Mind games

TITLE: Excession
AUTHOR: Iain M Banks
PUBLISHER: Orbit

RANKING
5/5 "Indiscretion"; 4/5 "Obsession"; 3/5 "Possession"; 2/5 "Depression"; 1/5 "Recession"
SCORE: 4/5

To keep themselves amused, the super-AIs known as Minds in Iain M Banks's science fiction universe spend their time runing galaxy-sized simulations, a world of make-believe and might-have-been the Minds call the Land of Infinite Fun.

"Excession" is a bit like spending a few hours in Mr Banks's own Land of Infinite Fun; outlandish, amusing, intriguing, but never quite involving enought to let you forget that it's all just make-believe. Po-faced it certainly is not, it's space opera with a wink and a smile, gently tapping on the fourth wall but never quite breaking it.

"Excession" is the fourth book set in Mr Banks's Culture universe. This universe features technology as ahead of own our as the iPod is to the clay tablet, technology taken to its ultimate extreme, capable of building anything, anywhere, in any quantity desired. As a result, the biological inhabitants have long since given control of space ships and habitats (nobody's so old-fashioned as to live on an actual planet) and pretty much everything else to the Minds, a bunch of computers as pompous as Deep Thought, as twiggy as HAL and as serious as a whoopy cushion at a Shriner convention. They are the perfect security blanket for the cosseted inhabitants of the Culture. Together, they can out-think and out-fight anything the galaxy can throw at them.

Anything? Well, almost anything. The word "excession" you see, means something beyond a civilization's ability to understand, or resist should it prove hostile. The Aztecs would understand the concept. The Culture, as luck would have it, may have discovered an Excession, in the form of an impenetrable black globe which may serve as a link to other universes. As an added complication, it's also rather close to a warlike race called the Affront.

Mr Banks plugs us into the machinations of the Minds, as they struggle to respond to the challenges posed both by the Excession and the Affront, not to mention a cabal-within-a-cabal of rogue Minds with an agenda of their own.

It's not all a meeting of Minds, though they hog the limelight and all the best lines. There's also Genar-Hofoen, a rake in the Clark Gable mould, currently serving as an ambassador to the thuggish frat-boy Affront. Somewhere in his closet, where he keeps his skeletions, is his ex-lover Dajeil Gelian, now a recluse on board a highly eccentric ship called the Sleeper Service.

The Minds have a job for Genar-Hofoen, though it might be pure stratagem. Tricky chaps, AIs. Just ask David Bowman. Are they trying to stop a war over the Excession, or start one?

The mysteries emerge into clearer resolution somewhat haphazardly, as we flicker randomly back and forth between Genar-Hofoen, Dajeil, and the Minds. The plot is mere subroutine, never the main program. The history between Genar-Hofoen and Dajeil, for example, is revealed in flashback info-dumps, and does not resolve so much as suddenly stop, blue-screened by other events around the Excession.
It's never a terribly compelling story, but then it's always fun to watch Mr Banks at play in his universe.

Mostly, you see, the novel is an exploration of the imaginative universe M Banks has created for us. What do supercomputers do for fun? What would post-humans do for religion? What would families be like if you could change your sex anytime you wanted? You get the feeling Mr Banks would rather answer these questions than attend to his sprawling story. It's a nice reminder that while American scifi has the best gadgets, it's the Brits that have the most fun. The overall structure of may suffer as a result, may get a little buggy, but the result is priceless.

It's not quite Infinite Fun, but you don't have to have a brain the size of a planet to enjoy plugging into Mr Banks's universe.

The Pleasures of Utopia

TITLE: Look to Windward
AUTHOR: Iain M Banks
PUBLISHER: Orbit

RATING
5/5 "Look out, there are llamas"; 4/5 "Remove infant before folding for storage"; 3/5 "Caution: Hot beverages are hot!"; 2/5 "Mind the gap"; 1/5 "Duck"
SCORE: 4/5

The trouble with utopias is that perfection gets a bit dull. Unless you're talking about Iain M Banks's "Culture" novels, which get scarily close to perfection without ever losing their charm.

The Culture is Star Trek's Federation stood on its head, anarchic where the Enterprise is hierarchical, post-human instead of stodgily 20th century, interventionist where Kirk's gang (in theory at least) stick to an intergalactic Peace of Westphalia and keep their hands to themselves.

