What’s the Point of a Genre?

Working at the bookstore, I come across a constant annoyance: trying to put a book into its proper place, using BITS, the internal store inventory system. The program is antiquated, clunky and a pain to use, and whomever is hired to enter the information into the system in the first place should be duct-taped off the ground and had rotten fruit thrown at them. It would be a good incentive to get the information entered in correctly and consistantly. Still, while annoyed about this the other night at the store, a thought came to me that’s been further pushed along by a post from John Scalzi on his blog, Whatever.

This recent post highlights something that I’ve noticed within the SF genre, and fandom: a general cry to be recognized by the literary establishment as a whole. Science Fiction, in general, has been trivialized by a number of establishments and authors of other genres – Margaret Atwood’s comments come to mind at just how against being labeled in the genre some peopel can be: “Science fiction has monsters and spaceships; speculative fiction could really happen”, and “Oryx and Crake is a speculative fiction, not a science fiction proper. It contains no intergalactic space travel, no teleportation, no Martians.” (From the Guardian and Book of the Month Club).

To some extent, there’s good reason for this – early science fiction, while fun, is loaded with rubbish, pulp and childish stories that were primarily geared towards selling as many copies as possible to the lowest common denominator demographic. Atwood’s characterization of the genre is highly flawed – science fiction is far more than intergalactic travel and aliens, and while that’s a common element, I see little difference between the superficial elements such as those, and the elements that contain a so-called speculative fiction. In the end, it’s the story that really matters, and provided that an author can put together a compelling plot and array of characters, I’ve often found that those more unbelievable elements, such as ‘monsters’ and intergalactic travel works out just fine.

Scalzi’s argument brings up a further version of this point – if the surrounding plot elements don’t matter all that much – and I’ve noticed an increasing number of books with horror, science fiction, paranormal, fantasy, urban fantasy and other themes – where does the overall label matter when it comes to books? Indeed, with the aforementioned types, they’re all lumped into the same small section in the larger bookstores, usually towards the back so the bookstore owners can hide the nerds and geeks from the rest of the cliental. (You know, kind of how the pretty people in gyms are always working out next to the windows?) I personally love the science fiction genre for its ability to tell stories, in addition to the settings and out there concepts that generally crop up. However, my enjoyment of one particular genre doesn’t necessarily cloud my feelings towards books of another, nor does the label on the back of the book affect how I feel about another genre.

To some extent, I think that the argument is largely fueled by egos and excess time of overeducated people, and out of marketing necessity. Since much of bookselling comes out of browsing, it makes sense to group books accordingly, by genre, which is in turn placed on a pedestal, as something that is so profound, it can’t possibly be associated with other books that have the reputation as science fiction / fantasy has.

This is where I have problems with the people who insist that any one particular genre is worthy of attention more so than the others. The same issue appears in Military History – I had a reading about this very same issue, as Military History is percieved by the larger academic community as an unimportant, somewhat annoying little cousin that wants to join in on the fun. Unfortunately, with the more established genres pushing out the newer ones, they miss out on a number of really good stories and insights into their fields. Cormac McCarthy’s book The Road is arguably one of the better books of the past decade, and it won the Pulitzer Prize, despite the post-apocolptic storyline that appeals to the many followers of the ‘geek’ genre. Still, it wasn’t marketed as such.

Marketing aside, I think the best alternative to all of this would be to get rid of the genre labels, sort out everything between fiction and non-fiction sections and shelve everything by the author’s last name. Non-fiction can be sorted by subject, while people can just figure out what they like ahead of time and just go by author. Scalzi’s hit on a huge point – this is an intellectual argument that really doesn’t matter in the long run. Honestly, if Science Fiction starts scoring more people, longtime fans will just find something else to complain about – the new fans who don’t have quite the same appreciation for the genre as they do.

Slave to the Traffic Light

Driving is something that I’ve become very interested in over the past year or so, and something that I’ve been interested in learning more about. It’s very rare that I come across a book that really challenges a lot of the perceptions that I have about something, but Tom Vanderbilt’s fantastic examination of driving, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What It Says About Us) really did the trick. Traffic looks at, well, Traffic, in all of its numerous and complicated elements, and in doing so, has become a book that is absolutely essential for everyone who gets behind the wheel of an automobile, and even those who come across a road with any regularity. Vanderbilt has put together a wonderfully comprehensive, exhaustive and accessible read that explains just why we drive the way we do and what it says about us.

