Last night I finished Eifelheim by Michael Flynn. Part of Eifelheim is set in a medieval village in the Black Forest and part is in some un-specified near future. The main body of the novel is about some mysterious occurences in the village that possibly resulted in the village dying out and nothing being re-built where it existed. The "near future" part of the book is very small in comparison and could easily have been edited out.

Flynn doesn't write a lot of books, only nine that I am aware of, but he is one of my favourite science fiction authors. His early books started out in a definite Heinlein/Asimov mode - lots of good ideas and interesting plots but wooden characters that were mostly mouthpieces for ideas/plot points and not easy to distinguish from each other - but he has grown a lot as a writer.

This new novel is a little lighter on plot but has nicely developed characters and an interesting historical aspect. Flynn has been careful to have the characters act, and think, like actual medieval people. The strange occurences lead to some religous discussions that are quite interesting in context.

While I would rate this novel very highly, I think the mix of medieval viewpoints and modern storytelling might be a little offputting for some casual readers. I'm was not surprised to hear this morning that it was nominated for a Hugo award but I would be surprised if it won.

Amazon Link: Eifelheim

Last night I finished The Aeneid by Virgil. Back in college, I had read a number of the classics for classes but didn't enjoy them and only did the minimum amount of reading/comprehension to get by. This changed a few years ago after I saw Troy . It's not a very good movie but after seeing it I was curious how closely it matched up with The Iliad. After reading Homer, it surprised me to find out that a lot of things I assumed were Hollywood add-ons were actually fairly close to the source. Contrary to what some critics wrote, Brad Pitt's portrayal of Achilles as a petulant, spoiled athelete is actually pretty close to the source material. I really enjoyed The Iliad and I went back and re-read some of the other classics I had neglected during college.

Since I know enjoy the classics, and I'm heading to Italy in a week or so, I decided to check out The Aeneid, Virgil's sequel to the Iliad where Aeneas leads the survivor of Troy around the Aegean looking for a place where the goddess Juno won't harass them. Eventually the gods guide them to Italy and they start the ball rolling that will eventually become Rome.

It's particularly interesting to read the little asides in the text where Virgil throws out praise to Aeneas's descendants, in particular the Caesars who were coincidentally running Rome at the time of the writing.

I have to admit that I cheated a little in reading both The Iliad and The Aeneid - I read prose versions. There is something about the visual structure of narrative poetry that makes it difficult for me to read. I don't consider this much of a cheat since these works were meant to be spoken, not read, and so the form of their writing is actually arbitrary. Some might argue that poetry best preserves the cadence of the lines but I don't see a lot of value in that, particularly since I am also not reading either of them in their original languages.

Amazon Link: The Aeneid

I finished The Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman last night. Pullman's works are usually published as kid's or YA (young adult) books, but they go beyond that simple qualifier. Often YA books are simplified and softened for their target market - in contrast, Pullman's books are often challenging and dark. For example, The Ruby in the Smoke, is set in Victorian London and features opium abuse, implied child abuse and multiple killings.

I've been a fan of Pullman ever since I read his His Dark Materials trilogy a few years ago but I hadn't sought out his other books. Finding this one in the library reminded me of how much I enjoy his books and I will look for the sequels.

Amazon Link: The Ruby in the Smoke

This morning I finished We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. It's an epistolary novel - told in the form of letters from the narrator, the mother of Kevin, to her husband after their son has committed a Columbine like school shooting.

The characters, particularly that of the narrator, are well drawn and interesting. Since it is epistolary, you only get the single viewpoint and so it is sometimes hard to tell if her interpretation of events or other people's thoughts are correct. For example, many times she feels she knows what her son is thinking but other interpretations seem possible.

I had mixed reactions to the narrator - at times I agreed with her, at times I sympathized with her and at times I disliked her. By the middle of the book, it was clear that neither she nor her husband should ever have been a parents, whether or not they were responsible in some way for the things their son did.

It was the most thought-provoking book I've read in a long time. And disturbing, in some ways as well. Just a few of the issues raised:
- is everyone capable of being a good parent
- what do you do if you don't like your own child
- what do you do if a person will not behave in an acceptable fashion
- are there things that are unforgivable?

