Cherie Priest comes highly recommended to me from many people whom I respect; Boneshaker has been lauded most of all of her books. I couldn't fathom Fathom, and that made me apprehensive about my next Priest experience. Boneshaker had two difficult tasks: it had to live up to the expectations heaped upon it by so many others, and it had to be better than Fathom. In both respects, it succeeded, and I have no reservations about declaring Boneshaker a fine novel.

There's a certain fullness to the story that makes it a perfect sort of cozy fireplace read. Priest accomplishes this by setting a deeply personal story—Briar searching for her son—against the backdrop of the intense, altered Seattle after the Boneshaker has unleashed the Blight upon the settlement. The former plot keeps us grounded in the now and interested in what's happening to people instead of just an impersonal place, but it's supported by the rich narrative potential Priest creates with the latter plot. The eponymous machine makes only a minimal appearance in the actual story, but its name pervades the atmosphere of the entire novel. Everything that this world of Seattle, inside and outside the wall, has become what it's become because of the Boneshaker. At the same time, however, Priest gives us yet another example of a situation where humans have adapted to survive the most inimical environments.

So much of what the commentary on Boneshaker focuses on its steampunk side, but I'm more interested in this theme of perseverance. I'm willing to grant that the two aren't mutually exclusive, and one could even argue that there's a quality to the practical, heavily mechanistic philosophies embodied by steampunk that make it useful for this sort of theme. Boneshaker goes deeper than mere machines and mad scientists, however. It bears similarity to post-apocalyptic fiction not only because it has zombies but because it's about the communities that emerge during the struggle for survival. As Zeke and Briar penetrate the wall, they encounter the people left behind when Seattle was partitioned.

Hence, it's frustrating that Priest never fully develops the "underworld of Seattle" that exists inside the wall. We get a vague understanding of the society forged through the uneasy piece between those who seek power, like Dr. Minnericht, and those who respect "Maynard's peace." Then there's the transients, like the airship captains, and the inscrutable and aloof Chinese. We don't get a clear idea of the interactions among these groups. Nevertheless, Priest manages to draw our attention to some interesting individuals. I particularly liked Jeremiah, your typical big guy with the big gun and suit of armour. Captain Cly deserves a mention as well. But Lucy is probably the most enduring member of the supporting cast, for she serves an important role as Briar's companion on her journey to meet Minnericht and confront him about the whereabouts of Zeke.

I liked the parallel narrative structure, where we see Zeke and Briar alternatively exploring their section of ruined Seattle. Their respective perspectives were interesting: Zeke has the somewhat naive attitude of an overconfident teenager; Briar quickly finds herself in more trouble than she was expecting but soon forges alliances based on who she is and, more importantly, what she does. For of course, both are fighting against the reputations society has saddled upon them: Zeke as son and grandson, Briar as wife and daughter. The legacies of two very different men have landed upon them, and they must decide when to be their own people and when to play the role—for as both discover, sometimes it's useful to be related to Maynard Wilkes.

Those two men also form a knot in the relationship between mother and son, a point of contention around which Briar and Zeke dance for much of the novel. Briar doesn't want to reopen that chapter of her life, wants to protect her son and shelter him from what she perceives as the mistakes of her husband and her father. However, she realizes that her own reticence means others can step in and put whatever spin they like on the lives of Leviticus Blue and Maynard Wilkes. It's a credit to Zeke's character that he remains as sceptical as he does.

The book slows down toward the end, after Briar encounters Minnericht and the rotters begin assaulting King Station. I was somewhat disappointed in how the narrative began to coalesce around this point. While I saw the resolution to the question of Minnericht's identity coming, it felt tangential to the main conflict. And for all the drama over Briar going over the wall to find Zeke, she doesn't encounter much difficulty once everything goes pear-shaped. The narrative just slows down, much like a clock in need of winding (see what I did there?). Boneshaker left me wanting more, yes, but I'm not sure if that's because my appetite is whetted or because I feel like there's too much left unfinished.

Whatever the reason, I do anticipate future books. I'd love to see more about life aboard airships, even if that trope is getting rather thin. I want to know more about the source of the Blight, and how the American government is going to react when they eventually stop fighting their little war and decide to make Washington a state. However, I've saved mentioning this enthusiasm for upcoming books until the end of the review, because I want to emphasize that Boneshaker is a good read in its own right, sequels or no.

You can curl up with this novel and sink your teeth into the emotional journey of Briar and Zeke Wilkes. When the Boneshaker came, it didn't just necessitate the remodelling of a town; it meant the rebuilding of myriad lives. And no one was affected more than the widow of the man behind the Boneshaker. This is her story, as much as it's Seattle's story. It's about the mistakes we make, and what we do to make amends, and the people we try to become along the way. And it's about humans, doing what we always do: building, fighting, loving, and if we're lucky, sometimes learning, over and over again until we die (or become zombies).

History is more than just a series of events happening in sequence. So many history books focus on discussing their subject matter as a series of chronological events, however, so books that flout this convention always feel the need to warn us. This is what George Basalla does in The Evolution of Technology. At the same time as he reassures us that this is an historical account of how technology develops, he dispels any misapprehension that this will be a chronological look at technology from fire through Stone Age hammers all the way to the atomic bomb. Rather, this is a well-structured argument that includes historical examples as needed.

The Evolution of Technology works because Basalla articulates his thesis so clearly and precisely that his entire argument is, if not convincing, at least admirable. Although the title is a loaded one, Basalla is careful to always demarcate where the metaphor he consciously invokes breaks down, such as is the case when discussing natural selection in evolution versus artificial selection in technology. By treading so carefully, Basalla avoids overreaching and weakening his argument.

