December 2020

Adventure Fiction Book Review

 Tarzan and the City of Gold

I usually complain about the convoluted plots of Tarzan books. Edgar Rice Burroughs tends to put multiple groups of people into the jungle, and have the main characters be captured, escape, recaptured, etc. It's complicated.

Not in Tarzan and the City of Gold. The plot has none of that. It's straightforward, a single plot thread. And although I appreciate the change of pace, the book itself is a disappointment. Most of the best bits have been done better in previous books. In fact, in my view, Tarzan and the City of Gold is a poor attempt to rewrite Tarzan and the Lost Empire, except that this go-round Burroughs doesn't take the time to do it properly.

Perhaps I'm too harsh on the man, and perhaps there's more going on in this book than I realize. But I didn't much care for it. The book was barely passable. The Tarzan series is wearing thin.

Biography Book Review

 Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader

I knew 90% of the Steve Jobs-Apple story already, but this book was still riveting. Amazing.

---

Somewhere in the NeXT and Pixar days, Steve Jobs learned humility. "[This] can't be about me. It's about the company." As near as I can tell, that's the difference. He still had all his faults, but less pride. He'd failed, and hard. And now he didn't want Apple's success or failure to be tied to his personal success or failure.

---

"Apple had shelled out more than a half billion dollars to rehire Steve Jobs." And it was a decision with no justification. None. It worked out, but I can't see why anybody on the board would have agreed.

---

Before, Steve Jobs was focused on making a breakthrough product. When he returned to Apple, his product was the company. His focus was on building a successful company.

---

It occurs to me that there's a little of Michael Scott in Steve Jobs. He yells at his employees but he's fiercely loyal to them in the end--unless he feels betrayed, in which case he holds grudges. But Steve Jobs will apologize when he's wrong. And he's smart.

Science Fiction Book Review

 Interstellar Empire

It's a fixup novel. No, not even a fix-up. It's three stories in the same universe packaged together as a novel. The first two are decent if unremarkable; John Brunner is a competent writer when he's cranking out stories for money instead of striving for masterpieces.

But the third story.

It's bad.

It reminds me of the worst traits of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Andre Norton, H.P. Lovecraft, and E. E. Doc Smith shoveled into one steaming pile of words. It's got every cliche, every sloppy writing shortcut, every unfair author's trick. Despite that, Brunner's talent does show through--it's just very rough work.

The third story is actually Brunner's first story ever, written when he was seventeen years old. It shows. But fortunately Brunner is supremely talented and his skill quickly caught up to his ambition.

It's not a great read in itself, but it's worth it for a look at this early Brunner story. I find it intriguing to see how even in his first story--which is bad--his talent is evident.

Fantasy Book Review

 The Royal Book of Oz

I have been reading the Oz books in order. I've read the fourteen original books by L. Frank Baum, as well as Little Wizard Stories of Oz and The Woggle-Bug Book. Now I have arrived at Oz book #15, the first Oz book written by Ruth Plumly Thompson. Is The Royal Book of Oz a good book? Does it retain the Oz flavor? Does it feel like something Baum could have written?

Baum's characters
Thompson wisely chooses not to include all of Baum's characters. There are too many. She picks a few to focus on: the Scarecrow, Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion. Others get smaller parts: Ozma, Scraps the Patchwork Girl, Jellia Jamb, the Sawhorse, Betsy Bobbin, the Tin Woodman, and Professor H.M. Woggle-Bug, T.E.

Sir Hokus of Pokes
RPT introduces her own characters. The most prominent of these is Sir Hokus of Pokes, an Arthurian knight who finds himself in Oz and pledges himself to Dorothy. I never liked Sir Hokus or found him amusing. He talks in old-fashioned language that my son couldn't understand, so more than once I had to edit on the fly as I read aloud. Sir Hokus wants nothing more than to fight a dragon, but RPT doesn't play this up enough.