Amazon Link: We Need to Talk About Kevin

This morning I finished Omega by Jack McDevitt, the sequel to The Engines of God. McDevitt is one of the best of the current crop of science fiction writers. He would probably be classified as "hard" science fiction but I think it would be more accurate to describe his style as "classic" science fiction, similar to the writings of Asimov, Heinlein or Simak. His work often deals with mysteries that are so old that his characters constantly struggle with very incomplete information and his readers may have to struggle with lack of resolution.

Amazon Link: Omega

On Friday, I finished The Geographer's Library by Jon Fasman. The eastiest way to think of this book is as a more erudite version of The Da'Vinci Code. It has the same mystery tied to history tied to a secret society kind of feel but without the dime novel thriller quality.

Amazon Link: The Geographer's Library

I finished my first fiction book in a while yesterday - Amazonia by James Rollins. This is your basic techno-thriller. The model for this type of book was laid down by Michael Crichton - a group comprised of scientists, soldiers and businessmen go in pursuit of a previous expedition in some forbidding, and still primitive, part of the world. There is the standard romance, betrayal and pursuit by a psychopathic rival tied in with some interesting sounding, but dubious, psuedo-science.

This is an OK light read - good if you're going to be stuck on a plane or just want to escape for a litte while.

Amazon Link: Amazonia

I finished two non-fiction books over the last week. The first is Hitler: A Study In Tyranny by Alan Bullock. I had read that this is the definitive biography on Hitler, so I picked it up from the library. It's pretty interesting and not only covers a Hitler but gives a lot of high level background on WW2 as well.

On a side note, I read a quote from Kurt Vonnegut last week as well. To paraphrase, he said "George Bush is exactly the same as Adolf Hitler, except that Hitler is elected." While I am no fan of George Bush, before I read this biography I would have dismissed this as a foolish exaggeration. After reading the biography, I think it is either appalling ignorance or a very deliberately dishonest slur. In reality, there are almost no similarities between Bush and Hitler - not in their backgrounds, methods, goals or in their sins. I'd go into more details but I don't really want this to be a political blog. All people do when they speak like Vonnegut did is to hurt our opinion of them.

The second book I finished is Astronomy: A Self-Teaching Guide by Dinah L. Moche. I was inspired to read this by a visit to Chabot Observatory. They have open telescope viewing every Friday and Saturday night. A few weeks ago, we went and great views of Saturn and the Orion Nebulae. I was inspired to go back and re-learn some of my basic astronomy.

Amazon Links:
Hitler: A Study in Tyranny
Astronomy: A Self-Teaching Guide

In a non-literary note, we went and saw Chris Thile and his new band, How To Grow A Band From the Ground Up featuring Bryan Sutton at a club in San Francisco last night. The music was sublime. I'm not sure what to call it. It was more progressive than progressive bluegrass, newer than newgrass and more out there than spacegrass. Post-modern bluegrass might be the only term for it.

Turning back to non-fiction, I finished The Fall of Rome by Bryan Ward-Perkins yesterday. This is a very specialized history book. It's main purpose is to counter the very recent revisionism that asserts that there was no real "Fall of Rome" and subsequent decline in general welfare in the western world. This theory goes on to say that the Germanic tribes that are traditionally blamed for the demise of the western part of the Roman Empire actually integrated with Roman society.

I think the book does a good job of debunking this idea through the use of archaelogical records, contrasting the pre and post-fall Roman world and the western post-fall world with the eastern post-fall world where the Roman Empire never fell at all. An interesting book but very narrowly focused.

Amazon Link: The Fall of Rome

I finished Bones of the Barbary Coast by Daniel Hecht a few days ago but haven't had time to write about it.

This is the 3rd book in a mystery series about a semi-psychic private eye. Normally that wouldn't interest me, but it is set in San Francisco so I decided to pick it up. I haven't read the first two books in the series but based on this one, I might go back and check them out. Hecht does a good job of creating some interesting characters, some un-expected plot twists and provides an interesting look at the pre-1906 earthquake San Francisco. As a plus, the sem-psychic/ghost sensitive angle doesn't come up very much either.

Amazon link: Bones of the Barbary Coast

I finished Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield a few days ago. It tells the story of the Spartans who led the small force at Thermopylae when they held off the full Persian army for 3 days in 480 BC. According to Herodotus, the Persian forces numbered 2 million while the defenders numbered only a few thousand, with just 300 Spartans (including their king, Leonidas).

