Published in 1972, Oliver’s second book is expertly crafted and full of the author’s vibrant and quirky intelligence. Still, for the reader familiar w Published in 1972, Oliver’s second book is expertly crafted and full of the author’s vibrant and quirky intelligence. Still, for the reader familiar with her later books, most of the poems here don’t really sound like herself, that mercilessly devoted observer of people and nature whom we have come to love and to listen to. Sometimes the poem sounds like Millay or Mew, sometimes like Frost or Wendell Berry, but these relentless iambic verses—many of which rhyme--seem too buttoned up, too confined to express the wealth of encounters and surprises that can be found in one of Mary’s walks through the woods.
Still, there's a lot of good stuff here. I like the incisive portraits (“Learning about the Indians,” “Anne,” “Aunt Mary”), the elegies for journeys taken or not taken (“Somewhere in Pennsylvania,”“Passing Through,” ”Mountain Road”), and the poems of mourning, written during the Vietnam War (“Night Watch,” “The Intervals,” “Points of View.”) But I could have mentioned many other poems too; every poem here is worth reading.
The poems that stick in the memory here, though, are the poems Mary writes about walls, how walls are good for limiting our territory, demarcating it as ideal and demure, but how they also wall the wilderness out, increasing its wildness by definition, making it a thing to fear. (Could Mary be thinking of formal rhymed poetry here, a practice she would soon abandon? And—yes—perhaps she is thinking of war too.) There are three or four poems that touch on this theme, but I’ll choose “The Fence” as a representation of them all. It is one of the best, and—besides—it is also a witty criticism of “Mending Wall” written in language much like Frost’s.
THE FENCE
The day the fence was finally in And I could see to every side The wire that glittered fierce and thin, The sturdy posts among the leaves, I felt a curious change begin To whisper slyly in my heart That things were different on my side, Were cleaner and more civilized Than the green portico running free. And though I knew it could not be, Since only days before I’d walked Under the trees and could not tell What leaves were wild, and which were mine, I felt the notion rise and flare Like heat about my willing pride.
Who builds a fence about his land Must bear the burden of those lines, And lest the sharp whim of a fence Creat a myth of difference, Teach love to leap, respect to glide Oh freely to the other side. For there’s no wilderness but one, And no safe place for any life That fear or fencing ever won.
Under the green and falling light I walk the borders of my land and let my thoughts swim into night; And pray that they should travel far, Look to the earth both here and there, Study the wild unpastured stars, Stare at the dark no fence can hold And, finally, leave the gate ajar.
This seventeenth entry in the Nameless Detective series may be the best so far. And it is a significant departure from the rest of the series.
Although This seventeenth entry in the Nameless Detective series may be the best so far. And it is a significant departure from the rest of the series.
Although the plot is familiar, it is a significant departure from the rest of the series, derived more from movie thrillers than detective adventures. One night, leaving his girlfriend Kerry’s apartment, Nameless is waylaid by a man in a ski mask with a gun. Bent on revenge, he chloroforms our hero and drives him to a cabin in the woods. Once there, he shackles Nameless to the wall, leaves him with enough food for thirteen weeks, saying he will be back for the body four months or so. Nameless, in course of his ordeal, decides he has three important task ahead of him: 1) devise a means of escape, 2) identify his assailant (why thirteen weeks?), and 3) track him down and kill him.
As regular readers of the series know, Nameless is an ethical, compassionate, and easygoing detective. But his ordeal in the woods and the requirements of survival have changed him by the time of his escape. He feels no qualm about his murderous revenge. He breaks into houses, scavengers; soon after he is carrying a gun.
The story of Shackles is a tale of revenge, but it is also a story of a traumatized man who eventually reclaims his full humanity again. During his imprisonment Nameless keeps a journal, and we learn something of his father and mother, something about his motivations. We also witness a suspenseful journey on snow shoes, meet a few interesting characters, and enjoy one roaring good fight. Eventually we are led to a satisfying conclusion which reveals a poignant fact about Nameless' assailant too.
All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable mystery....more
“To Serve the Master,” first published in Imagination (February 1956) is the sort of story that lingers in the memory. On the surface it is a simple d “To Serve the Master,” first published in Imagination (February 1956) is the sort of story that lingers in the memory. On the surface it is a simple dystopian take which take place after the war between humans and robots, but what we learn of the war’s origin seems to place blame on both sides, and makes us mourn for the loss of the utopian world they briefly shared.
It takes place in a dreary world ruled by giant “companies”—similar to Kornbluth and Pohl’s The Space Merchants (1952), filled with rigid rules and little leisure. It tells the story of a mailman named Applequist who finds an extraordinarily rare thing: a damaged robot still “alive,” left over from the human robot war. Although he knows it it forbidden, Applequist—directed by the robot—begins to repair him, and the two of them discuss the world before the war, a world of leisure for humans, and how the war came and changed that world forever.
