nwhyte's reviews
4413 reviews

Book of Alien Planets by H.B. Fyfe, Edmond Hamilton, Mary Gentle, Michael Shaara, Stephen David, Arthur C. Clarke, Peter Davison, Ray Bradbury

adventurous challenging dark fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

Peter Davison's Book of Alien Planets (1983), on the other hand, contains eight stories, only two of which are original - one by the editor, and one by Mary Gentle, who at that time had published only one novel, A Hawk in Silver, several years before; she had two more stories published in Asimov's that in 1983, and of course has never looked back. The others are all classics by the likes of Emond Hamilton, Ray Bradbury and two by Arthur C. Clarke, "The Star" and "History Lesson". From Davison's foreword, it appears that these were very much chosen by him as personal favourites. Most of them have a grim twist at the end. It is the more solid of the two anthologies, but you are more likely to have the stories in it.

Peter Davison's Book of Alien Monsters by Christopher Evans, Michael Scott Rohan, Philip K. Dick, David Langford, Allan Scott, Stephen David, Dyan Sheldon, Garry Kilworth, Robert Holdstock, Peter Davison

adventurous lighthearted fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.25

Peter Davison's Book of Alien Monsters (1982) includes nine stories, eight of which are original and were presumably commissioned for this book (the exception is "Beyond Lies the Wub", by Philip K. Dick). But most of the other eight are by major British authors - Robert Holdstock, Dave Langford, Michael Scott Rohan, Christopher Evans and one woman, Dyan Sheldon (her first SF publication, according to ISFDB, and last for several years as well; she is better known as a YA writer). They are decent enough, but only the Kilworth story has been subsequently published elsewhere.

Carbone & Silicium by Mathieu Bablet

challenging dark sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

Carbone ("Carbon") and Silicium ("Silicon") are two artificial intelligences constructed in the near future, given humanoid bodies, and observing and participating in the gradual decline of humanity and the end of the world in environmental catastrophe. It's much slower paced than, say, Barbarella, but thoughtful as well as grim. As my regular reader knows, I'm not a huge fan of stories with anthropomorphic robots; however this somehow worked for me.

Calvin by F. Bruce Gordon

informative slow-paced

3.5

it's a pretty dry and detailed biography of the major figure of Geneva's history, what he was trying to do and what he did. As usual (I keep saying this about theology books, but it's true) the ideological points mostly soared over my head, but I found a lot of interesting stuff. Calvin lived from 1509 to 1564, and from 1541 became the most important person in Geneva - he never held public office, but politics in the city became completely polarised between his supporters and his opponents, and usually his supporters won. (But not always.)

There's a lot here about the politics of Geneva as a city-state and Calvin as an individual with regard to France (where he was born and brought up), vs the Holy Roman Empire, vs Berne and the nascent Swiss Confederation (which Geneva did not fully align with until 1584, twenty years after Calvin's death). I'd have liked a bit more reflection on how Geneva became a theocracy in the first place - it had been an ideologically Protestant republic since 1536, before Calvin arrived - and also how it managed to survive as such, when other such experiments failed (for instance in Münster shortly before). But the books is about Calvin, not Geneva.

Calvin's wife died in 1649 after only nine years of marriage; he is not reported to have had other partners, but his brother Antoine was a major supporter throughout his career, and he had many other close friendships, some of which went sour when ideological differences emerged. He is remembered for his writing - and his output at the peak of his career was phenomenal - but his preaching was clearly an important factor as well; none of that survives, apart from a few second-hand notes taken by people in the congregation. Gordon is clearly a fan of his subject (most biographers are) and does his best to find in his favour, performing particularly intense gymnastics when it comes to the execution of Michael Servetus.

The most interesting part for me was the relationship between Calvin and England. He actually had something resembling a personal relationship with Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset and regent of England in the first couple of years of the reign of Edward VI (1547-1549). But Somerset was overthrown, and when Edward died in 1553 his Catholic sister Mary took over. Calvin had hopes of winning England back when Elizabeth, a Protestant, came to the throne in 1558. However, in what Gordon calls "perhaps the worst mistiming of the European Reformation", that same year saw the publication in Geneva of Knox's The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women and Goodman's How superior Powers ought to be obeyed of their subjects, both of which opposed the legitimacy women as rulers. Knox and Goodman had been thinking of Mary I of England and Mary of Guise in France, but Elizabeth took huge offence and returned Calvin's correspondence unopened, and although he still had some powerful sympathisers in England, he never again had the access to the top in London that he'd had ten years before. He was much more successful in Scotland, but there is surprisingly and disappointingly little about that here; he was of course less directly involved, Knox being the main figure.

Anyway, really a book for specialists only, but I got a bit more out of it than I had expected.

