The Gods Themselves, Isaac Asimov

Title:		The Gods Themselves
Author:		Isaac Asimov
Rating:

This was a recommendation from somewhere, but I honestly don't recall who it was that suggested it.

It was originally published in 1972 and it reads like it, which, alas, is a problem I have with a lot of science fiction of late.

In this one Asimov was playing with parallel universes, parallel people/beings in those universes, and the end of the world (or worse).  Alas he was also writing about the kinds of personal interactions and sex his various characters might have, and (IMO) not writing about those things all that well.

And for as bright as he was I don't feel like he did the science justice here.  The potential for ending the world could have been handled in a much more convincing way.

The end result isn't all that interesting, sad to say.

Still, there was a story here, and it held my interest to some degree.  Not awful, just not as good as I think it could have been.

And yet this won both a Hugo and a Nebula in 1973.  Really?  My standards must be really different.

Sleeping With The Devil: Robert Baer

Title:		Sleeping With The Devil
Author:		Robert Baer
Rating:

Sleeping With The Devil is Robert Baer's book about the US relationship with Saudi Arabia.  While it is profoundly disturbing at times, there are places where I don't think he fully supports his arguments.  In addition, events have surpassed his vision of reality.

Published in 2003, Baer worries about the affect of very high oil prices on the US economy that might result from instabilities and problems within Saudi Arabia.  He worries about oil getting up to or over $100 per barrel, but that has already happened.  See, for example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Brent_Spot_monthly.svg

I am sure that the price of oil has deepened our economic problems, but it, singly, has not brought down the world's economy as Baer seemed to fear.

In any case, the issues Baer highlights about the relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia - mostly in the form of our relationship with the Saudi royal family - are troubling.  Any number of great arguments for energy independence can be made starting from concerns about oil, and I think there is a lot of truth there.

In short, an interesting book, but how much it reflects reality now I am not sure.

Atheist Universe: David Mills

Title:		Atheist Universe
Author:		David Mills
Rating:

Atheist Universe is an excellent introduction to the atheist point of view. It covers a wide ranging set of topics from a straight forward, "this is why we think that" perspective. If you're an atheist but not used to defending your turf, this book will help you see how do so. If you're wondering how someone can get along without believing in God, this book will explain it.

It isn't a perfect volume, though. Really deep explanations - the actual underlying science - isn't here. That's not a problem, really, and it would make the book vastly larger to include even a small portion of it. Mills summarizes it when needed, and he mostly gets it right. The years since the last update and the fact that I am better read them him in a few areas give me a couple of minor quibbles with his statements, but they don't invalidate his arguments.

More problematic is his style, which is somewhat "in your face". Some would call it aggressive or pushy. Others might call it calling a spade a spade. Regardless, he isn't afraid to tell you what he thinks is right, and in this era of political correctness I enjoyed much of it.

There is one chapter - on Christian fundamentalists and internet porn - which seems out of place to me, but the rest is pretty solid stuff. If you want deeper arguments - covering the philosophy or science in depth - you need to look elsewhere, but if you want a summary of why an atheist might think the things s/he does, this is a fine place to start. Just be prepared to be challenged if you come from that perspective. Mills is confident that all religion is silly and says so. I happen to agree with him.

Willful Creatures, Aimee Bender

Title:		Willful Creatures
Author:		Aimee Bender
Rating:

Willful Creatures is a collection of short stories by Aimee Bender. These came highly recommended and I was looking forward to reading this volume. Sadly, though, they didn't stick with me.

That's not to say I didn't enjoy reading them. I did, in a way, but life has been busy and now, just a few weeks later, I cannot remember any of them without flipping the book open to renew my memory.

What I do recall from reading the book is that the behavior and motivations of the characters seemed rather arbitrary. I know these are short stories so I don't expect the kind of character development I'd get in a novel, but then again I do expect to see something, some explanation for what they do or why they do it. That was lacking.

The situations were interesting - they must have been or I would have abandoned the book - but there was something lacking in the motivations that kept me from being sucked in as deeply as I might have otherwise.

I suspect that Bender has a consistent style. If you've read other works by her and liked them it is likely you will like this. Alternately if you didn't like her other works, then you probably won't appreciate this one much. If you're not sure, reading it won't cost you much time - it is a quick read, and most stories are very short - and you can make up your own mind. For me, I think I am done with Bender's short fiction. It's not bad, but there is lot that I would rather read.

