eBooks, eBookshelves, eLibraries

A whole library dumped on my doorstep ...

One of the odd things about reading eBooks is that the booksellers encourage you to use only their own software for reading them. Of course this is to insure you will keep buying from them, since they have integrated their own digital "stores" as an extension of what you're reading.

Amazon is the worst culprit in this practice because they go further by using a proprietary format for their eBooks that insures you have to use their software. But Apple, Barnes and Noble, Google, Kobo and the rest do the same thing even if they agree on using the ePub standard format. Amazon even locks down their tablets to prevent you from installing reading software from other vendors. (This is the main reason I tell everyone not to buy a Kindle. Most other tablets, even from B&N and Kobo, will allow you freedom of choice.) So if you want to buy from multiple vendors you end up having to remember who you bought a book from so you can look for it in the appropriate software.

This is just weird. Imagine if you could only pick up and read one of your paper books if you could remember where you bought it. Hm, let's see. I was on my way to San Francisco, and in the airport ... or was it after I got there and went to City Lights? Or did I just take it with me to read on the trip?

It's possible to centralize your digital library with something like the Aldiko reader (for Android) or Adobe Digital Editions (Windows and Mac), but the lack of multiplatform support and digital rights management issues (the dread DRM) can make that challenging. So in practice we're ending up with these compartmentalized collections as if we had to organize our library in bookcases labeled "Amazon" et al. instead of Fiction, Biography, History, etc.

One of the downsides to this is that we're dependent on the bookseller to stay in business so they can continue to support their distribution ecosystem. How reliable is that? What would happen to all your eBooks (and music) if Amazon went belly up someday? Well, okay, maybe that's not likely. But what if it was Barnes & Noble? Not impossible, since they're struggling. It already happened to Borders, which had partnered with Kobo for eBooks. Luckily for their customers, Kobo remained open for business even after the chain of stores went down the tubes, but that was only because they were separate companies. (Kobo subsequently formed a partnership with the Independent Booksellers Association, which is why you should go to the website of your favorite indie bookseller and sign up for an account through them.)

Another case in point is Sony. The faltering entertainment juggernaut was in the eBook business at one time, and even launched one of the first readers with an ePaper display. This is where it gets personal, because the unimaginatively named "Sony Reader" was my first one. (I wrote about it here and here back in 2008.) I used it extensively for several years, mostly to catch up on the wealth of free literature available in the public domain from Project Gutenberg.

As the competition heated up with Amazon, Sony released a software update so they could convert to the ePub standard and abandon their own proprietary one. But they had missed the boat on distribution. What made the Kindle such a runaway success was not the reader or software or even the pricing available from Amazon's vast catalog. It was the ability to buy instantly over the air. Sony was too late to that party, having started out with the idea that you would shop on your desktop computer and push books onto your device through a cable. Quaint. So last year they decided to pull the plug on their whole book store to staunch the bleeding.

I was sorry to see them go. My Reader still works and still has unfinished books on it. (Be patient, Joseph Conrad, I'm getting back to you!) But I imagined my ability to re-download them vanishing. Kobo to the rescue! The Canadian company now owned by Rakuten of Japan struck a deal to take over all of Sony's existing clients along with their purchase history.

Amazingly, when the day came I didn't even have to do anything. I just got an email from Kobo letting me know that all my Sony books were now available in my Kobo library. Grabbing my tablet, I looked, and there they were. Instant gratification.

Imagine if when Borders went out of business a Barnes and Noble truck had pulled up to my front door and deposited copies of all my Borders-purchased books. Impossible of course, with traditional books. Not necessary, either, because they were already on the shelf. But with eBooks all things are possible. And necessary.

[Next time -- the changing library.]

KOBO - Now More Than Ever

It's not too late to support your local independent book seller ...

Of all the reading platforms for ebooks perhaps the one with the most fortuitous name is not Kindle or Nook but Kobo. (Let's omit the unimaginative Sony Reader Store, the goofy Google Play Store, and the total misnomer iTunes.) So until someone starts selling a Koob or Obko reader, Kobo is the only one to call itself by an anagram of what it's all about: THE BOOK.

But I've become a fan of Kobo for more than just the name. It might be my best chance to defend my rights as a reader and to keep my friendly local bookseller in business.

Some history: In the beginning (1971) a fledgling ecosystem came to life. Project Gutenberg began offering free public domain texts after Michael Hart "invented" the idea of an ebook. By 1998 primitive reading devices came into existence, along with several variants of copy protected text formats, and they all began vying for supremacy, each offering their own limited selection of content, each supporting one or more of the available file types, but none of them dominant. They had dim, low resolution LCD screens, and were less fun to read on than your laptop -- which at the time weighed 6 pounds and heated up your legs like a toaster oven.

The first big breakthrough came with ePaper display technology. This replaced LCD screens with something much more clear, rendering black on off-white text at nearly the resolution of laser printers. Better still, these new screens drew battery power only when the page was turned, resulting in times between charges measured in weeks instead of hours. Now we're getting somewhere!

At this point Amazon exploded over the landscape like a nuclear bomb. Sony and other lesser known vendors came to market with ePaper more or less simultaneously, but Sony is now marginalized and the others are long gone because only Amazon recognized the key ingredient -- it's not the device, it's the ecosystem. Using its might as ubiquitous retailer and its ability to sell devices at or below cost, it was able to foist its own proprietary format on vast numbers of consumers who didn't care how much they were being locked in to a single vendor as long as they could get whatever they wanted from Amazon, instantly.

They key word there was instantly -- and wirelessly. It was Amazon's genius to "give away" cellular data plans with each Kindle so that you could buy your books at the beach instead of taking them with you, reducing the delivery time to zero. Can you spell "impulse buy?"

I confess it took time for this idea to grab me. My own first reading device (2008) was a Sony and it didn't even have Wi-Fi. (I didn't have it in my own home yet either.) No problem. Just download books to my PC, then plug in the USB cable and copy them over. A chore of few minutes followed by weeks of happy reading. It was much later before I experienced the instant gratification of hear-about-it / download it / read it.

I'm not sorry about the delay however. I instinctively shied away from the hermetically sealed world of Amazon with its books that can be read by nothing else. Faced with this juggernaut of competition, most other vendors had rushed to support the ePub standard and Adobe's digital rights management, in principle allowing you to buy content from whoever you wanted and read it any way you wanted. Most other reading devices will also view PDFs and plain text files, but if you want to read those on your Kindle you have to send them to Amazon first to be automatically converted to Amazon's proprietary format. This really rubs me the wrong way. I need permission to read a draft of my own novel? Not only that, they have the gall to charge you 15 cents per megabyte for the privilege.

