Peter Sean Bradley

Impossible Murder in a too possible future.

The Real-Town Murders by Adam Roberts

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This book is like the author's prior book (Jack Glass) in featuring an impossible murder in the ultimate locked room. In this case, it is a body that mysteriously appears in a locked car trunk (or boot, since this is set in England) manufactured by a robot automobile assembly plant under minute recorded observation by an artificial intelligence (AI). How did the body mysteriously get put there when no one was seen or videoed putting it there?

Private investigator Alma is called in to investigate. Alma is sharp but works under a disability. Her lover, Rita, has been infected with a genetic phage that will kill Rita unless Alma - and only Alma - diagnoses and implements a cure every four hours. This limitation keeps the clock ticking at all times.

The mystery goes deeper than the murder. 90% of humanity has become addicted to a virtual reality existence called the “Shine.” They exist in the real world as comatose bodies that are taken out for walks by their “mesh” suits to keep the bodies working. The Shine is captivating like the best video games. Anything can happen there. The real world cannot compete and does not have to compete since robots and AIs can make the few things that humans need in the real world.

Because of Rita's dependence on her, Alma lives exclusively in the real world, which is virtually depopulated, apart from the occasional human body being taken out for exercise while the human mind continues to enjoy the Shine. Real-world government has attempted to compete by making the real world more exciting, such as by sculpting the White Cliffs of Dover into giant faces of British historical figures and renaming towns like Reading into “catchier” names like R! Town.

But it is a losing proposition, and real-world governments are feeling the power shift to their Shine equivalents.

If only real-world governments had a game-changer that could lure the population out of the Shine?

Like, teleportation.

I like this book. The writing and observations are insightful. Ultimately, though, the write-up fell short of tying up some loose ends (like Jack Glass), making me think that there might be a sequel in the works (like Jack Glass.)

2000 Years of Christ's Power (Vol. 2) by Nick Needham

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This is a hard book for me to evaluate. It has a lot of virtues, but in a very subtle way it communicates an unfortunate undercurrent of anti-Catholicism, despite, I believe, making a heroic effort to avoid that vice. This assessment is not surprising. The book is written from an unapologetically Evangelical perspective and I am a Catholic with a deep interest in history.

The book is part of a longer series that surveys Christian history from the beginning to the present day. This book offers a broad survey of history beginning with the eruption of Islam into Christian lands outside of Europe to pre-Protestant anti-Catholic religious movements. This survey is broad and informative. It often takes a deep dive into particular subjects. The language of the book is extremely accessible and the subjects are invariably interesting. A very nice feature of this book is that at the end of each section, the author, Nick Needham, provides textual excerpts from some of the sources he's mentioned.

Much of this is very good. I particularly liked the section on St. Gregory Palamas and the dispute over Hesychasm. As an introduction to a very difficult and arcane topic, it was first-rate and well worth the price of the book. Likewise, the section on Scholasticism laid down the basic teachings of the centuries-long line of Schoolmen in a brief and intelligible way.

Although the recounting of this history takes a long and longed for step away from anti-Catholic tropes, it still manages to slip a few of the traditional tropes into the mix. For example, the presentation of the Crusades is premised on Catholic aggression against peaceful Muslims. The myth of peaceful Muslim Spain is promoted:

“The most tolerant and fruitful Christian-Muslim relationships were those of Muslim Spain (or the “emirate of Cordova”, as it was called in the Islamic Empire).

Needham, Nick. 2,000 Years of Christ's Power Vol. 2: The Middle Ages (p. 29). Christian Focus Publications. Kindle Edition.

Given the fact that Christianity was virtually exterminated in Muslim Spain, it's not clear how tolerant these relationships were. A recommendation here is to read “The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise by Dario Fernandez- Morera to become acquainted with the dark side of this history.

Likewise, the Muslim conquest is explained by the nobility of its soldiers:

“Arabia. Within a hundred years, they had created a huge Islamic Empire, stretching from India to Spain. The world had rarely known armies like this before: brave, tough, completely sober (Islam did not allow Muslims to drink alcohol), and burning with a zeal for their faith which made them unafraid of death.

Needham, Nick. 2,000 Years of Christ's Power Vol. 2: The Middle Ages (p. 20). Christian Focus Publications. Kindle Edition.

In none of this is the real desire for loot and wealth acknowledged. Arab warriors had a long tradition of raiding and much of the Muslim conquest was prefigured by years of raiding which destabilized the target prior to conquest.

The way this trope works is that Evangelicals tend to conflate peacefulness with being Christian and start tut-tutting about those war-like Catholics betraying Christian principles by being so beastly and war-like against noble and peaceful Muslims. What this trope leaves out is the fact that the Muslims were occupying lands that had been Christian for centuries and were gradually exterminating Christian populations through continuous pressure such as heavier taxes and social discrimination which could be alleviated through conversion. This pressure was periodically punctuated with bouts of violent persecutions, resulting in genocides.

This book doesn't mention the damage done to Christian Europe by the constant raiding which took millions of Christians as slaves and resulted in Muslim attacks on Rome itself. If Christianity had not learned to fight back, then Christian populations in Europe could easily have gone the same way as Christian populations in the Byzantine Empire. Since this book is about 2,000 years of Christ's power, some due interest in the legitimacy of Christian resistance, and the backstory that justified that resistance, ought to have been presented.

Another trope involves the Inquisition. The author writes:

“It developed into the most feared organisation of the later Middle Ages. Once the inquisition had accused a person of heresy, it was almost impossible for him to prove his innocence.

Needham, Nick. 2,000 Years of Christ's Power Vol. 2: The Middle Ages (p. 319). Christian Focus Publications. Kindle Edition.

This is pure nonsense, according to modern scholars. In the Great Inquisition in Languedoc following the Albigensian Crusade, 5,500 men and women were questioned by the Inquisition. Out of this number, according to “The Corruption of Angels: The Great Inquisition of 1245-1246 by Mark Gregory Pegg:

“In the two hundred and seven known sentences that the two friar-inquisitors pronounced in a series of general sermons given, largely at Saint-Sernin, between Sunday, 18 March, and Sunday, 22 July 1246, only twenty-three did not involve having to wear yellow crosses. Instead, these twenty-one men and two women who had “shamefully offended God and the Church” were all punished with perpetual incarceration in a “decent and humane prison.”

If you read other books on the cases that appeared before other Inquisitions, you learn that the Inquisition took due process very seriously and often released the accused where there was a lack of evidence. (See Kagan, Richard L.; Dyer, Abigail (2011-07-21). Inquisitorial Inquiries.) The Inquisition had a light footprint when it came to convictions.

To his credit, the author doesn't spend a lot of time on the Inquisition, but there are few references to it that are fresh meat for anti-Catholics.