As any American today can tell you, intervening in the affairs of others doesn't always end well. As "Look to Windward" opens, the Culture is wiping egg off its collective face after an attempt to eliminate social inequality in a people called the Chelgrians has instead ignited a bloody caste war. Not coincidentally, the Culture is also marking the 800th anniversary of a battle in their last serious war, which caused the destruction of two suns and a few billion souls.

Death is very much on the mind of Chelgrian emissary Quilan, still mourning the death of his wife in the war the Culture started. He has been dispatched to the Culture world of Masaq', ostensibly to talk a dissident artist into returning with him. However, he has secret orders, so deeply buried in his mind that even he doesn't know what they are.

Masaq' is an Orbital, an artificial world shaped like a gigantic, rotating bracelet in space, millions of kilometers in diameter. As such, it offers its inhabitants nearly limitless space. Technological advances, meanwhile, have banished illness, disease, poverty and starvation.

The plot with Quilan and the dissident composer is only the rim of the story, provided impetus by the hub and the heart, which is looking at how humanity would live in such a utopia. And just as importantly, how we might choose to die.

Mr Banks's Culture novels are never less than full-bore malarial fevers of imagination, and "Look to Windward" does not disappoint. The book's primary pleasure is the chance to sink into Mr Banks's hallucinatory universe and let the ideas and images wash over you: city-sized living zeppelins, sailing cable cars, a fortress perched atop basalt stacks.

How would we live in utopia? Picture your worst American sterotype, dialled up to 1,000. His Culture citizens are hedonistic, selfish and hilariously shallow--high points include a diner unsure whether what's on his plate is food or an alien, and a rafter on a lava stream who is unable to distinguish between base and virtual reality. But Mr Banks shows us the flip side, as well, in their guilt for past mistakes and the way they face life's final end.

Readers looking for something as kinetic as Mr Banks's first Culture novel, "Consider Phlebas", will be sorely disappointed. Like the Masaq' Orbital, "Look to Windward" is in no hurry to get you anywhere, but invites you to take a spin and admire the view. A pretty view it is, nicely leavened with both light and shadow, proof that utopias don't have to be boring.

Time Enough for Love

TITLE: The Time Traveler's Wife
AUTHOR: Audrey Niffenegger
PUBLISHER: Vintage Canada

RATING
5/5 "A month of Sundays"; 4/5 "The eleventh hour"; 3/5 "The nick of time"; 2/5 "Two shakes"; 1/5 "Zero hour"
SCORE: 4/5

I watched my daughter sleeping the other night. I wished I could stop time. I wished I could stay there forever.

My melancholy mood has a name, and it is "The Time Traveler's Wife". Like most novels that claim to be about one thing, it is really about its opposite--here, escaping the bonds of time throws our prison bars into greater relief. The love story at its center is both mundane and profoundly moving. I can't point to any special insight, any masterful display of wordplay, but for days after I wanted to reach out, to cling to my family, to stretch each moment into eternity.

Audrey Niffenegger's novel is about love, but it is also about loss. Clare, the wife in question, is married to Henry, who is sort of an epileptic with a twist--instead of seizures, his fits send his body hurtling randomly backwards or forwards in time. He takes nothing with him; he arrives naked and disoriented, and each time must first set about finding clothing, shelter and food, putting him in mortal danger. Clare must sit and wait, and hope that he will eventually return to her.

The great thing about time travel is it submits docilely to whatever interpretation you care to impose. Pick your metaphor. Relationship woes or dealing with illness and disease are the obvious ones here. Fate and free will are equally plausible. The fleeting nature of time. Life's randomness and unfairness. I suspect it is this malleability of meaning that has made this such a popular book.

Ms Niffenegger concentrates on the story and allows you to scribble whatever meaning you like onto her canvas. What did come through strongly for me was her belief in the power of art to transcend the limits of time. Henry is the son of a violinist and an opera singer. He bonds with teenagers over punk rock music made before they were born. Clare's mother writes poetry, her sister is cellist, she herself is a sculptor. Clare's mother, uncommunicative in life, speaks to her daughter through her poems. Henry's mother lives on in recordings of her performances. Towards the end of the novel, Clare creates a self-portrait, then "I (Clare) place my finger on her forehead, and say, "Vanish", but it is she who will stay; I am the one who is vanishing." Art, in other words, outlives its creator.

It is a moving book, but not especially movingly written. The power comes from the story's conception rather than execution. Henry and Clare are almost too perfect, too pure in their love. I was reminded somewhat of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (the filmic version; I must confess to never having read the original story), in that the remarkable character at the center doesn't do anything especially remarkable with his life.

