Category: Science Fiction

Book Review: ‘The Dent in the Universe’ by E. W. Doc Parris

Last year I published a review of a book entitled ‘Recursion’ by author Blake Crouch. In that review I praised ‘Recursion’ for having a very unusual slant on the old SF theme of time travel. Like ‘Recursion’, the plot of  ‘The Dent in the Universe’ by author E. W. Doc Parris also concerns a very different, and interesting kind of time travel, although as you might guess the results are every bit as chaotic.

Cover Art for “A Dent in the Universe” by E.W. Doc Parris. (Credit: Amazon)
Author of ‘A Dent in the Universe’ E. W. Doc Parris. (Credit: Amazon)

One Corporation is a high-tech company operating out of California’s silicon valley in the near future, the 2030s. The company specializes in developing video games and their chief claim to fame is the sChip, an integrated circuit that uses Quantum Entanglement to achieve Faster Than Light (FTL) communications with other sChips. This property allows gamers all over the world to play One Corporation’s video games together without any nasty time delays because of distance. (Actually there are some theorists who think something like that might be possible.)

Einstein called Quantum Entanglement “Fuzzy action at a Distance.” but could it be faster than light? (Credit: The Quantum Atlas)

About ten years after the sChip is first introduced an accident causes a large portion of the network to crash, a gamer spilled his coke onto his terminal. An investigation by One Corporation’s chief scientist, the guy who invented the sChip in the first place, reveals that the crash originated when the coke spilling gamers sChip sent a conformation signal to his buddy’s sChip BEFORE it was asked for the conformation. It seems sChips are not only capable of FTL they can send messages into the past.

Time Travel is one of the oldest and most often used plot device in Science Fiction. In fact it’s been used so often that you have to be very cleaver to come up with a new approach to the idea! (Credit: Penguin Random House)

That’s the neat part about ‘The Dent in the Universe’. Here time travel is limited to only information being send through time, not material objects. Another constraint on time travel in ‘The Dent in the Universe’ is that time travel is only possible through sChips and therefore the farthest back it is possible to go is ten years, when the first sChip was made.

In ‘A Dent in the Universe’ sending messages back in time is only possible through a special integrated circuit, the ‘S Chip’ and hence you can only go as far back in time as to when the first S Chip was made. (Credit: In Compliance Magazine)

Of course it was a part of Stephan Hawkins’ work over decades that showed that information is still energy so it is a material object. Think about it, in a computer information is stored by flipping magnetic fields, something that requires energy to do. So sending information back in time is still sending a material object, the energy to flip a magnetic field, back in time. Nevertheless the unique take on time travel, and the consequences thereof, is the best part of ‘The Dent in the Universe’.

Stephen Hawking spend much of his career wondering if information is destroyed by entering a black hole. His research did show how information is a kind of energy however. (Credit: Nature)

The worst part is the villain, a serial killer of the Bind Torture Kill or Jeffery Dalmer type. I don’t consider myself to have a weak stomach but there were several sections of ‘The Dent in the Universe’ that were simply unpleasant to read, and that’s being kind. There were a lot of gory details that simply weren’t necessary for the plot as far as I was concerned. By the way the idea of a serial killer getting his hands on a time machine isn’t new. Back in the 1979 there was a movie called ‘Time after Time’ where Jack the Ripper, played by David Warner, got his hand’s on H. G. Wells’ time Machine and traveled to 1980s San Francisco. Wells was played by Malcolm McDowell.

In the 1979 movie ‘Time After Time’ H. G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell left) shows Jack the Ripper (David Warner right) his Time Machine. Jack then uses it to escape to 1980s San Francisco. (Credit: Film-Authority.com)

All of that is quite a shame because much of ‘The Dent in the Universe’ is well plotted out, something very necessary in a time travel story and rather exciting. The story could have worked just as well without so much graphic gore.

I’m not a big fan of Slasher movies, which was a big problem I had with ‘A dent in the Universe’, the villain was just too gory for my taste. (Credit: Medium)

I do have one other complaint as well. Like many SF stories that take place in the near future ‘The Dent in the Universe’ is filled with techno-talk. The computer gamers all say things like “Rashad’s device processed a D-pad signal at the I/O bus”. Meanwhile the detective’s hunting the serial killer all say things like  “That’s inside the feeding zone. Walking distance to the MPWS station, Good eyes Detective Baker, good eyes.” Sometimes I wonder if authors are just trying to impress their readers with how in tune they are with the language spoken by experts in various fields.

Nowadays every profession has its own specialized jargon. Writing an entire novel using only those forms of speech can be a bit tiring after a while however. (Credit: Tech Talk)

And finally it turns out that ‘The Dent in the Universe’ is just the first installment in another series of novels. I haven’t made up my mind as to whether I’ll read the next installment. As I said  ‘The Dent in the Universe’ had some really interesting parts, as well as some very unpleasant ones.

Book Review: ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ by Anthony Doerr

Actually five stories woven into one novel, ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ by author Anthony Doerr weaves it’s way from the fall of Constantinople to the Moslem Turks in 1453 to an multi-generational Starship on it’s way to colonize a planet circling the star Beta Oph2 with a stop in present day Idaho along the way. It’s the story about the starship that allows the story to be considered ‘science fiction’.

Cover Art for ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ by Anthony Doerr. (Credit: Amazon)

The five main characters in ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ are, in order of historical existence, Omeir, a young teamster from Bulgaria in the Moslem army attacking Constantinople while Anna, an even younger seamstress is living in the city under attack. Present day Idaho includes Zeno, a gay Korean War veteran who is interested in classical Greek plays and stories along with Seymour, an emotionally disturbed (autistic?) high school student whose only real friend is an owl who lives in the forest just outside town. Finally there is Konstance, a young girl born on and becoming a teenager aboard the interstellar ark the Argos, 65 years into its 592 year journey to the star Beta Oph2.

