The Fall Of Hyperion, Dan Simmons

Title:		The Fall Of Hyperion
Author:		Dan Simmons
Rating:

The Fall Of Hyperion completes the story started in Hyperion. In the first book the main characters - well, most of them anyway - got to the time tombs on Hyperion and big events are just starting to happen. You might expect the next volume in the series to pick up right there, but no. Simmons instead introduces us to an entirely new character and starts giving us his back story, gradually weaving it into with the original tale.

We eventually get the story of the last Shrike pilgrimage worked out, sort of. There are a lot of unanswered questions, though, and some less than entirely satisfactory story telling. It's not that I require everything to be wrapped up with a pretty, pink bow, but something seems to be missing.

I noted more instances where an editor would have helped, as in Hyperion itself, and the damn cover image still features a two armed Shrike, not the four armed one actually described in the novel. *sigh*

In all I am not quite sure what to make of this. It's good, but not great, interesting, but less than fulfilling. I wish Simmons had done more with it, but I can still recommend it.

Hyperion, Dan Simmons

Title:		Hyperion
Author:		Dan Simmons
Rating:

I first read Hyperion quite a few years ago. So long ago, in fact, that with my rust memory it was almost like reading it for the first time again. As I recall, I really enjoyed it the first time around. I remember thinking it was a great book. Really great. Sometimes it stinks getting older. This time I can call Hyperion a good book, but not a great one.

Simmons clearly has a lot to tell, and even having read it before I was still surprised that it's only half the story, completed in The Fall Of Hyperion. I found the characters interesting and the Shrike compelling, but I seem to be growing tired of the "journey as story" phenomenon. Why is it so hard to find interesting stories that don't include the main characters traveling vast distances? Here we watch the main characters travel by space ship, tramway, wind wagon, and on foot. I didn't object that much as I was reading it, but it did sometimes seem that moving the characters around was more important than the rest of the story. That got a bit old, particularly in hind sight.

If I have any real gripes, though, they are actually less serious. There were a couple of places where Simmons desperately needed an editor. A few sections of repetitive text and a mention of a checking account (yes, really), for example, bugged me. There were also some possible printing errors in my copy, but they might instead have been writing errors an editor would have found and removed. Editing seems to be a lost art these days.

Finally though, the biggest irritant for me is the cover art. The Shrike has four (4!) arms dammit! Why on earth (or Hyperion) do we have four volumes in this series and only the fourth finally gets that little detail right on the cover? What sort of nitwit artists did these covers without reading enough about what they were painting to get it right. Gah! (Yes, this is trivial, I know, but it's amazing how it bugs me now as I sit here with the books writing reviews.)

Anyway, if you can get past these few oddities and irritants, Hyperion is a good tale. Be prepared to read Fall Of Hyperion too, though, or you'll never know how things end.

Paul Of Dune, Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

Title:		Paul Of Dune
Author:		Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson
Rating:

I love the original Dune books by Frank Herbert. Well, I love some of them and appreciate the others for what they are, even if they aren't up the quality of Dune or God Emperor Of Dune, which are the best two in the series. Sadly, however, Herbert died with the series incomplete, and left a lot of questions unanswered.

His son, Brian Herbert, picked up the tale with co-writer Kevin J. Anderson, but rather than continue where Herbert left off, they have so far set their stories before or between the original novels in the series.

I'd read another one of their works some time back - Dune, House Atreides, I think - and found it flat. Recently, though, I was given a copy of Paul Of Dune and decided to try it, to see if the earlier work was just a poor example or actually reflected the reality of what Herbert and Anderson are writing. Sadly, it turns out to be the latter.

The Dune universe provides a rich tapestry to work with: compelling characters, fascinating settings, unique technology, incredibly complicated politics, and (of course) the spice. Herbert and Anderson, though, simply cannot find anything interesting to write about here. In fact, they barely find anything to write about at all.

The story has no focus, and we go from chapter to chapter wondering why any of it matters. It appears the time Paul Atreides spends consolidating power after assuming the role of emperor is pretty dull. If this wasn't fiction it might even be true that nothing of interest happened during this period, but Herbert and Anderson could and should have done better. Alternately, if they are following notes left by Frank himself, they should have skipped this part of Dune's history and written about something else. Something that matters.