The only sour note for me was the priviledged backgrounds Ms Niffenegger gives both Henry and Clare. Henry's parents are world-famous, Clare's are fabulously wealthy. While partially this is a plot point--the garden of Clare's house becomes their secret rendezvous--it somewhat blunts the pathos. Consider 23-year-old Ann in "My Life Without Me", struggling to protect her unemployed husband and two infant children from the fact that she is dying of cancer. That gets my sympathy. Being born into immense wealth, staying wealthy because your husband knows all the lottery numbers, but frustrated because he's not always around? Ho-hum.

I know, I know. I'm a stone. The trick is despite the so-so love story, there's enough that lingers with you long enough to get you watching your loved ones at night.

Et tu, Sidebottom?

TITLE: King of Kings
AUTHOR: Harry Sidebottom
PUBLISHER: Penguin

RATING
5/5 "Lord of the Rings"; 4/5 "Prince of Bel Air"; 3/5 "Queen of Hearts"; 2/5 "King of Pop"; 1/5 "Ace of Base"
SCORE: 3/5

If there's one thing the Romans had a talent for, even more than oratory and regicide (et tu Brute and all that), it was for getting on the wrong side of history's Samuel L Jackson types. Hannibal of Carthage, Attila the Hun, and the Sassanid Persian Shah-an-Shah, the King of Kings.

The last was for centuries perhaps the most dangerous. The Sassanid Persians were the only regional "superpower" that could fight the Romans on anything like equal terms. It's this conflict that forms the focus for Harry Sidebottom's "Warrior of Rome" series, and provides the best bits of the second installment, "King of Kings".

The first novel, "Fire in the East", was hugely fun. Mr Sidebottom teaches classical history at Oxford University, allowing him to bring tremendous depth to the subject. His fist novel was vivid, detailed, richly imagined and with a clear narrative focus that drove the action like a circus charioteer. Ballista, former barbarian hostage and now Roman general, is sent to defend the city of Arete from a Persian invasion. He travels to the city, readies the defences, then leads his men in a desperate but hopeless resistance.

"King of Kings" suffers from a lack of similar story arc. Here, you feel Mr Sidebottom is mainly playing for time, shuffling the pieces on the board in order to set up a cliffhanger ending. This leaves his characters at loose ends for prolonged periods. We pick up with Ballista as he flees the fallen city. He becomes a general again, fights a battle, gets sent to persecute Christians in the Anatolian city of Ephesus, quits and gets called back to the colors again. While "Fire in the East" built nicely from the first sparks to the final conflaguration, "King of Kings" gutters in the breezy subplots, never building much heat until the final few chapters.

To constructively fill the time, Mr Sidebottom recycles a number of old enemies, as well as the "whodunnit" device of the first book. There, Ballista faced a traitor in the city, here, a string of assassination attempts. Mr Sidebottom's portrayal of Christians also echoes the less than heroic role they played in "Fire in the East". More orthodoxly religious readers may find his squabbling, fanatical Christians a little disrespectful.

Still, if it's Romans red in tooth and claw you're after, Mr Sidebottom is your man. Ballista isn't shy about spilling a little claret, as he carves his way through assorted assassins, rioters, pirates and Persians. The setting remains richly detailed and imagined, giving you an enjoyable peek at Roman life. Mr Sidebottom's scholarship shows in other ways too, such as the winks he throws to readers who know their Roman history. When Ballista's chum Aurelian gets on the wrong horse, for example, it's more than mere accident.

With so many enemies, it was inevitable that the Roman Empire would end badly. See Decline and Fall Of, Sack Of, etcetera. Let's hope the "Warrior of Rome" series avoids the same fate in the final novel, "Lion of the Sun".

The Matter with Banks

TITLE: Matter
AUTHOR: Iain M Banks
PUBLISHER: Orbit

RATING
5/5 “Oxygen”; 4/5 “Dysprosium”; 3/5 “Neon”; 2/5 “Krypton”; 1/5 “Berkelium”
SCORE: 3/5

There’s a popular anecdote about an old woman (or Hindu mystic in some versions) who proclaims the world is a disc supported on the back of a turtle. When challenged on what the turtle is standing on, she famously replies, “It’s turtles all the way down.”

