Lord of the Isles

David Drake's "Lord of the Isles" is an 'epic fantasy,' and overall is a pretty good read, although I wouldn't say it's particularly innovative - country boy get swept up in forces of the universe, fights bad guys, other people's special tendencies come out, country boy saves the day, and most of the people live happily ever after.

I did like the treatment of "evil" - which is a human term, and the multiple thousand year old wizardess takes pains to make that clear - as an elemental force, typically in balance with "good", although various wizards or whatever occasionally try to mess things up by messing with a natural ebb and flow of the dark side. Naturally, at the climax of the book (I guess this is a spoiler), the country boy is faced with the temptation of "evil" and chooses the path of light, good, and apple pie. Saves the girl and the sorceress while he's at it, too. Well done, Garric.

Let's see. Reasonably well written, managed to fit a whole story into a single book - but if Piers Anthony's calling this "One of the finest epic fantasies of the decade" as is indicated on the cover, the entire genre must be getting a little tired.

The Postman

David Brin's "The Postman" (you have to scroll down the linked page a bit) is better than what I've heard about the movie by the same name. No, I haven't seen the movie. Short summary, free of spoilers: Gordon Krantz is trying to survive 16 years after an apocalyptic cataclysm involving nuclear arms, pestilence, famine, a three-year nuclear winter. Needless to say, America (not much mention of the rest of the world, but presumably it's all messed up too) has imploded into a tribal sort of existence. Actually, "America" doesn't really exist anymore. It's just a bunch of people trying to survive. That is, until good ol' Gordon becomes a postman. It's entirely by accident - after being robbed by a band of ne-er do wells, he stumbles across the remains of a postie in a rusted out Jeep - with the accoutrements (nice jacket but for a couple of bullet holes), a hat, and, yes, a sack of mail. For his own reasons, Gordon picks up the mail and appoints himself some rounds. Sleet, hail, nuclear winter... GO USPS!

Actually, he falls into it by accident - he's mooching food and shelter at a small enclave, and they twig onto the postman gear, and bingo bango bongo, he's the first employee, inspector, and CEO of the Restored United States of America Postal Service. Neat, because people get all funny and give him food and shelter when he comes around. But, it's never so simple. He made up the Restored U.S.A bit, and then has to run with it. Along his route, he meets people that really feed off the idea, and then the book has the chance to explore several themes all at once, including the nature of leadership, the folly of aggression versus cooperation, technophilia versus technophobia, feminism, individualism and it's variants, Mountain Man anti-governmentalism, "Man" in a state of nature (Hi there Hobbes! Rousseau's out for a bit!) and the need for hope as well as the unending responsibility faced by reluctant yet worthy leaders.

Whew.

Worth reading. I've been lucky with the books so far. I'm probably due for a stinker.

Fatal Storm - The Inside Story of the Tragic Sydney-Hobart Race

Happy day before spring. Rob Mundle's "Fatal Storm - The Inside Story of the Tragic Sydney-Hobart Race', featuring exclusive photos of the race is another maritime real-life drama, much like the book I read about the Vendée Globe race. In this Sydney to Hobart, the fleet encountered a cyclonic buster in the Bass Strait, which basically beat the daylights out of all the competitors. A few yachts sank, most of them were damaged, and six poor souls died. Amidst the turmoil of the storm, the efforts of the Australian Search and Rescue crews were, as always, Herculean. Mundle indicates that the book was put together in about 16 weeks - which is impressive, yet unfortunate. While the factual telling of the story appears to be lucid and accurate, there's none of the same drama, philosophy, or buildup that Godforsaken Sea had. As a tribute to the guts of the sailors, and the sheer balls of the SAR people, it's a worthwhile read.

Forge of the Elders

"Forge of the Elders" is a science fiction novel by L. Neil Smith. The Earth has been 'united' under the United World Soviet, the last vestiges of individualism are being suppressed for the collective - the Earth essentially now mirrors Soviet Russia. Resources are scarce, and the global economy is faltering. So, three 80 year old space shuttles are taken out of mothballs, kitted out and launched - crewed by potential enemies of the state, so to speak, to colonize an asteroid that appears to have resources usable to prop up the state of the world.

It's a good read - although the contrast of collectivism to individualism appears rather heavy handed through out the book. I could be wrong on this, but I think that that's an interesting device to set up the (somewhat) unexpected conclusion. It's a struggle between the extremes of Randian individualism and warped collectivism - with an obvious editorial in favour of individualism and capitalism.

Not a bad book.

Last Days of Montreal

"Last Days of Montreal" by John Brooke is one heck of a book. This slim volume is jam-packed with the cultural signifiers and memory of a city, province, and even country wracked with all sorts of problems.