Vacuum Diagrams, Stephen Baxter

Title:		Vacuum Diagrams
Author:		Steven Baxter
Rating:

Thanks to a lot of conflicts and two crazy jobs in the past year I am behind on my book reviews. That makes writing them a bit tougher as I have to root around in my entirely inadequate memory for what I thought of these things months ago when I finished them. I'll do my best...

Vacuum Diagrams is a collection of science fiction short stories that collect and intertwine the author's larger works in a (relatively) cohesive whole. Baxter actually pulls this off better than many - Asimov and Heinlein come to mind as examples of those who should never have tried such a thing - probably because he actually did have a relatively cohesive world view as he wrote his various works.

Nevertheless, while I found these stories acceptable, they really didn't stick with me. There's something about huge, sweeping tales - these cover the entire history of our universe, and introduce a second, if that makes any sense out of context - that makes me want more than just short stories to get them to stick.

If you've read other things by Baxter and enjoyed them then this may be your thing. You can see the overall view of the universe(s) he imagines here. For me, though, these were simply OK stories without enough glue to make them work overall.

Doorways In The Sand, Roger Zelazny

Title:		Doorways In The Sand
Author:		Roger Zelazny
Rating:

As some of you may know, I teach stone carving. Something close to five years ago we had a high school student join the class. This was a new experience for me - the class is generally directed at adults - but Jeremy was a great addition. I learned a lot from him, and he added quite a bit to the classroom experience.

This year saw him graduate and go off to college. Over the years we've watched him get ready for this and now seen him leave. I always told Jeremy he should milk his college days as much as he can. If he needed 3 PhD degrees and a 20 year post doc, for example, he should do that, and all on his parent's dime. He says that won't happen, but in the spirit of the idea I am sending him a copy of Doorways In The Sand.

In it, the hero has managed to stay in college for something like 14 years without graduating. He gets close at times, but always changes majors or otherwise manages to escape. The reason is that his uncle's estate pays for his college education until he graduates, but doesn't contain a time limit. As you can imagine, Jeremy needs to read this. The USPS will deliver a copy to him shortly.

As books by Zelazy go, Doorways In The Sand is good, but not one of the greats. It's fluffier than something like Lord of Light, and lacks the grand sweep of the Amber Chronicles. Still, it's fun and well written. Definitely worth your time if you're into lighter SF.

The Agony and the Ecstasy, Irving Stone

Title:		The Agony and the Ecstasy
Author:		Irving Stone
Rating:

It's been months since I had the time for any reading. In fact, I was nearly finished with The Agony and the Ecstasy when the job started, and though I finished it shortly thereafter it has been a long time since I've posted here, so this review is long overdue.

All I can do now is recommend this book highly, particularly if you're a student of the arts or an artist.

Stone's research is good, and though I cannot tell you where he veered into fiction, I can tell you that I enjoyed this work a lot.

Michaelangelo is one of my favorites, and an inspiration to me as a sculptor. I learned a lot about him and his time from this book, and highly recommend it.

The Happiness Hypothesis, Johnathan Haidt

Title:		The Happiness Hypothesis
Author:		Johnathan Haidt
Rating:

This is a tough book to review. Early on Haidt had me hooked. I felt like he was heading in the right direction and that things were making sense. Then it got derailed. I suspect that was my fault, though. I choked on what I view as his overly generous and accepting position towards religion.

The first half or more of the book seems to be well supported in terms of research. If there's a problem there it's in Haidt's use of excerpts from various ancient sources - mostly religious - without a lot of context and background. That, for me, is something of a no-no, as quotations need to come with context if they are to be taken seriously. The Bible is a violent book when viewed as a whole, and extracting a few peace loving lines out of it doesn't change that, nor does it put those lines in the proper context.

But I got past that because it looked like Haidt was saying something like "Ancient source X says this semi-mystical thing Y. Modern research shows that Y is correct in the following way." (Sometimes Y was incorrect, by the way.) Given that presentation I let things slide.

Then, however, I got to the latter portion of the book and things just started to grate on my nerves. Haidt winds up making the claim that we are ultra social, somewhat hive minded organisms. Like bees in some ways. Now, I recognize that there are some interesting evolutionary drives, and maybe, in some ways, a few aspects of human behavior are similar to those of bees or ants, but we aren't all the way to a hive organism as I see it, and while I'm sure he wouldn't say we were either, he thinks the bits that are similar are a lot more important than I do, or than he justifies as far as I could tell.

