Nothing Left to the Pagination

Despite the evidence of the past few blog posts, not all spare time in my household during the ongoing quarantine is spent binge-watching old TV shows. Aside from property maintenance (including the first lawn cut of the season) and other such practical activities, there is a bit of reading going on as well. (I even cracked open an old 8^th grade Latin text, mirabile dictu; it’s probably time to worry when I revisit high school algebra.) Comments on five book selections follow. They are all old-fashioned paper-and-ink from E.R. Hamilton, so whatever their virtues and failings they are at least cheap. All get at least a mild Thumbs Up though the thumbs for Coben and Baxter are held especially high.

Time’s Last Gift by Philip Jose Farmer

This scifi – or, more appropriately pleifi – novel by Farmer (best known for Riverworld) was originally published in 1972, but holds up pretty well today. I’m not generally keen on time travel fiction due to the awkward paradoxes typically involved. Farmer skirts the bulk of those problems however by anticipating the Novikov self-consistency principle – an argument by Russian physicist Igor Dmitriyevich Novikov that only time travel that doesn’t alter the present is possible. Farmer’s time vessel simply cannot go to parts of the past where its crew could do anything that would alter the present. In this lively tale the anthropologist crew travels from 2070 CE to 12,000 BCE ice age Europe. They encounter hunter gatherer inhabitants, live among them, and share the dangers from the fauna (including unfriendly humans).

Though a stand-alone novel in the sense of needing neither prequel nor sequel, the book does fit into a fictional universe that includes characters not only of Farmer’s own creation but from classic authors including ER Burroughs and Jules Verne (e.g. Farmer’s Tarzan Alive and The Other Log of Phileas Fogg). The crew of the time vessel HG Wells I in Time’s Last Gift are puzzled that one of their number, John Gribardsun, seems all too at home in the age they are visiting.

Atlas of a Lost World: Travels in Ice Age America by Craig Childs

Childs' book pairs well with the pleifi Time’s Last Gift. Childs writes of his own personal travels around North America to early sites of archaeological interest from the Bering Sea to Floridian sinkholes. He describes artifacts that have been found in those locations and notes (often conflicting) academic views about them.

If there is any more bitter battleground than contemporary politics it is anthropology, which often is a proxy for the same thing. Particularly unsettling to some has been the challenge to the theory of the Bering land bridge as the route to the settling of the Americas some 12,000 to 13,000 years ago. To be sure genetic studies confirm that this is the primary path taken by the ancestors of pre-Columbian inhabitants, but too many far older sites (some of the oldest – 25,000 years ago or more –  are in South America) have been discovered to dismiss them all as isolated dating errors. The most likely path of earlier migrations, given the glaciers blocking the land route, is along the coast by maritime fishing people. The coastlines of 25,000 years ago are now under hundreds of feet of water, so what otherwise would be the most promising archaeological sites are inaccessible. Some reviewers have taken Childs to task for simply reporting opposing views rather than championing one (whatever one is favored by the reviewer), but this neutrality is more of a strength than a weakness. The reader is free to consult other more specialized sources in order to draw his or her own conclusions in these matters.

Everything Is Going To Kill Everybody by Robert Brockway

Brockway’s book adds some perspective to the current state of existential panic. There are so many ways to die, both as an individual and as a civilization, that there is little to be gained obsessing on just one – something else will sneak up behind you with a club. There is something oddly comforting in that.

Brockway with graveyard humor discusses natural disasters such as supervolanoes, hypercane, and asteroid strikes. He discusses bio threats including misguided genetic manipulation, a trend toward male sterility, and (of course) old fashioned contagion. He does not forget robotics and artificial intelligence of the sort that so worried Stephen Hawking. Much of what he discusses is silly and much is exaggerated, but more than enough is entirely real.

The Massacre of Mankind by Stephen Baxter

This authorized sequel to HG Well's War of the Worlds by scifi master Stephen Baxter is set 14 years after the first 1907 invasion from Mars. In the real timeline of the early 20th century, of course, humans were busy massacring each other. In Baxter’s version of the era there was still a “Schlieffen War” but it never escalated to a world war thanks to an alliance of convenience between the UK and Germany that allowed the Kaiser to overrun France. Baxter’s UK is a very authoritarian place as the British – who were singled out and damaged badly in the 1907 invasion – brace for a possible rematch. They aren’t wrong. In the 1920s the Martians are back with a larger force (and better antibiotics) for a second go at it. Once again the first wave of the second invasion strikes England – Winston Churchill organizes a defense – but additional waves target major cities around the world. The Martians haven’t lost their taste for human blood. The account of the new invasion is written from the perspective of journalist Julia Elphinstone, sister-in-law to the chronicler (unnamed in Wells' book) of War of the Worlds.

The first sequel to Wells' book of which I'm aware is Edison's Conquest of Mars (1898) by Garrett P. Serviss. (Yes, that Edison: it could have been aptly named The Earthings Strike Back.) It was serialized in The Boston Post, which surely would have been sued by Wells had he been aware of it. It isn't very good, but as authentic Victorian steampunk it has some value. Baxter, needless to say, is far better.

I have a fondness for War of the Worlds. In 1959 my mom brought home the Classics Illustrated comic book version of the novel. Contrary to the zeitgeist of the time she figured that reading was reading and she was happy to encourage it in my sister and me with comics. It worked, because I deliberately sought out HG’s actual novel the following year. It was the second adult novel (i.e. not Dr. Seuss and the like) I ever read recreationally. (Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World was the first: I still have that very copy on my bookshelf.) War of the Worlds began a lifelong enjoyment of literary scifi. The Massacre of Mankind does nothing to undermine that enjoyment. In this affectionate homage to HG Wells’ book, Baxter has (as usual) written a solid action tale and sprinkled it with human drama.

Promise Me by Harlan Coben

Coben is an excellent mystery writer (and NJ native) whose appeal is only slightly enhanced for me by commonly being set in locations I frequent. This novel is a case of “No good deed goes unpunished.” At a party Myron overhears a friend’s teen daughter talk about getting a ride from a drunk friend. He tells her that if she is ever in that situation and doesn’t want to call her parents she should call him. He promises he will pick her up no questions asked. At 2 a.m. one night he gets such a call. He picks up the young lady in Manhattan and takes her to her “friend’s” house in Ridgewood NJ as she asks him to do. She goes around back to the back door, reappears to wave him away because everything is OK and goes around back again. He drives off. The next day the girl is missing. The owners of the house never heard of her. Guess who is the prime suspect in her disappearance?

We’ve all made promises we had cause to regret. It is sometimes hard to know if it is more honorable to keep them or break them in certain circumstances. If you are even asking the question, it is wiser to break them, but wiser is not the same thing as more honorable. Myron proves more resourceful in his bleak situation than most of us would be.

Still More

There have been other books in the past few weeks and there will be time for more in the next few, but five are enough to mention for now. Perhaps one or more will get a mention on this site next week – but no promises.

A tune for waiting out the quarantine – Cold Blood (Lydia Pense vocals):

I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free (1969)