"One Second After" William R. Forstchen

U.S. Army Colonel John Matherson is offered a general's star if he will accept assignment to a NATO post in Europe. But his wife Mary is ill with cancer, and he declines the commission, moving instead with her and their two daughters to her Christian-college hometown in the back woods of North Carolina. There he accepts a teaching position and adapts to a life very different from that of his Newark, NJ childhood. Then, one fine spring day, not only do the lights go out, but cellphones and car transmissions die and electronic devices of all kinds cease to function.

William R Forstchen's One Second After is a post-apocalyptic tale in the tradition of Lucifer's Hammer and Alas, Babylon. It tells the gripping story of survival in America after an EMP attack cripples the US. A threat known since the sixties, an Electromagnetic Pulse attack can be made using as little as just one small nuclear device set off high above the atmosphere. The high-voltage flux thus generated will fry any non-hardened electronics within the line of sight. The damage would be virtually complete and all but irreversible. In the first minute alone more than half a million people would die as their planes fell paralyzed from the sky. They, as the cliché goes, would be the lucky ones.

The story is fluidly written, and the plot grips you. The work is both realistic in its portrayal of how people react to disaster and romantic in portraying heroic people who identify their values and then struggle to maintain them. I finished this book in two eager late-bedtime readings. My throat tightened with emotion a few times. The book does have a few minor drawbacks, there is too much exposition as opposed to dramatization. Forstchen often relates the story after the fact rather than describing it in real time. And the repeated use of the expression "should of" instead of "should've" which was meant to convey local dialect seems more like a spelling error than a colorful regionalism. But if a story like this one chokes you up and you find it hard to put the book down, then it's a good read. And if it makes readers think about a serious threat to the civilized world, all the better.

While it does stand alone as a story, it's obvious that the author has a point to make. Hostile reviewers complain far too loudly that this is not a work of great literature. But Forstchen's goal was not to present a work of despair or self-recrimination acceptable to the aesthetic tastes of the political left. Frankly, I expect Forstchen would forgo the Pulitzer and the Nobel Prize for Literature if he could make the issue of preventing an EMP attack just one tenth as fashionable as was dealing with Y2K in its day. Forstchen has given us two good reasons to read this book, the warning message it implies and the story itself. Warner Brothers has optioned the movie rights. There is a Wikipedia article, and the book has an official website, onesecondafter.com, with links to congressional documents, as well as scientific information and information about the author and the real-life setting for his novel. You can also see the author speak on on YouTube and listen to an hour-long interview at BookTV, which I strongly recommend. And I recommend this book without reservation.

Greg Bear "The Forge of God"

President Crockerman asked, "Do you believe in God?" Without a moment's hesitation, the Alien replied "We believe in Punishment."

Greg Bear, born in 1951, is a Hugo and Nebula award winning author of some three dozen novels and short story collections. A writer of hard science fiction, he often focuses on biology, especially diseases and microbiology. His Nebula winning Darwin's Radio and its sequel Darwin's Children explore political repression, retroviruses and speciation. Vitals deals with bacteria as communal organisms, as well as devling entertainingly into conspiracy theories. (You will never guess who the KGB has kept alive in a fishtank in the middle of modern Manhattan.) His Hugo winning Blood Music (expanded from a Nebula Winning novella) portrays an apocalyptic transformation of the nature of the self brought on by the escape of genetically enhanced human blood cells down a bathtub drain.

One of his best reviewed books, The Forge of God, deals not with microbiology, but with the Fermi Paradox. If the galaxy is full of alien life, then why aren't they here yet? Why have aliens not yet visited the earth? The answer quickly becomes evident. First, the Jovian moon Europa disappears. Then mountains appear overnight where there was none before in Australia and in Death Valley. Robots promising a golden age emerge from the Australian mountain. In America an enigmatic alien is found near death, apologizing for bearing bad news, and telling the president its simple punitive theology.