But is the story Applequist receives from the robot the real one? It certainly differs from what his supervisor Hennessy tells him. Whatever the truth may be, Applequist must face a few grim realities before his tale is done....more
Martin Cruz Smith’s Gorky Park (1981) is the first book in series set in the Soviet Union and featuring Arkady Renko, a homicide investigator for the Martin Cruz Smith’s Gorky Park (1981) is the first book in series set in the Soviet Union and featuring Arkady Renko, a homicide investigator for the Moscow city police. It is an unusual work, for it gives the reader a unique glimpse into the difficulties facing a detective who is forced to operate in a police state.
For example—and this makes for a noteworthy variation on the typical policier—Renko at first tries not to solve his case, but instead to find some piece of evidence—of foreign involvement or some form of conspiracy—that will allow him to dump the whole vexing affair in the lap of the KGB. The vodka-fueled bludgeonings he usually investigates are easy to handle, but these three frozen corpses in Gorky Park—two men and one woman shot to death, their faces and fingertips removed to prevent identification—are another matter entirely. This is definitely something that might attract the attention of his superiors. And that kind of attention is something Arkady Renko does not desire.
One of the best things about Smith’s book is his portrait of the Soviet bureaucracy: suspicious and hypocritical, deceptive and self-deceptive, filled with outmoded beliefs and threadbare traditions, always ready to betray the loyal and the naive for the good of “the institution.” Now what exactly did Smith’s description of this society remind me of? The Republican Party? The Roman Catholic Church? Yes, of course, those too, but they weren’t exactly the institutions I was thinking of. And then it hit me: Smith’s Soviet Union reminded me of John le Carre’s “The Circus,” his fictionalized portrait of British Intelligence in the post WW II world.
In 1979, John Le Carre completed the last volume of his highly esteemed “Karla Trilogy” (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Honourable Schoolboy; and Smiley’s People), in which he depicts in detail the culture of the British Spy Network. (And more than a little about the Soviet Union too) Two years later, Gorky Park was published.
Le Carre, a writer of genius, transforms his jaundiced view of the “circus” of spies into a metaphor for an even greater fraud: humanity itself. Martin Cruz Smith, although no genius, is an accomplished writer of thrillers who knows how to learn from a master. In Gorky Park he has given us an excellent mystery that—although no indictment of humanity--is also a memorable portrait of the Soviet Union in decline....more
Deadfall (1986) is the sixteenth entry in the Nameless Detective series. (Forty-six novels so far, and—I hope—more than a few to go.) It’s nothing exc Deadfall (1986) is the sixteenth entry in the Nameless Detective series. (Forty-six novels so far, and—I hope—more than a few to go.) It’s nothing exceptional, really, but—like all of the prolific Pronzini’s entertainments—it is well crafted, thoroughly professional, and pleasing to fans of the genre.
This time, our nameless hero stumbles onto a murder while he’s on duty (an unenviable assignment, on stake-out as a repo-man). He hears shots, investigates. and discovers a bloody crime scene. The police think the murdered man Leonard Purcell is the victim of a robbery, but his life partner Tom Washburn thinks otherwise. He is convinced his lover’s death is related to the “accidental” death a few months earlier of Leonard’s brother Kenneth, a collector of small objects d’art (snuff-boxes and bottles, to be precise.)
Soon Nameless is on the trail of a missing $50,000 snuffbox, surrounded by a suspicious crowd of the Purcell brothers' disagreeable family augmented by an equally disagreeable cabal of venal art dealers and unscrupulous collectors. There seem to be a lot of pieces to the puzzle, and it takes Nameless a while to sort them all out.
He’s got his personal troubles too. Nameless’ girlfriend Kerry’s ex-husband is now a fanatical fundamentalist preacher, convinced that Kerry—still his wife in the eyes of the great Jehovah—must be immediately restored to him. And he just won’t take no for an answer.
An enjoyable read. Recommended to fans of the genre....more
First published in If (December 1958), “Null-O” was written in 1953 but didn’t achieve publications for five years. Why not? Nobody knows for sure, bu First published in If (December 1958), “Null-O” was written in 1953 but didn’t achieve publications for five years. Why not? Nobody knows for sure, but it just might be the unsettling, subversive nature of the theme.
Dick began with A.E. Van Voght’s World of Null-A, a world featuring Spock-like creatures of perfect logic. Dick, however, took it two steps further. One: wouldn’t the perfectly logical man also be devoid of empathy? And two: wouldn’t the non-empathetic be inevitably paranoid, isolated in emotionless world.
