Book Review: “The Confusion” by Neal Stephenson

The Confusion is the middle volume Neil Stephenson’s trilogy, The Baroque Cycle. It is the follow up to 2003’s Quicksilver and this vast doorstop of a book at over 800 pages. The Confusion is in fact two novels: Bonanza and The Juncto that are offered in large alternating sections within this one volume. The two stories are mostly told separately, with just a little intermingling at the end. “Bonanza” is the story of adventurer and rogue Jack Shaftoe, who was a slave at the end of Quicksilver. While The Juncto follows the story of Eliza, Duchess d’Arcachon, Sir Isaac Newton and other minor characters as well. While this structure sound all a bit more than confusing, it is actually rather easy to follow.

In Bonanza Shaftoe is recovering from a venereal disease, called the French pox. But the bout has left him with serious gaps in his memory. So he essentially finds himself in the middle of a plan for him and his fellow slaves to pirate a treasure ship and buy their freedom with the ill gotten gains. The bit of piracy is pulled off, but it also makes the motley crew a target. Jack and his fellows flee with their loot: Across the Mediterranean, through the Red Sea, over Indian and Pacific Oceans to Manila, and Japan, and Mexico, and finally return to Europe.

The Juncto is much less breathless in its pacing. In fact The Juncto often comes to dead halts as Stephenson lectures the readers through the mouth of his characters, mostly about money. However The Juncto parts are not without their excitement and adventure as well, as Eliza tries to save her kidnapped illegitimate son and also save Princess Caroline, one of the potential heirs to the English Throne from her rivals.

Besides the politics and economics there are multiple sub plots that involve alchemy, calculus, symbolic logic, and the attempt to build a very early mechanical computing machine. Also tossed in are famous historical figures such as Newton and his rival Leibniz. The Confusion is replete with separate stories, not all of them move the plot along in any manifold way. They just seem to pop up at random points and seem to exist merely to take up space in the book. Stephenson’s prose has never been concise, but he seems to have thrown any self-editing overboard in this book. Still The Confusion is worth a read if the reader wants to take the time to do it, or has been drawn into the series by Quicksilver.

Book Review: “Margaret Thatcher: Not for Turning, Volume One” by Charles Moore

Charles Moore’s authorized biography of Margaret Thatcher will do little to change peoples’ opinions of Britain’s “Iron Lady” but does add a great deal to the general public’s knowledge of Baroness Thatcher’s life.

Margaret Thatcher: Not for Turning, Volume One is the first book in a two-volume biography of the first woman prime minister of Great Britain. This first book covers Lady Thatcher’s life from birth to the end of the 1982 Falkland’s War with Argentina. As an authorized biographer Moore had access not only to all the public documents of Thatcher’s time as Prime Minister (1979 to 1990) but also to the secret papers. He also has unfettered access to the Thatcher family as well as the Baroness’ help in arranging interviews with political allies and co-workers.

In this book the reader learns perhaps more than they might have wanted to know about Thatcher’s early life, family relationships and career. Using a set of 150 letters between Lady Thatcher and her older sister, Muriel, the reader finds out that Margaret was almost a good time girl before she met and married Denis Thatcher. She dated often with a goodly number of different men and was not afraid to use her feminine wiles to get what she felt was her due.

Nor was the Thatcher’s picture-perfect marriage actually so picture-perfect. Denis Thatcher had a nervous breakdown in late sixties and ran off to South Africa for awhile. Moore reports that many of the Thatcher’s family friends felt this event was caused by Margaret’s single-minded focus on her growing political career.

After dealing with this, Moore starts to focus on Thatcher’s political life and times. He opines that there was nothing particularly special or inevitable about Lady Thatcher’s rise to power. Rather it was, like many historical events, made up of a series of accidents and unforeseen circumstances. If there is one theme that Moore brings to the front of Thatcher’s career, it is that her political enemies nearly always underestimated her as a politician and a leader.