Finally, a really unfortunate slip of anti-Catholicism occurs when the author writes:

“The more fervent worshippers of Mary declared that in heaven Bernard bore a blemish on his glorified breast to atone for what he had said against the Virgin.

Needham, Nick. 2,000 Years of Christ's Power Vol. 2: The Middle Ages (pp. 201-202). Christian Focus Publications. Kindle Edition.

I really believe this is an unfortunate error on the author's part. The sense I get from the generally irenic tone of this book is that the author wouldn't intentionally intend to slander Catholics with the “Catholics worship Mary” lie, but, unfortunately, this sentence sets back a desirable ecumenism.

To his credit, the author encourages his readers to take an interest in medieval history, even the Catholic parts because, according to the author, the Reformers were born in the heart of the Catholic Church. He observes:

“As an heir of the Reformation and a Church historian, I often find myself telling people that the great spiritual and theological movement set rolling by Luther and Zwingli was in fact the best elements of Western medieval Christianity trying to correct the worst elements.

Needham, Nick. 2,000 Years of Christ's Power Vol. 2: The Middle Ages (p. 9). Christian Focus Publications. Kindle Edition.

In volume 1, the author explains his model of Christian history whereby Christian history can be thought of as a growing person: Birth>Child>Teenager>Adult, with the Middle Ages being the child and the Reformation being the teenager.

So, fine, we have explicitly stated something that many Protestants probably think. I know that I had a law partner tell me one evening his sincere belief that Catholicism was “transitional paganism.” I personally don't think this is a helpful or truthful way to model history.

So, I probably can't recommend this book to people who don't already know enough history to read it in an informed and critical way. On the other hand, I may refer to it as a quick source of names and dates. The textual excerpts are excellent and can be a useful springboard for further reading.

Favours by Benedict Jacka

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It has been a few years since I read my last Benedict Jacka novel (Fated #2.) I remember the general outlines of the first two books, but I don't remember Sonders, who is the main character in this novella. Sonders was previously a spear-carrier called in by lead character Alex Verrus.

In Jacka's story, magic users are divided between light and dark mages, and individual mages specialize in various kinds of magic, e.g., battle magic, elemental magic, etc. Sonders is a “time mage.” He has the ability to view past events. He's called in to examine a theft of important documents that can be used to blackmail important people on the Light Council. Murders occur as he investigates and ultimately Sonders finds himself holding a chit in the big game of power politics in the Light Council.

The story is interesting for taking someone who was a plot device in the prior book, like so many expendable characters in similar books, and making him the main character in his own story. In this regard, we see the world from Sonders' perspective. I couldn't tell if I liked Sonders. He seemed driven to solve the mystery and see justice done, but he also ended up coming across as a mercenary. Perhaps that was the point of the story. It should be interesting to see how this sub-story develops.

Eternals by Neil Gaiman


I am not a prolific reader of graphic novels. So, I get lost when we move beyond the top tier of superheroes. However, with the Eternals movie coming out, I thought I'd get a preview.

So, apparently, a million years ago a group of Very Advanced Beings - maybe God (or gods) - called “Celestials” came to Earth and designed three species of humanity, Homo Deviant, Homo Immortalis, and just us, “Vanilla Humans.” The Deviants are individually different with tentacles, claws, teeth, bad body odor, and a tyrannical attitude. The immortals are “Eternals” who are beautiful, super-powered, and have good hygiene habits. Plain vanilla humans are stupid. The Eternals have names like Ikarus, Makuri, Thena, etc., and were the corresponding gods of ancient human civilizations.

That is a complicated backstory, but it gets worse. It seems that the Eternals have lost their memory because of the machinations of one of their number, who wants to grow older than 11. We get an introduction to the main Eternals. The Eternals is set in the Avenger universe so Iron Man and Wasp play a role.

The writing is supposedly done by Neil Gaiman, but I didn't discern anything particularly Gaimanesque about it.

If you are a reader of this genre, you may like this. On the other hand, I'm not sure I need to complicate my life with another layer of myth.

Every Hole is Outlined by John Barnes

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John Barnes is better known for his book-length stories than his short stories, but this short story reveals that he can bring his prodigious imagination and storytelling skills to the short story format.

This story is set more than 14,000 years in the future - or at least the starship on which the story is set is that old. Humanity has expanded far across the galaxy in various pulses of colonization. It isn't clear why interstellar trade occurs at all since humans can create anything from the molecular level on up. “Ship people” are an autistic class that is separated from their planet-bound fellow humans by centuries of relativistic time dilation.

This is a ghost story. I was expecting something dark and spooky for the Halloween season, but this is really a romance. The humans who crew these ancient ships are quiet and withdrawn and have to keep a minimum number of crew. When one of their numbers dies, a replacement - a slave - is purchased and integrated into the crew. Her mentor shows her that occasionally - rarely - ghosts of the former crew come back to the ship. There is a discussion about what this means, but the real strength of the story is the feeling of melancholy and nostalgia as the relativistic years pass.

I enjoyed the setting and the writing.

Jesus the Eternal Son by Michael F. Bird

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In the popular lay mind - at least that portion that has been exposed to popular scholarly Bible studies - the idea that adoptionism was the original Christian position is accepted as an article of faith. In certain of his popular lectures on the Teaching Company (now Wondrium), Bart Ehrman has identified the Ebionites's doctrine of Christ as a non-divine human being. I saw a lecture given by Father Raymond that tried to explain the progressive development of the exposition of Christ's divinity from the Baptism (Mark) to Birth (Luke and Matthew) to pre-existence (John), ignoring completely the earliest stratum of Paul's letters that contained a high pre-existence Christology.

This book does a very nice job of dealing with these claims in a coherent and scholarly manner. For example, the author, Michael F. Bird, addresses the claim that Mark exhibits a low-Christology consistent with adoptionism. Adoptionism is the doctrine that Jesus started out as a mere human being until he was adopted by God, usually at the Baptism when God announces that Jesus was his beloved Son.

Adoptionism presents the adopted Jesus as a lesser god, not ontologically one with the Father, aka God. This would make Christ a kind of demigod, or intermediate god. The argument based on Mark is that the gentile world was used to the deification of human beings. Emperors were customarily promoted to god status after death, and sometimes during their lives. These emperors were the subject of actual worship and, yet, the pagan mind could distinguish between the actual gods and these adopted gods.

Even Jews recognized an intermediate class of angels and divine beings between God and humans. Bird writes:

“We can easily find Jewish literature referring to heavenly beings who seem to represent and stand in for Israel's God, including the Angel of the Lord.78 The angel Metratron functions as a heavenly vice-regent.79 Philo calls the Logos a “second god.”80 The Enochic Son of Man is a heavenly figure who receives homage.81 Or else human figures are treated with divine status and given divine tasks like Adam,82 Enoch,83 and Moses,84 and in the Qumran scrolls Melchizedek exercises the divine prerogative of judgment and is even called Elohim (“god”) in the sense of Ps 82.85 In several Jewish texts, humans could experience post-mortem transformations into glorious states and attain angelic qualities. Yet, they seem to fall short of a deification that gives them equality with Yahweh in power and being.86 Many have naturally seen in these intermediary figures clear evidence that divinity was inclusive rather than exclusive and regarded them as an explanation for describing how divinity was acquired by or attributed to Jesus.