In “Null-O,” Dick follows the boy Lemuel, one of those perfectly logical, non-empathetic paranoids. Such people have their deficiencies, true. But they are not mentally ill, they just have a cold, stripped-down view of things. What’s more, they make ideal dictators and technocrats, gifted at taking over the world. And equally gifted at destroying it.
To see how Lemuel and his paranoid crew take over the world and almost destroy it, you should read Philip K. Dick’s disturbing story “Null-O.”...more
Andrew Johnson, a mediocre man who became president through a lamentable series of accidents, presided over our nation at a time when we required a le Andrew Johnson, a mediocre man who became president through a lamentable series of accidents, presided over our nation at a time when we required a leader of vision and political skill. The story of this mediocre man is worth telling, but unfortunately the book by Annette Gordon-Reed that tells it is mediocre too.
First, the mediocre man. Like Lincoln, Johnson, born in poverty, advanced through force of character, but, unlike the Great Emancipator, he possessed few good qualities in addition to his extraordinary will. A tailor by trade, he taught himself to read and write (with much assistance from his wife Eliza) but never became a scholar or an accomplished writer. He was, however a fine public speaker, with a booming voice, a love for oratory, and a talent for public disputation. Debate—along with fist fights and knife fights—was a popular form of village entertainment in the 1820’s, and often led to a political career. So it was with Tennessee Johnson, who, becoming a Greeneville alderman at the age twenty-one, advanced from office to office unto he reached the position of United States Senator at the age of forty-nine.
When the Civil War broke out, Senator Johnson, a fierce defender of the Union, remained in Washington even after Tennessee—the last state to do so—seceded.. In March of 1862, when the Union had recovered much of his state’s territory, Lincoln appointed Johnson military governor of Tennessee. The following year, when Lincoln ran for re-election, he was already looking forward to Reconstruction, and thought it would be advisable to add a Southern Unionist to his presidential ticket. Andrew Johnson—senator, anti-slavery, pro-union, successful military governor—was an obvious choice. Johnson was elected vice-president in 1864, and five months later, an assassin’s bullet elevated him to the position of President of the United States.
Johnson clearly lacked Lincoln’s extraordinary gifts, but the situation was worse than it appeared. For Johnson, although opposed to slavery, was a confirmed racist: he believed that the black slave, in league with the planter class (!?), conspired to deprive the poor white man of his legitimate employment. Once the institution of slavery was abolished, Johnson believed, the white man should be allowed to govern his state in any manner he pleased. Matters such as education and the political franchise were best left up to the individual states. The Radical Republicans in congress were outraged, Johnson stubbornly stood by his beliefs, and thus became to first United States president to be impeached.
Now to the mediocre book. It is not a bad book, really. Annette Gordon-Reed’s prose is lucid, and she writes with a clear, breezy style. It is just that her book suffers from occasional lapses in word choice and poor planning. Her diction is sometimes eccentric (the word “grandee” used--more than twice--to describe influential men) and sometimes just wrong (“astral” used as a superlative, in place of “stellar”), but the outstanding fault is the organization of her chapter “The Tailor’s Apprentice.” Gordon-Reed clearly planned to write an entire chapter about Johnson's early years, but, not finding enough facts to fill out the pages, she indulges in redundant speculation to the point of obvious padding.
Still, Andrew Johnson, whatever its faults, gives us a vivid and fair account of a not terribly sympathetic man, a white man from humble beginnings who, hampered by racist views and an inflexible temperament, endeavored to do his best by the country, and failed....more
People tell me that Gene Wolfe’s tetralogy The Book of the New Sun is a fantasy masterpiece, but after completing the first two volumes, the jury—at l People tell me that Gene Wolfe’s tetralogy The Book of the New Sun is a fantasy masterpiece, but after completing the first two volumes, the jury—at least this particular one-man jury—is still out.
In my review of the first volume, The Shadow of the Torturer, I praised the superb prose, the vivid descriptions, the realistic evocations of a pseudo-medieval world, and the tantalizing possibility that it may be the culmination of a great civilization (possibly ours) in decline.
All this is equally true of The Claw of the Conciliator, and it has been more than enough to keep me reading. But there is something about the studied guardedness of Severian, protagonist and narrator, that wearies me. I like a hero who, however flawed, I can identify with and root for, and the chilly precision of Severian’s voice—frosty even in his frankest revelations—prevents me from fully committing myself either to his story or his fate. And, not being fully committed, I have come to view Severian’s journeying—however unfairly—as picaresque meanderings, not a quest. (Besides, an event I’d looked forward to—Dr. Talos’ play—disappointed me. I understand it is founding myth, and a commentary on the characters, but it was very long, and I have concluded (pace Gene Wolfe) that Dr. Talos is a very poor writer.)