Considered one of the pivotal moments in history, the fall of Constantinople in 1453 is be setting for two of the five stories in ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’. (Credit: Warfare History Network)

The thread that ties all these stories together is a 2nd century novel by the ancient Greek author Antonius Diogenes called ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’. So in a sense Anthony Doerr’s ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ is a novel about a novel. The ancient story is about a simpleton named Aethon who wishes to become a bird, preferably an eagle, hawk or owl, so that he may fly up to the bird’s heaven, Cloud Cuckoo Land. Actually, while Antonius Diogenes was a real 2nd century Greek author the novel ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ is a fiction made up by modern author Anthony Doerr.

Author Anthony Doerr uses a fictitious ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ by the real Greek Author Antonius Diogenes as the link for the five stories in his ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’. (Credit: NCW Libraries)

What the modern ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ is, is a book in praise of books and libraries and those people who love books and libraries, Doerr in fact dedicates ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ to librarians. Much of the novel’s action actually takes place within libraries. The lives of all of the main characters are influenced by books and they all come to revere books in the end.

‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ is dedicated to librarians including those at the Free Library of Philadelphia, a place I have visited hundreds of times in my life! (Credit: Visit Philadelphia)

Each of the stories in ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ is interesting in it’s own way and the ways in which they intersect is cleverly told. The writing is both beautiful without being too florid and bittersweet. All of the stories have something to say about humanity that will on one hand depress you, yet somehow still give you hope. One theme that runs throughout ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ is the fragility of books, indeed of all knowledge with the ancient ‘lost’ version of ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ serving as an illustration of how much of ancient literature, Greek and otherwise, has actually been lost.

The fragility of knowledge. Much of what we know of the ancient world comes from the work of scholars who try to piece together the fragmentary evidence from damaged scrolls like this one. (Credit: World History Encyclopedia)

‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ is a thoughtful story, not an exciting one. In fact author Doerr manages to skip past all of the bloodshed during the fall of Constantinople, the Korean War and even the murder of one of his main characters. ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ seems to regard violence as just one of the painful parts of life but certainly not one of the interesting parts.

Nevertheless, violence still seems to be our first choice in trying to resolve a conflict between us. But after all, we’re really still just animals following our instincts. (Credit: Quotes.pics)

As I said above ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ is beautifully written and very thought provoking. It’s one of those stories that just a pleasure to read so even if it’s not really ‘science fiction’ I think science fiction readers will love it because it will remind them of all the reasons we love books!   

Books, books and more books. Sounds like heaven to me, or perhaps I should say ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’. (Credit: The Today Show)

Review: House of the Dragon on HBO Max

The first season of HBO’s new series ‘House of the Dragon’ has finished and so I’ll take this opportunity to give my two cents worth. As I’m sure everyone reading this post knows ‘House of the Dragon’ (HOD) is a prequel to HBO’s massively successful series ‘Game of Thrones’ (GOT) and the network hopes to capitalize on the popularity of its biggest ever hit.

HBO’s House of the Dragon (HOD) is the prequel to the network’s hugely successful Game of Thrones (GOT) with much of the same production staff and even input from the creator of GOT George R. R. Martin. (Credit: IGN Nordic)

As a prequel HOD is more constrained in what new ideas can be portrayed than could be done in a sequel. For example, since in the final season of GOT the supernatural creatures the ‘White Walkers’ were totally defeated and destroyed a sequel could replace them by introducing a completely new supernatural foe, maybe some sort of amphibious creature or bat like people. A prequel on the other hand cannot introduce anything too important that’s completely new without explaining why that new thing never got mentioned in the original show. 

As a prequel HOD cannot introduce any new ideas or important characters that would cause anachronisms (literally out of time) in the already broadcast GOT. (Credit: IMDB)

HOD definitely succeeds in not going outside the bounds of a prequel. In fact it may succeed too well because whereas GOT is a sprawling tapestry of many stories woven into one, HOD is much more narrow in theme, too narrow in my opinion.

HOD is really just a family squabble played out across the background of seven kingdoms. Nevertheless by concentrating on a single family it loses much of the complexity and variety that made GOT so interesting. (Credit: IMDB)

Season one of HOD concerns itself with the political intrigue between two branches of the Targaryen dynasty that rules the ‘Seven Kingdoms of Westeros’. In HOD the Targaryen family rules Westeros because they control the dragon’s that are by far the most fearsome weapon in the whole GOT Universe.

Since their power comes from their dragons the Targaryen family has taken to revering, almost deifying the creatures. By the way many people have begun to criticize the cinematography of HOD as simply being so dark it’s hard to see what’s happening! (Credit: NPR)

King Viserys Targaryen is the fifth king of that line and when his wife dies in childbirth Viserys names his daughter Rhaenyra as his heir rather than his hot-tempered brother Daemon. Things get even more complicated when Viserys marries a second time to the lady Alicent Hightower who bears the king two sons. The marriage between the old king and the young noblewoman was the contrivance of Alicent’s father Ser Otto Hightower, the king’s first minister, known as ‘the Hand’. Ser Otto seeks to increase his own power by putting his grandson on the iron throne as king. It’s in episode 9, when King Viserys dies that the peace of Westeros unravels as the various claimants grab for power. 

As HOD begins the young noblewomen Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower are the best of friends. That doesn’t last long however, not when there’s the throne to be taken. (Credit: Vanity Fair)

And so we have a tale of political intrigue worthy of GOT, but GOT was about a lot more than just than just political intrigue. In GOT in addition to the fight over the iron throne after the death of King Robert Baratheon between House Stark and House Lannister there were the adventures of Daenerys Targaryen across the narrow sea in Pentos, there were the adventures of Jon Snow beyond the Wall in the north, and there were the adventures of Arya Stark with the Assassins, plus a lot more.

