I have a confession (my reviews often start with confessions because reviews are as much about the reviewer as they are about the book): I don't much like monster movies. Unlike many film buffs, I do not revel in the campiness of 1940s and 1950s costuming; I do not drool over stop-motion animation or long for the good-old days when the monster was some guy in a suit, not a tennis ball married to a motion-capture unit. Boris Karloff film festivals hold no magic for me. Whether it's Frankenstein's monster or Dracula, this area of speculative fiction has never gripped me as much as, say, space opera.

So I approached Shambling Towards Hiroshima with some scepticism. Could a story so steeped in this subculture hold my interest? The narrator, Syms J. Thorley, is a has-been monster movie actor recounting his involvement in the New Amsterdam Project, also known as the Knickerbocker Project. As an alternative to the Manhattan Project, the Navy and a biologist bred giant fire-breathing lizards that could be towed to the shore of Japan by submarine and unleashed to wreak devastation on the island nation. But they needed a scale-model monster to destroy their scale-model of Japan in front of representatives of the Japanese government. Enter Thorley, professional monster man.

The only real science fiction in this book is its premise. While essential to the plot, it never steals the stage from Thorley's voice as a harried old man or his story about balancing his movie obligations with his duty to his country. At first, the idea that the Navy might be breeding Godzilla-like monsters to defeat Japan may sound outrageous to a reader—it did to me! Then I stopped and considered what the public must have thought in the aftermath of the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. "Atom bomb" sounds like something out of science fiction—indeed, until the Manhattan Project reified it, it was something out of science fiction. Yet nuclear weapons, while not commonplace (thankfully) like toasters or computers are a matter of common parlance, part of our technological canon, if you will. If we can harness the power of nuclear fission for destructive purposes, surely breeding fire-breathing lizards is not that crazy.

And what about duping the Japanese with a guy in a suit? Well, that is just one of the many levels of satire in which James Morrow engages. In a commentary on both the United States military and the Hollywood film industry, Morrow looks at the relationship film has with deception. The government is no stranger to deception as a negotiating tactic. When they need to deceive the Japanese delegation about the veracity of their scaled-down monster, it makes perfect sense to turn to a professional industry practised in such deception. With the proper costuming, lighting, and acting, anything is possible in the movie industry.

Shambling Towards Hiroshima is rife with satire of the movie industry; much of it, owing to my unfamiliarity with 1940s American cinema, went over my head. I knew enough to gather that James Whale and Willis O'Brien, hired to direct Thorley's performance and manage special effects, respectively, were real people in the movie industry. Morrow gives Thorley an over-the-top rival, who also plays a somewhat antagonistic role in both Thorley's life and the plot. Siegfried Dagover is enjoyable because he is a caricature of the jealous actor rather than despite this fact. Similarly, the rough characters of Thorley's director and producer on his movie project hearken back to the coarser era of American cinema. By no means do I subscribe to a view that American cinema was ever "innocent", but this was an era where radio was still the dominant communications medium. The cult of celebrity around movie actors, especially those who specialized in the monster movie industry, manifested differently than it does today. Morrow displays the differences, both celebrates them and mocks them, as is evident from Thorley and Darlene's interrupted adventures on Santa Monica beach with Thorley's monster costume. . . .

Moving further into meta-fictional territory, Morrow comments on the monster movie form itself. He (ironically, I think) has Thorley insist that, "the writers repeatedly employed a conceit that, in retrospect, seems to strike a blow for feminism." The necessity for a romantic interest for the male protagonist would often lead to his association with a lonely female scientist. Lo and behold, the biologists working on the Knickerbocker Project are Dr. Ivan Groelish and his daughter, Joy. Joy's relationship with Thorley is more short-lived and platonic than it is romantic, but it's clear Morrow is not aiming for a one-to-one correspondence. In fact, the biologists play a surprisingly small role considering the monstrous premise—again, because this is a story about Thorley and his role in a deception that failed to end a war, not a story about monsters invading Japan.

Any satire spared the monster movie industry Morrow saves for the United States military. Admirals Yordan and Strickland, like Dagover, are caricatures of stereotypes. And because everything about Shambling Towards Hiroshima is a caricature of a stereotype, that works. Yordan acts like an atheist attached to a religious event, forced to oversee a project he doesn't understand implemented by people who, not being military personnel, he does not trust. Of course, the situation is not helped by Thorley's irreverent attitude.

Like all satire, however, Shambling Toward Hiroshima has a serious point, embodied by the frame story. Thorley has eleventh hour encounters with a sympathetic hooker, a friendly hotel steward, and a fan stuck in a costume model after Thorley's famous monster. These characters serve as windows into the mind of the older, more experienced Syms Thorley, one haunted by his role in the war. More than just a failure to end the war, Thorley's mere involvement in the war has rendered the rest of his life in a darker shade of grey. He's continued to shuffle as a mummy, to howl as a werewolf . . . but that profession that he loved so much has been tainted for him. And all the awards and accolades that he has accumulated, the money and the cult recognition, if not fame, is a hollow victory compared to what could have been.

War is hell. This a theme oft-repeated, and to do something truly innovative with it is a formidable challenge for a writer. Simlarly, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are some of the most controversial events of the twentieth century, events that marked the beginning of the "Atomic Age" of humanity, and all the good and ill it would bring. I suppose it is possible to interpret this book as a pro-bomb statement. Simply read, this is a story of the military trying to persuade Japan to surrender through a mock demonstration of a superweapon. If that were the case, however, why not write about a mock demonstration of the atomic bomb? Instead Morrow chose to portray a fictitious alternative to the Manhattan Project. In doing so, he decouples the nearly indelible link between the mechanics of the atomic superweapon and the morality.

More than just a story about dropping the bomb, Shambling Towards Hiroshima is a story about the mindset of those working so hard to end the war. It's all there in the title, which is so perfect. "Shambling" is reminiscent of zombies—but, more topically, it refers to all the various monsters of the 1940s cinema. It also conjures the image of an inexorable but by no means smooth path toward the dropping of the atomic bomb, a weighty spectre of fate. Morrow gave me, someone who has no context for Hiroshima, an idea of the zeitgeist of 1940s America. As the war in the Pacific drew ever on, the prospect of ending it with one fell swoop grew ever more appealing. Each successive event compounded on the last, making the deployment of the bomb more likely. And so the world lurched and shambled, one step at a time, toward the beginning of the Atomic Age.

