Book Review: Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

Kate Wilhelm
1976
Awards: Hugo
Rating: ★ ★ ★ – –

SPOILER ALERT

Kate Wilhelm’s writing is subtle and understated. It grows on you gradually.

This story sucked me in so slowly, in fact, that at first I thought it was going to be boring.

Also, the first part of the book, which takes up about a quarter of its total length, is basically an introduction to the rest. So many major events happen and so much time passes during that first section that it seemed like too much; I thought I was never going to be able to get into any of the characters. I would just start to get attached to one and then they were gone.

The later sections of the book go at a better speed, however. And for them to work as well as they do, I guess the first part has to cover that much ground.

This is a post-apocalyptic story in which we have destroyed our environment with radiation and toxic chemicals. All the pollution and contamination cause people to become infertile and, over time, Earth’s human population gradually dies off and dwindles down to almost nothing. And, to top it off, another ice age begins and glaciers start crawling all the way down into Maryland.

Only one very organized, very wealthy family in the Shenandoah Valley continues to reproduce – by cloning themselves. They saw the writing on the wall, trained themselves on the necessary technology, and built themselves a secret compound complete with hospitals, laboratories, incubators, schools, and dormitories.

This is all very well and good for them, the saviors of the human race, but then something creepy starts to happen. Instead of producing one child at a time, the family scientists begin to produce sets of identical children. At first there are twos and threes and eventually they get up to sevens and eights.

The sibling sets start to discriminate against oddball “singles” with increasing viciousness. And, at the same time, the sets grow progressively more and more group-focused until they are completely dependent on their clone brothers or sisters to function. They are unable to think originally or creatively on their own.

Ironically, this means that the clones themselves are headed for extinction, since they cannot invent new technology or repair their equipment when it breaks, much less adapt to the approaching glaciers. And they have ostracized the single children, the only ones who can do these things.

Eventually, though, the clones are in turn saved by one of the few remaining “regularly-bred” humans – and the human race is (ta-da!) preserved to start over again the original way.

Okay, maybe that ending is a little too neat. But, overall, I liked the book. In particular, I thought that Wilhelm did a good job of taking an idyllic setting and a group of happy fresh-faced youths and gradually making them into something more and more sinister and unpleasant. Something almost as sinister and unpleasant as… junior high school.

Science Fiction Themes: A Case Study

Nebula- and Hugo-winning novels that I have reviewed so far and the themes they explore, arranged into a lovely chart.

Click to enlarge.

Book Review: Speaker for the Dead

Orson Scott Card
1986
Awards: Nebula, Hugo
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ –

SPOILER ALERT (for Ender’s Game)

In the introduction to my edition of Speaker for the Dead, Orson Scott Card said that he never meant to write Ender’s Game. He had intended to make Ender’s childhood a relatively small part of the beginning of Speaker. But when he got into it, he realized that Ender’s war-gaming backstory was involved enough to deserve its own novel, so he split that part off into Ender’s Game, making that book a prequel to this one, which was the book he really wanted to write in the first place.

I think Card’s priorities were right on. I liked Ender’s Game quite a bit but this is an even better book. Not many people are able to write something so touching and sensitive without being trite or cloying, but Card was up to the task.

Before getting into the plot of Speaker, a brief review of the events detailed in Ender’s Game are in order: Thinking he is only running a computer simulation, a teenage military prodigy named Ender Wiggin brilliantly wipes out the “buggers,” the only other known sentient species in the universe, with whom we are at war.

Ender defeated the buggers due less to his tactical genius than to his ability to understand others. He grew to know his enemy well enough to intimately understand their weaknesses. This insight allowed him to learn how to kill the buggers, but it also meant that he could no longer bring himself to hate them.

Ender’s victory over the buggers makes him a hero. But when he finds out what he has done to them, his guilt wrecks him inside. He goes to the buggers’ home world and finds a cocoon containing the very last remaining bugger hive queen. He secretly takes the cocoon with him, hoping to place it on a hospitable planet one day, once all the humans have finally gotten over their fear and hatred of the buggers.

In the meantime, the hive queen in her cocoon is able to communicate telepathically with Ender. In an act of contrition, Ender writes a history of the queen and her species. This book, The Hive Queen, is published anonymously – the author is listed as “Speaker for the Dead” – and it is distributed across the populated universe. It makes humans understand the buggers so fully that they undergo a guilt-fueled reversal of opinion. The formerly-revered Ender Wiggin, Savior of Humanity, becomes reviled and hated as Ender Wiggin, Xenocide. Nobody has any idea that the Xenocide and Speaker for the Dead are actually the same person.

Speaker for the Dead becomes a model for many people. The anonymous author even inspires the growth of a sort of new religion, in which Speakers are called by the living to research and report – warts and all – on the life of someone who has died, in the hope that it will increase understanding all around.

Ender goes underground to escape the celebrity, both the good and the bad. By traveling at light speed from planet to planet, he ages only a few years while human society ages hundreds of years. By the time Ender is 35 years old, 3,000 years have passed in real time. He ends up on Trondheim, a planet of snow and ice, where he goes by his given name (Andrew) and starts teaching at an institute that trains Speakers of the Dead.