Moore passes rather rapidly over Thatcher’s turmoil-filled, first term of rioting and high unemployment. But he does go into some detail on the inner workings of the War Cabinet during the Falkland’s War and Lady Thatcher’s determination to see the conflict through.

Moore’s prose can be a bit dense at times, but is precise and full of wry wit and good humor. “Margaret Thatcher: Not for Turning” is a required read for anyone interested in Margaret Thatcher as a person, politician and world leader.

 

Book Review: “Never Far From Nowhere” by Andrea Levy

Never Far From Nowhere is Andrea Levy’s 1996 coming of age novel set London during the 1970s. Levy also wrote the better known Small Island. The book tells the story of two sisters, Olive and Vivien. The two girls are the children of Caribbean immigrants to England. Also the sisters are very different as siblings often turn out to be. The older sister, Olive, has the darker skin tone and the curlier hair. She is the smarter and tougher of the two. She wants to get out on her own soon as possible. Meanwhile, Vivien is three years younger than Olive and also lighter skinned with wavy, not curly, black hair. Vivien is also smart, though perhaps not as smart as Olive, but she much more wants to fit into the “white world” around her. She even goes as far as to say she is not of Jamaican descent, but that her family is from Mauritius.

Because of the differences in their looks, Olive has a much tougher life than Vivien. Both try and make their way out of their lives of council housing (government housing) into a wider and more materially successful world. Both of course suffer from the usual teenage pressures of getting good grades, of peer pressure and of parents who want them to make good. This is only multiplied by the subtle and not so subtle prejudice they seem to be subjected to seemly every minute of their lives.

Vivien manages to earn excellent grades in school and is soon off to college leaving Olive behind. But according to Olive, Vivien is “black” as she is and will never be totally accepted into the white world because of it, and no matter how hard she tries.

The girls’ stories are told in chapters of alternating narration, so the reader is on one page seeing the world through Vivien’s eyes and the next is seeing the same world through Olive’s eyes. Also the chapters are very short, generally just a few pages, which means the reader is rather bounced back and forth between the two points of view. Levy’s London is an odd place, it seems that Olive and Vivien’s family are the only black people around, and all the rest of the characters are white.

Levy’s writing is clear and easy to read, but this book is unrelentingly bleak and sad. According to Levy, life is full of nothing but disappointment and, if you are black, constant racism and misery.

Book Review: Life after Life by Kate Atkinson

Alternative histories and alternate universes have been staples of science fiction since there has been science fiction as a genre. Even serious historians have taken up the tropes of the sub-genre, calling it “counter-factual” history. Within the bounds of the allo-history (other history) sub-genre the two overriding pivot points of history are someone killing Hitler or the American South winning the American Civil War.

So it is with Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, Atkinson’s main character, Ursula Todd, tries to kill Hitler in November 1930. In another book the reader would then see how this event affected the larger world. But in Life After Life the reader is suddenly thrown back to 1910 and Ursula’s still birth. And then is told about her live birth.

It seems that Ursula Todd is a special person, able to re-live her life over and over again and be conscious of the alternative lives she could and did live all at the same time. For example, in one section of the book, Ursula is violently raped and left pregnant by the attack. In another version she manages to avoid the attack and in a third version of the same event Ursula actually flirts with her would-be attacker. This book is like some kind of very serious version of the movie, Groundhog Day.

However, the book is really less about alternative universes and time lines then it is about how the two World Wars and the changes to British society in the interwar years affect Ursula and her family. As the reader moves through the book, it becomes clearer that the whole “allo-history” theme is merely an overplayed gimmick. Life After Life would have been a perfectly fine (and much shorter) straight novel about an English middle-class family and their troubles and trials in the early and mid 20th century without the whole (rather silly) alternate history overlay.

Further, Atkinson is not telling the reader anything they do not already know: Life was very restrictive for women in Edwardian Britain; they had limited choices and lived powerless lives. War is awful and World War Two was the most awful of wars, with millions killed, wounded and otherwise hurt.