Few authors have won my heart as quickly as Nancy Kress. Two years ago, I had never heard of her. Suddenly I have seven of her books on my shelf, only one of which I've read. Like Octavia E. Butler does in Lilith's Brood, Nancy Kress uses genetic engineering to comment on what we consider human. With Nothing Human, Kress looks at humanity through posthuman eyes, asking where we draw the line between human and inhuman—when we can cut down the chromosomal level, what criteria are we using to decide what is human and what isn't?

"Act One" is set even closer to the present day. An actor is preparing for her role in a movie about "Arlen's children," girls who have been genetically engineered at birth to be more empathic. The novella opens with the actor and her achondroplastic manager (our narrator) meeting with representatives of the Group, a radical organization that advocates genetic engineering by any and all means. Jane Snow just wants to be prepared for her role, but she finds herself an unwitting participant in an act of bioterrorism.

Engineering children to be more empathic seems innocuous, right? Or, as Jane's manager, Barry, puts it: "Prospective clients loved the promise of kids who actually understood how parents felt." As creepy children Bridget and Belinda Barrington demonstrate, however, super-empathy is not all it's cracked up to be. Nurture is as important as nature, and from Belinda's sociopathic behaviour it's clear that her super-empathy does not mitigate her spoilt, emotionally-distant relationship with her mother.

The Arlen's Syndrome children plot, while central to the story, did not affect me as much as Barry's relationship with Jane and his relationship with his ex-wife, Leila, and his son, Ethan. As a dwarf, Barry knows his share of genetic woes. He is the product of a genetic disorder, a mutation that, while not a disease, carries its share of disadvantages and drawbacks, both physiological and social. When genetic screening indicates his unborn son will not be a dwarf, Barry decides to use genetic engineering to change this. But

something went wrong. The retrovirus that was the delivery vector mutated, or the splicing caused other genes to jump (they will do that, or maybe God just wanted an evil joke that day. The soma-gene correction spawned side effects, with one gene turning on another that in turn affected another, a cascade of creation run amok. And we got Ethan.

Barry and Leila fall out, and Barry meets Ethan for the first time when he is forced to flee with Jane and the Barringtons to his mountain-side cabin. Ethan's reaction is . . . less than warm, at first. But soon we see there is a glimmer of hope.

Children . . . such enigmas, such complicated bundles of information. Intrinsically innocent, yet blatant reminders of past mistakes or triumphs. And that is the point: when we dabble in our genes, we dabble in the future of our species. We are changing our children, arguably our most precious assets. It behoves us to think long and hard about any such changes before we make them.

Barry is also hopelessly in love with Jane. Jane knows this, but it's an unbroached topic between them—at least, until Belinda broaches it:

Something unnamed could, just barely, be ignored. Could be kept out of daily interaction, could almost be pretended away. What had been "given words" could not.

Jane's serial marriages to very attractive men combined with Barry's dwarfism, not to mention their professional relationship, seems to make anything more than friendship impossible. It's more than that, of course. As Belinda points out, Jane recoils from Barry's accidental touch:

It wasn’t the words Belinda had said. Yes, I loved Jane and yes, that love was hopeless. I already knew that and so must Jane. How could she not? I was with her nearly every day; she was a woman sensitive to nuance. I knew she hated my accidental touch, and hated herself for that, and could help none of it.

On a visceral level Jane's body rebels and displays a bigotry that disgusts her. As enlightened as we like to think we are, sometimes our involuntary reactions bely that and surprise us. I'll admit to having such reactions before.

And so Kress explores not only the consequences of genetic engineering but the motives as well. She goes deeper than the stock reasons of eliminating disease or, for those of a sinister bent, breeding a master race. To some extent, those visceral reactions we find so shameful make us human, and they contribute to our desire to give our children better futures.

Although genetic engineering is in its infancy (no pun intended), it is real. We have sequenced the human genome, and we can screen for genetic disorders. Gene therapy is a reality. It is only a matter of time before we are able to choose the sex of our children, and from there, even more complex traits. With the shadow of World War II looming over the last century, and the spectre of biological determinism always waiting in the wings, there is no area of science for which the phrase "playing God" is more apt. Our ability to alter individuals and our species at the most fundamental level raises hard questions for which there are no easy answers. Kress and other authors like her are using science fiction to show us thought experiments, potentialities inherent in our future capabilities. "Act One" is a powerful reminder that advancements in science and technology bring with them challenges to morality and ethics that must not be ignored. This is, as the title of Kress' novella says, only the beginning of the show.

It has been a while since a book made me cry.

The Sparrow begins with a concise prologue, so unassuming that I overlooked its significance. Within this prologue, however, is a reminder, a sort of caveat that hangs over the book:

The Society [of Jesus:] asked leave of no temporal government. It acted on its own principles, with its own assets, on Papal authority. The mission to Rakhat was undertaken not so much secretly as privately—a fine distinction but one that the Society felt no compulsion to explain or justify when the news broke several years later.

The members of the Jesuit Rakhat expedition are amateurs. They are brilliant priests and scientists, to be sure, but none of them are astronauts, and they are amateur anthropologists and diplomats at best. So much of our history of space travel has been dominated by government organizations that sometimes we forget civilians, with the right technology and resources, can venture into space too. The Rakhat expedition is the first of its kind; Emilio's linguistic adventures with remote groups of humans are the closest anyone comes to having first contact experience. The outcome of the expedition is a sobering reminder to those who eagerly await our first visit to an inhabited planet: we're human, so we are probably going to screw it up.

This is a message not of pessimism but of realism. The Sparrow, its religious themes notwithstanding, is overwhelmingly about realism and not denying the facts of the moment. There are two interleaved stories linked by one man, Jesuit priest Emilio Sandoz, although the Emilio from one story seems nothing like the Emilio of the other. In 2060, Emilio is a broken man trying to recover from degrading, dehumanizing trauma. His expedition to Rakhat was twenty years earlier by Earth's count, but thanks to the effects of relativity, it has only been a few months since he was rescued—and though forty-five years passed on Earth while he was gone, he only spent three years on Rakhat. Emilio is the sole survivor of an ill-fated voyage of discovery, a victim of cultural miscommunication and physical assaults, and a prisoner of his guilt and self-pity.

After the disappointing anti-linear narrative that was Time's Arrow, MDR's use of flashbacks is a nice reassurance that non-linear storytelling still works. Moreover, MDR's attempt to use foreshadowing and dramatic irony to create suspense works where Martin Amis' fails miserably. The Sparrow begins in 2060, with Emilio rescued and returned to Earth. He is incoherent and inconsolable, but the reports from the rescue team include scandalous, horrifying facts: they found him in the equivalent of a brothel, and he killed the child who guided them to him. The Emilio Sandoz of 2019, the dreamer, the community activist, is not capable of such actions. How does he become the broken man we meet at the beginning of the book? Every moment spent on the story of the expedition is tainted by the knowledge that everyone except Emilio dies, knowledge made all the more tragic by MDR's great characterization of Jimmy Quinn, Sofia Mendes, and Anne and George Edwards.

