Miss Moriarty, I Presume? / Sherry Thomas

3.5 stars

I assume that Sherry Thomas has a plan, because the ending of this installment leaves me with oh so many questions. 

Although I still really enjoyed this book, I didn't find it as riveting as previous volumes. Partly because I was able to predict some of it. And I never thought I would say this, but we got far too much of Charlotte and Ash's sex life. It distracted from the intrigue with Moriarty. It also illustrates how difficult it is to maintain plot tension when the romantic couple achieve coupledom. Suddenly, one of this reader's major motivators is gone.

The reappearance of some earlier characters was welcome, as was Olivia's oblique encounters with her beau, Mr. Marbleton. Her anxiety was contagious, making my chest and throat tighten in sympathy. I guess the romantic plot tension is transferred now to this couple. 

I guess the outcome of all of these musings is that I will be excited to read the next book, although I won't be on the edge of my seat like I was for this one.

As a postscript, isn't that cover gorgeous?

Diplomatic Immunity / Lois McMaster Bujold

 

4 stars

Miles and Ekaterin Vorkosigan are a formidable team. While returning from their honeymoon (with two babies ripening in uterine replicators back on Barrayar), Miles receives an unwelcome transmission from Emperor Gregor. There's a diplomatic situation brewing that requires the Imperial Auditor's attention.

In many ways, this novel is kind of Miles Vorkosigan’s greatest hits. His days spent as his alter ego, Admiral Naismith, are recalled when he unexpectedly finds his former officer, Bel Thorne, as Portmaster at Graf Station, the site of the current disturbance. Bel still has ties to Barrayaran security (ImpSec), another former role of our current Imperial Auditor. Bel is partnered with a quaddy woman, Garnet Five, a circumstance which links back to the fourth book of this series, set in quaddy space (a freefall environment perfect for people with four arms and no legs). Incredibly, Bujold manages not only to squeeze in some references to dire events which occurred on Jackson's Whole but also to end up with Miles relying on his former contacts in Cetaganda, Ghem-General Benin and haut lady Pel, thereby avoiding the current disaster.

Bujold drew on all the events and qualities that make Miles the man we know him to be, a human chaos centre with quick wits and a talent for thinking outside the box. Not to mention bravery and a strong sense of responsibility for those he is surrounded by. No wonder Ekaterin loves him and his staff are fanatically loyal. I also enjoyed seeing Lady Vorkosigan come into her own, standing her ground against military bigwigs until Miles regained consciousness.

Not everyone will love the Vorkosigan saga, but I always enjoy a high energy visit to this familiar universe.

Book number 431 of my Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading Project.

I Shall Not Want / Julia Spencer-Fleming

 

 

4.5 stars

I should have known better, but I had forgotten the addictive quality of this series. I started it in the morning, when it was a lovely day outside and I should have been catching up on tasks that are easier when there's no snow. At the very least, it would have been sensible to start freshening up the guestroom for my Christmas visitor. I did none of that. From the very first chapter, Spencer-Fleming grabbed me with suspense and I could not set the book down until I had finished.

The mystery component of the books in this series are quite acceptable, but it is the relationship between Russ and Clare that keeps me coming back for more. Both are feeling unhappy and guilty after the death of Russ's wife, Linda. Clare's other admirer, Hugh, is trying to take advantage of their estrangement, but he obviously has no clue how tightly bound together the police chief and the reverend are. However, Clare does wish at a certain point that she was a lesbian and could just leave men out of her life.

So, although that's the drama that glued me to the page, Spencer-Fleming doesn't just leave it at that. Added, and also interesting, is the interaction between the new female police officer, Hadley, and a young officer we already know, Kevin Flynn. I can see where this story line will become more important in future books. Confined to this novel is a romance between a brutalized sister of some of the local thuggish brothers and a Mexican migrant worker. One very intense scene has Isobel and and Amado hiding in the woods as a brother calls for her. Amado thinks that the brother sounds like a farmer calling chickens with an axe in his hand. A shiver went down my spine as I realized I knew exactly what he meant.