Fortunately, Atkinson writes with a good deal of wit, style and clarity. Never is the reader confused as to where Ursula is and what she is about at any place in the novel. But sadly the whole thing is really rather pointless. Life After Life is entertaining enough, but is not anything particularly new or groundbreaking.

The Best Veterans’ Day Movies

“All Quiet on the Western Front”, the 1930’s film of the classic novel is by far the best. The plot revolves around Paul Baumer as a young draftee into the German Army as he tries to survive and adjust to the horrors of war. This is no clean and glorifying version of the war. In one memorable scene as the Paul’s unit storms through barbed wire, people are blown apart, one memorable and horrifying image is of two hands gripping the wire as the rest of the body is shot away.

1945’s “They Were Expendable” is another classic, starring the inestimable John Wayne and Robert Montgomery as the officers of a Motor Torpedo Boat (PT Boat) squadron in the early days of World War Two in the Philippines. Based on a book by the Medal of Honor Winner John Buckley, this movie is noted for its verisimilitude.

1959’s “Pork Chop Hill” also features a stellar cast, which includes Gregory Peck and Rip Torn. Also in the cast are several young actors that would later go on to be stars including: George Peppard, Harry Guardino, Robert Blake, Martin Landau, Gavin MacLeod and Harry Dean Stanton in a bit part. Based on the history book of the same name written by famed military historian S.L.A Marshall, the plot is about the bloody fighting on Pork Chop Hill at the end of the Korean War. Again this film is noted for its realism and attention to accurate detail.

1987’s “Hamburger Hill” was until “We were Soldiers” the best movie regarding Vietnam and it is still among the best. Featuring a cast that of then relatively unknowns that went on to become stars including Dylan McDermott, Steven Weber, Courtney B. Vance, Don Cheadle and Michael Boatman. The film tells the story of a platoon of infantry in the 3st of the 187th Infantry as they repeatedly assault the well fortified North Vietnamese position on ‘Hill 937′ or “Hamburger Hill”.

The number one best Veteran’s Day movie of all time has to be 1946’s “The Best Years of Our Lives”. A multiple Oscar winner, this movie follows three World War Two Veterans as they return to civilian life and try to adjust to post war America. The veterans and their families must cope with how the war has changed the men and how the men must now move on with their lives. Without a doubt “The Best Years of Our Lives” should be shown every Veteran’s Day.

Classic War Movies

It seems that every Veteran’s and Memorial Day popular cable television stations broadcast marathons of classic war movies. This of course raises the question of which movies are the true classic war films.

“All Quiet on the Western Front”, the 1930’s film of the classic novel is by far the best of all the film versions.

“The Battle of Britain” based on the book “The Narrow Margin” by Derek Wood and Derek Dempster features an international cast including and tells the story of “the Few” that saved Britain in the Fall of 1940

“They Were Expendable” based on a book by Naval Officer and Congressional Medal of Honor Winner John Buckley, this movie is noted for its realism.

“Wake Island” tells the story of the doomed defense of the American Outpost of Wake Island at the start of World War Two is a multiple Oscar Winner.

“Twelve O’Clock High” tells the story of the early days of the Daylight Bombing campaign of the US Air Corps in England. This film stars Gregory Peck as the hard driving Brigadier General Savage commander of the 918th Bomb Group.

Oscar winning “Saving Private Ryan” is well known for its first 27 minutes that depicts the harrowing landing of the 2nd Ranger Battalion on Omaha beach. The story follows eight Army Rangers as they search for the last survivor of a family of four sons; Private Ryan of the title, to send him home after his three brothers have been killed combat.

“The Best Years of Our Lives”. A multiple Oscar winner this movie follows three World War Two Veterans as they return to civilian life and try to adjust to post war America. The veterans and their families must cope with how the war has changed the men and how the men must now move on with their lives.

