February 2007

Missionary Memoirs Book Review

 On the Back Road to Mandalay

My grandparents spent twenty years as missionaries in the Chin Hills of Burma. In 1988, my grandfather published his two-volume History of the American Baptist Chin Mission, which recounted the mission work in the Chin Hills from its beginnings in 1899 to the leaving of the last missionaries (my grandparents) in 1966.

Now he has written a short book recounting specifically his own years in the Chin Hills. It's less a of a history book and more of a biography. (In fact it's the perfect complement to the short autobiography of his childhood, My Early Life, which he wrote and distributed privately to family members several years ago.) On the Back Road to Mandalay is self-published through the print-on-demand publisher Xulon Press, and is available through bookstores and at Amazon. My grandmother, who worked as a professional copy editor for many years, did the editing. It has a few typos but is free from more serious problems.

Robert and Betty Johnson went to Burma in 1946. The accounts of their first few years in the Chin Hills perplexed me at first, as they mostly consisted of stories about how they rebuilt and set up the mission house in Haka (which had been damaged in the war.) It apparently was several years before they began to do much missionary work. But what I realized was that these years were spent in language learning. Several hours a day they devoted to language learning, and it was only when they became fluent that they could spend more time on mission work.

The Chin people already had a thriving community of Christians. What they needed was trained, educated pastors. One of the first tasks was therefore to set up a Bible school for training of pastors. The Johnsons taught Bible school for several years. In the later terms, they helped to translate the Old Testament, to organize the various Chin Baptist Associations into a Convention, to evangelize the more remote villages, and to provide basic medical supplies at cost. The final task was to aid in constructing a new church building in Haka. Robert Johnson designed the church and supervised the construction of the 96' x 50' building, built of stone quarried locally by villagers.

One thing I noticed with interest was the introduction of Western customs and ceremonies into the Chin culture. In one sense, it seems imperialist. On the other hand, many times there was no other choice. For example, the Chin Christians could not very well use the old animist marriage rituals. They had no Christian marriage traditions of their own, so why not adopt the Western customs which had served so many so well for centuries?

The Chin Hills are mountains, actually, and travel is difficult. There were some drivable mountain roads, but even these were not always safe. Johnson recalls one harrowing incident:

We rounded a sharp right turn and came to a very narrow part of the road, so narrow I feared to cross the thirty feet of danger. I was unable to back up because of the sharp turn. There was no other road. I had to cross. I knew that my left tires would be almost over the crumbling edge of the road. Then we spied a tree uphill from this dangerous spot. I had a strong rope, so I tied the rope around my chest and the Chin lad tied to rope to the tree above. I figured that if the jeep and trailer went over the edge, I would be pulled out of danger by the rope.

He survived that trip without mishap. Years later, though, he was involved in a serious accident when his jeep slid off the mountain road.

Someone in Falam, upon hearing of the accident, telegraphed my wife with what he intended as an encouragement to her, that God would help me and keep me safe. But his English was faulty, so the message Betty received read:

Jeep accidented at mile seventeen,
Johnson hurt worst. May God help him.

To her, of course, that meant I was probably near death. It crushed her.

He was not so near death, though, and although it took a trip to the States to fix his broken jaw, he recovered and returned to Burma to continue his missionary work.

Science Fiction Book Review

 Rocannon's World

Ursula Le Guin's first novel is part of her notable Hainish series. It tilts almost entirely toward the fantasy side of the spectrum. Rocannon, an ethnologist for the League of All Worlds, believes the League has interfered inappropriately in the development of the primitive planet Fomalhaut II.

While Rocannon is studying on Fomalhaut II, unknown invaders destroy his spacehip, his crew, and his ansible--thus cutting the planet off from communication with the League. The enemy are rebels, and have chosen to establish a secret base on Fomalhaut II, from which they plan to destroy the League. The native inhabitants of Fomalhaut II suffer greatly the indiscriminate violence of the rebels.

Rocannon must find a way to steal the rebels' ansible and send a warning message to the League. To aid him, he recruits some natives, and together they embark on a quest across the continent to the rebel base. It is a fantasy quest story, with Rocannon as the mysterious hero and wizard. He has an impermasuit that protects him from the cold, from fire, from arrows, from swords, from sharp blows--and this makes him seem a god to the locals. Everyone rides around on flying steeds. And to top things off, Rocannon meets a strange hermit on a mountaintop who gives him the secret of mind-reading, so Rocannon can read the minds of the rebels.

As a first novel, Rocannon's World shows promise, but it's not good enough to warrant a recommendation on its own strength. I give it a low score of two.