This is the point where Speaker of the Dead begins. The action is centered on the planet Lusitania. In colonizing Lusitania, a group of humans have discovered the third known sentient species in the universe, the “piggies.” The piggies appear quite primitive, so the humans establish strict rules, limiting contact to avoid influencing their development. Unfortunately, however, Pipo, one of the xenologers whose job it is to study the piggies, ends up getting killed by them in a horribly gruesome manner – dissected, with his stomach opened up and his organs strung out from his body across a hillside.

Pipo's young daughter Novinha sends out a call for a Speaker to "speak," or report on, her father's life and death. Ender takes the call himself, but he is several light years away. By the time he arrives on Lusitania, only two weeks have passed for him but 22 years have passed for everyone on the planet. In the meantime, not only has Novinha’s abusive husband Marcão died, but her friend Libo, the new xenologer, has been killed by the piggies in the same way as his father Pipo – and Novinha’s children have called for someone to speak the deaths of both of them too.

Ender researches the three men’s lives and deaths and uncovers a lot of painful and/or really cool truths not only about them but also about the colony, the piggies, and the planet’s strange biology. When he speaks the deaths, it is like a root canal to the colonists, exposing all their secrets and faults. But it is also a release and a relief for them – especially Novinha and her children, who had been living with lies and guilt their whole lives.

Although I enjoyed the story of the colony and the piggies a lot, the real strength of the book is the character of Ender, his tremendous capacity to understand those who are different from himself, and the message he carries about seeing the shades of gray in everyone.

This understanding is what made him want to be a Speaker. He knows that no one is as all-good or all-bad as people want them to be. He doesn’t glorify anyone when he speaks, and he doesn’t vilify them either; he tells the truth so the living will know them as they really were. He shows everyone that Marcão is not 100% bad, and that Pipo and Libo are not 100% good, even though that is what most people wanted to hear.

The great thing, though, is that Card doesn’t make Ender into some drippy, self-righteous spiritualist. Ender knows that sometimes it’s necessary to be threatening or cruel or to use physical force. And he makes mistakes and has doubts, just like everybody else. Almost everyone in the universe regards Ender as an extreme: genius, hero, devil, Xenocide. But he knows that he is just a human being trying to do what he thinks is right.

The one part of the story that makes me a little impatient concerns Valentine, Ender’s sister and his only real companion on his galactic travels. I know Valentine is important to Ender, as the only person who has really loved him all his life, but I never got interested in her or the political machinations she pursues.

Oreilles Gauloises (Twin Cities Edition) - New Day Rising (Hüsker Dü)

There were many great bands coming out of the Minneapolis/St. Paul area in the late 70's and early 80's. And sure, there was Prince, but frankly, I wasn't paying much attention to that stuff at the time. Most people I knew were singing the praises of Paul Westerberg and the Replacements, but personally, I preferred the more punk-inspired antics of Hüsker Dü.

I was first exposed to their music in '85 when I found their album Zen Arcade at my friend Adam's place, and while it made a big impression on me (a punk band doing a double concept album!!), it wasn't until I heard New Day Rising that I got into their music more seriously.

It was really the first time that I heard what I would refer to as the melodic punk sound...a harsh guitar sound, but beautiful melodies. I guess these days, people call it pop punk. I loved the fact that these guys were also kind of ugly, and not at all in step with the indie world aesthetics of the time. Both the guitarist and he drummer were a little fat, and the bass player had this very un-punklike handlebar mustache! Not exactly eye candy. They truly didn't care. As good as the Replacements were (and they were very good), to me they were still pretty boys getting attention partly for all the wrong reasons. Hüsker Dü, on the other hand, only had their music to rely on, and I think that made them a better band.

It wasn't until years later that I also found out that the two song writers and lead singers in the band were both gay. That made them even cooler in my eyes, and it made me look at all their lyrics in a somewhat different light. It was also a big lesson for me in terms of learning about homosexuality, and tearing down some of the stereotypes around that topic.

Another reason I love this album is because it really has two very distinctive styles of songwriting, and it really comes through on this record. Even if Bob Mould and Grant Hart had indistinguishable voices, I could still listen to the music and say "this is a Bob song" or "this is a Grant song". They really were in many respects each other's biggest rival, à la Lennon/McCartney, and that rivalry I think substantially contributed to the high quality of the writing.

This album is packed - PACKED! - with great rock songs! From the strident sounds of Bob Mould's Gibson Flying V on the title track, to the great lyrics of "Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill" and "Terms of Psychic Warfare", to other gems like "If I Told You", and "I Don't Know What You're Talking About" - it's hard to find any filler in this record.

To me, this was the band's zenith! They really peaked with this album, and I think they never quite surpassed the quality of the songwriting after that. Plus, it's their best album cover work, by far! The picture of those two dogs in the water is as iconic an image for me as those Raymond Pettibon's paintings on the Black Flag album covers.

For those who say that the 80's sucked musically, I say, as I once heard Henry Rollins say, "it depends on what altitude you were flying". Sure, there was plenty of really bad pop music, and godawful spandex metal, but there was also Sonic Youth, the Minutemen, Mission of Burma, Dinosaur Jr....and Hüsker Dü.

