Minor Thoughts from me to you

Hidden Figures
by Margot Lee Shetterly

My rating: ★★★★★
Read From: 22 January 2017 - 24 January 2017
Goal: Non-Fiction

I loved reading this book. I enjoyed it on multiple levels. I'd heard that the story involved the African-American women scientists, who helped NASA send men into orbit. I was surprised to learn that all of them worked in Hampton, VA.

I grew up next door to Hampton, in Norfolk, VA. I'm not used to reading about my hometown in books. It was a very pleasant surprise to read about my hometown in this book. I'm woefully ignorant of the history of the area, so I'd never known that Hampton had played such a pivotal role in the development of flight.

The women worked for an organization called the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) — a precursor to NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration). I was fascinated to learn about the role that NACA played in the development of airplane technology, discovering the science behind many of the airplane features that we take for granted today.

I also learned something about airplane designations. For instance, we've all heard of the B-29 bomber or the P-51 Mustang. I hadn't realized that the "B-" and "P-" designations had specific meanings. Shetterly explains.

Like Darwin’s finches, the mechanical birds had begun to differentiate themselves, branching into distinct species adapted for success in particular environments. Their designations reflected their use: fighters—also called pursuit planes—were assigned letters F or P: for example, the Chance Vought F4U Corsair or the North American P-51 Mustang. The letter C identified a cargo plane like the Douglas C-47 Skytrain, built to transport military goods and troops and, eventually, commercial passengers. B was for bomber, like the mammoth and perfectly named B-29 Superfortress. And X identified an experimental plane still under development, designed for the purpose of research and testing. Planes lost their X designation—the B-29 was the direct descendant of the XB-29—once they went into production.

I was also struck by the love that these woman had for science and mathematics. They were truly doing these jobs because they loved the work and the mathematics behind the work. I don't think it would be inaccurate to call them math nerds and I love reading about the contributions that nerds have made to our world.

Finally, I was struck by the racism that Shetterly revealed. I'd known that Virginia had a racist past. I wasn't aware of just how committed to that racism Virginia had been and just how adamantly they fought for it.

The racism could be casual, such as the incident that Mary Jackson experienced, at the predominantly white East Side section of NACA.

Her morning at the East Side job proceeded without incident—until nature called. “Can you direct me to the bathroom?” Mary asked the white women. They responded to Mary with giggles. How would they know where to find her bathroom? The nearest bathroom was unmarked, which meant it was available to any of the white women and off-limits to the black women. There were certainly colored bathrooms on the East Side, but with most black professionals concentrated on the West Side, and fewer new buildings on the East Side, Mary might need a map to find them.

And the racism could be very deliberate, entrenched, and vindictive. For instance, one Virginia school system took extreme measures to avoid integrating their schools.

In Prince Edward County, however, segregationists would not be moved: they defunded the entire county school system, including R. R. Moton in Farmville, rather than integrate.

… Prince Edward’s schools would remain closed from 1959 through 1964, five long and bitter years. Many of the affected children, known as the “Lost Generation,” never made up the missing grades of education. Virginia, a state with one of the highest concentrations of scientific talent in the world, led the nation in denying education to its youth.

… Commenting on the situation in 1963, United States Attorney General Robert Kennedy said, “The only places on earth known not to provide free public education are Communist China, North Vietnam, Sarawak, Singapore, British Honduras—and Prince Edward County, Virginia.”

Definitely, it was offensive. But, ultimately, Southern racism was incredibly stupid and shortsighted.

Foreigners who traveled to the United States often experienced the caste system firsthand. In 1947, a Mississippi hotel denied service to the Haitian secretary of agriculture, who had come to the state to attend an international conference. The same year, a restaurant in the South banned Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi’s personal doctor from its premises because of his dark skin. Diplomats traveling from New York to Washington along Route 40 were often rejected if they stopped for a meal at restaurants in Maryland. The humiliations, so commonplace in the United States that they barely raised eyebrows, much less the interest of the press, were the talk of the town in the envoys’ home countries. Headlines like “Untouchability Banished in India: Worshipped in America,” which appeared in a Bombay newspaper in 1951, mortified the US diplomatic corps. Through its inability to solve its racial problems, the United States handed the Soviet Union one of the most effective propaganda weapons in their arsenal.

… Newly independent countries around the world, eager for alliances that would support their emerging identities and set them on the path to long-term prosperity, were confronted with a version of the same question black Americans had asked during World War II. Why would a black or brown nation stake its future on America’s model of democracy when within its own borders the United States enforced discrimination and savagery against people who looked just like them?

I came away from this book with great admiration for these black women as well as an even greater contempt for the racists that dominated the South during this time period.

I was also struck by Shetterly's epilogue. She wants to give these women their due, not by showing how extraordinary they were but by showing how normal they were. They were extraordinary because they were black, female nerds who had to fight to fit in, but they were also very normal because they were nerds who just wanted a chance to fit in and do what nerds everywhere do — geek out about the science.

For too long, history has imposed a binary condition on its black citizens: either nameless or renowned, menial or exceptional, passive recipients of the forces of history or superheroes who acquire mythic status not just because of their deeds but because of their scarcity. The power of the history of NASA’s black computers is that even the Firsts weren’t the Onlies.

… By recognizing the full complement of extraordinary ordinary women who have contributed to the success of NASA, we can change our understanding of their abilities from the exception to the rule. Their goal wasn’t to stand out because of their differences; it was to fit in because of their talent.

I enjoyed reading about these women and I'll recommend this book to anyone that asks for a recommendation of what to read.

Hillbilly Elegy
by J. D. Vance

My rating: ★★★★★
Read From: 27 August 2016 - 10 September 2016
Goal: Non-Fiction

I highlight the things I read for one of three reasons: because I vehemently disagree with it, because I agree with it, or because it makes me think. I've highlighted this book more than any other and all of it made me think.