The first two chapters are introductory, establishing the topic and the terms in which Basalla will discuss the evolution of technology. Here we're given an idea of the historical and contemporary attitudes toward technological development, both with regards to what gets developed (Chapter I: "Diversity, Necessity, and Evolution") and how it gets developed ("Chapter II: Continuity and Discontinuity"). Basalla's most concerned with dispelling the—fallacious, in his view—idea that technological development occurs in a series of discontinuous revolutions initiated by individual "genius" inventors. While he doesn't dispute that individuals can make significant contributions to invention, he goes to great lengths to establish a sense of continuity when it comes to innovation.

This yields a perfect segue into the next two chapters, which are all about novelty. If it's the case that "revolutions" are more a product of historical analysis than actual fact, what criteria can we use for calling an artifact or invention "novel", and what factors in society determine these criteria? Basalla divides this analysis into four major types of factors that he splits across the two chapters: psychological and intellectual factors, and socioeconomic and cultural factors. Far from being abstract and abstruse, Basalla's arguments employ specific examples from a wide variety of technologies. He does tend to focus on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century innovations, including the steam engine and the automobile, probably because of the plethora of economic and historical data available for these inventions and the people involved in their production. This is a sound strategy, for it provides a common thread of investigation throughout the entire book (and he includes enough examples from other eras, like xylography in ancient China, to avoid charges of hasty generalization). Basalla makes a convincing case for why novelty emerged as a very individualist, Western concept while China and the Middle East did not embrace novelty as the mother of invention.

From novelty, Basalla moves on to selection. His factors are similar, although in this case he pays more attention to involvement of the economy and the military. Once again, the steam engine and the automobile feature heavily in the examples he invokes. However, he also discusses the ill-fated attempt to develop commercial supersonic transport and the propaganda-saturated era of nuclear power. Of particular interest is his counterfactual look at how there are potential alternative technologies for those adapted at various points in history: for instance, if railroads hadn't connected the United States in the nineteenth century, it's possible that canals and rivers could have picked up the slack. This isn't random science fiction speculation on his part—while any counterfactual history is ultimately speculative, Basalla draws on serious studies on the subject to marshal support for his anti-deterministic argument for the evolution of technology.

Basalla claims that The Evolution of Technology is an historical look at technology, and not a philosophy of science textbook. Well, I read this for a Philosophy of Science & Technology class. It's definitely an historical account, but I think there's more philosophy in here than Basalla admits. It's good philosophy though, interesting and well-argued. Of the two books I'm reading for this class (the other is Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, by Robert Klee), I liked this one better.

I found Jhumpa Lahiri through her anthology Unaccustomed Earth, which was my #1 book of 2008. Almost a year and a half later, I return to Lahiri, this time in novel form. The Namesake has rough edges not visible in Lahiri's later efforts, but the same magic that so impressed me in her short stories is there even in this earlier novel.

This is a story that captivates because it becomes so personal. The birth and development of Gogol Ganguli, a second-generation Indian in the United States, fascinates me because I grew up in a household so different from the Bengali culture Lahiri depicts here. However, I can still identify with Gogol's struggle for self-identity—who can't? Not all of us change or names, but most of us, at least once in our lives, feel lost and unsure of who we are. It's this dual sense of the alien and the familiar that makes The Namesake compelling, at least for me: I can recognize truths about my own life because they're presented against a background that differs from my own.

Gogol does not struggle against his parents' attempt to enforce an "Indian" or "Bengali" identity so much as he struggles against more personal definitions of self, such as his name. As a child, he rejects his parents' attempts to give him an official "good name" of "Nikhil." Upon entering university, he changes his name to Nikhil to escape the connotations of his namesake, Nikolai Gogol. This becomes a recurring theme throughout Gogol's life, and a curious one: he rejects his parents' intervention, then succumbs to it, often once they regard it as folly. We see this again in his relationship with Moushumi. At first he dates very "American" women and resists his mother's attempts to fix him up with Moushumi. Later, after he meets Moushumi and marries her, his mother regrets her matchmaking when the relationship doesn't work out.

Most of the book focuses on Gogol's relationships with women. He never seems to have a close male friend, or even close platonic friendships with women. The only men who have a long term impact on Gogol's life are his namesake and his father: "the man who gave you his name, and the man who gave you your name." I like how Lahiri charts their influence on Gogol, from how he views his names to how he views his father. Yet her exclusive focus on Gogol's relationships seems so narrow. We never see his interactions with professors or roommates, beyond a few meagre lines of dialogue. We never meet his colleagues. Gogol exists with a buffer zone around him, upon which only girlfriends and family members impinge.

I appreciate the multiple perspectives Lahiri uses, delving at times into the minds of Gogol's mother, father, and Moushumi. Each of them carries their own conflicts and doubts, not just about Gogol but about their own lives. The contrast between Gogol's parents' lives and Gogol's own life is striking: a single generation changes so much. As Gogol's mother puts it:

She no longer wonders what it might have been like to do what her children have done, to fall in love first rather than years later, to deliberate over a period of months or years and not a single afternoon, which was the time it had taken for her and Ashoke to agree to wed.

It's these multiple perspectives that give a sense of meaning to each character's choices. Gogol and Moushumi perceive in each other a sameness, a shared background that promises the stability they think they crave. After marrying, Gogol thrives on that stability, but Moushumi quickly becomes unsatisfied. Endemic to The Namesake, connected to its motif of identity, is a look at the question we sometimes forget to ask: why do people act as they do? What motivates one couple to stay together while another couple breaks apart?

