Books: Galactic North, Case of Conscience, Sky Filled With Ships, and Doc Savage

[woodwardiocom]

Galactic North by Alastair Reynolds

This is a collection of short stories set in Reynolds' Revelation Space Universe, home thus far to four novels and two novellas. They are set in a core sample of eras from that universe, starting in the near future and proceeding to far distant millenia. Like most of Reynolds' work, they tend to be about assorted cyborgs with warring agendas being forced to work together to survive some technology out of control. One of the mainstays of Reynolds' shorts is that you can guess there will be a twist coming in the last few pages, and he does an excellent job of setting up red herrings, so you're never sure what the twist will be. This is both a good collection of stories in its own right, and a good introduction to the RS Universe, so: Recommended.

A Case of Conscience by James Blish

This was one of the few Hugo-winning novels I'd never read (though I'd thought I had, until I realized it wasn't part of the Cities in Flight arc). Premise: A Jesuit biologist is part of a team investigating a world of intelligent aliens, and what he learns about their biology shakes him to his core.

The problem here is that the novel depends on the conceit that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny is A) actually true, and B) that the Catholic church regards it as threatening ('cause it's "proof" of evolution, you see). The aliens in this world go through the same recapitulation as humans, but as children, not as embryos, thus providing visible "proof" of evolution. Our protagonist thus decides that this world, despite being an apparent utopia, must be the work of the devil, and is a threat to the souls of all humanity.

So, yes, two problems, really. First, the plot depends upon the reader accepting recapitulation theory as being true, when it was completely disproven even in the 1950s, when this book was written. Second, we have to emphasize with our Jesuit hero, who believes these benevolent aliens must be wiped out because they are proof that God is not necessary or real. It's kind of hard to find him sympathetic.

All that said, I generally approve when SF bothers to acknowledge that current religions might still exist in the future, and while I find the hero misguided, I still liked his intellectual rigor, founded on false premises though it may be. Moderately recommended.

The Sky is Filled with Ships by Richard C. Meredith

I picked this one up at Lorem Ipsum Books in Cambridge because of the title. Plot: A captain of the Interstellar Trading Company must convince his corrupt management that they shouldn't take sides in the war between Earth and its colonies, since no one can win the war, and it's important that the Company and its ideals of free trade survive to be the core of the next civilization. It's mostly a minor action novel, with brief interludes of Libertarian philosophy, which (like so many books of its era) shows us how decadent future Earth society is by the fact that men wear codpieces and women wear open-front blouses. What exactly was wrong with mid-20th-century SF authors that they consistently regarded the visible female breast as a signifier of societal decay? Anyway, not particularly recommended.

Doc Savage: Resurrection Day and Repel by Lester Dent writing as Kenneth Robeson

Nostalgia Ventures has been reissuing the classic Doc Savage novels in 2-for-1 volumes. I hadn't had much opportunity to read them before, so I grabbed a few. My discovery: Doc has all the personality of a brick wall. It's also easy to see why Ham and Monk were the only members of the Fabulous Five to stick around for the full run, since even their one-note personalities are the only heroic ones present. The villains are much more interesting, and they never survive the book (except for the Light, who, by virtue of appearing in two books, therefore must be Doc's archenemy). So, while it's good to see all the pulp cliches in their original form, I can't honestly recommend these to anyone not a student of the genre.

Comments

[signsoflife.livejournal.com]

Okay, I was all like, "I could have sworn that was 'A Case of Consilience,' and I hadn't realized it'd been expanded into a novel, and, huh, wasn't that just a couple years ago? Jon's talking like it's a classic."

And then I did my due-dilligence googling, and am more informed than I was ten minutes ago.

[signsoflife.livejournal.com]

By the way, I recommend "A Case of Consilience" to all readers who find the general "evangelical Christian dealing with aliens" concept interesting.

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

Merci for pointing it out, 'twas good.

[drwex]

Case of Conscience drove me sufficiently batty that I had to stop reading it. I can only yell "no, you idiot, get past your prejudices" at a protagonist so often before I give up on that character.

[unseelie23.livejournal.com]

A Case of Conscience is pretty dated, both for the reasons you list and because the Catholic Church actually accepts the Theory of Evolution. To be fair, I'm not exactly sure when this occurred, so it's possible that they did not when the book was written. It's nice to see an acknowledgement of current faiths still existing, but those faiths change as well.

[sleepyworm.livejournal.com]

What exactly was wrong with mid-20th-century SF authors that they consistently regarded the visible female breast as a signifier of societal decay?

Seems like a sensible view to me; I mean, if god had intended for breasts to be visible, we'd be born naked.

[herbmcsidhe.livejournal.com]

My favorite Blish novels are still Black Easter and The Day after Judgement; together they are the "third part" of the trilogy that begins with A Case of Conscience.

Doc Savage was a fun and quick read when I was a teen, but he certainly could have used a more defined personality!

[(Anonymous)]

"After Such Knowledge". The apparently-not-very-religious Blish playing SF writer with religious concepts, from multiple angles.

Though I still favour the other book in that set - Doctor Mirabilis - if only for Bacon's fever-dream of the future.

--
Phil Masters