So I trudged along with my Sony, taking advantage of the wealth of free digital books available from Project Gutenberg and Feedbooks, while still buying most of my new books in paper form. But that fledgling ecosystem was not standing still. Meanwhile the iPhone and iPad happened, then Android phones and tablets. Prices plunged and features exploded. My Sony with all its limitations cost over $300. Suddenly for a hundred bucks less you could get a general purpose tablet with full color display, sound, video, wifi, email, web browser, etc etc etc. And the miracle workers who first brought this to market was not Amazon but ... Barnes and Noble.

The venerable bricks-and-mortar bookstore had jumped on the bandwagon late, but in time to make a splash. The Nook was the first real budget priced Android tablet, subsidized and only slightly limited by having a restricted version of the App Market (now the Play Store) to prevent people from, for example, installing Kindle software and downloading books from Amazon. That's fair, right? Just try installing Nook software on a Kindle.

B&N did a lot of things right. Their hardware came out before the color version of the Kindle, and new models competed well on features as Amazon took a turn playing catchup. B&N followed up with the first back-lit ePaper device. The predictable price war ensued, benefiting the customers of both. But now it's beginning to look like the party could be over.

Faced with slumping sales in spite of its arguably superior product, B&N first began to whimper about getting out of the hardware business, then appeared to play a trump card by releasing a software upgrade that removed all restrictions on their Android tablet. Match that, Amazon!

Why would they do such a thing? Well, for the same reason I bought my Android tablet elsewhere. Namely, Google had got into the market, offering full featured tablets with no software restrictions for not much more than Amazon and B&N were charging for their locked up ones. Given the choice, why would you choose the ones that were needlessly crippled? On a Nexus you can install apps from both of the "other" booksellers and buy from whoever you want -- in addition to Google.

For awhile I was buying books from B&N on my tablet, if only to root for the underdog. But now B&N appears to be considering selling off its entire digital content division. I don't know what they're thinking. Dumping the up and coming thing to devote themselves to selling paper books and magazines? Haven't they learned anything from the experiment? Worst of all, the potential buyer may turn out to be Microsoft, which could mean the death knell for both parts of the company.

Which brings us to Kobo. Remember them? As I reported after hearing their presentation at the Miami Book Fair, Kobo was once going to be the salvation of Borders Books. The partnership was their answer to the Kindle and Nook, and it was Kobo's answer to having a brick-and-mortar anchor in the world. Kobo had great hardware at competitive prices, a commitment to open standards, and their own online book infrastructure. When Borders went under and Kobo became an orphan I was worried about them but maybe I shouldn't have been. They were orphans before the partnership, so they had little to lose while Borders needed them like a life raft.

So Kobo is still around, with newer and prettier devices. They were acquired by Rakuten, said to be "the Amazon of Japan," and have made another savvy move. They replaced Borders with a network of independent booksellers. With a bold stroke, one underdog hooked up with another. Now you can have the best of both worlds, acquiring ebooks while giving your support to your favorite local bookstore. You can create a Kobo account and install their reading app on your tablet or PC even if you don't have a Kobo device. Just be sure to register through your bookstore's website so your account will link to them.

Better do it quick. Today, no Borders. Tomorrow, perhaps no Barnes and Noble? What about the day after that? It's not that I hate Amazon. I buy from them too. I even have a wish list. I just don't ever want them to be the only place I can go.

Miami Book Fair 2011

A belated report on last year's book fair -- quick, before it's time for the next one ....

I've certainly taken my time about posting this account of Miami Book Fair International, 2011 version, but it's not from lack of interest. As ever, there was much to appreciate, and a few new wrinkles.

Big Science

My first event involved getting tickets in advance. It's always wonderful to me that a writer can command a sellout audience. In this case it's even more amazing because the stage was shared by a pair of science writers: James Gleick, author of the landmark book about chaos theory that did as much to popularize the concept as anything else, including Jeff Goldblum's character in that Jurassic Park sequel, and whose intriguing new work is called The Information; and Dava Sobel, who had just published her biography of Copernicus titled A More Perfect Heaven.

Reviews of both books are too abundant to need repeating here. I'll just add that Gleick made me want to know more about Claude Shannon, the "father of information theory," who was a contemporary of Alan Turing and swapped ideas with him during World War II. In Sobel's presentation I was most taken with her account of inspecting the original manuscript of Copernicus' book, with it's famous diagram of the sun-centered solar system. She noticed a tiny pinhole in the center of the sun, the place where the point of the great man's compass had pierced the page while he drew the concentric orbits of the planets. If that doesn't give you goose bumps, then you're in the wrong room.

During the question session that followed, I appreciated Gleick's point that science "is about uncertainty, not truth," that it is as much about asking questions as giving answers. Let's please keep this in mind when debating Darwin with the people who don't understand him. Which reminds me that Sobel mentioned a notable parallel between Darwin and Copernicus: both of their theories were widely accepted before they were actually proved, a sure sign that they were ideas whose time had come.

Another interesting point was raised about online sources of information such as Wikipedia versus traditional authorities like the Britannica that are falling out of use. (Anyone want to buy a used encyclopedia? No? It weighs about 90 pounds and was out of date the day it was printed. Still no takers?) The questioner feared we will end up only with sources we can't trust. But Gleick expressed the hope that we are in a transitional period where we have not yet learned to vet and trust the new media, which are ephemeral through the necessity of constant update.

He is, he says, predisposed to be "optimistic without justification." And perhaps that's how he could respond to a query about the looming "singularity," when machines will take over the earth, by saying simply, "by the time they take over we will be so attached to them that we won't care." Incidentally, there is another theory about the singularity which says it has already happened and we didn't notice.

All This And Noir

After these weighty matters I made my way to the bizarre and noisy tent where Akashic Books was previewing New Jersey Noir, the latest in their series of story collections that demonstrate there is a dark side to every locale on earth. I couldn't pass this up because one dark side of my own past is that, like the panellists, I also hail from the Garden State -- so called, I believe, because they created Newark and left the rest of the land comparatively unscathed.

The panel included former poet laureate Robert Pinsky, native of Long Branch, casually clad in a black T-shirt that became him, and Alan Cheuse of NPR fame, substituting for Joyce Carol Oates who couldn't make it. Alas, my notes don't tell me which of them repeated the old gag about how they say their ABC's in New Jersey. ("Fuggin A, fuggin B, fuggin C ...") Which kind of shows how informal the whole thing was. But Pinsky did wax poetic when he spoke about depicting "the beauty of the broken, sordid, and low class" -- material which they found in abundance right there at home.

What's China Doing Here?

This tent was right across from another, larger one featuring China. Yes, the country. I confess to being nonplussed by this exhibit, which was like walking into one of those places at Walt Disney Epcot where the various wares and cultural oddities of some foreign place are on display -- except here none of it was for sale, which left us all wondering what we were doing standing around and looking at shelves and tables full of Chinese export bric-a-brac. No answers were forthcoming. But I guess since our Chinese friends are everywhere, doing everything, they might as well be here too.