Lahiri makes no promises of a happy ending nor assurances that life will work out for the best. Instead, she portrays the mistakes and the memories of two generations with sometimes brutal honesty. Aside from a few setbacks, however, Gogol's life does seem a little uneventful. This is an artifact of Lahiri's focus on his relationships, because Gogol seldom makes many decisions about those until it's too late, at which time he drifts along in life until the next woman comes by. I feel like Lahiri could have done more here, could have explored more, if only she had given Gogol more difficulties.

The narrative style that worked so well for short stories, unfortunately, feels flatter when extended to novel-length. Lahiri writes as if in stream-of-consciousness, except in third person, present tense. Everything is description, with very little dialogue. This allows her to cover plenty of time in a short amount of pages, but it has the disadvantage of feeling more like plot summary than story. As I observe above, we're well acquainted with her characters' thoughts and feelings, but the events of their lives go past sometimes as a montage instead of actual scenes.

But there's a masterful sense of resolution to the ending, happy or not, that makes up for these narrative flaws. As Gogol's mother prepares to leave the house she's lived in for decades, Gogol rediscovers the Nikolai Gogol book his father gave him for his thirteenth birthday. Years after his father's death, he suddenly has the opportunity to get to know the man who named him, as well as the man whose name he bears (no matter what his passport says). It's a final redemption that serves as a powerful reminder: we can never go back and rectify the past, but we can always go forward and remake the future.

I can't be as effusive in my praise for The Namesake as Unaccustomed Earth. There is still much here to enjoy and to experience. Jhumpa Lahiri has a knack for putting to the page observations that ring true, regardless of the culture of one's upbringing. In doing so, she offers a window into other lives, other minds. We're all so different and diverse, so in our quest for identity, inevitably we find different answers. The questions, however, are always the same.

Throughout Scar Night, Alan Campbell occasionally manages to create pockets of drama and suspense, but he fails to sustain this atmosphere for the duration of the book.

The city of Deepgate, suspended above an abyss by chains, is an interesting concept in and of itself. To go along with this temporal construction, Campbell has created an interesting ecclesiastical mythology centred around the abyss and what haunts its depths. The people of Deepgate believe that one's soul resides in one's blood, and they throw their dead into the abyss to send their souls to "Ulcis, god of chains", who was kicked out of heaven (which doesn't seem to trouble them).

Unfortunately, the descriptions of Deepgate fail to do justice to its concept. We learn that it's suspended by numerous chains and (somehow), ropes. There's a League of Ropes and a Temple of Ulcis somewhere near the middle, as well as a sagging bit called the Depression. However, the geography of the city is vague. Maps and minutiae may not be required, but Campbell never seems to capture the grandeur of the scenery by expanding his narrative scope. This same problem plagues his characterization.

My second issue with Scar Night centres around its characters. To Campbell's credit, most of the characters are three-dimensional, with understandable motives. Yet his narrative scope is so narrow that I often felt like I was missing pieces of information that would make me better appreciate the characters, particularly Carnival. What was with the prologue? I get what happened, but why?

Similarly, while we get a little bit of exposition toward the end about Rachel's past and her reasons for joining the Spine, she seems like a rather neglected sidekick, burdened with the unfortunate Power of Heart. It's admirable that Campbell decided not to turn her into a kickass Action Girl, but it would be nice if she were good at something. Because, of course, Dill is rather useless, which is why during the climax, the psychotic Carnival is the one who does most of the fighting. At one point I thought Dill was finally going to step up and take charge, seize upon his full potential. Much like Rachel, unfortunately, Campbell has severely limited Dill's competence.

Devon the Poisoner, arguably the main antagonist of Scar Night, has exciting motivations. Unfortunately, his villainy falls victim to pacing issues. Toward the end of the book, he has to single-handedly convince the barbarian nomads--who hate him with a passion--to align themselves with him and march on Deepgate. His success is hasty and suspect; it feels like the nomads were convinced more because "it was necessary for the plot to advance" than because Devon is particularly persuasive.

As I mentioned above, there were moments of clarity where it felt like Campbell had hit the perfect note. This usually happened whenever Presbyter Sypes was on stage. He was probably my favourite character, a pragmatist with impeccable integrity. Sypes also serves as the vehicle and mouthpiece for most of Campbell's shocking revelations (which I won't spoil) about the truth surrounding Deepgate's religion and the god of chains.

Scar Night piqued my interest and held it until the climax, exactly what a good novel should do. A great novel goes one step further, sustaining interest until the very end and leaving one hungry for more. While I think I'll probably seek out the sequel, I'm not exactly ravenous for more Alan Campbell.

The back cover of this mass market paperback edition is fully laden with blurbs from authors, many of whom I recognize: [a:Sharon Shinn|28544|Sharon Shinn|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1218995575p2/28544.jpg], [a:Sarah Ash|127082|Sarah Ash|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1224698402p2/127082.jpg], [a:Scott Lynch|73149|Scott Lynch|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1260905174p2/73149.jpg], and [a:Hal Duncan|143699|Hal Duncan|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1212552013p2/143699.jpg]. On the front cover, a blurb from the Publishers Weekly says: "Campbell has [a:Neil Gaiman|1221698|Neil Gaiman|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1234150163p2/1221698.jpg]'s gift for lushly dark stories and compelling antiheroes." I can see the "dark stories" part, but "compelling antiheroes"? Do they mean Carnival, or did I miss something? And I disagree with the comparison with Neil Gaiman.

The plethora of praise should raise a flag among canny readers. Scar Night is certainly a good read, but not as good as the hype would have you believe.

How useful is an angel when you trap its soul in Hell, cut the wings off its body, then stuff the soul in a giant mechanical simulacrum of an angel? We find out in Iron Angel, the sequel to Scar Night.