The Wave In The Mind, Ursula K. Le Guin

Title:		The Wave In The Mind
Author:		Ursula K. Le Guin
Rating:

The Wave In The Mind is a book of essays by Le Guin covering a variety of topics. In reviewing it I know I am going to get into trouble, but so be it.

On the plus side, Le Guin ends with a series of essays about writing. These I found interesting and informative. And some of the other works were interesting in various ways, but not all of them. The problem is that her outlook and my own just don't agree on a couple of things.

I consider myself a feminist of sorts. I hate discrimination in any form, and treating women badly - in any way - stinks. But I draw the line when feminism starts creeping into science, and I'm afraid Le Guin has consumed some of that cool-aid. I find it distressing.

Deep science - like physics - can be objective, and the gender of the people doing the research shouldn't matter in the least to the results of the work. (Who can get funded and published is a different kettle of fish, I know, but physics experiments don't care if it's Adam or Amanda trying to figure things out.) I understand it gets fuzzier in the softer sciences, but it isn't clear that Le Guin makes the distinction. That crawled up my nose a bit while reading some of these pieces.

Nothing in here was life changing, and much of it won't impact anyone's career as a writer, but there are some interesting items. It might be worth checking out from the local library if you're curious.

The Meaning Of It All, Richard P. Feynman

Title:		The Meaning Of It All
Author:		Richard P. Feynman
Rating:

The Meaning Of It All is a transcription of three lectures the famous physicist gave back in 1963, as part of the John Danz Lecture Series at the University of Washington. This book was published in 1998, ten years after Feynman died of cancer.

I am of mixed minds about this book. I have to cut it some slack because it appears to be a transcription of the lectures, lacking only the "uhms" and pauses of speech, but including the digressions and spontaneous things that happen when speaking only from notes or off the top of one's head. As a result, some of what is here is hard to follow or mixed up. I cannot fault anyone for that, and I am sure the lectures themselves were just fine because they included his gestures, pauses, and so on that added the nuances lost in the transcription. Setting aside the limitations of the format, though, there are pluses and minuses to what is here.

Feynman was brilliant, of that there is no doubt. He was also something of a polymath, with a wide array of interests and the willingness to explore many topics that other scientists of his day ignored. I admire him for those qualities.

Further, he's eminently rational in most instances discussed here. For example, in the third lecture he dismisses a slew of pseudo-sciences (astrology, quack medicine, and so on) and just plain dishonest behavior that still plague us today. All to the good. But there are times where he gets things wrong, or defines things in unusual ways.

Getting something wrong - as he does when he equates mind reading with telekinesis - I can mostly ignore. Maybe it was just something that came up spontaneously in the lecture. (Note that he effectively dismisses both items, apparently only confusing the names.) More problematic for me is when he says that religion and science don't conflict. To come to that conclusion, though, he defines religion in a particular way, and effectively excludes a lot of Christianity in the process, such that his effective claim is more like science has no conflict with some smaller subset of Christianity. In our highly polarized age, where the non-religious feel like their world is shrinking every day, and where the religious feel the same way for entirely different reasons, his statements didn't ring true.

In summary, I'm sure these lectures show something about Feynman himself and his approach to the world, but I found them a bit disorganized and not as profound as I'd hoped. Maybe I am not giving him enough credit, though. I'm quite certain that he was a lot smarter than me, and the times are very different now.

The Bourne Identity, Robert Ludlum

Title:		The Bourne Identity
Author:		Robert Ludlum
Rating:

Published in 1980, The Bourne Identity tells part of the story of Jason Bourne, a man who, well... this gets a bit complicated.

First of all, the book and the movie of the same name, while related, tell very different stories. I have a fascination with the conversions of novels into movies, and it was only after I watched the movie (9 years after it was released) that I bothered to track down and read the book, mostly to see how it had been converted into a movie.

Both the movie and the book center around an individual suffering severe amnesia who gradually discovers his past. Some of the other characters share names between the book and the movie, but the story arcs are very different.