J. D. Vance writes his story, of how he achieved the American dream. He's now a successful lawyer and venture capitalist, living in San Francisco, married, and with two dogs. He started as a hillbilly in Eastern Kentucky, lived with his mother, grandparents, and a string of his mother's boyfriends and husbands. He came from a broken home — in nearly every way that it's possible for a home to be broken.

While this is a story about overcoming obstacles, it's really a story about the obstacles and how daunting they are. This is a story about J. D., but it's really a story about hillbilly culture and how it's both an asset and an incredible hindrance to success.

I was enthralled by this book and often had trouble putting it down. But I also had multiple nights when I had to put it down, because J. D.'s story was wrenching and too emotionally draining to just power through.

This book, more than anything else I've ever heard or read, showed me how incredibly privileged I've been. Not in finances — I definitely didn't grow up rich — but in having an intact family, in having stability, and in having a supportive community who never told me anything other than how I would succeed in life. J. D. Vance's story was educational, in the best possible way.

This book is worth your time.

Grendel
by John Gardner

My rating: ★★★☆☆
Read From: 2 July 2016 - 5 July 2016
Goal: Literary Fiction

I read this book because Adam suggested it to me, as a somewhat out of the box choice for literary fiction. It's the story of Beowulf. Except that it's really the story of Grendel, the monster whom Beowulf killed. The entire story is told by Grendel, from his perspective.

This is one of those books where I feel like I must be missing something. Probably a lot of somethings. A lot of people really like this book. I didn't like it. I didn't hate it. I was mostly apathetic towards it.

It's short enough that I'd be willing to read it again, if I was reading it as part of a larger discussion group. I'd be interested to see what's there that I'm not seeing.

Starship: Mutiny
by Mike Resnick

My rating: ★★☆☆☆
Read From: 27 August 2015 - 30 August 2015
Goal: Flotsam & Jetsam

This piece of space opera stars Wilson Cole, a space navy officer who never met an order he liked and who makes a habit of being demoted for cause. He's assigned to the Theodore Roosevelt for his insubordination. Once there, he proceeds to violate orders multiple times before finally mutinying and taking over the ship.

This is all supposed to be in the service of a grand adventure, starring a supremely competent officer. It fails because Cole is a jerk who's constantly explaining his own superior understanding of what everyone else should be doing. Worse, he's a loose cannon who acts on his own initiative, always impressed by his own abilities. If you developed a plan no failed to tell him the entire thing, he's exactly the type of officer that would screw it up, by taking the part of it he did know and deciding to "improve" it.

All of the other characters are wafer thin and seemingly only exist to either admire Cole's brilliance or make Cole look more brilliant by playing the part of the idiotic foil. There's the weapons tech who worships Cole, just because he disciplined the tech for being high on duty. There's the alien best friend, who will support him no matter what. And there's the beautiful security chief who will tell him everything, subverting ship,security to do so, , and who (of course) ends up in his bed.

Having been blinded by the light shining from Cole's halo, I have no interest in reading any further in this series.

River of Stars
by Guy Gavriel Kay

My rating: ★★★★★
Read From: 18 June 2015–29 June 2015
Goal: Specific Authors

This is another novel of Kitai, Guy Gavriel Kay's analog to historical China. This book takes place in a time roughly equivalent to the early 12th century. Kay described his own setting, in the book's "Acknowledgement" section, along with his reason for working in historical fantasy, rather than historical fiction.

River of Stars is a work shaped by themes, characters, and events associated with China’s Northern Song Dynasty before and after the fall of Kaifeng.

... I am significantly more at home shaping thoughts and desires for Lin Shan and Ren Daiyan, or developing the characters of my two Lu brothers, than I would be imposing needs and reflections (and relationships) on their inspirations: Li Qingzhao, the best-known female poet in China’s history, General Yue Fei, or the magnificent Su Shi and his gifted younger brother. Not to mention other figures at the court (including Emperor Huizong himself) in the time leading up to and through the dynasty’s fall.

But what is the river of stars? In Kitai legends, it is that which lies between mortal men and their dreams. It is what must be crossed over, after death, to reach the afterlife. That's an appropriate title because the major theme of the book is what is remembered of a life, after that life is over. River of Stars focuses largely the life of the main character, Ren Daiyan and explores what he did and how he was remembered.

Kay is fascinated by the ways in which the decisions and events that seem almost trivial at the time become something that reverberates throughout time. He's also fascinated by the opposite side of that: the things that could have been momentous, but sink with barely a ripple because of what was happening elsewhere or because of the way in which a life was cut short.

All of that leads, inexorably I think, to a meditation on the way in which we construct narratives to explain the world around us. I think the result musings were frequently poignant.

He died too young in a war in which too many died.

We cannot know, being trapped in time, how events might have been altered if the dead had not died. We cannot know tomorrow, let alone a distant future. A shaman might claim to see ahead in mist but most of them (most of them) cannot truly do this: they go into the spirit world to find answers for today. Why is this person sick? Where will we find water for the herds? What spirit is angry with our tribe?

But sometimes storytellers want to inhabit certainty. They assume more than mortals ought. A tale-spinner by a hearth fire or gathering a crowd in a market square or putting brush to paper in a quiet room, deep into his story, the lives he’s chronicling, will deceive himself into believing he has the otherworldly knowledge of a fox spirit, a river spirit, a ghost, a god.

He will say or write such things as, “The boy killed in the Altai attack on the Jeni encampment was likely to have become a great leader of his people, one who could have changed the north.”

Or, “Lu Mah, the poet’s son, was one whose personal desire would have kept him living quietly, but his sense of duty and his great and growing wisdom would have drawn him to the court. He was lost to Kitai, and that made a difference.”

However boldly someone says this, or writes it, it remains a thought, a wish, desire, longing spun of sorrow. We cannot know.

We can say Mah’s was a death too soon, as with O-Yan of the Jeni, their kaghan’s little brother, slain in the first attack of a grassland rising. And we can think about ripples and currents, and wonder at the strangeness of patterns found—or made. A first death in the north and the death farthest south in the Altai invasion, in the years of the Twelfth Dynasty when the maps were redrawn.