Book Review: Gateway

Frederik Pohl
1977
Awards: Nebula, Hugo
Rating: ★ ★ ★ – –

The best thing about Gateway is the cool and unique setting. Frederik Pohl explores that setting with a relatively interesting story line – at least not one that seems like it was created half-heartedly just to show off the world he invented.

It is the relatively near future. During our exploration of nearby space, we have discovered a spaceport, which we call Gateway, that has been abandoned long ago by an alien species, who we call the Heechee.

The Heechee were technologically advanced and left behind an array of valuable artifacts, including spaceships with the capability for hyperspace travel. There are many of these ships still fueled up and docked at the spaceport’s gates. Everything is in perfect working order. It is like the Heechee just up and left one day, leaving everything running.

Conveniently, the Heechee appear to have been about our size and to have had similar environmental requirements, so it is possible for us to use their station and their ships in relative comfort.

The only catch is that we can’t read any of their instruction manuals or any of the indicators on any of their equipment. Everything we know about their technology we have learned from brute force experimentation – people getting into the ships, pressing a bunch of buttons and seeing what happens.

We have learned some very basic things. We know how to select a destination code and start the ships on their journey. We know that once the ship is started, it will not deviate from its pre-programmed course and it will automatically return to Gateway.

But we don’t know what the vast majority of the destination codes mean, so most of the time we don’t know where the ship is going. We don’t know how to program it to turn around or go somewhere else while it is in flight. We don’t know how to tell how long the voyage is going to be. And we don’t know whether or not the ship actually has enough fuel to get there.

So an industry has grown up around Gateway in which a corporation hires people to risk their lives flying the Heechee ships to where ever the ships might take them, and then gives them a share of the profits if they find something that is useful to the company (assuming they survive the trip).

Sometimes the ships end up in the middle of a supernova. Sometimes they run out of fuel and never come back. Sometimes the ships return with a dead crew whose food or oxygen ran out before the trip was over.

But sometimes the ships take the crew to a brand-new planet that is habitable or has a supply of valuable ore. Sometimes it takes them to a new Heechee port with still more artifacts. And sometimes the trip gives us more of a clue to the navigation system. When anything like that happens, it makes the crew very wealthy.

The main character, Bob Broadhead, is one of these pilots. He flew a couple small missions and then a third mission that made him wealthy beyond his wildest dreams, but left him a traumatized wreck with nightmares and guilt that he can’t get rid of. The book starts with him in therapy (with a computerized therapist he calls Sigfrid von Shrink) after returning from this last trip. Through flashbacks and sessions with Sigfrid we gradually learn about Gateway and the Heechee and what happened to Bob to make him both so wealthy and so messed up.

Again, I think that the best part of the book is in the setting – the Gateway spaceport and the ships that can set people up for life or kill them in any number of horrible ways. Bob’s story is fine but not quite as strong as the central idea.

And I do have to admit that although I can see that Bob’s third mission was scientifically very important, I don’t understand why it was of concrete monetary value to a corporation. Bob explained it to us but I still didn’t really get it.

Quick: What Is This Candidate's Party Affiliation?

A friend of a friend is a supporter of somebody named Tom Campbell who is running for U.S. Senate in California. Via Facebook, I clicked over to Campbell’s campaign website, and every page in the site is awash in Democratic blue. For example, here is Campbell’s logo:

I had to hunt high and low through this azure-hued site before I could confirm that Campbell is, indeed, a Republican. Unless I missed it, there’s nothing to that effect on his Bio page, or anywhere else, save for the third-party headlines reprinted on the Media page.

Nothing wrong with this, I suppose. It’s not like blue is a registered trademark of the Democratic Party, and he’s clearly decided that it won’t pay to trumpet his party affiliation. If he manages to hold off Carly Fiorina and capture the GOP nomination to face Barbara Boxer in the general election, it will be interesting to see if his branding changes at all.

Book Review: The Einstein Intersection

Samuel R. Delany
1967
Awards: Nebula
Rating: ★ – – – –

SPOILER ALERT (Not that it matters)

Samuel Delany published his first novel at age 20, which earned him a reputation as a prodigy. The Einstein Intersection, which he wrote at 24, seems like a desperate effort to hold on to that reputation. Everything about this book – the ambitious but half-resolved plot lines, the trippy sentence structure, the trendy 1960s themes, the inclusion of his own writer’s journal in the quotations that start each chapter – gives the impression of a writer using every technique he can think of to impress us with his brilliance without having the content to back it up.

The story takes place 30,000 years after humans have disappeared from Earth for unspecified reasons. Aliens from “the other side of the universe” have colonized the empty Earth and have somehow taken human form in an attempt to adapt better to the planet. But the human form doesn’t work quite right for the aliens, so every generation has a lot of mutation. Those who are mutated range from “functionals,” who can mix with “normals” in everyday society, to “non-functionals” who have to be kept in a “kage” and tended all their lives.