Still, there are plenty of individual scenes that pleased me here, scenes that remain in the memory: Severian’s interview with the green man from the future: our hero’s use of the Claw to fend off the man-apes, while something leviathan stirs the waters below; a midnight supper with Vodalus, where Severian consumes a lover’s flesh and enters into a kind of communion; the notules, small things that fly through the forest air and try to suck the life-force from Severian; the grotesque diminution of the gorgeous Jolene after the single bite of a blood-bat; and the final spectral dance in the streets of an ancient stone town.
As I said, my jury is still out. Well, let the deliberations begin again! On to The Sword of the Lictor!...more
Any useful definition of modern conservatism—one far removed from the bloviations of Sean Hannity and the pieties of Mike Pence—should be broad enough Any useful definition of modern conservatism—one far removed from the bloviations of Sean Hannity and the pieties of Mike Pence—should be broad enough to include poet and naturalist Wendell Berry. An environmental activist and pacifist, Berry’s politics are rooted in the great tradition of Jeffersonian Democracy, in his conviction that the small farm and the local community are central to our republic’s survival, that our fidelity to family and friends, our sense of reverence for the earth, spring from a cultivated affection for—and a commitment to—a particular place, individual people.
Wendell Berry began teaching at the University of Kentucky in 1964, and soon after bought a farm in Port Royal, not far from where he was born. He gave up teaching in 1977, and devoted himself full time to writing and farming for the next ten years.
This collection of poetry—his third—was released in 1970, about halfway between his transformation from professor to farmer, and I believe it to be Berry’s first completely successful, deeply original collection. It features, among other things, the first appearance of “The Mad Farmer,” speaker of eccentric aphorisms and habitual contrarian, but it includes many other wonderful pieces of well.
Here, just for a taste, are five maxims from the Mad Farmer and two short poems:
PRAYERS AND SAYINGS OF THE MAD FARMER
II
At night make me one with the darkness. In the morning make me one with the light.
III
If a man finds it necessary to eat garbage, he should resist the temptation to call it a delicacy.
IV
Don’t pray for the rain to stop. Pray for good luck fishing when the river floods.
VIII
When I rise up let me rise up joyful like a bird
When I fall let me fall without regret like a leaf
XI
By the excellence of his work the workman is a neighbor. By selling only what he would not despise to own the salesman is a neighbor. By selling what is good his character survives his market.
TO KNOW THE DARK
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
FEBRUARY 2, 1968
In the dark of the moon, in flying snow, in the dead of winter, war spreading, families dying, the world in danger, I walk the rocky hillside, sowing clover.
First published in Orbit Science Fiction (1953), “Tony and the Beetles” is a wise and resonant story about how deceptively peaceful an environment may First published in Orbit Science Fiction (1953), “Tony and the Beetles” is a wise and resonant story about how deceptively peaceful an environment may look through the eyes of a people in power, and how that “peace” may quickly pass, replaced by hostility and menace, when it becomes obvious to all—both conquerors and the conquered—that the people in power are no longer winning.
Tony is a boy who lives on the Earth colony of Betelgeuse, a place inhabited by an intelligent exo-skeletoned people called the Pas whom the earthlings refer to as “beetles.” Tony and his father discuss the war on Orion, where it looks like the beetles, backed up against the wall, may start winning for the first time. Tony pays little attention to his father’s warnings, and goes out to play with his “beetle” friends. But by the time he gets there, the news has spread: humans have lost the battle on Orion. And Tony’s friends the beetles are not his friends any more.
Dick wrote this story in the early 50’s, and I suppose he was thinking of the British and the French who were then in the process of being driven from their colonies all around the globe. But when I read it, I thought about Chris Hayes book on the American justice system, A Colony in a Nation, about Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, about the frustrated goals of the Black Lives Matter movement, and I wondered: what will happen—and it will be one day soon—when it becomes clear that White America is no longer winning?
This is one of Dick’s clearest statement about racism, and one of his best stories too. It is also unfairly neglected and seldom anthologized....more
First published United States Magazine and Democratic Review, XVI (April, 1845). “P’s Correspondence"—although not completely successful—is unusual an First published United States Magazine and Democratic Review, XVI (April, 1845). “P’s Correspondence"—although not completely successful—is unusual and extraordinarily interesting. It is at once an alternate history, a frame-story including an unreliable narrator, a case study of madness, and a satiric commentary on the youthful dead heroes of the previous generation, and what they would have been like if they had lived—as most of us do—to a less romantic and attractive old age.