George R. R. Martin freely admits that much of his inspiration for GOT came from England’s ‘War of the Roses, a war for the English throne between two branches of the same family. GOT however also went beyond that simple conflict to explore a unique and interesting world while HOD is just a family quarrel. (Credit: Ancient Origins)

There was also a lot more magic, whether it be Bran Stark with the Raven’s eye, or the witch Melisandre along with the religious fanaticism of the High Sparrow, and I’ve already mentioned the demonic White Walkers. In other words there were a lot of things going on at once, I haven’t mentioned a tenth of everything that happened in GOT and trying to keep it all straight was part of the fun. If one story ever got a little boring there were a half dozen other stories to keep your interest.

In GOT the gift of clairvoyance was represented by the three eyed raven (r). Bran Start (l) had it. Aside from dragons there’s a lot less magic in HOD. (Credit: Diply)

 HOD isn’t that complicated, and therefore it just isn’t that fascinating. It also isn’t as surprising as GOT was, remember the Red Wedding! A lot of things happened in GOT that were totally unexpected, but that certainly isn’t true of HOD where everything is pretty much predictable. In fact we’re told about Ser Otto Hightower’s plans to put his grandson on the throne at least a dozen times over five episodes before the king dies.

GOT’s ‘Red Wedding’ just before the blood starts to flow. GOT made a point of killing off major characters suddenly and sometimes almost pointlessly, in a sense almost like real life. HOD hasn’t shown that same spontaneity however. Everything that happens is is pretty much telegraphed well ahead of time. (Credit: Herald Sun)

I’ll add one more criticism, at the beginning of GOT we’re told that the Night’s Watch who guard the northern wall are just a shadow of their former glory and at the same time GOT starts with no dragons still alive. Well, when I heard that they were doing a prequel I was hoping to see the Night’s Watch at full strength and learn a little about what happened to the dragons. So far I’ve been disappointed on both counts.

Winter is Coming. In GOT the Night’s Watch were tasked with guarding ‘The Wall’ that kept the wild peoples and supernatural creatures of the north out of the ‘Seven Kingdoms of Westeros’. (Credit: winteriscoming.net)

Now this is only the first season of HOD, and to be honest GOT got a lot better in season 2. Still HOD seems to be much more committed to its main story and when that story sags the whole show becomes uninteresting. And that’s one thing Game of Thrones never was.   

Book Review: ‘Recursion’ by Blake Crouch      

We all know that our memories are to a large degree who we are. All of our loves, and hates, all of our opinions are formed from past experiences that are stored in memory. I suppose that’s why stories, real and fictional about people with amnesia are so popular. And then there’s always the idea of reliving a memory, of going back to either enjoy once again the best time of our life or perhaps to fix some mistake we made in the past.

The process of remembering something is actually a very complex mechanism involving many different parts of our brains! (Credit: Pinterest)

That last notion is the idea behind ‘Recursion’ a recent novel by Author Blake Crouch. Barry Sutton is a New York City Detective who is investigating a suicide that is linked to ‘False Memory Syndrome’ (FMS) a rare condition where a person suddenly acquires complete and detailed memories of a life they never lived, a mental jolt that causes many of them to kill themselves. Helena Smith is a neuroscientist who is trying to develop a method of recording memories in the hopes that it will lead to a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease, which her mother is beginning to suffer from.

Cover art for ‘recursion’ by Blake Crouch. (Credit: Penguin Random House)

Turns out that what Doctor Smith has invented is a time machine, a way of literally going back into a memory in order to change the past. One interesting thing about the time travel in ‘recursion’ is that making the jump requires the release of the strong hormones that accompany death. In other words you have to die in the present in order to pop back into one of your memories. And if you do change the past those people whose lives you’ve altered will suddenly acquire the memories of their original lives when time progresses to the moment when you used the time machine to pop back, that’s the FMS.

Author Blake Crouch. (Credit: Goodreads)

Now the physics of time traveling through memory in ‘Recursion’ is never really explained and the ‘Grandfather Effect’, the logical loop where you go into the past and kill your grandfather as a boy so you are never born so how can you go into the past to kill your grandfather, is barely mentioned. That said once you accept the rules of time travel in ‘Recursion’ the novel is tightly written and very well thought out.

The Grandfather paradox is a logical absurdity that stories about time travel have to deal with, although many simply choose to ignore it. (Credit: Medium)

Doctor Smith’s research is funded by one of those techno-billionaires named Marcus Slade who somehow seems to understand the full capabilities of the machine before Helena does. Slade is the first to try to exploit the possibilities of time travel but it isn’t long before the DoD gets involved and when the technical information for the machine gets hacked there are soon a dozen different entities trying to impose their preferred version of the past and reality itself begins to crack under the pressure of multiple pasts.

Have you noticed how techno-billionaires have become to stock villains of choice in Hollywood lately? I wonder how that got started? (Credit: (l to r) Salon, The Ringer, Timeslive)

I won’t go any further but the breakdown of time itself, along with Helena and Barry’s attempts to fix it are very well written. It fact the whole of ‘Recursion’ is very well thought out and composed.

In Some Time Traveler stories the problems of changing the past are integral to the story. (Credit: Ranker)
Other Time Travel stories are more about the societies that the Time Traveler encounters. (Credit: American Literature)

I do have a couple of very minor complaints. First of all the use of a techno-billionaire as the villain is becoming trite even if Blake Crouch does put a nice twist on him. Second, the novel was written around 2018 and the main action of the story, the breakdown of time occurs in 2018 so it’s already not happened! I would have placed the story at least a few years in the future, say 2028 in order to not have the problem of time making it false even as it was being published.