“Pork Chop Hill” is based on the history book of the same name, written by Brigadier General S.L.A Marshall, is about the bloody fighting on Pork Chop Hill at the end of the Korean War.

“Hamburger Hill” this film tells the story of a platoon in the 3rd of the 187th Infantry as they repeatedly attacked a well fortified North Vietnamese Army position on “Hamburger Hill”.

“We Were Soldiers” this film tells the story of the Battle of the Ia Drang valley in Vietnam, the first major clash between the American Military and the North Vietnamese Army.

Movie Analysis: Overlooked Horror Movies

Given the ubiquity of DVDs and Blu-Rays for sale and rent, it is difficult to believe that some of these fine gems of horror flicks have slipped below the of radar of many a horror fan. There is no particular rhyme or reason as to why these movies are widely unknown even among hard core scary movie fans.

So in alphabetical order:

“Bubba Ho-Tep”:

The award winning “Bubba Ho-Tep” released in 2002 stars Bruce Campbell, (the Chin himself), as Elvis Presley, (yes THAT Elvis) and Ossie Davis as the still alive former President John F. Kennedy. This is all explained in the movie. Based on a short story by Jon R. Lonsdale, “Bubba Ho-Tep” tells the story of the duo of Presley and Kennedy as they battle a resurrected mummy that is sucking the life out of residents of their retirement home.

“The Changeling”:

1980’s The Changeling is one of the best haunted house movies of all time, it rates at least has high as the more popular “Poltergeist” on the scare-o-meter. Starring the awesome George C. Scott as composer John Russell who movies into a empty house soon after the death of his wife and young daughter. This movie is not a gore fest but depends on a disquieting camera shots, weird music and pure mood to creep the viewer out.

“Dog Soldiers”:

A section of British soldiers on maneuvers in the Scottish Highlands are attacked by werewolves and are forced to fort up in a cabin in the woods. The most action oriented movie on this list, there is also plenty of gore and not some little pathos as the squaddies are taken out. Features Sean Pertwee, the son of the 3rd Doctor Who, Jon Pertwee.

“In The Mouth Of Madness” (1994)

In 1994 John Carpenter released this homage to H. P. Lovecraft, Stephen King and the Hammer Horror movies of the 1950s and 60s. This movie has a stellar cast including Sam Neill as John Trent, an insurance investigator out to find Sutter Cane the most popular horror writer in the world. It also stars David Warner, Charleston Heston and John Glover. Playing a riff on the Lovecrafts Cthulhu mythos, the movie is weird, disturbing and surprising stylish.

“Something Wicked This Way Comes”:

1983’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes” based on the novel by Ray Bradbury and with a screenplay written by the man himself, is a classy, creepy gothic movie with some genuinely outright scary moments. This movie also has a top notch cast with Jason Robards, Diane Ladd and Jonathan Pryce as Mr. Dark.

Book Review: “Old Man’s War” by John Scalzi

The big three books of military science fiction are “Starship Troopers” by Robert Heinlein, “The Forever War” by Joe Haldeman and “Old Man’s War” by John Scalzi. All of these novels won the Hugo Award.

Scalzi’s novel is the first person narrative of John Perry and his tour of duty with the Colonial Defense Forces (CDF). It is here that Scalzi overturns his first trope. Instead of hormone fueled adolescents, the CDF only recruits 75 year-olds. Perry leaves the Earth simply because he has nothing to really hold him there as his wife is dead and he is no longer really connected to his remaining family.

The CDF uses bio-engineering and nano-technology to rejuvenate and enhance their recruits. It would be a bit much to give away the exact methods for this process, but it involves DNA, cloning and nano- computers and results in greatly enhanced strength, speed and endurance of the CDF soldiers.

In the universe of “The Old man’s War”, Earth is a backwater. It is used as a recruiting ground for colonists, mostly from poor third world countries and for soldiers, mostly from richer first world countries. However once you leave Earth you are not allowed to return ever. The book’s universe is also filled with big bad aliens, most of which seem to have a taste for human flesh.

