March 2021

Science Fiction Story Review

 Harrison Bergeron

To make everyone equal, the Handicapper General gives every citizen a handicap. Strong people carry heavy weights. Smart people wear radios in their ears to interrupt their thinking. Beautiful people cover their faces with a mask. People with good vision wear glasses to make them half-blind.

Enter: Harrison Bergeron. Strong, smart, and markedly under-handicapped. He storms onto the set of a live TV broadcast, declares himself Emperor, sheds his handicaps, and attempts to overthrow the government by sheer force of charisma.

The Handicapper General shoots him dead.

The end.

The story is short, and it's a better thought experiment than it is a story. The thought experiment is: what if we made everyone equal in ability by handicapping people so that nobody is better at anything than anybody else? The result is the absurd world where ballerinas wear ankle weights and strong people carry forty-seven pounds of birdshot in a canvas bag padlocked around their necks.

But the story itself? I'm not impressed.

Missionary Biography Book Review

 Let My People Go: The Life of Robert A. Jaffray

This is a brief biography of Robert A. Jaffray, a missionary with the Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA). He was a driving force behind the missionary efforts in China, and later in other parts of southeast Asia, including Borneo and Sulawesi.

One thing I noticed is the importance Jaffray placed on establishing Bible schools. First, preach the gospel and make a few converts, then start a Bible school. It's part of making the local church strong and independent.

After reading this book, it occurs to me that the Empire of Japan's attempt to conquer the Asia-Pacific region was Satan's attempt to stop the spread of the gospel. Certainly it seems that the missionary efforts were significantly and permanently harmed. Jaffray died in a Japanese prison camp near Pare-Pare in south Sulawesi.

Science Fiction Book Review

 Star Bridge

Truly magnificent. I'm older now than when I first read it, and I notice the outdated treatment of women. But it's still a cracking good read.

Science Fiction Book Review

 Cinnabar

Overall I wasn't a fan of this. It's too vulgar, too transgressive, too avant garde (or something) for my taste. It's well written and could be the perfect book for some. Not me.

Jade Blue
Incomprehensible and unsatisfactory.

The Road to Cinnabar
Decent gimmick story.

Gray Matters
Endless parties, eternal life, ennui, mindwipe, fake people and artificial love. Inscrutable and unsatisfactory.

The Legend of Cougar Lou Landis
An unhappy woman commits murder by memory theft, imagining herself to be a hero a-la Robin Hood: stealing memories from talented successful people and giving them to poor cripples.

Hayes and the Heterogyne
Harry Vincent Blake is pulled from 1963 to Cinnabar. He learns a great deal about life and love; his mind is opened. He returns to 1963 and makes an impact. A satisfactory story. Good, even, if a bit too focused on sex. And the gender stuff may have seemed exotic at the time, but in the 2020s it feels a little quaint compared to the trans wokeness of American culture.

Years Later
Vile. I’m not in the mood for a sick old man who murders and dismembers for fun and pleasure.

I don’t think I like this book. If I’m going to read shocking perverted filth it should at least be thought-provoking or eye-opening. This is not.

Sharking Down
Timnath Obregon recreates a giant extinct shark (named Sidhe) which attacks his rival Grimdahl. The computer Terminex orders them to settle their feud by combat, so Grimdahl creates a resurrectronic shark (named the Black Avenger) to fight Sidhe. The two sharks circle each other and swim out to sea as friends. I don’t rightly know what to make of this story.

Brain Terminal
Timnath Obregon, Tourmaline, Jade Blue, Torre, and Wylie Cafter journey to city center to confront Terminex, the central computer that is intent to destroying Cinnabar.

Science Fiction Book Review

 Cyteen

C. J. Cherryh is not for me. I couldn't get into Cyteen. She is a supremely talented writer and I feel like I should give a Hugo winner a bit more effort, but I stalled out on page 126.