I didn't expect to fall for the love triangle between Jimmy, Sofia, and Emilio. I groaned at first, worried that this subplot might derail parts of the larger story. If anything, the love triangle had the reverse effect, for it added another dimension to Emilio's struggle with his faith in God. He goes to Rakhat because he knows that, somehow, he has spent his whole life preparing for this mission. And until now, his vow of celibacy has never troubled him, unlike some priests. But he never really confronts the issue until they arrive on Rakhat. He acknowledges the attraction is there, which is better than an outright denial, but he does not confront his feelings. As a result of their proximity on Rakhat, however, he can no longer ignore the budding romance between Jimmy and Sofia, and Emilio realizes he must make a choice. He does not seem to find this choice difficult, but it is telling. Emilio is a man of God. Despite his threats during his recovery to leave the Society, he has always placed his faith in having a purpose as revealed to him by a higher power. This philosophy gives him strength—and so when it fails him, it is all the more devastating.

This juxtaposition of religion and exploration fascinates me. MDR draws explicit comparisons to other missionary activities where priests have met resistance, torture, even death. This is slightly different, however, because any remote tribe of human beings is still a group of humans. There is still, at some level, a basic shared frame of reference. The Runa and Jana'ata, in contrast, are literally alien beings. In her depiction of them, MDR brings to bear her education in her cultural and biological anthropology, much to her credit. The predator-prey social hierarchy of the Jana'ata and Runa, respectively, along with the strict population controls is a depiction both alien yet easily comprehensible. The Rakhatians are not as terrifyingly different as, say, the Oankali from Lilith's Brood, yet they are no less dangerous. If anything, their moments of human-like reactions disarms the expedition. It becomes all too easy to forget that a person like Supaari is not merely a merchant of a foreign land. He is a predator, one with different rules. The Runa and Jana'ata both share some traits in common with humans, but they are not human.

It's this discrepancy, and his failure to keep it in mind, that threatens Emilio's faith. From the beginning, the Rakhat expedition feels like it is blessed. First there is the miracle of detecting the radio transmissions and realizing what they are. Then the Society confirms Emilio's choice of his friends as members of the expedition—even Anne, stubborn and reticent, eventually decides to go. They find an appropriate asteroid and make the journey to Alpha Centauri without issue. The planet's atmosphere and vegetation are hospitable; D.W. and Alan Pace's health problems aside, the expedition members live comfortably on Rakhat for several years. (The lack of explanation behind D.W. and Alan Pace's issues bothered me, because everything else in The Sparrow is so meticulous and pertinent to the plot.) The Runa are amiable hosts; even Supaari's overtures are promising. After so much good fortune, everything goes bad at once. D.W. and Anne die; then Jimmy, Sofia, and George; and finally Marc. The Jana'ata crack down on the Runa village where the expedition has been staying, and Marc and Emilio become dependent upon the good will of Supaari. But Supaari has always wanted only one thing from these foreigners: the status necessary to earn breeding rights. He uses Emilio as a bribe, and Emilio changes hands, becoming a sexual plaything and curiosity of the Jana'ata elite.

And the question Emilio asks is the foundation of theodicy: why? Why has God forsaken him? The answer, if you can call it an answer, is the same as most theodicies—free will, etc. But The Sparrow is not a work of theodicy, at least not on a broad, philosophical level. It is instead one man's attempt at theodicy, but an emotional one grounded in his need to recover from a trauma I can't adequately imagine. Watching MDR break down Emilio is a harrowing, slightly pornographic experience. Setting this tragedy against the backdrop of all the optimism and exuberance of first contact and exploration adds another perspective, transforming a single person's tragedy into a human tragedy on a grander scale. Although not emphasized much, it is clear that the actions of the first Rakhat expedition have upset the balance of power on Rakhat, with the Runa rising up against the Jana'ata. Once again, a human civilization has touched another civilization and brought ruination.

It sounds rather dark, doesn't it? Truthfully, The Sparrow is a dark tale. But in such tales, particularly set against the challenges and differences provided by science fiction, we often find the most human of stories. There is loss, chance for redemption, always the struggle to survive, to understand, and to grow. The Sparrow is tragedy, is triumph, is many other things—but they do not start with "tr," so mentioning them would spoil the alliteration. I still maintain, however, that the atmosphere of The Sparrow is not pessimistic, just realistic. Mary Doria Russell sends Jesuits and scientists into space, fallible human beings without much experience in alien contact. There are mistakes—terrible mistakes—but she never takes the easy way out by laying blame upon a single group. The Jesuits aren't evil missionaries; the scientists aren't calculating, inhuman explorers; the Jana'ata aren't heartless predators. With a complex plot and characters to match, The Sparrow reminds us that things will go wrong, and it isn't the mistakes you've made that matter but the ones you avoid by learning better.

It's very rare that I wish I had started a series with the second book instead of the first, but that's what I wish about Jay Lake's Clockworth Earth trilogy. I had some serious reservations about Mainspring. Its sequel, Escapement, might be an interesting example of how to avoid the dreaded "middle book syndrome" that afflicts so many trilogies. Categorically superior, Escapement is the maturation of the fantastic premise Lake began in Mainspring, without the insufferable protagonist and his vague, fuzzy quest from God.

Whereas the narrator of Mainspring followed only Hethor, Escapement follows three characters. Two of them were minor characters in the first book: Emily Childress, the librarian who initially aids Hethor; and Angus al-Wazir, chief petty officer about the ill-fated Bassett. The third, our protagonist, is Paolina Barthes, a young woman of Portuguese descent who has spent her entire life in Praia Nova, a settlement along the Wall populated by the descendents of shipwrecked and outcast sailors. Paolina is provincial in the sense that she knows very little about the outside world. When she builds a unique piece of clockwork that allows her to manipulate reality itself, she sets off in search for England and its "wizards." Suffice it say, she's sorely disappointed.

I like Lake's decision to shift to three perspectives. All three characters are much more interesting than Hethor. Paolina at least seems to have a well-developed sense of the moral implications of what she's doing, and she sets out with a very specific goal in mind. This is preferable to Hethor's, "Well, I guess I'll find the Key Perilous. Or maybe I won't" method of operation. I also got a palpable sense of Paolina's frustration with the misogynistic world order embodied by Praia Nova's fidalgos. Despite Hethor's class-based oppression in the first book, I couldn't sympathize with his hardship, probably because of the golden tablets that kept falling from the sky whenever he needed reassurance. Aside from a brief cameo by an angel at the end of the book, Paolina's experiences notably lack a religious dimension.