Despite all of the dangers of Time Travel can any SF fan say they wouldn’t like to take a ride on a Tardis? (Credit: Giant Freaking Robot)

Other than that I cannot recommend ‘Recursion’ strongly enough. This is one of the best time travel stories I’ve read, right up there with Wells’ original ‘Time Machine’ and Bradbury’s ‘The sound of Thunder’. If you like Science Fiction in general you will certainly enjoy ‘Recursion’ but if you like time travel stories you absolutely have to read it.

Movie Review: ‘Don’t Look Up’ on Netflix

For the most part Science Fiction and satire don’t cross paths very often. The best known exception is of the course ‘The Hitcher’s Guide to the Galaxy’ series but aside from those novels satirical science fiction stories and novels are rare and usually light on the satire. I suppose that’s because science fiction is usually an adventure in a completely different world while satire tends to poke fun at the world as it actually is.

The Original and still the best, the ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ took pot shots at everything and everyone. (Credit: Amazon.com)

‘Don’t Look Up’ is a new movie now showing on Netflix that illustrates rather convincingly how science fiction and satire can be combined to produce a story that is both thought provoking, and hilariously funny. Starring Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio as two astronomers desperately trying to convince the world of the danger of a comet heading straight at the Earth ‘Don’t Look Up’ takes place in the superficial, instant gratification world of modern society.

Both a straight critique of modern society and an allegory for the threat of Climate Change ‘Don’t Look Up’ is now available on Netflix. (Credit: Netflix)

Lawrence plays Kate Dibiasky, a doctoral candidate in astronomy at Michigan State University who is searching for supernovas in order to measure the expansion of the Universe. (For me a lot of the fun in ‘Don’t Look Up’ consisted of hearing them mention a topic that I’ve blogged about! There were actually quite a few!) Just by accident she discovers a comet. Calling in her advisor Dr. Randell Mindy, played by Leonardo Dicaprio, the two work out the orbit of the comet and realize in horror that it will strike the Earth in 6 months and 17 days.

NASA is busy trying to catalog the orbits of any threatening asteroids in order to give us decades of warning of any danger. But comets can appear without warning with only months before a possible collision. (Credit: Space.com)

The two immediately inform NASA of their fears and once the space agency has confirmed their calculations they are whisked to the White House for a meeting with President Orlean, played by Meryl Streep. Problem is that the President is having a problem getting her Supreme Court candidate past the Senate, it seems he once appeared in a soft corn porn film, so the astronomers have a long wait and little time to brief the President about the crisis.

PhD student Kate Dibiasky, played by Jennifer Lawrence, accidentally discovers the comet while searching for supernova. (Credit: Refinary29)

Once the President is made aware of the situation she decides to “sit tight” and wait for scientists at a more prestigious university like MIT or Princeton to confirm the observation. She’s also worried about the effect of the end of the world on the upcoming midterms.

To President Orlean, Meryl Streep, the end of the world is just another crisis that can hopefully be put off until the next administration. (Credit: CNN)

Away from Washington the two astronomers attempt to get their story out to the people by the media and are scheduled to appear on a network morning show hosted by Bree Evantee and Jack Bremmer, played by Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry respectively. While Bree tries to keep the news of a comet destroying our planet light and upbeat Jack seems obsessed with supernovas, “…exploding stars, stars can explode???” he asks Dibiaski.

Yes, stars can explode. This one did about a thousand years ago. (Credit: The Atlantic)

It isn’t long before the story has gone viral with predictable results. President Orlean finally decides to act and deflect the comet because saving the world might help her poll numbers only to have an Elon Musk / Jeff Bezos type character named Peter Isherwell, played by Mark Rylance, suggest that he has a better use for the comet, which is chock full of valuable materials.

There’s been a lot of press coverage of all of the valuable metals there are on the asteroid Psyche, and a lot of crazy, for now, ideas about how to get them. Now it’s great to imagine the technology of the future but we have to solve today’s problems with today’s technology. (Credit: Space.com)

So the comet now becomes a jobs creator and everyone in America soon takes side to either ‘Just Look Up’ or ‘Don’t Look Up’. Those slogans kinda reminded me of ‘Build Back Better’ or ‘Make America Great Again’, which I’m certain is what the writers intended. In order to avoid giving too much away I’ll stop there.

In ‘Don’t Look Up’ the media treats a collision with a comet as just another news story, the same way is actually does treat the threat of Climate Change. (Credit: The Sentinel Assam)

‘Don’t Look Up’ is delightfully funny in places, even having a couple of running jokes that have nothing to do with the comet. At the same time it is a painful reflection of our current shallow, celebrity driven culture. The acting is uniformedly excellent although I was surprised at how hard Meryl Streep tried to be funny, a bit too much for someone playing a President I thought. The special effects worked well on my TV screen, which is one of the advantages of watching a Netflix movie as opposed to seeing one on a big theater screen where CGI can sometimes look cartoonish.

I know this will get me in trouble but I think CGI works much better on the little, i.e. TV screen. In the theater, on the big screen too much CGI starts to look like Bugs Bunny and friends. (Credit: StudioBinder)

All in all ‘Don’t Look Up’ was a fun 2 hours and 18 minutes but I hope that it will be more than that. Maybe it could start a fashion for science fiction satire.

Book Review: ‘This is How You Lose the Time War’ by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Somewhere in the Multiverse two ideologies are at war, The Agency is a Techno-hierarchy while The Garden is an organic consciousness. Each organization sends out agents who travel up and down time streams, back and forth across dimensions altering the future here, deleting a bit of the past there in their efforts to bring themselves into existence. Red is the top agent for The Agency while Blue is her counterpart for The Garden.