In the book we learn that Jason Bourne is part of a plot to remove a master assassin named Carlos. He has to figure that out of course, thanks to the amnesia. As in the movie there is a woman, Marie, who helps him, though in the book she's an expert in international finance instead of a student.

Oddly - and rarely, in my experience - the movie may actually be better than the book, though it's a close thing. In the book I didn't buy the relationship between Bourne and Marie. She fell for him too easily given their "introduction" and nothing in his character made me think he loved her, even though those words were used. Early chapters bogs down in needless detail about certain financial transactions. Later chapters moved along better, but the details of some of Bourne's history got hazy, so things weren't perfect there either. And, frankly, Carlos seemed too good - and too powerful - to be true.

That being said, Bourne himself has a less nasty past in the book than he does in the movie. He feels a bit cleaner here, and possibly a bit more likable. The movie, while being more up to date in many ways, gives Bourne an uglier background, one where his motivations and origin are a lot more gray than white. It then promptly sugar coats it, though, leaving the audience happy and probably not thinking about it too much.

I guess the book is worth reading. Ludlum did get some things right, but it's not perfect.

The Rise Of Endymion, Dan Simmons

Title:		The Rise Of Endymion
Author:		Dan Simmons
Rating:

Well, I'm done with the Hyperion series now, and I'm glad.

The Rise Of Endymion wraps up the Hyperion books for good, or so I hope. It's not that it's a bad book, but it could have been so much better.

Slow to the point of plodding at times, we're told about character development rather than seeing it, and quite a few things are very predictable.

I've called this book "OK" purely because if you've gotten through the first three in the series you'll probably want to read this one to learn the bits of the ending that you don't already know. That said, it's not all that well written.

A major problem that inhabits all four volumes is that Simmons lets his imagination run way ahead of what he's already written. He created a particular universe in Hyperion, changed a couple of the fundamentals in The Fall Of Hyperion, changed a lot of the fundamentals in Endymion, and a few more in The Rise Of Endymion. Effectively he's rewriting the rules of the game - his laws of physics and rules of behavior - on the fly. Changing even one rule like that in the middle of a series is difficult to do well. Your readers tend to lose their willing suspension of disbelief when you pull that stunt. Simmons does it so many times you just start to give up. There are no touchstones you can return to here.

In summary, I think the original Hyperion is a pretty good book, but it has no ending, and the three that follow it get progressively less well written. It's a shame, really. Hyperion has such promise.

Endymion, Dan Simmons

Title:		Endymion
Author:		Dan Simmons
Rating:

Endymion is the first book in the second part of the Hyperion series. In it Dan Simmons takes up the story of Hyperion, some of the characters from the first series, and (of course) the Shrike some 200+ years after the first series.

Religion takes an even thicker role here than it did in Hyperion and The Fall Of Hyperion, and much of the story is a travelogue, with little in the way of explanation for why the characters are traveling where they are. In fact, they all just kind of accept apparently random travel for no good reason, which got on my nerves.

In truth, though, several things seem off here. First of all, Simmons takes some major departures from things he setup in the first Hyperion novels. Flinging aside major characters - like the new pope - with reckless abandon, and recasting events in new and entirely unexpected ways. Going so far, in fact, as to basically tell us that much of what we learned in the first two books was wrong, misleading, or outright lies told by characters there.

When combined with the oppressive presence of Catholicism and the seemingly pointless travels of the characters, it got a bit old, and I even considered putting it aside. In the end, though, a couple of minor characters - the Shrike and Nemes - kept me from doing so. Well, that and the fact that I was traveling and needed something to read where I was at the time.

Sadly, Simmons's main hero - Raul Endymion - is both boring and a bit dimwitted. I'd rather he'd focused more on Aenea or A. Bettik.

And yet again we have a cover featuring a two armed Shrike. Where was the editor during the process of getting these books out? Nonexistent, apparently.

I have some reservations - some of which may or may not be resolved by the final book in the series, The Rise Of Endymion, which I am reading now - but fans of Hyperion will probably want to read it.

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.

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.

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.

How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered The World, Francis Wheen

Title:		How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered The World
Author:		Francis Wheen
Rating:

I am of decidedly mixed mind about this book. Part of me absolutely loved it and wanted to stand up and cheer many times while reading it. Another part of me, though, found it meandering and somewhat unfocused. Looking at Amazon's reviews, I see they are mixed two, with an average of about 3.5 / 5 stars. I'm not all that surprised.