Bird, Michael F.. Jesus the Eternal Son: Answering Adoptionist Christology (pp. 51-52). Eerdmans. Kindle Edition.

However, as with the case during the Arian heresy, Jews recognized a distinction between the divine and the non-divine:

“If we bring Josephus and Philo together in their critiques of deification, then we can agree with Dunn that, “Jewish writings tend to be more scrupulous and less free in their attribution of divine sonship and divinity to men.”114 The premise of monotheism, even with subordinate and intermediary figures, includes an absolute distinction between God and humanity that could not be traversed.

Bird, Michael F.. Jesus the Eternal Son: Answering Adoptionist Christology (p. 57). Eerdmans. Kindle Edition.

Lex orandi, lex credendi:

“Overall, angelic creatures and exalted human figures were not treated as recipients of cultic worship on the same level of Yahweh in Jewish circles. Jewish devotion showed a concern to preserve God's uniqueness. In their cultic worship they maintained an almost paranoid anxiety about exclusivity. The upshot is that Jewish practice was very concerned with safeguarding monolatry, suggesting a genuinely robust commitment to a strict monotheism. In which case, devotion to Jesus Christ—not as a second god or an angel beside God but as an expression of faith in the one God—is strikingly unusual.

Bird, Michael F.. Jesus the Eternal Son: Answering Adoptionist Christology (pp. 59-60). Eerdmans. Kindle Edition.

According to Bird, Mark locates Jesus on the other side - the divine side - of the creator/creature line:

“Given the widespread attestation of Jesus's pre-existence in Christian sources contemporary with Mark,35 Davis is right that “any espousal of adoptionism would need to be quite pointed; but this we do not find.”36 Quite the reverse is apparent: there are telltale signs that Mark has a tacit conception of Jesus's pre-existence as a divine son.

Bird, Michael F.. Jesus the Eternal Son: Answering Adoptionist Christology (p. 78). Eerdmans. Kindle Edition.

Bird points to something that has escaped my attention on the issue of divine pre-existence, namely, Jesus and the demons were already acquainted:

“Even so, the baptism story is not the final word on the subject. While we can and will say more about Mark's κύριος language for Jesus and what it implies about Jesus's identity, a prima facie case for the pre-existence of the Markan Jesus is evidenced by his reception from demons. During one exorcism in a synagogue, a man possessed by an unclean spirit cried out, “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!” (Mark 1:24). And the narrator later describes Jesus's ministry in Galilee, informing readers that “whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell prostrate before him and cried out, ‘You are the Son of God.'” The story of Jesus's encounter with the Gerasene demoniac afflicted by a legion of demons includes the demoniac running to Jesus and shouting: “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I implore you before God, don't torture me!” (Mark 5:7). It is not simply a question of the demons knowing about Jesus, they know him to be the “Holy One of God” and the “Son of God” who has come from somewhere on the God-side of the heaven-creation divide, and has divine authority to destroy them.

Bird, Michael F.. Jesus the Eternal Son: Answering Adoptionist Christology (pp. 78-79). Eerdmans. Kindle Edition.

Bird supports his argument with examples of Jesus's “divine prerogatives.”

So, the first “surprising” point is that Mark is not an adoptionist.

The second is that adoptionism is not attested to until relatively late in the game, i.e., the late second century. Bird examines classical arguments for adoptionism, including the Shepherd of Hermas and the Ebionites, whom he acquits of the adoptionist charge. The Ebionites come across as far more diverse than Bart Ehrman allows in his lectures to generations of naive students.

Bird convicts Theodore of Byzantium on the adoptionist charge:

“As a distinct heresy,” says Harold Brown, “adoptionism did not make its appearance until about the year 190 in Rome, where it was certainly partly a reaction against the gnostic speculation that made of Christ an immaterial aeon.”45 The idea is associated with Theodotus of Byzantium, a leatherworker or cobbler, who came to Rome.46 Critics alleged that Theodotus had denied the faith while in Byzantium and fled to Rome. When confronted with his denial, he responded that he had only denied a mere man, not God.47 However, it is more likely that his views were carefully articulated rather than an improvised excuse for his apostasy.48 He was excommunicated by Bishop Victor of Rome before the end of the second century.49
Theodotus's scheme accepted orthodox views of God and creation, perhaps holding to the virgin birth.50 The crux was that Jesus was a “mere man” (ψιλὸς ἄνθρωπος) who was supremely virtuous. Thereafter, the Spirit or Christ descended upon him at his baptism, enabling him to perform miracles.51 Theodotus is said to have emphasized certain texts like Deut 18:15, Isa 53:3–8, and Jer 17:8, in which God promised to raise up a human prophet in the future.52 He summarized the apostolic testimony to Jesus with the description of Jesus as “a man approved by signs and wonders” (Acts 2:22) and the “one mediator between God and man the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim 2:5).

Bird, Michael F.. Jesus the Eternal Son: Answering Adoptionist Christology (pp. 120-121). Eerdmans. Kindle Edition.

So, if I understand this, Bird's conclusion is that the late second century is the first moment we can securely identify someone as being adoptionist.

Of course, in history, the “first moment we find something” typically indicates that the actual first moment is earlier. Most evidence of historical events is simply lost to the historical record. When science announces the discovery of the earliest human, we know that it didn't just appear fully-formed like Athena from the head of Zeus; the first discovery is evidence of a much longer development, which is why we shouldn't be surprised when they inevitably find an earlier example.

However, for purposes of this discussion, the evidence convicts. We have clear evidence of high Christology more than a century before we have any evidence of an adoptionist Christology. On that point, we can safely conclude that adoptionism was .... wait for it ... a heresy that was created after the orthodox position.

Take that Bart Ehrman.

The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte

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I came to this book after watching the Roman Polanski/Johnny Depp movie “The Ninth Gate.” In the movie, Johnny Depp is a book buyer named Corso. He is hired by Balkan (Frank Langella) to compare Balkan's copy of a demonic book said to have been written by Satan with two other known copies. Balkan is a Satanist who wants the book because of its reputation of being a book by which Satan can be summoned. On his trip, Corso is attacked by other people who are after the book. Murders occur and the other copies mysteriously disappear or are destroyed. Along the way, Corso is befriended by a mysterious, beautiful young woman, who at random times floats down stairs in “watch or you'll miss it” scenes that are never mentioned or explained.