If You Can Read This, Thank Your Reader

The last presentation I went to was on ebook publishing, a topic dear to me as both a reader and a hopeful author. Back in the 1990's I once asked a publisher at a writing workshop what impact he thought digital media and Internet distribution were going to have on his business. His appalling answer was a single word: "None."

As evidence, he asked, "Would you curl up in bed with a computer?" I was dumbstruck. Even though there were no ebook readers in existence back then, I already knew people who were perfectly happy to take their laptops to bed with them. How could this guy not see the writing on the wall in giant letters?

Fast forward about 15 years and it's all history -- but history that is still unfolding, as purveyors of the written word, from newspapers to magazines and books, continue to deal with the biggest disruption since the invention of the printing press.

I was very impressed with the chipper young Canadian woman representing Kobo. You may recall that they had a brief affiliation with Borders Books just before the chain went bankrupt. The Kobo reader was going to be Borders' answer to the Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble Nook -- but Borders just got there too late and too many dollars short. B&N proved they were nimble enough to get into this game, but Borders just couldn't make it.

In the aftermath of the Borders collapse, I was concerned about Kobo, who were making a very nice collection of reading devices every bit the equal of the Kindle family, but with the added virtue of supporting open standards like PDF and ePub as opposed to proprietary ones like, well, Amazon. But my concern might have been premature. Kobo managed to get a major investment from a company said to be "the Amazon of Japan." They have a very serviceable (and completely open) tablet that sells for under $200 and a thriving online bookstore. So we'll have to see how it goes.

Another feature Kobo offers is unique. Kobo Pulse is something they call "social reading," a way to instantly share your take on what you're reading with your online buddies who are similarly equipped. A show of hands revealed this optional feature was not universally appealing to the audience, which tended to split along predictably generational lines. Us older folks were squirming in our chairs and thinking "oh no, not that," while the younger ones were all like, "I'm down with that."

Whether this "gamification" of reading will take hold and eclipse the traditional reading experience is something we will have to watch as it develops. On the one hand, media companies are salivating over producing "books" for the iPad and its ilk full of embedded videos and interactive features. On the other hand, I note that writers like Neal Stephenson can continue to churn out 900 page novels the immersive experience of which beggars anything Hollywood has to offer.

So the jury is out. Maybe the next chapter, so to speak, will be written, as it were, at the next version of the Miami Book Fair, coming in November.

On the Joys of Reading Long Books

There was a time in my life when I found books of a certain size intimidating. Maybe it goes back to my attempt, at the age of twelve, to absorb my father's copy of War and Peace when the only adult literature I had read until then was science fiction. I remember getting to the end of chapter one and feeling like I'd just eaten way too much chocolate cake. I knew it was good stuff, on a level above anything I'd seen, but I also knew I wasn't ready for it.

By the time I reached high school I was able to plow my way through not only Tolstoy but Dostoyevsky, and not only Russians but Americans like Steinbeck and Faulkner -- even Absolom, Absolom with its pages-long sentences. In my college years Hermann Hesse came into vogue, so I consumed most of his works including the monumental Magister Ludi (or The Glass Bead Game) which is supplemented at the end by a sort of appendix of poetry and three short stories  purported to have been written by its main character, a wonderful example of a book that contains other books. I also developed my fondness for philosophical works by digesting William James' Varieties of Religious Experience and Aldous Huxley's The Perrenial Philosophy. Both of those are heavy wading, but they made an interesting pair since they shared the idea that all the world's religions have much in common, an idea that appealed to me as a Unitarian who was destined to become a Quaker.

Then, as happens to many of us, I became so caught up in the world and the need to make a living that I found less time for reading. I returned to my first love of science fiction for recreation, and gravitated toward short stories that were quicker to consume. I lost my taste for big thick books that revealed from their sheer bulk the amount of time and attention that would have to be give to them. It was so much easier to take two hours to absorb a movie or a magazine.

I suppose it has just been reaching a later stage of my life that has drawn me back to those substantial works I had avoided for so long. But the pleasure of discovery -- or rediscovery -- has been well worth the wait. Armed only with the willingness, I launched into such projects as reading the twenty volumes of Patrick O'Brian's seafaring novels, and Neal Stephenson's trilogy of 700-pagers set in the Baroque period. I also got an ebook reader and have been using it to catch up on many of the classics that I had somehow managed to overlook, things like Moby Dick, The Magic Mountain, and the other wonderful novels of Joseph Conrad which are not called Heart of Darkness.

Having acquired the taste, it is now one of the most satisfying feelings I can imagine to sit down and crack the covers on something that measures a couple of inches in thickness. I'm finally reading Shadow Country, Peter Matthieson's final version (900 pp.) of his legend about Mr. Watson, the backwoods killer who was shot down by his neighbors in the Florida Everglades.

And, just to keep things interesting, I've also started in on the three volumes of Shelby Foote's definitive account of the Civil War. Something wonderful happens when you realize the author will take as much time and space as it takes to give you the full picture. Thus we begin with two capsule biographies of Lincoln and Davis, the rival Presidents, and proceed at leisure up to the first conflict at Harper's Ferry.

The reader can sit back with a sigh, confident in the hundreds of pages remaining to unfold the whole tale, and comforted by the other two volumes still waiting on the shelf. When you're having this good a time, the best news you can hear are the words, "To be continued ..."

Book Fair 2010

It's great even when abbreviated ...

This was year 27 of the Miami Book Fair International, and year 50 of its host, Miami-Dade College. I've been attending ever since year one -- even the year when most events were canceled due to severe weather -- and I'm ashamed to say how close to its beginning I attended Miami-Dade College. (Hint: it was the first year of South Campus when we had to attend classes at my old high school because the classroom buildings weren't finished yet).

I could only make it for the final day of this year's fair, but I appreciated all the more the few events I could attend. I started out with some levity in the Mateo Theater, an intimate space with a semicircular stage only about a dozen feet across. T. Cooper presented his odd little work, The Beaufort Diaries, about a polar bear who goes Hollywood. This graphic novel has spawned a video and might grow up to be a feature someday, especially with the attention it's gotten from David Duchovny and Leo DiCapprio. Here's what he showed us, as projected from his MacBook.

Then Vicky Hendricks, Miami's femme fatale of noir, gave us part of a story that takes place in Key West. Let's just say the place is going to the dogs. But you already knew that. This is from her new collection titled, aptly enough, Florida Gothic Stories, a follow up to her appearance in the collection, Miami Noir.


Finally Preston Allen, my old compadre from the Butterfly Lightning reading series (the website is gone but you can still view it at the Internet archive), read from his latest novel, Jesus Boy, about the steamy relations between bible thumper Elwin Parker and a lady old enough to know better. The book has a serious message that goes down more smoothly with its chuckle-provoking coat of sugar.