The subtitle of How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered The World is "A Short History of Modern Delusions". I'm not exactly sure how I encountered this one, but it was an interesting if frustrating read. I'll divide my review into the good and the bad, as my mixed feelings above make plane.

On the positive side, Wheen tackles a bunch of sacred cows, and he doesn't particularly lean towards the left or the right. In reality, both sides are full of idiocy, and it was amusing to watch them skewered in this way. Starting with Thatcherism and Reagan, he heads into politics with no compunctions. He has direct (and I think mostly correct) things to say about both Bush presidencies (and presidents), Clinton, and various candidates from both sides, along with leaders and politicians from many other countries as well.

He similarly goes after business. He's particularly hard on everyone who thinks (or thought) that the Internet and the so called "new economy" are actually any different from the old economy and environment. He has some enlightening quotes from Keynes and others showing how people thought very similarly about the world a long, long time before computers were even invented. Some of his examples - of company founders, lauded as new visionaries who then fell flat on their faces and of companies (like Enron and Global Crossing) that were corrupt, stupid, or both - are great reading.

Some time is also spent at the end on the left's apologetics around religion and 9/11 in particular. That was interesting reading for me, and the chapter titles ("Voodoo", early on about Thatcherism and Reaganomics, and "Voodoo Revisited" about the left's irrational reactions to 9/11) were well chosen.

From my perspective, though, his best attacks are against religion. He spares no barbs here either, and I think the hypocrisy exposed is a good thing. Sometimes you have to call a spade a spade, and Wheen does so. Here, for example, is a quote from Thomas Jefferson:

Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity... Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.

You can find Jefferson's full text here, if you're curious: http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_religions40.html

And some people think the US was founded as a Christian nation. Clearly not.

All of that said, there are some problems with Mumbo-Jumbo that irritate.

First, Wheen seems to have a strong belief that Keynes got it all right and every economist since has gotten it wrong. I appreciate the sentiment in some ways, and I long ago lost my faith in the completely unregulated market. All humans are actually irrational consumers at some level, and we often won't make the "economically optimal" choice even if someone threatens us with a gun should we screw up. But it doesn't follow that since Friedman was in error Keynes is the end of the story, and I'm not sure that Wheen is open to that.

More of a problem - at least for me - was the meandering narrative. There are many great quotes in here, and a lot of interesting facts and stories, but somehow they don't add up to something more. It might be compared to a museum exhibition of paintings selected from all cultures and periods of history, but where they are all jumbled together, so that no indication of the path through history is obvious. Even if all the works were definitively the greatest ever made, the viewer could walk away without learning much about art over time. In a similar way Wheen's point gets lost in the shuffle.

On a smaller scale, some of Wheen's chapters wander off topic as well. So a chapter titled "The Catastrophists" starts out discussing wacko predictions of the end of the world but also discusses things like government support for complementary and alternative medicine. Huh? An editor would have tightened up the focus of each chapter - possibly adding more chapters in the process, where the focus can legitimately change radically - and the result could have been both more directed and cohesive.

The biggest issue, though, is that there are no prescriptions here, and no real hope either. The last chapter attempts to call for a return to Enlightenment principles, but is so wound up in arguing against the far left's view of 9/11 that the message is lost. Even more sadly, Wheen's readers won't include those who need to hear his message. The first chapter - on Thatcher and Reagan - will even drive off quite a few moderates based on its tone alone.

So what can I say in summary? I learned quite a few things from How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World, but I am not convinced it's the right vehicle for the author's message. It's both fun and annoying at the same time.

The Word For World Is Forest, Ursula K. Le Guin

Title:		The Word For World Is Forest
Author:		Ursula K. Le Guin
Rating:

It's hard for me to believe this short volume won both the Hugo and Nebula awards in 1973. It seems to be well received, with good reviews on various book review sites. As usual, though, I went the other way. I found it predictable, lacking any credible hero or heroine, and the villain is so simplistic he might as well be a cardboard cutout.

The story is part of Le Guin's Hainish cycle, which includes The Dispossessed. Here we see the introduction of the ansible (a faster than light communications device) during a tale of human exploitation of another world and another culture.