This is true of Escapement as a whole, and that pleases me. The central conflict is temporal: Childress finds herself the unexpected representative of one secret society, the avebianco or "white birds," sent as ambassador/sacrificial lamb to the alliance between another secret society, the Silent Order, and the Chinese. These two are collaborating to construct a metaphorical bridge over the Wall. Meanwhile, England has dispatched a team to bore a tunnel through the Wall; Al-Wazir is attached as resident Wall expert and general safety officer.

There is a spiritual component to the conflict. Childress opposes the Golden Bridge project because she recognizes that it will destroy the balance between the two halves of the Earth. Such a bridge would allow the two powerful empires in the Northern Earth to spill into the South, which is still a land of untamed magic. Similarly, Paolina is frightened of her newfound power, especially once she sees what is possible when it falls into the hands of the Silent Order. However, the spiritual component is just that: it's a part of something larger. Mainspring, in which the fate of the world literally depended upon Hethor succeeding, failed because Lake concentrated too much on the big picture. He didn't spend enough time establishing details that would make me care about saving this world. Escapement gives us a much broader look at the politics and philosophies present on this clockwork Earth, which makes the story much richer, and thus better.

We only run into problems again toward the end of the story. While Paolina has more specific goals than Hethor, her disappointment and disillusionment with England and the wider world in general strikes a blow to those goals. She wanders somewhat aimlessly afterward, and as a result, the book itself loses its sense of direction. Perhaps it's true that Paolina's confusion is a realistic and natural response to her experiences. That's all well and good. But fiction can't always be realistic, and Escapement does not sustain the level of drama necessary to keep me engaged throughout the final chapters. There are some more airship battles and some magical translocation and character drama as Paolina tries to decide how to deal with her power. Unfortunately, Lake does not synthesize these disparate dramatic elements into a single, unified plot.

I'm in the strange position of having finished Pinion today, prior to writing this review. So I know how the series ends, and I've already started forming my opinion of it overall—but I don't want to spoil my next review! Escapement is definitely better than Mainspring, and in some ways it made me think I judged the latter too harshly, because I don't see much of a difference in the quality of the writing. My subjective tastes aside, I think it also demonstrates how choices in the scope of a plot and the perspective of the narrator can affect the reader's experience. Mainspring had high stakes but was confined to a narrow perspective that I just didn't like, so I had a hard time liking the book. Escapement branches out a bit even as it tamps down the ambition, resulting in a much more balanced read.

On its own, comparisons cast away for now, Escapement has a strong theme about relationship between self and the orderly world, whether that world is the spiritual or the temporal. Paolina rebels against the world order as she perceives it. She rebels against the men in power, and against her own role as a woman. She does so vehemently:

"If I may ask, why do you travel as a girl? Slim as you are, you could wear trousers and pass for a young man. People would devil you much less if you did so."

"I…" It wasn't as if Paolina didn't understand that to be a possibility. "Men are … men. The venom in the voice surprised her. "I don't want to be one, even for a moment."

(Ellipses and the horrible double negative are both Lake's.) Paolina is staunch and uncompromising in her principles. She abhors when her power results in death and refuses to be kill anyone else to save herself. This is something I admire, and it's this type of convicted characterization that makes Paolina a much better protagonist than Hethor (oh, there I go with the comparison again).

Childress and al-Wazir both experience their own small rebellions. The former assumes the identity of a dead Mask, becoming herself as a Mask, which is a very interesting look at the whole idea of the performance of self. The latter uncomfortably assumes a role in a government-sponsored expedition to the Wall. A petty officer at heart, al-Wazir isn't really sure what to do with himself, so it's not surprising when he finds himself helping the Brass man Boaz instead of pursuing his duty to Dr. Ottweil. In both cases, these characters find themselves making choices to deviate from their previous sensibilities about how the world should be. Watching the consequences unfold from there makes Escapement a fair bit entertaining.

While far from even espying perfection on a clear day, Escapement merits praise and a grudging amount of steampunk love (which is like regular love, only coal-fired and administered by a system of pulleys and gears). So here's something I don't often recommend: don't read the first book. Skip to this one. It's better, and on its own it's even good.

My Reviews of the Clockwork Earth series:
← Mainspring | Pinion →

The God Engines opens with what, along with the opening line of [b:JPod|221059|JPod|Douglas Coupland|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172821182s/221059.jpg|820439], is now one of my favourite first lines: "It was time to whip the god."

Immediately, John Scalzi establishes a sense of difference between our universe and the one in which this book is set. In this universe, monolatrism is the order of the day. Captain Tephe and the crew of the Righteous worship a god, conveniently called "Our Lord." Captured gods serve as engines for their starships; bound by iron, the gods warp space-time to deliver ships to their destinations.

What a twist on religion and one's relationship with one's god! Faith quite literally empowers gods—this is not a new idea, but turning captive gods into starship engines is pretty nifty. And Scalzi uses the situation to write all sorts of interesting conversations between Tephe and the god that powers the Righteous, mostly about the nature of faith, gods, and one's devotion to one's god.

The most interesting motif of The God Engines is faith. Not only does faith empower gods, but it comes in various flavours of diminished quality. Tephe's faith is the weakest, for it has been handed down to him over the generators. By contrast, "first-made faith" of new converts is the strongest. And with several gods aiming to take a bite out of His Lord, Tephe is sent to a planet untouched by gods and ignorant of the theological conflict taking place in the universe at large.

The idea that converts are more fanatically devout in their belief makes sense. Theirs is a raw belief, one that inspired them to choose to worship their god. Believers who were raised (or indoctrinated) to believe, on the other hand, do it by rote. Many of them are devout, but their minds have been moulded into faithfulness not by a god, but by a parent.

Considering the somewhat predictable twist that leads into a downer ending, it would be easy to label The God Engines anti-religious in nature. After all, it portrays gods as capricious creatures who essentially enslave societies. Science and engineering have been erased, replaced with faith-on-demand. It's not that Tephe and his people use gods to power starships because that is a superior form of power—it's because they know of no other way, although such ways do exist. That deception on the part of His Lord is an essential part of Tephe's crisis of faith, which ultimately demonstrates that this book isn't about religion at all, and thus isn't anti-religious. It's all about faith.

