God is not Great

The other book I've been reading over the last month was God is not Great, by Christopher Hitchens. I picked this up after seeing the Intelligence Squared debate regarding "The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world", with Hitchens and Stephen Fry on one side, and Archbishop Onaiyekan and Anne Widdecombe on the other. It was a good watch, and hugely improved my opinion of Hitchens.

I'm generally aware of the state of the "Culture Wars" going on, particularly in the USA, between the secular world and the resurgent religious fundamentalism. I've been supportive in general of the "New Atheism" - Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, whats-his-face Dawkins, etc., basically because without them it's a one sided argument. I'm an atheist, but like most atheists I feel there is a kind of pointlessness to arguing for my position. There are lots of things I don't believe in that I don't ever get questioned about - my lack of belief in Dragons and Unicorns, the Tooth Fairy, and so on. But when you wander around being an atheist, you do get called on your lack of belief in the various Gods that people have invented over the years. It's good to see there are people on our side willing to take on the fight, and risk all the death threats and personal attacks that inevitable arrive when you criticize religions. It's those proselytizers who wander around hassling non-believers (and believers in slightly different versions of their own god) that tend to give all believers a bad name, and result in my general lack of tolerance for religion in general. On an intellectual level, I'm perfectly supportive of people's right to believe in gods, and I'm quite supportive of the broad deism that typifies many people who were raised with organised religion but have drifted away from their church; but I do think a world without religions and other superstitions would be a better place.

The book itself was a great read - very well written, clear, and intelligent. I found myself really enjoying reading it; Hitchens says better than I ever could why religion as a bad thing, from a rational, ethical, historically knowledgeable point of view. He mentions some of the arguments for the existence of god, and points out the glaring holes in them; but in the main this book takes it for granted that religions are, in general, incorrect, and is mainly arguing why religion in general, and churches in particular, are a bad thing.

He makes a key point when he recalls a radio host once asking him whether if he was walking down the street after sunset, and a group of men were walking towards him, wouldn't he feel safer if he knew they had just come from a prayer meeting? Hitchens responds that no, at most times and in most places, he wouldn't. Certainly not in Baghdad, or Beirut, or Belfast, or several other cities beginning with B.

This is a book I would recommend to anyone to read. It expounds in great depth and with great vigour why we'd be better off without religions; that the rational person has no need for religion, and that it in fact tends to make people less rational and gives them excuses to absolve themselves of great evils. It also acknowledges that we are imperfectly rational mammals, and that we probably have a need for religion to fill in the gaps left by our lack of rationality. If you're religious, it'll show you that your churches haven't been the forces for goodness that they like to protray themselves as; if you're atheist or agnostic it'll show you that there are people who think like you, and that there are very good reasons for living the way you do.

Transition

Things have been a bit quiet here on the Stuff By Dan front; it's been an absurdly busy month (with another absurd month or two ahead), and the latest book I have read has those badly-sized chapters that mean I have a choice of about 5-10 minutes of reading, or 40 minute of reading. For me, 20 minutes is about the ideal chapter length, since it means I get a fair bit read each evening before bed, but not so much that I'm awake all night reading, or falling asleep before the chapter ends.

Also, I was reading two books simultaneously. But more on that in the next post.

I've just finished Transition, by Iain Banks (oddly, not Iain M Banks). It's that very difficult breed of novel, a Multiverse novel.

A big problem with science fiction is making all the worlds your characters visit feel like real, and distinct worlds. It's why I avoid running space opera roleplaying games; I never feel it's really possibly to evoke the sense of a real world when it's a different planet you're visiting every session. Multiverses are even harder, as it's a different world in a different universe that is being visited. Banks, on the other hand, is a masterful world builder, so he can get away with these sorts of shenanigans.

Transition gets around this by having the transitions between universes being only possible between similar universes; in fact, the characters can only transition into bodies and minds similar to their own; and it's only their mind that transitions. It's often hard to tell which universe any particular part of the story is taking place in; our Earth is frequently visited, as is Calbefraques, the version of Earth where the ability to transition was discovered. Each different version of Earth has branched from ours at some time in the past, and there are infinities of possible earths between each of these universes, corresponding, presumably, to every branching possible outcome of every event in the Earth's history.

