Classic Sci-Fi New Author Challenge 3

As a general comment, whoever dreamed up this notion of challenges to focus reading in a desired direction was brilliant. More specifically, my Yahoo reading group Classic Sci-Fi has gifted me with a veritable cornucopia of new and exciting reading.

Here's my progress on the challenge so far. Completed titles are highlighted in red italics:

1. Lest Darkness Fall - L Sprague de Camp
2. The Voyage of the Space Beagle - AE van Vogt
3. A Mirror for Observers - Edgar Pangborn
4. The Best of Stanley G Weinbaum - Stanley Weinbaum
5. Earthman's Burden - Poul Anderson & Gordon Dickson
6. Triplanetary - EE "Doc" Smith
7. Dying Inside - Robert Silverberg
8. Tales of the Dying Earth - Jack Vance
9. Cities in Flight - James Blish

Next up will be "Doc" Smith's "Triplanetary".

Earth is Room Enough - Isaac Asimov (*****)

"Earth is Room Enough" is an anthology of Asimov's early short stories centered on the theme that anything can and probably will happen right here on earth. It's likely that Asimov and his editors probably had their collective tongues firmly planted in their cheeks and grins on their faces when they tweaked the noses of Asimov's contemporary authors by proving that you didn't need rocket ships and space opera to write great science fiction.

While he didn't wander too far from home in terms of setting, Asimov used his fertile imagination and probing intellect to weave stories that will touch you in a wide variety of ways. Like all good SF authors, Asimov used his craft to question government, human emotions and fears, our development of and reliance on technology, humour and imagination.


Perhaps a couple of examples will serve to whet the appetite of those who have yet to savour Asimov's talent! What collection of Asimov's short stories would be complete without at least one from his vast repertoire of Susan Calvin's robots? "The Dead Past", like most of the stories he wove around his famous three laws of robotics, is a clever logic puzzle but it also probes deeply into the human psyche and our potential interactions with robots. Asimov's "Multivac", a computer character he returned to over and over again in an enormous variety of stories, appeared in "Jokester", a clever tale that probes the very nature of humour and "Franchise", which takes a very well-aimed poke at political pundits and pollsters. "The Immortal Bard", undoubtedly drawn from Asimov's well-documented non-fictional study of Shakespeare, is a clever jibe at our modern interpretation of this master playwright's work. And on and on it goes ...


For those that have yet to sample science fiction in general or Asimov's work in particular, this would be a fine place to start. Intellectual, thought-provoking, and deeply questioning yet humorous and lightweight enough to be entirely unintimidating!


Highly recommended.

The Geographer's Library - Jon Fasman (***)

A puzzling and ultimately unsatisfying ending!

"The Geographer's Library" has aspirations to that lofty genre, the literary thriller, which is attracting so many hopeful authors and readers of late. For a debut novel, Fasman's efforts come very, very close indeed to success but ultimately a puzzling and cryptic ending left me feeling like I had just dined on that proverbial gourmet Chinese food - you know that old one about eating lots and enjoying it but, when the ending arrives, you're not really satisfied and a few minutes later you're hungry!

The story begins as Paul Tomm, reporter for a small town Connecticut weekly, is assigned to write the obituary for Jaan Puhapaev, an Estonian professor of Balkan history at the local college, who died alone in his rooms. Tomm's questions, initially aimed only at fleshing out the bones on the life of an old man that nobody really knew, quickly began to disclose a much more shadowy past.

Fasman ekes outs the details of Puhapaev's shadowy past and its mystical connection to the shadowy arcane science of alchemy by interweaving a series of fourteen thoroughly entertaining historical vignettes with the main body of the plot. Each story tracks the life line of a different artifact, some now priceless and others barely distinguishable from garage sale junk, all stolen in antiquity from the collection of twelfth century geographer Al-Idris to their resting places in the modern era.

The writing was sharp; the malevolent and stomach-churning plot-line of the thriller was well-paced and compelling; the historical asides were entertaining and informative; the characterization was enjoyable; and the stereotypes - the tweedy college don, small town cops, the laid back weekly newspaper editor, the church-going music teacher and even a Russian mobster - were all spot on and used with wonderful effect. But when the climax arrived and it was time to resolve the thriller and tie the present to the past that magic dissolved in a puff of smoke.

I'm a reader that needs a little more resolution in a novel's ending and this one is anything but - puzzling, cryptic and unresolved with entire futures and relationships left hanging in the balance! I enjoyed the book but I was certainly left with the feeling that it could have been so much more.

Death Match - Lincoln Child (***)

Enjoyable screenplay but not up to his usual standards!

Eden Incorporated is not your run-of-the-mill matchmaking service. For the rather lofty price tag of $25,000, Richard Silver, the company's brilliant and reclusive founder and Liza, the computer and its state of the art artificial intelligence software that is more person than machine, will guarantee to find you a "perfect" lifelong soul-mate. Well ... not quite perfect, but so close mind you that the paired partners certainly aren't complaining. So nobody was more surprised than Silver and Eden's management when Liza, despite overwhelming odds against such a match, found six absolutely perfect pairings.