This is another draw of the series, the social issues that drive the mystery plot. In this one, it's both the situation of migrant workers and the awful familiarity of domestic violence. We get to see our societal prejudices from a new angle and see what we think of them.

The book ends with personal upheaval in Clare's life, because an author can't let their characters breathe to easily or the suspense is shot. Russ is a widower, but he still needs to mourn Linda and tend to his family relationships. Clare must survive her time away and come back to Miller's Kill. I can hardly wait to pick up the story again with the next book.

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The Man Who Died Twice / Richard Osman

 

The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Every bit as much fun as the first book. Where can I apply for membership to the Thursday Murder Club? I desperately want to have a glass of wine with Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron, and Ibrahim. I'll cross my fingers that Chris and Donna show up too. Even Bogdan, although he reminds me of the mobster Toxic in The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning.

Osman is awfully good at all the twisty doublethink of espionage literature. He reminds me of Le Carre and Herron for plotting, but he somehow makes his novels lighter. (Probably because there isn't really any political agenda in them, his villains are motivated by simple greed.) That and his background in comedy. He has the good sense not to over do it, providing just enough humour.

I love the amount of vigor and agency he grants to his older characters. Yes, they fall asleep in the car after a big day and they keep a sharp eye out for the nearest toilet, but they still retain their brains and their kindness. They are lively and interested in events around them and spend remarkably little time marinating in the past. They have good relationships with children, grandchildren, police officers, and their neighbours. Dementia isn't swept under the rug--Elizabeth's husband Stephen suffers from it and we watch her fight to keep him at her side. If anyone can do it, Elizabeth can. I have every faith in her.

I hear there are to be two more books in the series. This makes me very, very happy.


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Issola / Steven Brust

 

Issola by Steven Brust
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The ninth book of the Vlad Taltos series. If you, like me, have made it this far, you know what to expect and Brust serves it up. Vlad is hiding out from the Jhereg mainly and everybody else incidentally. So he is surprised when Lady Teldra, the servant of the Dragonlord Morrolan appears in his campsite one night.

Always willing to hear out the people that seek him out, Vlad learns from her that Morrolan and Aliera are missing. Vlad may talk a good line about being a cold and calculating assassin, but in reality he is easily talked into being part of the rescue mission. And he does wonder why all these wizards and demigods seem to want him included in the effort. Lady Teldra is an Issola (hence the title) which means that she is the soul of courtesy and graciousness. During periods of captivity and when the sorcerors are debating things, Vlad and Teldra discuss manners, politeness, and appropriate behaviour. While there may be epic battles taking place, this quiet discussion becomes the real centre of the novel.

If you're not into that, don't worry—there are threatening Jenoine abductors, tight places to escape from, deadly Morganti weapons being brandished, and a final decisive battle. Vlad is still making smartass remarks and as usual, Loiosh, Vlad's familiar, provides some comic relief. All the stuff we are used to finding in this series.

Book Number 429 of my Science Fiction & Fantasy Reading Project.



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Astounding / Alec Nevala-Lee

 

Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction by Alec Nevala-Lee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a continuation of my Isaac Asimov reading binge, as he is one of the chosen focal points for the last quarter of the year by the Dead Writers Society. Searching for a better understanding of the man through an examination of the ecosystem that he worked in, I picked up this book. It was just what I was looking for, providing a much desired perspective on the so-called golden age of science fiction.

The majority of the book is focused on the editor of Astounding, John W. Campbell Jr. Although he authored some science fiction himself, he seemed to prefer to be a gatekeeper to the genre, supplying ideas to writers and demanding that they produce work in accordance with his prejudices. It is absolutely no wonder that modern science fiction is still struggling to extricate itself from racist and misogynist world views that call Campbell's reign “the good old days.” By which they mean when it was an exclusive straight white male endeavor.

I read a lot of this kind of sci-fi when I was a teen because that was what was available and I enjoyed it because that was what was available. Having reread a fair amount of it relatively recently during my Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading Project, I can tell you that the genre may owe these men for getting it started, but it has moved along at a lively pace and that some of the most interesting stuff is now written by women, people of colour, and the LGBTQ+ community. They have wildly varying viewpoints that give them unique windows on possible futures which are a great complement to the white guys in the field today.