An unnamed narrator introduces us to his friend P, whose hallucinatory experiences he describes as “not so much a delusion, as a partly wilful and partly involuntary sport of the imagination.” In his letter, P tells us of entertaining great men in London, men whom we know died in their youth but who have continued to live and age in P’s imagination. He seems to relish the fact that in old age these giant personalities have become too ridiculous for greatness, and, even though the occasional memory of a tomb or a terminal biography may frightens him into reality, P. tenaciously maintains his delusion, and continues to gently mock the ruins of great men.
Here are three of P.’s portraits:
LORD BYRON AT 60
He wears a brown wig, very luxuriantly curled, and extending down over his forehead. The expression of his eyes is concealed by spectacles. His early tendency to obesity having increased, Lord Byron is now enormously fat; so fat as to give the impression of a person quite overladen with his own flesh, and without sufficient vigor to diffuse his personal life through the great mass of corporeal substance, which weighs upon him so cruelly. . . Were I disposed to be caustic, I might consider this mass of earthly matter as the symbol, in a material shape, of those evil habits and carnal vices which unspiritualize man's nature, and clog up his avenues of communication with the better life. But this would be too harsh; and besides, Lord Byron's morals have been improving, while his outward man has swollen to such unconscionable circumference. . . .
ROBERT BURNS AT 85
His white hair floats like a snow-drift around his face, in which are seen the furrows of intellect and passion, like the channels of headlong torrents that have foamed themselves away. . . . He has that cricketty sort of liveliness--I mean the cricket's humor of chirping for any cause or none--which is perhaps the most favorable mood that can befall extreme old age. . . . It seems as if his ardent heart and brilliant imagination had both burnt down to the last embers, leaving only a little flickering flame in one corner, which keeps dancing upward and laughing all by itself. . . . Burns then began to repeat Tam O'Shanter, but was so tickled with its wit and humor--of which, however, I suspect he had but a traditionary sense--that he soon burst into a fit of chirruping laughter, succeeded by a cough, which brought this not very agreeable exhibition to a close. On the whole, I would rather not have witnessed it.
NAPOLEON AT 76
There is no surer method of annihilating the magic influence of a great renown, than by exhibiting the possessor of it in the decline, the overthrow, the utter degradation of his powers--buried beneath his own mortality--and lacking even the qualities of sense, that enable the most ordinary men to bear themselves decently in the eye of the world. This is the state to which disease, aggravated by long endurance of a tropical climate, and assisted by old age--for he is now above seventy--has reduced Bonaparte. . . While I was observing him, there chanced to be a little extra bustle in the street; and he, the brother of Caesar and Hannibal--the Great Captain, who had veiled the world in battle smoke, and tracked it round with bloody footsteps--was seized with a nervous trembling, and claimed the protection of the two policemen by a cracked and dolorous cry.
Death Angel’s Shadow is a collection of three novellas starring the barbarian swordsmen Kane, the immortal brother-slayer whose “mark” is his eyes, ey Death Angel’s Shadow is a collection of three novellas starring the barbarian swordsmen Kane, the immortal brother-slayer whose “mark” is his eyes, eyes that “glowed with their own light” like “cold blue gems” that “blazed the fires of blood madness, of the lust to kill and destroy.”
“Reflections for the Winter of My Soul” introduces us to a Kane on the run, traveling through an ice-bound world until a blizzard forces him to seek shelter. There, in the forest lodge of Baron Troylin-- a cold, beseiged environment which evokes the darkest passages of Beowulf, a world where we the monster Grendel might triumph after all. It is an epic, but it is a mystery too. A werewolf is preying on Troylin’s mens, and Kane is the one who must uncover the murderer.
“Cold Light”, with its dusty desert city, feels like a spaghetti western based on a samurai film, only this “Magnificent 9” are not the protectors of poor peasants, but avengers determined to kill our “hero,” the merciless and murderous Kane, even if they have to sacrifice a few peasants to do it. It is true that Kane is wicked and may deserve death, but the nobleman Gaethe—commander of this ruthless squad of mercenaries—is a little too self-righteous to be believed. We want Kane to win, but he is surrounded. Can he escape? And can he save not only himself, but also his blind concubine, the psychically-gifted Rehhaille?
The last of the three novellas, “Mirage,” is a tale in the Romantic Gothic mode, reminiscent of Keat’s “La Belle Dame Sans Merci.” Kane is held in thrall by vampire princess in her ruined castle deep in the woods. Her hypnotic love drains his strength a little at a time; can he summon the strength to break free.
Wagner’s prose, even at its least effective (and the prose of Death Angel’s Shadow is uneven at best) is good at painting a scene, evoking a terror, bringing a sword fight to life. If you like Conan, but somehow always wished that he were smarter, darker, more terrifying, then Karl Wagner’s Kane is the hero for you....more
This may be the best book in the Times Books’ American Presidents Series, and surprisingly it was written by a politician, presidential candidate Geor This may be the best book in the Times Books’ American Presidents Series, and surprisingly it was written by a politician, presidential candidate George McGovern.
