Review: The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke

I’m not dead you know. Just working minimum wage, full time. I’m one of those now, the 99% (of employed people doing a job they don’t particularly like) until I find another teaching job. Whilst my energies are drained for little reward I have shied away from putting pen to paper on any more short stories of my own, (though I intend to return to writing up the ideas I’ve collected after I move into a new flat in the next few weeks) I have been steadily feeding my hunger for classic science fiction. Not your ‘Sci-Fi/Fantasy’ genre fiction, but far out speculative science based fiction writing… your Arthur C Clarkes of the world. The first review of 2012 then is the second Arthur C Clarke novel that I have read in recent weeks (I’m flying through them they are so readable) and the seventh piece of extended fiction from his extensive catalogue – The City and the Stars.

Hats off first of all to the cover art on the SF Masterworks release of this work. The other worldly green glow and futuristic cityscape gives an exotic appeal and completely masks the surprising premise of the book: That this ‘otherworld’ is in fact Earth, an all but abandoned Earth millions of years in the future where the last remnants of humanity cling on with an eternal fear, no phobia, of the outside world, outside universe. In a sense, The City and the Stars is both a narrative of the end of human endeavour and its rebirth.

What an incredibly well read and intelligent man Arthur C Clarke must have been, and so much I regret not coming to his works earlier. This story does what the best scifi always does – it tackles epic themes of our place in the universe, human nature, faith, control, free will, and even such minutiae as how people may ‘furnish’ their homes in the future. He forsees, writing in 1956, virtual reality and the use of avatars being the principal means of socialising and exploring, something that feels quite remarkable in a modern world of Wii Mii’s, World of Warcrafts, Second Lifes etc. He even tackles one of the thorniest issues of any speculative writing about ‘immortality’ – he has the male race genetically altered by scientists to no longer reproduce the traditional way. Sex becomes purely recreational and the unexpected effects of this are thought provoking and gently explored in the social interactions between the principal characters. The family unit no longer serves any meaningful function when people come into the world physically as adults and ‘check out’ when they choose, not when their biological ticker gives out. It is a work of astonishing vision and still readily accessible unlike some contemporary science fiction which appears to me to be written in an ancient tongue long since forgotten.

Arthur C Clarke does what a lot of popular advise for writers today warns against – it tells the audience things at times, rather than ‘showing’, though it certainly does that also. However it does not feel a cheap way of world building and lends it a kind of academic quality. He writes so confidently and so clearly that you accept his vision. However the real strength of his writing I found was in the way certain passages would make me just stop, re-read the last few paragraphs and reflect, daydreaming at work on the possibilities of it all. One thing i have noticed from having read Rendezvous with Rama and The City and the Stars is that his writing, whilst complete in its telling of a particular story and satisfying in itself… feels like a mere slice in time. As if you were reading a brief moment in the lives of these characters and that they really continue after you reach the back page. He builds living worlds in his books and that persistence of characters, even after the completion of the story is a great compliment.

What happens next? What happened before?

On the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens birth, I ask of the sadly departed Arthur C Clarke…

Please Sir, Can I have some more?

Highly recommended for lovers of science fiction.

 

In Defense of Extinction

Imagine taking this for a walk before work...

It has come to my attention that certain groups in society are intent on preventing any of the worlds fauna or flora from passing into their rightful place in history alongside the dinosaurs and the dodo. They even rush to preserve long exhausted ideas and outmoded building styles.

Let us examine this for one moment. Who in their right mind would argue it would be a good thing if T-Rex had survived to the present day? Can you imagine the tailbacks on country roads due to Tyrannosaurs crossing? The insurance costs for keeping one as a pet (and some enterprising American would no doubt swap his Lion for a velociraptor) would be enormous. Let’s not forget the environmental impact of history’s most famous carnivore. That’s a lot of cows they would need feeding and we all know about the impact cows have with the gases they produce. At least I hope we do if we’re going to have an informed debate. When you think about it, if Mr T-Rex and his cousins hadn’t gone extinct, then the human race may not be here today. After all, it took us millions of years to work out how to create fire and use tools, we would have stood no chance in the Jurassic food chain.

What business of ours is it if some Tasmanian devil or great white shark goes extinct? How great is that shark if it cannot ensure its own survival? I know your going to say its our moral responsibility to protect the nature around us.