Quotation:

The world itself has become a grain of sand on the shore of night.

Fantasy Book Review

 Swords and Deviltry

Apparently Fritz Leiber's stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser established some of the archetypes in the fantasy genre, but that doesn't mean they're good stories. Swords and Deviltry, the first book in the series, is a three-story mashup that cannot possibly appeal to anyone who is not already a rabid fan of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

The first story, The Snow Women, introduces Fafhrd. He is the son of a cold-hearted sorceress of the Snow People. When traders come to their realm, he takes the opportunity to fall in love with Vlana, a dancing girl. An honorable man might ignore the dancer and stay with Mara, the local girl who is carrying his child, but Fafhrd is not an honorable man. He gets into a few fights, kills some folks with his sword, and runs away with Vlana.

The Gray Mouser makes his appearance in The Unholy Grail, where he is apprenticed to Glavas Rho, a magician. He is studying white magic, but as Glavas Rho says, the Mouser is too filled with blackness to be a white magician. The best he can hope for is to something in between, practicing neither black nor white magic. Hence the Gray Mouser. Studying along with Mouser is Ivrian.

Ivrian's father hates magic, so he manipulates her to gain entrance to Glavas Rho's home, and kills the magician. Mouser escapes unharmed, then gains revenge by killing Ivrian's father. Then he and Ivrian--who fall in love--escape.

The final story, Ill Met in Lankhmar, brings Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser together. Both are the city of Lankhmar, operating as free-lance thieves. They meet when they both happen to waylay the same allotment of gems. Instantly becoming friends, they introduce each other to their women, Vlana and Ivrian.

But operating independently, they have angered the Thieves' Guild. (Is there some rule of fantasy that all professions must organize guilds? How would a guild of thieves even be permitted, anyway?) Goaded by Vlana, who hates the guild for some earlier slight, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser brazenly attempt to kill the leader of the guild. For their trouble they barely escape with their lives, and Vlana and Ivrian are brutally murdered. In revenge, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser kill a great many low-ranking thieves and apprentices, torch the guild house, and then run away from Lankhmar.

It's a crummy, boring story. Its only purpose is to put the two heros together and rid them of any baggage, which is why Vlana and Ivrian had to die. The heros are cowardly criminals, too. There is nothing worthy of respect in either of them. That wouldn't be a problem if the story had life, but Leiber is just going through the motions. He's setting a stage for the real story, and I see no reason to subject the reading public to these 254 awful pages of introduction. Swords and Deviltry ranks just a two out of five.

Science Fiction Magazine Review

 Asimov's Science Fiction, March 2007

• Novella: Doctor Muffet's Island, by Brian Stableford - Sequel to The Plurality of Worlds from August 2006. The doctor sails off to discover Tahiti, but discovers that Sir Walter Raleigh and the cosmic spiders have discovered it already--and that they intend to cement an alliance between spiderkind and humankind against the insectoid races that rule the galaxy.
• Novelette: Breeze From the Stars, by Mary Rosenblum - A young man tries out to be a rockhound, but is assigned to Dispatch duty, where the crazy old Dispatcher waxes poetic about how he must be one with the whole solar system.
• Novelette: Public Safety, by Matthew Johnson - A ransom note declares "she dies on the thirteenth" but no ransom is demanded and nobody has been kidnapped. The city is in a panic to discover the truth.
• The Lion, by Bruce McAllister - A man turns into a lion and kills people for their sins.
• The Sanguine, by Jim Grimlsey - Dr. Morgan Horton goes in for his yearly mandated memory restoration, where he remembers for a few hours the memories that he consented to have expunged from his mind.
• Babel 3000, by Colin P. Davies - Weird future world where the fad is using old words.
• Chainsaw on Hand, by Deborah Coates - A story in second person, in a cold South Dakota winter, of a woman whose ex-husband claims to see angels.

Science Fiction Book Review

 Marune: Alastor 933

A man shows up at the Carfaunge spaceport on Bruse-Tansel. He has no memory of who he is or where he came from. Someone has wiped his memory and sent him on a one way trip. With help from the local officials, the man earns some money and travels to the capital on Numenes. After much research, he learns that he is from the planet Marune.

Once back on Marune, he discovers his identity: he is Efraim of Benbuphar, a minor personage of some small importance. His memory has not returned, but he hides his handicap as much as possible to protect himself against those who would take advantage of him, and against those unknown persons who wiped his memory--who must surely be on Marune.