I say “surprisingly” because politicians aren’t usually remembered for their literary achievements. Even their ghost-written works—with the exception of Sorensen’s Profiles in Courage—gained few rewards and fewer readers. Only about 10% of our presidents have been gifted writers (Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln. Grant), and I doubt if our long list of losing candidates could offer a greater percentage of literary skill. Still, George McGovern’s Abraham Lincoln beats the odds. It is a well-written and moving book.
Perhaps Senator McGovern’s literary accomplishment shouldn’t be all that surprising. After he returned from World War II (bomber pilot, 35 missions, winner of the Air Medal and Distinguished Flying Cross), he took advantage of the G.I. Bill to earn a doctorate in history from Northwestern. His 450 page dissertation on the 1913 Colorado Coal Strike was later published as The Great Coalfield War, and since then then he has produced approximately a dozen books, both alone and in collaboration.
McGovern was eighty-six years old in 2008, when he completed Abraham Lincoln. Only four years of life remained to him, and I like to think of this book as a twilight meditation, the reevaluation of the Great Emancipator by a lifelong admirer who saw the great man’s flaws yet thoroughly appreciated his strengths.
He shows us a Lincoln filled with contradictions: an amiable jokester who suffered from melancholy; a lover of justice who suspended habeas corpus; a lover of freedom who censored the press; an idealistic statesman and a shrewd political manipulator; a compassionate pardoner of soldiers and a cold-blooded commander-in-chief.
Faced with the task of presenting such a large subject in within the confines of a short biography, McGovern chose the option of organizing Lincoln’s presidency into thematic chapters which are also vaguely chronological: “Lincoln and the Union,” “Lincoln and Emancipation,” “Lincoln and Total War,” and “Politics in Wartime.” This structure allows the reader to sense the progress of the war and yet concentrate on one subject at a time.
The Chapter “Victory and Death” I found to be particularly moving. As I read of Lincoln’s last meeting with Sherman and Grant, his visit to the captured Confederate capital of Charleston, I suddenly realized that I was weeping. Of course, I knew Ford’s Theater could not be far behind, but I think I not only wept for the America of 1865 and for the soon-to-be assassinated president, but I also wept for the America of 2018. I wept for my America too.
How America hungers for someone like Lincoln: his humanity, his compassion, the force of his steady guiding hand!...more
First published in Fantasy & Science Fiction (December 1954), “The Father-Thing” is one of Philip K. Dick’s most effective and well-crafted short stor First published in Fantasy & Science Fiction (December 1954), “The Father-Thing” is one of Philip K. Dick’s most effective and well-crafted short stories. It takes a common paranoid delusion (this thing that looks like father is not really father), develops it into into a convincing “body snatchers” premise, and then uses it to create an exciting tale of boyhood adventure. And yet . . . although everything eventually ends happily, the premise is so disturbing—and the sight of what is behind the “father-thing” so convincing—that the story persists in challenging our familial sense of reality and lingers in the memory.
It is one of Dick’s most frequently anthologized stories and—I understand—one of the episodes of the Dick TV anthology Electric Dreams, featuring Greg Kinnear as the father and the father-thing.
It is also my absolutely favorite Philip K. Dick story. And it still scares the hell out of me after all these years.
When the family—named (fortuitous coincidence!) the “Waltons”—is summoned to dinner, young Charles Walton informs his mother that there are “two fathers” quarreling with each other in the garage, and that the father who comes to dinner is “the other father.” Charles soon realizes that the world as he knows it is endangered by this “father-thing,” and he summons a misfit crew of three (a semi-bully with a b.b. gun, a quiet black boy good “at finding things,” and himself, to stop the “father-thing” before it can do real damage.
"I always had the impression,” Philip K. Dick once said in an interview, “when I was very small, that my father was two people, one good, one bad. The good father goes away and the bad father replaces him. I guess many kids have this feeling. What if it were so?”
In that interview he also tells us why children are important in this story, that when one has something to say and “one cannot communicate it to others,” that “fortunately, there are other kids to tell it to. Kids understand: they are wiser than adults -- hmmm, I almost said, ‘Wiser than humans.’"...more
When Charles Simic emigrated to America as a teenager, he carried the War and Belgrade along with him. “My travel agents were Hitler and Stalin,” Simi When Charles Simic emigrated to America as a teenager, he carried the War and Belgrade along with him. “My travel agents were Hitler and Stalin,” Simic says.
Although he published a few books before Dismantling the Silence, Silence was the first of his books I read, and it made a great impression on me. I thought of abandoned cities, hallowed-out buildings. Walls strafed with bullets, spattered with blood , . . Everything about the place screams out “Hunger!” But there is some very funny graffiti left on the walls.