Set in the mid 1990s, there's lots going on in Montréal. The referendum on Québec sovereignty, economic stumbles, the anglophone exodus, dilapitating infrastructure, and snow (although that's not limited to any epoch). The characters are all struggling through the confluence of their day to day lives which are coloured by the event unfolding around them. The connections between the individual stories are deftly woven - one person's activities meld into the lives of one, two, or more other characters, which then tie in to another, and then the circle closes, back to the first person again. The story whirlwinds through their lives, leaving the feeling of being out of control - much like the people in their situations - but both at the end of narrative snapshots, and at the end of the larger tale, the end really gives the sense of not really closure, but evolution on the parts of the characters.

The book is far too long and far too complex to undertake a full description and analysis of the characters and events - besides, I don't think I could do it justice! The book though, takes its title from one of the central characters - "Last Days," a vagrant who is confined to an electric wheelchair after having his legs crushed during a protest against some municipal undertaking. He wanders the streets, intervening in generally crude, even perserse, manner, in people's lives, in a form of brutal honesty. His is a repulsive character - but one who personifies the vibrancy of the city in a one-man struggle against the decline, trying to incite the people he comes across into life.

The book's treatment of the affairs of the day is aware, astute and incisive, from the English-French conflict (ici on parles français), to the vicissitudes of the global economy, to the cultural significance of snowfall and snow clearing and beyond.

Wholeheartedly recommended.

Finished reading Steven Bochco's "Death by Hollywood" and came away thinking that it was a pretty nice bit of fluff. Mr. Bochco is the co-creator of Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, and NYPD Blue. I suppose if you like those particular aspects of the popular culture oeuvre, this book might be fascinating. It's written in a bit of a clichéd hardbitten gumshoe tone - the narrator is a Hollywood agent to the 'stars,' and seems to revel in a touch of cynicism. The whole book is a (fictionalized) account of the alternate universe that Hollywood apparently is - I can't say for sure as I've never been there. By all accounts, though, this book reinforces the stereotypes of the superficial world out there.

The storyline is pleasantly sprinkled with wrinkles, although by the last third of the book, I started to find myself not being surprised anymore. Maybe that's a strength of the book - the events and actions are warped by general standards of morality, yet, by that last third, I as the reader became jaded to the world, and ceased to be surprised by the machinations of the characters. The book's conclusion is gratifying in that it clearly marks the end of the story - Bochco appears to have had a clear idea of where the story was going and how to end it, and got it there in due course.

The characters - jaded police officers, grasping starlets, Latin lovers with irrepressible sexual drives, self satisfied socialites, flavour-of-the-day actors with delusions of grandeur - are all archetypes, and that lets Bochco off from really having to develop them. That's not to say that Bochco is sloppy or remiss in the development - he's just able to move the story along a little quicker.

Just finished reading Catherine Bush's Minus Time, and it's a pretty interesting novel. The chronological shifting took a bit of getting used to, as there are paragraphs interspersed to provide background both on the plot and the development of the characters. Quick summary: The main character, Helen Urie is in her early twenties and struggling in the nexus of separate, yet related events. Her mother, Barbara, is an accomplished scientist launched aboard a space shuttle to take up residence in a space station and set a record for the longest time spent aloft. Her father, David, is a geologist by training, has become a sort of disaster response expert, and hence flits around the world responding to natural disasters - a vocation with coincides with his flight from marriage with Barbara. Helen's brother is perhaps the most 'normal' of the family, pursuing a degree in architecture.

Helen, apparently accidentally, falls in with a pair of environmental activists, and gradually becomes more involved with the cause - and almost predictable, with the male activist. Through her adventures, we find that natural disasters are occuring with ever greater frequency which serves to highlight the fragility of the ecosystem - described as equivalent to a layer of Scotch tape on a basketball.

Conflict between the characters brings up intractable issues such as competing dreams and desires within families, and between individuals and 'the mass', questions of self, animal rights and ecology (there are well-placed references to philosophers of 'species rights'), activism, and love - as just a sample.

With a well defined core cast of characters, the book is focused, and rarely seems to wonder where it's going.

Lately, I've been finding the endings of books unsatisfactory - the last few I've read have really seemed like they were rapidly wound up because the author was running out of pages. This time, it still felt a little bit like that, but the sense of Helen finding peace and even some exhilaration in the present and future works to close the story.

Orbiter - A free space flight simulator looks like a lot of fun. I'll try it out later.

I've just finished reading Godforsaken Sea: Racing the World's Most Dangerous Waters by Derek Lundy - the tale of the '96 Vendée Globe race. That's a race where intrepid sailors single-hand 60 sailboats from France, down around Antarctica and back - a trip of something like 27000 miles. I thought it was going to be a bit of a guts n' gore 'see how many people perished' tale, but it was remarkably well written, with fairly perceptive insights into the mindset and motivations of the competitors. There's also a decent history of singlehanded sailing interspersed through the book. All in all, a very satisfying read.

The Political Compass is a pretty good little gizmo; got me pegged as a left-leaning libertarian. Which kinda makes sense to me.

Long time no "blog"... oh well.