Not only is Efraim at a disadvantage from losing his own memories, he also does not remember the intricate social customs of his society. Eating and drinking are taboo bodily functions, and must be done alone and secretly in little closets. Further, the six suns of Marune lead to nearly a dozen distinct periods of the day--and the social customs are different for each period. What is polite during aud may be a faux pax during isp. Sex is completely proscribed except during mirk, the rare period when all six suns have set. During mirk, the women stay in their rooms and the men wear hideous masks and prowl to find willing (or not so willing) women.

Efraim arrives back at his estate and discovers himself in the middle of tricky negotiations with neighbors--negotiations Efraim's father left incomplete before his death. Efraim is determined to recover his lost memory, but he must tread carefully. It is likely that his neighbors had a hand in his condition, and Efraim's life is in danger.

My biggest objection to Marune: Alastor 933 is that Jack Vance pulled a minor sort of deus ex machina at the end. Efraim recovers his memories and remembers how and why he ended up on Bruse-Tansel. But the rest of the story is top-notch. It's the best Vance book I've read, with the possible exception of The Languages of Pao.

Science Fiction Magazine Review

 Analog Science Fiction and Fact, March 2007

Trial by Fire strikes me as heavy-handed and clumsy, but mercifully does not specify which party the fictional President belongs to. Queen of Candesce is actually becoming interesting now that Venera Fanning has emerged as a strong main character--although she is still rather unlikable. I found As You Know, Bob to be boring and predictable. I get it, the author is poking fun at fantasy--but all his sample stories are excruciatingly bad, and it is a chore to read.

Don't Kill the Messenger is too sentimental. Crackers is a pretty good story; Things That Aren't is interesting but needs an ending with more punch.

• Serial (1 of 4): Queen of Candesce, by Karl Schroeder - Sequel to previously serialized Sun of Suns. Venera Fanning is castaway on Spyre, an immense relict city fully a dozen miles in diameter. With help from exiled Garth Diamandis, Venera works to find a way to escape Spyre so she can exact revenge on all her enemies.
• Novella: Trial by Fire, by Shane Tourtellotte - Lucinda Peale cooperates with the government to use experimental personality alteration to extract information from terrorists and dissidents, but wonders if she can continue her support when the President seems bent on eliminating all forms of hate.
• Novelette: Things That Aren't, by Michael A. Burstein & Robert Greenberger - A scientist uses a brain inducer to put his colleagues into a permanent dream world.
• Short story: Don't Kill the Messenger, by Kim Zimring - A cute, fuzzy gray alien appears on Earth. It is not intelligent, but is carrying a mysterious egg.
• Short story: As You Know, Bob, by John G. Hemry - Intended to be humorous. The evolution of a story as it is revised at an editor's insistence, transforming it from science fiction to fantasy.
• Short story: Crackers, by Jerry Oltion - A homeless bum notices a couple of teenage boys using his stolen antigravity invention.
• Science fact: The Ice Age That Wasn't, by Richard A. Lovett - Humans changed the global climate and averted an ice age 8000 years ago by inventing agriculture and deforesting the world.

Science Fiction Magazine Review

 Analog Science Fiction and Fact, April 2007

Karl Schroeder's Queen of Candesce is reasonably good, but I can't help but wish all the characters would die horribly. I didn't care much for the rest of the stories, although they were all serviceable. On the whole this is a decent but instantly forgettable issue.

• Serial (2 of 4): Queen of Candesce, by Karl Schroeder - Sequel to previously serialized Sun of Suns. Venera Fanning is castaway on Spyre, an immense relict city fully a dozen miles in diameter. With help from exiled Garth Diamandis, Venera works to find a way to escape Spyre so she can exact revenge on all her enemies.
• Novella: Small Pond, by C. Sanford Lowe & G. David Nordley - Liz Avonford risks all to ensure that her sister's Black Hole Project continues as planned.
• Novelette: Cool Neighbor, by Michael Shara & Jack McDevitt - Astronomer Kristi Lang studies brown dwarfs--which she posits are artificially created warning beacons--and discovers that one of these brown dwarfs appears to be wobbling with a six-month cycle.
• Short story: Trucks, by Amy Bechtel - Young Ryan cannot see numbers like normal people, but he effortlessly interprets facial expressions.
• Short story: Misquoting the Moon, by David Bartell - When an asteroid is about to destroy Earth, one man hunts the last of the elephants--then offers his guide a chance to escape with him to one of the lunar colonies.
• Science fact: Toward a Not-Just-Diamond Age, by Stephen L. Gillet, Ph.D. - Nanotechnology will be largely carbon-based, but plenty of other elements can be constructed into useful substances.