The characters keep talking about how there is a lot of prejudice towards anyone who is considered “different.” You are “different” if you have a mutation of any kind, whether it is a harmful mutation or a special ability like telepathy or telekinesis (like the X-Men). According to the book’s publicists this is supposedly one of the most powerful elements of the book, but we never run into any situations where this prejudice is really manifest or where it has any major impact on the story.

The main character, Lobey, is “different.” His difference is that he can hear the music that is playing in somebody else’s head and he can play it on his flute. Lobey falls in love with a “different” woman, Friza, who is telekinetic. Friza is mysteriously killed and Lobey is told by the elders of his village to go discover what killed her and kill it.

Through a series of hallucinations and/or visions he learns that Friza’s murderer is another “different” person named Kid Death, who can look through other people’s eyes anywhere they are and see what they see. When he gets bored with looking through their eyes, he closes their eyes permanently and thereby kills them. Lobey leaves his small village, joins up with a group of dragon herders and travels with them to the big city where the Kid is. Eventually he does manage to kill the Kid with the help of the herders and manages to also learn some life lessons in the process.

There are several bothersome things about the book, not least of which are the bold but half-explained and semi-developed themes.

One of these central themes is myth. Lobey is a rough parallel to Orpheus, who was a musical genius (on the lyre) and who traveled (unsuccessfully) to Hades to bring the woman he loved back from the dead. A modern retelling of a myth is a good device in theory but Orpheus’ story seems kind of pointless to me – his lover dies, he goes to Hades to go get her, he isn’t able to bring her back so he comes back home. I’m afraid that Lobey’s journey seems equally pointless.

Another theme of the book is the convergence of rational and irrational thought (whatever that is). One of the elders explains to Lobey that long, long ago, Albert Einstein defined the rules of the rational world and Kurt Gödel came as close as anyone can to defining the rules of the irrational world. At the intersection of the two… well, this is where the explanation kind of peters out, but it has something to do with society reaching a pinnacle of both scientific and spiritual development. It’s not really clear how it relates to Lobey’s journey, but it certainly sounds very cool to talk about.

Myth also shows up in the cheesy references to 1960s pop culture which have supposedly become lore in Lobey’s world – the tale of the Myth of Ringo, the swearing in Elvis’ name, the referring to death as “returning to the great rock and the great roll.” These might have been funny when the book first came out but seem trite now.

Delany starts each chapter with a quotation or two. Most of the quotations are from a self-consciously eclectic mix of writers from Bob Dylan to Thomas Chatterton and the Marquis de Sade, which is annoying enough. But some of the quotations are also from the author himself, from the journal he kept while traveling through Europe and writing this book. The entries always casually mention his current exotic location while talking about how he’s struggling with telling Lobey’s story: Oh, I’m having a devil of a time expressing Lobey’s pain while sitting in a small tea shack on the Bosporus with a group of Turkish sailors with whom I’m conversing in French.

At the very end of the book, he signs off the story with “— New York, Paris, Venice, Athens, Istanbul, London / Sept. ’65 – Nov. ’66.” Almost makes you feel like he wrote the book just so he could show off where he went.

In keeping with the era in which it was written, this book uses a psychedelic vocabulary and sentence structure. This sometimes works (“Chills snarled the nerves along my vertebrae”) but often doesn’t (“My ear is funnel for all voice and trill and warble you can conceive this day”). I think the main times that it doesn’t work are when Delany himself hasn’t fully thought out what he is trying to say, as in: “Music is the pure language of temporal and co-temporal relation.” What?

Delany is self-conscious about this writing style, which also makes us too conscious of it. In one of his journal entries, Delany says, “In a week…I can start the meticulous process of overlaying another filigree across the novel’s palimpsest.” I think if your novel needs to be multi-layered and obscure, just write it that way – you don’t need to tell us that’s what you’re doing so we’ll be impressed.

One thing I do have to give Delany credit for is that he gave the people in this book three sexes – male, female, and androgynous. And this book came out two years before Ursula K. LeGuin’s Left Hand of Darkness, which was considered groundbreaking for its treatment of androgynous characters.

Book Review: The Forever Machine

Also published as They'd Rather Be Right
Mark Clifton & Frank Riley
1954
Awards: Hugo
Rating: ★ ★ ★ – –

I have read several reviews of this book that say it is trite and clichéd. But I mainly enjoyed it.

The main character is a telepathic man who grew up ostracized and isolated because of his abilities. He doesn’t want to be so lonely so he builds a machine that can make other people into telepaths.

The book’s premise is that everyone has the potential to be a telepath. But our prejudices and judgmental natures prevent us from being one.

When you’re telepathic, of course, you know what everyone else is thinking. This means that telepaths have to be the most understanding, least judgmental people on earth. It would lead to a great deal of upset and disorder if telepaths were unable to handle knowing the bad things that even the best of us sometimes think.

In order to make you telepathic, therefore, the machine strips out all your preconceived ideas about what is right and wrong and rebuilds you, cell by cell, from the ground up…

…which has the nice side effect of making old people young again.

Which means that once the machine has been run on its first person, an elderly woman, and she is transformed back into a beautiful twenty-year-old, everybody on earth wants it.