Once you get past the very Science Fictional setting, the story is more a spy thriller than a Sci Fi novel. The main protagonist, Temudjin Oh, is a Transitionary, one of the rare breed who can transition between Universes. He is an agent for l'Expedience, aka. The Concern, and organisation based on Calbefraques, which has the duty of sending its Transitionaries to different realities, and making butterfly-effect changes to a single person's life that end up changing that world in a big way. Things naturally get more complicated as conspiracies are unveiled and motives revealed, and it marches to an exciting, if somewhat small-scale, conclusion.

I'm yet to find a Banks novel that I'm disappointed by when I get to the end. Admittedly, I wasn't able to really start reading Feersum Endjinn, but the others are great. Transition never feels quite on the scale of Banks' other Science Fiction; novels like The Algebraist and his Culture novels overwhelm the imagination with the sheer scale of things. No-one can write an interstellar war like Banks. Transition is smaller, more personal, and deals with the intrigues between a small group of people who know each other quite well.

So, it's worth a read, but if you haven't read Banks, I'd start somewhere else in his corpus.

Should be watched...

Gotta love logic

This evening Atty decided he was scared of his skeleton pajamas, since they might attract skeleton ghosts. I informed him that his dogs (he has a small army of plush dogs) would protect him. It reminded me of a similar incident with Dante a while back.

"Daddy, I can't sleep - I'm scared of ghosts"
"D, you know that there's no such thing as ghosts - they're not real"
"But I'm scared of them"
"Don't worry, Brown Bear and your other bears will protect you" (Where Atty has dogs, Dante has bears)
"But they're just toys, Daddy, they're not real"
"That's OK, ghosts aren't real either, which means that your bears can protect you against them"

Dante thinks for a moment, and nods, satisfied, and lies down to go to sleep. Gotta love a kids that's willing to accept logical arguments.

The New Space Opera

The New Space Opera is a collection of short stories by a range of authors, showing the breadth and depth of writing that falls into the "New Space Opera" sub-genre.

It's something I realise I've been reading a lot of in recent years. It's Space Opera, but written in the wake of the Information Revolution; which has transformed how Sci Fi writers envision the future. Notably missing from this collection are two of my favourite authors, Stross and Banks.

There are some great stories in this collection; some will stick with me for ages, and some are the kind where I'll forget the story, but the ideas will be integrated into my brain, and I'll probably read them in the future and wonder why the technologies all seem so familiar.

Some of the high points: Dan Simmons' Muse of Fire melted my brain; Walter Jon Williams' Send them Flowers felt like a Beat Generation road trip in a parallel universe; Alastair Reynolds' Minya's Flowers was food for thought. Note for further investigation: do all good modern Sci Fi authors have names ending in 's'?

So the future is going to be dark and mysterious and complex and textured. We may be the only civilization we ever meet, but otherwise we'll be a minor player in the vast and incomprehensible game of galactic politics. Physics is Einsteinian, but wormholes or a Many Worlds universe may let us get around that to travel the greater universe freely.

I got a lot out of The New Space Opera, even though I don't think it's necessarily the best that the genre has to offer. A lot of the tales in this compilation were really bursting at the seams of the short story format, and were clearly aching to be filled out to novel length, so that the strong characters and huge ideas has space to stretch their legs.

The Tent

The Tent, by Margaret Atwood, is a delight to read. Thirty or forty short stories - some not even stories; merely thoughts a couple of pages in length, hints and suggestions of larger stories and issues. The blurb on the back cover calls them "fictional essays", which doesn't seem quite right.

To be honest, it felt like a Dr Seuss book for grown-ups. There was the same delight in language, the twisted-about twirling dance of words, but much darker, more solemn and filled with the sadnesses and mysteries and compromises of adulthood.

The only other book of Atwood's I've read is Oryx and Crake, which is an amazing piece of science fiction*, and one that mesmerized me.

I must read more of her books; The Blind Assassin and The Handmaid's Tale are sitting on my shelves, waiting patiently.