Science Fiction Book Review

 The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag

This collection was previously published under the title 6xH. It contains six of Heinlein's best non-science fiction stories. Although I'm a fan of his sf more than his fantasy or horror, it is still a good set of stories. I particularly enjoyed "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag," but the rest of the stories--though memorable--struck me as nothing but whimsy.

• The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag: Hoag, who does not know his own profession, hires a husband-and-wife team of detectives to tail him and discover what he does in the daytime. The detectives have several run-ins with the strange Sons of the Bird, but continue to investigate.
• The Man Who Traveled in Elephants: Reportedly one of Heinlein's personal favorites. It's a Bradburyesque fantasy of a widower who goes to a fair and meets his wife in the afterlife.
• "All You Zombies": Time travel loop.
• They: A mental patient is convinced the whole universe is a charade meant to fool him.
• Our Fair City: An intelligent whirlwind runs for mayor of a corrupt city.
• "And He Built a Crooked House": An eccentric architect builds a house shaped like a tessaract, only to have it collapse and trap him in the fourth dimension.

Science Fiction Book Review

 Berserker Blue Death

I have not read Moby Dick. But if Moby Dick were set in space, it would be Berserker Blue Death. Instead of a white whale, we have a blue berserker named Leviathan--a giant machine whose only desire is to sterilize the universe of all life. Captain Niles Domingo monomaniacally hunts Leviathan after the berserker kills his family.

The deadly war between humanity and berserkers continues, but Domingo refuses to help defend human colonies. Instead, he takes his powerful spaceship Sirian Pearl into the Milkpail nebula and hunts Leviathan. The berserkers nearly kill him; Polly Suslova nurses him back to health, and as soon as he recovers he sets out again. This time he corners Leviathan, and with help from a Space Force cruiser, mortally wounds the berserker. Domingo boards the berserker himself, to get his revenge in the most personal way possible.

Saberhagen undoubtedly parallels many plot points from Moby Dick. I wouldn't know; I haven't read Moby Dick. Still, I found that Berserker Blue Death holds up on its own merits. The character study of Niles Domingo is engaging, if ultimately meaningless: Domingo never changes, never grows as a character. The blue berserker is likewise an uninteresting character, as it rarely appears on stage until its final deadly flight. The most interesting parts of the story are almost incidental to the plot: in the course of hunting Leviathan, Domingo uncovers evidence that the berserkers are developing a biological weapon to use against humanity. I had hoped this revelation would be important to the resolution of the story, but Saberhagen opts to leave that unresolved plot thread for another book. (Minor spoiler: I'd suspected that Domingo and his crew were the biological weapons: that they were actually berserker-created zombies, not real humans. I was wrong.)

Berserker Blue Death is a top-notch story, but would probably be better received if it were edited. The story works well when considered as a medium-length novella. As a full-fledged novel, it's hard for people not to dismiss it as a mere retelling of Moby Dick.

Nonfiction Essay Review

 Results of the Labor Struggle

Carnegie responds to a series of violent incidents involving striking workers by writing an essay about the struggles of the workingmen. Interestingly, Carnegie seems to agree wholeheartedly with the demands of the workers: "the revolt of labor occurred in New York city, where the employees of the Third Avenue Railway struck for fewer hours and better pay. If ever a strike was justifiable this one was. It is simply disgraceful for a corporation to compel its men to work fifteen or sixteen hours a day."

Carnegie noted that while he agreed with the goal of the strikers, he found their actions counterproductive. First, they asked too much: they should have asked for half-hour reductions in working hours, rather than demanding an immediate shift to 8-hour days. Second, the strikers turned violent--at which point they lost the public sympathy any hope of winning concessions. Carnegie blames the violence on anarchists who used the strikes as an opportunity to stir up trouble, not on the labor movement in general. Further, he criticizes business owners for hiring scabs: it incites the strikers to violence, and it betrays a trust between employer and workingman.

Regardless of who is responsible for the outbreaks of violence, the result is clear: "Labor won while it was reasonable in its demands and kept the peace; it lost when it asked what public sentiment pronounced unreasonable, and especially when it broke the peace."

And Carnegie believes their complaints are valid. He makes a big deal about how, at a 24-hour factory, a move from two 12-hour shifts to three 8-hour shifts benefits both the workers and the employers. "I trust the time has gone by when corporations can hope to work men fifteen or sixteen hours a day, and the time approaches, I hope, when it will be impossible, in this country, to work men twelve hours a day continuously."