And as he gets closer to these more speculative leaps the number of end notes and referenced studies goes down, just as the number of anecdotal reports goes up. (Note: I could be wrong about this. I'm documenting my response to this book, not writing a detailed study in which I count end notes, cited papers, and so on. Still, I think my conclusions are probably sound.)

In addition, Haidt - despite claiming to be an atheist himself - glosses over a bunch of problems with religion. Maybe they just aren't relevant to his conclusions, but I found the act bothersome.

I give him credit for trying to synthesize something of this scope, and there are useful bits in here. For example, he makes a good case that the question "What is the meaning of life?" is pointless. "How can I live a life full of meaning?" is a much better question, and he gives some help in here if you're stuck on that issue. Not a lot of detailed help, mind you - meditate, make use of cognitive therapy, or take Prozac is the gist - but enough to maybe get you talking to someone who can move you along one of those paths. If you decide you need to.

Overall I guess this book was OK. Not stellar, not life changing, at least for me, but OK. Maybe that's because I am (I think) a relatively well balanced person who is pretty happy most of the time. If you are perpetually unhappy you might find something more useful or meaningful here than I did.

A Perfect Spy, John Le Carre

Title:		A Perfect Spy
Author:		John Le Carre
Rating:

This one came off my shelf to make some room, as it's a moderately hefty hard back tome. My previous time with Le Carre has been OK, and I guess that's what I'd have to say about this one.

A Perfect Spy is essentially an exercise in back story and character development. In large measure, nothing really happens in here, and I found that a bit off putting. It wasn't terrible, but I did spend a bit of time wondering if anything - other than the rather predictable ending - would happen.

In previous books I've reviewed by Le Carre I've seen an odd problem: at times he randomly changes the point of view. It can be a bit bizarre to suddenly realize that we've gone from omniscient narrator to the limited point of view of some body guard. Thankfully I didn't note that in A Perfect Spy. Instead I had different problem.

The main character, Magnus Pym, has a somewhat split personality. In his role as narrator he regularly refers to himself as if he was someone else. This gets confusing and it took me nearly 100 pages to catch on. I kept wondering if there was some other character present that I'd somehow missed. Finally, though, I got it. I may be more than a bit dense - others might have recognized what was going on a lot faster - but it really slowed me down until I figured it out.

Other than that, I didn't really note anything all that good or bad. As I say, the ending was fairly predictable, but once you meet Pym and get the gist of where he is in life the ending is just about a given.

If you're into cold war spy stories you might enjoy this. If that isn't your bag, then you can probably give this one a pass.

Ringworld, Larry Niven

Title:		Ringworld
Author:		Larry Niven
Rating:

Ringworld is probably Larry Niven's most famous work, having won both the Hugo and Nebula awards back in 1970 when it was first published. My previous experience with Niven's work, though, has left me cold. He's a hard science fiction writer and his characters have been very flat, to say the least. I hoped that Ringworld would be different.

It isn't.

It appears as though Niven had the idea for the ringworld and forced some characters and story together to give him a reason to write about the toy he'd invented. For me the result simply didn't work.

The toy itself - the ringworld - is an interesting idea, but other than some math about dimensions and spinning it to create gravity, everything else about it is pure, unadulterated fantasy. There are all kinds of impossible things going on here in the guise of "science": impossibly strong and thin wire, materials impervious to just about anything, multiple forms of FTL travel, unexplained failsafe systems, life extending substances, stasis fields, transmutation of one material into another, alien species, etc. One or even a few of these things would be fine in a science fiction work, particularly with some background and explanation, but Niven piles them up thick and just keeps going.

In short, he made up anything needed to let him talk about the idea of the ringworld itself. Everything other than the ring - characters, physics, story - was essentially superfluous. If he was a better writer I might have suspended disbelief, but that never happened. Not once.

Even worse, there were several places where the writing is so bad - or the copy I have is so poorly transcribed from the original - that after rereading a few paragraphs several times I had to give up and move on. Some things just didn't make sense at all.

In other places, despite the fact that the words and sentences held together, Niven didn't adequately describe the situation or action. After a while you just wind up accepting that he's not going to explain things well enough to make sense and forget about it. Not a good sign.

For amusement you can look it up on Wikipedia and read about other technical problems. There are quite a few.

I don't know why this book won any awards. It's not very good. My perception of Niven as a writer remains unchanged and I will avoid his work in the future. Too bad.