The catch is that the machine won’t work on anybody who is convinced that they are absolutely right about something. If you are not flexible enough to be removed of all your assumptions and prejudices, then you will come out of the machine unchanged.

I especially liked the first third of this book, when the telepathic man is a young boy. As a child, he reacts not to what people are saying but to what they are really thinking, which of course makes everyone think he is crazy. He learns, painfully, that it is better to disguise the fact that he can tell what people are thinking.

In the second third of the book, the boy grows up and goes to college and teams up with two professors to create the telepath-making machine. Throughout the project the three of them are alternately reviled and revered by the public, because the public is both terrified of what the machine means and also greedy for it. Eventually popular opinion turns totally against them; they become the target of a witch hunt and have to go into hiding. This part was good too.

After the machine has actually been built, however, and its three creators start doing demonstrations of the machine for the public, the book kind of loses its way. It becomes far too heavy-handed in its lesson about how we all need to be more flexible and realize that we’re not always right. I also thought the solution for what to do with the machine in the end was dissatisfying.

Tower Street

I think I'm a bad dumpster diver

The other day I saw a mess of two-by-fours in the dumpster at a home that's being renovated around the corner from us. I grabbed a set of them that had been nailed together three different ways and spent about 45 minutes ripping them apart with a tiny little pry bar and a 6 or 7 ounce hammer, until, finally, I broke the hammer. I got all the nails out of two of the boards, which are eight footers, and the third one is still riddled with nails. Seems like a lot of trouble for wood that would have cost me $5.42 cents. At least I didn't hurt myself.

Book Review: Slow River

Nicola Griffith
1996
Awards: Nebula
Rating: ★ ★ – – –

I was generally impatient with this book.

It is set not too far in the future, when all of our sewage is processed and recycled by bioengineered microorganisms. The main character, Lore Van de Oest, is one of the heirs to a wealthy family that made money by creating and patenting many of these microorganisms.

At the beginning of the story, Lore gets kidnapped and the kidnappers demand ransom, but her emotionally-removed, dysfunctional family refuses to pay and basically writes her off as dead. Lore manages to escape from her kidnappers but ends up badly hurt in the process, lying an alley in the bad part of town. She is rescued and nursed back to health by a small-time cyber-crook named Spanner with whom she inevitably becomes romantically involved.

While recovering at Spanner’s apartment, Lore decides that this is her chance to escape from her family and all the baggage tied to her famous name. Spanner helps Lore get a new identity and for a while the two of them live a grimy life of cyber-crime.

Eventually Lore decides to investigate why she was kidnapped and why her family refused to pay her ransom. In order to figure it out she has to go undercover in one of the sewage treatment plants that uses her family’s microorganisms. This was the best part of the book. The water treatment plant uses a multi-stage ecological system to break down the sewage naturally, from pools of toxin-eating algae at the beginning down to fish farms at the end of the line. The technology behind it was really neat and not all that far off from what we could do today.

Unfortunately, I just didn't get into the rest of the book. Spanner is a pretty harsh and unappealing person who is willing to do just about anything for money including sell out her lover. And I didn’t really feel all that sorry for Lore as the poor little rich girl who is so beleaguered by her wealth and fame (even if she does uncover an awful history of abuse in her family).

Blackbaud Corp. Smoking Policy

Dibbles

This morning I passed a small pile of recently-pruned cherry tree branches at the Arnold Arboretum. Some of them still had flowers on them. I thought about taking a big fat section home to make into spoons, but then I remember the stack of curing maple and wild cherry wood I have already waiting for my attention, and I took a small branch instead.

I took the smallest piece--about finger-thick--and stripped the bark off with a paring knife. Then I whittled away the dark, moist outer layer, leaving just the inner wood. Then I used a handsaw to cut off the sharp ends where I had snapped the branch into dibble-sized pieces.

I feel like I should know what that middle layer is called--sapwood? Cambium? Or is it simply the inner bark?

At any rate, I know have two lovely, handmade dibbles that I plan to use (tonight if I can get myself organized) to start seeds for my new garden.

Oreilles Gauloises (Dead Air Edition) - OFF UNTIL FRIDAY APRIL 16th

Due to a couple of work-related deadlines, I was unable to write my weekly music album review this past Friday. I will be back this coming week. My apologies. To make amends, and to pay homage to Mr. Alex Chilton who recently passed away, I am posting this Big Star classic, from their timeless debut #1 Record

- Karlissimo del Banco

Book Review: Ender's Game

Orson Scott Card
1985
Awards: Nebula, Hugo
Rating: ★ ★ ★ – –

SPOILER ALERT

Before I read Ender’s Game for the first time, I had heard a lot of hype from others about how life-changing this book was for them. It didn’t live up to the lofty expectations that the hype had set up and I was disappointed.

I read it again recently, though, and this second time I think I was able to appreciate the book much better for what it is.

The story is set in the future, when we on Earth are nearing the end of an 80-year break in an interstellar war against another species, the Buggers. The Buggers’ original two invasions were brutal and all of humanity is united in preparing to defend Earth against the expected Third Invasion. Governments have begun genetically engineering children to be soldiers in the coming war; they run them through a series of tests when they are little to see if they will be good candidates for Battle School (when they are elementary-school age) and then Command School (when they are teenagers). In school, they run the children through battle simulation after battle simulation, teaching them how to fight and kill.