Bear is not only a great story teller, he is an artist of literary caliber. His works feature complex interwoven plots with twists that surprise the reader yet fit seamlessly together without resorting to the arbitrary deus ex machina. His characters are well developed, strongly individuated. In Forge of God, the president, a likeable man, is driven to the edge of insanity by the revelation that the world will soon end. His response is religious in form, but Bear does not portray him as some mindless religious stereotype, and, in a touch of sophistication, the populist preacher that Crockerman summons to advise him in fact doubts the appropriateness of a religious response to the physical threat and turns to the president's science advisors to admit that he is out of his league and that the Presdient could perhaps use some more conventional strategic advice.

Whether likening squiggles of toothpaste to little blue tadpoles in the sink or graphically comparing the City of Los Angeles, its citizens transformed into blobs of jelly and sentient fungal growths by a plague, to a vision from a Max Ernst painting, Bear uses vivid concrete images that often approach the poetic in their evocativeness. One can form a detailed mental image of his characters' physical traits and their bearing and gestures. Conflict is well motivated, antagonists act not just out of opposition, but because of an alternate, if mistaken view of the good. Psychology is made apparent through telling thoughts and dialog. Yet facts not known to the characters are not revealed to the reader until they become clear to the protagonists. This maintains a sense of realism and especially of suspense. Is the dying alien in league with the supposed robot benefactors? Is the earth truly at risk? The aliens provoke paranoia in some and disbelief in others. What, we ask, are the plots within the plots?

If you have not read Bear, you can think of him as combining the fast-paced plots of Larry Niven and his knack for contemporary social commentary with the analytic depth and literary quality of Frank Herbert. While I have not been able to get into his The Way, Queen of Angels, or Songs of Earth and Power series, I have thorougly enjoyed all the books of his which I have read past the first few dozen pages. The apocalptic Forge of God, with its epic and very differrent but highly complimentary sequel, Anvil of Stars, is a good place to start.



Read the excellent article on Bear at Wikipedia. Check out his official website. And pick up one of his books, today. The painting above, Into The Forge of God, by Alan Gutierrez depicts the launch of a NASA probe into Jupiters atmosphere and was used on the cover of Bear's novel.

Richard Adams "Watership Down"

Frank Herbert's Dune was rejected by almost twenty publishers. Made into two movies, it is now the best selling science-fiction book of all time. Ayn Rand's Fountainhead was rejected by twelve publishers, and has been made into a movie, sold millions of copies, and was voted second-favorite novel of the 20th Century in Modern Library's reader's poll. Richard Adams' Watership Down was rejected by 13 publishers. It has been adapted for film and television. It is 79th on the Modern Library poll. It has sold more copies than any other novel under the Penguin Books label.

Watership Down is the epic adventure story of Fiver, Bigwig and Hazel, three rabbits whose warren is destroyed and who must brave the threats of men, predators, and a band of rabbits run as a military dictatorship in order to build a home in peace and freedom. A critical success, the novel has been likened to Tolkien's work for its complex back-story including a mythology and an invented language. It has been likened to Homer's Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid for its plot and epic scope. It is the story of the triumph of bravery and cooperation over submission and force.

While the subject might seem juvenile, the story is written at an adult level and will appeal to all who like a well-plotted adventure with a positive theme and a happy ending. This is one book that no parent will begrudge reading his children.

The 1978 movie adaption is quite faithful to the book. It should, of course, be enjoyed after you have read the novel. It is also available in full on YouTube, here:

James Blish, "A Case of Conscience"

Mankind has made first contact and among the four researchers sent to investigate the garden-world Lithia and its reptilian inhabitants is Father Ramon Ruiz-sanchez, SJ. The Jesuit botanist and doctor is the only member of the research team to oppose opening the world up for human intercourse. The Lithians, he suspects, may be too good to be true. Indeed, with their peaceful and proseprous society, more advanced in many ways than man, and in their total lack of any idea of faith or the divine, they imply that a sentient species can live the good life without religious revelation. These "unfallen" beings are not angels. Indeed, he fears, they may be a creation of the Devil, meant to tempt man into abandoning religion in light of their enlightened example.

But this belief is heresy. Only God has the power of creation. The Devil merely perverts. If these beings are good, they cannot be a creation of the Devil. Yet why would God create them perfect without religion, while making man imperfect in His image?