But then, maps are always being redrawn. The Long Wall had once been the forbidding, fiercely guarded border of a great empire. We look back and we look ahead, but we live in the time we are allowed.

A related theme is the way in which we, of the present, look back at the past and try to draw lessons from it. But that too is a construct. Life happens and is often incomprehensible in the happening. It's only much later that someone can see a pattern or a lesson.

He died on that last thought, not the one about fearing a sword. That had come a moment before, while the man who ended his short span of days (Pu’la of the Altai was seventeen years old, his father’s only son) had been levelling a bow.

It was a similar death—on guard at night, an arrow—to that of another young rider two summers before. O-Yan of the Jeni, fourteen years of age, had been killed by an arrow loosed by Pu’la’s own skilled and deadly father on the night the Altai attacked the Jeni camp, beginning their assertion of themselves upon the world.

There might have been a lesson, a meaning, in this, or not. Most likely not, for who was there to learn of it, and what would the teaching be?

I gained two things from this novel. The first is a continuation of my desire to learn more about Chinese history and culture. Kay has convinced me that that history is rich and deep and worth studying. Second, is a humility about looking back at that history. The events of the past are the sum of the hopes, dreams, fears, and actions of the people of the past. Their stories are what's worth focusing on, more than the supposed lessons of the past.

Under Heaven
by Guy Gavriel Kay

My rating: ★★★★★
Read From: 10 June 2015 - 15 June 2015
Goal: Specific Authors

This story, set in a fictional country of Kitan, is loosely based on Tang China, the master poets of the dynasty, and the An-Lushan rebellion. I came to the story completely unfamiliar with Chinese history. I was captivated by the story and the beauty of the society that the story depicts.

Shen Tai, the second son of General Shen Gao, has spent the last two years in a solitary pursuit—he's been burying the dead at Kuala Nor. These are the soldiers killed during one of the last battles with the Taguran Empire. He's been burying the dead of both armies, as a way of honoring his late father's memory.

Near the end of his two years at Kuala Nor, Shen Tai receives a letter from the Taguran princess, giving him a gift of 250 Sardian horses. These are the most magnificent horses for hundreds of miles, coveted by everyone in Kitan. Men would kill for any of these horses, let alone 250 of them. This gift is both a potential death sentence and an incredible opportunity.

The rest of the story concerns both Shen Tai and the empire of Kitan, how they grew and changed and what effect the horses had on the course of history. This is a story about Kitan, the Tang Dynasty, as much as it is about Shen Tai or anyone else.

Like all of Guy Gavriel Kay's novels that I've read, this one is beautifully written and very moving. There are fantastical elements to the story, but they take a back seat to the characterizations and the evocative language. It's a story that forces you to appreciate human nature and the way that history can change on the smallest of decisions. It was a pleasure to read.

Lords and Ladies
by Terry Pratchett

My rating: ★★★★☆
Read From: 15 March 2015 - 17 March 2015
Goal: Flotsam & Jetsam

After Terry Pratchett's death, last week, I felt the need to read more of his novels, in memoriam. When I last read a Discworld novel, I was reading in the "Witches" sub-series. I decided to keep going with that and read Lords and Ladies.

The last novel was a send-up of fairy godmother stories. This was a pastiche of elf (or fairie) stories, primarilyA Midsummer Nights Dream. Pratchett chose to present his elves as amoral monsters who toyed with humanity purely out of a boredom and a desire for entertainment. Their power derived from their ability to make people feel completely overwhelmed by their inferiority to the elves. The overmatched individuals lost all inclination to fight back, feeling that whatever happened to them was just and right.

The surface plot revolved around the wedding of King Verence and Magrat Garlick. Throughout the story, Magrat tries to figure out who she is and what her role in life should be. Granny Weatherwax and Mustrum Ridcully, Archchancellor of Unseen University, both feel regret for paths that they didn't take through life.

Surprisingly, I thought the story contained a strong streak of conservatism. Part of the idea of conservatism is that past generations knew things that we don't and structured society (or traditions) in response to that knowledge. We may have forgotten the knowledge that they had, but we still have the traditions that they established to embody that knowledge.

In Lords and Ladies, elves are let into the world of men through the actions of young witches who think that their elders (Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg) are exasperatingly old-fashioned. They flout several traditions, including several that were key in keeping elves away from the Discworld. Because of their rejection of tradition, Lancre almost falls under the sway of the elves again. The current generation has to relearn the lessons that led to the traditions of past generations. By the end of the story, they begin following those traditions again, to keep their own families and children safe.

I enjoyed this story on all of the levels that I saw.

Maskerade
by Terry Pratchett

My rating: ★★★★☆
Read From: 17 March 2015 - 18 March 2015
Goal: Flotsam & Jetsam

Amazon description:

The Ghost in the bone-white mask who haunts theAnkh-Morpork Opera House was always considered a benign presence -- some would even say lucky -- until he started killing people. The sudden rash of bizarre backstage deaths now threatens to mar the operatic debut of country girl Perdita X. (nee Agnes) Nitt, she of the ample body and ampler voice.

Perdita's expected to hide in the chorus and sing arias out loud while a more petitely presentable soprano mouths the notes. But at least it's an escape from scheming Nanny Ogg and old Granny Weatherwax back home, who want her to join their witchy ranks.

Or as I'd describe it: "the one where Gytha Ogg and Esme Weatherwax go to Ankh-Morpok and meet the Phantom of the Opera." I quite enjoyed it. Pratchett had some great humor around the inherently nonsensical nature of opera. And, of course, it's great fun to see what happens anytime that Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg interact with unsuspecting innocents.