* she claims it isn't science fiction, since the science in it is merely an extrapolation of current trends in science. Genius though she is, she's completely wrong there, confusing "Science Fiction" with "Fictional Science".

The Steep Approach to Garbadale

Iain Banks (aka. Iain M. Banks) never fails to impress. I started reading his Sci Fi a few years ago when someone said "you should read these Banks' Culture novels - they'd be your sort of thing", and whoever that kind recommender was, was exactly right. I had kind of gone off reading actual Science Fiction for a few years there, concentrating my efforts on History, Horror, and Fantasy, and Banks (and then Stross) dragged me back into the fold.

Banks writes two kinds of books, different enough that he has the slightly different pen names, with and without the M. His Science Fiction, under Iain M Banks, is mind-blisteringly* broad in scope. As I've said before, I've got a background in Math and Science, and bad Science in Sci Fi irritates me. I'm happy with logical science and different laws of physics based on currently-undiscovered scientific principles; but random laws of physics that aren't consistently applied, or stupid applications of real laws irk me. Banks is one of those authors whose physics is spot on.

But that is an aside. The Steep Approach to Garbadale isn't one of his science fiction books. It's the other kind - the well-written fiction novel. A lot of these books steer of at least a little into the fantastical of horrific, but this is a novel clearly set in our world, with real and flawed characters, and reflects on the politics of our time - or at least, our time two years ago; it sits solidly in the Bush era, and the characters reflect on and rail against US imperialism. I found it quite gripping, and on occasions hard to put down. It's a little more normal for me to not put a book down because a stupendously powerful star cruiser is about to chop up an Orbital with billions of people living on it; not being able to put down a book because Alban was about to go fishing with his cousin Sophie and oh my goodness what will transpire between them! was an unusual and pleasant feeling.

So, it's a definite worth-reading book. My problem now is that I can never quite remember which of my Banks non-sci-fi I've read and which I haven't. I've started reading one before on at least one occasion only to discover that I'd red it before. I'll have to go and work it out.

* Oddly enough, my spell-checker is happy with mind-blisteringly, but has an problem with recommender.

Singularity Sky

Singularity Sky, by Charles Stross, is the kind of book that reminds me why I read science fiction. It actually comes before Iron Sunrise, which was the first Stross book I read, and was the one that made me decide to read all his books (not there yet, but well on my way).

The setting is some time after the Singularity, when an artificial super-intelligence has scattered humanity over several thousands of light years, and the various outposts of humanity have settled on various levels of technology, depending on whether they have embraced or rejected technology.

It's a big ol' space opera, a couple of people from Earth are working in/for a backward totalitarian empire, and get involved when that empire ends up fighting a very high-tech invader. The people are well done, though some tend towards caricature. The culture clashes between the various groups are very nicely done; the technology is mind-blowing.

This one is a definite recommended read if you like your science fiction. One of the books I'll recommend down the years, and read again at some point in the future (unless Stross keeps up his current prolific rate of writing, in which case I'll just try keeping up with him).

Byzantium's Crown

I have a rocky relationship with trilogies; I try to avoid reading them unless I've got the whole series, since I hate having read one of a series and not being able to find the others. So this book has been sitting on my shelves for over a decade; probably something closer to 20 years. I finally found the others in the series at a second hand book shop and got them (not too cheaply, of course; it was a Newtown secondhand bookshop), and so I figured it was time to read this one.

Also, historical fiction (and/or historical fantasy; I'm not an expert on the divisions between genres) is always a risk to read. When it's good it's great, but mostly it's awful.

Byzantium's Crown, by Susan Schwartz, fell closer to the awful end of the spectrum than the excellent end. The world is "Antony and Cleopatra won at Actium, and there's magic". Which could be cool, but ends up rather disappointing (possibly not quite all the way to awful, though). It may be because I had looked at it for twenty years and was expecting some awesome after this time; it may be also that I automatically end up comparing it to Gillian Bradshaw's excellent historical fiction. I probably should've read this one when I was fifteen; I think it might have been much better back then.