After reading the book by Arturo Peretz-Reverte, I have a much better idea of how the pieces fit together. In the Reverte novel, the Satanist is not Balkan, at all, but someone else. Balkan is the narrator of the story, at least in the parts that are first person. Reverte's novel stitches together two unrelated mysteries: one being the pursuit of the Ninth Gate book mystery, the other being a folio of handwritten notes concerning a chapter of the Three Musketeers by Dumas. The novel was revised to eliminate the latter plot and move characters around to serve the former. That's why Balkan becomes the Satanist in the movie. Likewise, “the girl” remains mysterious, but we get a better understanding of what her mysterious mission is.

I enjoyed the book far more than the movie. The book did provide two mysteries, one involving the satanic book, the other involving the Dumas manuscript. We are led down the primrose path by one of the mysteries. The Corso character was engaging. The “girl” was mysterious and probably a fallen angel. The story moved along at a nice clip.

The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories (Landmark Series.)

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The first six books of The Histories by Herodotus are a kind of Cook's Tour/ethnography of the world known to Herodotus. He tells us what he knows and has heard, which often amounts to tall tales from sailors. He knows something about India but never mentions Britain or Spain. The Hebrews/Israel get no mention, which makes sense because they have only recently been returned to Israel by the Persians during the period he is writing about.

It's interesting and sometimes amusing but not very important or historical.

Midway through Book Six, we run into the Battle of Marathon and The Histories turn into a “page-turner.” After Marathon, Xerxes builds up a huge army and navy to crush the Greeks. Herodotus takes us slowly through the Persian advance as the Persians conquer Thrace, Macedonia, and Thessaly. Greek city after Greek city “medize” by offering land and water to the Persians and become subject to the empire. Their armies are incorporated into the mighty Persian army. The Spartans delay the Persian army for a slight time at Thermopylae but it is not enough to keep the multinational army from conquering Athens and burning it to the ground.

It looks like it will be lights out for independent Greek culture. There will be no democracy, philosophy, early science or drama for us to treasure. Xerxes sits in the burning embers of Athens preparing to watch his mighty navy destroy the last of the Greek ships while the free Greeks bicker among themselves, each preparing to run back to their home cities.

Then, the Battle of Salamis happens and the Persian fleet is destroyed. Xerxes decides it will be best for him to leave Greece, but he also leaves 300,000 of his best men behind.

The Persians remain in northern Greece returning to burn whatever is left of Athens for a second time because the feckless Spartans refuse to march out from behind the wall they have built at the narrow Isthmus of Corinth to protect their own territory. The Athenians are justifiably outraged by Spartan betrayal. They threaten to form an alliance with Persia but give the Spartans one last chance.

The Spartans march out and link up the last of the free Greeks outside of Plataea, just south of Thebes, which is actively supporting the Persians. The Persians and Greeks face off against each other for a week. The Greeks withdraw and Persians strike. The future hangs in the balance.

Greek victory!

Rebellions break out among the Greeks in the Persian Empire.

Alexander the Great waits in the wings in the next century.

The last three and a half books of The Histories are an epically good read. A lot of fantasy novels, such as The Lord of the Rings, feature a giant empire that comes to crush the free West. The West faces extinction and is saved by a few clutch plays and a couple of lucky breaks. That's the story that Herodotus tells and it is the archetype for a lot of our fantasy novels thereafter.

Another resonance from history: The image of an emperor at the head of a huge multinational army sitting briefly in the enemy's burning capital before fleeing with a bare fraction of his army resonates with a premonition of a later emperor - Napoleon.

If you are going to read Herodotus, get the Landmark edition. The editors provide lots of maps to track the action, which is very important in the last four books. They have also included helpful pictures to illustrate some of the things mentioned and there are informative appendices to address various subjects that you might be wondering about.

Artifact Space by Miles Cameron

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I listened to this as an audible book. It was a first-rate science fiction space opera. Author Miles Cameron has done a phenomenal job of thinking through his fictional universe and fleshing it out in a way that makes it interesting and entertaining. As I was listening to this book, I was constantly put in mind to its similarities to David Feintuch's “Seafort Saga” in telling the story of a midshipman in a future navy who seems destined for great things. That is not to say that this book was derivative in any way, but, rather, that it stayed true to the traditions of this kind of story.

In this case, the navy belongs to the Directorate of Human Corporations (the “DHC.”) The DHC seems to be one of several human political entities in human space. The backbone of the DHC navy are the “great ships” that can carry cargo and make long jumps through “artifact space” to other star systems. These great ships are huge and as the story opens, someone is killing them off.

The focal character is Marca Nbarro, who is an expelled student from an orphanage operated by the DHC in the underside of a space-based city. The decks are stacked against Marca in many ways, not the least of which is that the head of the orphanage wants to prevent her from joining the DHC navy, which Marca is determined to do no matter what gets in her way. Marca does join the navy and is able to follow the path of success and luck blazed by Horatio Hornblower and Nicholas Seafort and others.

Marca is, of course, phenomenally lucky, but that does not make her a “Mary Sue” character any more than Hornblower is a Mary Sue. The book puts Marca into desperate situations and then follows her as she makes realistic decisions to extricate herself. This is just good, fun, and engaging writing.

The first chapter is a fairly difficult introduction since the author throws a lot of jargon and concepts at us before we know what is going on. After the first chapter, things settle down and we learn the backstory of Cameron's setting. It turns out that the economy of the DHC is based on the traffic of “Xenoglass,” which is manufactured by aliens at the tail end of the DHC navy's commercial caravan route. As we move through the jumps, and the crew of Marca's ship, the Athens, find themselves beset by external and internal enemies, we come to understand that there may be other aliens in the game, who are pulling the strings on the foreign enemies and DHC traitors.

This chapter is the first installment of what may be a trilogy (or series.) However, it ended on a logical point, albeit a cliffhanger. I don't begrudge this book for not being complete in itself because Cameron's universe is so well crafted that I want to see more of it.

Famous Men Who Never Lived by K Chess

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This is a literary science fiction novel that emphasizes character over plot and setting. This works for the most part because the author, K. Chess, has a nice, engaging writing style. Unfortunately, the main character - “Hel” (short for Helen) - is not a particularly appealing character, the plot is fairly weak, and the real strength is in the setting, which is underplayed.

Hel is the main character of the story. She and 150,000 others have immigrated from a parallel history that diverged from our history in 1910 for unexplained reasons. We are given tantalizing pieces of information about the divergent history of Hel's timeline. The Nazis in Germany weren't “Nazis” but operated under a different name. There was no Holocaust, but some undefined ugly behavior against the Slavs. The real threat to Hel's America was some kind of Communist state based in Caracas that unified Latin America. We never get any explanation about how that history developed the way it did, which is a disappointment to any fan of alt-hist, and which seems highly implausible.

