Best of Summer/Fall 2013

I've been reading A LOT of books.

But after "Collapse," the last book reviewed here, I am now without any books to read.  This will probably be the case until at least Chinese New Year, when I'm sure I'll be in Taipei, Kaohsiung, or some other place where I can buy books.  Until then, consider this the end of my book reviews.

You can click on the titles for a longer review of each book.

10 Best Books

1. "Childhood's End" by Arthur C. Clarke

This is the book that made Clarke famous, and this is also a book that proves his fame is well-deserved.  Not only is it well thought out and meticulously plotted, but the prose is far superior to what you find in most science fiction novels.  Truly a great work by a great writer.

2. "A Century of Science Fiction 1950-1959" edited by Robert Silverberg

There are a few stories in this one that are probably best forgotten, but for each forgettable story there are two excellent works of short fiction.  My favorites in this one were the stories by Philip Jose Farmer and Jack Vance.

3. "The Gates of Creation" by Philip Jose Farmer

Kind of like Conan the Barbarian meets Dune.  This is the second book in Farmer's "World of Tiers" series, and I would love to read the other two books.  Farmer might have written a lot of crap, but this novel is excellent.

4. "Soul Catcher" by Frank Herbert

Perhaps the only "serious" (non-genre) fiction penned by Herbert.  This one takes place in the Pacific Northwest, where an Indian guide kidnaps a young boy.  The ending is a bit disappointing, but this book gets deep.

5. "A Canticle for Leibowitz" by Walter M. Miller Jr.

Possibly one of the most profound science fiction novels ever written.   Miller Jr.'s novel of post-apocalyptic survival does not make for easy reading, but it is the kind of book that makes an impression.

6. "Venus Plus X" by Theodore Sturgeon

This book is trippy, and I like that.  One of Theodore Sturgeon's two most famous books, this one explores the battle of the sexes from the perspective of an alien race.  Even if you don't agree with the author's historical premise, it's still a great story.

7. "All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy

The first book in McCarthy's "Border Trilogy."  This one follows two friends as they explore Mexico on horseback.  The part in the Mexican prison is one of the most harrowing things I've ever read.

8. "Jazz" by Toni Morrison

Even if some of this book does invite unflattering comparisons to Faulkner, Morrison's "Jazz" is very much its own novel, with its own kind of story to tell.  Definitely worth reading.

9. "Peace on Earth" by Stanislaw Lem

Lem at his most slapstick, and Lem at his most paranoid.  An astronaut visits robots on the moon, and returns with a brain severed into two halves.  Certainly one of the strangest and best science fiction novels I've ever read.

10. "Radio Free Albemuth" by Philip K. Dick

A nice companion to Dick's VALIS.  In this book, which can be considered a forerunner of that more famous book, Dick explores the relationship between a record executive, the extraterrestrial intelligence offering him "enlightenment," and a tyrant bent on (inter)national domination. 

Honorable Mention: Frank Herbert's "The Eyes of Heisenberg"

5 Books That Just Weren't Very Good

1. "Lord of Light" by Roger Zelazny

Buddha without the Buddhism.  Science fiction without the science.  Gods war against one another with gizmos, and none of it makes a great deal of sense.

2. "The Heaven Makers" by Frank Herbert

Wow this book was boring.  One of the worst books Herbert ever wrote, and certainly one of the reasons people can't take him seriously outside of "Dune."  The sexual parts were almost interesting, but they couldn't save the book.

3. "Gather, Darkness!" by Fritz Leiber

An order of monks brainwash the populace with a technology they themselves don't understand.  This one might make even less sense than "Lord of Light."

4. "The White Plague" by Frank Herbert

Wow this book is even more boring than "The Heaven Makers" - and also a lot longer.  A plague decimates the women of the world, and leaves the men searching for answers.  It tries to be deep, but fails miserably.

5. "Microworlds" by Stanislaw Lem

Lem comes across as a cranky old man in the non-fiction "Microworlds."  I am sorry that he ever wrote this book, for the simple reason that it will dissuade people from reading his novels - some of which are fantastic.  In this book Lem attempts to put science fiction under a microscope, but the order of magnification is so high that he fails to see anything of substance.

Dishonorable Mention: Marion Zimmer Bradley's "The Planet Savers/Sword of Aldones."

