The beauty of science and the science of beauty

Title: Stories of Your Life and Others
Author: Ted Chiang
Publisher: Small Beer Press

5/5

Science can be beautiful, but you don't always have to be a scientist to appreciate its beauty.

Anyone can appreciate a mandelbrot set, the mathematical designs on a mosque dome, the earth-rise over the moon, the impossible staircases of MC Escher. Add to this list the works of Ted Chiang.



If you're already a science-fiction fan, likely Mr Chiang will need no introduction. Despite producing just 12 short stories in his career, Mr Chiang has amassed about a dozen literary awards and a cult following of enthusiasts. If you're not a fan, Mr Chiang is one of the best arguments for becoming one.

"Stories of Your Life and Others" is a collection of eight short stories, relentlessly inventive, wildly diverse in content but strongly unified in spirit. Whether he's talking about building the Tower of Babel or being able to predict the future, Mr Chiang builds rational, internally consistent worlds that unify scientific thinking with humanistic sensitivity.

The capstone of this construct is undoubtedly "Story of Your Life". In it, a linguist named Louise Banks learns an alien language, and this new frame of reference enables her to see into the future. Intellectually, the story is a marvel, as Mr Chiang concocts a plausible basis for foretelling the future, and a philosophical theory as to how fate and free will could coexist.

But the real punch is emotional. Banks is a mother (or was, or will be--it's complicated) and knowing the future gives a new twist to the questions faced by any would-be parent: Are we ready for this? Will our child be healthy, happy, successful? The kicker of course is that Banks already knows the answers.

For stories with such strongly rational overtones, there is a surprising fascination with religion and faith in Mr Chiang's stories, and God pops up (or conspicuously fails to) in one form or another in several of the stories, the best of which is "Hell is the Absence of God". Here, Mr Chiang wrestles with the age-old chestnut, Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People, by does so by making the mystical commonplace.

In this story, Acts of God, in the insurance sense, really are literal Acts of God, as every earthly manifestation of the heavenly host sets off lightning storms, tidal waves or hurricanes. Not surprisingly, some innocent people get hurt or even killed, and among them is the wife of the protagonist, Neil Fisk. Fisk then faces the impossible task of trying to love the God who killed his wife, and the story follows the increasingly desperate steps he takes to be reunited with his wife in heaven.

In lesser hands, such a story could come off as mere church-bashing, but here you get a strong sense of a sensitive man struggling to accept the random cruelty of existence, and the fact that "God is not just, God is not kind, God is not merciful, and understanding that is essential to true devotion."

That said, Mr Chiang's writing is somewhat hampered by his apparent discomfort with dialogue. Instead of getting the character's words verbatim, we often get stories related almost entirely by narrators. While in some ways this further underlines the veneer of rationality over these fantastical stories, it somewhat dulls the emotional impact. Also, in one or two stories, Mr Chiang manages the balance between head and heart, intellect and emotion, rather less well, and throws at you such complex concepts that the story becomes head-scratching rather than heart-warming.

Still, "Stories of Your Life and Others" is a literary accomplishment no mere harpings of mine can diminish. Art is not always appreciated in its own lifetime, but here's your chance to put that to rights.

Three strikes for Mr Smith

Title: Three Stations
Author: Martin Cruz Smith
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

1/5

Back in 2008, I read a fantastic article in National Geographic by Mr Smith, "Moscow Never Sleeps". In the article, he plays on the contrast between the outrageous wealth of Russia's nouveau riche and the sorrowful squalor of society's least fortunates, geographically embodied in the part of Moscow known as Three Stations.

"Three Stations", the novel, is basically that article turned into a book, minus the focus and editing, 30 times longer but many times less interesting. It's social commentary masquerading as a crime novel, and doing neither with any particular distinction.

The seventh outing for Mr Smith's Moscow police investigator, Arkady Renko, packs a surfeit of plots into its slimmish 240 pages. There's a runaway teenage prostitute, whose baby has been stolen. There's a pair of hired killers looking to bring her back to the whorehouse. A kindly teenage street gang. A murderer obsessed with ballet.

What there isn't is a coherent story line stringing all these plot points together. Characters are introduced, only to vanish for chapters on end. The abducted baby and a murdered ballerina fight for space, and as a result neither story line feels fully developed. Also missing is the coherent social commentary that marks Mr Smith's other works, including his National Geographic article.

Renko this time is almost a parody of the established character--still the only one who believes a crime has been committed, still fighting with his boss, still bemused stepdad to chess prodigy Zhenya, still hooking up with women in passionless encounters (his girlfriend of the last two books has conveniently disappeared, for reasons not immediately obvious). There are the odd glimmers of Mr Smith's trademark dark wit, but mostly this Renko feels locked in a holding pattern, like a car in a traffic jam on Moscow's ring road.

The end result is a bit like "Indiana Jones 4". Or "Blair Witch 2" or "Son of Mask". In short, a poorly-written sequel that does its best to kill whatever good memories you had of the works that came before.