There was a brief period of time at the beginning of Iron Angel where it looked likely to eclipse Scar Night, perhaps even earn four stars. As I continued reading, both those possibilities became less and less likely. Scar Night has much that this book does not: a fascinating setting, an interesting antagonist, and a suspenseful story. By dint of Alan Campbell's writing, Iron Angel manages to scrape by with two stars.

What redeems much of Scar Night is its fascinating setting, the suspended city of Deepgate. Combined with the eponymous ritual enacted by Carnival, this at time created an atmosphere of suspense and perhaps even dread. Deepgate has this alien but vaguely familiar nature; I picture some sort of dark, overrun Victorian London hanging above a massive pit. For a series entitled "the Deepgate Codex," however, it seems like we're destined to spend little time in Deepgate from now on—Iron Angel takes us to the other side of the world!

Campbell fails to create a new setting worthy of Deepgate's legacy, and without such a place to tether the narrative, the book quickly becomes unwieldy. Hell almost serves this purpose, and Campbell's attempts to portray that transformation of souls into walls, floors, doorways, weapons, etc., was a little creepy (in a good way). But Iron Angel doesn't come close to providing any replacement for Deepgate. The characters are always in motion, always trying to get somewhere, and the book fails to convince me that they're going to accomplish anything in their journey.

I had reservations about the protagonists of Scar Night, and Campbell does nothing to mollify me in its sequel. Dill and Rachel are still useless at doing anything they try to do. It's actually amazing to watch. Combine this with the mess of antagonists in the book, and the story becomes what I'm going to call "frustratingly unfocused."

So we have the "gods," who at some point were cast out of Heaven, which is now sealed away. Dead people go to the Maze/Hell and as food for the Mesmerists, who are led by King Menoa. The exception would be Deepgaters, who mostly got fed to Ulcis; their souls now reside in the blood of Carnival (but that's only tangential to the story at this point). I give credit for Campbell's attempts to inject moral ambiguity: not only is King Menoa evil, but the gods are nearly as bad:

"If his creatures win, mankind faces the same oblivion Ayen sought to bestow upon us."

"And if you win," Cospinol said, "mankind faces slavery."

"A kinder prospect, surely?"

The talking head there is Rys, who's younger than his brother god Cospinol but a much bigger jerk. So both the gods and the demons are out to get humanity! Lovely.

This presents a problem, however, because it raises the question: for whom should we cheer? Clearly neither Menoa nor Rys will be gracious victors, although the book seems determined to steer us into Rys' (or at least Cospinol's) camp. Who has humanity's back? Rachel and Dill? They're incompetent at everything, even at just trying to run away from the conflict! If these two are our only hope, then I say just throw in the towel now, because humanity's done.

Rachel tries very hard, and for this Campbell punishes her by ignoring her for the middle part of the book. We follow her from Sandport to Deepgate and then to Cospinol's ship; after that we completely ignore her until she reunites with Dill during the novel's climax.

Dill, on the other hand, is about as opaque as coal that's been dunked in black paint. We get a very limited sense of how he's dealing with being pulled out of Hell only to get sent back to Hell, this time while his corporeal body gets possessed (and Rachel lifts not a finger to help exorcise Dill's body, I might add). For all that Dill arrives in Hell inhabiting a room that is his soul, I still have no idea what's going on in his head. He just seems eternally bewildered and/or determined, as if he has a switch and those are his only two states of being. He doesn't so much make his own decisions as do what others tell him to do (Rachel has the same problem, but at least she volunteers before she's ordered, so she makes it look like it's her choice).

So there's all this pressure on the protagonists, and they just aren't up to the job. Campbell has created this wonderfully messy conflict, but it's all dressed up with no one to resolve it. I don't care if Rachel and Dill do wind up saving the day in [b:God of Clocks|5863627|God of Clocks (Deepgate Codex, #3)|Alan Campbell|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1256003309s/5863627.jpg|6035784]—right now, as it stands, they are not believable saviours. Fantasy, by its nature, gets a wider leeway when it comes to suspension of disbelief. Hence, when you start having problems with believability, you need to step back and rethink things.

That's the bottom line on Iron Angel. It feels more like a first draft than a finished draft, and I wish it weren't the finished draft. There's a sliver of potential here. And Alan Campbell is, for the most part, a good writer. I quite enjoyed his description of Hell, of Cospinol's airship, and his portrayal of John Anchor. It's these small things that earn Iron Angel another star, so I'll grudgingly give it two, and I have a feeling I'll ask my friend to loan me the final book, if only so I can confirm my hope that it doesn't get any better. You might disagree, and that's fine; for me, however, Iron Angel doesn't pass muster.

My copy of The Postman is battered, well-read, and much loved. It's a movie tie-in Bantam paperback that I found at a used bookstore, the pages ever so slightly yellowed, the cover worn, its top corner ever so slightly curling up in a dog's ear. It fits perfectly with the atmosphere that David Brin creates. This is not a book to be treated delicately or reverently; it is meant to be read, re-read, enjoyed, and explained.

As good fiction, and science fiction, is wont to do, The Postman made me think. The central theme of this book is how humanity depends on myths to survive, and that these myths are always exaggerated and perhaps even, at their core, false. What matters is not their truthfulness but that they provide hope and inspire people to do great things, something Gordon Kranz discovers when he singlehandedly re-establishes the U.S. Mail service in Oregon and hails the coming of the "Restored United States."