Hel arrives in our history because the Latin America Superpower has unleashed some kind of radiological disaster that threatens Hel's New York (and maybe the world (it isn't clear)), but, fortunately, a scientist has invented a window into a parallel universe, which we assume is our universe.

This is all incredibly interesting, but the focus of Chess's story is on the experience of Hel and her fellow “universally displaced persons” (“UDP”). Once here, the story of Hel and the other UDPs is the typical existence of immigrants - alienated, isolated, and discriminated against. Chess does a good job with the first two elements, but, honestly, the discrimination trope is so tired and cliche at this point. Chess seems to want to win some points for bringing this trope into the story, particularly with the strange requirements that UDPs attend some kind of re-education classes five years after their arrival and are docked for failing to attend, but this element of the story goes nowhere. Apparently, there is a box to check for “xenophobia” in stories of this kind.

This leads to my main problem with the book - I didn't particularly emphasize with Hel. She seemed too much like an upper-class, urban elite - what would have once been called a “Yuppie.” Hel has been lucky enough to survive a world-ending disaster, but she is upset, angry and disappointed with the fact that the world is not her world. This is not an incidental or occasional set of feelings; these feelings seem to define her to the extent that she has made no effort to fit herself into the new reality. For example, she refuses to take the steps necessary to qualify herself as a doctor in current New York for no logical reason. She stupidly risks the last copy of the great science fiction work of her reality and then assaults her only influential friend because he curtly informs her that he can't help her.

In short, Hel is not particularly sympathetic. We are supposed to sympathize with her because of her situation, and I do sympathize to a certain extent, but like most people, including her influential friend, there is a limit to sympathy, and that limit tends to get reached when we don't see the object of our sympathy doing rational things to help themselves.

That said, I did enjoy contemplating with the book what it would be like to be exiled to a universe where everything I knew had “never happened.” (Of course, those things had happened, really, in a different time and place.) Of course, I have those experiences all the time at my age. I can go to a particular place where I had a picnic in the country one spring afternoon, which is now an intersection with stoplights and medical buildings. I can clearly see with my mind's eye what it was and with my actual eye what it is now. I am just as much at a loss to explain to my kids what it was like as I know it in my memory as Hel is to explain why a particular science fiction book that no one knows was known by everyone.

The core of the story is, of course, about Hel's memory. Her boyfriend, Vikram, was a scholar of Ezra Sleight, author of The Pyronauts. In our history, Sleight died as a boy; in Hel's history, Sleight became an influential writer, perhaps he was the Kurt Vonnegut of Hel's world, albeit it seems that Slieight's work was pulpier and he was more influential than Vonnegut. Vikram brought a copy of The Pyronauts with him and so it is the only remaining text of its kind in our world. If it is lost, then Sleight is lost.

Hel discovers the house where Sleight lived as an adult in her history. She decides that it would be a good idea to open a UDP museum - which actually seems like a good idea - and she brings the only copy of the book to a party with a museum official, at which point, she loses the book. She believes that the museum official stole the book and the vast middle section of the book is taken up by her efforts to get the book back.

Meanwhile, Vikram learns some things about the program that led to the arrival of the UDP in our history. This thread seems to go nowhere, but in retrospect, you will realize that it provides the developments necessary for the final wrap-up.

After seeming to wander around for most of the book, the ending arrives like the solution of a mystery when we didn't know we were reading a mystery. I began to be suspicious when Chess started throwing a particular character at us.

This is not a bad book. In fact, it is enjoyable if you don't mind a book that takes its time to develop itself. Likewise, if you are willing to read a book that is more literary than science fiction, you will enjoy this book. On the other hand, this book could easily have been written in a way that developed the alternate history setting and the plot more directly. That book would have been more exciting, but you can't blame a book for being the book that was written rather than the one you wanted to be written. This book is more cerebral and more tantalizing in laying out hints and clues concerning the history Hel grew up in without providing answers.

This book reminded me of Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, which was also cerebral and brought the reader into the minds of the characters. If you liked that book, you will probably like this. If not, then you won't.

Transient City (Victor Stromboli 1) by Al Onia

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I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would, mostly because it is a well-written mystery with thrilling set-pieces and a sympathetic lead character.

Victor Stromboli is leaving on the fringes of society in Transient City on the planet Lodan. Lodan is owned by Agamemnon Corporation, which is only interested in Lodan's mineral wealth. The cities on Lodan are moving mining operations that slowly crawl over the face of the planet from mineral strike to mineral strike, picking the planet clean. Eventually, the corporation will pick Lodan clean and leave the planet and its population without any established settlements or economic infrastructure. This set-up leaves a hidden undercurrent of political unrest in the background.

Stromboli has a photographic memory which he uses to act as a part-time, freelance “witness” for the security bureau. Stromboli is liked by the people he deals with, but there is something withdrawn about him because of past tragedies that he literally cannot forget.

Stromboli is drawn into conspiracies while participating in the investigation of several murders. One of the murders involves the husband of a woman recently returned to Transient City who Stromboli cannot forget as his great unrequited love when he was twelve years old. She, of course, has forgotten him.

The book clips along at a good pace with serial killers, explosions, plots, and counterplots. I liked the Stromboli character who kept things glued together.

The book is not perfect. I didn't have a clear sense of what Jordan was like. My mental image was “Mars with atmosphere” because the city seemed to have no obstacles in the way, but there were indigenous life forms, or, at least two were mention. So, the world-building was fairly empty.

Likewise, I question an administrative system consisting of three bureaus - Automation, Immigration, and Security. Maybe that could work, but it seems sparse. Immigration worked as Human Resources, incidentally, because a large part of the economic system involved the cities trading blocks of compartments and the people that went with them to fit their economic needs.

All in all, though, it was a fun book. I've picked up the next instalment in the Stromboli series.

Call Him Demon by Henry Kuttner & C.L. Moore

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Kuttner and Moore, husband and wife, were a gifted writing team, turning out numerous classic short stories during the 1940s and 1950s. Kuttner died tragically young, and Moore, who may have been the more gifted writer of the pair, stopped writing.

This story features the traits that made their writing so powerful. The story opens with Jane visiting her grandmother's home and reckoning a time she spent as a six-year-old with her relatives. For unexplained reasons, an alien presence has inserted itself into the home as a “fake uncle.” The parents are oblivious to this imposition, but the children know. They've been feeding the other half of the entity in some odd parallel reality. When they stop feeding the entity, things turn tragic.

Kuttner and Moore were acolytes of H.P. Lovecraft. In fact, they met through their Lovecraft connection. This book reflects the “cosmic horror” themes of Lovecraft, the innocence of the world jammed up to an evil that endures through time.

In some ways, the story is impenetrable in terms of logic, but that is part of the point of the story. The logic in the story is explicitly the logic of children.