Carpe Jugulum
by Terry Pratchett

My rating: ★★★★☆
Read From: 18 March 2015 - 19 March 2015
Goal: Flotsam & Jetsam

Amazon description:

[This book] involves an exclusive royal snafu that leads to comic mayhem. In a fit of enlightenment democracy and ebullient goodwill, King Verence invites Uberwald's undead, the Magpyrs, into Lancre to celebrate the birth of his daughter. But once ensconced within the castle, these wine-drinking, garlic-eating, sun-loving modern vampires have no intention of leaving. Ever.

Only an uneasy alliance between a nervous young priest and the argumentative local witches can save the country from being taken over by people with a cultivated bloodlust and bad taste in silk waistcoats. For them, there's only one way to fight.

Go for the throat, or as the vampyres themselves say...Carpe Jugulum.

The best part of the book is the fact that Lord Magpyr is aware of every single vampire trope—and is determined to be unaffected by any of them. He intends to be the first of a new breed of vampire: invulnerable to anything. The main hitch in his plan isn't the witches. It's his servant Igor, who thinks that the old ways are the best and that his new master is a disgrace to the memory of the old Lord Magpyr.

This book is a humorous send-up for anyone who's ever enjoyed a Frankenstein movie, a Buffy episode, or Dracula itself.

Time
by Stephen Baxter

My rating: ★★★★☆
Read From: 07 March 2015 - 22 March 2015
Goal: Hard Science Fiction

I like hard science fiction, but I don't like it for the stories. Most of the hard SF stories that I've read are a little bit thin in the plot department. Mostly I don't care, because I'm not reading them for the plot or the characters. I'm reading them for the ideas. It's a more enjoyable way to learn about science than actually reading journal articles.

This story isn't an exception to that generality. There wasn't a lot of plot and the characters weren't very deep. But the science was interesting. It had a lot of elements that I enjoy. There's a company called "Bootstrap" that exists to, well, bootstrap humanity into space, mining the incredible wealth in the asteroids.

Bootstrap uses cheap, disposable rockets and its initial flight is piloted by an intelligent squid. The flight is to an asteroid called Cruithne, which appears to orbit the earth in a very odd pattern. The launch date is sparked due to the Carter catastrophe.

The characters also use something called a Feynman radio, to pick up signals from the future. As things progress, we see a vision of a possible far, far future where humanity's distant descendants mine the stars themselves, and blackholes, for energy. The characters also witness a succession of universes, showing that our universe is but one of an evolutionary tree, with universes evolving from each other. It turns out that blackholes could be the means by which daughter universes are spawned.

All of these science elements are either real or quite plausible and Baxter gives a list of references, at the end of the book. Don't read this for the plot, but do read it for the ideas and the exploration of what could, quite possibly, be.

Yesterday’s Kin
by Nancy Kress

My rating: ★★★☆☆
Read From: 10 March 2015 - 11 March 2015
Goal: Interesting Hooks

I put this book on my reading ideas list because of the author's description of the story.

I wanted to portray contemporary biological science as it is actually done: with sophisticated equipment, as part of an international conversation, with career-impacting mistakes and triumphant corrections. Too often, the “science” in SF is of the cloning-in-a-basement-by-a-mad-scientist type, or else gibberish hand-waving (“If we hook up the actofrabble cycle to the Hartford drive, we can create galaxy-spanning life insurance!”). I have enormous respect for science and scientists (all right, I’m a science groupie) and I wanted to show biological discoveries being made under pressure, with the inevitable competition as well as the teamwork, as realistically as I could.

I don't feel like I saw that in this story. The science seemed real enough. (I don't have nearly enough knowledge to speak confidently on the subject.) But I don't feel like I saw any career-impacting mistakes or triumphant corrections.

The main viewpoint character didn't really do any science in the story. It opens after she's already published her groundbreaking paper. Everything else she does, throughout the story, is described as the type of thing that a lab assistant could do. As a result, I didn't see "biological discoveries being made under pressure", either with teamwork or competition.

The overall story also seemed flat, like pieces were missing. Everything was painted in with a brush that was just that much too light. We needed more more detail than we got. The story worked fine as a pitch for a longer novel, but didn't work all that well as it is.

Beyond the Shadows
by Brent Weeks

My rating: ★★★☆☆
Read From: 8 March 2015 - 10 March 2015
Goal: Specific Authors

This book was better than Shadow's Edge, the previous book in the series. The action moved along at a brisk pace and there was plenty of it. Much more action than you normally get in a book of epic fantasy.

The action comes at a cost though. This entire series spent much less time on world building than typical epic fantasy novels do. I think that's a weakness of this action packed approach. Because it's epic fantasy, Brent Weeks created a large world with multiple different nations, complex politics, varied religions, and multiple different magic systems.

Weeks spent comparatively little time actually describing how everything worked. I spent a lot of time confused, wondering what was going on and what the significance of certain characters or actions was. Things were unexplained enough that I spent parts of the story wondering if I'd missed a previous book that set things up or if parts of this story were missing.

The story was also prone to sudden bouts of info dumping. Often, it would come as characters suddenly paused and "realized" what had been going on for the past 10 chapters and thought threw a whole chain of events. Or characters would suddenly start explaining things in-depth in a way that rarely felt natural. These info dumps served to inform the reader, but in a way that magnified the story's flawed structure.

Weeks created characters that I liked and magic systems that were interesting, but I didn't completely enjoy the books that contained the stories. I read Brent Weeks as an experiment. After concluding the experiment, I'm not sure I'll be reading more of his books.

Shadow’s Edge
by Brent Weeks

My rating: ★★★☆☆
Read From: 3 March 2015 - 7 March 2015
Goal: Specific Authors

I really enjoyed The Way of Shadows, the first book in this series. I thought it was exciting, fast paced, and a real page turner. I did not feel the same way about this book.

I wish I'd been taking notes as I read this book. There were several instances where the dialog was downright pedestrian or things were awkwardly phrased. The pacing felt odd in places. There was a lot less action and a lot more moping around and traveling from place to place. This definitely was not a page turner.

I'm hoping this was just a sophomore slump or a middle book muddle. I'll be disappointed if The Way of Shadows was the highpoint of this series.