The Comfortable Camel and the Doubtful Dromedary
Two other characters that make an impression are the Comfortable Camel and the Doubtful Dromedary. The Doubtful Dromedary is her most successful creation. His habit of always saying "Doubt it" and being skeptical is funny. The Comfortable Camel I found unnecessary.

The new characters: not as fun as the Glass Cat
My son did not find the new characters nearly as fun as the classic Oz characters. He smiled a bit at the Doubtful Dromedary's penchant for doubting everything, but it wasn't a squeal of delight like Baum's Glass Cat elicits every time she brags about her brains. (You can see 'em work!) Sir Hokus of Pokes is bland and boring, I'm sad to say. I did find the A-B-Sea Serpent and the Rattlesnake amusing (my son didn't), but they were nothing more than pun characters that only appeared in one chapter.

Puns
Speaking of puns, Ruth Plumly Thompson employs them. Everywhere. She uses puns more than Baum ever did. I like puns, so for the most part that's OK with me. But sometimes it may be overdone. For example, she introduces a character named Pid for the sole reason that he can be ordered to go fetch some stew: "Stew, Pid."

The Odd and the Queer
It wouldn't be Oz without magic items, odd places and queer characters. Ruth Plumly Thompson delivers. There is a magic parasol and a magic fan. There are the Middlings. There are the Pokes. There is Fix City. There is Bangalore the candy giant. There is Wish Way. There is the Scarecrow's pole. And most of all, there is Silver Island.

Silver Island and the racial stereotypes
The bulk of the story happens on Silver Island, where the Scarecrow discovers that he is their long-lost Emperor Chang Wang Woe. (Oh, Woe is me! Ha ha.) The Silvermen are stereotypical Chinese, with funny names and long queues and robes and the whole works. Because, get it, they are not Chinamen, they are Silvermen. China, Silver? Get it?

It's lazy writing and I didn't care for it. Baum wasn't above using racial stereotypes to humorous effect. I remember the phonograph in The Patchwork Girl of Oz, and I read The Woggle-Bug Book. But this is on another level. Ruth Plumly Thompson's entire plotline and most of the humor in the Silver Island section of the book (which is most of the book) is predicated on the idea that, ha ha, aren't foreigners funny? They have funny clothes and funny hair, strange customs, their names are hard to pronounce, and they eat gross food. It's so funny, right? I mean, I guess, sometimes, but that's lazy writing. I want intriguing ideas and societies like the Wheelers from Ozma of Oz, not a tired stereotype. It's not mean-spirited per se, just lazy writing.

The Silver Islanders are a mixed bag of folks. The Scarecrow finds one honest person, a servant named Happy Toko, who becomes his confidant and whom the Scarecrow later installs as the new Emperor. But, haha, the Scarecrow can't get his funny foreign name right and calls him Tappy Oko. That opens the door for a lot of tapioca jokes, but seems a bit insensitive. Well, I guess Dorothy did force Bill the yellow hen to change her name to Billina, so it seems Ruth Plumly Thompson was not the only one to decide that our heroes get to decree what their friends should be called.

Besides the loyal and good Happy Toko, there is the Grand Chew Chew, General Mugwump, the Grand Gheewizard, and the Emperor's three scheming good-for-nothing sons. Oh, and Princess Orange Blossom who is old and ugly, ha ha. The regular citizens of Silver Island are just that: regular folk. Not good, not bad, just folks.

A genuinely funny scene
The funniest sequence was when the Scarecrow, now Emperor of the Silver Island, entertained his grandchildren. They aggravated him by their constant bowing and prostrating, their obsequious politeness, and their earnest disbelief in the existence of the land of Oz. I suppose this is part of the racial humor--the idea that bowing and scraping and politeness is aggravating, but it is also genuinely funny.

"Yes old Grandpapapapapah!" chorused the Princes bending over as far as they could.

...

"It is not on the map, great Grandpapapapah," he announced solemnly, and all of the other little Princes shook their heads and said dully, "Not on the map."