Perry undergoes basic training and then ships out to fight humanity’s alien enemies. The battle scenes are exciting and well written, with each alien species using unique weapons and technology. Perry is a good soldier despite being a pacifist on earth and advances up the ranks to captain before the end of the novel.

Scalzi’s dialog is sharp and rings true; his narrative is tight. The book avoids long diatribes about war and peace or politics. Scalzi’s characters are sympathetic and real. The reader really cares who lives and dies. Yet not all of them are brave and caring, some are real jerks. This is also rings true. Every military unit or job has its fair share slackers and loudmouths. The book is just the right length; it engages the reader without taxing them with techno-babble or philosophy.

“Old Man’s War” is a very fine first novel and was deservingly won the Hugo Award. The novel spawned a direct sequel, The Ghosts Brigades that was published in 2006, and was followed by two other books, The Last Colony and Zoe’s Tale.

Book review: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman.

The canon of military science fiction has three ‘must reads’. One is “Starship Troopers” by Robert Heinlein; another is John Scalzi’s “Old Man’s War”. The third  is “The Forever War” by Joe Haldeman.

“The Forever War” follows the story of William Mandella as he is drafted and advances from Private to Major, fights the alien Taurans and suffers the effects of time dilation as he travels from star to star at near light speed. While the novel wears a hard science fiction overcoat with wormhole traveling starships, fighting suits with lasers and alien life forms, it is actually and thematically, a novel of the Vietnam War.

The book was published in 1974 just as America was extracting itself from Southeast Asia. Haldeman is a Vietnam veteran, who was clearly writing about his war and projecting it forward in time and space while exploring universal theme of combat and the fighting soldiers.

In the first section: Private Mandella, William Mandella, college physics students, is conscripted into the United Nations Exploratory Force. His cohort of 100 draftees, all have I.Q.s over 150 and bodies of above average strength. The training is both harsh and foolish. Training in Missouri for fighting on planet were the temperature approaches Absolute Zero. During this section we learn that the army is coed and very sexual, in fact men and women bunk together as a matter of regulation. But the sex is never explicit and doesn’t derail the story.

The training progresses to outer space and casualties begin to mount as several of the trainees are killed or severely injured and the survivors are dispatched on their first combat mission. However, before leaving for the battle the soldiers are “conditioned”, read “brainwashed”, into remorseless killing machines. The conditioning is unnecessary; the first ground battle with the enemy Taurans is a cakewalk as the Taurans seem to have no concept of infantry fighting.

The second section; Sergeant Mandella details another campaign, in which the human starship is on the wrong end of time dilation when the Tauran ship has much more advanced weapons then the humans.

After that, William and his lover Marygay Potter, are discharged and return to Earth. While they have only aged months, Earth has aged years and it is now barely recognizable to the returning vets. Crime is epidemic; everyone goes armed or requires bodyguards to simply leave home. A one-world-government controls the economy and even food rations. The most jarring change to Mandella is the vast numbers of homosexuals. The UN encourages homolife as a mean of population control. When Marygay parents are killed in a criminal attack and William’s mother dies because she is not due any health care under the Universal Medical Security System. They both re-up to the army and are immediately sent back into combat.

In the third part: Lieutenant Mandella, William and Marygay are assigned to the same company and are both badly wounded in battle, William loses a leg and Marygay an arm. They are shipped to Heaven, the UNEFs hospital planet, where they grow new limbs to replace ones lost in the war. When they are reassigned, Marygay goes to a special company forming on Heaven and William is shipped off planet to Stargate, the UNEF command center and main base, to join another.

In the last part: Major Mandella, William takes command of a company and is sent to the farthest wormhole ever detected, in Magellanic Clouds. Reduced to fighting in a ‘stasis’ field with swords, he manages to win the last battle, but loses most of his company. When William returns to Stargate, he and his surviving soldiers find themselves as the last people to have fought the war. Human clones with a collective mind, called Man, have replaced individuals on Earth. The Man clones also have established communications with the Taurans which are also clones. Once the two clone groups started to talk they discover that humans started the war and it had all been for nothing.