It really struck me as significant that three of these men (Campbell, Heinlein and Hubbard) all believed themselves to be strong leaders. They all had a tendency to lecture and a strong antipathy to criticism. It is no wonder that they went their separate ways. Asimov, as the one of the group who had experienced racism, was more tempered in his behaviour, although he benefited from white male privilege routinely, assuming that he could grope and proposition women around him continually without reprimand or repercussion.

If these four are the most influential of the early age of the genre, it's no wonder that there is a conservative faction of fandom who are outraged that more progressive themes are awarded prizes and honours (the Sad Puppies of the Hugo awards for example or the harassment campaign of Gamergate). They don't seem to realize that they may not be the majority of the fandom any more, that there are plenty of non-white and female fans out there who buy just as much product (or more) and have every right to expect to see their faces and dilemmas reflected in the literature and games too. By the way, this book illustrates how the fandom started out exclusively white male as well, often led by men who would be classified as trolls today.

The interactions of these four major players are fascinating to read about, while at the same time knowing that they would be the most tiresome kind of people to spend time with, all of them way too fond of the sound of their own voices. On the other hand, I think it would be fascinating to have a cup of coffee with the author, Alec Nevala-Lee, to get the scoop on all the details he didn't have room to include in this volume.


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The Graveyard Game / Kage Baker

 

The Graveyard Game by Kage Baker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

3.5 stars

If this is really how the 23rd century is going to be, count me relieved that I won't be around to experience it. Not only is veganism mandatory, but alcohol, coffee, tea, sugar, and chocolate are verboten. Even sex is coming to be frowned upon. So far they still seem to allow sleep, but who knows for how long? Anything remotely pleasurable seems to be suspect. Worse to my way of thinking: novels are a thing of the past!

Mendoza is still missing and her mentor, Joseph, and her friend, Lewis, have been looking for her for centuries. They've found lots of things, but not Mendoza (or her mortal lover, Edward Bell-Fairfax). Lewis is a literature specialist and has been using his research skills to trace both of these missing persons, but he has to be careful not to let the Dr Zeuss Company know what he's up to or what he's looking for. He and Joseph try not to meet too often, but occasionally vacation together in strategic locations. The Company monitors its cyborgs pretty closely, so they are both risking their freedom to investigate.

There is also the question of whether an immortal, self-repairing cyborg can be killed, or at least rendered inoperative. Some of them have been functional for millennia and have developed some strong opinions about the Company. Frankly, the 24th century employees don't seem to have the necessary guile or intelligence to manipulate their immortal employees. They are far too inhibited by their societal requirements to be politically correct at all costs. Can they truly be responsible for the Silence that falls in 2355?

There's a lot of intrigue, but few answers. I find it disappointing when there is no resolution to at least a couple of the main subplots by the end of a book. However, I have the next book waiting on my shelf, so I'll be able to continue on as planned in 2022.

Book Number 429 of my Science Fiction & Fantasy Reading Project.



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By Chance Alone / Max Eisen

 

By Chance Alone: A Remarkable True Story of Courage and Survival at Auschwitz by Max Eisen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Memoirs like this one are important documents. November, when we observe Remembrance Day, seems to be an appropriate time to read a Holocaust narrative. The people who lived through this hell are aging, their health was compromised by the concentration camp conditions, and we won't have them with us forever to bear witness to these events of WWII.

We would like to think that the brutal treatment of Jews during the war is a rare thing, but I think we have seen enough genocides and general cruelty since then to determine that this impulse seems to lurk within all of us. It is a tendency that we must struggle against, trying to be kinder and more accepting of our fellow humans, even those who are different from ourselves in some way. A change from xenophobic to xenophilic.

If you are interested in reading other powerful accounts of this subject, I would recommend Night by Elie Wiesel or Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Another option is The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levi. For younger audiences, the graphic novel Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Art Siegelman is a good option. There is also the old standby, The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (but I couldn't force myself to read it as a young person, I waited until I was an older adult before I appreciated it.)