I say that’s nonsense. Never before, to our knowledge has a species actively tried to engineer the natural world on a biological level. Beavers build dams, but you don’t see cats sponsoring field mouse breeding programs. Or seagulls rationing their fishing to certain waters and manageable quotas. They just get on with their lives and do their best to adapt and those that cannot do that go extinct. That is Darwin’s theory of evolution. Natural competition.

You say cats don’t drill the oil from the land, don’t bury nuclear waste beneath areas of natural beauty or fell an entire rain forest. Just because they haven’t done that yet, does not mean they wouldn’t if they could.

The real reason people are opposed to extinction is quite selfish. We are trying to preserve the world as it is to ensure our own survival. The evolutionary process be damned. Things work as they are so lets keep it as it is.

I ask you… how moral is that? Just as people get to die with dignity, so should species that are not cut out for this ever-changing world. Even humans should have the threat of extinction hovering over us. It is the very threat that has generated millions of years of innovation. What right do we have to interfere with the natural order of things?

Besides…

If you’re so worried about saving things from extinction, you may as well start with, well… extinction.

 

Book Review: Heaven’s Shadow by David S Goyer, Michael Cassutt

And so ends my summer of happy reading. What began with a Three for Two offer at a Doncaster Waterstones and took in books like The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman and Glen David Gold’s debut novel Carter Beats the Devil reaches its conclusion with a book that Guillermo Del Toro tells us on the sleeve to be a “Pulse-Pounding Tale” – Heavens Shadow by the writer of the Dark Knight (David S Goyer) and the Twilight Zone (Michael Cassutt). I’ll start with a disclaimer. As a teenager I read dozens and dozens of books from series like Sharpe and other historical fiction sagas. By my old age of 25, I’m pretty burnt out on on going books. I’ve discovered a passion for reading self contained novels that contain all the information I ever need to know between its two covers and leave no questions unanswered at its conclusion. If I had realised in the shop that Heavens Shadow was the first of a series of books from the Bat Zone team, I would not have bought it – regardless of how sumptuous the cover looked.

Lets be grateful for lazy book buying eh? Not doing my research meant I picked up a book that I read cover to cover in 7 days and was left panting for more. Before I go into the detail let me just give an overview of the book.

Set in the next decade, this science fiction tale feels immediately familiar in all its references to technology and procedures and tracks two competing international teams of astronauts (respectively called cosmonauts in Russian, and vyomanaut for India) as they race to be the first humans to touch down on a Near Earth Object. Not the moon, though that had been what everybody had trained for, but what appears to be a rogue meteorite approaching Earth from below the south pole. It’s going to miss, so no panic, but it does provide a unique opportunity for national pride and demonstration of technical feats. So off they go, only to find on their final approach massive volcanic activity on the meteorite causing it to tumble into orbit around the earth. Analysis by the brains in Houston and India confirm the unbelievable truth – those eruptions were not so much volcanic in nature as similar to thruster’s on a space ship. In other words, the NEO suddenly becomes a UFO with two unprepared crews landing on its surface unsure what to expect.

For what is clearly going to be an epic piece of science fiction writing by the authors, Heavens Shadow manages to accomplish the feat of building a near future world that seems very familiar. For anybody who keeps well read on science and space, almost everything referenced in this book has been talked about in journals and the media. It takes it from Science Fiction to Science Possible, which is the first step on the road to greatness for a Sci-Fi story in my opinion. It has been plotted to such an incredible detail that not one of its 400 beautifully laid out pages seems wasted. In fact the whole book feels like a prologue to the main event. ordinarily that would be a criticism, but the tension, wonder and sheer fantasy that is ratcheted up page by page leave you hoping the book doesn’t end. I am glad there will be a sequel! So many questions are open at the end of this book that thrill rather than frustrate, amongst which I wonder just how big are the writers thinking? Its a story that could span generations of characters.

Cassutt and Goyer do a sublime job of re-stoking the cold war space paranoia introducing the new players in the space race – Brazil, India, Europe, and preserving gratuitous displays of pig-headedness from American bureaucrats. The story lurches from petty politics, to the brink of galactic warfare between our old Super Powers, before throwing everybody in to the same mess together. From nuclear detonations, to the living dead, crash landings, extremely dangerous aliens, and the enforced conscription of thousands of humans into a conflict, a war, that we cannot begin to comprehend… its a story with all the big ideas and concepts. Its about how we treat each other, how we treat the memory of our loved ones and how we should face the wonders out in the universe which no matter how clever we think we are will always surprise us.