The book takes the form of the recollections of a survivor told to the staff of Xerxes, the Persian emperor and covers the period from the survivors youth to after the Persian's naval defeat at Salamis. It does a good job of creating some interesting characters and a portrait of Greece at the time including Sparta, one of the oddest societies in history.

Amazon link: Gates of Fire

Finished Holmes on the Range by Steve Hockensmith yesterday. As you can probably guess from the title, this is a mix of a western and a mystery but it doesn't actually directly involve Sherlock Holmes. Instead, it is about two brothers in 1890's Montana who are down on their luck. One has become a fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories, read to him by his brother because he is illiterate, and he gets to put his new hobby to the test when they both become involved in a mystery when they are hired on as ranch hands at a remote, and shady, ranch.

I'm a huge fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories and I was very into mysteries back in the first year of university. That year, I burned out on reading mysteries and only read them occasionally now. This is a decent mystery and the author does a good job of creating a reasonable Wild West setting as a backdrop.

It's a light read but if you are into light mysteries, I would recommend it.

Amazon Link: Holmes on the Range

I finished Dead Air by Iain Banks a few days ago but I've been to busy to write about it. I'm a big fan of Bank's books but only his non-science fiction ones. He writes science fiction as Iain M. Banks and even though I read a lot in that genre, I don't like his books very much. On the other hand, his non-science fiction books are mostly excellent and Dead Air is no exception. It is more in the vein of my favourite book of his, The Crow Road, than his stranger books like The Wasp Factory.

Dead Air starts right around the time of 9/11/2001 and the main characters are introduced at a party in London that ends with the news of the attacks in New York. The book follows the mis-adventures of a surly and sarcastic London "shock jock" as he sleeps around, parties and discusses politics with various friends. As I've commented before, UK writers seem to have an ear for colourful dialogue that is lacking in most North American writers. Banks is one of my prime examples of that and this novel doesn't disappoint. Highly recommended.

Amazon Link: Dead Air

Finshed two books over the last few days - the first is The Depths of Space by Mark Wolverton. It's a non-fiction look at NASA's Pioneer program, the first program to send space craft out as far as Jupiter and Saturn. Though short, it's a good read if you are interested in the history of un-manned space exploration. The Pioneer program is also one of the few programs not run by JPL for NASA. It was run from the Ames Research Center in the San Francisco Bay area.

The second is a fairly inconsequential book, The Protector's War by S.M. Stirling, the second in a low end, post-apocalyptic series. In the first, Dies The Fire
, the laws of physics change making anything depending on electricity or fast combustion stop working. It follows a fairly predictable path - the characters struggle with living without technology, deal with other survivors who have turned savage, and try to re-build a new society. The Protector's War continues the story with medieval style power struggles amongst groups of survivors. The book does have one unique viewpoint - that Wiccans and refugees from the Society for Creative Anachronism will be indispensible in a post-technology society.

Dies The Fire had some good moments but The Protector's War just seems to be going through the motions.


Amazon link: The Depths of Space
Amazon link: The Protector's War

I just finished The Terror by Dan Simmons. This book started off as a bit of a challenge. It was in the "Hot Picks" section of the library so I only had a week before it had to be returned and it is a 700+ page hardcover. Even the librarian at the checkout wished me good luck.

It turned out to be not too difficult to get it finished - I even did it 3 days early. The book turned out to be quite good and when I get engrossed in a book I am very skilled at finding extra time for reading.

The Terror is about the crew of the real life Franklin Expedition, trapped by the ice in the Arctic for multiple years while trying to find the fabled Northwest Passage. The title refers to the name of one of the ships in the expedition. Simmons also throws in a pure fiction twist - in addition to having to deal with spoiled food stores, scurvy, dwindling fuel supplies and temperatures below -40F/-40C on a ship frozen in the middle of an ice field, the crew is being stalked by a mysterious beast.

In some ways, this is a standard horror setup - take a group of people, put them in a situation they can't get out of, and add a sinister force that is killing them one by one. In this case, the book is saved by Simmons compelling writing and the interesting underlying situation although I wouldn't recommend this book for the faint-hearted. Simmons descriptions of the effect of long periods of cold, lack of food and isolation grinding down the men make the middle/latter sections of the book quite depressing.