The Way of Shadows
by Brent Weeks

My rating: ★★★★☆
Read From: 28 February 2015 – 2 March 2015
Goal: Specific Authors

I put this book on my reading list for 2015 because Brandon Sanderson described Weeks' writing as "epic fantasy novels that read with the pacing of a thriller". After reading this novel, I can confirm that Sanderson wasn't exaggerating. This book is an absolute page turner, even as Weeks paints a world worthy of epic fantasy.

And it's a gritty, dark, painful world. Pain, viciousness, and brutality are everywhere. Don't spend too much time hoping for things to come up roses for our heroes—no one will make it to the end of the story uninjured. Azoth is a 10-year old member of a criminal street guild, barely able to survive. He wants to become a "wetboy" (an assassin with magical Talent) because he's tired of being afraid and powerless; he wants the security that kind of power can give him. His desired mentor and teacher is Durzo Blint, the best wetboy in Cenaria.

This is the story of how Azoth becomes Kylar Stern, the wetboy that he always wanted to be. He has to make painful decisions about whether or not to have friends and how to protect the people that he cares about, in spite of trying not to care.

This isn't a great story. But it's a good story that's written very well. I read it to see if Weeks was an author that I wanted to follow closely. Given that I read a 659 page novel in 3 days, I think I've got my answer. I'm already looking forward to the next novel in the Night Angel series.

Times Three
by Robert Silverberg

My rating: ★★★★★
Read From: 23 February 2015 - 28 February 2015
Goal: Specific Authors

Time travel stories are my favorite sub-genre of science fiction. I've always loved the idea of visiting other times. I'd like to experience history directly. I'd love to sit in the audience for the first performance of Handel's Messiah or one of Beethoven's symphonies. I'd love to experience Teddy Roosevelt's charisma for myself. What was imperial Rome like, at the height of its power?

I'd also like to experience the planet as it existed in the past. I'd love to see what it would be like to walk through the forests that used to sit where Buffalo now stands. What would it be like to hear Niagara Falls from a distance and walk up to it through the trees? What did the Great American Plains really look like, during the pioneer days?

In this collection, Robert Silverberg provides three time travel stories that touch on these elements. I've read a lot of time travel stories and these three are all worthy of a place in my personal top ten list.

Hawksbill Station

Hawksbill Station is the perfect prison for political dissidents. Instead of spending money to guard them or courting political dissent by executing them, just exile them to the past instead. In this case, the late Cambrian era. The only form of life is trilobites; everything else is rock and water. There are no trees, no grasses, no ferns, no birds, no fish, no mammals, nothing. There's nowhere for the prisoners to escape to and no way they can interfere with history, to change the world of their past.

When I first read this story, I fell in love with Silverberg's description of the bleakness of the late Cambrian era. It's haunting, in the best possible way, and makes me excited about that part of the Milwaukee Public Museum's pre-history exhibit in a way that probably mystifies everyone else.

But the setting is almost the least important part of this story. "Hawksbill Station" is really a character study of Jimmy Barrett, the King of Hawksbill Station. He was a reluctant revolutionary long before he was a political prisoner. Silverberg invites us into his life, both at the beginning and end. It's a moving story where the time travel, as fascinating as it is, is the least important part of the story.

Up the Line

This is a more comic story. Judson Daniel Elliot III is a bored young man, who allows himself to be talked into a job as a Time Courier, a tour guide of the past, because of his love for historic Byzantium. A job as a Time Courier gives him the opportunity to criss-cross Byzantium's history, seeing all of the great events, people, and places.

Don't picture the Time Couriers as lantern jawed heroes, in love with the past and devoted to their duty. You should picture them more like a group of clock punchers, more dedicated to having fun on the job than to the job itself. And, well, with all of history to play around in, hijinks will ensue. Things will go wrong, and the police (the Time Police) may get called.

As is typical with Silverberg, the story revolves more around the characters than around the gizmos. It's a human story, but also a bit of a farce as we get to witness how human nature mixed with time travel can be a recipe for trouble.

Project Pendulum

Two identical twins: Eric and Sean Gabrielson are the subjects of the very first human experiment in time travel. They'll start their journeys through time together, from the same platform. They'll both move through time, like a pendulum that's gradually increasing its swing. First Eric will move five minutes back while Sean moves 5 minutes forward. Then Eric will move 50 minutes forward (from the fixed reference point), while Sean moves 50 minutes backwards. They'll continue alternating swings through time, each swing taking them an order of magnitude further into the past and future.

That's the hook. Silverberg uses it to paint one vignette after another of both humanity's past and humanity's future. With the twins, we see an inauguration parade for President Harding, have an encounter with neanderthals, and get to experience the majestic grandeur of California's redwood forests, centuries before they were overrun by development and tourism.

This is another story, like "Hawksbill Station", that I'll love just for its beautiful descriptions of lost worlds. I'll never be able to see them in person, but Silverberg has a genius for helping me to see them in my imagination.

Lock In
by John Scalzi

My rating: ★★☆☆☆
Read From: 20 February 2015 - 23 February 2015
Goal: Awards

Warning: This review contains spoilers. If you don't want to be spoiled, don't read it.

Haden's Syndrome is a flu-like virus with a nasty side effect: one percent of its victims experience "lock in". They're fully awake and aware but they're completely cut off from control of their own bodies. They can no longer speak or move. It is, essentially, a conscious coma.

A whole panoply of technologies were created in reaction to the disease. The locked in are able to interact with the physical world through the use of cybernetic bodies called "threeps". (In homage to C-3PO.) They're also able to control the bodies of volunteer Integrators, through neural links.

Lock In is the story of FBI agent Chris Shane's first week on the job. It's a nasty first week, as his first case involves the murders of multiple "Hadens" and the suicides of multiple Integrators. As he investigates, he begins to see a common thread weaving everything together.