Bear v. Shark, Chris Bachelder

Title:		Bear v. Shark
Author:		Chris Bachelder
Rating:

I have no idea now where the recommendation for this book came from, but I am afraid I am going to disappoint someone.

I had the same reaction to this that I have to some modern art, like a canvas painted all one color. I thought "I could write this. I could write a lot better than this guy did."

Nearly the entire book consists of very short (1-2 page) chapters describing the story of the Norman family as they travel to watch the second bear/shark battle. This is a parody of America, though, so while most of what we see is familiar, it's all deliberately exaggerated to the point of silliness.

In an attempt to heighten the effect, most dialog isn't quoted, characters talk past each other, and all kinds of events aren't really explained. Then end result is a ball of semi-related things that sort of make up a story, but a story without any reasonable ending. In fact, it's rather like the author couldn't come up with one, so he decided to leave it open and let the reader imagine his own.

In any case, I didn't find it funny, though others apparently do. It does contain a lot of social commentary, but only of the most blunt kind.

This is the author's first novel. I have no desire to read anything else by him, and I can't imagine why a publisher would spend money on this book. Not recommended.

The Black Hole War, Leonard Susskind

Title:		The Black Hole War
Author:		Leonard Susskind
Rating:

Some time back I read two books on string theory by Brian Greene. Both were interesting, well written, and managed to explain complicated physics in a manner that made them somewhat easier to understand.

It turns out that a lot has changed in physics since those books were written, or that those books don't cover a bunch of things going on in the field. The Black Hole War describes many thing Greene doesn't, but does so in passing, as it tells the story of a significant disagreement over the fate of information that gets sucked into black holes.

The resolution of that argument took a long time. Susskind describes a meeting in 1981 where Stephen Hawking made the claim that any information entering a black hole is lost forever. Susskind and Gerard 't Hooft were bothered by this - it violated a fundamental principle - and began trying to prove it incorrect. It took until 2007 before Hawking admitted he was wrong.

In those 26 years physics saw huge changes. String theory, among other things, made a big impact. But many other discoveries were made as well, and a lot of physicists were involved. Susskind describes all kinds of interesting physics in this book, and credits many other physicists with important discoveries that helped make his case.

Overall The Black Hole War is a good read, and it explores some fascinating ground, but there is a problem. Maybe it's that Susskind has too many things to cover to make his case, so he cannot cover individual topics in enough depth to make them clear. I suspect, though, that Susskind isn't quite as good at explaining these non-intuitive concepts as Greene is.

For example, a few hours after finishing the book I couldn't explain the holographic principle to my wife, and it's a key element of the proof Susskind is making.

Perhaps the failure is mine, or the material is so strange that it doesn't make sense to humans given the way we've evolved, but I think it could be described more clearly, even without resorting to the incredibly complicated math that backs it up. At least I hope so.

In any case it is clear that there is a lot of current physics that I don't understand, and didn't know was being researched before I read this book.

Recommended, but I hope that Warped Passages by Lisa Randall - when I get to it - provides a clearer explanation of at least some of the underlying physics.

James Herriot's Animal Stories, James Herriot

Title:		James Herriot's Animal Stories
Author:		James Herriot
Rating:

A very short collection of stories extracted from other books by Herriot, with some nice illustrations and a brief introduction by Herriot's son.

These are probably among the heart warming best from the entire series. Nice - particularly with the illustrations - but there's nothing really new here if you've read the other books.

The Robber Bride, Margaret Atwood

Title:		The Robber Bride
Author:		Margaret Atwood
Rating:

I didn't get this book. Of 466 pages it seemed as if 460 were back story, and there was little action of any kind. Instead we get a pseudo-drama, expressed in the thoughts and discussions of three women: Tony, Charis, and Roz. What little story we get revolves around a fourth woman, Zenia.

The three main characters are actually too well drawn. We don't need to know every little detail about their lives to understand why they might be reacting this way, but we get that detail in any case. And more. And still more.

Tony's a history professor with a specialization in battles. She's a fairly ineffective and self effacing person as well. Her real name is Antonia.

Charis is another ineffective character, but this time with no real talents she can earn a living from. She does, however, have a spiritual side that "works". Her real name is Karen.

Roz is a business woman - someone with power and money - but who is also hopeless in her own way. In this case it's her marriage she cannot manage. Her real name is Rosalind.