It's all stuff you've read before, no doubt. Peace loving natives are enslaved by the rapacious humans coming to take the world's raw materials. There is a vile military man (the source of many of the problems and the above mentioned cardboard cutout), a human who fights for the natives, and a native who befriends that one friendly human. Everyone else is essentially unimportant.

You can probably envision the central conflict of the story at this point.

Usually I like Le Guin but this is both too simplistic and simple minded.

Those who follow Le Guin will feel the need to read The Word For World Is Forest, but I don't think there's much here.

Brainwash, Dominic Streatfeild

Title:		Brainwash
Author:		Dominic Streatfeild
Rating:

Two people before me have reviewed Brainwash in Doug's old forums, and they are both excellent reviews. In fact, it was those reviews that lead me to put this book on my list. Now that I've read it, though, I'm not certain it was worth the time and effort.

The book opens by recounting some disturbing events relating to the behavior of several people in Hungary, Korea, and the Soviet Union in the 1930's, 40's, and 50's. It appeared those countries had developed the ability to modify someone's behavior - and possibly their actual thoughts and beliefs - in very significant ways. It was a scary time, and the reaction of our government - and others - was to go looking for how this could be done and if it could benefit us.

From there we're lead into several stories, some of which are truly horrific, about research (both military and non) into various forms of mind manipulation and control.

Brainwash is non-fiction, and thus useful to someone as an overview of the topics involved. However, I found that some of the contents - like chapters on the Moonies, satanism, and recovered memories - fairly far afield from those things that government organizations are doing. Yes, some of the underlying techniques are the same, but for me the presentation didn't hold together that well as the topics varied so widely.

Another frustration - one that may not be the author's fault - is that we never get complete resolution on the alarming cases presented early on. We get some information late in the book, but some of the victims have died and (of course) the Soviet Union is no more. Still, even an explicit summary of what we do and do not know about those cases would have been nice.

Finally I found the style of the book too informal for the topic matter. It bothered me enough that it slightly reduced my level of trust. This is a very serious issue and deserves a more thoughtful (and well documented) presentation than it was given here. Not that this is a tome full of jokes, but it doesn't exactly read like a scholarly work either. That may be part of the reason it is popular, though.

In the end, an important message is presented: there really is no such thing as brainwashing. It's a handy word for something that cannot be done. It is entirely possible to make people talk in various ways, but to change their thoughts radically without destroying them in the process simply cannot be done. In a way that's reassuring.

The Honourable Schoolboy, John Le Carre

Title:		The Honourable Schoolboy
Author:		John Le Carre
Rating:

For the first three quarters or so I thought this was probably the best Le Carre I've read so far. Then some things happened that I didn't believe, and all bets were off.

Overall the story was good - following the middle part of the end of George Smiley's career - but I've noted something about the writing in these books now that bugs me: the point of view wanders. Sometimes it's omniscient, sometimes it's from the perspective of a single character, sometimes it's from the perspective of some review or report written after the fact, and so on. The changes aren't clearly delineated, and (in fact) I think I saw changes of these sorts mid chapter.

I'm not sure what to make of Le Carre's take on his characters either. No one is presented in a great light, but perhaps that has to do with the nature of the spy business.

In any case the Karla trilogy was very popular and makes for interesting reading, even if there are some issues with the writing.

Things I Overheard While Talking To Myself, Alan Alda

Title:		Things I Overheard While Talking To Myself
Author:		Alan Alda
Rating:

This is the most recent book by Alan Alda, published in 2007. It extracts portions of various speeches he's given over the years and includes commentary written later tying them together and adding perspective acquired since they were originally given.

Alda himself interests me. He's not religious, loves science, and knows his own limits and interests. In short, he looks like someone who's found a reasonable path through the chaos of life. But reading this book you discover that he's always been trying to find meaning in the world, and hasn't always been successful.

At the very end he has some words that sum up what he thinks the meaning of life is and isn't. They are deceptively simple, and close to my own take on things at this point. That doesn't mean they are something you can act upon, though, and how one reacts to them is inevitably a personal thing. Many would in fact disagree with him.

Beyond that bit at the end, though, this isn't a book I found thrilling. It wasn't bad, but I see no need to reread it in the future. Alda's an interesting person with an outlook on life somewhat similar to my own, but he would be the first to admit that he's no expert on much of anything beyond acting, directing, and writing entertainment, and maybe not even on all of those.