But when Lewis and Lindsay Thorpe, the first of Eden's starry-eyed perfect couples, are found dead as the result of an apparent double suicide, Eden's corporate alarms sound wildly and Christopher Lash, a former FBI forensic psychologist is hired to quietly investigate the death from the inside. Lash, struggling with demons from his own past and memories that the investigation has brought to the surface, finds himself faced with a situation spiraling completely out of control when another perfect couple is also found dead - a bizarre second double suicide!

"Death Match" is first-rate brain candy when it's compared to other plot driven thrillers that seem much more screenplay than novel - James Patterson's and Iris Johansen's recent factory driven voluminous output comes to mind. But by comparison to the rather high standards that have been self-imposed by his own previous work - the Pendergast canon in conjunction with his partner, Douglas Preston, and his first solo effort, Utopia - "Death Match" falls well short of that mark.

There were so many opportunities for those technical addenda, side-bars and essays that I think of as part and parcel of Child's and Preston's writing - forensics, artificial intelligence, the computer dating and match-making industries, the psychology of suicide, computer security and corporate espionage, for example. But, sadly, all of them (not to mention character development in the bargain) were virtually ignored and the only motive for turning the pages was a plot. Creative and well-crafted, to be sure, but rather naked and lonely!

Well, I enjoyed it and I'll certainly look for more of his work. It just wasn't quite as cerebral a thriller as I had hoped for. Recommended for those looking for a fast-paced lightweight summer read. Three stars and a thumb-and-a-half!

The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr (****)

Rough and Tumble Late Nineteenth Century New York!

In "The Angel of Darkness", Caleb Carr returns his readers to the atmospheric, intriguing, rough and tumble world of late nineteenth century New York. The story is told through the eyes of Stevie Taggert, a former young thug rescued from a miserable life and almost certain early death as a street kid already up to his eyes in street crime and drugs by his guardian, Dr Laszlo Kreizler, the famous psychiatrist first introduced to us in "The Alienist".

During the politically troubled era preceding the onset of the Spanish-American War, the wife of a Spanish diplomat, whose baby has been kidnapped, frantically appeals to Sara Howard, a private detective and proud feminist who specializes in helping troubled women, for help to rescue the child before it is murdered. Sara in turn appeals to her friend, Dr Kreizler and their colleagues for their assistance in this most puzzling case - Stevie Taggert, Cyrus Montrose, Kreizler's faithful man-servant, Jonathan Moore, crime reporter for the New York Times, and Lucius and Marcus Isaacson, the brilliant yet comedic Jewish twin brothers hired as NYPD detectives by Teddy Roosevelt when he was chief of the force. When the kidnapper's identity is discovered relatively early, the tale changes from a whodunit into that more modern complicated breed of thriller that explores the "why" of the crime!

As the story is told completely through Stevie's eyes, the reader is treated to a wonderfully smooth, linear narration that is both complete and straightforward to follow from the plotting point of view. But that simple statement belies the scope and depth of this wonderful story that includes discussions of the birth of modern feminism, the ravages of cocaine and drug addiction, the growing use of modern crime-fighting tools - forensics, psychological profiling, fingerprinting, ballistics, microscopic matching of hair and fiber samples - and the psychology of that most puzzling and disturbing of criminals, the female serial killer!

For good measure, Carr also treats his readers to appearances of real-life historical figures that are substantially more than tossed off cameos - Theodore Roosevelt as pro tem head of the US Navy prior to his election as president leads a group of feisty sailors in a brawl against a brutal street gang; Clarence Darrow is observed in a thrilling courtroom drama establishing his reputation as one of the most brilliant defense lawyers that the US has ever seen and Elizabeth Cady Stanton whose early musings formed a substantial part of the basis of modern feminism is called upon as a critical witness for the defense.

Four stars and two thumbs up. Lovers of historical fiction will thoroughly enjoy "The Angel of Darkness" and cross their fingers that Carr will deliver on the rumour that there are more "alienist" novels in the works to be narrated by some of the other members of the team.

Coincidences, Chaos and All That Math Jazz - Edward Burger (****)

Making Light of Weighty Ideas!

What a wonderful motto for learning! To understand deep things simply, investigate simple things deeply.

In "Coincidences, Chaos and All That Math Jazz", Burger and Starbird take that motto to heart and bless their readers with an entertaining, irreverent, always amusing yet eminently readable and completely understandable exploration of some of the frontiers of mathematics.

In the opening chapters, real-life numbers - the roulette wheel, nature vs nurture studies of twin's characteristics, e-mail stock picking scam and spam artists, air safety standards, HIV testing and the puzzle of coincident birth dates at a party - are used to put meat onto the bones of the familiar saying "lies, damned lies and statistics" and to introduce the modern concept of mathematical chaos.