The main character in the book is Andrew “Ender” Wiggin, a six-year old military genius (who is good at many other things as well). He is lonely at Battle School, ostracized and sometimes hated by many of the older students who are threatened by his skill. They do everything from not eating with him at meals to trying to kill him in the hallways. But he is so good that he still rises rapidly through the ranks at Battle School, leading first small groups and then whole battalions of his fellow students, entering Command School several years early.

Ender enjoys what he does. He is creative and adaptable. He learns his opponents’ patterns quickly and exploits them. The problem is that he doesn’t like to kill. And the more successful he becomes, the more agonized he gets inside about what he is doing. He knows he is being used as a tool and it makes him miserable.

What he doesn’t realize until it is too late is that the humans don’t just want to defend themselves against a Third Invasion – they want to completely annihilate the Buggers and their home world. And that at some point, the battles he is fighting have changed from simulations to real encounters with the enemy that he is commanding by remote control.

He does, finally, lead the human forces to victory over the Buggers, with huge loss of life. When he finds out what he has done he goes through a profound breakdown and decides to completely redirect his life and honor the memory of those he has killed.

It is a very good story and Ender is a very likeable character. I definitely identified with his loneliness and I liked the way he was always able to think his way into succeeding against huge odds. I just had a couple problems with the book.

One was that the ending seemed too abrupt. It was very quick. I guess I thought that Ender would eventually be on the actual battlefield himself, or that we would actually meet a Bugger, and when neither of those things happened, it was a bit unsatisfying.

The other was the more minor story of what was going on back home while Ender was at school. Ender’s brother Peter and sister Valentine are geniuses in their own rights, but Peter was too aggressive and Valentine too pacifistic to make good military leaders. Left out, they begin writing columns and editorials in global political nets, widening divisions between political factions (mainly between America and Russia). I didn’t really get into their story as I did Ender’s.

After reading Ender’s Game, I read the sequel, Speaker for the Dead. I just loved it. It was moving and complex and I enjoyed seeing what Ender had become as an adult, after he had turned away from the military. Later I read that Orson Scott Card originally meant both stories to be in the same book, but that when he got into it, he realized that it was too much and he should split off what was then just a backstory about Ender’s youth into its own book, which would then be a set up for Speaker. If that is indeed what he intended, it totally worked for me.

Felt

For my first attempt at knitting in the continental style, I decided to make felted pot-holders.

I made a pair, one in all knit garter stitch and one in all pearl garter stitch. (I even did a few rows of pearling in the "Portuguese style," [with yarn tensioned around neck, which I think would be more properly called Arab Style], which was amazingly fast and easy for pearling. It's a bit tricky for knitting but I think maybe worth learning.) It turns out garter stitch is not great for felting pot-holders, but they work fine as hot pads for warm serving dishes on the table. And the felting process did a nice job of evening out my sketchy first-time-ever-knitting-this-way tension.

I have also been using them as a bottom layer of insulation underneath the warm jars of fermenting milk when I make yogurt.

Paris Tree Gunman

March 26, 2009.

Oreilles Gauloises (Travis Bean Guitars Edition) - At Action Park (Shellac)

I don't remember why I bought my first Shellac album. I don't think I'd heard their music before. It could have been that I was intrigued by the art on the cover of the album Terraform. In any case,  I did walk out of Mars, a record store that was once located on Mass Ave between Central and Harvard Square, with their album in my hand. This was back in the mid 90's. Great album, but not as great as this one. This one is what sealed the deal for me.

Steve Albini is a relatively well-known recording engineer and producer. He's done work with all sorts of bands, including Nirvana, the Pixies, The Stooges, and Robert Plant/Jimmy Page. He's also a musician in his own right. His band Big Black had a couple of great albums that are highly regarded in the punk/indie music community. Shellac, his current band, has been around for about 15 years, and they release albums every 4-5 years (the members have day-jobs, so-to-speak, and they're not under pressure by their record company to put out music every 6 months, which is the way it should be if you ask me). Albini is also a very polarizing character because of his strong views on the record industry, his recording techniques, and his often-shocking song lyrics. People seem to either worship him, or hate his guts. Me, I just like a lot of the songs he's written, and the way the man plays his guitar.

If you're like me, and are a big fan of Travis Bean guitars, you'll love this album. They're made out of really hard wood, with a metal neck - practically indestructible - and they have that metallic tone that makes them really unique. Many jazz and rock musicians have used these guitars in the 70's and 80's, including the Rolling Stones, PiL, and the Grateful Dead, and more recently, The Jesus Lizard....and Shellac. They stopped producing the guitars in 1979, so there are a limited number of them floating around, and owning one is a real privilege, and the envy of many.

This is the album that reminded me how amazing guitars can sound, and gave me back my faith that guitar-based music still had a lot to offer. If you know a band that uses Travis Bean instruments, go see them live, and you'll hear what I mean right away.