These days, when truth seems to be a matter of choice rather than actual events, we need books like this one more than ever.


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Callahan's Key / Spider Robinson

 

Callahan's Key by Spider Robinson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is a tribute novel to Robert A. Heinlein (and to some extent other authors of his vintage). If you don't know his work or that of Theodore Sturgeon, you'll miss some of the point of this book. As Jake Stonebender, his family, and his clan of weirdos migrate to Key West, Fla., from Long Island, NY, they make a stop close to where Heinlein's widow lives and they consider (and reject) the idea of visiting her. Instead, they acquire a new misfit to add to their number: Robert Heinlein's cat, Pixel, the cat who can walk through windshields (get it?). There are lots of obvious and subtle references to RAH fiction. (Including a sign that Zoey puts up by the door of their new home: “Did you remember to dress?”)

I really enjoyed the quotes at the beginning of each chapter—nuggets from the many silly things said by George W, Bush's vice-president, Dan Quayle. That there are 20 of them is amazing and sad somehow. I bet many people barely remember the poor guy or how much the press loved his flubs. Public speaking just wasn't his jam, plus he seems to have had a pretty loose grip on facts.

The absolute best part of the book is the description of the space shuttle launch that the clan attends during their drive south. Did Robinson attend one? Because it reads like he did. The excitement and awe seem completely authentic and it has the feeling of an eyewitness account.

For some reason that I cannot put my finger on exactly, I find Robinson's authorial voice in this series highly annoying, so I am glad that I am almost finished with the Callahan books. Only one left, next year. My library has weeded them, but I bought them second hand (before I realized how irritated they made me). I'm stubborn enough that I intend to read them before I recycle them back to the second hand bookstore.

Book Number 428 of my Science Fiction & Fantasy Reading Project.



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Why Didn't They Ask Evans? / Agatha Christie

 

Why Didn't They Ask Evans? by Agatha Christie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As usual, Ms. Christie led me a merry dance. Although I had my suspicions, she managed to distract me with well placed red herrings. Her two amateur sleuths, Bobby and Frankie, remind me a lot of another pair of Christie's, Tommy and Tuppence. Poor old Bobby even gets clonked on the head, just like Tommy.

Frankie, or Lady Frances if you prefer, is another one of Christie's adventurous young women who knows what she wants and sets out to get it. I love these books that feature intelligent young women, giving them the starring role. They are like a tonic after all the mystery novels that feature male protagonists. Frankie is a lively person, not letting the grass grow under her feet. She's pretty good at managing the men around her too, including Bobby, his pal Badger, and the family lawyer.

Christie also seems to have a reluctant admiration for the conscience-free criminal. She often allows them to escape justice and live to grift another day. My sister, who works in our provincial justice system, claims that only the dumb criminals see the inside of a courtroom, so maybe Christie is just using her writing to reflect reality.

I'm somewhat disappointed that Bobby and Frankie get only one novel to strut their stuff. But one is better than none.


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Time / Stephen Baxter

 

Time by Stephen Baxter
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'm not sure why I put off this book for so long. I didn't expect to get as involved as I did and was pretty startled by how emotionally engaged I was. My own prejudice, I suppose, as I don't generally enjoy the more technically based stories. Baxter included enough human interaction (and squid interaction) to keep me happy.

It helped that one of the major point of view characters is Emma Stoney, the ex-wife of one Reid Malenfant, billionaire with grandiose plans. Emma still retains a significant position in his business empire and seems to be an important presence at any of his dramatic events. In fact, nothing of any import happens without her and even she is not sure why she sticks around.

There are details that remind me of earlier science fiction. H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, with its intelligent cephalopod invaders from Mars. On page 254, there was a little shout out to Kurt Vonnegut: So it goes. The mysterious object on the near Earth asteroid reminded me of the black monoliths in 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke. The Blue children smacked of another Clarke novel, Childhood's End. Maybe some echoes of David Brin's Uplift series regarding the engineering of the intelligent squid pilot, Sheena, and her dreams of the shoal (much like the Whale Dream that Brin's dolphin space explorers experience).