If the plot is a mess, the editing is worse. Mr Smith keeps forgetting to tell us things. An old woman appears; "It was the babushka who had been suffering the crumbs of the priest"--but Mr Smith never said there was a babushka with the priest. A bad guy is nasitly disemboweled by a hero who magically appears in just the right spot--but quite how this feat is managed is never entirely clear.

"Three Station" was almost physically painful to read, especially since I have long been an enormous fan of Mr Smith and his Renko books (read my reviews of "Wolves Eat Dogs" and "Stalin's Ghost"). Read Mr Smith's earlier Renko books, especially "Wolves Eat Dogs", read the National Geographic article, but whatever you do, don't read this.

Small book with big ambitions

Title: The Art of Travel
Author: Alain de Botton
Publisher: Penguin

3/5

"Vacation" and "travel" have become so synonymous that in order to separate these words, we had to glue two others together to make "staycation". The question of why we feel this urge to spend our free time somewhere, anywhere but here, is at the heart of Alain de Botton's nerdy but entertaining book, "The Art of Travel".

Yes, nerdy. You will read few books so proudly, unashamedly in-your-face intellectual as "The Art of Travel". Mr De Botton is a social geologist, and to explain his take on questions such as why we are drawn to the exotic, to the countryside or to the monumental, he digs into the history of literature, of art and philosophy, and brings up parables drawn from the lives of Gustave Flaubert, William Wordsworth or Edmund Burke to illustrate his point.

This is a little book with big ambitions. In a series of essays on our motives for travelling, what we do when we arrive at our destination, and how it makes us feel, Mr De Botton trawls the lives and works of these classic authors and artists to try to explain first, why we are so often unhappy in our travels, and second, how we can become better travelers.

Despite such lofty goals, ponderous stuffiness is fended off--if only just--by a whimsical turn of phrase; Birds in Barbados "career through the air in matinal excitement" he says, going to to note the "democratic scruffiness [of] street furniture" in Amsterdam, and elsewhere he remarks that "man seems merely dust postponed" in the face of the bleak majesty of the Sinai.

Less successful is Mr De Botton's attempt to bolt his own travel experiences onto his exploration of universal themes. For example, he inserts an anecdote on his delight in the "neighborliness" of the u and i in the Dutch word "Uitgang" (Exit) into a description of Flaubert's travels in Egypt. In such cases, it seems a stretch to equate his experiences with the lives of the greats, or else he seems to be pushing too hard to make events fit whatever point he is trying to make.

The other limitation of Mr De Botton's work is his narrow definition of "travel". I started reading "The Art of Travel" after returning home from visiting relatives in Canada, and found it silent on the themes that mattered to me at the time, aspects of travel like "leaving loved ones behind". I finished it during a business trip to the Middle East, and again Mr De Botton had little to say to me. Mr De Botton's homilies on how to enjoy architecture or museums are nicely argued, but how about gastronomic travel? Shopping travel? "The Art of the Sightseeing Holiday" might have been a more accurate, though admittedly less catchy title.

Yet this is a book that rewards perseverance. I find myself returning again and again to Mr De Botton's themes, holding them up and examining them from each angle, trying to find what I believe. Strip away the ostentatious wordiness and awkward personal anecdotes, and you are left with some though-provoking insights, perhaps the greatest of which is that "vacations" and "travel" need not be the same.

Rather, in the words of Nietzsche, the key is to be the kind of person who "know how to manage their experiences ... who know how to make much of little". You might try starting with this little book.

The devil is in...

Title: Surface Detail
Author: Iain M. Banks
Publisher: Orbit

4/5
The devil is in the details. Actually, several are in Surface Detail, which is fitting, because the book itself is obsessed with details.

[I'm trying to cut down the self-indulgent crap, and answer the questions that actually matter]

What's it about?
Breezy dialogue (by either smart-arse AIs or idiots in over their heads), balls-out techno-blitzkrieg battles, and densely detailed, borderline obsessive-compulsive world-building. There's some stuff about virtual reality heavens and hells, a virtual war being fought to shut down the latter, and a reincarnated woman out for revenge on her murderer, but that's just to keep the cheap seats happy.

What's it like?
Spending 10 years in Banks's hyper-advanced Culture setting. Gives you an ever-escalating series of imaginative and outlandish settings, in a kind of literary tinnitus that fills each page with vision after stupendous vision. Catnip for the devotee, but bafflingly self-indulgent to everyone else.

Is it any good?
Mostly yes, but leavened with bouts of dullness, unless you like your SciFi chattier than Stephen Fry's twitter page.

Paved with good intentions

TITLE: An Ungodly War—The Sack of Constantinople & The Fourth Crusade
AUTHOR: W. B. Bartlett
PUBLISHER: Sutton Publishing, 2000

RATING
5/5 “The Dark Knight Returns”; 4/5 “Knights who say, ‘Ni’”; 3/5 “Knight Rider”; 2/5 “Knight and Day”; 1/5 “Marion ‘Suge’ Knight”
SCORE 3/5

Almost exactly 800 years before the invasion of Iraq, there was the fourth crusade. Some things never change.