That grand tapestry is what ruined the book for me. (This is where I spoil the mystery.) The criminal mastermind is that most likely, most stereotypical, of suspects: the corporate billionaire. One man, seeing harsh times ahead as his government subsidies come to an end, decides to keep the profits flowing by any means necessary.

The billionaire's plan involves committing multiple murders, blowing up a competitor's research facility, manipulating stock prices to crash multiple competitors, and then buying everyone up to create a near-monopoly. Because, greed. Everyone knows the rich are greedy and will doing anything to keep the wealth coming. Murder and stock market manipulation are common tools of the wealthy elite. One frequently sees it in the news headlines.

I like the set up Scalzi created for this novel. I though Haden's Syndrome was creative and the various tech created to help the Hadens offered a lot of storytelling potential. But Scalzi decided to waste all of that on a murder mystery with an unintelligent plot.

This is a plot that I expect from the worst of the mass-market action thrillers. This story is science fiction only in that the hero has a robo-body and the villain controls people through neural links rather than blackmail. Without those elements, it's just another by the numbers murder thriller. Boring.

Asimov’s, September 2014
by Sheila Williams

My rating: ★★★☆☆
Read From: 22 August 2014 - 26 August 2014
Goal: Flotsam & Jetsam

Novelettes

Place of Worship by Tochi Onyebuchi—Lit fiction. I couldn't even read it; I had to just skim it. It seemed to wander around aimlessly. It was less of a story and more of a meandering reflection. Parts happened in space—that was about the only thing in it that could be loosely considered to be SF.

A Lullaby in Glass by Amanda Forrest—New writer takes us to a future Vietnam. A young man struggles to figure out what caused a recent production failure, to protect his family. I feel like I should have felt more than I did, reading this story. But I didn't.

Bogdavi’s Dream by Tom Purdom—This novella is the concluding piece of a much longer story that Purdom's been writing about interspecies war in the distant future. Groups of humans and aliens will have to join together to fight other groups of humans and aliens, to protect the dream of peaceful coexistence. Before reading this, I hunted down some of Purdom's previous stories. I enjoyed them. This feels more like the mid-50's SF that I read growing up.

Short Stories

Patterns by James Gunn—A secret lurks inside of the most hidden of patterns. Of course, to talk about the secret is to trigger another pattern: denial, denunciation, and ridicule followed by dismissal and irrelevance. But the secret is still there, still lurking, still waiting. This was extremely short, but I really like it.

Everyone Will Want One by Kelly Sandoval—What is it about this new toy and why will every teen want one? It just might hold the key to gaining social status in the most elite of cliques. Isn't that reason enough? This was another really good story. It's something that's plausible and that I could imagine being reality in another decade or two.

Scouting Report by Rick Wilber—A baseball scout spends a few days watching Cuban teams, checking out some new prospects. He also reflects on the aftermath of an alien crash that occured 10 years ago. I wanted to like this story more than I did. The infodumping was heavy handed and I feel like the main character is a real dunce for not seeing what was obvious to me just one-third of the way into the story.

Windows by Susan Palwick—This story showcases the harsher side of life. A mother travels to a far-away prison to pay a visit for her son's birthday and to share birthday greetings from his sister, onboard a generational space ship. She arrives at the prison only to learn that the generational ship just exploded, but hides that news from her son in order to create a happier birthday for him. It's another story, in this issue, that I didn't really feel was SF at all. The only sci-fi element in the story was that it mentioned a generational ship. I think a story needs more than that to qualify as SF.

Departments

Reflections: Flashing Before My Eyes by Robert Silverberg—Every career has to start somewhere and this is Silverberg's story of how he started his. Silverberg reflects on the SF magazines that he admired as a teen and his struggles to get his own stories into these magazines, next to the writers that he so admired.

Thought Experiment: Tomorrow Through the Past by Allen M. Steele—This is a speech that Steele gave at the Philcon Science Fiction Convention, in 2013. He looks back at the history of the SF field and how the genre has reinvented itself over the years. He laments the current clichés: alien invasions, space battles, dystopias, and guys in body armor shooting at each other with big guns. He argues that SF has become paranoid and militaristic and needs to regain a sense of optimism, to tell stories with positive outcomes instead of just stories with negative outcomes. He argues that the genre needs to be more about stories set in the future, rather than just stories about the future. It's a thought provoking speech and I hope some of the authors and editors in the field are inspired by it.

My Take

I liked Steele's speech. I liked three of the seven stories in this issue. Asimov's continues to be something that I subscribe to and read but not something that I eagerly wait for each month.

Asimov’s, August 2014
by Sheila Williams

My rating: ★★★☆☆
Read From: 18 August 2014 - 21 August 2014
Goal: Flotsam & Jetsam

Novella

Of All Possible Worlds by Jay O'Connell—The Old Man lives downstairs, in the first floor apartment. He's busy editing Earth's history to save us from imminent doom from nuclear bombs and asteroid impacts. He's ensuring that our timeline truly is the best of all possible worlds.

Novelettes

Placebo by Nick Wolven—A medical mechanic working in a home for sick children, does what he can to bring joy into the children's lives. Even if that means putting up with a pet. Life is full of unsung heroes, but it may be a while before we forget about the protagonist of the story.

Writer’s Block by Nancy Kress—An off the beaten track novelette about a dreaded authorial problem. The protagonist tries different paths, through many a dark and stormy night, to get past his block. He finally succeeds.

Mountain Screamers by Doug C. Souza—This is Souza's first sold story. A teenager and his grandmother capture several mountain cats. They're destined for a planet that humanity will use as one massive wildlife preserve. Along the way, the teenager strengthens his bond with his grandmother and learns more about her lifelong commitment to wildlife. This story had warmth and personality. It didn't blow me away, but I'm willing to read more of Souza's work.

Short Stories

Wet Fur by Jeremiah Tolbert— This short story depics the unquestioning loyalty of humanity's best friend. Unfortunately, I didn't care for it. Tolbert told the tale entirely as a first person report, to a second person, of that second person's conversation. I thought the resulting pronoun usage was confusing—needlessly so.