Father Ruiz-Sanchez returns to Earth with a precious and frightening cargo, the unhatched egg of a Lithian. Blessed with a genetic memory, his passenger will hatch and mature without Lithian care. But what will happen to an alien raised among men?

The result is horrific; a brilliant, cynical, conscience-less creature who wreaks havoc on human society, manipulating men like a demonic puppet-master plying his craft. His presence on Earth provokes riots and incites murder. Meanwhile, it appears that Lithia is largely made up of weapons-grade lithium, an unimaginable source of thermonuclear munitions. And now the human-raised Lithian has outsmarted his hosts and is on his way back to Lithia, perhaps to cause a fall from grace among his kin akin to the kind that the serpent brought Adam in Eden.

This vivid, imaginative, fast paced, and often poetic work is a book of ideas. The characters are three-dimensional and the situations are quite topical in a timeless way certainly still valid fifty years after it brought its author a Hugo Award for best novel. If you haven't read Blish start here.

The painting is "Lilith" by John Collier.

Frank Herbert "The Santaroga Barrier"

Why do people born in the peaceful California wine valley of Santaroga seldom leave, and always return? Why do passers through rarely stop, and visitors never stay? Why do outside business interests find it impossible to establish a beach head? What makes Santaroga's wine and cheese from the Jaspers Co Op so special, yet immune to analysis? Why have the last two market researchers sent there died under mysterious circumstances? And why is the latest, Gilbert Dasein, the victim of three near fatal accidents within his first 24 hours in the valley?

The Sanataroga Barrier is science fiction, witty social commentary and detective novel all rolled up in one. For those who only know Herbert from his Dune books, this, and his recently reprinted White Plague, show that the master was no one-trick pony. This book involves ideas that touch upon corporatism and cult dynamics, but it is not a novel written merely as an excuse for exploring such ideas. Rather, it is simply an incredibly good story, with all the intricate and multilevel subtleties and wordplay that you would expect from the author of Dune, yet set in a little California wine-town.For example, the hero's name, Dasein, is German for "existence" or "presence" (literally "there-being") used famously by Martin Heidegger in his Being and Time. According to Wikipedia:

For Karl Jaspers, the term "Dasein" meant existence in its most minimal sense, the realm of objectivity and science, in opposition to what Jaspers called "Existenz", the realm of authentic being.

So long as Dasein is an "objective" outsider, his being will lack authenticity in the Santarogan sense. Remarkably the townfolk discuss philosophy and psychology over breakfast in the way that one would expect the residents of a farming town to ruminate about crop prices and the recdent drought. The local paper reads like an in house think tank newsltetter.

This town and this book are not what they seem at first. Herbert integrates, extrapolate and speculate in ways to which no other science fiction writer can compare, and his non-Dune books have been far too long neglected. This is one of the best. Sit down with a nice glass of beer and a plate of cheese and dig in. And don't ruin the suspense by reading any spoilers!

"The Mists of Avalon" Marion Zimmer Bradley

It is a time of change in Britain. Immigrants bringing their foreign ways expect women to surrender the power they have held in the Isle, to resign from politics, to adopt to the newcomers' standards of modesty, to submit to the religious rule of men and their Middle Eastern religion of peace. The time is the fifth century, and the invaders are Christians and Anglo-Saxons who will ally to dominate the matriarchal Pagan and Celtic society of ancient Britain. The story is the Mists of Avalon, an epic Arthurian novel of love and war, spanning three generations of British women, told from the viewpoint of Arthur's sister Morgaine (Morgan la Fey) and the women of Avalon and Camelot.

Published in 1983, this well-reviewed novel, the product of years of research by award-winning author Marion Zimmer Bradley, was a best seller for four months in hard cover and over four years in its paper back release. While the novel is set in a world of fantasy, its magic plays a tertiary role, behind that of the women whose lives it realistically portrays and the men who play a supporting role in its lovingly crafted plot.