Commentators have been quick to see parallels between the medieval crusades and America’s wars in Iraq. Rowan Atkinson’s definitive retelling of the First Gulf War was titled “Crusade”. Director Ridley Scott hinted at this theme in 2003’s “Kingdom of Heaven”. Doing a Google search for “crusade Iraq” gets you something like 21 million hits.

It’s not an analogy W. B. Bartlett makes in his 2000 study, “An Ungodly War”, but after reading this clear if rather dry account, the parallels between the two events are inescapable. The fourth crusade is the story of how a Western army in the Middle East, lied to by its leaders and diverted in the name of money, turns on its allies and attacks the wrong target. Sound familiar? Let’s look at the evidence.

Misleading Your People

The reason for any crusade was to recapture the Holy City of Jerusalem. The Pope himself promised anyone reaching the Holy City a VIP pass to paradise, no questions asked. However, the failures of the second and third crusades had shown that reaching Jerusalem would be a tall order. The leaders of the crusade reckoned attacking Egypt would be much easier. But how to break the news to the men?

“Many believed that the Holy City was the ultimate destination of the crusade, and any idea that this was not, in fact, the case could have the gravest repercussions for the success of the enterprise,” writes Mr Bartlett.

Of course, lying to your army about who the enemy was and why they were fighting would be incredibly dishonest and morally bankrupt. So that’s what the crusade’s leaders did.

Cui Bono?

Deciding where to go was one thing. Getting there was another. Travel from Europe to Egypt required ships and sailors, and those required money. The ablest sailors of the day were the Venetians. They agreed to transport the crusade for 85,000 marks ($500 billion in today’s money, though I could be making that up), which turned out to be about double what the crusaders could afford.

To pay off part of their debt, they agreed to capture the city of Zara (Zadar, in modern Croatia) for the Venetians. Which happened to be a Christian city. And nowhere near the Holy Land. But the crusaders needed the money, so they attacked it anyway.

For his sources, Mr Bartlett relies heavily on the works of crusaders Geoffrey of Villehardouin and Robert de Clari, which although inescapable, is a bit like relying on George W Bush’s “Decision Points” for a balanced account of the invasion of Iraq. Nevertheless, even from their chronicles, it’s clear many started to have doubts at this stage. Some allies started bailing on the whole enterprise, leaving a sort of “coalition of the willing”, if you like.

Mission Accomplished

European civilization’s greatest bulwark against the Muslims was the Byzantine Empire, with its capital at Constantinople (now it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople, been a long time gone, Constantinople). Constantinople was one of the greatest cities in the world, economically, spiritually and culturally, New York and London and Paris all rolled into one.

As Mr Bartlett explains at some length, the Byzantines were also Christian, but not Catholic. As a result, although they were ostensibly on the same side as the crusaders, there was little love lost between them. So when the son of a recently deposed ex-emperor appeared at the crusader camp in Zara, offering them Constantinople’s wealth if they helped them retake the imperial throne, he found a receptive audience.

The title of the book rather gives the ending away. Constantinople fell to the crusaders in April 1204, but only after it had been burned down twice, the library destroyed, and its churches systematically plundered. The crowning achievements of this crusading army had been to devastate Christendom’s greatest city, slaughter thousands of Christians, and enrich a bunch of Italian merchants.

It’s a truly damning indictment of the mindless stupidity of religious bigotry and fanaticism, and of the enormous threat posed by powerful, greedy men who feel accountable to nobody. The analogy to the Iraq war isn’t perfect, I know. On the Western side, the toughest, most bloodthirsty bunch were the French, for a start. Nevertheless, I strongly feel it is modern events that make reading this book now worthwhile.

“An Ungodly War” would have made a far more interesting read if Mr Bartlett had been willing to go out on a limb and draw these kinds of parallels. Instead, the conclusion is littered with ponderous, grade-school platitudes such as, “we should reflect on the demise of a great civilization … and ponder deeply that nothing, however permanent it might seem at the time, lasts forever”. Mr Bartlett is content to let history be history, and confines his opinions to questions of how to interpret events, rather than asking what significance they have for us today. This is a sane and sensible approach for a historian, I know, but when discussing the crusades (even back in 2000), this is the equivalent of not mentioning the elephant in the room.

This wouldn’t be so bad if the writing were a bit more lively. Mr Barltlett tries, but the results sometimes English creative-writing-class level cringeworthy: “only ten knights managed to fight their way back … the rest … lay still, where they had fallen, their life-blood drained from them.” Life-blood? Give that boy an “F”.

Nevertheless, the incredible episode of the fourth crusade deserves to be better known, and “An Ungodly War” is a solid introduction.

Zero Gravitas

TITLE: Zero History
AUTHOR: William Gibson
PUBLISHER: Putnam

RATING
5/5 “Zero-zero-seven”; 4/5 “Zero gravity”; 3/5 “Zero-sum game”; 2/5 “Zero calories”; 1/5 “Zero friends”
SCORE 4/5

With "Zero History", you get the feeling that William Gibson, finding the world has finally caught up with his Marshall McLuhan-meets-Timothy Leary vision of the future, has decided to escape instead into the world of fantasy.