Let us not conflate the two, for although religion often involves faith, faith does not always mean religion. The religious parts of the society in this book are dismal, almost dystopian. The rulers are called the Bishopry Militant, a terrible juxtaposition of two authoritarian terms. Although it does not come up per se, we get the idea that this is not the sort of society that kindly tolerates freedom of expression. Blasphemy is high on the list of forbidden acts. Obedience is the second-most prized virtue, especially from ship captains. The most-prized virtue, of course, is faith.

If religion is the stern, morally-hidebound uncle who's no fun at family reunions, faith is the spunky cousin everyone loves, even though she makes everyone just a little bit uncomfortable. Faith is the more fervent sibling of confidence; they are really the same feeling, only one is reserved for special occasions. What Scalzi does is literalize what we all, internally, understand about faith, because we all have faith in something, even if we are not religious. And faith, true faith, that unconditional and utter belief, is powerful. It can capture the imagination, inspire acts of unfathomable beauty or untenable ugliness, and result in the most amazing events. We have fought wars because of faith. We went to the moon because of faith. So in that context, using faith to power a starship is not all that strange.

And in the darkest hour, after Tephe has learned the awful truth, what sustains him? What gives him the ability to keep going, knowing that he and his crew are doomed? Well, super-sleuth that you are, guessed it: faith. For the sake of spoilers, I won't say faith in what. Maybe one's god, maybe one's humanity, or maybe just faith in some generic sense. But it's enough to keep Tephe going even in the face of certain destruction.

Lest I mislead you in my positive discussion of the Power of Faith, let me be clear: this is not a warm-fuzzy book. Without going into detail, there is not much Happily Ever After happening here. The God Engines is about terrible revelation and unrecoverable betrayal. And maybe it could have gone differently for Tephe and the Righteous. Part of me wishes it did, of course.

There is an intriguing sense of minimalism about The God Engines. As a novella, it is short, and Scalzi wastes no time in crafting a tantalizing glimpse at this world. It left me wanting more, and that frustrated me for a time. Then I realized I was being silly: books should leave you wanting more (in a good, curious way). So the more I consider it, the more I feel that a novella suits this story.

Sometimes the plot is rushed. Once the Righteous arrives at the untouched planet, it takes no time at all for the story to skip to the conversion of one of its tribes. Another story, another writer, might have drawn this out, added characters and relationships, really turned this into a novel. And if I were being lazy, I could call this poor writing and call it a day, review over.

But then I would be ignoring the fact that Scalzi chose to write this as a novella. That is what I mean by minimialism. He intended these elisions, and they are as integral to the book as the commentary on faith.

The only place where The God Engines suffers as a result is its characterization, which is lacking. None of the characters truly stand out in my mind as three-dimensional. But as fans of the short story know, length is not a necessary condition for good characterization—but sometimes it can make poor characterization a little more adequate. Tephe, Andso, and Shalle are all fairly stock roles with fairly conventional relationships. As much as I enjoyed reading The God Engines, I keep coming back to this flaw; it is all the more glaring for everything else that is right about this book.

Some books are like that: one small detail mars the rest. Some books can bear the flaw, others unravel . . . The God Engines survives, but only just. Only because, for some reason, I managed to see its potential, if not its actuality. And so even though it did not quite deliver, I still had faith.

I love Regency and Victorian fiction. In those halcyon days of a declining empire, men and women of rank fused scientific exploration with military daring. The blank spaces on the map were shrinking every day, and as such, this age of exploration and adventure was also an age of introspection. Strict notions of propriety and visible class barriers contributed to meditations on what makes one human, on the roles of birth and upbringing in the development of a person, and the roles of gender and sex. Some of the best literature of the English language came from the 19th century.

So I love when contemporary authors set books in 19th-century England and then imitate the prose style of the period. The Women of Nell Gwynne's is a great example of such a book, thanks to Kage Baker's captivating style. But why should you take my word for it? Here's an example:

A lengthy and painful discussion followed. It lasted through tea and dinner. It was revealed to Lady Beatrice that, though she had been sincerely mourned when Mamma had been under the impression she was dead, her unexpected return to life was something more than inconvenient. Had she never considered the disgrace she would inflict upon her family by returning, after all that had happened to her? What were all Aunt Harriet's neighbors to think?

Baker takes the propriety so valuable to Victorians to an absurd length—although, at the same time, observes that this situation is not too far from realistic. Having returned from the dead, so to speak, but much tarnished in body and spirit, Lady Beatrice has two prospects. She could enter a convent:

Whereupon Uncle Frederick, his face black with rage, rose from the table (the servants were in the act of serving the fish course) and told Lady Beatrice that she would be permitted to spend the night under his roof, for her Mamma’s sake, but in the morning he was personally taking her to the 
nearest convent.

At this point Aunt Harriet pointed out that the nearest convent was in France, and he would be obliged to drive all day and hire passage on a boat, which hardly seemed respectable. Uncle Frederick shouted that he didn’t give a damn. Mamma fainted once more.

Beatrice chooses to prostitute herself instead; she becomes, to use the vernacular, a "fallen woman." Baker manages to establish Beatrice as a very broken yet strong woman with all the deftness such issues require while simultaneously keeping the atmosphere of the story light, drôle. As Beatrice remarks to a gentleman who recognizes her as her father's daughter, no one deserves ill or good fortune—in other words, sometimes bad things happen to good people, and society isn't always equipped to deal with it. Beatrice can hide, retreat, or she can steel herself to the task of living, however difficult it may be.

Fortunately, Beatrice's unique experiences make her perfect for a job at Nell Gwynne's, a brothel run by the ostensibly blind Mrs. Corvey. Nell Gwynne's is the ultimate set piece in Baker's reversal of our Victorian expectations. Although a genuine house of ill repute, Nell Gwynne's is exclusive, invitation-only, and services only high-ranking officials and statesmen. It is actually a front for a secret society of innovators, who often find they need information from or leverage over certain men. Beatrice and her colleagues are more than whores, then, they are spies. And for Beatrice's inaugural mission, she and three other prostitute-spies attend a private function of Lord Basmond's in order to discover the nature of a device he's auctioning to the highest bidder.

The plot of The Women of Nell Gwynne's is actually very thin, and at times it stretches beyond its capacity. There are a few loose ends never satisfactorily explained. Firstly, who was Hindley? It seems obvious that he is the illegitimate child, who ostensibly died, of Lord Basmond. Even so, that does not explain Hindley's genius. Secondly, the murder of Lord Basmond and its resolution were not very impressive. I do not think that was Baker's intention, because she never gives us time to get acquainted with the potential suspects.