There are several main arguments and elements of driving that Vanderbilt covers over the course of the book. The first is largely psychological, looking at the first major aspect of driving: The Driver. Without a driver, a car just sits in the driveway or a parking lot, and is for all intents and purposes, harmless. Putting a person behind the wheel subjects the car, driver and passengers to the judgment, attention and skill of the driver.

Attention seems to be the most important element for the driver, and this is something that Vanderbilt tackles right away in the book. Driver error is arguably one of the leading causes of crashes, and in this day and age, there’s certainly no shortage of things to distract the driver, from other cars on the road, to mobile phones that are increasingly more complicated. Vanderbilt explains that driving is an extremely complicated process, and that in order to drive around safely without crashing into anything, the brain receives and processes a lot of information – eye tracking cameras have found that a driver is looking all over the place, to the side of the road, in front of the car and ahead, all while analyzing their surroundings and making decisions accordingly that minimize the risk to the occupants. In the instance of driving, eating, talking, fiddling with the radio and so forth, the brain has to essentially divert resources and stimuli in order to properly make those actions. Drivers who look down to text on their phone take their eyes off the road while moving, which creates an incredibly dangerous situation, as the car, moving at speed, is now captained by a driver who isn’t acting on their surroundings.

Besides the driver looking at the road, the mentality of the drivers also comes into play. Vanderbilt describes the road as a place where a number of people who don’t know each other must interact and cooperate, for the good of the system. Humans are social creatures – look to the difficulty of communicating online, where you are deprived of access of someone’s voice and subsequent inflections, facial cues and so forth, and think back to the last time someone honked at you, passed aggressively, and so forth – the road is a place where numerous people come together, with a huge variety of training, habits and attitudes, and where there is virtually no feedback as to how you are doing on the road. Vanderbilt notes that just because a driver doesn’t get into an accident, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they aren’t a poor driver – they’ve just been lucky. Most problems on the road stem from these relationships between drivers – miscommunications, the absence of communication and drivers not interpreting traffic correctly. As more drivers enter the road – and Vanderbilt notes that traffic is on the rise in the United States – it becomes more crucial for people to work better together while on the road.

 

Congestion and traffic is the next major issue that is covered in the book. It is noted several times that as highways were constructed in the 1950s and 1960s, they were put together with a certain intent for capacity. In the ensuing years since these roads were constructed, the ceilings for traffic volume has shot through the roof and roads are carrying far more than they were ever intended for. Vanderbilt looks at several issues associated with this: the various ways in which traffic is dealt with, but also how some solutions are really not solutions at all. With a higher volume of vehicles on the roads, Vanderbilt notes that traffic systems have to jockey all these cars around – traffic lights and signs have been longtime elements that have managed traffic, but have severe limitations. Similarly, their very presence impacts the behavior in of cars in ways that are sometimes counter to what is good for the overall system. Traffic lights stop cars completely, which stops the vehicles behind them. Once the green light clicks on, cars go though, but there is an inherent risk there, as cars travel through a projected path of the cars to the side of the intersection. I’ve long been a fan of rotaries – there is one here in Montpelier, with another one just opened after a couple months of construction, and I believe that they should be put into far more widespread use, as it not only keeps traffic moving smoothly (once people get used to using them), but it keeps drivers on their toes, rather than automatically expecting that they will be safe going through an intersection.

A major issue with congestion is traffic volume, and how driving impacts the rest of an overall system. Vanderbilt notes that often times, roads can handle a high number of cars, provided that there are no bottlenecks, such as accidents and slow-moving cars. He compares the system to a bucket of rice going through a funnel. A certain volume can be handled going through, but with more and more added, everything backs up. He cites one example of stop-lights that monitor the volume of an interstate, and will allow cars on accordingly, at lulls in the system, allowing traffic to move smoothly as a whole. At times, what is best for an individual driver can be harmful to the overall health of the system.

With that in mind, consider that the best thing for the system as a whole is the health and well being of the driver, and in order for that to be achieved most often, drivers need to drive safely, and to be alert. Vanderbilt suggests an argument that on the face seems very counter-intuitive, but one that makes a lot of sense: In order for drivers to be safer, they need to drive in unusually unsafe conditions. Think back to the time when you drove in unfamiliar territory, or a road that was somewhat dangerous, such as a mountain road. I’ve done that recently, and remembered that I was more alert, a little slower, and more conscious of my surroundings. Thus, I was paying far more attention to the road, and less on what was far less important, such as my mobile phone. This argument has been tried out in various countries, where municipalities have removed road signs from the road in order to make drivers more aware of their surroundings. The result was fewer accidents, not more, as drivers were forced to pay more attention to the cars and roadside than before, where they could not assume safety in the regulations.