This accentuates a trend in Mr Gibson's recent novels. Starting with 2003's "Pattern Recognition", the settings of his books have pulled closer and closer to the contemporary world, even as his storylines have pushed further into la-la land. You almost wonder if he's being deliberately perverse. How else to explain "Zero History's" bizarre concoction of macho military fashion designers, ninja rock drummers, Japanese tailors and base-jumping super-spies? And that Mission Impossible-as-done-by-the-A Team ending? Please dear God, let that be a joke.

Don't get me wrong, Mr Gibson remains one of the most effortlessly stylish and readable authors out there. It's his choice of subject matter. I feel like I'm watching Michelangelo doing potato painting.

Let me explain.

"Zero History" completes the trilogy begun with "Pattern Recognition" and continued in 2007's "Spook Country", though it is much more closely tied to the latter. Freelance journalist Hollis Henry returns, again in the employ of insatiably curious marketing bigwig Hubertus Bigend. So is Milgrim, the benzo-addicted translator from "Spook Country", now straight thanks to Bigend's largesse and a stint at a clinic in Switzerland.

Also making a reappearance is the style of "Spook Country", which ratcheted down the flowery language in favor of bare-bones structures, non-linear conversations and off-beat settings. When it works, and it usually does, the words glide effortlessly, supple as old-fashioned denim.

There's a nice touch early on when Hollis googles "Gabriel Hounds" and describes what comes up first--a book by Mary Stewart, a Wikipedia entry, a CD title--because of course that's exactly what comes up if you or I try it, giving you a weird behind-the-looking glass feeling, and lending the story that extra touch of verisimilitude. There's also a reference to a YouTube video of someone jumping from the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building. Again, same thing.

Hollis remains something of an enigma, a sort of existentialist hero drawn into absurd events, seemingly lacking the will to extract herself. Milgrim is more sympathetic, an innocent reborn through his detoxification, and not surprisingly he provides the loom that spins this particular story. Bigend remains plausible, a billionaire brat more spoiled than malevolent, but no less dangerous for it. This time, the objective of Bigend's fascination is fashion. Specifically, a cutting-edge guerrilla brand called "Gabriel Hounds", and in a parallel plotline, military outfitting contracts.

Fashion provides Mr Gibson an excuse to revisit his theme, present in both "Pattern Recognition" and "Spook Country", of the tension between the cutting edge and the mainstream, how the former becomes--or desperately seeks to avoid becoming--the latter. The subtext is that the mainstream is derivative, exploitative and false, an elaborate con game. One would-be designer speaks of her dream to escape "the seasons, the bullshit, the stuff that wore out, fell apart."

I might feel better about this subplot if I didn't find the whole premise such an offensive, heaping, steaming pile of Hounds doo. There is nothing inherently superior in cliquey exclusivity or snobbery. I couldn't care less about "secret brands" of canvas shoes or Japanese denim, and as a result, this part just feels tiresome. At one point, Bigend refers to companies that "find brands ... with iconic optics or a viable narrative, buy them, then put out denatured product under the old label." I wish I could say this barrage of pretentious bafflegab is supposed to be indicative of the character, not the author, but Mr Gibson is forever having people spout lines like this.

It didn't use to irritate me. Mr Gibson has always been a bit of a hipster, but it grated far less when he was writing about the far future. Geeking out over the (purely imaginary) "Hawker-Aichi roadster" in 1999's "All Tomorrow's Parties" didn't bug me--the endless iPhone, iMac and Twitter references drive me a little bonkers.

The main plot kicks into gear, and sadly loses touch with reality, when Milgrim's investigation into military clothing upsets a competitor, who first tries to kidnap Hollis and Milgrim, then succeeds in nabbing one of Bigend's other employees (no, I won't spoil it by telling you who, though it's another returning character from "Spook Country") in retaliation. This sets up a rescue that involves the cast of Ocean's 11, conspiracy-theory worthy technology, the makeup effects from Mission Impossible, the camera balloons from "All Tomorrow's Parties", and the martial arts moves from, er, "Rush Hour 3". It's a hopeless, hideous letdown, a bit like the new Gap logo.

I said much the same thing about "Spook Country", and this only confirms it. The more I like Mr Gibson as a storyteller, the less I like the stories he tells. "Zero History" is a beautifully written, vividly imagined, totally preposterous pile of bunk.

A is for Anomie and Anti-globalization

TITLE: Generation A
AUTHOR: Douglas Coupland
PUBLISHER: Windmill Books

RATING
5/5 “Double rainbow. All the way”; 4/5 “Where the hell is Matt?”; 3/5 “Sneezing panda baby”; 2/5 “Gummibear song video”; 1/5 “Miss teen USA 2007”
SCORE 4/5

“A" is for apple, and where would we be without them? It's funny to realize that although apples, like the letter A, were there at the beginning (think Adam, think Eve), the last apple you ate probably didn't exist until about 100 years ago. Granny Smiths started in 1868, Golden Delicious in 1900. Mucking about with nature doesn't always end in disaster.