I was not so sure that that Scarecrow's reaction--to fly into a rage--was quite in character:

[The] Scarecrow tried to continue his story, but every time he mentioned Oz the little Princes shook their heads stubbornly and whispered, "Not on the map," till the usually good tempered Scarecrow flew into a perfect passion.

"Not on the map, you little villains!" he screamed, forgetting they were his grandsons. "What difference does that make? Are your heads solid silver?"

"We do not believe in Oz," announced the oldest Prince, serenely. "There is no such place."

Despite it being rooted in cultural stereotypes and not being true to the Scarecrow's character, it is the most memorable and enjoyable sequence in the whole book. I like the image of fifteen perfectly-behaved, unfailingly courteous little children working a grown man (well, Scarecrow) into a fit of rage with nothing but their politeness and demands for academic rigor. "It is not on the map." Ha ha. The Scarecrow got fact-checked by his grandchildren.

The verdict
The Royal Book of Oz is promising. Compared to Baum's Oz books, it's nowhere close to my favorites, but it compares favorably with the weaker entries in the series. It has the right feel, that is, it feels just like an Oz book. I can see Ruth Plumly Thompson's influence, but it's acceptably Ozish. There is more racial humor than I'd like, and a few more puns than I'm totally comfortable with, but Thompson has kept the essence of Oz--our favorite characters, the whimsy, the humor, and the parade of odd societies and characters. She has also improved on Baum in a few ways, most notably by not feeling compelled to shoehorn every single character into the book.

Oz, ranked
And now, what I've wanted to do for some time, here is a ranking of the first fifteen Oz books from my favorite to least favorite.

The good

• #2, The Marvelous Land of Oz
• #3, Ozma of Oz
• #12, The Tin Woodman of Oz
• #7, The Patchwork Girl of Oz
• #1, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Middling

• #4, Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz
• #14, Glinda of Oz

Marginal

• #15, The Royal Book of Oz
• #13, The Magic of Oz
• #11, The Lost Princess of Oz

Nope

• #6, The Emerald City of Oz
• #8, Tik-Tok of Oz
• #9, The Scarecrow of Oz
• #10, Rinkitink in Oz
• #5, The Road to Oz

So, Ruth Plumly Thompson's first entry into the Oz canon just barely misses the cut of books I'd consider re-reading. But at that, it's still better than half of Baum's Oz books, so that's not all bad. There are good signs--her willingness to jettison useless characters--and some bad signs--her overreliance on racial humor. I'm intrigued to see what she comes up with next.

Biography Book Review

 Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Life

A Life. A Biography. A Hagiography.
To hear Jane Sherron De Hart tell it, RBG is a liberal saint. She is perfect and never made a mistake. She is always right. Everyone who opposed her is narrow-minded, partisan, bigoted, and wrong.

I read this book because I wanted to know why RBG was so beloved. I think I understand why. First, she made important contributions to the women's rights movement as an advocacy lawyer. Later, unable to further advance her goals as an activist, she sought out a judgeship and later a position as a Supreme Court Justice, where she used every bit of influence available to her in order to shift the law to where she wanted it to be. She was a master at rhetoric and when she found herself in the minority on the Court, she issued forceful dissents that influenced the public and Congress, and brought her some notoriety. She seized on that fame and played it up, becoming the first and perhaps only celebrity Supreme Court Justice. (The woke liberals ate it up--RBG was a progressive New York cosmopolitan, after all.) Through it all she was a genuinely nice human being, who treated everyone with love, warmth, and dignity. I believe that her entire career as a judge was in some ways dishonest and wrong--I don't believe she was ever committed to being a judge who was a neutral arbiter of the law, which is what it should be--but she was nonetheless a truly wonderful human being. The world needs more people like Ruth Bader Ginsburg--just not on the Supreme Court.

Preface: An American Icon
The author lionized RBG. She highlights certain themes that came out in her research on RBG. First, the "sheer difficulty of the struggle for equality under the law" (page x.) Second, the "dynamic interaction between progressive social movements and the conservative counter-movements they trigger" (page xi). Finally, the "dynamics of the Supreme Court itself" (page xi, xii). The author betrays a blatant bias against originalism and a neutral Court. I do not expect this book to be a fair analysis of RBG's legal ideas, but it can still be useful.