Branching off from that argument, Vanderbilt notes that there is an increasingly seductive move to give drivers more space, more warning, and more comfort in order to take cars further apart from one another, or to give drivers more warnings about hazards. The result is that drivers feel more comfortable with their surroundings, but instead of making the road safer, it provides a sense of security that allows drivers to drive more hazardously. Top Gear, the popular BBC show, has ranted about an excess of road signs, placed in towns to mitigate liability for accidents, such as ‘Falling Rocks’ (What am I meant to do with that information) and ‘Changed Priorities Ahead’ (I’d been thinking that I’ll be more responsible, pay off my mortgage and eat healthier, but when I saw that, I said screw it, I’ll go to the pub). Similarly, cities with large numbers of bicycles and pedestrians have noted trends that follow this information: as drivers are more aware of less protected people, they tend to act accordingly. I recently read an article on a city that saw an increase in bike traffic, and rather than a rapid rise in collisions, there were fewer. The problem as I see it is that that drivers do not realize that driving is an inherently risky activity – seatbelts, airbags, crumple zones and the like give us the illusion that we are safer than we really are. To be fair, these instruments are still essential – it may make drivers feel safer, but in an accident, they will absolutely help to save people’s lives.

The overall effect of this book is taking a familiar activity and looking at it in an incredible amount of detail. Prior to reading this book, I had no idea of much of the information, and after reading it, I’ve noticed a number of bad habits with my own driving – things that I’m mindful of now that I’m going to be working to correct. At the very least, I, and I’m sure far more people, are largely unaware of how our actions impact those around us. I’ve gone, in my mind, from a good driver to an average one, and I’m honestly surprised that I haven’t been in an accident before. It’s a revelation that needs to be imparted to the rest of the driving population, simply because of one chilling statistic: every time you drive, you have a 1 in a 100 chance of dying in a car accident over the course of your lifetime. This book, in a way, is about risk-management, and examining driving in a way that helps us become more aware of the risks that we take every time we get behind the wheel of the car. Similarly, it helps to put into perspective just how traffic works. It will certainly make me more responsible, knowing the overall context the roadway.

It’s Gonna Be The Future Soon

One of the main elements of the science fiction genre is the future. Looking to the future extends far beyond just the world of Science Fiction, but to speculative fiction, religion, the business and military worlds, and indeed, is a question that everyone inevitably asks, can we predict what will happen next? George Friedman’s latest book, The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century purports to just that. While Friedman makes a number of interesting, and at times, good points, the resulting work is deeply flawed in its reasoning. I’ve since reviewed this book for io9 – much of the summary for the book can be found here.

There are three major points that I took issue with when it came to this book, which are instrumental to the book’s findings: lack of sources, an overemphasis and reliance on history and the assumption that the world will return to similar political connections that characterized the Cold War. However, while this is the case, Friedman imparts a very important lesson through this book, reminding the reader that history and nations work with a sort of cause and effect mentality, where x event causes y reaction over z time. Major events take years to build and grow, and an essential thing for the reader to keep in mind is that the world and political structure can change over the course of twenty to thirty years.

This book has no index, notes or sources anywhere in the book, which is odd, considering the number of places that there should be some sort of citation, such as a UN report citing declines in birthrates, or historical information on the political stance of a country. The result of this is a lengthy opinion piece that gets stranger and stranger as the decades pile up. Unfortunately for the book, this does nothing to help with the book’s credibility, despite the author’s credentials, and essentially turns it into an extended op-ed. With no scholarly information to back up the author’s assertions, the book rests on the idea that the author knows just what he is talking about, and given some of the things that he comes up with, I am more inclined to file this under fiction, rather than non-fiction.

Much of the book’s reasoning seem fairly flawed to me. Friedman, right off the bat, suggests that what he terms the US-Jihadist war (This should probably be Western-Jihadist war, in all actuality) is merely a small problem that will go away within a couple of years. I’m not well versed in the intelligence community or up on the current information, but I would imagine that that’s as far from the truth as you can get. The conflict that’s ongoing in the Middle East is one that has been brewing for years, even decades. Israel, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and others close by have long-seated issues with the United States and the Western world, fueled by extremists who believe that our way of life is detrimental to theirs, and have literally been killing themselves to try and stop us. This is not a problem that will vanish without many of those underlying problems being corrected, which I don’t see happening. Furthermore, Friedman fails to take into account how things will change with time – the importance of petroleum, for example, which is not a sure thing. What will the effects of climate change legislation have on nations, and how will changes in these resources affect countries. Furthermore, South America, Oceania and Africa are barely mentioned throughout the book.