Cover of ‘This is How You Lose the Time war’ by Amal el-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. (Credit: Amazon)

Such is the background for ‘This is How You Lose the Time War’ by authors Amal el-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. As the story begins Red has emerged victorious in a large battle in some corner of reality when she spies a piece of paper with the words “Burn before Reading” written upon it. Although they have never met Red immediately knows that the message is from her enemy Blue and guesses that the message could be either a trap or an attempt to turn her to Blue’s side. Knowing that even reading the message could be a betrayal to her side she burns the paper and in the fading ashes she reads the first in a series of letters passed surreptitiously between the two time warriors.

Authors Max Gladstone (l) and Amal el-Mohtar (r). (Credit: Uncanny Magazine)

As you have probably guessed by now ‘This is How You Lose the Time War’ is a different kind of Science Fiction novel, written in a technique as much poetry as prose, with world building that is both abstract and minimalist. The rules of plausibility, so often broken in Science Fiction are here gleefully ignored. This is a story that is more about style than plot and indeed its plot is really a very familiar one.

I like this drawing showing the two protagonists Red and Blue of ‘This is How You Lose the Time War’. Notice that, like the ying yang symbol there’s a bit of red in Blue and a bit of blue in Red. (Credit: Laya Rose Art)

The two agents are soon passing notes back and forth and of course they soon fall in love, both are female by the way. To be honest I didn’t see the parallels to ‘Romeo and Juliet’ until Shakespeare’s play was explicitly mentioned. “Two houses alike in dignity…From ancient grudge break to new mutiny.” and “Two star crossed lovers” but it was pretty easy to see where the plot was going. As I said ‘This is How You Lose the Time War’ is more about style than plot.

First date I ever went on was the Franco Zeffirelli version of R & J. (Credit: TV Tropes)

After about a dozen messages between Red and Blue I was starting to find the story becoming repetitious but the authors must have also realized that because at this point the two agent’s superiors begin to suspect that something is going on and Red and Blue are soon put in a situation reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet’s in Act 4. The ending is quite different however and I was pleased that I managed to figure it out ahead of time.

Just like in Romeo and Juliet the two houses cause all the problems for the two lovers Red and Blue. The ending however is quite different. (Credit: No Sweat Shakespeare)

As I said ‘This is How You Lose the Time War’ doesn’t have a very intriguing plot, and if you really like the details of world building you’ll be disappointed. However the writing of Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone is very clever and interesting, again something like poetry.

Of Course Time Wars are right up The Doctor’s alley. But Aml el-Mohtar and Max Gladstone have done a pretty good job with ‘This is How You Lose the Time War’. (Credit: Wikipedia)

And another thing, it’s a quick read. It took me less than two days to finish the novel. So if you’re looking for a light desert after a heavy meal like Dune or GOT maybe you should try ‘This is How You Lose the Time War’.  While it may not be memorable it is nevertheless certainly enjoyable.   

Book Review: ‘Project Hail Mary’ by Andy Weir.

 ‘Project Hail Mary’ is the third novel by Andy Weir, best known as the author of ‘The Martian’. Like Weir’s two earlier novels ‘Project Hail Mary’ is a fast paced, hard science fiction adventure with both a plausible plot and relatable characters. In many ways this is Weir’s forte, he always does his science and engineering homework beforehand so that as he writes he can describe the interior of a spaceship as accurately as another author could describe the interior of a Starbucks.

Cover art for ‘Project Hail Mary’ by Andy Weir. (Credit: Amazon.com)

And like Mark Watney in ‘The Martian’ Ryland Grace, the main character in ‘Project Hail Mary’, is the sort of person who solves problems by ‘Sciencing the shit out of them.’ As the novel opens, Grace wakes up aboard a spaceship with amnesia, and two dead astronauts for his only company. As the story goes along Grace remembers bits and pieces of his past, a commonly used plot device that allows Weir to fill in some backstory whenever he needs to.

Andy Weir seems drawn to characters who are problem solvers, which I guess is why I like his stories! (Credit: Meme Generator)

In fact there’s quite a lot of backstory. As Grace remembers his past Weir describes in detail the threat to our Sun, and therefore us, that prompted Project Hail Mary. He also describes the design and construction of the spaceship that will take three astronauts on an expedition to hopefully find a way to save our Solar System.

As an aid in visualizing what’s going on in the novel, Andy Weir even gives a drawing of the interstellar spaceship Hail Mary. (Credit: Kerbal Space Program Forums)

You see unlike ‘The Martian’ or Weir’s second novel ‘Artemis’, both of which took place inside our Solar System and only concerned terrestrial life forms, ‘Project Hail Mary’ takes place in the Tau Ceti system and deals with humans contacting alien life. With the rest of his crew having died while in hibernation, which is also the cause of his amnesia, Grace is all alone in another Solar System trying to save all of humanity from a threat that’s infecting multiple solar systems. Or is he alone; could there be another intelligent species in the same predicament as we are?

In ‘Project Hail Mary’ Ryland Grace may be the only human in the Tau Ceti star system but he isn’t alone. (Credit: Goodreads)

So you get a story of first contact with aliens while under the shadow of extinction for both species. Weir’s alien comes from the Epsilon Eridani system and lives in a very different, and deadly environment. Because of that the only time Grace and it touch is during an emergency that nearly destroys both ships and the result of that touch is that both creatures nearly die.

Some basic scenarios for contact with Extraterrestrials. In ‘Project Hail Mary’ a single human meets a single alien and both are in such desperate need that working together is the only way to save both their worlds. (Credit: Seth Baum et al, Pennsylvania State University)

Both human and alien work together however to save their worlds, that’s another idea Andy Weir seems to like to portray in his novels, how much more we can accomplish if we just try to work together. And there are a lot of problems for the two astronauts to solve before the end of the novel, another of Weir’s traits.