Heavens Shadow is published by an imprint of Macmillan in the UK but copyright is owned by Phantom Four Films and St. Croix Productions. This is no surprise. The clean way it is written and set out screams for a television adaptation. Cover to cover this could be an entire television season in one book. I look forward to seeing if anything develops and also waiting for its sequel Heavens War.

Shame I have to go back to reading textbooks for the courses I’m teaching. What a fun summers reading.

P.S. I’ve subsequently done some digging and the Heaven trilogy of books has been picked up by Warner Bros. to make into films. Bit of a disappointment as the number of cliff hangers and surprises in the book I thought would have made it great fodder for TV.

 

Book Review: Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold

Today’s review is the second of three books I purchased on my last trip around the UK for a series of job interviews. At the start of the summer I purchased ‘The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ’ by Philip Pullman, Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold and ‘Heavens Shadow’ by David S Goyer (he of  The Dark Knight) and Michael Cassutt (he of The Twilight Zone), from a Waterstones in Doncaster. It was unusual enough of me to be purchasing paperbacks since I buy most of my books on my lovely Kindle, but all the more unusual to buy from a Waterstones,  a company in recent years which gives bad names to brick and mortar book stores. They also treated my fiancée terribly when she worked for them. However I digress, this was a taint free branch store and I have to say, two books into my Three for Two deal, I am delighted with my purchases. Religion, Magic, hard Sci-Fi. I had quite the eclectic choice that day.

Carter Beats the Devil is the first novel from Glen David Gold who reveals a debt of gratitude to the UC Irvine Creative Writing Program as “the greatest learning experience of my life” It took him five years to write this book and vast quantities of his student loan to buy biographies and memoirs of magicians and other pieces of research. If you had doubts about the usefulness of creative writing programs or writing circles this should underline how valuable they are – with the right mentor, with the right class of fellow students reading and peer-critiquing, and suitable inspiration it can have incredible results – with a bit of luck. Glen David Golds debut here earns every one of its cover quotes; Addictive (Guardian), Electrifying (Independent), Magnificent (Charles Pallister), Magical (Independent on Sunday, yes I groaned at the pun pre-reading), Extraordinary (Daily Telegraph). It is all of them, and more than everything earns that description of magical. The writing is as magical as the characters and events described.

Charles Carter (‘the Great’ as he is proclaimed by Houdini in the novel) is a thoroughly likeable chap who finds tricks and illusions more readily understandable than the magic of stocks and bonds that his father and brother practice. This love affair with music sees him skip college, travel the world as a bit part ‘Kard and Koin’ man on a vaudeville show and eventually graduate to headline act before the real drama even gets going featuring cannons, murder, Presidential assassinations (x2), fallen women, blind persons dogs, Lions that roar on command, vanishing elephants, pirates, prohibition and discoveries that could change the course of the world (fought over by Radio executives on one side seeing money, Military men on the other seeing conquest, and Charles Carter seeing a neat trick). The book is fiction, inspired by real life, and it does what all great fiction and magic does – it disguises the point where reality ends and illusion begins. I’m not ashamed to say I kept googling events!

The author evokes a time of wonder and change transitioning from a period when travelling fairs were still largely animal fairs (slowly becoming rides and skill stalls) to the arrival of radio and dawn of television which the book takes as one of its three main plots. This sees the plots get so wrapped up and convoluted that you would doubt a magician could escape let alone the author but this is one trick Glen David Gold does with aplomb and he had me wanting to applaud aloud at his final chapters.

For a book to truly resonate with me it has to have a point – it has to say something meaningful by its final page and one line, a few paragraphs from conclusion did just this for me;

“There were never moments in your life when you actually saw something end, for whether you knew it or not something else was always flowering. Never a disappearance, always a transformation.”

Any person who reflects back on their life will see the truth in these words. I find myself in my own time of flux going from the end of studies into a life of work teaching but must acknowledge its not as clear as that as I began cover teaching whilst still training, and had stories published whilst doing both. So no part of my life had a hard end and abrupt beginning (besides my birth). You can apply that passage to good writing – character development should be a transformation over the passage of many pages not a sudden change. Look at the chronologically earliest chapter of this book and you find a boy completely different to the almost heroic, world worn magician at the end.