"Childhood's End" by Arthur C. Clarke

"...however confident they may be in their beliefs, they fear that we will overthrow their gods.  Not necessarily through any deliberate act, but in a subtler fashion.  Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets.  No one ever demonstrated, as far as I am aware, the non-existence of Zeus or Thor, but they have few followers now.  The Wainwrights fear, too, that we know the truth about the origins of their faiths.  How long, they wonder, have we been observing humanity?  Have we watched Mohammed begin the Hegira, or Moses giving the Jews their laws?  Do we know all that is false in the stories they believe?"

"Childhood's End" was first published in 1953, though parts of it were published as a short story, "Guardian Angel," as early as 1945.  This novel, in various forms, would be roughly contemporary with Isaac Asimov's first "Foundation" stories, and would predate Frank Herbert's "Dune" novels by two decades.

The novel details the arrival of an alien race, the Overlords, in the year 1975.  The Overlords assume stewardship over the Earth and its peoples, ushering in a golden age of peace and prosperity.  Humanity, at first straining against the controls imposed by the Overlords, learns to live in harmony with the aliens, and to eventually evolve beyond the aliens' technological superiority.

All of which will sound very familiar to anyone who's read 2001, or any of its three sequels.  The difference being that the Overlords of "Childhood's End" endeavor to establish a dialogue between humankind and themselves, to the mutual advantage of both species.  The "aliens" (if they can be called that) of the 2001 series are much further removed in terms of time, space, and intelligence, and the mysteries they guard over are only ever glimpsed - much less understood -by the feeble minds of Man.

While I loved the 2001 novels for their scientific accuracy, their prognostication, and the questions they posed, I found "Childhood's End" to be a far more human novel, and in a way far more wide-ranging. "Childhood's End" is rather like the corollary of the 2001 novels, in that it explores many of the same questions from the opposite point of view.  Where 2001 begins from "What does it mean to be alien?", "Childhood's End" begins from "What does it mean to be human?"  Both questions are, of course, equally valid, but the center of "Childhood's End" is our own, living selves, and this is a much easier place to start from.

Another great thing about this novel is the way in which it seems to anticipate later works, by other authors.  As stated above, Asimov was already writing the "Foundation" novels at about the same time, and the following quote from Clarke's work brought those novels immediately to mind.

"A society consists of human beings whose behavior as individuals is unpredictable.  But if one takes enough of the basic units, then certain laws begin to appear - as was discovered long ago by life insurance companies.  No one can tell what individuals will die within a given time - yet the total number of deaths can be predicted with considerable accuracy.

"There are other, subtler laws, first glimpsed in the early twentieth century by mathematicians such as Weiner and Rashavesky.  They had argued that such events as economic depressions, the results of armament races, the stability of social groups, political elections, and so on, could be analyzed by the correct mathematical techniques."

Thus we have something very similar to Asimov's idea of Psychohistory, explained in less obtuse terms.  Even Asimov's prescient character, The Mule, is foreshadowed in "Childhood's End," as humanity begins to evolve abilities that put them beyond the Overlords' control.  And whereas Asimov spends three volumes (the original "Foundation Trilogy") working through these ideas, for Clarke they are issues of secondary importance, outside the main narrative thrust of "Childhood's End."

There is also this passage, which brought to mind Frank Herbert's "Dune":

"Yet your mystics, though they were lost in their own delusions, had seen part of the truth.  There are powers of the mind, and powers beyond the mind, which your science could have never brought within its framework without shattering it entirely. "

In this we have some intimation of a messianic quality within the human race, which will place it beyond the reach of interlopers.  The novel even goes on to state that there is an element of prescience involved with the quality, in that mythical archetypes within our human culture have predicted the coming of the Overlords.  Seen in this light, humanity's rapid evolution under the Overlords comes to resemble the kind of genetic manipulation seen in "Dune," with the result being a messiah or messiahs who will free humankind from bondage.  While Herbert certainly added a host of other ideas to this central concept, it is clear that it had origins at least as old as "Childhood's End."

I could go further, and point out all the other novels that "Childhood's End" seems to anticipate, but if you've read this far you're probably sufficiently interested to read it yourself, and draw your own conclusions.  I highly recommend this book, and I'm sure that any fan of the more intellectual science fiction novels will love it.