This novel is copyrighted in 2000, but some of the plot details are pulled from the 2021 news headlines: billionaires starting space companies, religious nuttiness about science, protesting, etc. I read the first few pages and thought about Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson and their space travel plans, separate from NASA. Today’s entrepreneurs just seem to be fixated on Mars rather than the asteroids.

I know the ending is meant to be hopeful, but I found it rather depressing. I can't imagine what is left to be discussed, but there are two more books. Curiosity will carry me along to the next one for sure.

Book number 427 of my Science Fiction & Fantasy Reading Project.



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The Apollo Murders / Chris Hadfield

 

The Apollo Murders by Chris Hadfield
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

3.5 stars?

Let me preface this review by saying that thrillers are really not my genre. This novel is well written and Chris Hadfield has proven himself to be a very well rounded guy, more creative than I would expect given his military and astronaut background. During the early pages of this novel, I found myself checking Wikipedia in order to determine Hadfield‘s age. Sure enough, he's two years my senior, and that's what I would have guessed from the time period he chose to write about. The years of Richard Nixon, Apollo space missions, and Russo-American rivalry. The stuff we grew up in. The choice of an alternative history, where another Apollo mission occurred, was an inspired choice for him.

Hadfield is almost uniquely qualified to write this book, former test pilot, astronaut, and commander of the ISS. He obviously has a good grasp of space history, both Russian and American. He speaks Russian, having spent time on both Mir and the ISS and in Star City, Russia. In short, he knows how the Russian space program, NASA, and astronauts look, sound, and act. He can keep it real. Especially that “you can have emotions on your own time" ethos that seems to govern the space program. Hadfield manages to shoehorn in a couple of female characters. One rather minor one is a geologist involved in the lunar program, who becomes a love interest for the more prominent CAPCOM, Kaz. The other is a female cosmonaut who provides much of the opposition needed for the book's purpose.

I struggled to stay engaged because for me there were far, far too many technical flying details included. The folks who do care about such things will have a field day dissecting his descriptions. Whenever I set the book down, it was hard work to convince myself to pick it back up again. That, however, is me, not the book or the author. When the book first came out, Hadfield was all over Canadian public radio, doing the publicity for it—I am unsurprised that he said that thrillers were his preferred genre. He has studied them well and has a well structured book with excellent tension and he threw in some imaginative twists. Don't judge the book by my rating. My ratings reflect my enjoyment of the reading experience, not the quality of the book.

The pressure in the last few chapters is intense, the action nonstop. It was such a relief, to see the end in sight, and to read the final reveal. The book has garnered a lot of attention due to the author—there are 554 people waiting for it at my library. I don't know if Hadfield has plans to write another novel, but this one is good enough that I expect there would be an appetite for it.



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Isaac Asimov / Michael White

 

Isaac Asimov: A Life of the Grand Master of Science Fiction by Michael White
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

During this fourth quarter of 2021, the Dead Writers Society has chosen Isaac Asimov as one of our featured writers. I read his Foundation trilogy and some Robot novels way back when I was a teen, and I reread several in 2011 when I started my Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading Project. I was reading fast in those days and not necessarily processing too much.

It seemed to make sense, then, to find a biography of Asimov and get some perspective on this author who became one of the founders of the science fiction genre. He seems to be one of those people that inspire strong feelings, love him or hate him. Interestingly, I read a biography of Ray Bradbury earlier this year and I got much the same feeling about him. Both men really seemed to want to be the centre of attention. You can almost imagine them saying, “Me, me, me, look at me!” I think both of them were a weird combination of overly egotistical and very insecure. Neither one of them was truly selfish, but they were both very self-focused. It took a lot to get them to actually consider other people's points of view.