Fortified by this trio, I felt ready to face Writing On The Edge, an anthology of articles by fiction writers who were invited to witness the work of Doctors Without Borders. Tom Craig interviewed two of these writers, Damon Galgut from South Africa and Hari Kunzru from Great Britain. All the while they were accompanied by a running slide show of images collected from around the world, wherever the good doctors are involved in providing relief.

As the presentation progressed I began to be overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the problem. As it happened, the evening before I had attended a fundraiser for an organization called ProNica that assists the poor in Nicaragua. Coming from that narrow focus on a single locale in a single country, it was devastating to see the same scenes repeated in nation after nation. Just to give you an idea, here's a partial list that I jotted down from the captions in the slide show:

Armenia ... Assam ... Burundi ... Cambodia ... Chad ... Congo ... Morocco ... Palestine ... Sierra Leon ... Somalia ... Sudan ... Ukraine ... Uganda ... and as you can see from the gaps in the alphabet there are many more. One of the panelists quoted Harold Pinter, who said simply, "Most people in the world live in hell." What can be done? Well, if you're a doctor you can sign up for a six to nine month stint in hell, and wake up every day knowing that you will save one or more lives. If you're not a doctor, you can send them some money. It's not much, but it's a start.

After this it was comforting to get a longer view of history. Biographer Stacy Schiff's latest project is Cleopatra:A Life -- though, as she said, considering that her subject lived from 69 to 30 BCE, she wasn't sure if it was biography or paleontology. It's one thing when you can read all of Ben Franklin's letters or interview everyone who knew Richard Feynman, but quite another thing when 2,000 years have passed and the person of interest is a feature of ancient history. Schiff reminded us that over the intervening years the language, culture, religion, and calendar have all changed. Even the topography of Egypt is not what it was -- it's flatter -- and the Nile itself has moved over two miles from where it used to flow.

Given this, she appears to have done wonderful work by going back to the available sources -- what the Romans of the day had to say about Cleo -- and cutting through centuries of myth and romanticism. One notable correction is that the notorious queen was not known for her beauty but for her charisma. Hey, Marc Antony, you're going to love her -- she's got a great personality! She also had an unerring knack for who to get pregnant with, and when. Not a bad way to play the game when you're in the business of hereditary rule.

After grabbing a crepe in the food court I wrapped up my day with a duo of poets (Jim Brock, where were you?). Geoffrey Philp read to us from Dub Wise in his mellifluous Jamaican voice, and Nina Romano from her latest collection titled Cooking Lessons. Don't let this title fool you, though. This is far from an episode on the Food Channel, and Nina evokes far more of life than the satisfaction of appetites. I was particularly taken with the poem about an encounter with a deer in its death throes on a high and dark mountain road. I still have the chills to prove I was listening.

Until next year ...

Times are hard ... anyone want to buy a paper?

Vive Jeanne D'Arc!

Perhaps the greatest heroine in history ...

If you think you're familiar with the story of Joan of Arc, you might want to revisit the history of this remarkable woman. You could read George Bernard Shaw's play, Saint Joan, or do as I did and download a copy of Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc by none other than Mark Twain.

This may seem an odd subject for the author of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, and most of us have never heard of it. But besides being his last novel Twain considered it his finest:

"I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others; twelve years of preparation, and two years of writing. The others need no preparation and got none."

Critics have never agreed with him, and even Mr. Clemens himself must have recognized that it was a departure from the bulk of his work since he first published it under a different pseudonym. Even so, it's an eminently readable tale told with his familiar gusto and killing insight into the depths of human nature. Often his lack of reverence for royalty recalls the "Duck" (duke) floating down the Mississippi on that immortal raft.

The book purports to be a translation of a French manuscript by Joan's page and secretary -- and childhood friend -- as he writes his memoirs late in life. This gives him a narrative vantage point from which to describe her history from country youth to unlikely soldier and liberator of her country, and finally to martyrdom.

Twain was accused of being "infatuated" with the subject of this history, and it's true that through his narrator he allows himself to gush with emotion over her. But in the context of fictional memoir this doesn't seem out of place, but rather in character: an emotional old man recalling a tragedy from his youth.

Through the amazement and enthusiasm of the narrator we are led to an understanding of the magnitude of what Joan accomplished. How is it possible that an illiterant country bumpkin, a slip of a girl just seventeen who had never been outside her own village, was able to inspire the confidence of her king and countrymen and to route occupying armies that had been entrenched for decades?

Perhaps the greatest achievement of the book is to make the story believable as it expands from the dreams and visions of a young girl to sweeping military engagements. Step by step, time and again, young Joan's implacable confidence in her "Voices" and faith in the strength of her Creator overcome all obstacles, however improbable it may seem. And whenever we might be threatened to doubt what happened, we are reminded of the meticulous historical record of the facts.

Much of that record, of course, is due to the trials (it took six of them!) that were arranged by the English to convict Joan of heresy. That she was burned at the stake is an historical fact as iconic as any that has ever been recorded. But in many ways what she accomplished in the course of the trials was her most impressive victory.

She was forced to endure endless questioning by as many as 62 judges arrayed before her, while allowed no legal counsel of her own, and living in chains and darkness during the rest of her days. In spite of this, her testimony is a sustained example of speaking truth to power that exceeds the confrontation of Jesus with Pontius Pilate. Day after day, week after week, month after month, she never admitted to any wrongdoing, never repudiated her faith and belief, avoided every legal trap devised by the opposition, dared to call them on every count of deviousness and blatant disregard of their own laws as they tried to convict her by her own admission.

For example, she was asked if she knew she was in God's grace. Answering Yes would have admitted heresy, because Church doctrine stated that no one could know if they were in a state of grace. Answering No would have admitted that she was guilty of her crimes, since she was not in a state of grace. It was the original Catch 22! Joan's reply?

"If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me."

What makes the story truly tragic is that she was ultimately punished for all the same qualities that made her remarkable, and that her devotion to the simple truth prevented her from making any compromises that might have saved her life. It is a life that was immortalized by being ended so soon. Joan was just nineteen when she was publically incinerated. That was almost 600 years ago, but the flame still burns.

[You can see a contemporary artist's take on Joan 

at Geddes Levenson's "Officially An Artist."]

Blood and Oil

Beware of judging a book by its movie ...

It's always dangerous to see a movie before reading the book it's based on, but in the case of There Will Be Blood I did it anyway, compelled by my admiration for Daniel Day Lewis and the critical acclaim the film had garnered. This is not to say I'm sorry, but it's a case where the film turns out to bear little resemblance to the tale told by the novel.