Chapter 1
RBG was raised Jewish. Her mother Celia encouraged her and pushed her to excel and get the education that Celia was denied. The Jewish patriarchal customs did not treat women as equals, particularly regarding religious customs and ceremonies around Ruth's mother's death. The strict and unjust treatment of her father after Celia's death lead Ruth to reject religion and become a secular Jew. Nevertheless, Jewish thought was a part of her.

She was a feminist from a young age, even as a schoolgirl.

Chapter 2
At Cornell she studied under Nabokov, who taught her the importance of words (p. 33-34).. Robert Cushman taught her the value of "spare, clear prose" (p. 35). She was a dedicated student, who knew "logic and reason" and who had "intellectual discipline and self-discipline." She did not seek leadership, but "her strength of character and intelligence" lead others to thrust leadership upon her. (p. 38)

This was an era where women were treated differently. Most went to college to meet a man and get married. When she married Marty Ginsburg, she lost her scholarship because the regulations treated married women differently than single women, or than married men. RBG was offended when "bureaucratic regulations mask prejudice and deny legitimate need." (p. 50)

Her husband, Marty Ginsburg was astonishingly feminist. His family was generous, welcoming, and also accommodating and gracious. Her in-laws gave remarkable support to her career ambitions.

Chapter 3
Now we get into legal theory. The new fashion was process theory, an offshoot of legal realism. Legal realism assumes that law is influenced by social, political, and economic forces, rather than being fixed rules. Judges are not neutral, especially when the law is unclear.

What process theory does is require judges to build a logical framework upon which to hang their decisions. First start with neutral principles, build on precedents and statute, and use a reasonable elaboration to make policy.

This is now the courts usurp the role of the legislature. This cloaks the policy-making objective that underlies the decision-making. At least process theory is more intellectually rigorous than legal realism, which scarcely tried to make a reasoned argument from the law. But it seems to me that process theory is less honest, because it tries to hide the agenda.

RBG could not agree that the process of how the case is decided is more important than the substance of the decision. This indicates to me that even then, in school, she had an agenda. The law was her vehicle to enact it.

Chapter 4
After graduation, she got no job offers. "A woman, a Jew, and a mother to boot" were "a bit much." Her Columbia professor got her a clerkship with Palmieri. Later, Palmieri tried unsuccessfully to get her a clerkship with Frankfurter. She did eventually get job offers, but it was still hard for women. She had to work harder to compensate.

She got an assignment to study Swedish law, and in doing so she came to believe that Americans should learn from foreign legal systems. (I disagree. How can we? Surely precedent cannot apply, and the process cannot be so different, can it? So how does this even work?)

Regarding abortion: "Ginsburg questioned the criminalization of a medical procedure in the United States that seemed so fully warranted" and was legal in Sweden. And thus we come to embrace murder and child sacrifice. Brilliant legal mind my ass. Can't see the human being right in front of her.

She was a professor at Rutgers, and volunteered at the ACLU to get litigation experience.

Chapter 5
RBG began studying women's law, to represent women in court for equal rights. And there were a lot of rights to go after: The EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) didn't take women's complaints seriously, marital rape wasn't illegal, discrimination was commonplace in academia, contraception was illegal, women would not even choose to keep their names upon marriage. Black citizens would not be tried by an all-white jury, but women could be tried by an all-male jury.

Under the law, men were treated as individuals with full rights, women were treated as a special class in need of paternalistic protections. There were arbitrary restrictions on their rights. RBG started a class on women's rights, and she knew she was opening a whole new frontier in legal advocacy.

Chapter 6
RBG took on the Moritz case, where a man was denied a tax deduction that would have been granted under the tax code had he been a woman. She tried to prove that a sex-based rule violated the Constitutional rights to equal protection and due process.

Previously, equal protection applied when comparing one man to another man, one woman to another woman, not when comparing a man to a woman. Men and women were in separate classes, separate categories.