Canadian author Douglad Coupland's 2009 novel, "Generation A", is also about beginnings, and apples, and mucking about with nature, though his take is more acidic Granny than sweet Golden. Despite some excellent writing, however, the book is an excellent beginning in search of an end, and A without a Z, a flower waiting for a bee.

Mr Coupland first buzzed into the public conscience on the wings of his high-flying 1991 novel, "Generation X", which for better or worse helped popularize "Gen X" as handle for those born in the 60s and 70s. I admit that, in a fit of contrarianism familiar to anyone who has ever been 17, I never read the book precisely because of its popularity. My confident predictions that Mr Coupland would be quickly swatted away have been decisively disproved over the last 19 years, as Mr Coupland has continued to pollinate popular culture with a steady stream of both non-fiction work and novels, of which "Generation A" is his thirteenth.

Over the years I have at times bumped into Mr Coupland's works on bookstore shelves, each time experiencing the disquiet I normally reserve for new Pearl Jam albums or Rutger Hauer movies--are you allowed to stay popular for 20 years? It all seems so old-fashioned somehow. Fittingly, the disconnect between popular culture and the individual has been a recurring theme in Mr Coupland's novels over the years. His work has hovered between consistency and repetitiveness, always engagingly and amusingly written, balancing mysticism and realism, although he tends to revisit similar situations and themes. Often, the strength of the writing overcomes the touch of déjà vu you feel on cracking open one of Mr Coupland's books.

Not surprisingly then, "Generation A" (Aha! Thought I'd never get around to it, didn't you?) is in many ways an echo of "Generation X". The structure is the same, with a framing narrative used to set the stage for the five main characters to tell a series of stories. The characters themselves are Mr Coupland's usual suspects, social outsiders in various stages of anomie, twentysomethings trying to extract meaning from a random universe.

"Generation A" is set in a near-future in which bees are believed to be extinct (this was a topical issue in 2007-8, when there were stories of mysterious disappearances of bee colonies; it now appears reports of their extinction were exaggerated). Believed to be, that is, until five young people in countries around the world are all stung. First is Zack, an Iowan corn farmer with ADD and a reckless streak. Then there's Julien, a socially awkward shut-in who spends his life in World of Warcraft, Diana, a religious Canadian dental hygienist with Tourette syndrome and Samantha, a New Zealander gym trainer. Rounding out the quintet is Harj, a Sri Lankan orphaned by the 2004 tsunami who works as a telemarketer for Abercrombie & Fitch.

The five are first put in isolation, extensively studied, and then released. Thanks to the Internet, they each discover they have become major celebrities without the compensation of celebrity paychecks. It comes as a relief when one of the scientists whisks them all away to a secluded island off the coast of British Columbia, where he instructs them to tell stories as a way of prompting their bodies to secrete proteins that may have attracted the bees.

It's much like Mr Coupland's other books. If you haven't read them, it's a bit like Douglas Adams on drugs, or Chuck Palahniuk off of them. The other obvious comparison is to fellow Vancouver author William Gibson; the two share a fascination with popular culture and technology, though Mr Coupland seems less enthusiastic on where they are taking us. As a result, his tone is more direct and satirical than Mr Gibson's. In "Generation A", the words positively sting. Diana's ex-boyfriend smells "of Rogaine and failure", Harj's call-center job involves discussing "colour samples and waffle-knit jerseys with people who wish they were dead."

However, some of this waspish criticism feels cheap and easy. Globalization has become this year's political correctness, the soft target that nobody will stand up for. Abercrombie & Fitch are already something of a self-parody. And do we truly live in a "fame-driven culture, with its real-time 24-7 marinade of electronic information"? Maybe. Some people do, I guess. But that leaves millions upon millions who don't have a Facebook account, couldn't care less about Rihanna or Justin Beiber, and whose only use for a cell phone is, er, to make phone calls. Mr Coupland demolishes this straw man effectively, but I feel his anger is largely misplaced.

On a technical level, there is a lot to like here. The first half of the book, as we are introduced to each character and watch their reactions to becoming specimens in a jar, is some of Mr Coupland's sharpest, juiciest writing. The second half, not so much. As amusing as it all is, the whole thing starts to feel a bit false. I don't for a minute believe any of the characters introduced in the first half would come up with the stories presented in the second. Mr Coupland champions story-telling as a means of creating order in our lives, but the ending is a chaotic, gooey mess. It's the literary equivalent of "Lost", 300 pages leading up to and ending that leaves you feeling a bit cheated.

It's as though you're reading two books awkwardly grafted together--one, a smart, biting social critique set in a nicely downbeat near-future, where mankind's doom is more apathetic than apocalyptic; the other, a weird mish-mash of offbeat short stories suddenly cut off by a "what the--?" ending. No guesses which of the two I'd rather be reading.