The dark, brooding portrait of a monomaniacal "oil man" in Paul Thomas Anderson's cinematic fantasy is a study in cold calculation. Lewis's restrained anger, which is destined to burst forth into violence, contrasts dramatically with the raving Evangelical foil of a self-declared preacher. The story comes to be a wrestling match between good and evil. The oil man's obsession with the dark fluid under the earth makes him satanic -- particularly so when lit by the flames of his burning well. The character is deepened by his adoption of the orphaned son of one of the oil field workers. This gives him a human side that would have been lacking otherwise, and makes him more complex.

The movie piqued my curiosity about what Upton Sinclair might have had in mind when he published Oil! back in 1926. Unlike some of his other works such as The Jungle and Metropolis, which are available from public domain sources like Feedbooks and Project Gutenberg, OIL! was only available in traditional print form, so I ordered one from Amazon and plunged in.

How to catalog all the differences? To begin with, the "adopted" son of the film turns out to be a plot device to eliminate a whole range of characters. In the book, the "oil man" is known as Dad from the beginning, with the story told from the POV of his natural son and heir. Rather than the solitary loner of the film, Dad is replete with an estranged wife, a daughter, a sister, and mother, all of whom relocate with the father and son to be close to the latest oil field.

Early on Dad delivers a sales speech to a group of hopeful property owners on whose land he hopes to drill. The speech is repeated nearly word for word in the film, and sets the tone for the methodical nature of this entrepeneur. He's a man who can level with you while stealing the ground from under your feet, and not think any the worse of himself in the process. Once this quotation is over, however, the plots diverge immensely.

The chief victim in the wholesale character eliminations of the film is Paul, the brother of Eli, the preacher. Both are portrayed by the same actor in the film, and they never appear together, so we are led to believe they are a case of split personality which adds to the maniacal character of the "healer" as he strays predictably from the straight and narrow path. But in the novel Paul becomes one of the principle characters, the very embodiment of the workers struggling for justice.

What? Workers? Justice? Right. You'd never guess it from the film, but Sinclair created his Capitalist anti-hero in order to advocate his destruction. The genius of this is the way he gets you to like and admire him first. He's portrayed as the model self-made man, parlaying his gut feelings and street sense into a growing fortune while enriching his country by developing its natural resources. He's seen through the halo of his son's admiration, and in the beginning he's even a boss who treats his employees with decency and respect.

This sympathetic treatment continues throughout the story. Even as Dad is called upon to participate in ever more dastardly deeds to protect his growing empire, it is continually shown that even he is a victim of the system forced to comply with the demands of big business even when it goes against his grain as a compassionate human being.

The son goes by the nickname of "Bunny," though he is also "Jim Junior," sharing his father's name. As he grows up, the story continually broadens in reflection of his widening horizons. Early on he forms an attachment to Paul, Eli's secular brother, who impresses him as someone of complete honesty and lack of interest in money.

Paul goes to work for Dad, but soon takes the side of the oil workers as they organize themselves into a union. Then when World War I breaks out he joins the army, only to end up as part of a contingent of US soldiers guarding the Trans-Siberian railway in Russia.

Where? The book is an education on this chapter of our history, which has been largely swept under the rug. During the civil war that raged after the Russian revolution, the US and its allies actively took the side of the Whites against the Reds, aiding and abetting anyone who wanted to fight them, occupying territory, and supplying arms and troops. This foreign counterinsurgency effort continued long after the armistice that ended the war in Europe. (Any wonder why the Soviet Union was so paranoid about the West?)

Paul returns from this duty thoroughly radicalized, having seen the lengths to which the established powers would go in order to curtail the threat that their own workers might rebel in the same way. From then on he takes up the cause of American workers in this global struggle for rights and dignity, with Bunny following eagerly in his wake.

The scope of the story has gone from the personal to the community -- with Dad greasing the wheels of local politics to get roads built where he wants them -- then to the state and the nation -- as Dad, now a member of a powerful association, plays kingmaker in the Presidential election -- and finally to the global scale of worldwide economic oppression of the masses.

Through all this Bunny is the pivot point, his sympathies for Paul and the workers always at odds with his loyalty to his father and his own inherited wealth and position. As we know, it is not possible to serve two masters, at least not for long. The tension between the two builds as the characters continue to become ever more symbolic of the struggle they are acting out.

The conclusion will be familiar to any student of recent history. Because when faced with the choice between comfort and freedom, which one do we always choose? Yet still we are left with hope, because Bunny -- Jim Junior, his father's son -- was born with a conscience, and the will to exercise it.

Yes, there will be blood, plenty of it, and there's still oil in it.

How I Spent the 17th Century

-- and the early years of the 18th, too ...

When I first spotted the first volume of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle at the book store my initial reaction was "Oh no!" (in the immortal words of Mr. Bill). It was so huge, at 900 pages, and so interesting to me, and so soon to be followed by two sequels of similar length, that all I could see was the huge investment of time I was sure to make in absorbing the whole opus. (The original three volumes were later printed in eight smaller installments, so it's not accurate to call it a trilogy.)

I put it off as long as I could, but this year I bought all three volumes in trade paperback format and wallowed my way through one of the most rewarding reading experiences I can remember. It's not the longest series I've got under my belt -- that distinction goes to the 20 volumes of Patrick O'Brian's epic about the Napoleonic Wars. But Stephenson's efforts are certainly to be classed with O'Brian's as mileposts in historical fiction.

Like O'Brian's work, Stephenson's is global in scope, with historical allusions going back to medieval alchemy and forward to contemporary science, cryptography, computers, and multinational corporate greed. The characters range from the noble in birth to the slave, from the greatest scientific minds of the day (Newton and Leibniz) to the self-centered idiots who generally people the rest of the world.

The principle characters are Daniel Waterhouse, a college roommate of Isaac Newton's who goes on to play a pivotal role in the machinations of the plot; Jack Shaftoe, a mercenary soldier and erstwhile street urchin who becomes a "vagabond king" legendary all over Europe; and one Eliza, a woman who was taken as a slave and escapes from a Turkish harem to become Duchess of the (mythical) island of Qwghlm and a femme fatale of international finance and intrigue.

If those names sound familiar then you must have read Stephenson's earlier work, Cryptonomicon, to which the Baroque Cycle forms an enormous prequel. In that novel, two generations of the 20th century descendants of Waterhouse, Shaftoe, and Eliza fight their way through World War II into the age of the Internet and global finance.

In all, the four volumes constitute a fascinating meditation on the nature of money, the influences of science and mathematics on the real world, and the origins and direction of technology. At the same time, the story is pure adventure, filled with sword fights, desperate battles and escapes from imprisonment, lust and romance, and the old tale of rags to riches -- and rags again -- that never fails to disappoint the reader.

Of course any good novel must come with a villain, and due to its size the Baroque Cycle has room for a number of them, all of whom come to wonderfully satisfying bad ends. But I won't spoil things by naming them or describing their fates. For that you'll just have to buckle up and go along for the ride.