Brin does not proselytize this theme subtly, but that's OK. It probably shouldn't be subtle, because it's such a fundamental part of the fabric of our society—perhaps the U.S. more so than my Canada, but every country has its founding myths. John A. MacDonald's "National Dream," anyone? We codify, honour, and embellish these myths (or in the case of my example, we pay Pierre Berton and the CBC to do it for us); upon these myths, we build our national identities and ideologies. The Postman reminds us that it behoves us to remember this fact. Myths are not, in and of themselves, bad—if we take Gordon's dream featuring Benjamin Franklin playing chess with a supercomputer at face value, it would seem that myths are necessary for the preservation of a stable, just nation. Nevertheless, we must tread carefully, lest myth cross that line from useful propaganda to Big Lie.

Playing the role of antagonists in The Postman, the Holnists follow the writings of anarchist survivalist Nathan Holn. The strong survive and the weak obey—or perish. Holn rises to popularity prior to the apocalyptic "Doomwar" (which is a really cheesy name) with a book that employs what Gordon calls "the Big Lie" technique:

Just sound like you know what you're talking about—as if you're citing real facts. Talk very fast. Weave your lies into the shape of a conspiracy theory and repeat your assertions over and over again. Those who want an excuse to hate or blame—those with big but weak egos—will leap at a simple, neat explanation for the way the world is. Those types will never call you on the facts.

This is obviously rhetoric on Brin's part against what he sees in politics in 1985. That it still rings true twenty-five years later is not surprising; as long as we have some form of society, post-apocalyptic or not, those who tell Big Lies will stay with us.

Just as we remember the myths, we have to remember the treacherous nature of Big Lies. The Postman is a repetitive lesson in critical thinking. Gordon plays the role of both deceiver and deceived, providing an excellent example of why myths can both help and harm. Everything in this postapocalyptic Oregon is wrapped in myth: the Restored United States, the philosophy of the survivalists, the truth behind the Cyclops supercomputer, Dena's militant feminists, etc. Nothing is what it appears to be.

I loved this book for the first three quarters. After Willamette Valley faces invasion by the survivalist, the quality of the book suffers. In particular, I didn't too much care for Brin's portrayal of Dena and her feminist ideals. They were straw feminists. Brin gives a slightly better treatment of this subject in [b:Glory Season|834670|Glory Season|David Brin|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178762615s/834670.jpg|820285]. As far as feminism in The Postman goes, however, you're better off ignoring this theme.

The climax and denouement do not give this book the resolution it deserves. The final chapter is both heartening and somewhat cliché—but probably necessary. Despite this, Gordon is different at the end of the book; events have changed him, for better or worse. So while I can't celebrate the particulars of the narrative, I can commend the changes they bring about in the characters. Gordon is a protagonist whom we can admire and even aspire to be. At the same time, he is fallible, and sometimes he lets us down. He may be the last "Twentieth Century idealist" in a twenty-first century wasteland, but that makes him perfect for his role as hero.

The Postman endures because it captures a story that is eternal to the human condition: the necessity of the myth, and the dangers of the Big Lie. As far as science fiction goes, it lacks most of the tropes. It takes refuge in the typical post-apocalyptic milieu and adds the merest hint of artificial intelligence and a dash of eugenics to the mix. But what it lacks in pomp and circumstance it makes up for in the persistence of its theme. The Postman is a myth unto itself, and one I heartily recommend.

Wow. That is an awful, awful cover. It just screams, "I'm a pulp fantasy cover from the '60s! Ignore me if you want people to think you're normal!" If ever there was a time not to judge a book by its cover, now is that time. Rocannon's World is Ursula K. Le Guin's first novel, and it shows. Nonetheless, it's not as cringe-worthy as this paperback reprint's cover makes it seem.

Anyone familiar with Le Guin's work will end up being disappointed, I suspect, not because Rocannon's World is bad but because Le Guin gets so much better as she goes on. From an academic perspective, this book is interesting because it already contains many of the themes Le Guin revisits in later novels. Rocannon reminded me at times of Ged, from [b:A Wizard of Earthsea|13642|A Wizard of Earthsea (The Earthsea Cycle, #1)|Ursula K. Le Guin|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166571382s/13642.jpg|113603], and Genly, from [b:The Left Hand of Darkness|18423|The Left Hand of Darkness|Ursula K. Le Guin|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166913055s/18423.jpg|817527]. Like the latter novel, this book takes place on a world whose inhabitants are less technologically developed than the League of All Worlds (later the Ekumen). Rocannon acts as a personification of Le Guin's sociological and anthropological interests in a different but still "human" society.

The central conflict is one of revenge. It's true that Rocannon also acts to protect Fomalhaut II and alert the League, but in his heart, he's acting because he's the only survivor of a terrible event, and this is the only thing he can do other than sit and wait for the end to come. Perhaps this scent of a last, mad quest is what makes him so beloved of the heroic Angyar. Rocannon is this larger-than-life, nearly godlike figure who's featured in their mythology, owing to the effects of relativistic space travel. When he says he's going on a long, perilous journey to find his enemies, the Angyar look for where they can sign up.

The similarities to Ged appear during this quest: Rocannon becomes fixated on finding and defeating his enemy, going so far as to acquire some form of telepathy from a mysterious creature he encounters on the southern continent. Rocannon's quest is all consuming, and when he is finished, he has nothing left. No reason to return "home" and no reason to go back to the home of the Angyar.

This is a short novel, but as I hope you can see, it unpacks into a multi-faceted narrative. I'm ambivalent about how much the secondary characters contribute. On one hand, Mogien and Yahan are great companions for Rocannon—especially the latter, as Yahan rescues Rocannon and acts like a faithful squire for the entire trip. Through them, we get a sense of the social order of the Angyar and how Rocannon perturbs that order. On the other hand, there's something about Le Guin's writing that keeps them ever distant. I think it's related to my mixed feelings about her use of telepathy—it feels unnecessary to the entire narrative. Why can't Rocannon find the enemy some other way? Likewise, while I recognize the need to see the Angyar as aliens, we don't get close to anyone except Rocannon.