And the mysteries we do get, namely Basmond's miraculous anti-gravity device, are never very suspenseful. When are our protagonists ever in danger? Mrs. Corvey goes wandering into the villain's secret lair, even rescues a protégé, all without so much as an alarm sounded or a guard alerted—surely Basmond could hire some expendable minions. Baker handily foreshadows Mrs. Corvey's use of her brass oculars, and draws attention to the irony that all of the antagonists assume she's blind when, in fact, she can see better than they. But it's clunky, which surprises me, because the rest of the writing is so good.

So good, in fact, that I didn't notice all of these plot holes at first. I was too busy enjoying the ride. Hence Baker's captivating style. And a book that is enjoyable to read, even when its plot isn't very good, deserves some praise. Yet that does not solve the book's problem: it lacks a climax. The absence of danger to our protagonists coincides with the absence of any dramatic tension around the mystery or any tension at all, in fact, regarding the resolution of the plot. I'm disappointed, because The Women of Nell Gwynne's starts off so strong. I was giddy with elation while reading the opening chapters. To Baker's credit, she managed to sustain that giddiness for most of the book—but once the story concluded and I sat down to think about it, I realized I'd been had.

There is a theory that views all of history as the result of actions by individuals at pivotal moments. These "Great Men" (or, let's be fair, "Great People") are the movers and shakers of historical periods. Leaders like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Elizabeth II, and Napoleon Bonaparte shaped society. Scientists like Sir Francis Bacon, Sir Isaac Newton, and yes, Galileo Galilei shaped our perception of the world. These are the people whose mark lasts long on history, or so we think. I do not subscribe to the Great Person Theory. It appeals too much to our individualism and our love of anecdotal explanations. We are creatures who like nothing better than a story, and the episodes from the lives of these Great People make for great stories. Assigning all, or even most of, the responsibility for historical change to these individuals is simplistic.

So whenever someone comes along and proposes that history would be different if, say, Galileo had burnt at the stake, I wonder: aside from the tautological sense, would history truly change if this happened? Of course, we don't know, and we probably can't ever know. Such counterfactual speculation remains just speculative, which is probably why I enjoy it so much.

Kim Stanley Robinson plays a bit to the Great Person Theory in Galileo's Dream. I wouldn't go so far as to say the book propounds it, because Robinson's model of time travel accommodates alternatives. Rather, many of the characters from the 31st century who travel into the past to alter it—commit "analepses" in the book's terminology—subscribe to this theory. Thus, Ganymede tries to ensure science's dominance over religion first by aiding Archimedes; when that does not go well, he moves on to Galileo. However, he does not want to help Galileo. He wants Galileo to burn at the stake, to become a martyr for the cause of science.

It's a profound thought. Galileo's heresy trial is an infamous moment in the history of science and the history of the Roman Catholic Church. Often we envision it as a moment of ignorance—or arrogance—triumphing over justice. Galileo was found guilty of "vehement suspicion of heresy" and forced to recant any belief in the Copernican model of the solar system, a model we have since adopted as the preferred one. We have the advantage of hindsight, however, and Pope Urban VIII did not. He was embroiled in ongoing enmity both within the Catholic Church and between Catholics and Protestants. His enemies, many of whom did not much like Galileo, accused him of being soft on heretics.

Robinson emphasizes the political climate around Rome at the time of Galileo's trial. Galileo's Dream shows how his trial was more than just a matter of science versus religion (although it was that); Galileo's fate was as much a matter of political expediency and political expectations than justice or injustice. In an era where many of the highest-ranking clergy were related by blood, Galileo's trial involves more than testimony. It was an intense episode of intrigue conducted across family lines. Galileo called in favours for services rendered, and his friends marshalled his crumbling support base.

There is more to Galileo than his trial, of course, and the book follows Galileo from Padua to Florence. We share in his hope that the patronage of Duke Cosimo de Medici will give him the freedom to tinker and experiment. We experience his anxiety over the fates of his children: his two daughters have been destined for a convent since birth, but the convent they enter is impoverished and their health suffers as a result; his son is lazy and unaccomplished. And then there's his mother. Apparently insane (or just very mean), Giulia is a thorn in Galileo's side, one that he cannot remove.

Despite such hardships, his continuous illness, and his troubles with Rome, Galileo's life wasn't that bad. He had some money; he had family (no matter how difficult at times); he even got recognition for his ideas as well as scorn. The telescope was a pretty neat invention; his experiments involving incline planes were neater still. I get a sense that Galileo was, like many scientists, a discovery junkie, always hooked on the next big idea.

So far I have mostly just been gushing about Galileo. That's because Galileo's Dream offered me a rich look at his life. Though not without fault, this book's depiction of Galileo was diverse and thoughtful, and it has made me want to learn more about Galileo through other sources (such as non-fiction). I love it when books make me think, question, and want to learn more.

The historical parts of Galileo's Dream, then, are exceptional. What of the science-fictional elements? Time travel! Visits to a far-off future of Jovian colonization! Encounters with extraterrestrial intelligence! Compared to the chapters set in 17th-century Italy, the adventures of Galileo in space are lacking. It seems like I'm not the only reviewer who has noticed this.

The characters and society of 31st century are very vaguely described. We meet only a handful, and they refer to various councils—presumably democratic—who are quite ineffective in the crisis of the moment. Ganymede is the one who begins bringing Galileo into his future, ostensibly as some sort of rallying symbol for his quest to stop the Europans from contacting the intelligence in their ocean. Soon enough the people who initially oppose Ganymede's analepsis begin bringing Galileo forward quite frequently. They educate him in all of mathematics and science since his time, then wipe his memories when they create a debilitating sense of déjà vu. But each time Robinson latches onto a plausible reason for Galileo's visits to the future, such as the intermittent attempts to communicate with this strange intelligence, the story pushes the reason aside and stubbornly returns to a discussion of the philosophy of time travel.

What we have here is, rather than a lack of exposition, misplaced exposition. Robinson spends all of Galileo's time in the future explaining time travel and not enough explaining the 31st-century society. Since we never learn much about the society, it is difficult to care about the politically-motivated action sequences or the attempts to contact the Jovian intelligence. Galileo's visits offered little of interest, and I found myself wishing for a swift return to the past.

As far as Robinson's time travel mythology goes, I'm ambivalent. On one hand, it is confusing, and Robinson resorts to vague, semi-philosophical explanations rather than any solid, say, physics. On the other hand, time travel, if it is even possible, is bound to be confusing, so I don't think I can fault him for that. Yet the time travel in Galileo's Dream disappoints me, because it doesn't change much. As far as I understand it (and maybe I'm wrong), Galileo didn't "originally" (always a dangerous word to use when discussing timelines) burn at the stake, but Ganymede wanted to change his present by ensuring Galileo did. Since the book ends with Galileo not burning (and also burning . . . but that's a couple of chapters of explanation), nothing much has changed. Oh, we've got some time travellers stranded in the past, and then there's the question of whether Galileo would have stumbled upon telescopy without Ganymede's prompting . . . but it's not enough for me.