What makes a piece like this work is, in a word, texture. Stephenson has achieved a nearly perfect synthesis of modern narrative with the best features of careful classical description. No detail is so minor that it can't become the subject of historical analysis, or etymology, or lengthy depiction, or all three, until the picture becomes almost like a memory of having had the experience. Repetition plays a role also -- I lost count, for example, of the number of allusions, all of them disgusting, to the Fleet Ditch (later to become Fleet Street) that sliced Baroque London with a reeking open sewer.

But the earthy horrors of the day are counterbalanced by the lofty flights of the first stirrings of modern science, the birth of the Age of Reason. You can argue that it's an age whose time has yet to come, but its aspirations are as timely now as they were 300 years ago. After setting down the last volume, I almost felt as if I'd been reading for that long, or that I could remember what it was like to be there ... how I myself had lived, centuries in the past.

Hey - What's On Your Book?

I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours ...

A while back Apple Computer used to run some ads asking the question, "What do you have on your MacBook?" The results, posted by various celebrities, always seemed to include something like a draft of their novel/memoir/screenplay along with iMovies of the kids, their latest GarageBand album, complete financial history, etc., ad infinitum.

It occurs to me we could start asking people what they have on their eBook readers, whether they be Amazonian, Sonian, or Barnes & Noblean. I, for one, would be proud to show off the veritable library (well, at least one bookcase thereof) that I have on mine.

This corresponds to the shelf in my physical library of books-I-need-to-read-right-now. I usually delete the ones I've read, keeping copies of some on my desktop computer, so everything on the reader is either in progress or yet to be read. One of the wonderful things about these devices is how easy it is to read multiple books at the same time without being limited by how many you are willing to carry around with you. And it always remembers your place in each one.

This is my in-progress list:

Democracy in America - de Toqueville
Last of the Mohecans - Cooper
Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu
Cross Creek - Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
The Diary of Samuel Pepys
Stories from L'Morte d'Arthur
Short Stories by Henry James

Winesburg, Ohio - Sherwood Anderson

And here's the wealth of others just waiting their turn:

On the Origin of Species - Darwin
Hard Times - Dickens
The Mutineers - Charles Hawes
3 Victorian novels by Charles John Cutliffe Wright Hyne (see my review about him)
The Water Babies - Kingsley
Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe
The Longest Journey - E.M. Forster
The Octopus - Frank Norris
Thus Spake Zarathustra - Nietsche
All Things Considered - G.K. Chesterton
Celt and Saxon - George Meredith
3 Western novels by Zane Gray
A Modern Utopia - H.G. Wells
4 novels by J. Fenimore Cooper, other than Last of the Mohecans
The American Scene and The Bostonians - Henry James
3 novels by Joseph Conrad (and none of them is Heart of Darkness)
Essays - Emerson
Plain Tales From the Hills - Kipling
2 novels by Olaf Stapledon
Maggie, A Girl of the Streets - Stephen Crane
The Virginians - Wm. Thackeray
The Voyage Out and Night and Day - Virginia Woolf
The Magician - Somerset Maugham
Leaves of Grass - Whitman
The Sonnets - Shakespeare
Boswell's Life of Johnson
Can Such Things Be? - Ambrose Bierce
Chrome Yellow - Aldous Huxley
Journal of the Plague Year - Defoe

If this doesn't whet your appetite, then you are not a reader of good books. Just two final comments:

(1) The amount of money I paid for these fine examples of literature is zero, zilch, nada. They are freely available online through Project Gutenberg and Feedbooks. You may have noticed that they all date from the period now comfortably in the public domain.

(2) It's true that I'm probably adding to the list faster than I'm deleting the ones I've read, but hey, I'm making progress. And there's plenty of room left in my reader, so bring them on!

(How about you? What's on your book?)

Atoms of Empire

Judging a book not by its cover but by the author's name ...

While browsing on one of my favorite sources for online books, Feedbooks.com, I stumbled across an obscure work called Atoms of Empire. The title caught my eye first, but what really hooked me was the name of the author: Charles John Cutliffe Wright Hyne. How's that for a mouthful? And what an epitome of Victorian respectability it captures in its ringing tones. That settled it. I had to see what Mr. C.J.C.W. Hyne had written.

The concept behind the title is that each individual is an indivisible atomic unit of the society as a whole. Specifically, in whatever far flung reaches of the globe they might find themselves, the intrepid subjects of the Crown were each a representative microcosm of the British Empire. Keep in mind that the work dates from the late 1890's when Victoria was still "Queen of England and Empress of India."

What follows in this collection of short fiction is a marvelous variety of period pieces ranging from droll plots hinging on matrimony to Indiana Jones-style adventures that stretch credulity to the breaking point.

In the opening story a priggish newcomer to an African colony decides to march into the jungle to impose law and order on the cannibal king, armed only with an umbrella. Having made himself universally unpopular, no one sees fit to prevent him from sallying forth to meet his fate.

Elsewhere various adventurers find themselves in the wilds of American swamps, falling victim to brazen train robberies, and fighting a cholera epidemic aboard ship. Then, on the fantastical side, we find out what lurks in an unexplored cave in the heart of the British Isles, and interview a mummy on the floor of an Egyptologist's study. Often the denouement of the story involves an encounter between two of the characters back home in Piccadilly or in the snug confines of their gentlemen's club.

What's enjoyable about these yarns is not just their dry wit but their unselfconscious belief in the triumph of pluck and daring-do. It's like watching old Hollywood movies where the writers, directors, and actors had absolutely no qualms about good triumphing over evil and America vanquishing fascism.

But more than just escape fiction, these stories have acquired a layer of historical interest for what they reveal about the attitudes of their intended readers. Racism, for example, is portrayed in a matter of fact way that has long since (thankfully) ceased being politically correct. Still, there is something refreshing about the use of the word "nigger" by someone who intended no insult by it. Now we are stuck with using the infantile phrase, "the N-word." That's progress for you.

There is precious little biographical information to be found about Hyne online, but in his day (1866-1944) he was a prolific popular novelist who cranked out a whopping 46 volumes during his career. There are a few others available on Feedbooks, including The Lost Continent, and still others thanks to the efforts of Google Books (check on Barnes and Noble), including the likes of Kate Meredith, Financier.

So if Atoms whets your appetite there is plenty to feast upon.

Tales of Space and Time

"Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future." - Niels Bohr

H.G. Wells, author of The Time Machine, Things to Come, and a number of other imaginative novels, also left us a body of shorter works. Some of these are available in a collection called Tales of Space and Time which you can download from Feedbooks.