I hadn't truly realized how young Asimov was when he wrote Foundation and I, Robot. It's amazing that something produced by such an inexperienced young man would still have some relevance today. The human characters are rather wooden, but the robots are more lively! Just the opposite of what you would expect. If you read for relationships, Asimov's books are not going to be among your favourites. He was much more interested in big ideas and scientific principles. In many ways, nonfiction was the perfect genre for him and I was surprised by how many nonfiction books he churned out.

I think Asimov was a product of a patriarchal system that led him to discount women, unless he knew them personally and could therefore appreciate their intellect or talent or humour (or whatever caught his respect). Understandably, many women didn't like being dismissed and disliked Asimov intensely (and with reason). I do think that he dismissed many men in exactly the same way, but the men didn't take it as personally perhaps. I also read Ursula le Guin's No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters this year and recall an award that she turned down, despite the fact that she knew it would go to Asimov and she also disliked giving him another accolade. She was no fan, considering him a conservative asshole.

This biographer calls Asimov a liberal, but in these days of Me Too, the “man with a thousand hands" would be having a hard time of it. He didn't always realize that if a thing applied to him, it should apply to everyone and vice versa. He could be absurdly outraged when someone else got the same consideration or same advantage that he had benefited from.

In short, he was as imperfect as we all are. I think we all have one of those friends with high intelligence but no idea how to deal with people. What amuses me is how often psychologists of one kind or another feature in his writing. His robot characters require them more often than the humans. His human characters are so coldly logical in their dealings that they verge on the robotic. Perhaps emotional, illogical people were more difficult for him to deal with.




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I, Robot / Isaac Asimov

 

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I know that I read this back in 2011, but honestly this felt like the first time! I realize that I read quite a few science fiction novels quite rapidly that year, as I had just cancelled my cable TV subscription and was going a bit nutty as a result!

This time around, I started this book right after reading Asimov's Foundation. I'm not surprised to find similar characters here in what became the Robot series. Arrogant men, from Mr. Weston in the first story, to Donovan and Powell, the testers of new models of robots. (They are so nasty to each other that I wondered why neither of them sought different employment.) The expert robopsychologist, Susan Calvin, is of course an intellectual ice queen, not very attractive (at least by Asimov's standards, including considering being 38 as far too old). She is a psychologist, lower on the hierarchy than the male scientists. (The old stereotype that intellect and being pleasant looking are mutually exclusive.)

There is a rather insidious parallel with slavery in the human-robot relationship here. The robots on Mercury reply to Donovan and Powell with the response “Yes, Master.” The duo are outraged by a space station robot which doesn't instantly believe everything they say and refuses to obey their orders because it views them as inferiors. (Incidentally, this robot seems to have spontaneously created a religion with similarities to Islam, a religion practiced in America first by Muslim slaves, then by free African Americans in response to racism.) When Susan Calvin interviews a robot who witnessed an accident, it cringes and assures her that it would never allow harm to come to “a master.” As she questions the robot, she addresses it as “Boy.”

Basically, this book is a series of short stories about robots which are stitched together by the interview of Susan Calvin by a young reporter. The inspired idea introduced is the Laws of Robotics, the programming which states that a robot may not harm a human nor through inaction allow a human to come to harm. This principle seems to have entrenched itself into the science fiction genre, as I have seen it referenced in other fiction which includes robot characters (e.g. The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons).

One of Asimov's assumptions is that a sufficiently intelligent machine will automatically feel emotions, have ambitions, and acquire a sense of humour. Real life experimentation has proven we have a hard time programming the basic things, like facial recognition. At any rate, I feel like Asimov's robots are the spiritual ancestors of my beloved Murderbot and of the sentient AIs of the Culture universe.


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Foundation / Isaac Asimov

 

Foundation by Isaac Asimov
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

One of my reading groups (The Dead Writers Society) chose Isaac Asimov as a featured author for the final quarter of 2021. I am interested in revisiting his work, having read quite a bit of it when I was in high school, and I remember being quite the fan of the Foundation series back then. I know that I reread this trilogy back in 2011 when I had just begun my Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading Project, but before I joined Goodreads.