None of these characters has it all together. In fact, though they could each potentially be interesting in some sense, collectively I found them pretty annoying. They whine and worry but rarely do anything, and when they try they fail. Every time. Then they whine about failing. Roz's twin daughters are a lot more interesting than anyone else here, and they're only bit parts.

There might be something important about the fact that Tony, Roz, and Charis all operate under something other than their real names too, but if so I can't tell you what that might be.

Zenia is something else. She's a liar and a thief, and ruthless about getting whatever it is she wants - including the man each of the three main characters loves - but that's about all we learn of her. She's the central mystery around which the book is written and we never figure her out. Never.

The story is told mostly in flashbacks - sometimes nested - and it can be a bit hard to keep track of if you set the book down at the wrong point. Unfortunately I found it easy to set it down just about anywhere given the vast back story. Complicating matters, at least for me, is that I didn't really relate to any of the characters. They were either boring or irritating, but never become important or interesting.

The only reason I continued reading The Robber Bride is because I've read other work by Atwood and really enjoyed it. This one, however, just didn't work, at least not for me. It needed both something significant to happen and a resolution.

Oh, and I didn't like Charis's spiritual muck. Or rather, the fact that it "worked" in some way seemed wrong. If she'd believed in it but nothing had come of it, fine. Instead we get a couple of mystical but completely unexplained incidents that make no sense. Then again I'm less spiritual than most bricks, and such tripe is liable to irk me in any case.

Perhaps Atwood is making some feminist point, but if so I missed it, along with just about everything else.

If you want to read something good by Atwood, try The Handmaid's Tale, or Oryx and Crake. I'd skip this one.

On Writing, Stephen King

Title:		On Writing
Author:		Stephen King
Rating:

I have never been a Stephen King fan. As part of some class in high school I had to read a short story about a possessed dry cleaning machine (or at least that's what I think it was) and that put me off him forever. It wasn't the writing - I probably couldn't have identified good or bad writing at the time - it was the subject matter. I was not interested in horror then, and still don't care for it now. In fact it generally irritates me.

In hindsight, that judgment - made when I was about 15 - might be too harsh. Maybe that story was simply a poor example of his work, or I woke up on the wrong side of the bed that day. Whatever the case, I am forced to reevaluate King now.

Those who know me well know I have a desire to be a writer. I suffer from some of the usual writer's problems, though, and haven't done enough writing to make me happy as a result. (That said, this blog is an excuse to write, so I am at least making strides in the right direction.)

Recently I decided to chase this dream a bit more aggressively, and this book came up as a recommendation. I'd never heard of it - I'd ignored King for roughly 25 years - but sometimes a search engine can point you in a surprising direction.

In On Writing King gives us several things:

• The experiences in life that made him the writer he is.
  
• Some tools (his metaphor) you need to write: vocabulary, grammar, etc.
  
• How to write. The actual day-to-day process of writing and editing, discussed clearly so you know what you're in for.
  
• An example manuscript before he edited the first draft and what the marked up pages looked like.
  
• Permission to read and write 4 to 6 (or more) hours a day.
  

All of this is useful information, at least to me. The craft of serious writing is one of those things whose attraction may not survive my actual attempt to pull it off, but King gives me information, permission, and hope.

Anyone looking to write should consider reading On Writing. And I will reconsider King's work. Anyone want to give me some recommendations for things that aren't horror?

The Essential Spinoza, edited by Michael L. Morgan

Title:		The Essential Spinoza
Editor:		Michael L. Morgan
Rating:

I did not and will not finish this book. Sorry.

Baruch Spinoza - an important philosopher - lived between 1632 and 1677. This book is a translation of at least some of his major works.

I've read or heard tidbits about Spinoza over the years and thought he sounded interesting. I should have read the Wikipedia page on him rather than tackle this muck head on, however.

I have come to the belated conclusion that reading philosophy is just not for me. In too many cases I catch the authors playing word games. In the worst example I know of - in Being and Time - Martin Heidegger used a word to mean one thing when it was capitalized and something else when it wasn't. I went nuts trying to figure out what he was babbling about.

Much more common is simply creating a new definition for a word, one that has nothing to do with normal usage. Spinoza (or his editor) plays that game here, and I find it idiotic.