The first piece in this collection, "The Crystal Egg," was dramatized in a 2001 British TV series titled, "The Infinite Worlds of H.G. Wells" (available from Netflix). It begins in that staple of English fiction, the old curiosity shop, where the proprietor experiments with the peculiar visionary properties of an item on his shelves. Wells' original version is a good yarn, but I confess I like the twist given to it by the TV writers. (In making a series of it, they cast H.G. himself as the protagonist investigating such things as time travel and mysterious teleportations.)

In "The Star," Wells abandons any pretense of telling a story and simply gives us a compelling account of what it might be like for our solar system to suffer a near encounter with a large, bright, hot, and gravitationally powerful interloper. The material could have been delivered as an essay, but by presenting it as a historical account by an omniscient observer, and by weaving in many glimpses from the point of view of common people, the vision becomes much more powerful.

Wells next visits the distant past and the not so distant future. His tale of the primitive man who invented the first ax foreshadows later works such as The Clan of the Cave Bear and William Golding's The Inheritors, while also harking back to Kipling's The Jungle Book with its talking animals. Even though the science behind it is no longer up to date, Wells' vision of it still rings true, as if he was able to imagine his way back to those earlier times. Oh -- and of course the inventor of the ax lived in primordial England.

The future seems to have caused Wells more trouble, for even though he only ventured ahead by 200 years many of his ideas are still hopelessly antiquated. Single young women, for example, still have chaperons, and hypnotism is the state of the art in mental health care. Women still wear fancy hats attached with hat-pins, and marketers are selling "digestive pills." His vaguely depicted flying machines have huge "sails" on them, with people hanging below in "swinging seats." (And you thought you were afraid to fly in a plane!) He accurately extrapolated the movement of the population into the big cities, but failed to see that the same mobility could result in the sprawl of suburbia.

Despite all this, Wells gets one thing right in an uncanny way. His hero and heroine are star-crossed lovers from different classes (and don't tell me that's an anacronism) who develop an antipathy for the status quo that is eerily reminiscent of the counterculture of the 1960's. They leave the city to try living in an abandoned town in the country (back to the land!), and when that doesn't work out they end up doing manual labor in the underbelly of society where everyone wears "blue canvas" clothing (jeans?). They even have their own ideas about child rearing that sets them at odds with the system of public "creches" where the infants of the future are raised. This foreshadows the darker vision of Huxley's Brave New World, in which the hero also left society to try living in the wilds of South America where it was still possible to be free.

As I've mentioned before (here and here), those who would foretell the future are taking a big risk, and science fiction writers are among the most daring of the lot. As Paul Valery said, "... the future is not what it used to be." Things are changing so rapidly that yesterday's future resembles yesterday more than today, and much more than tomorrow. Just consider some past images of the future on display at Paleofuture.com ("a look into the future that never was").

But we have to give the venerable Wells his due. Like Jule Verne, Jonathan Swift, and others who went before, by boldly imagining what had never been imagined he helped to create the space of possibility in which the future, come what may, is still unfolding.

Long Live Big Brother!

1984 becomes the first unbook, but probably won't be the last ...


What a coincidence -- no sooner was the digital ink dry on my recent blog about the 25th anniversary of 1984 than Orwell's notorious novel made news again by disappearing from Amazon's Kindle readers everywhere. This must mean it's time to reflect once more about the issue of copyright and rights management in the digital era.

Apparently Amazon was notified by the legitimate copyright owners that their digital editions of 1984 and also Animal Farm had been obtained from an illegitimate third party source, so they were obliged to stop distributing them. What makes the story bizarre, and should put consumers on alert, is that Amazon went way beyond what was required of them and decided to use their "Whispernet" back door into all Kindles everywhere to recall (i.e., delete) all the copies that had been downloaded previously.

Customers received refunds, but were not even told that their books were now vanished as if they had never been. They had become "unbooks."

Now, as everyone should remember, Winston Smith, the diligent worker bee of Orwell's imaginary world, toiled away at his desk in the Ministry of Truth carefully excising past references to news that had been revised and people who had been done away with: "unpersons." He did this by pasting brown paper over their pictures in old newspapers, and by redacting the text until it resembled a passage of testimony on the Iran-Contra affair. The operative government slogan was: Who controls the present, controls the past. Who controls the past, controls the future.

But just when we thought we were safe because things have worked out differently, along comes this new digital technique capable of instantly removing all references to any digital content. The battle is not lost yet, because regardless of Amazon's deletions there are still lots of hard copies of Orwell out in the world, and perhaps some legitimate digital copies as well -- maybe even a fugitive one living on a Kindle somewhere, saved only because it is in some remote area of the planet where Whispernet cannot reach. But the example shows what is possible and should give us cause for concern.

With the immanent demise of the print editions of all newspapers, we will soon get used to the idea that our sole source for information is the digital archives of the Internet. And alas, the memory of online sources is brief and subject to loss and revision. Under a regime with the will to do so (let's pick China as an example), the nerve-nexuses of the Internet can be constricted, spying software can be installed on your computer by law, and what you can and cannot access can become very much a matter of centralized control.

And never mind deleting books or articles -- how about just revising them, perhaps while they are still being read? Remember that election last year where our editor lambasted the other party's candidate? Well, as you can see, you are mistaken, because he was clearly backing the winner from the start. Remember the famous photo of the young man standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square? Well, your memory must be playing tricks on you, because you can search all day and you will never again find a copy of that photo.

Our defense against this potential tyranny is still vigilance, as always. The battle of information flow between the top-down central authority model and the bottom-up grass roots model gives hope that there is at least an alternative. But we also need to start choosing our battles while we can still win them. Digital Rights Management, or DRM, is still a winnable debate.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act has stripped us of some basic rights that we used to take for granted when we bought a book or record. We need to make up our minds to resist. We can do it economically, by boycotting publishers and distributors who engage in practices we don't approve of, or politically, by demanding legislative change, or in courts, where organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation are standing up on our behalf. (Check out their take on this issue here.)

One commentator on the irony of this fate befalling 1984 observed that it might have been even more ironic if it had happened to Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, about a society that had burned all its books. But there is probably small chance of that happening as long as the publishers need to have something to sell us. Rights management is really about having a way to sell us the same thing multiple times, the way we are expected to pay every time we watch a movie.

I'm much more concerned about the possibility that the next time I read it there will be something funny about the ending of 1984. Winston Smith, bright and shiny after graduating from the rehab program in the basement of The Ministry of Love, joins the Anti-Sex league with his pal Julia. They move into a plush new apartment suitable for Inner Party members and live happily ever after. Winston can't imagine what ever got into him to question things the way he did. But that's all in the past now, where it can be safely ... revised.

An Anthem for Anathem

In the age of digital books, this one deserves a hard copy ...

As a long time fan of novelist Neal Stephenson and a new fan of the Long Now Foundation, when I heard that the latest novel of the former was inspired by the 10,000 Year Clock project of the latter, I hurried to order a copy. And while it might seem that science fiction -- or speculative fiction, to use a newer term -- would be perfect to read in digital form, something compelled me to acquire Anathem not only printed on paper but hard bound as well.