A simple straightforward chapter on the nature of numbers that almost effortlessly leads us into a basic understanding of much more complex topics such as cryptography, the Goldbach and the Twin Prime conjectures closes with the interesting comment,

"... our instinctive desire to wonder about the world of numbers has paid enormous practical dividends in the past - abstract ideas about primes and factoring unexpectedly led to public key cryptography and security in Internet commerce. Somehow human curiosity about numbers from ancient times to the present seems to be in synchronicity with the universe."

Counting spirals on pineapples and sunflowers and the simple act of folding and unfolding a strip of paper is used as a springboard to take the reader, who is now thoroughly engrossed in the enjoyable style of the book, to a basic understanding of the Fibonacci sequence, the golden ratio, chaos and fractals. But for me personally, the most interesting section was the last one. Burger and Starbird used extremely simple notions of counting, matching and a hotel with an infinite number of rooms to guide the unsuspecting reader to a brilliant "aha" moment - a concise, clear understanding of Cantor's ideas regarding the cardinality of infinity, the completely counterintuitive idea that some infinities are bigger than others.

Mathematics is fun and beautiful and this wonderful little book will show even the most math-phobic reader why! Highly recommended.

Mars - Ben Bova (****)

A realistic vision of the first manned mission to Mars!

The theme of "Mars", Ben Bova's extraordinary vision of a first manned expedition to Earth's planetary neighbour, is hardly unique and imaginative. In fact, it's been pounded into submission on hundreds of previous occasions. Bova succeeds nonetheless and has served up a particularly compelling and realistic entry into the pantheon of space exploration sci-fi that unflinchingly explores the politics, the psychology, the emotion and humanity as well as the danger and excitement of an extended exploratory space mission that would in fact last almost two years. A healthy serving of science and day to day scientific realism rounds out this exciting and eminently readable story of a group of planetary explorers that are ultimately shown to have "the right stuff".

Nominally the hero of the tale, Jamie Waterman is a Navajo geologist selected to be part of the multi-national scientific ground team that will explore the red planet. The story opens as Jamie steps onto the surface of Mars and, overwhelmed with the power and emotion of the moment, he utters his first words to a waiting populace on Earth in Navajo instead of the carefully scripted English he was supposed to use. The resulting political firestorm that erupts on Earth is somehow sadly predictable in its powerful and dramatic realism.

Told primarily from Jamie's perspective, the main plot line unfolds around a debilitating and almost certainly fatal illness that every single member of the ground crew except the doctor contracts. While the forensic medical investigation into the illness is told with an urgent drama that will have every reader on the edge of their seat right to the literally cliff-hanging climax, it's the ultimate discovery of its cause that will leave readers slack-jawed with amazement at Bova's brilliant imagination and the almost absurdly humourous irony of the problem.

The Iron Curtain and the US-Russian Cold War are now relegated to the pages of history so the political structures and international rivalries portrayed in the story clearly date the writing of "Mars" to the latter part of the 20th century. But that takes nothing at all away from Bova's masterful development of full, complex characters whose well-being and success will matter to the readers. What more could a happy science fiction fan ask for - characters, plot and a heaping plate full of informative, entertaining and realistic science!

Highly recommended.

TBR Challenge 2007 (continued)

5 MONTHS IN AND WE'RE STILL LOOKING GOOD!

With spring well sprung and summer definitely into bloom, May has come and gone. But, I'm SIX titles into the challenge and I've actually started on the seventh. Amazing! Here's the list as it currently stands with completed titles italicized and highlighted in red (OK, OK, I've cheated a little and shown the one I'm only partway through as finshed as well). So sue me ... I'm still pretty proud of it and I've actually managed a teeny, tiny dent in Mt TBR to show for it!

1. Strange Cargo – Jeffrey Barlough (fantasy)
2. The World is Flat – Thomas L Friedman (non-fiction, sociology)
3. Angels and Demons – Dan Brown (thriller)
4. The Angel of Darkness – Caleb Carr (historical fiction)
5. Vancouver – David Cruise and Alison Griffiths (historical fiction)
6. Dreaming the Eagle – Manda Scott (historical fiction)
7. Rite of Passage – Alexei Panshin (classic sci-fi)
8. The Man Who Mapped the Arctic – Peter Steele (history)
9. The Historian – Elizabeth Kostova (fantasy)
10. Dark Fire – CJ Sansom (historical fiction
11. Backbeat – J Frederick Arment (sci-fi)
12. The Lions of Al-Rassan – Guy Gavriel Kay (fantasy)

Alternates:
1. Colonization: Aftershocks – Harry Turtledove (sci-fi)
2. War of the Flowers – Tad Williams (fantasy)
3. Clothar the Frank – Jack Whyte (historical fiction)
4. West of Eden – Harry Harrison (sci-fi)

The Best of Stanley G Weinbaum (*****)

18 months of astonishing new writing ... and then gone!