Still, grafting is what gave us the Golden Delicious, and there's still plenty to savor here. Just don't let the ending leave you with a bitter aftertaste.

Men who hate "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"

TITLE: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Original title Man Som Hatar Kvinnor): Millennium, Book 1
AUTHOR: Stieg Larsson/Translation by Reg Keeland
PUBLISHER: Quercus

RATING
5/5 “Full-body tattoos of Buddhist demons”; 4/5 “Chinese characters you can’t even read yourself”; 3/5 “Bands of any type”; 2/5 “Anything Celtic”; 1/5 “(Ex) Girlfriend’s names”
SCORE 3/5

Shrug. Sorry, that’s the best I can muster after finishing Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s serial bestseller, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”. I know, phenomenon like this tend to produce tsunami-wave cycles of popularity, of crest and trough, of adulation and backlash, and back again, pushing opinions to the extremes and drowning out the middle ground. Does anyone find the Twilight series, “OK, I guess”? How many people finished “The Da Vinci Code” and thought, “Ho hum”?

You can’t doubt “Girl” and the other two books that make up the Millennium trilogy are very much at the peak of the crest now. Last month Amazon announced Mr Larsson had become the first author to sell over one million e-books for the Kindle. The Huffington Post reports that sales of trilogy exceeded 30 million worldwide. But after wading through 500-plus pages of turgid exposition, choppy dialogue and wet characters, the most I can say for this book is, It’s OK, I guess. Ho hum.

I admit though, it is refreshing to read a novel set in such a little-known nation, and there’s no denying the old-world charm that rises like perfume from place-names like the Furusund Strait, Arholma, Gotgatan and Gamla stan. True, some of the cultural references may be hard to follow, such as to Sweden’s interest rate crises in the early 90s, but in a way that kind of adds to the enjoyment of experiencing something new and foreign. But that’s just about the only nice thing I can say about the book.

Much of the hype surrounding the Millennium series focuses on its characters, and they are the book’s first disappointment, but not its worst. Theoretically, the hero of the story is political/financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist, but the publisher knew what they were about when they changed the title to focus on his partner, dragon-tattooed computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (the original Swedish title translates as “Men Who Hate Women”). It’s undoubtedly a smart publicity move, but sadly Salander, billed as a Goth-punk Bourne with an extra X chromosome, instead comes across as yet another fantasy figure, the kind of kick-ass girl introverts dream of dating, one whose real turn-on is diffidence. “Dammit, he had treated her like a human being” she thinks to herself before hopping into bed with Blomkvist.

If Salander is a disappointment, Blomkvist is a disaster. His defining characteristic is passivity. He’s accused of libel by a shady businessman, but refuses to defend himself, and is disgraced as a result. Luckily, he’s then hired by octogenarian industrialist Henrik Vanger to investigate the case of a child that disappeared 40 years previous, but for much of the book he manages to do little but drink coffee and have sex. Blomkvist’s only other character trait, you see, appears to be his alarmingly omnivorous sexual appetite. He sleeps with every single major female character in the book, a list that includes a woman half his age (Salander), the (married) editor-in-chief of the magazine he works for, as well as the (married but separated) niece of Henrik Vanger, a woman much closer to 60 than 16. For Mr Larsson, a journalist, to write about a journalist having such success with the ladies, will probably a too-transparent bit of wish fulfillment for some readers.

The other attraction the novel offers is its choice of themes. Here, the situation is somewhat better. The overriding theme, as the Swedish title suggests, is violence against women, especially sexual violence. Each part of the book begins with a grim statistic such as “48% of the women in Sweden have been subjected to violence by a man”, and this carries over into Blomkvist and Salander’s investigation, as they turn up evidence (after much coffee-fuelled bed-hopping) that someone in Vanger’s family harbors a serious grudge against the opposite sex.

Mr Larsson has other irons in the fire as well. There’s his evident disgust with the cozy ties between financial journalists and their subjects, his hatred of both Sweden’s unrepentant Nazi movement and abuses of power, and perhaps more oddly, his airy dismissal of the role of stock exchanges. To be sure, Mr Larsson’s rage is evidently heartfelt, though Blomkvist’s sudden outbursts against these targets feel as though they come from the author rather than the character. Still, these doses of raw emotion help to enliven an otherwise lifeless plot.

The real drawback of the book, you see, is the positively somnolent progress from plot point to plot point. The convoluted backstory could probably have been dealt with in a fraction of the space. We learn a lot about the Vanger family but little that relates to the case. There’s a buildup of evidence but no corresponding narrowing of suspects, leaving the reader with nothing to get involved in, but instead watching the investigation at arm’s length. Just when the novel feels like it might be suddenly getting interesting—a Dan Brown mystery for grown-ups—Mr Larsson suddenly shifts gears, reveals the culprit and then just as quickly kills him off. The remaining 100 pages are an entirely unnecessary epilogue in which Blomkvist gets his revenge on the man who framed him in the libel case.