He’s nearly eighty now, but I don’t think Simic has changed much with the years. The same loss, the same pain, the same death’s dead humor. I don’t think he grows much. But he survives.
This is a helluva book. You should read it. I highly recommend the poem on pages 52-57: “BESTIARY FOR THE FINGERS OF MY RIGHT HAND.”
Below you will find a few of its shortest poems, by way an of introduction.
POEM
Every morning I forget how it is. I watch the smoke mount In great strides above the city. I belong to no one.
Then, I remember my shoes. How I have to put them on, How bending over to tie them up I will look into the earth.
FEAR
Fear passes from man to man Unknowing. As one leaf passes its shudders To another.
All at once the whole tree is trembling. And there is no sign of the wind.
BONES
My roof is covered with pigeon bones I do not disturb them. I leave them Where they are, warm In their bed of feathers.
At night I think I hear the bones, The little skulls cracking against the tin, For the wind is blowing softly, so softly, As if a cricket were wining inside a tulip. . .
What is joy to me is grief to others. I feel grief all around my house Like a ring of beasts circling a camp fire Before dawn.
HEARING THE STEPS
Someone is walking through the snow. An ancient sound. Perhaps the Mongols are migrating again. Perhaps, once more we’ll go hanging virgins From bare trees, plundering churches, Raping widows in the deep snow?
Perhaps, the time has come again To go back into forests and snow fields, Live alone killing wolves with our bare hands, Until the last word and the last sound Of this language I am speaking is forgotten.
This novella (first published in Orbit Science Fiction, Nov.-Dec. 1954), tells us of the final days of Bors, the last of the robot-governors, in a onc This novella (first published in Orbit Science Fiction, Nov.-Dec. 1954), tells us of the final days of Bors, the last of the robot-governors, in a once technologically sophisticated America, now reduced to primitivism by the depredations of the Anarchist League.
This story is exciting and suspenseful, as we observe a team from the Anarchist League as it attempts to seek out and destroy the last robot-directed outpost of the old civilization. One of the best things about the story is that Dick—whose heart was always with the anarchists—demonstrates a remarkable balance here, showing his sympathy not only for the war-hating team of the three anarchists, but also for the creaky old robot, the repository for a culture’s worth of knowledge, as he doggedly attempts to preserve a dying world.
Philip K. Dick had a few words to say about Bors the Robot: “Now I show trust of a robot as leader, a robot who is the suffering servant, which is to say a form of Christ. Leader as servant of man; leader who should be dispensed with—perhaps. An ambiguity hangs over the morality of this story. Should we have a leader or should we think for ourselves? Obviously the latter, in principle. But—sometimes there lies a gulf between what is theoretically right and that which is practical. It's interesting that I would trust a robot and not an android. Perhaps it's because a robot does not try tol deceive you as to what it is."...more
I read this mystery because I’ve vowed to complete every book in the “Nameless Detective Series,” but this novel is significant for another reason, an I read this mystery because I’ve vowed to complete every book in the “Nameless Detective Series,” but this novel is significant for another reason, and the title—Double—offers a clue. This book is the first collaboration between the husband-and-wife team Bill Pronzini (creator of “The Nameless Detective) and Marcia Muller (creator of Sharon McCone).
There’s a picture of the two of them on the back of the book, and they are very cute together, in a sort of dorky writer way. I don’t much like collaborations (I prefer the magic woven by one single voice), but this yarn kept me entertained and I’m glad to have met Ms. Muller’s Sharon McCone.
The story takes place at a private investigators’ convention, held in McCone’s hometown of San Diego at the old gothic Casa Del Rey hotel. The convention seems to be going okay—although neither McCone or “Wolf” (McCone’s nickname for Nameless)—seem interested in the technological displays or the helpful series of lectures. It becomes obvious, though, that something is just not right at the hotel. McCone’s can see that her old friend and mentor, Elaine Picard, Casa del Rey’s chief of security, is worried about something, and “Wolf” discovers that a woman and her little boy—installed in a bungalow on the hotel grounds—have since disappeared, and the staff refuse to acknowledge the two were ever guests of the hotel.
Of course, before too long, there is a murder, and “Wolf” and McCone’s join forces to uncover the mystery of the Casa Del Rey.
Forgettable, but enjoyable while it lasted. And the two detectives—like their authorial counterparts—are very cute together, in a sort of dorky private eye way....more
First published in Science Fiction Stories (1954), “The Turning Wheel” depicts a post-apocalyptic society, where America is controlled by the “Holy Ar First published in Science Fiction Stories (1954), “The Turning Wheel” depicts a post-apocalyptic society, where America is controlled by the “Holy Arm”—a pseudo-Asian religion that disbelieves in progress, disdains invention, and is dominated by reverence for nature, fear of karma, and belief in retributive reincarnation. We follow Su Wu, a member of the high caste “bard” class, as he travels to Detroit to investigate a “Tinker” cult emerging among among the lowest most primitive caste, the Caucasoid “Technos.”