Isaac Asimov called Stanley Weinbaum a nova who burst into the field of science fiction writing like an exploding star in 1934 with his debut short story "A Martian Odyssey". Perhaps super nova would have been a better euphemism because, like a supernova, Weinbaum not only exploded onto the scene but disappeared a scant 18 months after his first story was published, a victim of throat cancer. "The Best of Stanley Weinbaum" is a collection of short stories that, unfortunately, probably represents half of this astonishing writer's entire output.

Perhaps the greatest and most enduring charm of Weinbaum's stories rests with his collection of unique extra-terrestrial life - sentient, intelligent life that clearly had alien psychologies and motivations beyond human understanding. The most innovative feature of Weinbaum's collection of creatures was that they were not simply monstrous foils used to showcase the heroism of the human protagonists. Nor were they shallow anthropomorphized critters that merely happened to have green skin and six arms and legs. Tweel, the comical ostrich-like creature from "The Martian Odyssey" was Weinbaum's phenomenal response to John W Campbell's dictum "write me a creature who thinks as well as a man, or better than a man, but not like a man". The outrageously bizarre intelligent plant "Oscar" from "The Lotus Eaters" challenged the thinking sci-fi reader in ways that had never been achieved up until that time. Indeed, a case may be made that no sci-fi writer has created this type of alien intelligence since.

Although current knowledge of our solar system has moved beyond what was available to Weinbaum in the thirties, his presentation of alien ecologies was fascinating, compelling and yet wholly believable in the context of the science of the day. His presentation of a hostile Venusian jungle in "The Parasite Planet" is positively chilling. Beyond that, even within the limitations of the short story format, Weinbaum also demonstrates the ability to create complete characters whose achievements matter to the reader. They are fleshed out utterly human down-to-earth "folks" with foibles, failings, happiness and sadness to accompany the heroism and feats of derring-do that are only to be expected in stories like this.

If you've never sampled Stanley Weinbaum, then you are in for a truly delicious treat. Read slowly and savour it, because, sadly, there is far too little of his work available. Highly, highly recommended!

Simple Genius (****) - David Baldacci

Wonderful Summer Escapist Thriller!

The seeds of Baldacci's latest novel "Simple Genius" are sowed a book earlier.

Mentally stressed beyond her ability to continue a normal life, Michelle Maxwell simply breaks down. Her horrifying experience in "Hour Game" with a boyfriend who turned out to be a serial killer and the continuing anguish of a deeply buried secret we will later learn she has carried with her since she was only six years old drives her into a potentially suicidal bar brawl with a complete stranger. Her long-time friend and investigative partner, Sean King, convinces her to check herself into a psychiatric hospital for rest, recuperation and serious examination of the demons she is encountering. Assuming full responsibility for the financial costs of this care, he desperately searches for work and accepts a contract to investigate the suicide (murder?) of Monk Turing, a quantum physicist and computer scientist working for Babbage Town, a high powered corporate think tank located across the York River from Camp Peary, a top secret CIA training facility. (That name, by the way - Turing, that is - is no coincidence!)

But like any good modern thriller, "Simple Genius" draws in far more detail, many more twists and turns, unexpected plot diversions and absorbing information than one would expect from this straightforward plot development in the opening chapters - the basics of public and private encryption keys and the related use of enormous numbers and their correspondingly huge prime factors; rogue CIA agents; the history of German POWs during WW II in New England; a treasure hunt from Colonial England and America's first days as an independent nation; the moral issues of civil rights as they apply to prisoners in the current wars on terror and drugs; hypnosis and the difficulties of diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses; and much more.

Like some of his high-powered peers in the thriller racket (Jonathan Kellerman, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child immediately come to mind), Baldacci's side bars on science, history, geography and politics are diverting, informative, interesting and entertaining without interrupting the timing and flow of the plot. This has got to be an art in its own right!

Highly recommended summer escapist reading! If you enjoy thrillers, you won't be sorry for taking a copy of this one to the beach or the cottage with you. And, thankfully, the door is left wide open for return appearances by Sean King and Michelle Maxwell.

How To Shit in the Woods - Kathleen Meyer (*****)

To the uninitiated, the art of having a dump in the woods probably seems no more complicated than "squat, squint, squeeze and squeegee"! But, alas, as the world shrinks and the use of the world's limited wilderness terrain by outdoor adventurers increases to the limit of the land's ability to withstand the stress of that use, it's just not that simple. When considerations such as ecology, weather, temperature, privacy, courtesy, hygiene, biodegradation, density of camping use in an area, terrain and so on are factored into the decision as to where and how to complete the necessary feat, all is not as simple as it would seem. The methods one should choose are as varied as the terrains one might choose to visit and the times of year in which those choices are made.

"How to Shit in the Woods" is a book that should be read by EVERY person who would choose to venture into the out of doors - whether you want to spend a weekend at the local campground or you're a hardcore toughened backwoodsman heading out into the bush for a week long solo canoe trip in Canada's northern boreal forest!