Across the Dark Water by Richard Kadrey

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A plague has wrecked society in the near future. A grave robber hires a guide to lead him out of a shattered quarantined city. The thief and guide overcome difficulties and express mutual contempt for each other. They ultimately come to the location of the Turk, who will sell the papers the thief needs to escape. The thief discovers something surprising and fulfills a prophecy.

I liked the setting, namely the shattered world that seems close to our own. Naturally, because this is a Tor short story, it can't fill out the backstory in the way I would have liked. I didn't find the characters particularly compelling or the plot very logical.

In Denial by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr

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For seventy years, leftwing scholars provided cover for those who wanted to deny that American Communists were thoroughly complicit with the vicious totalitarianism of Soviet Communism. Despite the repeated defenses of Soviet atrocities that were repeatedly exposed after being denied, despite the u-turn of American Communists on opposing, then defending the Nazis that was tied to changes in Soviet foreign policies, and despite numerous convictions of American Communists as Soviet spies, leftist writers and historians were always there to whitewash, obfuscate, and gaslight.

In the 1990s, the case against American Communists broke decisively with the release of the Venona intercepts and the KGB archives. The release of this information established unimpeachable, independent corroboration that every claim that had ever been made against communists was true. Alger Hiss was guilty; the Rosenbergs were guilty; the Soviets pumped millions of dollars per year into their American Communist Party spy rings.

This book reviews this interesting history, but it goes on to expose what a corrupt and dishonest mess the American history profession has become. In the 1970s, the history profession was taken over by leftwing “revisionists” who were ideologically committed to ascribing every evil to the United States, which meant defending the Soviet Union and all its works. These revisionists took over the journals that cover the Cold War period and have made sure that articles critical of American communism do not get printed, whereas apologetic pieces do get published.

This book documents in detail the evasions and circumventions that revisionists have engaged in to keep their faith in communism alive. This book was writen in 2002. It is frightening to see how twenty years later the same techniques of censorship and control have moved from the academic world to the broader political world of nearly half the American population.

The trend of habituated self-deception is frightening.

Babylon Berlin by Volger Kutscher (Rath Number 1)

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I came to this after watching two seasons of the German series. Normally, I find the book superior to the film version, but this is an odd case where the video is better.

Nonetheless, this is a fine book. This book introduces Gereon Rath. Rath has arrived in Berlin because he was involved in the killing of an influential publisher's son in his hometown of Cologne. Rath is assigned to the Vice squad where he introduces us to Berlin, his colleagues, and the underside of Berlin. From a chance meeting, he has an insight into a murder that he hopes will promote him to Gennat's homicide squad. (I just learned from a Wondrium lecture on German serial killers that Gennat was a historical figure who was prominent as the Berlin murder captain.) As in the series, Rath gets wind of Russian gold and rightwing arms dealing, all of which leads up to a thrilling conclusion.

It is a good story. The characters are well drawn, albeit different from the video. Rath is not a shell-shocked drug addict and Charlotte Ritter is not a hooker. Sometimes I wonder why these kinds of changes are introduced into dramatizations of books.

On the other hand, I think the video is stronger in giving us the feel of Berlin in late-stage Weimar. Putting Charlotte into the vice dens lets us see that world in a way that the book's depiction of Rath going to sex clubs doesn't. Perhaps that is why I preferred the show.

Obviously, I should not judge the book by the show. The book stands up on its own and is quite entertaining.

The Symposium by Plato

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This is Plato's classic exploration of the theme of love.

As everyone should know, a symposium was a Greek dinner party. The guests reclined on couches around a table and ate and drank and enjoyed witty Greek conversation, which, if this narrative is any indication, consisted of talking about the mysteries of the highest form of love, i.e. the love of young boys.

The narrative set-up for Plato is that this is the second night of drinking and gabbing, and everyone is a bit hung-over. So, to temper their drinking, the guests agree to give a speech about love - or about the god of love.

The speeches are, well, interesting, although to a bourgeoisie 21st century American - not a bad thing to be - the pedophilia angle is weird on so many different levels. These Greek men talk about their boys as teasing and torturing and befuddling them. What the heck, their love interests are 14 years old! How much could they really have in common?

Nonetheless, we do get a speech or two that praises boy-love as the highest and best, which is just strange from the standpoint of these are children. Again, how much could these men have in common with the boys? One gets the feeling that equality was not what the Athenians were looking for in love.

There is also the interesting story told by Aristophanes about how humans were once a compound creature with four arms, four legs, two faces, etc., that was split apart by Zeus to temper their industry in overthrowing the gods. Ever since that time, everyone has been looking for someone else to complete themselves. If their form was originally two females glued together, they became lesbians; two males glued together became homosexual, and the inferior types who were male and female stuck together became heterosexuals reduced to breeding the next generation like sniff animals.

Socrates' speech, therefore, comes as something at variance from this He-man, no girls in our club, drinking party. First, Socrates' speech involves his own education at the hands of a wise woman, Diotima. What??? A woman - previously described as fit only to make babies for the superior male species? Why, yes, a woman. We have to think that may be an example of Plato (or Socrates) being transgressive.

Another feature of Socrates' speech is how it is fixated on reproduction, pregnancy, and fecundity. Love is a poor and middling kind of spirit. Not really a deity at all. Love is the offspring of Poria, son of Metis, the shapechanger, and the goddess of poverty, Penuria. Thus, love is needy. Love, therefore, desires what he does not have and what he most of all desires is the good. This is quite a come-down from Agathon's speech which had Love the most powerful of all the gods.

The greatest desire that people have is the good for all time, which means that people desire immortality. Some obtain immortality through children, while others achieve it through being remembered. This is achieved by creating things. Hence, love is inherently fecund.

I think Plato may have been transgressive in this theme. Compare the theme of fecundity with the sterility of boy love. As I pointed out, was it even possible to have a good conversation with a boy (albeit insofar as the older man took on the position of mentor, that person could have been shaping a kind of heir for the future.)

Then, Alcibiades comes in and is persuaded to give a speech in praise of Socrates. Socrates is praised for not getting drunk and being a tough warrior. He is also known for annoying people with his continual arguments and for not having a homosexual/pedophilic interest in the young boys of Athens. Is this perhaps a clue confirming that his description of love as fecund was part of the real Socratic agenda?

Don't know. The narrative makes for a fun and interesting read. There are a lot of jabs and insults at the party-goers that seem like they could have been taken from real life. This is not to say that the narrative is not without its difficulties, but the experience is a lot like the college bull sessions you may have enjoyed back in the day, only at a higher level.

What is the Gospel? by R.C. Sproul

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What is the gospel? I couldn't tell from this book since no definition was provided. It seems that we are just supposed to know what the gospel is because we are told that the “Gospel is the saving power of God.” But it isn't clear what the gospel is.