This story is notable for its efficient presentation of a detailed, believable world, but it is particularly amusing because of Dick’s treatment of the founding spirit of the “Holy Arm”: the prophet and messiah “Bard Elron Hu”--a references to L. Ron Hubbard, the SF author and founder of Scientology who had published his book Dianetics two years before.
The ending is too abrupt, and too gimmicky for my taste, but the rest of the story is fine....more
I like returning to the “classics” of my youth, for I always discover not only something new about the work itself, but something about myself and how I like returning to the “classics” of my youth, for I always discover not only something new about the work itself, but something about myself and how I have changed. Sometimes, though, rediscovery is a mitigated pleasure; sometimes I must face that fact that one of my old “classics” isn’t really a classic after all.
Re-reading Brainwave was like that. I still think the premise is a first-class idea: after a period of millions of years, the Earth moves out of a neuron-hampering space field, and suddenly the brain power of all terrestrial creatures—men and women, chimpanzees, pigs, sheep, even bunnies—surges at an alarming rate.
How will the old human institutions, based on on the limited insights of inferior intellects, hold up under new scrutiny? Will the brainy new humans rise to the challenge, or will they collapse under the strain of their new intelligence? And the old domestic animals, the ones no longer too dumb to know any better: how will they react to their inferior status?
Yes, these are good questions, and I remember being intrigued by the way Anderson attempted to answer them. I particularly loved the parts of the book which took place on a recently abandoned farm operated by a mentally-disabled man (now of near-genius I.Q,) named Archie Brock, how he coped with the revolt of the crafty pigs and came to regret the slaughter of the sheep, who were now consciously, creepily, aware of their fate. (For years I remembered a particularly fine passage in which it was obvious that the sheep—with the help of their Lord and Slaughterer Archie—would soon be forming a religion.)
As sometimes happens with re-reads, I discovered I was right about the parts of the book I remembered, for these were the parts that worked well. What I had forgotten about were the parts of the book that didn't work at all.
The “city” portions of Brainwave don't work nearly as well as the "farm" parts. There is a tedious love triangle that slows the action, and Anderson’s attempt to create a new kind of speech for the super-geniuses (a slap-dash fabrication consisting of normal dialogue in quotes, gestural emphases in quotations, and telepathic emotional messages in italics) just seems complicated and—even worse—kinda dumb. Poul Anderson is a smart writer, but the challenge of making a super genius sound smart is a challenge which thoroughly defeated him. (And it has defeated others before and after him too.)
Although the Archie Brock sequences have a few problems of their own (for example, the gun-wielding circus chimpanzees working the farm resemble caricatures of field Negroes), they are extraordinarily successful. Brock’s point of view—that of an extremely intelligent normal man who once was mentally disabled—is both interesting in itself and useful for the narrative. Brock could have provided all the insights into the “brainwave” event that the reader of this novel needed to hear.
Yes, Poul Anderson should have taken the perennial advice given to rural youth since time immemorial: Poul Anderson should have stayed down on the farm....more
This short action-filled novella, first published in If (April 1954), is set in a post-apocalyptic world where government agents like Baines hunt down This short action-filled novella, first published in If (April 1954), is set in a post-apocalyptic world where government agents like Baines hunt down all mutants, killing the most dangerous and neutering the rest. Baines, though, had his hands full with his latest quarry: a beautiful young golden-skinned man named Chris who lives just one step into the future, but can see the consequences of that one step so clearly that he always chooses the prudent thing to do.
He has another “superpower” too . . . but you’ll have to read “The Golden Man” yourself to find out what it is. (I think I can say this much, though, without spoiling it for you: it has something to do with the way evolution chooses the most effective mutations.)
Philip Dick himself, in a 1978 interview, told us something about his reasons for writing this story. Apparently he was weary at the ‘50’s fantasy of the benign mutant leader or mentor ( a view favored by John W. Campbell, the editor of Astounding:
Here I am also saying that mutants are dangerous to us ordinaries, a view which John W. Campbell, Jr. deplored. We were supposed to view them as our leaders. But I always felt uneasy as to how they would view us. I mean, maybe they wouldn't want to lead us. Maybe from their superevolved lofty level we wouldn't seem worth leading. Anyhow, even if they agreed to lead us, I felt uneasy as to where we would wind up going. It might have something to do with buildings marked SHOWERS but which really weren't.
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