Chapter 7
RBG keeps citing foreign law. She did this to show judges that times are changing, that these ideas are not radical, that this is normal, that the norms upon which the laws is interpreted are changing. (p. 159)

In Reed v. Reed the Supreme Court struck down a law that discriminated on the basis of sex, saying it was a violation of the 14th Amendment.

Chapter 8: Setting up Shop and Strategy
RBG sets up the women's rights litigation office of the ACLU, staffed mostly with her students.

Author De Hart hates Rehnquist and his strict constructionist view of the law, and does not even pretend to give him or it a fair presentation. She says Rehnquist is a Nixon stooge to politicize the Court and advance a Republican agenda.

I say, Rehnquist is prescient when he writes of a desire on the left to erase all distinction, even physical and biological, between men and women. (p. 166).

RBG's biggest hurdle was educating men--and women--on how sex discrimination hurt women, and how even neutral policies can result in discriminatory outcomes due to inherent differences between men and women.

Her challenge: to manage the overall case litigation strategy, picking good cases to advance the cause of women's rights incrementally. It was hard to organize when too many organizations were pursuing women's rights, not all organized--unlike the civil rights movement which had been more organized.

Chapter 9
RBG took the case of Susan Struck case, who was forced out of the military when she became pregnant. RBG felt this forced women into an unfair dichotomy: full motherhood or full career, with no middle way.

Also, author De Hart doesn't seem to understand anything. On page 191 she says opposition to abortion was based on thinking that abortion was "an exercise in moral laxity, female self-indulgence, and abdication of maternal responsibility." This is not a neutral historian. She is an advocate and a champion.

Struck case was dismissed and could not be a basis for Roe v. Wade which led to a poorer decision in that case. (RBG always felt it was a poorly reasoned decision.)

Chapter 10
The Frontiero case, a woman denied a housing allowance when she got married, because her husband was not automatically considered a dependent. De Hart goes into the weeds on the Supreme Court Justice's deliberations. RBG didn't get the sweeping decision she wanted, which led her to adjust her legal strategy to get more "middle ground" rulings. Basically, RBG had hoped to get the Court to adopt the ERA before it was even passed. Some Justices wanted to do so as well, out of fear that it would not pass. (And indeed it didn't.)

Chapter 11
RBG lost the Kahn case, about an unequal Florida tax break that was available to widows but not widowers. Again De Hart goes into details on the Supreme Court deliberations.

Chapter 12
The Wiesenfeld case extended Social Security survivor benefits to widowers, not just widows.

Chapter 13
More Court victories, more legislating from the bench. The ERA still doesn't pass. Courts refuse to go as far as RBG wanted in changing the law. She would have to become a judge herself.

Chapter 14
Conservative resurgence prompted RBG to apply for a judge position in the expanded federal courts under the Carter administration.

This is rich! (p. 282) RBG is lauded for her "objectivity and moderation" when she had been a radical tempered only by competence and the wisdom to pursue change incrementally. (p. 286) It's like RBG thinks she's owed a spot on the bench to continue her advocacy work. That's not a judge's role.

Conservative fears of a feminist with an agenda on the bench seem founded. RBG wanted the position so she could make law. She played a moderate on the appellate court, always with an eye on the Supreme Court. Moderate indeed!

Chapter 15
RBG's approach is "pragmatism" not rules. (p. 305) So much for the rule of law. From page 321, Senator Willian Cohen: "There is some suspicion in some circles … that you are basically a political activist who's been hiding in the restrictive robes of an appellate judge, and that those restrictions will be cast aside when you don a much larger garment." Yes!

Only after RBG was appointed to the Supreme Court was a women's bathroom added. O'Connor had been on the court twelve years.

Chapter 16
She starts relatively centrist, then writes a great VMI opinion forcing the Virginia Military Institute to admit women.

Chapter 17
VAWA, Bush v. Gore. De Hart truly loathes the conservative Justices. Also, I still think it likely that Bush got more votes than Gore in Florida, liberal anger notwithstanding.