Stations of the tide

I think I missed something in this book. It's by Michael Swanwick, of whose books I've read Vacuum Flowers (many years ago) and The Iron Dragon's Daughter (quite recently), both of which blew me away. The subtlety and complexity of the concepts and world building was astounding in those two novels, and so I had high expectations. While it was interesting, it seemed like it was trying to jump a few too many genre boundaries, and never really went anywhere. This reviewer covers my feelings about it pretty well; I think the author of that book had a bit more of an idea of what was going on than I did. And now that I've read the spoiler-laden interpretation that is linked to from that review, I see that there's whole layers of meaning in there that I did completely miss, largely because it references things I've not been educated in. I've always been pretty poor at picking up on symbolism in literature (and people who've run roleplaying games with religious themes are often exasperated by my overly literal mind). I think it's part and parcel of my atheist upbringing and particularly of my having degree in mathematics. Math, while it's all about symbols and representation, is also about clarity of definition and structured, logical thought, which while generally useful, does at times tend to hinder one.

Well, it appears I ramble. I expected more of this book, and would only recommend it if you're into this sort of thing. I know that next time I read one of Swanwick's books I'll do so a lot more carefully.

The moral of the story...

I don't know if you've ever read and Care Bears stories (my advice: Don't!), but they are oppressively saccharine and dull. Unfortunately I was reading one to Atty and Elora the other evening (Elora grabbed the book from the shelf for her bedtime story). This one was about Sharing. Funshine Bear (or something stupid like that) had just received a box of Rainbow Bars (confectionery, I can only assume), and wasn't going to Share. But then Share Bear told him a story of other care bears who had failed to Share, and the dire consequences of this. Mainly that the other bears didn't play with them or were sad (disappointingly, no being torn to shreds by wolves or plummeting tragically over a cliff or anything). At the end of this tale of woe, Funshine Bear decides to Share the Rainbow Bars with the other care bears. Every Share second Share flipping Share word Share in Share the Share flipping Share story Share was Share Share. Share.

So, a little sarcastically, I then asked Atty and Elora what the moral of the story was. This should be easy, thinks I; Care Bears stories really hit you over the head with the moral mallet.

"Rainbow Bars" says Atty.

The kid is a genius.

Vernon God Little

Inspired by Jen's plan to read all the Man Booker prize winning books, I bought Vernon God Little (by DBC Pierre) a while back. It finally floated to the top of my to-read list, so I figured I'd give it a go.

I always find these literary masterpieces rather daunting to start. There's a girding of the loins, a deep breath to be taken before embarking on them. I think it goes back to a lot of badly translated classics that I've read in the past - always worth a read, even though the prose flows like a river of bricks. But then, as often as not, they take me by surprise.

This was one of those ones - lyrical, intense, and at times impossible to put down. It was responsible for several very late nights and cranky following days as I stayed up reading. It's story of a teenager wrongly accused of a crime, written in the first person. It chronicles the gathering of evidence for and against him, the various people in his life - his mother and her friends, schoolmates, and others who are brought in on the tide of publicity surrounding the crime.

This is definitely worth a read, and will propel on to try to get through more of the Man Booker winners.

The Jennifer Morgue

Another Charles Stross Laundry novel, this was a lot of fun, though not quite as awesome as the Atrocity Archive. Rather than Nazis, it's James Bond, but there's still whole bunch of geekery and Lovecraft.

Definitely worth a read, and I was quite excited to hear Stross is working on the next Laundry novel, due out next year.

Ambitions

Atticus, this evening: "When I grow up, I want to be a Daddy, so I'll have a phone and I can play the games on it"

World War Z

This was a really effective book. I know I seemto be saying everything I read is awesome, but World War Z is really a very good read. Especially when we're on the eve of a major flu pandemic. It chronicles the decade-long struggle of humanity to beat back a plague of zombies that wipes out most of humanity. It's told as a series of interviews with key survivors from around the world - naturally, as is often the way with these books, they're mostly from the USA, but there is a good sampling of people from other parts of the world.

Apart from a few sillinesses, and the obvious issue of zombies, there is a realistic feel to the book; the compromises made to ensure humanity's survival, and people's reactions to the situation. The only real downside is at the end, when some of the characters are reintroduced; because I read the book over a few weeks I found mydelf having to look back through the book to figure out who they were.