Partly, I suspect, this long-windedness is the result of the book’s rather unique genesis. As most of you will know, Mr Larsson died of a heart attack shortly after delivering the manuscripts of the series to his publisher (this wouldn’t sound nearly so eerie if he’d written, say, a work of adult erotica, but hey). So bang went any chance of give-and-take between editor and writer as they sought to hone the work into the finished product. Would you want to delete a dead man’s words? No? So that’s very much what it feels like we’re getting, a raw, unvarnished manuscript, one showing lots of promise but lots of rough edges, too.

Hic Sunt Cuddly Dracones

TITLE: His Majesty’s Dragon (In the UK: Temeraire)
AUTHOR: Naomi Novik
PUBLISHER: Harper Collins

RATING
5/5 “HMS Victory”; 4/5 “HMS Beagle”; 3/5 “HMS Bounty”; 2/5 “HMS Pinafore”; 1/5 “RMS Titanic”
SCORE 4/5

Time was, dragons were the stuff of nightmares, horrors lying beyond the horizon, "Hic Sunt Dracones"—here be dragons, and watch out, they're coming for you. How times change. Revisionism is in, and our old nemesis has gotten a makeover. "His Majesty's Dragon" shows this isn't necessarily a bad thing, provided you don't mind having your dragons declawed.

At first glance, "His Majesty's Dragon" seems like a one-trick dragonet, its one twist being that it puts dragons in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars. The idea of mashing up fantasy and Napoleonic adventure is cute, but not terribly original. It's been done before, most notably with Susanna Clarke's 2004 bunker-buster "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell". Fortunately, that's not all "His Majesty's Dragon" has to offer. Like many good works of speculative fiction, it takes a well-worn concept and stands it on its head—here, deadly fire-breathing dragons are not monsters, but our friends and allies.

This too, has been done elsewhere, often in kiddie stories like "How to Train Your Dragon". But whereas these boy-and-his-dragon stories tend to present dragons as a geeky kid's dream pet ("does whatever I say, and if anybody gives me any grief, turns them into smoked baby back ribs"), the dragons in "His Majesty's Dragon" are more like a geeky adult's dream kid.

Dragons in Ms Novik's book are smart, sentient chaps who imprint themselves on the nearest suitable candidate after they hatch from their shells—much the way birds do in the real world. As the novel opens, Royal Navy Captain William Laurence captures a dragon's egg from a French frigate, and no prizes for guessing who the little critter picks to be his mommy-surrogate when he hatches. A panicked Laurence names his new companion "Temeraire" (French for "rash") after a ship in the Royal Navy—which sounds about par for guys' choices of baby names. We're always trying to get the kids named after our obsessions: I know one soccer-mad father who planned to name his son Zidane, while in Japan a certain Mr Hayashi (the name translates as "Wood(s)") was thwarted in his attempt to name his son Tiger.

Also like some new parents, Laurence isn't overjoyed at the prospect of giving up his career and private life to look after a needy, grasping infant. The two of them are packed off to join Britain's Royal Aerial Corps, currently going tooth-and-claw with the French emperor Napoleon's own squadrons of dragons. The training scenes that follow are more 'Cosby Show" than "Karate Kid", as Laurence helps Temeraire to make friends, learn about where he came from, and steers him through the treacherous shoals of adolescence. This is light, breezy fun, as we watch Laurence go from reluctant parent to proud father, and Temeraire from shy stripling to king of the skies. There is skullduggery and violence of course, even a climactic aerial battle against the foul and most foreign French, but this is a kind of "Princess Bride" combat, deadly without every feeling threatening.

This is to the fantasy genre what the marshmallow is to Irish cream cheesecake; soft, squishy and sweet, simple yet a little bland. "His Majesty's Dragon" under-does the action, adventure or humor in favor of "awww, shucks" moments of bonding between Laurence and his dragon. Characterization is also marshmallow-simple, especially among the human cast. It's "The Black Stallion" with scales, surprisingly without bite for a book about dragons. The best that can be said of its Hornblower-meets-Helm's Deep setup is that Ms Novik at least explores how this might change history, with the Battle of Trafalgar as a sneaky deception to hide Nappy's real plan for invading England (this compares well with Ms Clarke's work, in which a powerful magician uses his wizardry to enable the British to beat Napoleon at Waterloo—which is, er, precisely what happened historically).

The real joy of the book is found in the energy Ms Novik invests in her scaly heroes. Thought has gone into getting the tone of each dragon right—from the dim-bulb chirpiness of the smallest dragons, to the earnest inquisitiveness of Temeraire himself. Speaking as a father, I'd say that in Temeraire, Ms Novik also strikes about the right balance between children's clinginess and their desire for independence. Ms Novik also obviously takes great joy in devising weird and wonderful breeds of dragons, with names to match, from the Winchesters and Parnassians of Britain, to the Pecheur Couronne (crowned fisher) and Flamme de Gloire (flame of glory) of France, and the Imperials and Celestials of China. Perhaps it's not surprising her human characters seem deadly dull next to these flamboyant butterflies.