At times, it seems that the Gospel is the content of a message. At times it seems that the gospel may be the story of Christ's life, death, and resurrection. However, this may not be correct because we are told that the deity of Christ is essential to the gospel (“The deity of Christ is an essential point of the gospel”), but is not the same as the gospel. At other times, it seems that the “gospel” is a set of Reformed Protestant doctrines, including sola fide,sola scriptura, and the doctrine of imputation, but not infusion, of grace, which most certainly are not the life of Christ. These latter points go beyond the life of Christ and seem to be theological proposition deduced from presuppositions inherent in Reformed Protestantism rather than the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

So, I was left befuddled on this point.

The gist of the book is an explanation of the 1998 Reformed publication of “The Gospel of Jesus Christ: An Evangelical Celebration.” This publication consists of 16 positive and negative propositions about the Reformed Protestant understanding of the Gospel.

As is typical of these kinds of publication, quite a bit is said about faith alone as being the key to justification. What is interesting is that while something like 15 of the question do not give any indication of something other than faith being involved, Sproul does acknowledge that “faith alone” is not sufficient for salvation. As he says:

“Now we get to a tricky part. Our document makes a distinction between what we call justification and sanctification. Affirmation 14 reads:”

Sproul, R.C.. What Is the Gospel? (Crucial Questions) (p. 72). Reformation Trust Publishing. Kindle Edition.

The “tricky part” is that although most Protestants think that “justification” means “salvation,” it doesn't. Sproul is to be commended for the clarity of his admission:

“The New Testament calls us to “work out [our] own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12). Sometimes we get confused when we read that language because the words justification and salvation tend to be used interchangeably. It's true that in a certain sense we enter into salvation the moment we put our faith in Christ. But our final and full salvation doesn't take place until we enter into our glorification in heaven. So, part of the process of salvation is sanctification. But justification comes first. We are not working to achieve our justification. We are working to bring the fruits of that justification to bear in our sanctification.

Sproul, R.C.. What Is the Gospel? (Crucial Questions) (pp. 75-76). Reformation Trust Publishing. Kindle Edition.

This raises the issue of sanctification:

“The moment we embrace Christ with true faith, God declares us just by virtue of the imputation of Christ's righteousness. But even though we have been justified, we continue to sin. The lifelong process by which we are made holy and brought into conformity to the image of Christ, which begins at the moment of our justification, is called sanctification. Article 15 addresses the relationship between justification and sanctification. Affirmation 15 reads: We affirm that saving faith results in sanctification, the transformation of life in growing conformity to Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. Sanctification means ongoing repentance, a life of turning from sin to serve Jesus Christ in grateful reliance on him as one's Lord and Master (Gal. 5:22–25; Rom. 8:4, 13–14).

Sproul, R.C.. What Is the Gospel? (Crucial Questions) (pp. 77-78). Reformation Trust Publishing. Kindle Edition.

What's interesting is that after explaining that “the gospel” means that grace is imputed, not infused, and anyone who denies that claim denies “the gospel,” Sproul turns around and demands that we accept that a person is transformed by actual grace before becoming capable of faith. So, why the insistence on damning those who believe in infused grace - like Catholics do ?

“Certainly, someone who has been justified has experienced a significant change, a change from someone who is under God's curse to someone who is righteous in His sight. A person cannot be justified without possessing true faith. But Christians disagree about when that faith happens in relation to rebirth or regeneration. Regeneration refers to the work of the Holy Spirit by which a person is quickened from a state of spiritual death and transformed into a state of spiritual life. Some believe that a person has faith first, and then, as an immediate consequence of that faith, he is not only justified but also regenerated. That would mean two significant changes that are related to justification. As soon as a person has faith, he is a believer rather than an unbeliever, and he's now regenerate rather than unregenerate.

Sproul, R.C.. What Is the Gospel? (Crucial Questions) (pp. 79-80). Reformation Trust Publishing. Kindle Edition.

The Reformed faith reverses the order of these two elements of faith and regeneration. We say that regeneration precedes faith. When we say precedes, we don't mean chronologically; we don't mean that a person is regenerated and then fifteen years later has faith, or someone is regenerated and five minutes later has faith. We're talking about simultaneous actions. But when we look at it in terms of a logical order, we say that regeneration comes before or precedes faith in the sense that regeneration is a necessary condition, a prerequisite, for the presence of faith. Reformed theology teaches that the only way true faith can be manifested in the life of a person is if God first works a work of grace in his soul through the operation of the Holy Spirit, by which he is quickened from spiritual death to spiritual life and is therefore reborn. As Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). A person who has true faith is also a regenerate person, a person who has been reborn. And that's why we see that sanctification must follow from justification: if faith is present and a person has been reborn, that means that person has been changed in his inner being through the operation of the Holy Spirit, and the process of sanctification, or growing in conformity to the image of Christ, has most surely begun.

Sproul, R.C.. What Is the Gospel? (Crucial Questions) (pp. 80-81). Reformation Trust Publishing. Kindle Edition.

One gets the feeling that these sections on regeneration and sanctification are not where Sproul lived. He seems to find it “tricky,” which makes sense since it runs counter to the “faith alone” doctrine that seems to be a far more straightforward proposition. Sproul doesn't do much to explain the inconsistencies; his goal seems to be to present the doctrines of his faith in a way that leaves followers as little disturbed as possible.

This is a short book that does a good job of setting forth Reformed doctrines. I was disappointed that Sproul wasn't more forthcoming in his definition of the “gospel” or in his failure to explain the anomaly between regeneration and infusion.

The Unbroken Thread by Sohrab Ahmari

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I listened to this as an audible book. The effect was like having a conversation with a smart and deep friend. I enjoyed it tremendously.

The basic frame of the book is that Ahmari wants his infant son to have something better than the intellectual wasteland it looks like will be his lot in the future. Ahmari's answer is to ask the classic questions about life and consider what the traditional answers have been. Ahmari introduces each chapter with a person who illustrates the issue in question, such as C.S. Lewis or St. Thomas Aquinas. These introductions are empathetic, inspirational, and insightful. I learned things about Aquinas that I had not known before. His skill is put to the ultimate test when he uses Andrea Dworkin as the springboard for a discussion about modesty and pornography, where he makes the point that fat, lesbian, loud Dworkin's concern about the kultursmog of porn was something to be concerned about.

I enjoyed the whole book and recommend it highly.

Crisis Preparedness Guide by Damian Brindle

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Given the zany state of the world, I picked this up to get some ideas about what might be done to prepare for a total financial meltdown. I'm not sure what I got out of it without making a deeper commitment to the prepper lifestyle than I'm willing to make. The book has some useful ideas about diversification strategies, why gold might not be the best option if no one else knows what it's worth, and why a bugout bag is no use if you don't have a place to bug out to.

It's worth reading, but it mostly reinforced my sense of gloom.

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It is something of an achievement to be so crazily conspiratorial that even the Nazis think that you are a nut.