Book Review: The Progress of a Crime

Julian Symons
1960
Awards: Edgar
Rating: ★ ★ ★ – –

This book is not a stereotypical murder mystery with a lot of drama and gore. As advertised, it follows the progress of a crime very closely and realistically, from the murder to the trial of the chief suspects. You experience the investigation from the point of view of several people trying to figure out what happened – reporters, policemen, and lawyers. Sometimes they get information through good detective work, and sometimes they get it accidentally. You find out what they know as soon as they know it, and you put the story together with them.

The story had twists that I did not expect, precisely because the twists were caused by what would happen in real life – people being confused, people saying things inarticulately, people not knowing quite what they want or what they are doing.

The story is set in a small city outside of London. A gang of youths acts rowdy and gets thrown out of a dance by a prominent local citizen. A short time later, amid the confusion of a Guy Fawkes Day fireworks and bonfire celebration, the youths come back and manage to stab the prominent local citizen to death. It so happens that Hugh Bennet, a reporter for the local paper, was covering the Guy Fawkes Day bonfire when the murder happened. He thus simultaneously becomes not only an investigator of the crime but also a witness to it.

Bennet isn’t a typical lead character; he is unsure of himself and gets confused like any normal human being. He is a relatively new reporter and tends to romanticize his editor, his job, and his co-workers. He becomes disillusioned with them when a big-time reporter from a London paper comes out to cover the case and gives him a little more perspective. Then, in turn, he gets disillusioned by the big-time reporter as he learns more about his world.

Bennet’s girlfriend is a real person as well; she gets frustrated and doesn’t always act in the best or most attractive way.

The lead detective on the case, Twicker, mishandled a previous case and Scotland Yard has given this one to him as a sort of a test. I thought the whole time it was going to be a stereotypical Hollywood-type story where he was going to pull it out of his hat and dramatically redeem himself to the Yard but, as with everything else in this book, things don’t always go exactly as Hollywood would have you expect.

The lawyers for the prosecution and the defense are charismatic characters but they're not superhuman or brilliant like the ones on Law & Order. They have moments where they shine and moments of trouble, and none of them care particularly about the boys they are prosecuting or defending; they care primarily about their jobs and reputations.

The case does make many of the characters reevaluate their lives and their careers, especially Bennet. But it doesn't tie up neatly or end terrifically happily for everyone. Things come out better for some, worse for others; some find their resolution depressing and others try to make the best of theirs. Just like real life.

P.J. Woods & Co. Insurance Calendar Weather Forecast Report Card: March 26-31, 2010

Forecast for March 26 - 31
“Sunny and dry – rather windy – gusty winds at times”

Observations at Logan Airport (via Weather Underground)

Date	Conditions	Precipitation	Wind Speed Avg / Gust
March 26	Light rain	0.17"	14 / 32 mph
March 27	Partly Cloudy	0	12 / 24 mph
March 28	Overcast	0	12 / 28 mph
March 29	Rain	1.96"	12 / 39 mph
March 30	Rain	2.93"	21 / 41 mph
March 31	Overcast	0.04"	13 / 20 mph

Result
The forecast was wrong — spectacularly wrong in the case of “sunny and dry” — during a six-day observation period featuring over five more inches of rain that pushed the total for the month to a record-breaking 14.87." On the plus side, it was fairly windy.

Grade
D

Cumulative GPA
1.71

What is This
A periodic check-up on the weather forecasts printed at the bottom of a nice big calendar from the P.J. Woods and Co. Insurance Agency, Peabody, Massachusetts.

Mission Hill

Stay on the High Road

The "Go for it" taunt made me wince. Sorry to see that it was apparently part of the prepared remarks as well. It's a needless bit of dancing in the end zone, if you ask me, and out of character for Obama.

You never want to provide headlines for the other team to put on the locker-room bulletin board. Also, his credibility with independents is too fragile yet to act so cocky.

Obama does this sort of thing from time to time -- cutting remarks like "You're likable enough" to Hillary Clinton and "I won" when in a Roosevelt Room meeting with Dem and GOP leaders last year on the stimulus.

When I saw this, my mind went immediately to the image of President Bush's callow challenge to insurgents in Iraq to "bring it on." Which they did.

Color Theory

Two caps, same plate, same lighting, same settings on the camera.

P.J. Woods & Co. Insurance Calendar Weather Forecast Report Card: March 22-25, 2010

Forecast for March 22 - 25
“Windy and wet – rain and a few thunderstorms.”

Observations at Logan Airport (via Weather Underground)

Date	Avg. Wind Speed (mph)	Conditions	Rainfall
March 22	8	Overcast	0.08"
March 23	16	Rain	2.22"
March 24	17	Overcast	0.02"
March 25	12	Mostly Cloudy	T

Result
The forecast was fairly accurate, except for the “thunderstorms” part, and it was not especially windy for this time of year. We did receive at least a trace of rain all four days, however, with March 23 seeing a record rainfall of 2.22".

Grade
B

Cumulative GPA
1.83

What Is This?
A periodic check-up on the weather forecasts printed at the bottom of a nice big calendar from the P.J. Woods and Co. Insurance Agency, Peabody, Massachusetts.