Be prepared for lots of silly toilet humour, hilarious anecdotes concerning toilet misadventures, lots of tongue-in-cheek jokes, a good number of belly laughs and a very earthy delivery to be sure - but the message ultimately is entirely serious and well worth the read! There is very little humorous when it concerns encountering the leavings of someone who trod the trail in front of you.

Highly recommended for campers of all stripes, sexes, ages and experience levels.

Klutz Book of Knots (*****)

In the outdoors, knowing and tying the right knot in the right circumstances can save your food, your canoe, your self respect and even your life. The "Klutz Book of Knots" is not the right choice for a sailor looking to win rigging contests. It certainly isn't the choice for someone looking to set records with the world's fanciest macramé creations. Nor is it appropriate for someone looking to begin a course in rock climbing. But it IS a superb primer of the very best set of basic and not quite so basic knot skills for someone who wants to develop an indispensable repertoire for use in the context of hiking, canoeing and backcountry camping - bowline, half hitches, tautline hitches, trucker's hitch, figure eight, double figure eight, figure eight on a bite, sheet bend and more.

You'll not only learn how to tie the knot but also how to tighten the knot and which context is correct for which knot. For example, you will learn that the choice between a bowline and two half-hitches depends on whether the rope you are working with needs to be snug to the attachment ring or post.

And what a brilliant idea ... the book's pages are made of heavy cardboard and are perforated so that the reader can practice with the supplied rope tying the knot to the page of the book directly over top of the illustration. Even a klutz can learn with great tools like that! Oh yeah ... I guess that's the whole point, isn't it?

And a bonus for those of us whose hiking boots or running shoes are constantly coming undone ... an absolutely bombproof way of tying up your shoes with a knot that simply will not loosen but is still a slip knot and comes undone with a simple one handed tug. I fell in love with that one! Highly recommended.

Burmese Days - George Orwell (*****)

Most lovers of English literature will be aware of George Orwell’s “1984” and “Animal Farm” but, sadly, few book lovers will have even heard of, let alone read, his scathing indictment of colonial British government rule in east Asia, “Burmese Days”. As Orwell’s parents and family were posted to Burma and were obviously participants in, if not supporters of this colonial imperialism, it is difficult to imagine how much putting such criticism and biting satire to paper might have cost Orwell on a personal level.

Like Thomas Hardy’s “The Mayor of Casterbridge”, this is an almost unremittingly dark novel with heroes that are at best deeply flawed. Orwell’s haunting and magnificently economical prose, is a gun turret mounted on a 360° swivel that is brought to bear on every character in the novel in turn.

Flory, a white timber merchant with an embarassingly insipid weak personality befriends Veraswami, a local Burmese doctor who, inexplicably, seems to be an avid supporter of the British colonial government. When Veraswami’s name is floated as the possible token native member of the British “club”, the hostile reaction is immediate and visceral. Flory seems overwhelmed and is simply unable to muster the courage necessary to stand up to the demands of his peers who insist on maintaining an institutionalized prejudice against the local “niggers”. Veraswami comes under attack on a second front from U Po Kyin, the utterly corrupt Burmese magistrate who covets the European patronage to enhance his own wealth and prestige. Beautiful Elizabeth Lackersteen – now there’s a character! If this novel were placed in the US, she would have been a “flapper”! Today she would simply be written off as a vapid airhead! But, in “Burmese Days”, she represents the worst of decadent imperial decline.

“Burmese Days” is not easy or comfortable reading. I felt at times queasy, often appalled, frequently saddened and even embarrassed that bigotry, hatred and corruption at this level is clearly a part of my heritage. Sadly, we are not yet able to claim we have grown completely past this type of behaviour but perhaps it is to our credit that people like Orwell had the courage to commit this to paper solely for the purpose of making us aware of our own shortcomings and that we are to this day profoundly uncomfortable when we read it!

Highly recommended.

The Alexandria Link - Steve Berry (***)

The world is a poorer place for the sad and never satisfactorily explained disappearance of the Ptolemy's amazing library at Alexandria. With the possible exception of the current collections of the Library of Congress or the Vatican, the Alexandria Library was probably the greatest accumulation of the world's knowledge in history. And it's all gone. But Steve Berry has cleverly parlayed that germ of an idea, the missing library, into "The Alexandria Link", an entertaining if somewhat overwrought geo-political potboiler. The scion of the Alexandria Library, a sadly reduced but still priceless collection of scrolls, papyri and documents rescued from the original library, hidden in the Sinai desert and carefully guarded by a small group of guardians and librarians for over two thousand years is the subject of a winner-take-all, no-holds-barred search by the American, Israeli and Saudi governments as well as a shadowy right wing cabal of the world's wealthiest industrialists known as The Order of the Golden Fleece.

Thrillers like this need their heroes and Steve Berry has chosen to give centre stage to two returning characters, Cotton Malone, recently retired from the US Department of Justice and his ex-wife, Pam Malone. Admittedly, the notion of the good guys chasing around the world getting ever closer to their goal by solving impossibly obtuse archeological puzzles is getting somewhat stale as the reading public has been inundated with an endless string of "Da Vinci Code" copy-cats! The jury was in and out of the room on any number of occasions as I read through book but ultimately the verdict is that Berry pulled it off ... but just barely!