This is a book about Eric Ludendorff. Ludendorff was, of course, a Wilhelmine German General. He was the architect of the brilliant German victory over the Russians in the Battle of Tannenberg. Together with Gen. Paul Hindenberg, he became the virtual dictator of Germany for the last two years of World War I.

Losing the war may have caused a cog to slip in Ludendorff's mind. After the war, he became obsessed with exonerating himself for the loss by inventing or appropriating the “stab in the back” myth. Ludendorff went further in his conspiratorial ideology by creating a complicated nexus of “supranational powers” - Jews, Catholics, FreeMasons, Bolsheviks - who had undermined Germany and continued to oppress Germany.

Ludendorff is particularly noteworthy for his anti-Catholic animus. Hitler and the Nazis were also anti-Catholic, but they found it politically dangerous to attack Catholicism tout court. Ludendorff had no such compunctions. In this, Ludendorff was playing to a traditional strand of German anti-Catholicism going back to the Reformation.

Ludendorff was also an open “pagan.” He was heavily influenced by his second wife, who produced pagan tracts. This paganism was not a worship of Odin or Thor, but some kind of hazy deification of Germany/race.

I've been interested in Ludendorff's anti-Catholicism for a while. I'm not sure this is the book I've been looking for. The focus of the book is on Ludendorff's post-war life and we do get a fair introduction to Ludendorff's zany worldview, but the book feels like an overview rather than a deep dive.

One thing I did appreciate about this book was the significance of Ludendorff to early Weimar right-wing conspiracies. Ludendorff was involved in the Kapp Putsch, but more importantly, there probably wouldn't have been the climactic march during the Beer Hall Putsch without Ludendorff's encouragement. Without that march, there would have been no myth of the Nazi martyrs that became a substantial part of the Nazi mythos in later legend.

The Pagan World - Ancient Religion before Christianity (The Great Courses)

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I liked this lecture series, but I found it something of a slog until Professor Mueller got to the sections on Caesar.

This course is a dive into the religious praxis of a broad swathe of history and territory. Mueller covers Mesopotamia, India, Egypt, Greece and Rome. The focus is on the nitty-gritty of religious practices - auspices, sacrifices, temples, etc. Some of this is technical, which creates the “slog” aspect of the course.

On the other hand, the course redeemed itself for me in the section on Rome. After a discussion of priesthoods, auspices and auguries, we turn to Julius Caesar whose success involved harnessing his position as pontifex maxima to his political ambitions by deifying himself. This religious revolution brought stability to Rome for a long period of its subsequent history. Eventually, this paradigm was replaced by another religious revolution on the part of Constantine in the adoption of Christianity.

I enjoyed Professor Mueller's deliberate, baritone delivery. It was clear and understandable. I also enjoyed his corny jokes as both a relief from tedium and a way of remembering various points of the lecture.

The Player of Games (A Culture Novel Book 2)

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This is the second installment of Iain Banks's The Culture series. Moid Moidelhoff of Media Death Cult calls this book nearly perfect.

I don't know if this book is perfect, but it is very good. The background, characters, and plot are very engaging. The background setting of “the Culture” is a character in itself.

The Culture was introduced in Banks's “Consider Phlebas.” It is very high tech, wealthy, almost transhuman society. The society is wealthy enough to create its own planets and orbital artifacts. Its military operations are handled by “Contact” and “Special Circumstances.” The society treats humans and machine intelligences as equals. The society seems to be run by artificial intelligence “Minds,” which are super-intelligent and virtually immortal. The economic structure works as a functioning socialist economy where ownership is unknown and people change genders at a whim.

The problem is that the satisfied population is bored. Playing games is a major occupation (just as it seems to be in our culture.) Gurgeh is a preeminent game player. He is blackmailed to represent the Culture in a game tournament in the Arzad Empire, located in one of the satellite galaxies around the main galaxy (which may not be our galaxy - it's not clear.)

The Arzad Empire is structured around the game of Arzad. The winner of the tournament becomes the emperor.

The Arzad Empire is brutal. Its elites thrive on entertainment involving torture and executions. The master species consists of three sexes - male, apex, and female. The Apex are the master sex of the species. They can swing both ways with a reversible vagina and they treat their males and females as second class citizens.

But it is not clear that the Culture is all that much better. The Culture seems to be an imperialistic and colonial power in its own right. It sweeps aside lesser cultures and imposes its egalitarian, socialist ethos on others. Given the choice between Arzad and the Culture, I'd go for the Culture, but that doesn't relieve the Culture of its own form of totalitarianism.

The story is tightly plotted. It reveals enough of the Culture to give the book a grand sweep. The characters are empathetic. There is action and tension. I recommend this book as fun and entertaining.

Speechless by Michael Knowles

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Michael Knowles is a gifted writer. He is persuasive. His analysis is exacting and compelling. He is absolutely correct that a political system based on a total absence of restrictions is fooling itself. Every political system recognizes some restriction on liberty, whether those restrictions are openly acknowledged or hypocritically concealed.

So, why did I give this book four stars?

Two reasons.

First, much of this ground has been plowed by other books. Knowles does a great job of reminding us about how the modern speech authoritarian regime developed and how it now stands. It is too easy to forget and think that things have always been this way.

However, a lot of this has been done in other books. I was hoping for an answer to the question of “what is to be done?”

Second, we don't get an answer to the question of “what is to be done?” Knowles finishes the book by explaining that answering that question would require another book, which I hope is in the works. But as it stands at the end of this book, I'm not sure what we are supposed to do with our awareness that speech always have limits - are supposed to start censoring leftists? That doesn't seem principled or possible.

I await Knowles next book.

The Builders by Daniel Polansky

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I am beginning to like Daniel Polansky. He has a nice, light writing style, with quips and arch observations, that delight the mind. The plots hang together and there is enough tension and conflict to keep the reader engaged.

In this book, Polansky introduces us to a bevy of animal characters who look to avenge their prior loss of the kingdom. Since betrayal was involved, the odds are that the traitor is still around. The animals are distinctive and delightful. The band is led by “the Captain,” a gritty, determined mouse - a Lee Marvin of a mouse. There is a badger, a Gallic weasel, a sharpshooting oppossum, a mole that fittingly runs the underworld, and others. They face insurmountable odds of attacking a fortified position for revenge and to restore the rightful toad on the throne.

It is a fun story, all around.

On Safari in R'lyeh and Carcosa with Gun and Camera (Tor) by Elizabeth Bear

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This is a well-crafted short story. It might be a little confusing to a reader who has not read H.P. Lovecraft's “A Shadow over Innsmouth.” If the reader has, then this short story fits nicely into the Lovecraft mythos. Basically, the main character purchases a genetic test and finds that 10% of her genetic material cannot be identified....and, then, there is that rejected doctoral dissertation from that odd Ph.D. candidate at Miskatonic University.