One small criticism I have is that the two expeditions show up in the Tau Ceti system at the virtually the same time looking for a solution to the same threat, what are the chances of that happening. In fact there are a number of such unlikely events in the novel. But of course any good story, especially a science fiction story, requires a little suspension of disbelief.

I guess ‘Suspension of Disbelief’ kinda depends on the circumstance. (Credit: Riky the Writer)

All in all ‘Project Hail Mary’ is a very good SF novel, I really enjoyed it. And unlike all too many SF novels these days it isn’t the first installment in a series of books. Andy Weir is apparently the sort of writer who has a good idea for a story and then writes the story without adding a lot of filler in order to stretch his idea out for three or four books.

Word out of Hollywood is that Ryan Gosling, who play Neil Armstrong in ‘First Man’ is in talks to star in and produce a movie version of ‘Project Hail Mary’. (Credit: The Daily Mail)

There’s no filler in ‘Project Hail Mary’, just probably the best science fiction novel I’ve read since…well, the ‘Martian’!

Book Review: “Shipstar’ by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven.

“Shipstar” is the second in a series of three novels by noted science fiction authors Gregory Benford and Larry Niven. I reviewed the first novel in the series “The Bowl of Heaven” back on the 2nd of January 2021. As we began “The Bowl of Heaven” the Earth starship Sunseeker was on a mission to establish the first human colony in another star system on a planet that is given the name Glory.

Cover Art for the Novel ‘Shipstar’ by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven. (Credit: Amazon)

In mid flight however Sunseeker encounters an unbelievable sight, a star that has been almost completely enclosed inside a shell. Such an object is commonly known as a Dyson sphere after physicist Freeman Dyson who proposed that such a structure would allow a high-technology civilization to capture and use the entire energy output of the enclosed star.

The bowl of heaven in the SF series by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven. (Credit: Centauri Dreams)

Now the star encountered by Sunseeker is not a complete Dyson sphere, there is a large hole in the sphere making the object more like a bowl, “The Bowl of Heaven” in the title. And the star’s solar wind has been magnetically channeled through that hole to provide a rocket exhaust making the star and it’s bowl into a ship, a “Shipstar”.

Investigating this marvel the Sunseeker sails inside the bowl and sends down a landing party to the inside surface of the bowl. On the surface the humans discover a large number of different intelligences, each of which appear to inhabit their own area on the inside of the bowl. The aliens who run the bowl, and who refer to themselves as ‘The Folk’ turn out to be rather domineering and capture half the landing party while the other half escapes into the bowl. After a series of adventures this is where “The Bowl of Heaven” ends.

View from the inside surface of the bowl. Two parties of humans are trapped upon the bowl, trying to survive and escape in “Shipstar’. (credit: Tor / Forge Blog)

“Shipstar” picks up where “The Bowl of Heaven” left off with half the landing party being interrogated by the folk while the rest are trying not to get caught. The first three-quarters of “Shipstar” consist of these adventures as the Earthlings learn more about the creatures that inhabit the bowl. Before long it becomes obvious that while the folk may appear to be in charge they clearly aren’t the original builders of the bowl. Several times in the novel one human character or another thinks to themselves “we’re missing something here” as the authors try to build up tension for the big reveal to come.

Did ya ever get that feeling? (Credit: Meme Generator)

So the first three hundred pages of ‘Shipstar” are pretty much action-adventure, the escaped humans actually get involved in a rebellion by one of the other intelligent species on the bowl against the folk. The adventures and the aliens encountered are all interesting enough but really they’re just filler.

Maybe every story needs a protagonist and antagonist but Science Fiction needs more than just conflict, it needs big ideas about the nature of the Universe and our place in it! (Credit: Teachers pay teachers)

And that’s my problem with all of these SF series lately. The author or authors may start out with a good enough idea but because they have to spread it over three or more books the story becomes mostly filler, more like a western than real SF. Conflict is important in any story, you learn that your first day in any writing course, every story needs its protagonist(s) and antagonist(s). Science Fiction however is about big ideas not just a series of shootouts and fistfights.

Larry Niven (t) with Gregory Benford (b), or is it the other way around. They actually do resemble each other a bit don’t they. Anyhow they’re with the cover of ‘Glorious’ the next chapter in the ‘Bowl of Heaven’ series. (Credit: Tor / Forge Blog)

Now as I said, with two top-notch SF writers like Benford and Niven the filler is worth reading and in the last hundred pages of “Shipstar” we do finally get some information, some resolution as well as a setup for the next book in the series. The story of the voyages of the Sunseeker and the Bowl of Heaven continues in “Glorious” and I’ll be certain to tell you all about it before too long. 

Book Review: Bowl of Heaven by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven.

A lot of Science Fiction is about future technology. Imagining structures, vehicles and devices beyond what we are capable of building today. Some novels are set in the far future with starships and colonies on other planets. Others may describe the world of tomorrow with AI networks controlling robots who have eliminated boring, repetitive manual labour so that people no longer have to (can?) work for a living.

What will our future habitats on other worlds look like? Is today’s Science Fiction tomorrow’s reality? (Credit: Space.com)

If that’s the kind of SF that you enjoy, if you’re interested in reading about a really big, really futuristic, ultimate high tech piece of engineering then I think you’ll like “The Bowl of Heaven” by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven. The story begins with a human starship on route from Earth to another solar system. The ship is named ‘The Sunseeker’ and it’s a sleeper ship taking centuries to cross interstellar space while the vast majority of its passengers and crew are hibernating. Once at their new world the sleepers will be awakened and begin their task of terra-forming a new home for the human race. As I began to read ‘the Bowl of Heaven’ the setup kinda reminded me of the movie ‘Passengers’ that I reviewed in my post of 28December2016.