The narration of the book is odd, because it is seemingly in third person for the entire book—but first-person pronouns occasionally sneak into the text. In the end, we learn that Cartophilus, Galileo's servant from the future, is the author of the text. He refers to himself as "Cartophilus" in the third person because this is just a role he plays, albeit one he has played for a long time. However, like the time travel, this doesn't add much to the book.

Galileo's Dream reads like two books, one historical and one science fiction, united by the mind of a single man, who was a great man if not a Great Man. It contains a fascinating look at Galileo and a . . . not so fascinating possible future. What will stay with me overall is its depiction of the human struggle to discover, as well as the obstacles that one must overcome during the discovery.

I won this in a Goodreads First Reads giveaway, because I did not read the description closely enough to realize it is historical romance rather than mere historical fiction. I tend not to read romance, but as far as my experience with them goes, Tempted by a Warrior is not that bad. The story (if not the characters or the romance) held my interest, and the historical in "historical romance" helps a lot. Nevertheless, there are flaws in this book that are difficult to dismiss.

Tempted by a Warrior is told in a limited third-person perspective, alternating between Fiona and Kirkhill. Unfortunately for the narrator, neither of these two characters are particularly interesting. I have misgivings about Fiona's psyche, whereas Kirkhill is just annoying in his insipid competence.

In the prologue, we witness Fiona's husband, Will, beating her. She is nine-months pregnant. A few weeks later, Will is missing (presumed dead) and Kirkhill shows up as Will's father lies on his deathbed. Fiona falls in love with Kirkhill, as we knew she would, in a few weeks, and as their romance blossoms, so too does their adversarial relationship.

Remove the first sentence from the preceding paragraph, and everything would be fine. However, Fiona has been married to Will for two years, and presumably he has been abusing her for about that long. Suddenly, her husband is gone, and she just falls in love with the next man who enters her life? Where are the trust issues? Why is Fiona not fucked up from being a seventeen-year-old battered woman? Oh, sure, she puts up a token resistance and displays her "temper" when Kirkhill infringes on what she considers her decisions to make. And there is some tension about the mystery of what happened to Will—perhaps he is still alive! Nevertheless, once conflict brings Kirkhill and Fiona together and the whole Will issue is hand-waved away, Fiona dismisses the psychological impact of the last two years of her life without so much as a "by your leave."

This irks me in its own right, but it also bothers me because Fiona is an otherwise well-written character. She is young, but her two years of hell have clearly matured her. While she and Nan, Kirkhill's kid sister, share a hot-headed nature, Fiona is closer to Kirkhill when it comes to matters of practicality and frugality. Nan only wants dresses that will make the boys look at her; she is about as vapid and spoilt as 14th-century Scotswomen come. Fiona, on the other hand, knows what is like to live in a sort of enforced state of poverty—neither her husband nor her father-in-law had the means or desire to provide her with many gifts. Scott depicts Fiona's sense of relief over being "freed" by the death of her father-in-law very well, and aside from the evaporation of that whole abuse issue, Fiona's attraction and eventual trust in Kirkhill makes sense.

Or, about as much sense as any attraction to Kirkhill makes, considering he is bland. While Kirkhill, like Fiona, has his share of personal challenges to overcome, his always seem trivial, because he is overly-competent at life. I can't think of a single obstacle he faces that presents much difficulty. To be sure, sometimes he expresses aggravation over having to deal with a bratty kid sister and a truculent ward. But those are just the ebb and flow of everyday life. Kirkhill manages to banish any major conflict, even Fiona's abduction at the hands of English forces, merely by looking at it sternly (and shouting, "the Douglas!" a couple of times on his horse). I never feel like there's any question of the outcome; worse, I never feel like Kirkhill's challenges result in any real character growth. He is as bland, boring, and good at everything at the end as he is at the beginning. He doesn't deserve Fiona.

One of the plot threads running through Tempted by a Warrior is the disappearance of Will Jardine. Fiona wonders if she killed him; Kirkhill needs to find out of he is still alive to settle matters of inheritance—not to mention, you know, so he can marry Fiona in good conscience. Once they find Will's corpse, the nature of the threat shifts slightly: now it's possible that an unlikable sheriff, related to Fiona's sister by marriage, will swing by and hang Fiona for Will's murder. Oh no!

Except the threat never materializes. The sheriff never shows up; he is a character in name only. After building it up as a significant concern, Scott dismisses Will's death. We learn whodunnit, and Kirkhill decides the person does not need to face justice—after all, Will was a Bad Man. I cannot actually fault Kirkhill's decision, since this is 14th-century Scotland, and I'm sure it is a realistic depiction of lord exercising his will to confound justice. It's not like Fiona had any legal way of appealing Will's abuse, so his death is justice in its own way. What I cannot countenance, however, is the way Scott teases us. It is emblematic of Tempted by a Warrior in general: lots of drama without any real conflict.

It is a shame, too, because the characters (aside from Kirkhill) have the potential to do so much more. They just want for a good plot, something that will re-shape them. Similarly, Scott's historical setting is detailed and obviously well-research—but wasted on a story that fails to leave a lasting impression. Tempted by a Warrior is exactly what it says on the tin: many temptations, few of them very fulfilling.

In Illegal Alien, Robert J. Sawyer manages to convince me that aliens from Alpha Centauri have come to Earth and need our help repairing their spaceship. He fails to convince me that the California District Attorney could try one of those aliens for first degree murder.

Sawyer recognizes the improbability of such an event, because he doesn't even try to justify it. The president mumbles something about the federal government not being able to interfere with the case because the state has jurisdiction and it's an election year. Yeah, because staying ahead in those polls is way more important than diplomatic relations with an alien species. And no one else so much as lifts a finger to try to stop this insanity. Speaking of which, Sawyer briefly digresses into the amorality of the Tosok, who believe in a female God who predestines all events, proving that Hask is insane by human legal standards. Not that it matters: Sawyer is determined to wring a trial from this Tosok, because that is where the story lies.