Chapter 18
RBG wrote a scathing dissent in the Carhart case upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. She may be right on Constitutional and precedent grounds, but she is defending murder.

RBG still wants to rewrite Roe v. Wade to base it solidly on equal protection grounds.

More dissents. Boy are we lucky she never had a solid liberal majority. And De Hart is so liberal it hurts. Everything Roberts does is an evil conservative plot. Wow.

De Hart hates Bush. Oh, and the deification of Barack Hussein Obama.

I'm still not sure why RBG was so loved and beloved by liberals if she so rarely got her way on the big important cases?

Chapter 19
De Hart doesn't even pretend to be fair to Republicans. She is so woke it hurts.

RBG dissented in Citizens United and Heller. Ledbetter dissent. De Hart keeps coming back to this. RBG influenced people and even Congress through her forceful dissents. RBG thought the minority could be more influential by speaking as one, so she tried to get all the minority justices to sign onto a single dissent.

De Hart keeps speaking of the Court's move to the right, which I'm not sure is true, and for which she provides no evidence or support.

p. 422: As always, RBG's moderate views were calculated to achieve long-term radical change by pushing the envelope incrementally. Boil the frog, so to speak. (De Hart criticizes Roberts for what she sees as a conservative attempt to do this, not seeming to understand that she's lionizing RBG for doing so in the opposite direction.

RBG's radical liberal bent is unleashed in her dissents. She relished her status as a liberal icon. She maintained good relations with reporters, which helped get her favorable coverage. (Also being a genuinely nice person, a good and thoughtful friend to many, didn't hurt.) She cultivated and nurtured her image as a liberal icon.

Chapter 20
RBG dissented in Fisher; she wants race-based affirmative action. De Hart gives us a long, biased history of the Voting Rights Act. De Hart presumes the worst of every Republicans and every conservative. RBG dissented in Shelby, the VRA case.

Chapter 21
Perry struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Windsor struck down Proposition 8. Obergefell legalized and mandated gay marriage nationwide.

RBG was a master at rhetoric, changing and influencing national policy even in her dissents. She dissented as much--or more--for the press and the public as she did for the legal aspects. RBG was never in it for the law. The law was only ever a tool to reshape society to be what she wanted it to be.

She was great at turning a phrase. "Skim milk marriage." "Throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm."

She became a celebrity. She was the Notorious R.B.G. She played it up, celebrated it. More than any Justice, she really seemed to crave the celebrity aspect, probably for the influence it gave her. Her small size helps. The image of a tiny woman in robes wielding huge power and being compared to the Notorious B.I.G. is amusing.

Chapter 22
p. 493, she spoke out against Trump. "Had she become too outspoken with her increasing celebrity?" Uh, yes. Yes. She forgot her role as a neutral arbiter of the law. Actually, no, she never intended to be one. It was only ever an act for her. She was an advocate and an activist.

p493. Oh man, all her European travel. She is such a New York cosmopolitan. That's OK, I guess--New York cosmopolitans are people too--but it makes it hard to relate.

Chapter 23
Gorsuch sounds like my kind of guy. Lots of immigration, deportation, detention cases. RBG managed to cobble together majority rulings on some cases, notably citizenship, and to punt some cases like Masterpiece Cakeshop back to lower courts. Kennedy's support helped.

Epilogue
RBG was a law professor, a women's rights advocacy lawyer, a District Judge, a Supreme Court Justice, and a celebrity Justice. And through it all, she was a genuinely nice, caring individual who treated everyone with love, warmth, and dignity. (I still don't think anybody should have let her anywhere near a judgeship.)

The book is OK up until RBG becomes a judge. Before that, it explains her background, her formative experiences, and her thoughts and worldview. After that, the book is largely silent on RBG and devolves into an extraordinarily partisan recitation of recent political history and a dry recounting of important SCOTUS cases.

Kavanaugh replaces Kennedy, who was more conserative than liberal after all.