The basic premise of the entire story was, to give full credit to Berry, quite ingenious and thought-provoking. The proof of an inaccurate translation of certain passages of the Old Testament from Old Hebrew through Greek and Latin to modern English rests in the Alexandria Library under the stewardship of The Guardians. If the accurate translation surfaces, the tensions between the Islamic, Jewish and Christian faiths would erupt in such a fashion as to possibly set a spark to a tinder pile that could well ignite World War III.

"The Alexandria Link", unfortunately, is a hit and miss affair that never rises to the level of a truly compelling page-turner but, when you get to the last page, I think most readers would agree that it qualifies as enjoyable reading. First prize for characterization goes to Danny Daniels, the president of the USA, who unabashedly styles himself as "the leader of the free world" and is eminently comfortable with the awesome power his position embodies. In spite of that he somehow remains a very human, compassionate and even humorous character.

The Black Echo (*****)

"The Black Echo", Michael Connelly's debut novel and LAPD Detective Harry Bosch's premiere appearance to a grateful reading public, opens with Bosch being assigned to what is supposed to be a pro forma investigation. A "hype", a derelict drug addict, has been found dead of an apparent heroin overdose in a drainage pipe. The expectation is that a routine report would be filed and that would be that. But within moments of crawling into the pipe to examine the scene, Bosch begins to spot details that don't fit the accidental overdose scenario. More than that, Bosch is surprised to learn that he knows the deceased - Billie Meadows, a fellow "tunnel rat" veteran from Vietnam.

From the opening paragraphs of the novel, Connelly's magnificent story-telling introduces the reader to Bosch's dark, troubled persona and his now familiar investigative style - doggedly picking at the unhealed scab of tiny details that don't fit, skillfully peeling away the layers of deceit on an onion that doesn't smell quite right until the kernel of truth at the centre lies exposed. In this case, Bosch quickly finds police records showing that Meadows was a prime suspect in a major bank robbery that fell under federal jurisdiction. Even though he is assigned to work with FBI Agent Eleanor Wish, their obvious reluctance to share information on the details of their investigation into the bank heist has Bosch smelling a rat! And finding the rat - trailing that rat from present-day Los Angeles to 1974 Saigon, into the jungles of Vietnam and back - the rat he knows is on the inside of either LAPD or the FBI, proves elusive indeed until Bosch makes his way past the final turn of this complex maze of subterfuge.

The dark underpinnings of Bosch's meticulously crafted complex character start here - his disdain for authority; his unwillingness to fit the mould of the "police family"; the troubled nature of a psyche that is undoubtedly all too common in Vietnam veterans; his fear of surrendering to an unconditional love; the disturbing family history that began with his birth to a hooker who was subsequently murdered and his childhood travails at the hands of government agencies; the surprising extent of Bosch's visceral reaction to the murder of a street punk. Pathos is presented without pity or despair and Bosch emerges a very real and very human police officer indeed.

Much of this ground will be familiar to veteran Bosch fans but "The Black Echo" will serve to bring an even deeper level of understanding to his motives and his conduct. For those that have yet to savour Connelly's brilliant creation and his mastery of the police procedural genre, "The Black Echo" is definitely THE place to start.

Highly recommended.

The Other Side of the Sky (****)

A MARVELOUS COLLECTION OF SCI-FI SHORTS!

"The Other Side of the Sky" is a collection of short stories by Arthur C Clarke, an author whom many consider as an icon of both classic and contemporary science fiction. Frankly, I never agreed. I always felt that his work was pretentious - "literary" in the most pejorative sense of the word, mystifying, muddy and purposely deep, yet without clarity, for the sole purpose of achieving the lofty height of being arty.

No doubt others may disagree with me, but when I read the opening story in this collection, "The Nine Billion Names of God", my first reaction was disappointment - "oh, oh, more of the same"! Why would anyone, even those with an abiding faith in their god, believe that there was some sort of deep religious or philosophical ramification to the act of physically preparing a complete list of the permutations of an arbitrarily selected set of letters? What meaningless drivel!

I almost closed the book at that point and I suspect it was because the next story was only a few pages long that I decided to try it anyway. And what a lucky choice for me! From that point on, the collection was a thoroughgoing winner with everything a reader could wish for - charm, characterization, fun, pathos, warmth, wit, depth, twists, humour, human interest, solid science and thought-provoking questions - all of this without ever stooping to being either mundane or, worse yet, snobbish and superior.