I'm sure I was taught about the Franklin expedition in school -- it took place in what would become Canadian waters and was investigated in the '80s by scientists from my home town -- but I had forgotten all details. One thought that came to me while reading it was that average, everyday life during the early 1800s must have been quite unpleasant if men were willing to volunteer for trips to the Artic where they risked having to live for years in these kinds of conditions. In fact, some of the men were veterans of multiple Arctic and Antarctic expeditions and had been trapped by ice before! They knew what to expect and they still signed on.

Amazon Link : The Terror

Book review posting has been light because I'm having trouble finishing a few of the books I started. I think I will probably give up on them and move on. The first is The Myth of Solid Ground by David L. Ulin. This is a non-fiction book on Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith, as the subtitle states. Since I live in the San Francisco Bay area and the long term forecast is for a major earthquake within the next 20 years, I thought this would give me an idea of how solid that forecast is and if I should seriously re-consider living here. Sadly, this book isn't up to the job. I was hoping for a popular science book on the research behind earthquake analysis and prediction but instead I got a book about David L. Ulin's quest to learn about earthquake research and prediction. Most of the book is focused on his thoughts and feelings about living with the earthquake threat in California and his reactions to the researchers and earthquake predictors that he meets. Not recommended at all.

The second book I was working on was re-reading The Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson. Wilson passed away a few weeks ago so I thought I should re-read his most popular book. It was very influential on me when I was a teenager. For a short period, I was an anarcho-capitalist, and almost fell into being a modern hippie. If there had been anyone in my community who had similar ideas, I could have ended up following that path. Luckily, there wasn't!

Even though I hadn't read this trilogy for many years, I had read it so many times in the past that I still remembered it very well and it couldn't keep my attention this time.

Amazon links:
The Myth of Solid Ground
The Illuminatus! Trilogy

Yesterday I was a volunteer judge at the Northern California First LEGO League Championship Tournament. First LEGO League creates a challenge every year for kids, ages 9-14. They have to use the LEGO Mindstorms design kit to create a robot that will do certain tasks in a timed competition with other kids. In addition, they do research on a related topic. For example, this year's theme was nanotechnology. Other year's themes have included a mission to mars, Arctic exploration and oceanic research. Next year's theme will be alternative energy.

This is the second year I've been a volunteer at this event and it was very interesting both years. It's great to see the enthusiastic kids talking about science and their experiences designing and using the robots. Last year, I helped judge the research projects and this year I helped judge robot design. Next year, I'll try to be either a teamwork judge or a competition referee so I can see more aspects of the overall event.

Doing the judging means that we are not on the competition floor but I try to find a break in the day to watch some of the competition as well. It actually feels like a sporting event on the competition floor, with kids rushing back and forth around the competition table and MC's giving play by plays on the table action.

Highly recommended if you have kids of the right age or if you are interested in promoting science/technology to the next generation.

Amazon link to LEGO Mindstorms NXT

Just finished The House of Storms by Ian R. MacLeod. This is the second book by MacLeod set in an alternate Victorian England where instead of steam being used to power the industrial revolution, a magical substance called Aether was discovered. The use of Aether is controlled by the guilds, who therefore control everything else and make up the aristocracy of this world. Like his previous book, The Light Ages, The House of Storms is filled with interesting ideas and evocative writing but still left me somewhat cold. MacLeod has said that he is trying to write "realistic fantasy" but the result, like in a lot of "naturalistic" fantasy, is un-sympathetic, sometimes un-understandble, characters. For example, the first character we meet is a mother trying to find a way to protect her son from the effects of tuberculosis but we quickly discover that she is also a golddigger and serial killer who will do whatever is needed to increase her power and position in society. The other complaint I have about both books is that the evocative writing sometimes takes over to the point that it is hard to decipher what is actually happening.

Amazon Link for The House of Storms

Amazon link for The Light Ages

Just finished The Rocket Companyby Patrick J. G. Stiennon & David M. Hoerr. This is an odd book, neither fish nor fowl. It's not a non-fiction book since it has fictionalized events and characters but it's not really a novel either. What it really is is a long case study like on would get in business school. It lays out, with quite a bit of technical and financial detail, how a company could reduce the cost of delivering goods to orbit by creating a new, fully re-usable orbital vehicle. I don't have the necessary background to judge the technical content but the financial details seem fairly realistic.

If you're interested in the details that might drive the future of the private space industry, this is an interesting book. But if you don't like reading technical writing, you should probably skip this one.