Science Fiction Book Review

 Shock Wave

This is a fun little story. Terry Ferman hikes out to a remote canyon to help his friend Cal track down the source of some strange radio broadcasts. He inadvertently triggers an alien transposer built into a cliffside and it transports him to a station on a faraway planet.

The station is abandoned. Everything runs on automatic, controlled by the Computer, and the Computer refuses to do anything useful--like send Terry back home--until a Supervisor arrives to give it orders. The Computer has been waiting over 6000 Earth years for a Supervisor. The civilization that established the galaxy-wide network of transposers is extinct.

Terry is not the only individual at this remote station. There is Grontunk, a saurian who triggered a transposer and was transported from his own planet much as Terry was. There is Tinkan, a robot formerly controlled by the Computer but who is now an independent entity. Later, the Computer introduces Murtag, a Student who had been in suspended animation--cooled--and who claims to have been a student in the times before the collapse of the galactic civilization.

Terry convinces the Computer to give him training and access to a research lab. He reverse-engineers the principles behind the transposer, and then he explores the galaxy with Murtag, Grontunk, and Tinkan.

Galactic civilization is dead. Many planets are devoid of intelligent life. Others have civilizations at various stages of development, usually pre-industrial. On one planet they find an account of the disaster: a lack of adequate safety margins in the transposer network resulted in an overload and cascading failure. Every active transposer in the galaxy exploded simultaneously, destroying in one blow the entire galaxy-spanning civilization.

Terry is suspicious though. Some things aren't adding up. The Computer has clearly been testing him, trying to turn him into a Supervisor. Furthermore, Murtag is a problem: there's no way she can be a student from the days of the galactic civilization, as she claims. Finally, his friend Cal, back on Earth, is not who he seems.

Terry confronts Cal and Murtag. They represent two different factions: Cal's group is holding civilizations back and preventing them from developing far enough to re-establish Galactic civilization.

Murtag's group is encouraging civilizations to develop so they can skim the best individuals off to turn into Supervisors. They are also trying to breed a new superior race capable of Galactic Civilization. They force an "evolutionary upcurve," strain off the best individuals, so that "each race reverts time and again to savagery." (Terry has visions of "a little man with a paint-brush mustache screaming to a hypnotized audience the doctrine of the 'Master Race,' while millions went to the gas chambers. The ghostly echo from the hypnotized populace came back to him: 'Sieg Heil!'")

Terry isn't a fan of either group, and determines that he and Earth will go their own way. Murtag, who is in love with him, agrees to join him. It's a happy ending.

Overall it's not a bad little story. It could have used some copy editing and maybe tightened up in a few spots, but I found it enjoyable.

People, places, and terms: Terry Ferman, Cal (Calvin Thorpe), Grontunk (saurian)
Galactic Citizen, General Citizen, Supervisor Class, Grade One Galactic Citizen, Basic Citizen, Citizen Supervisor Class
Tinkan (independent entity), Pietra Murtag
Student Technician, Citizen Technician, Computer, Student observer
Transposer, Cooling
Pranje
Mouse trap
Hey-you, Big Fellow

Science Fiction Book Review

 Envoy to the Dog Star

Earth sends an astronaut to Sirius to look for new planets to settle. The astronaut they send is a dog.

A dog-stronaut to the dog star
Yes, they sent a dog to the dog star. Not just any dog though. This dog is Canis superior, an engineered dog as smart as a human. Scientists created the species in a lab to use for experiments. Unbeknownst to the humans, Canis superior has evolved to communicate telepathically. That will come in handy later when--or no, it won't. It's sort of tangential to the plot. Oh well.

Spaceprobe-I
Our unnamed dog-stronaut is surgically removed from his body and his brain is implanted into a spaceship, which is blasted off to Sirius using an experimental FTL drive. It's experimental so they don't want to risk a human, but an automated probe isn't good enough because blah blah blah technobabble hand-waving whatever. It works, is all we need to know.