A few examples will perhaps serve to whet the appetite. "Refugee" manages to humanize the British royal family in a most appealing way. "Special Delivery" explains some of the difficulties of living in a satellite and the physical implications of a jammed autopilot that accelerates a rocket delivering supplies for just a few seconds too long - a very, very small incident that illustrates the enormous implications of such a tiny event. "Cosmic Casanova" is pure space humour with an unexpected ending reserved for the final sentence in the manner of Jeffrey Archer's "A Twist in the Tale". "Publicity Campaign" is tongue in cheek and humorous but it is also a clear and scathing condemnation of bigotry and man's xenophobia. "The Star" could not be perceived as anti-religious in its tone but this tale of a very special and unique supernova should provoke more than a little head-scratching and puzzlement in those that would interpret the Bible literally. (This was probably my favourite story in the entire collection)

If you're already an Arthur C Clarke fan, I'm sure you'll enjoy "The Other Side of the Sky". If like me, you were unconvinced of his right to icon status, try this one on for size. Plenty enjoyable enough that I'd be happy to pick up more of Clarke's work and give it a try again. Maybe I'll even go back and try some of his other stuff again to see if perhaps I missed something. It's happened before!

Recommended.

Utopia (*****)

A ROLLER COASTER THRILLER ... LITERALLY!

Dr Andrew Warne is a brilliant computer engineer with some very avant garde theories in the field of artificial intelligence and robotic learning. Warne's hardware designs and his cutting edge software - "The MetaNet", an operating system that allows large numbers of robots loosely tied together in a common network to operate quasi-autonomously and to learn and improve from their day to day activities - have been used to create the wildly successful theme park "Utopia" located in the Nevada desert. Following in the tradition of Disney World's "kingdoms" but light years beyond in conception and execution, Utopia uses a fanciful, creative blend of technology, engineering, holographs, robots, set design and special effects to create an astonishingly, indeed almost frighteningly realistic set of worlds in which awe-struck patrons can enjoy a completely immersive experience - Victorian England, Camelot, a spaceport, a turn of the century American boardwalk seaport in the style of Atlantic City and a re-creation of Atlantis, still under construction!

When a series of bizarre accidents, injuries and even fatalities occur in the park, circumstances seem to point the finger of blame at problems in the MetaNet and Warne is summoned by Sarah Boatwright, Utopia's CEO, to supervisor the dismantling of his pet creation. Naturally, this does not sit well with Warne and he strenuously insists there is nothing wrong with the network. With the assistance of the park robotics expert, Theresa Bonifacio, he hurriedly struggles through a forensic hunt for the proverbial needle in a computer haystack and frantically debugs his code virtually line by line. As a very nasty chap, who styles himself John Doe, enters the park and calmly attempts the extortion of a copy of the park's invaluable state-of-the-art holographic software threatening the lives of Utopia's 65,000 guests, it now seems clear that Utopia has been the target of a well coordinated team of terrorist thieves - including very sophisticated hacking and tampering with the MetaNet.

The next four hours erupt into a non-stop series of adrenalin charged confrontations with the terrorist team as the good guys attempt to foil the thieves' escape with the software CD and their plot to explode the dome covering Utopia which would almost certainly kill thousands of innocent guests.

"Utopia" is a techno-thriller, the first (and quite clearly very successful) solo effort by Lincoln Child, one half of the Child/Preston duo famous for their Aloysius Pendergast series that started with "Relic". Child has enough output behind him that it is safe to label the style of this novel as vintage - wonderful characterization, enough romance to be heartwarming without indulging in even a hint of prurient sex or sappiness, and high speed action juxtaposed with a number of technical explanatory sidebars that explain, inform and educate on a wide variety of topics that, almost magically, seem to happen without slowing the action and the novel's pacing and plot.

Highly recommended for those that love their thrillers (and Child's next book "Deep Storm" is just as good!)

Update - "By the Decade" Challenge

These challenges are the greatest thing since sliced bread! What a great way to motivate, focus and direct your own reading. I'm about 2/3 of the way through George Orwell's Burmese Days so I'll allow myself the indulgence of updating the list as though it were complete. Here's how I stand at the moment:

Here's the link to 3M's blog for a detailed explanation of the rules and a list of participants. Completed titles appear in red italics.

1870 The Law and the Lady - Wilkie Collins
1880 A Study in Scarlet - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
1890 The Well at World's End - William Morris
1900 First Men in the Moon - HG Wells
1910 The Poison Belt - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
1920 The Mysterious Affair at Styles – Agatha Christie
1930 Burmese Days – George Orwell
1940 The Robe - Lloyd C Douglas
1950 The Voyage of the Space Beagle – AE van Vogt
1960 The Chrysalids – John Wyndham
1970 Mission of Gravity – Hal Clement
1980 West of Eden – Harry Harrison
1990 Plum Island – Nelson DeMille
2000 Ptolemy's Gate – Jonathan Stroud

The Voyage of The Space Beagle (***)

With all the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to read Van Vogt’s “Voyage of the Space Beagle” with the same clarity and futuristic vision that perhaps inspired Gene Roddenberry to spin off Star Trek vesting the Enterprise with the five year mission to go where no man has gone before. In a style that will remind readers of Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles” or Asimov’s “I, Robot”, this quintessential example of early pulp science-fiction and space opera - at once fun-loving, thought-provoking, intense, frightening and entertaining – is actually a series of four short stories joined together by the common theme of inter-stellar exploration and alien first contact.