This is first rate horror; I thoroughly recommend it. It's the kind of book that you'll remember for a long time, and keep thinking about. Since I'm now blathering on about the books I read, I might as well start rating them. I'm going to give this one 4 out of 5 awesomes.

The Atrocity Archive

I've just read The Atrocity Archives, by Charles Stross. I have to say, it was bloody awesome. It's got

• Lovecraftian horror
  
• Nazis
  
• System Administration
  
• Maths
  
• Unix
  
• tcpdump
  

And more!

It's the tale of Bob Howard, a low-level system administrator/hacker, who had stumbled onto some dark secrets and got drafted into The Laundry, a top-secret organization within the British Government that deals with occult threats. He gets moved into active duty, as an agent, and all kinds of excitement ensues - eldritch horror as well as bureaucratic wrangling.

Now, I'm aware that I'm pretty much slap-bang in the middle of the intersection of the book's demographics, but even so, I have to say it's a bloody good read. I've got the sequel, The Jennifer Morgue, sitting on my bedside table to be read soon.

West Bank Story

Just saw this on SBS. Very nice.

The stress of her regard

Just finished reading The Stress of her Regard, by Tim Powers. I've got to say I do really enjoy reading Tim Powers - I've got to get my hands on the rest of them some time (I've read Declare, The Anubis Gates, Drawing of the Dark, and On Stranger Tides). His stuff isn't like anything else out there (that I've read, anyway) - it's pseudo-historical fiction, based around real characters and events, and he then comes up with the secret occult secrets that explain it all. There's a depth to the mythologies and occult lore in his books that is just astonishing, and he comes at the ideas from a completely different angle than anyone else.

Stress is a vampire novel, with Byron, Shelley, and Keats. It tells the story of the last years of Shelley's life through the eyes of Michael Crawford, an English doctor who is haunted by a strange demon/vampire/lamia creature. It was a riveting read, and the mythology that Powers builds is rich and believable. It's certainly one of his better books, and it's another of his that will haunt my thoughts of mythology and religion. Reading Shelley's wikipedia entry is like getting a recap of the story of the book, minus the bits the book states didn't make it into the public record.

Summary: a damn good read. Go out and read all of Tim Powers' stuff, especially the later novels, where he's worked out how to end a story without an anticlimax.

Kids

Today was an amusing day to be a dad.

First was Dante on the train. We were on our way home, and he spotted a young couple near us (Uni students, by the look of them) looking at a book together. Strolled over a little, trying to figure out what it was. Peered over the girl's shoulder, trying to read. The guy seemed to be trying to impress his girl with his culturedness ("Hey, read this, it's great!"). Eventually Dante caught their attention, and they showed him the book (Catch 22). He asked to read it, and they handed it over. He started reading it; they were impressed by his reading prowess - you could see Dante was very much enjoying impressing the young lady. After he handed the book back (we were nearing our station), he told the guy that he looked like Peter Parker. The girl didn't know who that was, but the guy said "Oh yeah, Spiderman". She commented that she didn't really know Spiderman, and the guy said to Dante "Don't worry, she isn't very cool". Dante looked up at her and said "I think you're cool".

The kid is busting moves on Uni students, and leaving their Uni-aged boyfriends in the dust. I fear his charm when he becomes a teenager.

Next was Atty, who had his shots today. I'm told he was a Very Brave Boy, and Didn't Cry Much. When I was bathing his and his sister, he said to her "Look at my shot! Look! But, don't touch it, or you might get a shot too!". Who knew vaccinations were contagious?

And then there was Elora, chattering away to herself. "I'm a girl, I'm a girl, vroom, vroom, vroom".

Thongor Against The Gods

I've wanted to read this for a long time - the sheer blatant unsubtleness of its cover and title made it somewhat legendary in my days of running the Sutekh library back in the day. I never got round to reading it back then, and I'm glad I left it until after I've read most of the good Conan stories (all the Robert E. Howard and Robert Jordan). After all, Conan should rightly be seen as the standard by which all barbarian fiction is to be judged.