Friedman hangs his hat on this one assumption – that the global war on fundamentalist terrorists will go away, and that the world will resume tensions that were in existence during the Cold War. He predicts that Russia will consolidate its power and a Russian bloc in Europe. While there are indications that this is happening, I don’t believe that it will be anything like what happened before, and that the US will essentially enter another Cold War. Furthermore, down the road, he predicts that the eventual demise of Russia will lead to the rise of Japan, Turkey and Poland, which I find somewhat more unlikely, at least with Poland and Japan.

Much of his reasoning in these instances depends upon historical record and what has gone on before with these countries. He notes that Japan, despite its recent pacifism, will return to warlike routes and eventually challenge the United States. Turkey will do the same. I find Turkey’s case slightly more reasonable, because of its diplomatic ties, stability and economy. In addition to these two countries, he also cites German and Russian tendencies to war. This to me is a particularly dangerous assumption, because countries and cultures are redeemable, as seen with Japan. Countries will not go to war or suddenly become aggressive simply because they have done so in the past. Japan has become incredibly tame, with a culture and multiple generations of people to support that. Germany similarly. Warfare, as Clausewitz notes, is an extension of political policy, and with a culture that is largely against war and conflict supporting a political structure, a highly militant Japan rising again seems unlikely. Friedman’s assertions that by the middle of the century, with lunar bases and ‘Battle Stars’ operated by the United States, are on the face ridiculous. (The cost alone of creating the International Space Station, which houses 6 scientists is in the trillions – the prices for stations that house people in the hundreds is magnitudes higher. Even then, with a mindset of defense against other nations, this still doesn’t fly.) But, even then, the idea that the Japanese will bomb these US facilities in a Pearl Harbor-esque attack on Thanksgiving evening is just nothing sort of laughable. History certainly has its place, but it cannot be used reliably to predict the future with an instance such as this. Analyze trends and motivations, yes, but using a country’s prior methods of warfare, in this manner, is pure fiction.

This is unfortunate, because the book is presented as fact and not necessarily as an exercise in history or how to think about how these events might work in the future. The result is a ridiculous and absurd argument for a return to older political thinking from people who were immersed in that world for so long.

Review: Old Man’s War

Now that I’m done with my Master’s, I’ve been finding myself with lots of free time. Fortunately, I’ve amassed a small pile (okay, quite large) of books that I’m starting to tackle. Right close to the top was Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi, which was recommended to me by a number of io9 readers after releasing a list of top military SF books and films. I hadn’t included this book because I was unfamiliar with it, but after reading it, it certainly deserves a place on the list.

Old Man’s War was Scalzi’s first science fiction novel, and for it, he won the John Campbell Award for best new writer. The story follows John Perry, a seventy-five year old man on Earth who has joined the Colonial Defense Force (CDF). People of his advanced age are specifically recruited because of their lifetime of experiences. He receives a new body, bonds with new fellow recruits and goes into training to become an advanced soldier. Humanity has spread to the stars, and its numerous colonies are largely under constant threat from other alien races throughout the galaxy. Perry goes into action with his unit against numerous races in a number of various battles, before a fateful final battle that leaves him the only survivor.

This is a fun read. Scalzi does a good job conceptualizing a futuristic warrior, the training and captures the battlefield and training bond between soldiers. A constant theme that is explored throughout the book is the idea of fighting for humanity, as a race, despite being a radical variation of said race, while not fighting specifically for a unified government or planet. The soldiers go from fighting for a grand concept such as the survival and foothold of the human race to something much smaller and more concrete, fighting for the survival of their unit.

Fans of military science fiction will really enjoy this book for the tech and action. Scalzi sets some fantastic battles throughout the story, and does a good job linking some of them together along with John Perry’s reaction to warfare and his role that he’s playing. A particular draw of military science fiction is the advanced super soldier, and Scalzi’s green, cat-eyed, rapidly healing and computer interfaced soldiers are nothing new to the genre, but they are fun to read about, and provides just enough new twists to the concept to make it modern and interesting.