The Low Hum of Her by Sarah Pinsker—This short tries to remind us of family, grief, and love. Mostly, it reminded me of how much I don't like steampunk / gollem type stories. That element just ruined the whole thing for me.

Departments

Reflections: Longevity by Robert Silverberg—Silverberg reflects on the many SF authors who have had long, productive lives. There sure are a lot of them. This was mildly interesting, but seemed like filler in that it was mostly a listing of people and ages.

My Take

I thought that "Of All Possible Worlds" was a strong story. I enjoyed the whimsy of "Writer's Block". The rest of the stories were okay, but I don't feel like I would have missed out if I hadn't read them.

Days of Fire
by Peter Baker

My rating: ★★★★☆
Read From: 28 August 2014 - 18 September 2014
Goal: Non-Fiction

Peter Baker wrote a surprisingly even handed account of the Bush presidency. I say "surprisingly" because I was familiar with the antagonism between the New York Times and the Bush White House. I wasn't sure what to expect from a book written by a Times reporter. What I got was a well researched, balanced look at how Bush ran the White House and how decisions were made.

Baker starts the book with a back-and-forth look at Bush's and Cheney's early careers. He covers their respective college years, then moves on to their political years. He covers Cheney's years in Congress and in the Ford White House. He covers Bush's political efforts on behalf of his father, his time with the Rangers baseball team, and his time in the Texas governor's office. He focuses the majority of the book, of course, on their partnership while running for office and while in office.

The book wasn't just about the politics of the White House. Baker relates some of the interactions between Bush and his staff. Bush, like most Presidents, had many ways to torment his staff. Visits to the ranch at Crawford provided unique opportunities.

[H]e loved clearing brush, of which there seemed to be endless supplies.

Aides would be recruited to join the brush clearing and judged on their prowess and endurance in the sweltering heat. Stephen Hadley, the new national security adviser, was teased for showing up in tasseled loafers. (In fact, they were leather shoes with laces, but the loafers legend stuck.) “There was like a hierarchy that was completely different from any other hierarchy,” said Steve Atkiss, the president’s trip director who traveled regularly with him. “When you start, your job is basically, after someone cuts down a tree, to drag it out of there and put it wherever it is going to go. Then, if you really did good at that, the next level up was you could be in charge of making a pile of all the things that had been dragged over so that it burned well when you lit it on fire. If you were really good at that, you might be able to, one day, get to use a chain saw.”

I wasn't really surprised to learn that Bush liked to be thought of as a slow-witted dunce. He felt that it was an advantage to have his opponents continually underestimating him. I was surprised to learn that Cheney had a reputation as a moderate early in his career. People took his quiet, low-key personality to mean that he was far less conservative than he actually was. This benefitted him, as he started out.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the book was that Bush really was the Decider in the White House. Everyone interviewed for the book, and Baker interviewed many people, agreed that Bush was definitely in charge. Cheney had opinions and Bush knew what they were. But Cheney rarely spoke up in meetings and didn't dominate the conversations around the White House. Instead, it was very clear that Bush was in charge of each meeting and ultimately made each decision.

Early in his presidency, Bush agreed with Cheney on a great many things. The most obvious area was how to respond to 9/11 and what to do about Iraq. But they were also in agreement on domestic policy, such as tax cuts. Bush allowed Cheney to be the point person, in areas where they agreed. Cheney would work quietly, through his massive network of government contacts and loyalists. He was very effective at getting done what Bush wanted done.

Bush definitely made his share of mistakes and had character flaws. One of them, in my opinion, is that he deferred too much to trusted subordinates. Everyone needs to delegate, but I think Bush took it to an unhealthy level. One example is the de-Baathification of Iraq.

Saddam Hussein was the head of Iraq's Baath party. Some of the Baath party members were true believers, dedicated to Hussein and his methods. Most party members were not. They were only members of the party out of necessity, to hold a job and survive in a brutal environment.

Before the invasion of Iraq, Bush and his advisors debated what to do about the Baath party. Some favored disbanding it entirely and firing all of its members. Others favored a selective purge, of just the true believers. Eventually, Bush decided on a selective purge, reasoning that it would be too risky to dump many well trained and well armed people on to the streets.

After the invasion, Bush appointed Paul Bremer as his personal representative in Iraq. After getting to Iraq, Bremer decided to go ahead with a full purge of the Baath party. He fired everyone and put them all on the streets. Many of these people ended up forming the core of the Iraqi insurgency. Many experts believe that the de-Baathification of Iraq led to the insurgency and made it as bad as it was.

Bush had made the decision to only partially purge the Baath party. Bremer knew of this decision and decided to go ahead with a full purge anyway. Instead of overruling his deputy, Bush let his decision stand.

Bush was loyal enough to subordinates to trust their judgment ahead of his, once he'd delegated an area of responsibility to them. The de-Baathification of Iraq was just one example. There were others, throughout the book. I think this represented a real flaw in his leadership, as he failed to fully take ownership of decisions and enforce his own decisions.

While it often appeared that the Bush White House was lawless, doing whatever it wanted to in the name of national security, that wasn't quite true. Baker tells of one renewal of the NSA's wiretapping program, when the Justice Department objected to the terms of the renewal.

John Yoo was now gone, and a new crop of lawyers had arrived at the Justice Department, only to be shocked at what they found. Jack Goldsmith, a conservative law professor who had taken over as head of the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, thought some of the opinions he had inherited were poorly reasoned and unsustainable.

As a result, he refused to agree to the reauthorization of the program. A majority of the Justice Department's top leadership agreed with him and backed him up. Ultimately, the FBI did too.

The President was determined to renew the program, whether or not the Justice Department agreed. When he tried, however, a dozen administration officials threatened to resign, including Goldsmith himself and FBI director Mueller. Bush was forced to rescind his reauthorization and modify the program to comply with Justice Department and FBI requirements.