Each of the four stories is brim full of the stock in trade and requisite hard sci-fi toys and elements of the typical stories of the day – blasters, stun guns, force fields, teleportation, bizarre aliens, hostile landscapes, communicators, travel at near light speeds, and the like. But assessing it from the hard side of the sci-fi spectrum, “Voyage of the Space Beagle” is certainly not unique, has little beyond short-term entertainment value to recommend it and I think most readers would be unlikely to accord it the status of “classic”.

But look more closely at the softer side of the sci-fi field of play! Ah, now there’s where “Voyage of the Space Beagle” comes into its own with some compelling and imaginative ideas, insights and questions – Elliot Grosvenor as the expert in the newly founded science of Nexialism which purports to be the nexus or bridge between hitherto unrelated fields of scientific endeavour such as physics, chemistry, metallurgy, geography or sociology for example (a means of looking at the “big” scientific picture from a new meta-level, as it were – do you think we’re talking about a 1950s version of Science Officer Spock here?); the social difficulties of a population living in the confined quarters of an exploratory vessel for extended periods; the political, command and management clashes between scientific, technical and military personnel with their varying motives, agendas and decision making styles on such a mission; the completely ineffectual nature of democracy as part of a command structure in the context of such an operation; and the unbridgeable philosophical differences and overwhelming communication difficulties that might be encountered in an alien first contact situation.

Clearly Van Vogt was appreciative of our ultimate smallness in the universe. Like Clifford D Simak, he was also openly critical of man’s history of violence and the arrogant impression of his own power and importance:

“You assume far too readily that man is a paragon of justice, forgetting, apparently, that he has a long and savage history. He has killed other animals not only for meat but for pleasure; he has enslaved his neighbors, murdered his opponents, and obtained the most unholy sadistical joy from the agony of others. It is not impossible that we shall, in the course of our travels, meet other intelligent creatures far more worthy than man to rule the universe.”

I wonder if Van Vogt appreciated the irony in his own writing. Despite the obvious criticism of the human condition inherent in his character’s words, Van Vogt persisted in writing stories in which every alien encounter failed to transcend that hostility and savagery and either began or ended with violent confrontation or battle. For the most part, the inhabitants of the Space Beagle barely even tried. Sigh!

“The Voyage of the Space Beagle” is fun to read, entertaining and imaginative to be sure but not truly visionary and capable of lasting other than as a memento of what good space opera was like in the 50s! Recommended for lovers of classic science fiction.

Paul Weiss

The Mysterious Affair at Styles (*****)

HERCULE POIROT ... IT ALL STARTED RIGHT HERE!

“The Mysterious Affair at Styles” can only be categorized as a classic among classics. In 1920, on the strength of a dare, Agatha Christie penned a cozy mystery that introduced a grateful reading world to Hercule Poirot and Arthur Hastings, the detective and sidekick duo who hold their place in literary fame alongside such luminaries as Holmes and Watson or Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe.

Captain Arthur Hastings, a guest at Styles Court, the family manor of long-time friend John Cavendish, finds himself hip-deep in a locked room murder mystery when Cavendish’s mother, Emily Inglethorpe, is discovered poisoned by strychnine inside her bedroom! Hastings, who fancies himself a competent amateur sleuth, suggests the Cavendish family engage his friend, Hercule Poirot, a recently retired Belgian detective of no small skill and reputation, to find the culprit.

There is certainly no shortage of possible motives, clues and suspects – John and Lawrence Cavendish, the victim’s sons who are suffering from pecuniary difficulty and constant financial embarrassment; Alfred Ingelthorpe, the blackguard, money-grubbing husband who stands to inherit the entire estate at the expense of the rest of the family; Evie Howard, Mrs Inglethorpe’s companion and long-time family friend recently dismissed from the estate after a bitter argument with the matriarch over the intentions of her new husband; Cynthia Murdoch, the chemist with access to strychnine; or perhaps Dr Bauerstein, a renowned expert on poisons entangled in an affair with Mary Cavendish!

A thoroughly enjoyable novel, easily read in a couple of sittings, “The Mysterious Affair at Styles” introduced us to all the hallmarks of typical Poirot mysteries – the quirky, vain fastidiousness of the little Belgian detective and his love of method, order and the use of “the little gray cells”; the loyalty, charm, unfailing gentlemanly behaviour and decidedly humorous upper class character of the ex-military man, Hastings; the liberal sprinkling of clues and possible suspects; and, of course, the much-loved and often imitated stereotypical congregation of the entire cast in the single room climax in which Poirot outlines his deductions and reveals the culprit for the edification of all!

If you’ve never read an Agatha Christie mystery, this would perhaps be THE place to start! If you’ve read her work before, then pick this one up again, re-read it and discover why you fell in love with Agatha Christie and Poirot in the first place.

Highly recommended.