Worse, though, is an apparently rigorous approach to things, reminiscent of mathematics. At the beginning of each major section of the book Spinoza sets out a few definitions, followed by a few axioms - things he takes to be true without need for proof or argument. From this basis he puts forward a series of propositions, each followed by a "proof". Sadly I have to use the scare quotes. I found most of what I read to be lacking in rigor, and much of it to be unintelligible.

At odd intervals Spinoza makes use of additional concepts and terms - undefined - as if they were intrinsically obvious too. New axioms on the fly. How handy.

The resulting hodgepodge isn't interesting or illuminating, at least not to me. I found it frustrating and garbled. In just 50 pages I lost all desire to learn more, began skimming, and gave up.

Elsewhere I read that Spinoza concluded that God exists as a sort of impersonal thing, a part of nature, but perhaps not all of it - see the Wikipedia entry on him for a bit more. Clearly such a God is nothing like the one his Jewish community envisioned. Nor did his views sit well with any organized, European religion at the time. He was excommunicated - in a writ if cherem - by the Jewish community, and at least some of his work was published only after he died.

There was promise here, but I simply couldn't get past the writing. If there's something important or relevant in this I will never know it directly, and probably not at all. I wish that wasn't the case.

Steering The Craft, Ursula K. Le Guin

Title:		Steering The Craft
Author:		Ursula K. Le Guin
Rating:

I've read a few books on writing over the years. Some were just too silly (write words and draw arrows between them) or were focused on things I honestly don't care about (writing as therapy, or finding my inner whatever).

The things that interest me are:

• How do I make my writing better?
• What are the ways that various writers find that let the be effective at it?

Steering the Craft falls squarely and wonderfully into the first camp.

Le Guin presents a series of exercises along with supporting text and descriptions that drive home specific points about writing well. In addition, she discusses some of her own opinions about a few things in the writing field. It turns out she's simply a practical writer with both a great feel for language and an excellent ability to distil that knowledge into usable tools and techniques.

This isn't a long book, but it is quite clear to me that if you follow though on it by doing the exercises and evaluating the results honestly - possibly with a group of like minded people - you have a good shot at becoming a better writer.

I've begun that process, and I look forward to following it all the way through.

I expect Steering the Craft will be an excellent resource.

God Emperor of Dune, Frank Herbert

Title:		God Emperor of Dune
Author:		Frank Herbert
Rating:

God Emperor of Dune is the fourth book in the Dune series, and my second favorite of the bunch. Only Dune itself is better.

In God Emperor we find ourselves following Leto Atreides's life something over 3000 years after Children of Dune. Yes, he lives that long and it's not horribly contrived that he does so. In fact it was setup during Children of Dune and Herbert is simply following the plan he laid out there. But ruling a multi-galactic empire for over 3000 years is not a simple thing, and Leto's got reasons for everything he does. Those reasons are impressive. I like what Herbert says about humanity here. Leto makes the ultimate sacrifice to save us from ourselves.

In addition to Leto we have a few other major characters: Moneo, Leto's majordomo; Siona, Moneo's daughter; and Duncan Idaho, the most recent in a long line of gholas with their memories restored from the first Duncan, who died in Dune.

I have to give Herbert credit. He can write with a huge scale in mind and pull it off. Sometimes I feel that Leto's words are a bit thick, but on reflection they're actually right for a character of his age and experience, and if I was a deeper reader I might not feel that way.

Another important point is that God Emperor isn't classic science fiction in the usual sense. Oh, it's a classic, but it's not a space opera full of ray guns and space battles. It's mostly conversation and description, as much of the drama is in relationships, so the interactions among characters are key.

If you liked the first three Dune books you'll probably like this one too. I know I do.

Children Of Dune, Frank Herbert

Title:		Children Of Dune
Author:		Frank Herbert
Rating:

Children of Dune was the first "end" of the Dune series. At this point there are a lot more books in that series, but this is where the original work stopped.

I enjoyed this more than I thought I would. It's better written than Dune Messiah, and has more content. In it, Paul Atreides' son Leto takes up his destiny. Preborn - having access to all the memories of his ancestors from conception - he finds himself following in his father's footsteps. And going well beyond them.

Some of what Herbert proposes about human nature in Children of Dune is quite interesting. Leto's "solution" is quite unique as well.

While it's still not quite the grabber that Dune itself is, this is a good book, and recommended.

Dune Messiah, Frank Herbert

Title:		Dune Messiah
Author:		Frank Herbert
Rating:

Dune Messiah is volume two in Frank Herbert's Dune series, and I am of mixed mind about it on this reread.