Rocannon's World is a fulfilling adventure story—I particularly enjoy the ending, which is sappy but tinged bittersweet. As we see in her later Hainish novels, Le Guin uses relativity as a wonderful plot device while also exploring the psychological implications of such forms of space travel. Even in her first novel, Le Guin shows what a careful and thoughtful writer she will become. Her ways of describing space travel to alien, less developed species are always poetic in a somewhat melancholy way: "They can send death at once, but life is slower." That's true even for those of us who don't have FTL ships.

To be completely honest, boot camp was my favourite part of this book. Everything after that seemed like a long denouement until the inevitable final page; boot camp was where the real character development happens. And this is an intensely character-driven book. Some people are critical of it because it lacks a plot, and they're correct on that point. It's not short on conflict, however. The conflict is just very personal. Also, I find Heinlein's descriptions of military disposition and protocol fascinating—more fascinating even than the action, which is probably a good thing, considering how many times Heinlein has Johnnie say something like, "I won't describe this next part. . . ."

Since we acknowledge that this piece is part propaganda and all polemic, making a connection between the narrator and the reader is essential. Heinlein gives Johnnie a voice that does just that. We understand why he's signing up for the Mobile Infantry, why he contemplates dropping out of boot camp, and why he stays in. (Heinlein's choice of writing in the first person was apt, but once or twice it leads to contrived circumstances required for Johnnie to overhear other peoples' conversations.) Above all, Johnnie Rico is fallible: he isn't the super-competent action hero we often see in contemporary military thrillers. In fact, he's just a kid, which is no doubt why this novel appeals to adolescent readers.

Johnnie's experience at boot camp changes him (for the better, we're supposed to believe), moulds him from boy to man. I must admit, Heinlein makes military life seem very appealing in certain respects: discipline, but fair discipline; training; camaraderie, etc. Although he fails to convince me that a militant stance is the necessary one, he has increased my respect and understanding for the military in general. Now, I already respected the military—but only as an abstract concept. Our armed forces have always been "there" in my mind, but I've never had a close connection to them. Heinlein's portrayal of military life (no matter how idealized it is), its structures and its values and its vagaries, gives me newfound admiration for people who elect to become a part of such an organism.

It is an idealized portrayal though. When I first contemplated my review, I was going to laud Starship Troopers for its "realistic" portrayal of soldiering. But then I thought better of it and realized that, while there is some realism here, Heinlein omits quite a bit. Like, all the bad stuff.

Johnnie experiences mild hardship at boot camp, people around him die in training and in combat, and he nearly dies himself in the climactic encounter with the Bugs. Yet he never undergoes a real crisis. He contemplates dropping out once or twice, and his mother dies, but Johnnie doesn't seriously question his convictions. Nor does he face any real challenges to his decision to "go career" and become an officer. Johnnie isn't perfect, and he makes mistakes, but all his mistakes are minor and easy to overlook.

I suppose it's a tribute to Heinlein's skill as a writer that I almost overlooked this flaw in the book. I was so interested in learning what happens to Johnnie that I didn't notice, while reading, that nothing bad happens. A lack of realism does not a bad book make; after all, this is science fiction!

And what's with that, anyway? Some reviewers seem to think that Starship Troopers is unnecessarily science fiction, that one could transpose the protagonist to a contemporary or twentieth-century war setting and tell the same story, with the same themes. Not so. The "starship" in Starship Troopers is integral to this book.

Firstly, Heinlein needs the faceless alien enemy always within grasp of a science fiction narrative. The Bugs are not human and do not even have a recognizably human hierarchy. They are, as their name implies if not their physiognomy, a collective, colony-oriented species, like ants or bees. This is important, because Heinlein needs an enemy with whom we can't sympathize. If Starship Troopers were set in a non-science fiction contemporary Earth, then the enemies would have to be humans. And that would mean having to refute whatever philosophy espoused by the human enemies. The Bug philosophy, if they have one, is irrelevant to the conflict: they're trying to expand into human territory, and humanity is resisting by taking the war to them. Since they lack human motivations, we don't have to stop and question whether their side has a compelling reason for acting as it does.

Secondly, there's something appealing about the "soldier of the future" that Johnnie Rico exemplifies. This may be related to the individualist/"army of one" mentality that [American:] society is prone to endorse. Heinlein embodies this mentality in the novum of the powered suit, which literally turns a single soldier into a walking, talking zone of destruction. When suited up, one becomes "more" of a solider, because the powered suit isn't a vehicle so much as it is an extension of one's own body. One isn't operating a weapon so much as one is the weapon now.

The final, and hopefully obvious, reason is that Heinlein needs the fictitious Terran Federation as an example of his ideal government. No such example exists on contemporary Earth; indeed, it's precisely a situation like this that calls for the "thought experiment" laboratory of science fiction. Starship Troopers isn't meant to be predictive; Heinlein isn't saying that he thinks we'll be battling bugs for real estate in the 22nd century. Instead, the 22nd century is just a convenient setting in which Heinlein can construct the society he needs for his polemic. Regardless of how one feels about the contents of that polemic, Starship Troopers is a wonderful example of what science fiction can accomplish that non-genre fiction would find difficult.

I've been ignoring the actual philosophy belonging to Starship Troopers, because I don't want my opinion of that philosophy to distort my review of the book. You should read this book, even if you don't agree with Heinlein's politics.