Faction Paradox: Of the City of the Saved... by Philip Purser-Hallard
Did not finish book. Stopped at 40%.

I'm afraid this is the end of the line for my reading of Faction Paradox. The City of the Saved is a place where all humans who have ever lived or died are resurrected; but they then engage in the usual city hall politics of any small state, and I failed to really engage with any of the characters. So I have put it down after 100 pages, and won't be going back.

Where Was the Room Where It Happened?: The Unofficial Hamilton - An American Musical Location Guide by B. L. Barreras

informative inspiring fast-paced

4.0

When I read Ron Chernow's biography, on which Hamilton: The Musical is based, I reflected that New York itself comes across as a major character in the story, and this little (70-page) guidebook efficiently links the relevant moments of the show to the real places associated with the events it portrays, concentrating largely on the city where Hamilton lived and died, with a few excursions to New Jersey and further afield. It's a little jewel of a book, with history and geography neatly packed into two pages for each of the New York and New Jersey places mentioned, and proposed walking tours depending on how much time you have and whether you're Team Hamilton or Team Burr. The Room Where it Happened was at 57 Maiden Lane, which no longer exists; but a number of other places do, including in particular the Grange, Hamilton's home for the last couple of years of his life, which has been moved twice but is open for visitors in non-pandemic times. Recommended for Hamilton fans, or people who want a slightly different walking tour of the history of New York.

Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver

emotional informative slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I've generally enjoyed Kingsolver's work, and enjoyed this too: her second novel (after The Bean Trees), a story of Arizona and Nicaragua in the mid-1980s, where the main viewpoint character returns home to care for her fading father, the town doctor, and rekindles a youthful romance while also uncovering layer after layer of her own history and her family's history; at the same time her sister is in deadly danger in Central America and their home town is threatened by environmental disaster. This is the most overtly political of Kingsolver's novels that I have read, and I didn't feel that the politics merged quite as smoothly with the action; at the same time it's a vivid framing for what is going on for the protagonist and her father (who also gets some tight-third narrative). Generally good stuff.

A Radical Romance: A Memoir of Love, Grief and Consolation by Alison Light

emotional reflective medium-paced

4.5

I had previously hugely enjoyed Light's Common People, the history of her own immediate ancestors; here she goes even more personal, into her marriage to fellow historian Raphael Samuel, from their first meeting in 1986 to his death in 1996. He was twenty years older, and Jewish; she had studied English at Churchill College, Cambridge (fellow Cambridge alumni will wince in sympathy) and gradually drifted into history and commentary, which was what brought them together. The first half or so, about the development of their relationships with each other and with their very different families, is lovely. But the strength is in the second half. I think even for someone less interested in history as a discipline than me, this would still be a tremendous memoir of love and loss; in particular, when she gets to Samuel's illness and death, she is sparing with the details but eloquent in her sparseness. She goes into much more detail on the funeral arrangements, but of course that's something that a surviving partner can control and direct unilaterally, unlike most aspects of a relationship, which have to be negotiated. A great book, strongly recommended.

The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson

4.0

The book starts by kiling off the whole of Europe in the Black Death, leaving Islam and China to develop civilisation and the industrial revolution. This book is perhaps a bit of a reaction to the deterministic approach of Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" and David S. Landes' "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations" which both argue that European superiority was more or less historically inevitable. My own view is that "natural" advantages need enlightened (or sometimes just lucky) rulers to exploit them - Rebecca West has some good observations on this in the Dubrovnik section of "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon". As a lapsed historian of science myself, I am particularly aware the rich tradition of Islamic knowledge, and that there was a time when Baghdad was the intellectual capital of the world. I also liked Robinson's Mars trilogy and the supplementary volume. Here, rather than the somewhat strained immortality thrust upon the Mars characters, he has reincarnation as a connecting thread between ten linked novellas covering 700 years. Oddly enough he ends up in much the same place as Robert Sawyer in "Hominids", with a rather utopian portrayal of an alternate timeline society contemporary with ours, but does it a hundred times better.

The Pilgrim's Regress by C.S. Lewis

http://nhw.livejournal.com/1069727.html[return][return]This book is overtly attempting to recast its great model in terms suitable for an intellectual Anglican of the 1920s or 1930s. Lewis's metaphors are even less subtle than Bunyan's (at one point he supplies footnotes so that we can be sure which philosophers he is parodying). He has more of a sense of humour than Bunyan, which is something. But I rather felt the whole book was a series of mots d'escalier after losing the argument over dinner at High Table; poor Bunyan was in prison for years, which is a rather different matter. It is fortunate that the first chapter is a rather effective skewering of smug Anglicans, otherwise it would have been difficult to take at all.