In closing I highly recommend this debut novel – many a night I’ve been nudged by a grumpy sleepy partner wanting me to turn out the light after I’d become engrossed in reading for hours – and will myself be looking to pick up Glen David Golds second novel Sunnyside featuring 800 Charlie Chaplin’s. A sample chapter is in the back of the edition of Carter Beats the Devil that I read.

Read this book and pass it on. Take Carter The Great – Everywhere! (cookie to the person who explains that reference).

P.S. Rumor has it that Johnny Depp is being courted to play the film version. This I would absolutely love.

 

Review: ‘The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ’ by Philip Pullman

Philip Pullman is as known for his excellent writing as much as for his raging against the Church and other religious organisations. His Dark Materials is essentially a story of a war between free thought and belief and corrupted doctrine. It is a particularly controversial topic for a Young Adult book, but superbly delivered and dressed up in fantastic characters. I was involved with a production of the stage play His Dark Materials by a youth theatre group in York a couple of years ago and heartily recommend it as a thought provoking entertaining read.

Given Pullmans record then, when you come across a book in the store titled ‘The Good man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ’ the tabloid sensationalist in me bounced excitedly that here must be a quite visceral assault on the Church and Christianity as a whole. My fiancee couldn’t believe their was a book with such a title, but there it was and on purchasing it in a store in Reading I immediately went into a field and read the entire book in a few hours.

The Good Man… is Pullmans reimagining of the story of Jesus – a man no sensible person denies actually existed as the historical record is quite strong on this – but introduces a twist right from the start; Jesus has a twin called ‘Christ’. At this point I have visions of the author in one of those Spanish Inquisition torture devices. However here is the second major surprise; this retelling of Jesus’ life is quite favourable. Except for a few occasions there are no cheap shots by Pullman, no denigrating of the image of Jesus and in fact I found the Jesus of this book a much more appealing and accessible person. You get a feeling that Pullman respects the man, respects the ideas he preaches, and the real axe grinder comes with the character of Christ who Archbishop Rowan Williams correctly identifies as filling the role of Judas who is missing from the narratives band of followers. Christ represents the perverted ‘truth’ that history and the Church has handed down.

Christ tries repeatedly to convince his brother Jesus of the need for a church to organise and create a representation of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Jesus doesn’t buy it though, and in fact consistently tries to limit his notoriety instructing people he performs miracles on not to tell anybody. Of course they go and tell everybody. Christ retreats into the role of an observer, encouraged by a mysterious stranger to record Jesus life not in how it happened but in the ‘eternal truth’ of his actions. Christ, longing for the same kind of appreciation as his brother, is told by the stranger that he has a role to play to secure the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven.

The book for me was a fascinating discussion of interpretations of stories such as Mary’s visit by an ‘Angel’, a faked resurrection and a collapse in Jesus’ personal faith when praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. Rowan Williams finds this passage as a weakness in the text, coming as it does apparently from nowhere, but for myself as someone who has suffered from anxiety and depression I see it as representing a clear breakdown. Jesus has achieved much, but in this story is himself a believer in millenarianism  – that the end of days is imminent, and every day nothing happens weighs heavier on Jesus who begins to feel that he is misleading people into very dangerous actions in what was a violent society. It makes logical sense to me that Jesus the good man would have such a very human response to his disappointments, and Christ in his desire to make the truth of Jesus speak through time would naturally eradicate this or play it down in the recorded text. The fact that the passage exists in this book is a bit of an inconsistency since we are supposed to be reading the words Christ wrote from eye witness accounts and Jesus was alone during his prayer in Gethsemane. Pullman I guess had a point he wanted to make and made it, though i’m sure there could have been a better way of constructing that scene to make it fit with the overal text.

I view religion as being a forum for discussing the human condition. In that context, for both practicing Christians, people of other faiths and the secular I feel Philip Pullmans work is an excellent offering to the discussion. As a confirmed agnostic, I find the story told by Pullman inspiring and heart breaking. The good that man can do, and the evil it can do in the name of good deeds. On the back and inside of the book are printed the words ‘THIS IS A STORY’. It has a double meaning I think. On the one hand he’s reminding people that his is a work of fiction, but it may just also be a shot across the bows of the original text.

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is in the Kindle store and as such a sample is available to read for free before purchasing.