A similar metaphor plays out in Iain M Banks’ 2008 science fiction novel “Matter”, the seventh in his series set in the “Culture” universe. The central setting and model for Mr Banks’ cosmology is the “shellworld” of Sursamen, an artificial planet made up of a series of increasingly larger, concentric hollow spheres, so that the inhabitants of one level live on the “sky” of the one below. Galactic society, too, operates on the same principle: the inhabitants of Sursamen at the bottom, with progressively more advanced races above them, up to the hyper-tech level of the Culture and their equals. The question, as the title indicates, is whether the universe works the same way—is it turtles all the way, are there levels of existence above us, or is this all there is?

Prince Ferbin, formerly from the eighth level of Sursamen, is certainly hoping there’s a higher power than can help him. Though in his case, he’s thinking something a little more concrete than divine intervention. His father, the king, has been murdered, his younger brother is a hostage, and he is forced to flee his homeworld. He has reason for hope though; his father’s old mentor is a general for Sursamen’s rulers, while his sister Djan is now an agent for the Culture’s dirty-tricks department, known as Special Circumstances. There’s an old-fashioned race against the clock, as he tries to find help and return home before his brother gets bumped off by the usurper.

I’ve long seen Mr Banks as a successor to the literary tradition of Kurt Vonnegut, with a seamless blend of science fiction, humor and a philosophy best summed up in the words of Isaac Asimov: “We’re here to help each other get through this thing—whatever it is”. Those elements are all present and accounted for, but the balance is off. While Mr Banks is normally a dab hand at infusing broad-brush, cartoon-color space opera adventure with his own unsentimental, hard-edged worldview, he muddies the colors a bit on this one.

Much of the novel is taken up with characters moving from place to place without doing very much of anything except ruminating on the nature of the universe. Go-nowhere subplots overload the front end, while the ending feels rushed and compressed almost to the point of unintelligibility. The end result feels hurried and uneven, with little payoff for your efforts to wade through the earlier chapters. The ending is pure Banks, an Othello mix of Shakespearean tragedy and upbeat hopefulness familiar to anyone who had read his earlier Culture novels: “They all died and lived happily ever after”.

That's the bad news. The good news is that this is indeed some of the most inventive fiction out there, and the scope of Mr. Banks' universe-building remains awesome. Every setting is entirely fresh, fascinating in concept and thoughtful in delivery, populated with truly *alien* aliens, and powered by technology of almost giddy inventiveness.

Still, it is hard to recommend Matter to anyone new to Mr. Banks' works. Consider Phlebas also explores our insignificance in the universe, but does so with far more wit and dash and far less navel-gazing, while Use of Weapons is both more inventively structured and more entertainingly written. Both are highly recommended.

Pure Brilliance!

TITLE: Use of Weapons
AUTHOR: Iain M Banks
PUBLISHER: Orbit

RATING
5/5 "Killing Time"; 4/5 "Reformed Nice Guy"; 3/5 "Gunboat Diplomat"; 2/5 "It's Character Forming"; 1/5 "Death and Gravity"
SCORE: 5/5

Ingenious. Melancholy yet consistently funny. Thought-provoking. Had enough yet?

I really shouldn't review this book. Bad idea. How can I criticize something that comes as close to perfection as I dare hope for in this imperfect world? So excuse me if what follows seems more of a love-in than an objective critique. If it will make you feel better, I promise to be rude about J.D. Salinger or make jokes about Kurt Vonnegut. The bastards.

I love "Use of Weapons" as a science fiction novel that isn't about science fiction. Oh, for sure, it takes place in Mr Banks's "Culture" universe, first introduced in "Consider Phlebas", a galactic society with technology so mind-bogglingly advanced that everyone has everything they could wish for, except for a sense of purpose. But the book isn't about the Culture. Instead, it's about people, or rather one man in particular, a man called Cheradenine Zakalwe, and his purpose is quite clear. To quote, "the need was obvious: to defeat that which opposed [his] life. The method was that taking and bending of materials and peoples to one purpose ... that talent, that ability, that use of weapons".

As the title suggests then, the book struggles with questions of ends and means, and the justifications we require to bridge the two. Zakalwe is a mercenary in the service of the Culture, tasked with intervening in the wars of less-developed civilizations in order to steer them towards becoming kinder, gentler, more Culture-like people. He is also a very troubled man, haunted by a horrific event in his past. The title works on two levels then; it questions how societies that consider themselves moral and just rationalize the use of sometimes ruthless means to make others so too, and on the personal level, how each person justifies their own existence.