William also discovers that Marygay is still alive and is using a surplus starship as a time machine to stay young until William can return. William and Marygay settle on a planet called Middle Finger, maintained by Man as a genetic pool in case the cloning has some hidden defect. In the epilog Marygay and William’s first son is born.

Thematically, the novel is about soldiers who suffer the violence and hardship of war and then return home only to find themselves alienated from the society that they have fought to protect.

As to it being ‘about’ Vietnam, hints abound leaving no doubt as to which war Haldeman is really writing about. For example, the soldiers are drafted, the cadre and leaders of the first campaign are ‘old vets’ like the veterans of World War 2 and Korea that lead the younger generation in Vietnam. William hates and disdains these older soldiers. The first campaign takes place on a jungle planet. There are many more hints if you look closely.

In The Forever War soldiers are not superhuman or even heroic, they are merely trying to survive and get home. The writing is simple, clean and uncluttered. Haldeman sketches rather than details, but leave the reader with a clear and concise idea of characters, settings and technology.

The Forever War is simultaneously one of the greatest science fiction novels of all time and a classic antiwar novel.

Haldeman wrote a direct sequel, Forever Free and a novella of Marygay’s time away from William in A Separate War.

Book Review: “The Cuckoos Calling” by Robert Galbraith

Cormoran Strike is the one-legged (his prosthetic limb works just fine, thank you) love child of a rock star and a drug addicted groupie. He is also former military policeman; actually he was investigator for the British Army’s Royal Military Police Special Investigation Division, and now is a private detective. But like many a protagonist in these kinds of novels, his life and his career are not going so well. He has been kicked out of his place by his on-again, off-again girlfriend and is sleeping on a cot in his shabby little office. Yet he has somehow managed to hire a temp to act as his secretar; this is the redoubtable Robin.

In the book The Cuckoo’s Calling by “Robert Galbraith” (otherwise known as J.K. Rowling, the mega successful author of the Harry Potter novels), Strike is hired by supermodel Lula Landry’s brother, John Landry, to look into Lula’s apparent suicide. Strike thinks this easy money, since the poor girl was in a bad relationship, had other troubles and was alone when she seemingly jumped from her high rise apartment balcony.

However, not all is as it seems as Strike with the supernaturally loyal temp, Robin, at his side do the full grind on the investigation. Going through Lula’s life one person and one relationship at a time, the two move around, in and through a world of lawyers, artists, musicians and frauds, all of whom think that they and their lives are the center of the universe.

The book is slowly and carefully paced. Cormoran Strike is methodical, to say the least, and obsessive compulsive to say the most. He leaves no stone unturned, no feather unruffled as he digs into the supermodel’s life and death. All the while Robin the temp is right at his side, Watson to his Sherlock Holmes, or perhaps Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote.

Detective novels rise and fall on their heroes (or anti-heroes), their unique voices and the reality of the situation they find themselves in. Sadly, Strike is mostly boring and pathetic; he is strictly damaged goods and has not one interesting thing to say in the whole darn book. Nor does the situation ring very true either.

Strike’s relationships are as uninspired and pathetic as the rest of his life. Although its seems like Rowling is trying for social comedy and social commentary, like the better works of Robert B. Parker, or Joe R. Lansdale, she falls measurably short in both the comedy and the commentary.

If The Cuckoo’s Call is the best that Rowling can manage after Harry Potter, well it is better that she should have just rested on her laurels and collected her fat royalty checks. But instead she has inflicted what will no doubt be a best seller and the start of a series on an unsuspecting reading public. Over the course of her career, Rowling has lost the art of producing the simple declarative sentence. In this book, she rambles, the characters ramble, the situation rambles and all of that leads to basically nowhere.