profoundly changed. Some never return.

Ray Bradbury is one of the biggest names in science fiction, and this book is one of his greatest works. A lot of my friends really love Bradbury, but strangely, I haven’t read a lot of him (Fahrenheit 451, way back in Middle School, and a few essays, but that’s pretty much it). After putting this book down, all I can say is wow. Now I know what my friends were talking about.

The Martian Chronicles is more of a collection of short stories than anything else. That’s understandable, when you consider that science fiction began with short stories, not with novels. Keep that in mind as you read it, too. This is not a book you can read all in one go; you have to take time between the chapters to let each one soak in, otherwise your mind will just get overloaded. Bradbury delivers a bang! ending to just about every story in this book, and some of them are really deep. My favorite one was the one with Sender, and how the fourth rocket discovered that all the Martians were killed off by the chicken pox. There are some really profound ideas in that one, and I loved reading it.

A lot of hard sf purists tend to call Bradbury a writer of fantasy disguised as science fiction, and I can see where they’re coming from. There’s nothing really scientific about this book; the Mars of Bradbury’s stories is a purely fantastic invention (even for the 50s). I remember the story about the third rocket, and how it landed on a grassy green lawn, and all the crew stepped out and found themselves in a little Ohio town, and all I could think was “what??” It was very fantastic, very surreal and even trippy at parts, but once you get the hang of it, it’s not so bad. And really, I’d argue with the whole “Bradbury = fantasy” thing–I think some of the ideas in these stories definitely blur the line between fantasy and science fiction.

One thing Bradbury is fantastically good at is infusing all of his writing with passion. There wasn’t a moment in this whole book when I couldn’t envision Bradbury himself, his eyes wide and bloodshot, gripping me by the shoulders and shaking me. His imagery was amazing, and his twist endings were incredible. You really read Bradbury for his prose and for his ideas; everything else takes a back seat, but he does so well with the first two that that’s ok.

These are the kinds of stories that stick with you long after you’ve read them. They might not be consistent with each other or follow in a coherent, logical order, but they will deeply and profoundly move you.