There's that philosophical edge, but this is no cerebral treatise. It is space opera with a point, Han Solo as Hamlet. Zakalwe is the classic Harrison Ford-fiqure, snarky humor and brash cynicism wrapped around a surprisingly vulnerable core. The structure compliments that message beautifully. It feels like sliding down the proverbial slippery slope, like riding on a bomb as it leaves the bay doors. The genius of the book is in the way Mr Banks shows us that moment, the point of impact.

We begin after the bomb. Zakalwe, scarred psychically, begins another mission for his paymasters in the Culture. From there, Mr Banks sends us blasting both forwards and backwards in time through Zakalwe's life in alternating chapters -- following the course of the mission on the one hand, and viewing progressively earlier and earlier episodes from Zakalwe's career on the other. The two tales travel in opposite directions, but loop back together as we hurtle towards the inevitable revelation of the dark secret in Zakalwe's past.

The flashback chapters in particular are wonderfully inventive, and oddly moving. Zakalwe cycles through just about every activity mankind has found to excuse its existence, and finds them wanting; loyalty to a country (he is betrayed); love (it doesn't last); art (it can't hide ugliness); even drugs (they prove illusory). It's almost a high-tech version of John Gardner's "Grendel" in its quest for meaning. It's Zakalwe's rather sad realization that the struggle for life is all there is, that using weapons is its own justification, that lifts "Use of Weapons" from mere adventure store to top-tier literature.

Some may find the final revelation too melodramatic, too out of character for Zakalwe. Then again, some people don't like Belgian beer, British luxury cars or "The Lion in Winter". So hell with them.

What else can I say? "Use of Weapons" is beautifully written, dazzlingly original, haunting. Pure brilliance, really. OK, I'll stop now.

Fireside Chat with a Favorite Uncle

TITLE: How Would You Move Mount Fuji?
AUTHOR: William Poundstone
PUBLISHER: Little, Brown and Company

RATING
5/5 "Verrry Slowly"; 4/5 "Magic"; 3/5 "Get Godzilla to Stomp On It"; 2/5 "With Chewing Gum, String, and the Moon's Gavitational Pull"; 1/5 "A-Bombs"
SCORE; 4/5

After a really bad job interview, ever felt the interviewer had it in for you right from the get-go? It may not be just in your head. A Harvard study found that random people watching a 15-second clip of job candidates entering, shaking hands with their interviewer and then sitting down scored the candidates almost identically to the interviewers themselves.

That's just one of the fascinating anecdotes that percolates through William Poundstone's tasty blend of corporate history, puzzle book and job-seeker advice, "How Would You Mount Fuji?".

The book feels more like a collection of loosely-linked magazine articles than a single narrative. While it's ostensibly about the "logic puzzles" used in Microsoft's job interviews, Mr Poundstone is more interested in telling a good story than helping you land a job coding for Mr Gates and co. Instead of a how-to guide, it's more like a friendly chat with a beloved but scatterbrained uncle.

Mr Poundstone starts with a critique of traditional interview techniques, where he mentions the Harvard study. He explains how the failings of these methods led to the increasing use of logic puzzles and branteasers in interviews, especially at Microsoft and at investment banks. Next we get a look at the organization and corporate philosophy of Microsoft itself. Mr Poundstone follows with a sample of the puzzles themselves. The second half of the book is more prescriptive, with advice for both job-seekers and interviewers on how to ask and answer logic-puzzle questions.

Regardless of the slightly butterfly progression from topic to topic, Mr Poundstone is always a highly entertaining guide, and despite the math-heavy subject, he writes clearly and simply enough even for an amateur booker reviewer to understand. Some of his proposed solutions to the puzzles seem a little too literal (his answer to the question of the title is to calculate the volume of Mt. Fuji using the formula for a cone, then calculate the number of dump trucks required to haul all the stone away). For most of the others though, you'll be kicking yourself for not getting his answer.

Since the book was originally published in 2003, the reputation of Miscrosoft, and especially its spiritual siblings on Wall Street--such as Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs--have taken a bit of a beating, so whether their model of interviewing is worthy imitating or not is a bit of an open question. The book's utility and appeal to job-seekers therefore seems a little doubtful. However, it is an enormously funny read for anyone just interested in puzzles, the history of interview questions, or the culture of Silicon Valley.

How would I move Mount Fuji? Stand on my head. Voila! I've turned it upside-down.