Book Review: Rendezvous with Rama

Arthur C. Clarke
1972
Awards: Nebula, Hugo
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ –

This is one of two Nebula-winning novels I have read so far that involve a totally neat-o, unusually-shaped, artificially-created world (the other is Ringworld).

In this story, Earth is innocently spinning along through space when suddenly our scientists see a blip on the radar and discover that something is coming towards us at tremendous speed from the edge of the solar system. As the object gets nearer they are able to see that it is a cylinder, made of metal and so exactly proportioned that it must have been made by an intelligent life form. At first they are afraid that it is going to hit us, but it slows down when it gets close to Earth. A crack scientific and military team is quickly assembled to intercept it.

When the team links up in space with the oncoming object, it does indeed turn out to be an absolutely enormous cylindrical spaceship. And when the team is able to get inside, they discover that inside the cylinder is actually a complete world, complete with seas and mountains and prairies. The catch is that the world is inside out, with the seas and mountains and prairies covering the entire inside skin of the cylinder. The cylinder revolves to create gravity, so that the seas stay in place, and so that when a human stands on the “ground” on the inside of the cylinder, they feel like they’re standing on a regular planet – even though the other side of the “world” is not under their feet but over their head.

The humans’ exploration of the new world is detailed and entertaining. Clarke not only thinks of the big things, like how the world gets heat and light, but also the little things, like that people might get a little queasy when they crawl down the stairway from the center of the cylinder (where there is hardly any gravity) to the ground on the inside edge of the cylinder (where there is Earthlike gravity).

The book is not overtly scary, but there are definitely moments when it is quite tense and suspenseful. Especially when you realize that the Earth team might not be alone…

This is actually just the first book in what eventually became a Rama series. The next books are also pretty good, exploring more of the spaceship and eventually letting you meet its builders. But Rendezvous with Rama is definitely the best of them all.

The only things that rang a bit false to me in this book were the characters. Clarke doesn’t seem to be able to write most of them so they seem like real people. However, if you can ignore that and the often stilted conversations and instead focus on the exploration of the really cool world-in-a-cylinder, you’re home free.

Quick Health Care Reform Post-game Show

I grieved the loss of the public option last year. My fear over the past month was more political: that the Democrats would once again get scared of offending someone rather than realize that people respect parties and politicians who disagree with them if one knows where they stand. So winning this vote, as weak as the actual legislation is, should work as a confidence-builder.

Most of the Democrats in Congress have spent their entire careers cowering in fear of someone calling them a “liberal.” It took new blood, someone like Al Franken who hadn't had time to get into the DLC-Frum-Carville defensive crouch, to get impatient and demand that Obama do some spadework on this. And then Pelosi's sharp-elbowed personality, which I hadn't ever found endearing before, was put to good use.

As for the legislation itself, I'm persuaded by the analysis that it's a foot in the door, and an important re-definition of the federal role in health care. We’re closer to a single-payer system now.

Also, back to the politics, I think Obama’s detachment during 2009 was part of a longer-term plan to establish his bona fides as a post-partisan. The country doesn't blame him for his failure to get GOP votes, and the next two issues, immigration and financial reform, are going to be trickier for the Tea Partiers to oppose.

Two Kinds

Lucas firmly believes that there are two kinds of people: leaders and backlers.

Which kind are you?

P.J. Woods & Co. Insurance Calendar Weather Forecast Report Card: March 17-21, 2010

Forecast for March 17 - 21
“Dry, rather quiet, with plenty of sun and light winds.”

Observations at Logan Airport (via Weather Underground)

Date	Rainfall	Conditions	Avg. Wind Speed (mph)
March 17	0"	Clear	8
March 18	0"	Scattered Clouds	11
March 19	0"	Partly Cloudy	6
March 20	0"	Mostly Cloudy	8
March 21	0"	Mostly Cloudy	10

Result
The forecast was fairly accurate, except for the “plenty of sun” part. There was zero precipitation and very light winds all five days.

Grade
B

Cumulative GPA
1.6

What Is This?
A periodic check-up on the weather forecasts printed at the bottom of a nice big calendar from the P.J. Woods and Co. Insurance Agency, Peabody, Massachusetts.

Mission Church

Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Mission Hill, Boston, Massachusetts.

Zorb

Zorb.com

From my 2005 journal entry in BallOfDirt.com:

I had read about Zorb in various guide books and had to try it. Basically you haul yourself inside a giant inflatable ball and roll down a hill. There are several configurations you can choose from; I selected the "Hydro Zig Zag." This entails several litres of warm water inside the Zorb with you and a zig-zag course down the hill instead of a straight shot down the fall line.

The water allows you to slosh around in there as the ball rolls. Without water, you have to strap yourself in a harness, which sounds less Xtreme but probably offers more stomach-churning action because you'd spend a fair amount of time upside down. With the water, you stay in the bottom half of the ball and it sort of rotates around you.

The expert Zorbers try to run inside the ball down the entire mountain. I was happy to just sit on my rear end and get wet.

That's me, by the way, in the lower-most ball.