This novel still retained the ability to suck me into the plot, as the Galactic Empire lurches to disaster and Hari Selden establishes the Foundation in order to diminish the period of “barbarism" before another “civilized" empire arises. I remember as a teen being fascinated by the concept of psychohistory, being able to predict human behaviour and history through mathematics. The concept of taking one of the social sciences and converting it into a “hard" science was exciting.

This time through, I was amused by some of the details, such as the Encyclopedia Galactica. The thought of a printed encyclopedia is archaic now in the days of Wikipedia, but it seemed completely plausible to me in the 1970s, well before the internet. Like a lot of other books published in the 1950s, there is a lot of smoking, making me remember how ubiquitous that behaviour was. No one in my family smoked, but we kept ashtrays on hand for the smokers among the relatives who visited. It would have been rude not to accommodate them, but it was perfectly polite for them to smoke in our tobacco free home. How life has changed!

I was also struck this time at how few female characters there are. Those that are included seem to be largely shrewish wives, making their husbands' lives miserable, or young women who are completely captivated by jewelry and gadgets. None of the featured male characters has a woman in his life and they are all coldly intellectual. When faced with a crisis, we find that these men have always planned for it and they emerge victorious by virtue of their superior thinking skills. To be successful in this universe, you must be male, unencumbered by relationships, logical, and unemotional.

For whatever reason, there is a long line of people at the library wanting to read this series. The waiting list for book two is amazing, so I don't think I'll be revisiting it any time soon. Asimov wrote such an astounding number of books that I can explore his work easily without continuing this series.


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The Lair of the White Worm / Bram Stoker

 

The Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is my selection for the birthday challenge of the Dead Writers Society, as Stoker was born in November. Bram Stoker was only 64 when he wrote this, his final novel. Somehow it feels like the writing of a much older or less capable author.

The basic idea of the story is apparently built upon the legend of the Lambton worm. Now those of us who have read Tolkien will realize that worm = dragon, perhaps not self evident to all modern readers. So the title gives us a strong hint of what's coming. Unlike his earlier work, Stoker seems to have abandoned any attempt to be subtle. He signals blatantly what is ahead when his protagonist, Adam Salton, buys himself a mongoose to accompany him on his exploration of the English countryside. Being an Australian, invited to England by his great-uncle, he manages to step outside the English class system, which he displays by fixing a neighbour's carriage on the road.

The neighbour, Arabella March, is described as a sinuous beauty, always dressed in white. Adam encounters her on one of his neighbourhood walks and loses control of his pet mongoose, which attacks Ms. March in the same way it launches itself at snakes. There is no mystery here. The biggest surprise would be if Arabella wasn't supernaturally linked to the White Worm of legend. What is odd is that her strange connections seem to provide no material benefits; she is hunting for a wealthy husband to deal with her growing debts. The object of her hunt is the hereditary aristocrat in the vicinity, Edgar Caswell, who seems to be as loathsome as Arabella is. He is a narcissist before that psychiatric diagnosis is used. For some unexplained reason, he is desirous of dominating Lilla, a young woman on a nearby farm. Adam Salton is offended by this, as he has an eye on Lilla's cousin, Mimi, and feels protective of both of them. I ended up wondering how Adam et al. were going to deal with the White Worm, rather than being perplexed by the mysteriousness of the situation. It seems to me that a great deal more tension could have been created with a more judicious doling out of the clues.

Stoker makes good use of Biblical symbolism, naming his main character Adam and setting him up against a woman/snake. Shades of the Garden of Eden! Edgar Caswell gets his chance to fill Satan's role, providing a strange motivation for most of his incomprehensible actions. He gives his villain speech on the top of his tower during a powerful thunderstorm.

I found that misunderstanding science is nothing new, as Stoker has both Adam and Sir Nathaniel spouting some seriously inaccurate versions of evolution. A long lived creature can adapt in behaviour, but not decrease in size or change its basic intelligence. One wonders if Stoker believed this or if he just let his characters run amok. Also notable to me was the attitude to the one African in the book, that he was subhuman. It reminded me of Tarzan of the Apes, which I read earlier this year and which was published the year after this one.



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