Hurry up and Wait, and Wait, and Wait...

TITLE: The Innocent Mage (Kingmaker, Kingbreaker Book 1)
AUTHOR: Karen Miller
PUBLISHER: Orbit

RATING
5/5 "Arthur Miller"; 4/5 "Glenn Miller"; 3/5 "Bode Miller"; 2/5 "Frank Miller"; 1/5 "Miller Lite"
SCORE: 2/5

"The Innocent Mage", the 2005 breakthrough fantasy novel by prolific Australian author Karen Miller, pulps together a number of genre stand-bys (boy of humble origins rises to fame, prophecy foretells his coming to save the world from world-dominating evil), but produces only a thin gruel.

This first book of a two-book series is set in the hermit kingdom of Lur, shuttered against a world overrun by evil behind a magical wall. Ms Miller gives this evil a name, and it is ... Morgan. Sigh. Morgan the insurance claims adjuster I buy, Morgan the evil sorcerer I do not (Actually, I have trouble taking anyone named Morgan seriously, unless preceded by the title "Captain"). The rest of the novel is likewise enjoyable only as a campy fantasy, a throwaway time-filler.

Asher, the youngest son of a large fishing family, travels to the kingdom's capital, hoping to save enough money to buy a boat of his own. By the second chapter, he is catapulted into the retinue of Prince Gar, the king's eldest son, and it is revealed Asher is a long-awaited savior destined to save the kingdom from impending doom. Oddly, the book is in no hurry to get him doing anything heroic, preferring instead to focus on dialogue and the drama of the royal family. Characterization is strong by unsophisticated, a drum solo rather than a 20-piece orchestra. This focus on character would work better if Asher were a bit less irritating. Ms Miller makes him a peculiarly repulsive form of stick-insect, a prickly, rude and thuggish boor you could cheerfully strangle. Flawed heroes are all well and good, but Ms Miller has her entire supporting cast fall instantly and inexplicably in love with Asher, leading you to suspect we're actually supposed to like this annoying little tick.

Ms Miller's blend of fantasy-lite and talky romance may appeal to adolescents, but there is little here for more grown-up readers. The series concludes in book two, "The Awakened Mage", but after such thin fare it's hard to muster much of an appetite for the sequel.

Kindle Post

PRODUCT NAME: The Kindle
TYPE: E-book reader
MANUFACTURER: Foxconn for Amazon.com

RATING
5/5 "The Alphabet"; 4/5 "The printing press"; 3/5 "Papyrus"; 2/5 "The Da Vinci Code"; 1/5 "Danielle Steel"
SCORE: 3/5

I view the Kindle a bit like the invention of papyrus by the ancient Egyptians. Bear with me. For centuries, any time King Tut or the Assyrian emperor had something they desperately wanted to tell people, "Nubile virgins wanted" or "Mission accomplished in Iraq" and that kind of thing, they'd bang it into stone and make damn sure people would still be reading about the drubbing he gave the Iraqis or the lamentable virgin shortage, three thousand years later.

Then, some clever-clogs points out how much quicker, easier, more convenient, more compact and portable it would be to scribble all the words on bits of mashed-up plant pulp. Voila, papyrus! Only snag is, it rots in moist air. Or crumbles in dry. And tears. And burns. Papyrus, in other words, was a step forwards in convenience, but a step back in permanence.

So too with Amazon.com's Kindle E-book reader, if not more so. Not only does the Kindle transform books into that most delicate of media, 1s and 0s flitting about in server-space, but also its longevity is inevitably linked to that of its producer, Amazon.com, a company that didn't even exist until 15 years ago.

Yes, yes, this is all very retrograde and reactionary of me. I cheerfully confess, as an E-book reader, the Kindle is superb. The E Ink display is crisp and easy on the eyes, and flipping through the pages is as smooth and seamless as reading the old-fashioned paper kind. The small screen on the Kindle 2 (I haven't tried the larger DX version) means there's more flipping to do, but since this is so effortless, it's hardly a drawback. The battery power appears generous, enough for endless hours of constant reading without pausing for a recharge. The built-in free 3G wireless connectivity is nice if a bit slow, letting you grab new titles or samples almost anywhere you please. The physical design too is pleasingly clean and simple, although I found the thumb-activated joystick for navigating menus a little clumsy.