Still, just as not every movie needs to be in 3-D, not every fantasy novel needs blood and guts. "His Majesty's Dragon" is a gentler kind of tale, as warm and cuddly as a dragon itself. And if that doesn't make sense to you, you're behind the times!

Can You Dig It?

TITLE: Warriors
EDITORS: George RR Martin, Gardner Dozois
PUBLISHER: TOR

Rating
5/5 "Can you dig it?"; 4/5 "OK, let's get down to it, boppers."; 3/5 "Warriors, come out and play-a-ay!"; 2/5 "The chicks are packed!"; 1/5 "What's the matter? You turning faggot?"
Score: 3/5

"OK, let's get down to it, boppers"

Call it the antidote to the Amazon effect. Modern technology is good at helping us find things similar to the ones we already own or like, but it's completely duff at leading us to new discoveries. Enter the short-fiction anthology. In the foreword to "Warriors", Editor George RR Martin compares anthologies to old-fashioned wire spinner racks, with "all the books jumbled up together". In "Warriors", he and co-editor Gardner Dozois set out to break the walls between genres by mixing up stories from all shades of the literary spectrum.

It's a laudable effort, and one that feels especially timely now, with the rise not only of chain superstores, as lamented by Mr Martin in his foreword, but also of on-line retailers offering sophisticated recommendation engines. It's a pity that much of the material in "Warriors" is not up to the task.

"Warriors, come out and play-a-ay!"

Partly, this is due to the subject matter. Mr Martin and Mr Dozois have made stories about warriors their unifying theme, and this has inevitably limited the range of stories they have collected. The 20 stories gather mainly around the poles of science fiction and historical fiction, with only a few pegs from other genres to support the idea that all fiction can fit under one tent. However, there are one or two exceptions, which not coincidentally turn out to be some of the best in the book.

It is also partly due to the very uneven quality of the stories on offer. While there are a few which are genuinely worthwhile entries, there are far too many which feel merely phoned in or hastily scribbled on the back of an envelope. Surprisingly, Mr Martin himself is one of the culprits here.

Now, let me say I stand in awe of Mr Martin's literary talent. I have encountered few writers in any genre with his gift for instant, vivid, believable characterization and ability to communicate this personality through the character's own voice. I am also staggered and humbled by the man's ability to juggle a best-selling fantasy series, a spin-off TV series, convention appearances, and still find time to edit this collection. So I call automatic BS on anyone who suggests I am insufficiently appreciative of his work.

The fact is, "The Mystery Knight", the latest in his "Dunk and Egg" series of short stories set in the same world as the "Song of Ice and Fire" novels, is just plain no good. Rather than building on our investment in Sir Duncan and his squire, Egg, Mr Martin invents a host of new characters, gives us no reason to care for them, then abruptly resolves the whole situation in an unsatisfying deus ex machina. Considering Mr Martin's name and the prospect of another entry in the Dunk and Egg saga was my main reason for buying the book, this is a terrible letdown.

"We're gonna rain on you, Warriors!"

Mr Martin can perhaps take small comfort in the fact that he has plenty of company. For a bunch of warriors, there are a disappointing number of misfires. Mr Dozois's own entry is not so much a letdown as simply baffling. Some of the big names, including Robin Hobb and Tad Williams, produce only shrug-inducing duds.

There are worse offenders, though. "King of Norway" by Cecelia Holland features a long, tepid battle scene followed by an escape that is pure hokum. David Weber's "Out of the Dark" is a shambling patchwork of Roland Emmerich's "Independence Day", Tom Clancy style military techno-fetishism ("the fifteen-pound round from the M-136 light anti-armor weapon struck the side of his vehicle's turret at a velocity of 360 feet per second") and a truly cringe-worthy Gothic third act. Diana Gabaldon's piece is utterly twee and far too taken with its own preciousness.

"You Warriors are good, real good." "The best."

Fortunately for those of us who already paid full-cover price for the hardback, the collection is not a total loss. In a development that's almost worth a "warriors" story on its own, the day is saved by the veterans of the old guard. Robert Silverberg, 75, turns in a melancholy yet thought-provoking piece on what warriors would do once there is nobody left to fight. Peter S. Beagle, 71, takes the warrior theme in an interesting direction, in a story that unfolds like a dream, which may be appropriate, since the hero may not--if you want to get technical about it--actually exist. S. M. Stirling, 56, gives us a light-hearted, fast-paced romp in a neato retro-future that mixes Napoleonic with post-apocalyptic settings. There are also solid entries from veterinarian James Rollins and closet botanist Naomi Novik.

Five out of 20 hits might be a good average in pro baseball, but makes these warriors look decidedly amateurish. Mr Martin's fumble as the slugger of the team is especially galling for us fans that were rooting hardest for him. We can only hope this shows his entire attention is going into the "Ice and Fire" series. Sadly for Mr Martin's lofty aims, none of the stories here were impressive enough to make me want to read more from the contributors. Though in a weird way, this is also a defeat for the Amazon effect he rails against, since I only got the book because Mr Martin's name was attached to it.

Call it a draw, then.