Morgaine is a tragic heroine, struggling against enemies, convention, and even family and friends to maintain her rights and champion the freedom of the people from priestly suppression of their long-cherished way of life. Morgaine, a priestess of Avalon, finds that the power she assumes from her religious role comes at a heavy personal cost. Bradley fleshes out Morgaine as a full person, with loves and losses, triumphs and painful compromises, a hero with whom we sympathize and for whom we root as she battles for her cult, her family, for Britain, and for herself.

Bradley spent years researching the Arthurian legends and the Druidic and Early Christian religion of the Isles. Much is speculation. But the book is one of the most real works of fiction you will ever read. The story is one of people and their values set in a time which happens now to be mythical. Magic plays the most minor of roles. Suspension of disbelief will not trouble the most hard-boiled reader. Neither is this romance, which has been called a feminist tract by some, a "woman's" book. It is a full-fleshed work of high literature, comparable in scope, conflict, characterization and fullness of theme to Ayn Rand's Fountainhead or Victor Hugo's Les Miserables.

There is a made-for-television adaptation of this novel. While I have heard it highly praised, I found it an unwatchable farce compared to the original. The book is one of my top ten favorites, and is recommended without reservation.

Niven, Pournelle, "The Mote in God's Eye"

Published in 1974, this "hard-science" sc-fi novel is one of the best reviewed alien "first contact" stories of all time. A millennium from now, mankind has settled the nearby galaxy, and established an empire. That empire has fallen, and is being re-united. Man has warp drive, but in all mankind's exploration, no other sapient life form has been found. Until now. Captain Roderick Blaine has just pacified the planet New Chicago in the Trans-Coalsack sector. Fresh from victory, Blaine is assigned to head an expedition to the Murcheson's Eye binary star system, whence an alien probe had been launched at sub-light speed before its unfortunate destruction as it entered human space.

Mote in God's Eye works quite well as a drama. It has what might be seen as stock characters, the autocratic Russian Admiral Kutuzov, a militarist and xenophobe who has destroyed worlds before, the Arab Trader Horace Bury, corrupt as only a Levantine could be. Yet the characters are well fleshed out, and an ingenious and well-researched plot, not formulas and stereotypes drives the story.

The aliens of the Mote are presented fully fleshed out as well. Trapped in their system for millions of years, the Moties are in many ways far beyond human development. Yet they suffer a strange handicap, one which threatens to destroy them, or humanity. Blaine must discover the nature of this handicap, and find a way from allowing the threat it presents to escape into the wider universe, where men like Horace Bury might sell out humanity, while preventing Kutuzov from annihilating the Moties altogether

The authors put much thought into the biology, psychology, history, linguistics and personal motivations of the aliens. They do not come across as humans in costumes, as many aliens in other lesser stories do. In being identifiably different from humans, they serve to illustrate human nature in the contrasts they afford.

This book is an excellent science fiction novel for those who value sci-fi, and for those who do not particularly enjoy it. It features starships and gunfights, but more importantly it showcases ideas and interesting characters. This title is recommended without reservation.

The Tripods

The Tripods is another childhood favorite of mine. Writing as John Christopher, Samuel Youd authored three novels in the 1960's, The White Mountains, The City of Gold and Lead, and The Pool of Fire. A pre-quel, When the Tripods Came, was written in 1988.

In the late 20th Century an alien civilization invades and conquers the earth. Breathing a poisonous atmosphere, the aliens (the Skloodzi) are confined to the mechanical tripods which most of humanity believes to be the aliens themselves. Humans are controlled by capping, the implantation of a control chip in the skull at age 16 which removes curiousity and initiative.

Will and Henry, residents of a small British town decide to flee their home when they witness their older friend siezed and capped by a tripod, losing all interest in the world at large, happy to stay and chop wood in his mediaeval setting. They are befriended by a so-called vagrant, "Ozymandias," who is not, like others, a victim of a failed capping, but a wanderer with a false cap who uses his vagrant status as camouflage in his quest to recruit young men for the resistance, based in the French Alps.

Will and Henry voyage to France, where they meet a tall "inventor" named Jean Paul who has managed to remain uncapped at age 17. Together the boys travel to the Alps to join the fight to overthrow humanity's alien masters.