In comparison to the barbarian stories of Howard, Thongor felt shallow and pale. The exoticness of the word was painted in broad, blunt strokes, and the characters had little force. Howard's Conan wasn't deeply developed, but he was richly and lovingly (almost lustfully) portrayed. Scarcely a page passed without an evocative description of Conan's powerful musculature rippling in the harsh sunlight as the tiger-like barbarian tensed for battle. In comparison, Lin Carter's Thongor was merely Strong, and his wife Sumia merely Slim and Beautiful.

I don't think I'll be seeking out the rest of Carter's Thongor series in a hurry.

Hippopotamus

Recently finished Hippopotamus, a novel by Stephen Fry. 'twas an amusing read, with Fry's usual dlightful wit suffused throughout. I'm used to his full-on tidal wave of linguistic gymnastics from A Bit of Fry And Laurie, so this novel felt very restrained and calm in comparison. The ending was somewhat underwhelming, but the characters and use of language made the book a worthwhile read. I haven't read any of his other books, and I will keep an eye out for them.

4-year-old language

Atty, to his little sister: "Let's chase our chuthers!"

They proceed to chase each other.

Mockingbird

Have just finished reading Mockingbird, by Walter Tevis.Was a good read, dystopian sci-fi in the style of Fahrenheit 451 or Brave New World. It portrays a world where reading has been forgotten; robots run the world and humans are educated to be stupid and ignorant and purely driven by sensation; and one man learns to read and that has large consequences. It has that feeling of abstraction, of a world without real texture, only really there to serve the message he's trying to get across, a gross exaggeration of a trend he's seeing in the world that he doesn't like. It still ended up being a decent story, with the characters gradually gaining some dimension as the story progresses. Of course, the gaining of dimension was kind of the point of the story; but a bit more texture in the society portrayed would have made it more real.

A worthwhile read.

Redefining his identity

Atty: "Daddy, you don't know my name"
Me: "Yes I do, I gave it to you"
Atty: "What is it then?"
Me: "It's Atty!"
Atty: "No, it's not. It's Superguy... Dragon"
Me: "Hi there, Superguy Dragon"
Atty: "Hi"

Not how I remember it...

This was seriously not the take-home message I got from listening to Holst's The Planets.

The Book of Skulls

Just finished reading The Book of Skulls, by Robert Silverberg. It's quite an amazing book - technically in the Fantasy genre, but more an exploration of the minds of four young men. Definitely one of the better books I've read recently. I'd definitely recommend it, and I'll certainly read more Silverberg in the future.

I found a great book shop in Tea Gardens when we holidayed there. It's just a shed in a guy's back yard, but it's wall-to-wall with books (all in plastic zip-loc bags to keep the bugs and sea air out), all at good prices. I get annoyed with all the second hand book shops around that seem to charge 80% of the book's original price - when I grew up we were often at markets and garage sales, and the price of second-hand books was a dollar or two. The books in this shop were mostly $3-$6, so we ended up getting nearly $100 worth. It's on the main street of tea gardens, the one you drive through town on to get to Hawks Nest. If you're in Hawks Nest and like books, go visit it.

The Delta of Venus

I recently read the Delta of Venus, by Anaïs Nin - it was a re-released version in the old-style penguin orange cover, so I bought it out of curiosity. We were on holiday up in Hawks Nest, so I was doing a lot of reading. I find I get a lot of reading done on holiday, away from the distractions of housework and computers and so on. I should read at home more often, like that.

The book was quite an eye opener. I've never read "literary erotica" before; I've never really read erotica. I found it quite an odd experience, gratuitous smut that would normally make for a dodgy X-rated movie, but couched in elegant language, some of it beautifully written, and often of the most degraded scenarios imaginable. The first story (it is a collection of occasionally linked short stories), "The Hungarian Adventurer", was a rollicking, sordid tale of lust out of control, and left me rather stunned and lost for words at the end. Nin states in the preface that her model for writing was the existing erotic literature that she had access to, written by men for men, but the characters that actually come across as real people with real desires were the women.

It was an illuminating read, and it has certainly broadened my horizons. Nearing the end of the book, I recall thinking about the book, and realising that a certain perversion hadn't yet been written about, only to find it lovingly described several pages later.