The issue of what form of government is best is far from settled. We have, in Canada and the United States, a "total representative democracy," as Heinlein might call it. Everyone theoretically can vote, although in practice our democracy puts limits on franchise—the Federation's limits are just more overt and widely applicable. So already, the prevailing philosophies and Heinlein's philosophy agree that enfranchisement isn't a right so much as a privilege; contemporary democracies just tend to extend the privilege to everyone of a certain age by default.

(My personal view is that a shadow oligarchy is the best form of government in theory; by shadow, I mean that the public shouldn't be aware of the oligarchy's existence. Yes, that means we could have a shadow oligarchy right now and not know about it, although I'm not so paranoid as to actually suggest that. Anyway, there are numerous practical problems with this form of government such that it's probably a very bad idea to implement it in the real world, and it's not really germane to Starship Troopers, so I'll end this aside now.)

You have to give Heinlein credit for not only discussing the problems with his contemporary society but for proposing solutions. There's a trend in non-fiction these days to identify aggressively the "problem" but then hide behind a claim that the book is just "an analysis" and offer no actual solution to the problem. Sometimes the author is a good enough writer to get away with this, and I still enjoy the book. Most often it's just annoying. Heinlein identifies what he sees as problems with his society and says, "This is how we can fix it." Kudos!

Heinlein's idea of limiting franchise to those who have served in the military (or an equivalent service organization) is interesting. I think it makes more sense, in a way, to make such a responsibility voluntary rather than use conscription, such as Switzerland does: if people want to vote, they have to serve, but they aren't required to vote. The resistance Johnnie encounters from the recruiting officer makes it clear that, at least in peacetime, the military is burdened with having to find "make-work" projects for all the people determined to gain citizenship. This isn't exactly an evil fascist enterprise to mould everyone into automatons.

There's a benefit to Heinlein's model that he makes explicitly clear toward the end of the book:

So what difference is there between our voters and wielders of franchise in the past? . . . Under our system every voter and officeholder is a man who has demonstrated through voluntary and difficult service that he places the welfare of the group ahead of personal advantage.

There's two key phrases there: voluntary and personal advantage. Conscription might force people to experience a taste of military life, but it removes any element of choice from the equation: everyone has to serve, so how do we determine who wants the responsibilities that come along with service? Also, Heinlein believes that those who have served, on average, value the group over personal gain. We see this in contemporary politics all the time: if one candidate has had military service, he or she may find this an advantage, because it confirms him or her as "patriot," i.e., someone willing to put the safety of the country above his or her personal survival. Don't you want people like that governing your country?

I find Heinlein's argument for limiting franchise intriguing and not as silly as some critics claim. Still, the conscientious objector in me questions whether his harsh approach to justice is necessary. He seems to be making certain assumptions about how rational we are, as human beings and particularly as children, that are worth a deeper investigation than we see here. That is, I wonder if there is a better way to determine who should qualify for franchise than military service.

That isn't a question Starship Troopers tries to answer, which is fine. It still tries to answer questions worth asking. So read the book. And ask them.

I don't judge books by their covers, but sometimes covers do say a lot about the book they contain. The cover of my edition of The City & The City is in washed out blue, with a stylized title and the skylines of two different Eastern European cityscapes—presumably, the modernized Ul Qoma, and its neighbour, Besźel. It's a very nice cover. Alone, it is aesthetically pleasing. Yet it also captures the atmosphere of the story with pinpoint accuracy. There's a washed out quality to The City & The City, a sense of drab stoicism imparted by centuries of maintaining Besźel and Ul Qoma's unique relationship. This makes it a perfect setting for a hardboiled crime novel, as well as another Miévillian story in which the city (two cities, here) are almost characters unto themselves.

(I'm going to reveal the exact nature of that "unique relationship" two paragraphs below, hence the spoiler warning on this review. I feel that this is essential in order to discuss properly the book, and I don't think that knowing the "secret" spoils the plot or even the enjoyment of the book.)

This only my second novel by China Miéville, and my second in two weeks (the first being Perdido Street Station). Already I'm gaining a great respect for his worldbuilding abilities. In particular, Miéville has a talent for understatement. In The City & The City, the reader teases out the nature of Besźel and Ul Qoma after a few chapters. We get hints from mentions of "unseeing," "unhearing," and, of course, "Breach." This was obviously intentional; otherwise, Miéville could have begun with, "Once upon a time, there were two cities. . . ." Instead, he forces us to acclimatize and orientate ourselves, much like a tourist to Besźel or Ul Qoma. We're forced to pay attention. And because this is a mystery, that is a good thing!

As its title implies, however, this book is more about the two cities and their relationship (both political and physical) than the murder that forms its central plot. Besźel and Ul Qoma, taken separately, seem like typical Eastern European cities, one stagnating and the other in a state of renewal. Taken together, these cities are anything but typical. In places where the cities overlap (or "crosshatch"), inhabitants of Besźel must "unsee" people in Ul Qoma, and vice versa; they learn to do this by paying attention to how people walk, hold themselves, the style of clothing they wear, etc. All of these elaborate cultural conventions have evolved to maintain the homeostasis of the two cities. Puncturing this equilibrium, we learn, is the worst possible crime in both cities: it is breach. And the people who deal with it have no identity, no concrete existence other than their purpose; they are Breach.

What I found more interesting than the existence of uniquely Besź or Ul Qoman modes of dress and walking were the implications surrounding these customs. In a crosshatched area, you can just "decide" to be in one city or the other. Change the way you walk, change the city you're in—of course, then you are also in breach, but that isn't the point here. It's the fragility of this system. Why would people ever choose to live this way?