The books are juvenile, but quite good for children. The story adopts the common conceit of children fighting an adult world controlled by some secret or alien force. Baffled by the world of adults who seem to come to an accomodation with some unspeakable evil - or just some bland gray mediocrity - this plot device appeals to the young and embarrasses those who sell themselves out to the establishment.

The books were adapted into a miniseries by the BBC and the Seven Network of Australia. While an adaptation of all three books was written and budgeted, The series was cancelled by the new BBC head who, according to Wikipedia, was opposed to science fiction programs. The two extant seasons have a cult following. The show can bee seen in twenty five half-hour episodes here on YouTube. The filmed episodes actually tell a better story than one finds in the books, with an expanded tale and love interests for the heroes. With the current market in DVD releases of old telvision series, one might argue that the BBC shortsightedly capped itself in refusing to film the entire series until its heroic climax.

Here is Episode One, Part One:

Frank Herbert "The White Plague"

In the near future, a mild-mannered geneticist sees his family murdered by religious terrorists in cold blood. Deciding to take revenge on the parties involved, he begins working in a basement. But his weapon has unintended consequences... Hard science, strong characterization, poetic language, this is one of my top 10 books. Many people only know Herbert from his Dune books, and if you've only seen the movies, he's been very poorly adapted. All of Herbert's books are brilliant, he has the most multi-layered backstory and widest range of real-world knowledge of any Hard SF writer I know. The White Plague has Yeatsian lyricism and antiseptic Orwellian style. The plot line should give you nightmares, because it could already be under way in Lebanon, in London, in Pakistan, in Iraq, in Albuquerque. The picture is from www.arrakis.co.uk Here is the Amazon listing. The book had been long out of print, which, given its timeliness, speaks volumes about the publishing industry. It has been re-released in an oversized paperback edition. You can find it at your local used book store, or for cheaper than bottled water at abebooks.com.

Colin Wilson "The Mind Parasites"

Although I cannot recommend it without reservation, I did thoroughly enjoy Colin Wilson's The Mind Parasites. Wilson is a cogent and engaging writer. The story begins as an archaeologist exploring a dig in Turkey hears from a psychologist who warns him that mankind is under attack, and then dies mysteriously. The hero continues his dig in Anatolia where he finds, to his utter amazement, evidence of ancient cyclopean buildings buried two miles below ground. And the parallels to H. P. Lovecraft are eerie. When our hero begins to undergo certain bizarre experiences, he determines to investigate the writings of his dead psychologist friend, only to find that the assaults of the paparazzi will be the least of his worries.

The book is flawed. The ending suffers from the author's use of deus ex machina. The nature of the mind parasites makes me recall the teachings of Scientology. I wonder what influence this work might have had on Hubbard? I cannot say more without revealing too much. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the work and finished it in two days.

Wilson is a good writer but a man with a mystic streak. He is seen as a crank by the literary establishment. His writings are a lesson in the primacy of consciousness. He has written Sci-Fi, True-Crime, books on existentialism and mysticism. His The Outsider, an analysis of the misunderstood individual, was his claim to fame. He has also written an acclaimed Criminal History of Mankind. In effect, he raises a question which will be of interest to any fan of Rand's. But his positive answers will be quite unacceptable.

I would rate the title four stars out of five.

Robert Heinlein "Starship Troopers" 1997

After world anarchy, order is restored by a government along the lines of the Roman Republic, or perhaps a better analogy would be modern Israel. Those who serve in the military earn "citizenship" and can vote. The rest who reside in this republic are perfectly free to bitch all they like. Then alien contact is made, and the aliens are not all that warm and fuzzy. Sex, politics, pacifism, war, ESP, personal growth and responsibility, Heinlein addresses it all. The book is a perennial favorite. Released uncut in 1987 it is reviewed here at Amazon. The movie version, criticized very unfairly upon its release for being "tits and fascism," was quite good, but disappointed some fans for leaving out much from the book. The spirit of the book adapted well to the movie. The movie is directed by Paul Verhoeven of Basic instict and Total Recall. It stars Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards, Michael Ironside and Neil Patrick Harris.