The starship from the movie “Passengers” was a

And like in ‘Passengers’ the Sunseeker has something happen to it in mid-voyage that’s changes everything. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere a star appears not very far away from the ship. Now stars don’t just pop into existence so the only two non-sleeping persons on board the Sunseeker, a couple of engineers whose training is in monitoring ship’s performance not astronomy, decide to wake a scientist in order to make some observations of this strange phenomenon. Those observations result in more people being woken up and before long a couple of dozen people, including the ship’s captain, are awake trying to figure out what they should do.

The cover of ‘Bowl of Heaven’ by Gregory Benford (l) and Larry Niven (r). (Credit: Tor.com)

What they found was that the star had been hiding inside an incomplete Dyson sphere. What’s a Dyson sphere? Well the noted physicist Freeman Dyson once suggested that the ultimate energy source would be to completely enclose a star inside a sphere. Solar collectors would then gather the entire energy output of that star. Obviously only a highly intelligent, very technologically sophisticated race could even begin to build such a thing.

Physicist Freeman Dyson originated the notion of surrounding a star with a sphere in order to capture its entire energy output. (Credit: LabRoots)

Now in ‘The Bowl of Heaven’ the star isn’t inside a complete Dyson Sphere, it’s more like a bowl covering most of the star, hence the novel’s title. It’s when the Sunseeker moves to a certain angle that the star inside becomes visible through the top of the bowl. This accounts for the star seeming to appear from nowhere.

And if encapsulating an entire star doesn’t impress you how about this, mounted around the rim of the bowl are enormous magnetic field projectors that focus the star’s solar wind into a propulsive jet. This jet is propelling the star and it’s bowl across the galaxy. Not a starship but rather a shipstar, a star turned into a ship!

Turning a star into a ship! Now that’s imagination! (Credit: Gregory Benford)

This concept is in fact an expansion of the main idea in author Larry Niven’s earlier novel ‘Ringworld’ where a ring is constructed completely around a star, again capturing an enormous amount of energy. In ‘Ringworld’ the ring rotates around the star not only producing centripetal force to act as gravity for the inhabitants but also reducing the structural stress on the ring. The basic idea of ‘The Bowl of Heaven’ is an extension of ‘Ringworld’ turning an entire solar system into a vehicle for exploring the galaxy.

The cover of Larry Niven’s earlier novel ‘Ringworld’. The technology of ‘The Bowl f Heaven’ is an extension of that in Ringworld. (Credit:The Atlantic)

Attempting to make contact with the intelligences controlling the shipstar the crew of Sunseeker go inside the bowl and send a landing party to the surface. Well it turns out that the aliens are rather haughty and treat other species as nothing more than intelligent animals, quite a few of whom they’ve genetically modified to serve them on the shipstar. The human landing party escapes however and what follows is a series of adventures on the surface of the bowl.

Living on the inside of the Bowl you’d never see nighttime or any change of seasons! (Credit: Tor/Forge Blog)

 And that’s my problem with ‘The Bowl of Heaven’ because while those adventures are interesting they are really beside the plot and they certainly go on for too long! After several hundred pages of the landing party roving around the bowl meeting different kinds of aliens and learning how to survive in such a strange environment you want to say. “Get on with it!”

But authors Niven and Benford don’t, because you see ‘The Bowl of Heaven’ is just the first installment of yet another series of novels. The story of the crew of Sunseeker in fact continues in the novel ‘Shipstar’. The problem with ‘The Bowl of Heaven’ is the problem with these series in general, too much filler so that the author or authors can turn one good idea into several books!

I have to admit that I’m getting a bit tied of all these trilogies or longer. I’d love to read another novel like ‘The Martian’ where the story actually ends when the book does.

The use of subplots to stretch out a story is very common and becoming more so in modern SF because of the large number of multi-novel series being written. The fact that they are so common doesn’t mean that they’re any good! (Credit: Gideon’s Screenwriting Tips)

Still, ‘The Bowl of Heaven’ was fun to read, and you can bet that I’ll be reading, and reviewing ‘Shipstar’ before very long. I do recommend it, but be aware that you’re going to have to read at least one more book in order to find out what happens in the end.

TV Review: ‘Lovecraft Country’ and a few remarks about the works of H. P. Lovecraft, and his racism.

“Lovecraft Country’ is a new series on HBO from executive producers Misha Green and J. J. Abrams. Based on a novel by Matt Ruff ‘Lovecraft Country’ is a chronicle of the adventures of a young black couple Atticus Freeman, played by actor Jonathan Majors, and Leticia Lewis, played by Jurnee Smollet-Bell. Taking place in the 1950s in ‘Lovecraft Country’ Atticus and Leticia, along with their relatives and friends must not only endure the prevalent racism of the time but also survive the machinations of a secret occult society of rich white people.

Official HBO poster for Lovecraft Country starring Jonathan Majors and Jurnee Smollet-Bell.(Credit: HBO)

Now let’s be honest right from the start. As an old, college educated white man I have had little personal experience of what it’s like to be discriminated against. (And by little in the instance I mean none!) I have, in my life and career known a wide diversity of different people and I hope that I have treated them based upon what kind of person they are rather than the group to which they belong. I had thought, just a few years ago that as a society we were making progress toward racial equality but lately it has become painfully obvious that bigotry runs deep in this country, and will take many more years to eliminate, if indeed we ever do.

And that’s one of the interesting aspects of ‘Lovecraft Country’. By illustrating some of the mechanics of historic Jim Crow racism such as ‘Sundown Towns’ (no blacks allowed after sundown) and tour guides for blacks (listing restaurants, motels and other establishments in cities and towns that serve blacks and are ‘safe’ to go to) you can acquire some feeling for what it was like to be black in a segregated America.