The extra bells and whistles outside or reading E-books seem less well done, however. There is a very basic web browser, which can just about handle Wikipedia but soon collapses, whimpering, when presented with sites more graphic-intensive. The lack of navigation tools is also aggravating, and makes browsing a bit like trying to access the Internet using only a "Pong" controller. In addition, there is also a text-to-audio feature which can read books to you, although I must admit I was never tempted to try.

To reiterate, the Kindle excels for reading books, but falters for anything else. To mangle the famous epigram of Greek poet Archilocus, the Kindle knows just one trick, but it's a good one.

Rather than any specific beef with the Kindle per se, my concern is with the whole concept of an E-book reader. Electronic hardware and the data you store inside them are terribly fragile, and are rapidly overtaken by new technological progress. I've taken my digital camera in to be repaired twice over the last three years. A computer crash wiped out a large chunk of my photo album. Never had to repair or replace a book. Although I never bothered to upgrade my videotapes to DVD, I've replaced my music collection twice already, once with CDs, and now with MP3s. I don't particularly look forward to doing the same with my library.

In short, I believe (I hope) that the Kindle and other E-book readers are never more than toys for boys, something to slip into the suitcase rather than taking an armful of paperbacks on holiday, perhaps an aid to those whose eyes and hands are not as sprightly as they once were. E-books and papyrus are all right for some things, but it's comforting to know some things are set in stone for future generations to enjoy.

Inglourious Empire

TITLE: Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe
AUTHOR: Mark Mazower
PUBLISHER: Penguin

RATING
5/5 "British"; 4/5 "Mongol"; 3/5 "Roman"; 2/5 "Macedonian"; 1/5 "Records"
SCORE: 4/5

George Santayana famously said "those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it". You are unlikely to ever forget reading Mark Mazower's "Hitler's Empire".

I must confess a geeky fascination with war and military history, with the pageantry of uniforms and the dash of arrows on a map. "Hitler's Empire" is the perfect antidote, reality's slap in the face of boys' bloodthirsty fantasies. It offers no happy endings; there are no Schindler Lists or Bielski partisans waiting to rescue the condemned.

Neither is this popular history in the spirit of John Keegan or Anthony Beevor. Instead, it is an exhaustively researched work of scholarship, the kind of account reviewers tend to describe as "weighty" or "definitive" rather than "readable". It's slow going, and the subject matter, the interminable roll-call of stupidity, greed and murder, does not help. You'll be forgiven for putting the book down once a chapter to go hug your family.

Mr Mazower tries to explain the competing visions that lay behind Germany's conquests, and how they played out in real life. The structure wobbles occasionally, as Mr Mazower tries to juggle both a chronological account of the occupation, as well as thematic discussions on topics that traditionally get little airtime in story of World War II, such as the German use of foreign slave labor, and the occupation regimes of Hitler's allies, such as the Romanians. Some interesting ideas, such as the parallels between German rule and the colonial empires of Britain and France, are raised but then abandoned. A "dramatis personae" and perhaps a timeline would have helped anchor the reader against the flood of details. However, this is more than compensated for by Mr Mazower's ability to tell the inside story, how the Nazis conceptualized their mission, by examining their own speeches, papers and journals.

The narrative that emerges is not a comforting one. For us in the West, the defining story of the German occupation has been defined by the unholy trinity of Hitler, the SS and the Holocaust. Would that it were so simple. Mr Mazower takes pains to show it was not only Hitler, not only the SS, and indeed, not only the Germans who engaged in wholesale slaughter on an unprecedented scale. The victims were not only Jews, though they suffered horrifically, but also included millions of Poles, Ukrainians, Russians and others considered "subhuman".

The other leitmotif running through the book is the inability of the Nazis, in the words of Hitler's interpreter Paul Schmidt, to "think ahead for more than five minutes". Mr Mazower shows that the occupation of Europe was a jerry-built (sorry!) amalgamation of regimes wildly different in aims, execution and effectiveness, riven by infighting among the Nazi Party, the SS and the military. The only constant was their desire to ensure the primacy of the German race, and to make Europe serve their war machine. Mr Mazower shows how the first aim invariably undermined the latter, making their rule as shortsighted as it was brutal, and leaving the reader to wonder how such trigger-happy bunglers were ever capable of bringing Europe to its knees. The sobering conclusion is that they succeeded in large part due to the complicity, or at least apathy, of most of those they ruled.

This book will likely only appeal to specialists, which is a shame. The war in Bosnia and the genocide in Rwanda show we have already repeated history. Reading this book will help us to remember, no matter how unpleasant the memory.