Michael Crichton "State of Fear"

A series of deaths is traced to the toxin of the blue-ringed-octopus.

An MIT prodigy goes on an unexplained hiatus.

A playboy businessman donates $250,000 to an environmental fund, the check is deposited to buy war weapons.

A crew shows up to film hundreds of children drown in a flash flood, 30 minutes before rain begins to fall.

A cranky old professor interrupts a conference on the coming abrupt climate change disaster, calling the speakers "eco-pimps."

A movie star and "friend of the environment" learns the truth about cannibals.

The playboy is named NERF's "concerned citizen of the year," and after he turns down the environmentalism award, his Ferrari runs off the California highway.

State of Fear is 600pp of mystery, footnotes, beautiful women, fast-paced action, and parties where socialites who mouth ecochondriac slogans throw fits when their host asks them to explain exactly what they mean by what they say.

I give this book an unqualified positive recommendation.

"The Morphodite" by M. A. Foster

Luto Pternam's Mask Factory manufactures shock troops and assassins to maintain the static totalitarian society of Lisagor on the Planet Oerlikon. His latest "creation" is a conditioned assassin with two unique abilities. The morphodite can initiate Change, a biochemical process that leads to regeneration and sex change. And this morphodite has a symbolic societal calculus that allows it to identify the keystone member of a society, whose removal will instigate catastrophic change. Half believing in his creation, Pternam looses him on Lisagor society, thinking that the chaos he will cause will lead to personal advantage. The morphodite, kidnapped and brainwashed, does his calculations, identifies the keystone individual, and sets loose forces that lead to revolution.

This book is extremely well written. The society is quite plausible. Characters are well developed. The hero does the best he can in his situation, refusing to initiate further force once his situation allows for a semi-peaceful existence. The concentration on sociological themes and the care with linguistic realism is reminiscent of Frank Herbert. Simplistic ad hoc moral dilemmas are not employed, rather, the hero acts with regret when necessary, according to the logic of the situation. Justice, while often cold-blooded and delayed, is done in the end. The writing is often wry and the language is formal, but this lends an authentic atmosphere to the Byzantine culture, into which the author put a lot of thought. The hero could seek power or revenge, but in the end, refuses to "rule."

I first read this book at 13 when it was published. Foster wrote two more books, which I have not read. They are reviewed under this title on Amazon. I have reread most of the fiction I have enjoyed over the years many times. I am happy to add this title to the list of books worth such attention.

Dune 1984 (Extended Edition)

Starring: Kyle McLachlan, Francesca Annis, Jose Ferrer, Sian Phillips
Director: David Lynch

Dictators named Saddam and Vladimir, poisoning,assassination, suicide warriors and Jihad, a vital resource found only in dessert sands...sound familiar? But this is not from the headlines,but rather from Frank Herbert's classic novel Dune. Herbert was decades, if not milennia ahead of his time.

The 1984 release of the movie adaptation was long awaited, and a disappointment to many fans, suffering in many of the same ways that The Fountainhead did, as being too rich and too long a story for screen adaptation. Yet what did appear on screen in 1984 was faithful in large part to the spirit of the original novel.

Now an extended version, with some 40 minutes of footage cut from the original is available as an import or from NETFLIX in all DVD formats.

This release begins with some exposition done by charcoal storyboard, and there is narration which could have either been better done or omitted. But the added visuals and the cut-out plot elements will make this version a must-see for anyone who enjoyed the original.

The care that was put into designing the sets for the interior shots, done by H.R.Giger of Aliens fame, is wonderful. Much of this was lost from the original theatrical release. Likewise, the extra-widescreen version of this release makes the viewing experience much more enjoyable.

If you liked the first release with all its flaws, this is a must-see.