Reading this book to learn a bit about someone else's POV is a good thing, while reading it to find "The Answer" would be a mistake. I guess this is mildly recommended as a result.

Lilith's Brood, Octavia Butler

Title:		Lilith's Brood
Author:		Octavia Butler
Rating:
Review Date:		Oct 03, 2009

Lilith's Brood is a collection of three separate novels in one volume:

• Dawn
• Adulthood Rites
• Imago

Butler died back in 2006, and she was something special and unusual: a female, black, science fiction writer. It was an replay of an interview I heard on NPR with her shortly after her death that lead me to get some of her work.

These three books discuss what happens to humanity and earth after a nuclear war between the superpowers. (The actual combatants aren't named but it's a fair bet the US and the USSR were among those tossing bombs around.) In the aftermath of the war a very different space faring race arrives and starts picking up the pieces, but their purposes and intentions are less than clear to the few survivors they find.

The aliens - and these really are alien - are radically different from humans, but are DNA based and are driven to find life of all kinds, learn from it, and "trade" for it. The use of the word "trade" there is one of the ways these aliens are so different from us, and I'm not entirely sure I understand how (or if) anything described in these novels can be a trade in any sense I understand.

The first novel - Dawn - sees humanity being restored so they can return to an earth that has been repaired and changed. But the aliens clearly want things from us, and we have no real way to chose to accept or reject their offer. Lilith - the human chosen to lead those who will go back to earth - isn't thrilled about the role forced upon her, nor about what is being done to humanity in the process. In fact, the book ends rather cryptically overall, and left me wondering what Butler's intent was. Was this supposed to be a happy ending, or tragic? In truth I don't think it's that simple, but that possibility wasn't made as clear as it could have been.

The second book - Adulthood Rites - takes place some time later and follows some of the same characters (they live a long time now) on earth itself as a new generation of human/alien constructs is growing up. In this case the story is a bit more directed and the intent is a bit clearer. I think Butler had a specific thing she was driving at in this case and it comes through in the writing. For me this was the strongest of the three books, probably as a direct result.

Imago - the last in the series - was the most disappointing. It started out reasonably well, but snowballed to a conclusion I didn't believe. We have another iteration of humanity appearing in this book, and initially things look pretty tough for them. Then, too quickly, things get easy. The last 75 pages or so seem a rushed ending to just wrap things up and get it over with. I think the characters get a free pass as a result, and I found it frustrating.

Overall, the concepts presented here - having to do with race and sexuality - are interesting and challenging. I suspect, though, that this isn't Butler's greatest work.

Still, it's different from a lot of science fiction in that it is mostly character based, rather than being driven by technology or environment. There is a fair bit of biology that drives the narrative, but it also drives the characters themselves, so it feels mostly right.

Recommended with some reservations.

Magic Street, Orson Scott Card

Title:		Magic Street
Author:		Orson Scott Card
Rating:

I think I got this one from my father in law, and (to be honest) I'm not all that certain of his reading choices. Nor am I all that certain I like Card, for that matter. I really liked Ender's Game, but the subsequent books drove me nuts. A few other things I've encountered in Card's work have left me cold as well, so I went into this with some trepidation.

And the first chapter or two had me wondering. I almost put it down, as it appeared to be a thinly veiled religious screed, at least initially. However, I must admit I was wrong about that - at least at some level. To tell you who the characters in the first two chapters actually are would give too much away, but I can say you've almost certainly heard of them before.

Once over the initial hurdle things held together pretty well. There was another spot later on where the religious aspects started to bug me, but they were actually relevant to the plot in that case, so I let them slide.

In the end I found it Magic Street to be a reasonably pleasant if somewhat lightweight read. If you like Card, this is something you'll probably enjoy. If you like modern fantasy, it's reasonably good.

One note: most of the major characters are black and the language used struck me as "off" at times. Not being black and thus not familiar with that culture in any depth I couldn't tell you how authentic it was, but I am quite certain that times it wasn't right. While I clearly noted this at those points - occasionally thinking things like "No one would say that, no matter what color they are" - I didn't let it distract me from the story. Your mileage may vary.