This seems like a natural question for us to ask. Let me rephrase it. Why would people ever choose to live in a city constantly in danger of flooding during a hurricane? Why would people ever choose to live in a city where they have to spend four hours a day stuck in a car going from home to work and back? To an outsider, those situations may seem just as bizarre as the superposition of Besźel and Ul Qoma does to us, yet people inhabit such cities. Why? Simple: it's home.

Miéville reinforces this point by contrasting the two cities. Borlú is Besź, so when he travels to Ul Qoma, he is out of his element. The cities share the same space, but they are very different from one another in character and composition—for Borlú, Besźel is most definitely "home" while Ul Qoma is not. It's precisely this sentiment, amplified a hundredfold and augmented with a sense of superiority, that gives hardcore nationalists like the Besź True Citizens and Qoma First their motivation. And on the other side, you have the unificationists of either city trying to merge the two together (which honestly seems like a bad idea to me, just from a physical infrastructure perspective).

Despite being so different, Besźel and Ul Qoma are both defined by their unique situation and by their oversight by the Breach. No other cities on Earth have an "alien power" watching over them, "protecting" them. Citizens learn as children to avoid breaching; as we soon discover, the murders of Mahalia Geary go to great lengths to avoid breaching while committing their crime. Breach is omnipresent, a constant undercurrent in thoughts and actions—it's amazing that most Besź and Ul Qomans don't have a siege mentality.

Borlú's a very interesting character and a good narrator. I am not so convinced he is a very good detective, but he gets the job done, and what he lacks in foresight he makes up for in guts. What begins as an admittedly vexing murder investigation quickly becomes an investigation into the structure of the cities themselves, into the nature of Breach and the possibility of a "third city," Orciny, existing "between" the other two. Borlú's not an action hero, but he's still tough and does what's necessary to deliver justice.

Can you read The City & The City as a straight crime novel, ignoring all this namby-pamby fantasy junk? Of course not. I focus so much on the relationship between these cities because it's integral to the story, and to the mystery—there would be very little mystery were it not for the fact that an Ul Qoman inhabitant winds up dead on Besź soil. Yet the mystery is just as integral to the book. It is the plot, the glue that creates the conflict and drives the story forward even as we learn about the two cities. Genre-wise, there is enough of a "crime novel" here that people who regard fantasy with a sceptical or hesitant eye need not fear being swallowed by a crowd of hungry LARPers.

The City & The City is—and I mean this without any denigration toward other types of fantasy novels—a very mature work of fantasy. It's probably more proper to label it "speculative fiction," if we're going to get into a label debate—I'm just calling it "fantasy" because we never do get a full explanation for why the cities are superimposed on each other. Should we get an explanation? You're certainly entitled to want one, but as it is, this book feels complete. It is a mystery set in a mysterious city and a mysterious city, but that mystery is not about the origins of the city and the city. The origins are extraneous, and attempting to add them would ruin the story's harmony. For The City & The City works precisely because it is balanced, because Miéville carefully controls the juxtaposition of the foreign and the familiar. The result is a murder wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a city and a city.

I'm ambivalent about this book. The best way to describe my reservation with Woman on the Edge of Time is that I was never comfortable suspending my disbelief. I tried to make myself willing to go where Marge Piercy was taking me but never quite got there. Although the book steadily improved from its chaotic but very dull beginning, it never involved me in the way I require to get much satisfaction from reading. In the end, I was reading the book to finish it instead of because I was eager to find out what happened next—I was not invested in the fate of Connie or Luciente. Piercy's utopia is intriguing and creative—and therein lies the problem.

Woman on the Edge of Time is a good example of how one can take a concept (in this case, a utopian society) and overdo the trope to the point where it distracts from the story one is trying to tell. Through the unique interaction of present (well, the 1970s) with a possible future, Piercy weaves a story of power and revolution. Her protagonist is one of the powerless, the poor, the oppressed. Society is "against" her. Her only hope lies in her ability to envision something potentially better.

There's a difference between having a detailed portrayal of a utopia and an effective one. My new gold standard is probably The Dispossessed. The key requirement is that the description of utopia itself doesn't get in the way of storytelling, and I'm not convinced that requirement is met here. Authors often take license with the imagined future, especially when it is compared with their present. Alone, any of the various concepts that Piercy injects into the future—conflict between the ecologically-aware and the technology-crazed sides of society, reproduction via bottle babies, a sort of non-hierarchical representative-by-lottery democracy, the natural evolution of language and dialect—are interesting and a fine basis for a utopia. Together, they're overwhelming. Piercy's utopia is too crowded.

In contrast, Connie's present is far too simple a world. We're supposed to sympathize with Connie's misfortunes, feel shocked at what the doctors at her asylum are doing when it comes to running experiments on patients. The explanations that the doctors offer Connie when she protests that she doesn't belong in a mental hospital are always curt, snide—it's all very one-sided. Connie's brother, father, and niece are all very unhelpful. It is almost enough to make the sceptic in me wonder if Connie is in fact more far gone than she believes, and the whole time travel part of the book is a delusion. I'm forced to conclude that's not the case, for Piercy never explores this avenue explicitly, except for one particular scene that doesn't confirm the delusion hypothesis. Connie's visits to the future are for the benefit of inspiring her to alter her present.

I am of two minds on this book. Ben the Philosopher appreciates what Piercy is trying to do, considers her utopia and Connie's plight, and contemplates the power struggles and social conflict philosophy underpinning this book. Yet Ben the Reader professes no emotion, no feeling stirred by the story. A book may have the most profound themes ever imagined, but if they don't move me, I cannot in good conscience commend the book. Still, I can say of Woman on the Edge of Time that it strives for greatness, and only in failing does it find mediocrity. Better to strive and fail than just aim low, and for that I can recognize a sincere effort if not a satisfactory one.