Umberto Eco "The Name of the Rose"

Upon rereading Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose I am struck by the obvious influence of Jorge Luis Borges on the work. When I first read the book in 1984 I was not aware of Borges, and had only just put down my first reading of Atlas Shrugged. The book itself is presented, in Borgesian manner, as a reconstructed text based upon a partial translation of a now lost and otherwise undocumented manuscript from the late Middle Ages. The plot concerns the investigation of a murder mystery set in a fictional monastery renowned for its unique library, the largest collection of books in Christian Europe, supposedly holding works of Aristotle lost to modernity. The characters are primarily scribes or other intellectuals. Yet, unlike much of Borges' esoteric works, this novel is not merely a curiosity, an intellectual insider's joke, but a true intellectual adventure story rewarding on many levels.

The hero, William of Baskerville, a Franciscan brother, is a champion of reason who has abandoned his position with the inquisition. He saw that institution not as a means of pursuing the truth, but as the use of force to compel confessions, which, even when they implicate guilty parties, are an affront to God's justice and his gift to man of the intellect. Brother William is a follower of Thomas Aquinas, a student of Roger Bacon, and a proponent of the scientific method, although he does not, of course, explicitly identify his investigations as such.

The story is told in retrospect by the Benedictine monk Adso of Melk. At the time of the story Adso was in his teens but he writes his tale as a dying man who promises to "tell the facts without interpretation" so that the signs he conveys will speak for themselves, allowing other wiser men in the future to draw their own interpretations. Adso is a mystic, and not an intellectual, but he admires William as a sincere instrument of justice, better than he.

The novel is steeped in the intricacies of pre-reformation Catholic theology; the debates among the great Scholastic thinkers such as Abelard, Occam, Duns Scotus and the other thinkers at the universities of Paris and Oxford, the details of monastic life, the methods of copying and illuminating texts, the herbal lore of the high mediaeval period, the particulars of numerology and its place even in architectural symbolism, and of course, as one would expect in the tradition of Borges, a great deal of irony, symbolism, abstruse academic references, and the ever present contrast between substance and form, essence and accident, genus and species, and exemplar and type. We hear Latin on most every page, verse and speech in Middle English, and contemporary German, French, Italian, Spanish and Provencal. One character, Salvatore, is so deformed that not only does he physically resemble a monster sewn together from the parts of different corpses, his speech is an almost unintelligible farrago of words from Latin and all the vernacular tongues which he has encountered. Listening to him can be as fascinating (or as disconcerting) as listening to a conversation on the NYC subway between a mixed family of a Puerto Rican and an Orthodox Russian Jew whose children go to public school - English, Spanish, Yiddish, Russian, Hebrew and Ebonics all in one sentence.



Adso himself religiously promises on the first page of his memoirs not to relay "mere" visual details such as the expressions of speakers or the appearance of their faces, as they "will be long dead" by the time we read his description of events. This is an ironic promise which, thankfully for us, he breaks almost immediately. While some of the descriptions of architectural, sacrimonial and mythological details can become tedious, the book is visually vivid and his concretizations make the setting and characterizations immediate and lifelike.

While the murder mystery is the prime mover of the story, it serves as an excuse for many interesting digressions: lengthy discussions of Papal, local and Imperial politics, the details of everyday monastic life, not only spiritual, but also scribal and mundane, such as the details of animal slaughter and food preparation; the tensions between various factions within the Church advocating poverty versus temporal power, faith versus reason, tradition and the new learning, the tensions between the old feudal political and economic power of the monastic centers and the Pope versus the rising market power of the new trade centers and the monetary power of the princes.

Much of the content of this amazing and brilliant work is religious, specifically Catholic in substance. There is lengthy examination of religious themes such as temptation, sin, and penitence, the nature of God and Satan, heaven and hell, prophesy, heresy, schism and persecution, the Antichrist and the Second Coming and personal salvation through works and grace. This contemplation is counterposed to the main action of the hero, a true scholar and scientist who uses reason and observation, not suspicion and circular justifications, to solve his mystery and save much more.