Sirius-4
When he gets to Sirius he discovers four perfect Earth-like planets sharing an orbit. One is inhabited, so he lands. Earth has thoughtfully provided him with a robot body so he can leave the spaceship and go make contact with the natives. Less thoughtfully, the robot body is shaped like a man. That's tough for a dog to get used to.

Sirians are humans
He meets the Sirians, who are human down to the precise anatomical level. They ask him his name, and because nobody on Earth ever gave him one, he chooses a reference from literature: "Call me Ishmael." OK then.

The Sirians are named Callia, Darius, Cavallo, and Grampius. They take him to their village and explain that they live simple lives, in harmony with nature, and aided only by the technology of matter duplication. They simply duplicate themselves and have their soulless doubles work as slaves, so you see, it's a perfect society where nobody has to work except for their doubles, but they don't count because they just don't.

Dog-stronaut, Dog Star, Dogs
It will not be a surprise that the Sirian humans have dogs. The Sirians call them symbionts, but they are dogs. Our hero recognizes them for what they are, and suspects they are as intelligent as he is. He tries to talk to a symbiont named Rolland but Rolland acts dumb and pretends to be a regular dog.

And if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you
For full disclosure, Ishmael shows the Sirians a documentary film about Earth. The Western Hemisphere is one massive over-populated metropolis. The Eastern Hemisphere is worse: parts are uninhabitable nuclear wasteland. In other parts--Europe and Africa--survivors of the last war eke out a miserable existence at a level barely above animal savagery. Sure human history has been nothing but war and conflict and near-total destruction of their planet, but humans are learning, Ishmael says. If the Sirians would allow them to come to Sirius and colonize the three uninhabited planets, humans would live peacefully and harmoniously like the Sirians. Right, and if you believe that I've got a bridge to sell you.

Gullible
The Sirians should probably murder Ishmael on the spot, smash his spaceship to bits, and hide the evidence. Instead, they dither. They don't trust Earth, but they admit they also have made a right mess of things. They had a population growth problem too, which they solved by birth control and by using their matter duplication technology to make three new planets for themselves. Only problem was, the birth control accidentally sterilized their entire race. Every last one of them. Oops. The Sirians are a dying race and will be extinct in a generation. Still, they are unsure of bequeathing their planets to the violent humans of Earth.

Let's sleep on it
Grampius says they'll sleep on it. Ishmael retires to his room, where Callia tries to seduce him. Ishmael gets flustered and blurts out the truth: he's a dog in an artificial human-shaped body. Callia leaves upset. Rolland, the symbiont, has witnessed the whole thing and is more upset. Ishmael shouldn't have revealed that, and now he's in danger. Rolland takes Ishmael away and brings him to the secret headquarters of the symbionts, where he introduces him to Peralto and Chiendandros.

Symbionts supreme
The symbionts are the true rulers of the planet. It is they who keep the matter duplication machines running. The symbionts allow the Sirians to think they're in charge, but the truth is the Sirians will soon die out and symbionts will reign supreme.

One and one and one is three
The symbionts agree that Earth can settle the three empty planets, but only if Earth's humans will grant dogs equal status with humans. They will also give humanity the secret to matter duplication technology. To prove it, they make ten copies of Spaceprobe-I and send them all back to Earth. When Ishmael arrives with the ultimatum--free Canis superior and treat them as equals, and three new planets and the secret of matter duplication are yours--the replicas of Spaceprobe-I prove that he's not making things up. Earth agrees.

Is it any good?
It would pack more punch if cut to twenty pages instead of 120 pages. Shaw writes competently, but there is only a novelette's worth of plot here, not a novel. That can work if the writing is unusually engaging or artistic or otherwise interesting, but that's not the case here. To his credit, Shaw does try to spice things up by introducing a prophetic dream: Ishmael dreams of chasing rabbits, who multiply and turn out to be himself. This foretells the matter duplicator and the multiple copies of Spaceprobe-I. But I didn't find that compelling or interesting.

Still, Shaw writes well. I would like to read more of his science fiction, but alas, this is his only work.