These kinds of conflicts—between Cheney and those representing the rule of law—continued to escalated. Increasingly, Bush began to side with everyone else. Baker demonstrates that Cheney and Rice represented the two sides to President Bush. Cheney represented Bush's impulse to protect America at any cost, going it alone if necessary. Rice represented Bush's impulse to work within the law, to build Congressional support for his policies, to work with other foreign leaders, to cooperate, and to build a reputation as an international leader rather than an international cowboy.

During the first term, Bush agreed with Cheney more often than Rice. But as the first term drew to a close, Rice started winning more of the policy arguments. When Rice moved to the State Department, at the beginning of Bush's second term, it was a clear signal that Bush was siding more with Rice and wanted her to have the clout necessary to carry out his desires. As the second term continued, Rice won almost all of the policy battles and Bush and Cheney grew increasingly estranged.

Ultimately, it become clear to me that Bush was who he claimed to be during the 2000 Presidential campaign. He was a moderate conservative, interested in domestic achievements that reached across the aisle and in building consensus among foreign governments. The 9/11 attacks shocked him, threw him off balance, and pushed him to respond in drastic ways.

Bush began correcting course at the end of the first term and became increasingly moderate throughout his second term. Ultimately, the dictatorial White House that the press loved to demonize didn't truly exist. The aspects of it that did exist were a reflection of Cheney's policies and Bush's agreement with those policies in the months after 9/11.

As Cheney and Bush grew apart, that image of the White House became less and less accurate. Bush was his own man, fully in charge, and capable of growing in office. But he was consistently identified with his Vice President and the public's image of him reflected the Vice President's policies and not his own policies. I think history will remember him far more kindly than people do today.

This is how Baker sums that up, at the end of the book.

And yet to blame or credit Cheney for the president’s decisions is to underestimate Bush. “Bush had a little bit of Eisenhower in him,” said Wayne Berman, “in that he didn’t mind if people thought that he was the sort of guy who was easily manipulated because it also meant that his opponents underestimated him and the people around him thought they were having more influence than they really were. And he used that always to his advantage.” While Cheney clearly influenced him in the early years, none of scores of aides, friends, and relatives interviewed after the White House years recalled Bush ever asserting that the vice president talked him into doing something he otherwise would not have done.

Bush, in the end, was the Decider. His successes and his failures through all the days of fire were his own. “He’s his own man,” said Joe O’Neill, his lifelong friend. “He’s got the mistakes to prove it, as we always say. He was his own man.”

Parasite
by Mira Grant

My rating: ★★★★☆
Read From: 20 June 2014 - 22 June 2014
Goal: Awards

This is the second 2014 Hugo nominee that I'm reading, before voting.

About three months ago, I listened to an EconTalk podcast episode about autoimmune disease and parasites. Russ Roberts, the host, interviewed Moises Velasquez-Manoff about his book, An Epidemic of Absence.

Roberts and Velasquez-Manoff discussed why allergies and autoimmune diseases have been increasing over the last 50 years. Epidemiologists have recently theorized that these diseases are increasing because of an overly hygienic environment that's causing a decrease in various microbes and parasites. Some people have theorized that we could actually make people healthier by reintroducing parasites into our bodies and several groups are running FDA trials to test that theory.

This is a theory that I've read about a handful of times in the past 2 years. I was ecstatic when I discovered, a few pages into Parasite, that it was about exactly this idea. The story takes place in the near-future.

In 2016, SymboGen gained FDA approval to sell a genetically engineered parasite—based on a tapeworm—called the Intestinal Bodyguard™. Patients ingested the parasites in pill form. From there, they grew in the intestines and cured asthma, allergies, and diabetes. They also secrete natural birth control and prescription medications on a regular basis, freeing patients from the tedium of managing schedules for different drugs. They became the miracle drug that humanity had been looking for.

Our narrator, Sally Mitchell, had an implanted Intestinal Bodyguard™ when she suffered a seizure while driving and crashed head-on into a bus. Ten days later, her doctors declared her brain dead and tried to persuade her family to let her body die. Then she woke up. Her memory was completely gone but, somehow, she'd lived through the brain death that should have been fatal.

The story proper begins 6 years later, in 2027. SymboGen has been paying for her medical care for the past 6 years, investigating how her parasite saved her life. Sally (now preferring to be called "Sal") has built a new life and just wants to be free of SymboGen, psychologists, and the constant medical examinations. That's when the "sleeping sickness" starts, quickly growing into an epidemic. It appears to be linked to the Intestinal Bodyguards™ and as the world's most famous survivor, Sal is right in the middle of the chaos.

Mira Grant's story captivated me. I read well-nigh the entire thing in less than 24 hours. I could not put it down or—once put down—resist taking it up and devouring it in large chunks. The pacing and tension were superb, effortlessly driving the story forward.

Best of all, this story was true speculative fiction. Mira Grant took an on-going scientific debate, ran it on fast-forward a few years, and then wrote a compelling story about one possible implication of pursuing the science. It's been a while since I've read speculative fiction and I hadn't realized how much I'd missed the excitement of thinking through the implications of scientific discoveries.

Mira Grant's story isn't perfect. The biggest flaw is that too many of the characters are one-dimensional. Sally Mitchell, our narrator, is fully realized. Her motivations and conflicts are believable and understandable. Unfortunately, few of the people around her are similarly well fleshed out.

Dr. Steven Banks, one of the putative villains, is mostly a caricature of the evil profit-grubbing scientist. Sally's parents and sister are insubstantial. Her boyfriend is too, although to a lesser degree. Some of this is understandable, as Sally is the narrator and has all of six years of life experience. It's understandable that she would feel distant from her family and wouldn't know them intimately. Given her expressed desire to learn though, the story's lack of strong secondary characters is a weakness.

Don't let that weakness dissuade you from reading Parasite. It's an intriguing scientific idea, woven into a thriller of a horror story. It's easy to see why it was nominated for a Hugo award.