This book has been made into a very satisfying movie. Yet, as with any great work of art, its adaptation into that medium has required that much be simplified, reduced or omitted. The movie retains the bare bones of the actual murder mystery, and makes Adso's love interest (Adso was Christian Slater's first movie role) much more important than in the novel. On film, cliche often replaces depth. In the novel, the first charcter to die is a young initiate who has had a homosexual encounter with another initiate. In the movie he is not, as in the book, seduced by another young man, but by an obese, leering old lecher. While the movie is a few hours diversion, this novel is an engrossing immersion in and education about a world of which many of us know little, but a world which is much closer in time than one might think. In a fictional monastery in the mountains of Italy in an age which many call dark we literally see the power of reason, the place of philosophy, and the fight of men of good will to preserve the light amidst that darkness.

Citizen of the Galaxy

While usually considered one of his "juvenile" books, Citizen of the Galaxy is one of Robert Heinlein's best. A boy sold into slavery is purchased by a legless mendicant who teaches him what amounts to the rational egoism of a Stoic, a Jesuit, or perhaps a Randian. The beggar is more than he seems, and so is the boy.

Leaving the slave planet, a world of Levantine decadence, the hero becomes a passenger on a family-owned trading spaceship where the crew speak what happens to be Finnish and live according to a two clan phratry system divided as well from outsiders, the "Fremdi." The social rules are very complex, one may not fraternize with the other clan, but when it comes time to take a wife, one may not marry within one's own clan. Heinlein does not make the fact that the ship members are Finns living according to ancient folk custom explicit, and I only figured this out after I had studied archeology and anthropology and then re-read the book after about a decade.

Having lived under a Middle Eastern-style despotry and aboard a clannish trading vessel with a gypsy-like attitude toward strangers, the hero then makes a transition into an British style navy where again he must learn a totally new way of life. He not only learns Western values, he learns his own birth identity and the role he can play, should he choose to, as a citizen of the galaxy.

The book is quite a broadening experience, for its hero and for the reader, and Heinlein's research and fidelity to the systems he describes is impressive. Except for the space element, the story might have been set on 19th century Earth. One of the best aspects of Heinlein "science-fiction" is that it is not alien or technology driven, but plot and character driven. Some of Heinlein's books have the flaw that they lack endings. Yet this story is fully integrated and does not disappoint. Do not be put off by the fact that the main character is an adolescent. The book is fully suitable for adults and I have read it three times. Heinlein's love for humanity, his cosmopolitan sophistication and his nevertheless unending advocacy for the superiority of universal liberal values show that Heinlein himself most assuredly deserved the title Citizen of the Galaxy.

Walter M. Miller "A Canticle for Leibowitz"

Walter M. Miller Jr.s' magnum opus, constantly in print since its publication in 1960, this work is considered by many to be the most beautifully artistic work of science-fiction ever written. In three parts, Fiat Homo, Fiat Lux, Fiat Voluntas Tua, it traces the future history of man from a post-thermonuclear dark age, through the re-invention of electricity, and back to the brink of self destruction. Written as an explicitly Roman Catholic and pre-Vatican II novel, the Hugo Award-winning story revolves about a monastery named for the titular character, Saint Leibowitz, who never appears live. A basic knowledge of Latin and a willingness to look up a term every other chapter (or to reference the wonderful cheat-sheet of Latin phrases fromn Canticle at Wikipedia) and an ability to suspend any anti-Catholic bias will benefit the reader.

The work is one of worship for heroic effort, of principles upheld, and values passionately pursued. Miller's sense of history and discerning psychological skill lead to vistas and characterizations of Herbertian depth. With the wry dark wit of a Cold War culture that produced Strangelove and Planet of the Apes, irony wrestles with ecstasy. Leibowitz is a Jew, canonized by the Church for accidental reasons. With its span of centuries, another strand woven throughout this epic is the apocryphal Christian mythological persona, the Wandering Jew, condemned to walk the Earth 'til Christ return.

Miller's language is unsurpassingly poetic, his words evoking imagery of Randian clarity. I have read this book three times through. Miller was known primarily as a writer of short stories, often, as in Dark Benediction, of great skill and originality. He led a troubled later life, and never finished another novel. The posthumous, disillusioned and anti-climactic Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman was finished by a ghost writer. But this masterpiece has all the pathos and beauty of a great mediaeval cathedral, crucifix included.