OK, so let's set aside the fact that trying an alien in a human court of law is silly. It's the story Sawyer has given us, and we have to work with that. To be fair, once one gets past this premise, the whole concept is intriguing. How exactly does one go about arguing the guilt or defending the innocence of an alien being? It's more than that though. Although Illegal Alien is, at times, very pedestrian in its tone, Sawyer manages to use his contrived courtroom drama to explore more than just the legal issues. He disguises his exposition as testimony, just as parents hide vegetables in the mashed potatoes, and suddenly readers find themselves learning about alien biology, technology, and philosophy even as they wonder if Hask will be acquitted—and whether he wants to go free.

Let me be clear: the writing in this book is bad. The characters are flat, even stereotypical at times, and prone to that mode of generalization that passes for narration in a Sawyer novel. By this I mean, every thought that passes through a character's mind happens to be fundamental reflection on something integral to the plot. For example, take a thought running through the mind of Dale Rice, Hask's lawyer:

Still, there weren't many times when it was an actual advantage to be African-American. He was used to the screwups in restaurants. Waitresses bringing him the wrong meal—mixing up his order with that of the only other black person in the entire place. White people constantly confused him with other black men, men who, except for their skin color, looked nothing like him, and were often decades younger.

But the one time it perhaps was to his advantage to be big and black was when he wanted to go for late-night walks.

Now, I'm not black, so I'm not going to pretend to know whether this characterization is accurate. I suspect, as with all anecdotes, it's true for some and false for many others. Regardless, my point is that Sawyer handles the whole issue of race about as deftly as clog dancers dance in cement shoes. Still not convinced? The detective in charge of the murder investigation is Jesus Perez—and that's pronounced Hay-soos, he is quick to remind us every single time he appears.

When it comes to enthusiasm for cutting-edge developments in science, Sawyer is among the best writers out there. His near-future science fiction is thought-provoking, when it comes to the science parts, but his characters consistently fail to impress me. And his dialogue does not fare much better. Unfortunately, Illegal Alien is mostly dialogue, because the middle of the book consists of little more than dialogue-laden courtroom scenes broken up by interstitial moments of tension during recess. Maybe those more amenable to legal thrillers might tolerate such a high degree of dialogue; it certainly works for movies. But the sheer amount of time spent exchanging words in that courtroom, witnessing every single instance that Dale says, "Objection!" . . . rather than make me turn the page because of tension and interest, I turned it so I could finish the book faster.

OK, so let's set aside the incredible premise and the bad writing. What have we left . . . oh yes, the aliens. Sawyer uses the courtroom as a theatre to tell us all about the Tosoks. Despite their taboos about discussing internal biology (comparable to our taboos on having sex in front of other people), we learn about the Tosoks' internal organs. We learn how they shed their skin, how they reproduce, how they count their familial relations. There are myriad ways Sawyer could have chosen to expound on these subjects; he chose the courtroom, and that decision works well. Although the legal question alone is intriguing, combined with Sawyer's sneaky world-building, it almost makes Illegal Alien downright compelling. (Almost.)

It is hard to believe that the same author who wrote this also wrote WWW:Wake. I guess now that I've read this, that, and the Neanderthal Parallax series, I've seen examples of Sawyer at his best, worst, and middling. Unless there is something about this book's description that makes you salivate and throb in all the right places, this isn't the Sawyer novel I'd pimp to you.

I am at war with myself. The feminist in me, who has been taking philosophy courses and reading books that challenge contemporary notions about gender, regards much of culture as a construction, something abstract and even arbitrary that we should alter to improve the status of various groups of people. The scientist in me, who reads books about genetics and ponders how amazing it is that we're programmed to learn how to talk but have developed writing as a skill, not an innate ability. These two selves often conflict, as biological determinism clashes with cultural relativism, and I find myself forced to walk carefully the line between the two. I never thought I would have to do this for art!

In The Art Instinct, Denis Dutton challenges the commonplace assertion that our notions of what constitutes art and what we find aesthetically pleasing are entirely constructs of our culture. Rather, his thesis is that evolution plays a large role in our tastes. We prefer savanna-like landscapes because it hearkens to our homes of the past; we place a value on skill and creativity because these are useful traits in a mate. Overall, Dutton insists that art criticism must be rooted in an evolutionary perspective (he seems to like using evolutionary psychology as a poster-child) rather than any particular school of thought based only on culture.

And that's the book, right there. Now you don't have to read it. Happy? You should be.

The Art Instinct has such a great premise, but, like so many books, the execution fails to fulfil that potential. Dutton's writing is stultifying at best, arrogant at worst, and always more loquacious than necessary. It takes him forever to get to the point—he loves lists in which each point is several paragraphs long. And for such a short book, Dutton spends remarkably little of it discussing art itself. Many pages he devotes to explanations of evolution—helpful, yes, but sometimes tangential. And unlike his evolutionary asides, he seldom goes into detail about the theories of art criticism he debunks for us, so much of that went over my head.

Dutton does some things right. He does not focus exclusively on Old Master paintings (although they are there). He talks about literature and music as well. I really enjoyed chapter 6, "The Uses of Fiction," in which Dutton makes a strong case for fiction being a product of natural selection (rather than mere by-products). Also in this chapter is the best glimpse at the argument Dutton tries to make, the idea that art (or the eponymous "art instinct") is an innate concept universal to every culture.

In that respect, I agree with Dutton's assertion that cultural relativism should not dismiss other cultures' creative works because "they don't have our concept of art." So if that is what Dutton set out to achieve with this book, then perhaps he has succeeded. But I didn't enjoy it.

This is not even a very academic book, despite constant name-dropping and enough quotations of Steven Pinker to qualify him for co-authorship. Seldom do I read a book which is just written in such an unsatisfactory way that I dislike following the author's arguments. Thus, even if Dutton has managed to convince me of his thesis, he has achieved the even greater feat of doing it while boring me too.

The Art Instinct is successful, then, in showing evolution's role in the arts. I won't dismiss all of art as stemming from evolutionary roots (and I don't think Dutton is trying to argue this, but it could easily be seen that way). Culture still has a role to play—evolution might influence the desirably body types, but fads and fashions contribute to changing representations throughout history. Even so, the way Dutton advances his argument leaves me with a distinctly apathetic attitude toward the entire book. It is very "ho-hum." Books should not just seek to convince or to move; they need to shake, to challenge, to galvanize new directions of exploration. The Art Instinct does not do this. It sort of loafs around in the lobby of one's critical cortex, half-heartedly attempting to hand leaflets to passing neurons.

I have a passing interest in aesthetics, in the sense that I have taken enough philosophy to know I need to read more about it sometime soon, lest I have a vast gap in my philosophical knowledge. Unfortunately, The Art Instinct does little to fill this gap; and while it held my aesthetic interest, it did not stoke the fire like I had hoped. Dutton's just not charismatic enough, not compelling enough, to make this book great.