Of course, this would not suit the denizens of the novel itself. To the "avout" who live in the hermetic society of the "math," mechanically printed books are too transient to be considered of value. All of their books are copied by hand onto leaves grown in orchards of "page trees," genetically engineered to produce a ready made paper with great longevity. Unstated is the corollary that only books considered important enough to warrant the effort will be copied by hand, which effectively culls the libraries of chaff and leaves only those works of enduring value.

[A similar idea appears in Robert Graves' utopian novel, Watch the North Wind Rise, in which poems are written in chalk and only when they have survived long enough are finally engraved in gold to be kept for all time. Not sure if this is a writer's dream or nightmare.]

Anathem is one of those books that comes with a glossary for the various unfamiliar terms of its internal language, though many of them become apparent from their usage. The most important concepts are also introduced by extracts from the Dictionary that appear as chapter preambles. Some of the words are English, but with modified meanings. A "math," for example, is a place where a certain mental discipline is followed. Other terms have been invented to fit the needs of the narrative. "Avout" is used the way we use "devout" when we say "one of the devout," except that the avout scrupulously avoid the concept of divinity in their pursuit of pure logic and knowledge. Thus the prefix "a-" to mean without belief. Those who do believe in God are called "deolaters" (not idolaters, which would imply false gods) and are found only in the world outside the maths.

One thing that becomes plain late in the story and which you might as well know at the beginning (because Stephenson tells us in his foreward), is that the planet called Arbre is not Earth. Letting go of this at the outset helps to explain how Arbre can have such a long history without any of it sounding familiar -- though there are, intentionally, many parallels to human history, especially the history of religion, philosophy, and science.

Beyond that, the less you know going in, the more you will enjoy the unfolding of this tale as it grows in scale and complexity. At first a sense of timelessness is created as we are introduced to a social order that thinks in terms of centuries and millenia, isolated by physical walls and social conventions from the surrounding civilization. But soon one of the characters expresses a wish that someday something would ... happen. And of course it does, as it must in any good novel. In a very satisfying way, something momentous works its way up from the depths until it bursts to the surface like a whale, shattering the quiet lives of the contemplatives and threatening global survival.

Should we compare it to Moby Dick? Probably not, but the quest for the explanation and resolution is as compelling as Ahab's obsession. And Anathem is a rare thing in contemporary literature of any kind: a novel of ideas. Though it owes something to Umberto Ecco's The Name of the Rose in its depiction of a monastic life, it also invites comparison to The Magic Mountain of Thomas Mann or The Glass Bead Game of Herman Hesse. Where else would we find the characters (and the author) indulging in lengthy Socratic dialogs about logic and a priori truth? This is not your father's sci fi.

There is such a wealth of this type of material that several sections have been stripped out (perhaps at the suggestion of an editor) and appear in the back of the book as "Calcas," or logical exercises. The cuts were made judiciously, because while they are interesting reading by themselves they are not as relevant to the plot as the ones that remain in the body of the novel.

But by all means, don't let this imposing array of features deter you from reading. Anathem is a ripping good yarn that even manages to encompass a love story. And it is one of the most richly depicted worlds in all of literature. Dive in and feast.

Back to the Future

New variations on traveling through time ...

Nothing is more fun than time travel in the arena of science fiction. Ever since H.G. Wells came up with the original Time Machine in his 1895 novel, hordes of others have continued to explore the possibilities and paradoxes of moving at will through the medium we are normally stuck in.

A recent effort is Joe Haldeman's The Accidental Time Machine. In this one, an MIT lab assistant discovers that his latest gadget, a "calibrator" that serves as the novel's McGuffen or plot instigator, has the unintended characteristic that pressing its reset button sends it into the future. He quickly discovers a further flaw -- not only does it move only forwards in time, but it does so by a factor of twelve times farther each time.

It doesn't take long for him to figure a way to go along for the ride, and the adventure begins. Each jump takes him to a future world stranger than the one before, and complications soon have him hoping to find someone still farther ahead who might be able to send him back home.

An old favorite of mine is The Fall of Chronopolis (1974) by Barrington Bayley, unfortunately now out of print. It involves a war fought between two empires millennia apart, and their attempts to undo one another by altering each other's past. The final cataclysm turns the universe inside out and starts it over again, like a computer that crashes and reboots.

The book includes an interesting variant on the old paradox about what happens if you go back in time and meet yourself there. The character aptly named "Narcis" goes into the future and kidnaps himself back to the past so his twin selves can live in wedded bliss. The only problem is that they will eventually arrive at the night when a stranger from the past comes to kidnap one of them, leaving the other alone again.

Just for laughs, there's a short story called "A Niche In Time" that I remember from the 1950's or 60's, by an author I can't recall. It involves a man named Harry Styne who uses a time machine to avoid prosecution for murder by jumping ahead of the statute of limitations. Confronted with this dilemma the judge finds for the defendant, stating, "in this case, a niche in time saves Styne." [Groan, groan.]

But seriously, folks ... Perhaps the best thought-out successor to Wells' original is The Time Ships, Stephen Baxter's sequel that picks up where Wells left off with the return of the Time Traveler from the world of 800,000 years in the future. He plans to go back to where he left little Weena of the Eloi falling victim to the vicious Morlocks, only this time he will be prepared to rescue her and to bring proper (Victorian) civilization back to humankind.

The plan immediately unravels, however, when he finds that the future he saw on his first voyage is no longer there -- somehow by traveling forward and back he has altered things completely. And this of course means that the past has changed as well, and that he will never have a home to return to.

This book, which was sanctioned by Wells' literary estate, does a great job, especially at the beginning, of resuming the old narrative voice of the original. Along the way Baxter investigates several alternate histories located in the past as well as the future, and ends in the "multiverse" where the infinite strands of possibility all collide. Bringing his hero back from that is quite a trick. But remember, in sci-fi all things are possible -- regardless of how probable.

One more short piece on the subject is Cory Doctorow's "A Place So Foreign," which leads off with the information that the father of the boy hero is "the ambassador to 1975" (from the year 1898). But we soon see that it is not the 1975 we know, but a radically more futuristic one resembling that of the Jetsons. Eventually we learn that the problem is that time travel is causing the future to "leak backwards" as technologies migrate into the past along with those who travel back and forth.

Perhaps our fascination with this subject is because we are all time travelers, even though like the hero of The Accidental Time Machine we can move in one direction only. The older we grow, the further back our memories extend, and the less familiar the world around us comes to seem. Eventually we must all end up displaced, born into one century but living and dying in another, like ambassadors from the past, strangers in a strange land, with no way to get back home.

[Does futurism have a future? See this article from New Scientist on the future of science fiction itself.]