Atticus (l) with his Uncle George who publishes a ‘Travel Guide for Negros. There really were such guides back in Jim Crow America. (Credit: Insider)

But of course ‘Lovecraft Country’ is a supernatural horror show and quite a good one, with some familiar monsters such as ghosts and vampires being used in very unusual ways as well as some completely new otherworldly creatures. Despite the title ‘Lovecraft Country’ makes no use of H. P. Lovecraft’s ‘Olde Ones’ such as Yog-Sothoth or Nyarlathotep although Cthulhu does make a very brief appearance in a dream sequence right at the very beginning of episode one. Incidentally Cthulhu gets beaten up by Jackie Robinson with a baseball bat, something I admit I could never have imagined.

Jackie Robinson about to beat on Cthulhu in a dream at the beginning of ‘Lovecraft Country’. (Credit: HBO)

The important difference however is that in a Lovecraft story the humans in contact with or worshipping the daemons and monsters are ‘men of a very low, mixed blooded, and mentally aberrant type’. The quote is from Lovecraft’s story the ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ and is just one example of the way that Lovecraft usually described minorities.

Waiting ever in the shadows, Cthulhu is a symbol of our fear of the unknown. (Credit: Mod DB)

In ‘Lovecraft Country’ on the other hand most of the wizards are rich white people. This is in fact a deliberate twisting of the racism in Lovecraft’s own works and when combined with the normal, mundane bigotry of the 1950s does succeed in making young, attractive, well dressed, rich white people seem like monsters. And remember this is an old white guy talking!

In Lovecraft Country a secret cabal of rich white men are wizards pursuing Atticus because, despite being black he is the last direct descendant of their founder! (Credit: HBO Watch)

Another difference between Lovecraft’s stories and ‘Lovecraft Country’ is sex. There’s quite a bit of hanky panky going on in ‘Lovecraft Country’, most of it pertinent to the storyline. On the other hand it would be hard to have less sex than there is in Lovecraft’s works.

Technically “Lovecraft Country’ is very well made, the special effects are quite good, at times even chilling. The performances of the actors are also engaging, especially that of Majors and Smollet-Bell. Several of the ‘minor characters’ have also been given storylines of their own in addition to their parts in the main story of Atticus and Leticia.

One of the monsters in ‘Lovecraft Country’ is the Shoggoth. Although different from Lovecraft’s Shoggoths it is still a fearsome creature. (Credit: The New York Times)

I’ve just finished watching episode seven of ‘Lovecraft Country’ out of a total of ten so there are three episodes left to the series. If you haven’t started watching it yet don’t worry, this is HBO so I’m certain that they’ll be rebroadcasting the entire series before long. If you’re the type who enjoys a good supernatural horror story you should certainly check it out.

But before I go I would like to take a few minutes to discuss what kind of writer H.P. Lovecraft was. Did he write Science Fiction or Fantasy or Horror or what? Of course you could just say that Lovecraft, like most storytellers wrote whatever he felt like, mixing all three categories as necessary in order to tell his tale.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft. He looks more like an accountant than the genius who imagined countless worlds beyond our own! (Credit: Reddit)

That’s a bit of a cop out however. I think the best way to understand Lovecraft writings are to recognize that they all deal with the strange, the unfamiliar, the alien. Lovecraft never could have written the kind of stories and novels that a Jane Austin or Ernst Hemingway or others like them wrote. Writing stories about a couple who fall in love or a man who faces up to his fears…how boring, how pedestrian, give me a tentacled monstrosity from beyond the stars!

Another member of ‘ye Great Old Ones’ is Yog Sothoth, a formless mass of malevolence. (Credit: StarfinderWiki)

And Lovecraft’s fixation on that which is different is almost certainly connected with his streak of racism, literally treating someone, or something unfairly and unjustly because you perceive them as alien. Throughout his works Lovecraft often uses the same negative, pejorative adjectives to describe his extraterrestrial god-daemons as he does to describe non-white humans. Psychologically it is called xenophobia, a neurotic fear of anything that is different.

Living in what was a pretty racist period in history Lovecraft’s xenophobia paradoxically not only fueled his vivid imagination but also twisted it into something that at times became morbid and sub-human. I freely admit that I love the way Lovecraft could describe a Universe that is both larger and more diverse than most writers, most people could ever imagine. However I also recognize that Lovecraft used the immenseness of the Universe as a source of fear and loathing, not the place of wonder and beauty that I see in all of its diversity.

But if we are to call ourselves rational creatures shouldn’t we be able to control our fears and learn to appreciate everything the Universe has to offer? (Credit: Notable Quotes)

‘Lovecraft Country’ has something of that same attitude; basically just that the Universe is a big scary place and we human beings should be afraid of it. Personally I may enjoy stories built on that sort of framework, as I enjoy ‘Lovecraft Country’. In the long run however, I do prefer those Science Fiction stories that have a more hopeful view of the Universe and our future in it.  

So what should we do with H. P. Lovecraft? Should we follow the advice of Shakespeare’s Mark Anthony when he says “The evil that men do live after them, the good it oft interred with their bones, so let it be with Lovecraft?” Remember Shakespeare himself said quite a few racist things. Do we throw away everything Lovecraft ever did? Do we censor the past in a vain effort to clean it up so that it cannot offend our modern sensibilities?

Intended to be anti-racist, ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ are now considered to be rather embarrassing! How far should we go in trying to ‘correct’ the mistakes of the past? (Credit: Medium)

Perhaps we should do what ‘Lovecraft Country’ does, turn racism around on itself and thereby demonstrate that it is really the racists, and racism itself that is truly ‘vile, loathsome and sub-human”!!