On the good side, there's more here than I remembered from previous readings. Yes, it's still a short novel - just 256 pages - but it has more plot than I gave it credit for in my memory. Herbert's voice is still here, and the world is still rich and interesting.

I like the way Paul continues to struggle with escaping his vision of the future, and it feels believable, though there is less descriptive language about his actual visions this time. I also like Hayt's role and what he becomes. Those who've read farther into the series know he's going to be around for a very long time.

There are a few things on the not so good side, though.

Most importantly it seems possible that Herbert became enamored of some things that weren't mentioned or present in Dune itself. The planet Tleilax, for example, gets a brief mention in Dune as the source of twisted mentats and another when Barron Harkonnen says he needs to order a new mentat. That's it. In Dune Messiah, however, things are very different. We encounter the name "Bene Tleilaxu" with no explanation, and they have a long history. Several of their creations - Gholas and Face Dancers among them - play major roles in the story. Why did we have no hint of this in Dune itself? Is it possible that Herbert was asked (told?) to "write more Dune!" and turned out Dune Messiah too quickly as a result? I honestly don't know, but I find the way the Bene Tleilaxu are played up a bit bothersome. They are powerful enough they should have had a bigger role before.

As additional evidence for the possible "hurry up and publish it" idea, I give you the book itself. My copy of Dune is nicely typeset, Dune Messiah, on the other hand, was clearly rushed to press. As with Dune, each chapter starts with a quote, but no one bothered to start each quote on a new page. As a result some of these introductory quotes cross pages, which looks very odd and supports my theory that the entire enterprise of writing and publishing it was rushed.

There are some plot issues as well. When Paul took the water of life, whether or not he was presented with all of his ancestors (male, female, or both) is never made clear. We know that Jessica and Alia have an inner dialog with their ancestors, and I know we learn in the next book that the same is true for Ghanima and Leto, but we never find out if that's true for Paul. Why not? Again, I doubt Herbert was given the time he needed to get the book written.

And the link between Paul and Leto at the end is never explained. That may be a bit picky on my part, but I don't know what allows it to happen. An explanation would have helped me.

In all, Dune Messiah was better than I remembered, but still not nearly as good as Dune itself.

Dune, Frank Herbert

Title:		Dune
Author:		Frank Herbert
Rating:

There are very few books that grab me the way Dune does. It's an amazing work of science fiction, and among the best books I've ever read, possibly the best.

I read Dune the first time at roughly 15 years of age, the age of Paul Atreides as the book begins. Whatever was going on in my life then, it let this book sink into me in a way few others have, and despite 30 years and innumerable re-readings, it continues to satisfy.

At one level, Dune is a science fiction story. It has a hero and a complex set of characters set against a backdrop that is foreign but understandable. At another level, Herbert went way beyond what anyone had done before. Written in 1965, Dune is an ecological novel, telling the story of an entire planet and the people that live upon it. I understand that Herbert did something like ten years of research before writing Dune, and it shows. This is a work well ahead of its time.

A quick synopsis: Paul Atreides is the son of Duke Leto Atreides. Duke Leto has been instructed by the Emperor to take possession of Arrakis, a desert planet and the only place where the spice, melange, is found. Melange has several properties, but most importantly it extends life, and it is a drug allowing altered mental states in some. For Space Guild navigators, it allows them to see far enough into the future to permit faster than light travel. For the Bene Gesserit, it permits and inward transformation so their members can access past memories.

Duke Leto, however, is opposed by Baron Harkonnen and others. Leto is killed leaving Paul and his mother to find shelter with the native inhabitants of Arrakis, the Fremen. There Paul comes into adulthood in a hostile environment and sets about taking back that which his father lost, and then some.

With Dune, Herbert hit a peak that I am not at all sure he ever reached again. Subsequent books in the series - Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, and others were OK, but don't measure up in my estimation. Dune is a singular achievement, and stands alone.

A brief story about the first time I read Dune: It turns out that my mother was reading it while I was in school. I came home and read in the afternoons and evenings when time allowed (often) and one night found me nearing the end of the book. Dune is large - my paperback is 537 pages - but I literally let out a cry of anguish when I learned the book ended some 50 pages shy of the cover. There were appendixes of various sorts after that point, but no more story. In the kitchen, though, I heard my mother's knowing chuckle. She'd finished the book a day or two before and knew what happened.