On the whole of it, the book is a very standard military science fiction novel. It is a fun read, but it has a number of flaws throughout that substantially weakened the novel. The first of these is the title of the novel, and the gimmick that is relied on – the use of old men and women as soldiers, because supposedly their lifetime of experiences will help with their combat experience. This is only touched upon in the book – it’s noted that soldiers have a lifetime of experiences to undo, and throughout the novel, Perry only references his old life back on Earth a handful of times. There’s very little practical help that a long life really provides for a soldier, save for one, and that’s the link to humanity and earth, but even then, that is not utilized in a way that it really could have been, and all in all, older soldiers are really no different than younger ones, given the tech and upgrades that they receive. Furthermore, the end of the book sees the introduction of the Ghost Brigades, experimental soldiers who have grown up fighting, who seem to be generally more effective than the regular soldiers. This entire aspect of the book left me wanting for more.

The last quarter of the book felt incredibly rushed to me. An alien race has utilized a new technology that proves to be devastating to the human ships during one of the final conflicts in the novel, and Perry is assigned to help the Ghost Brigades capture the devices on the planet. This to me seemed to have very little relation to the experiences that Perry had accumulated throughout the book, breaking an overall good story and character arc, and it misses the vital arguments above that would have helped link Perry’s motives in the military with the rest of the human race. Instead, it was a final bang and exposition to which the book ends and it left me both disappointed that there wasn’t some revelations to be found from the characters, and that it seemed to just exist for the sole purpose of the next book, titled The Ghost Brigades.

Scalzi falls into a trap that a lot of military science fiction writers seem to fall into: take soldiers, enhance them, and then turn them loose against alien foes. Essentially, most military science fiction novels utilize military doctrine and tactics that seem to be right out of the Second World War 2 or Vietnam, with little exploration to how the military actually works, and how military tactics change to reflect new technology. Infantry warfare is one of the earliest types of warfare, and I honestly find it difficult to believe that it will exist in the future as it is portrayed. There is no mention of other styles of fighting, such as maneuver warfare that pairs up infantry with armored forces, or the capabilities of air power against infantry forces. A quick survey of warfare in the past couple of decades will show that both are as equally important as infantry forces. Indeed, this is the future, with far advanced technology – what advances might there be in the next hundred years, and how will that inevitably impact warfare as we know it? People with guns in hand fighting as they do in this book is a fairly unrealistic method that places characters in an extreme situation to extract some sort of revelation – that never really comes – from the protagonist.

Furthermore, while Scalzi has put forth a fairly well worn and conceptualized universe, the entire system of the CDF and colonies isn’t fully explained or realized in the book. There doesn’t seem to be any unified system of government between the colonies, and the CDF is deployed at a moment’s notice to wherever there are problems with one of the colonies. For a massive government waging constant war against aggressors, it seems illogical that there doesn’t appear to be any sort of overall plan or guiding strategy that both utilizes diplomacy to secure its borders and military force as a way of enforcing those borders, if you’re a student of Clausewitz. Military forces are not deployed willy-nilly in the real world, without extensive benefits to that government. Here, the colonies seem to be fighting holding actions, with some allies, to hold onto their planets. The absence and outright rejection of diplomacy in this world seems even more illogical.

That all being said, this is an interesting, fun and light read for anybody who is inclined to read military science fiction. While the book doesn’t really add anything significant to the subgenre, that’s not necessarily the requirement for a good read in the genre. I am interested to see where Scalzi will take this world and characters, and as such, I’ve already picked up The Ghost Brigades. Hopefully some of the issues will be corrected at some point in the upcoming novels in his series, and if not, it’s not detrimental to the world that has been set up.

A Library Without Books

The other day, I came across an article that really shocked me. The Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, MA has decided to eliminate their twenty-thousand book library in favor of a digital one. According to the article, they have spent $500,000 to transform the library into a ‘learning center’ which will be outfitted with several widescreen televisions to display data from the internet and can interface with student laptops, while they have purchased 18 e-book readers (Most likely the Kindle and Sony Reader) which will have access to a large digital library. To cap it off, a coffee shop is being built in place of the circulation desk, including a $12,000 cappuccino machine.

While this really annoys me, I can see why the change is being made. The internet is becoming far more prevalent in our lives, and e-books are going to be on the rise with the successes of Amazon.com’s Kindle device and other similar brands. The school is certainly making a logical, and enormously expensive effort to modernize their library to tap into these new changes in how education might go. With this upgrade, students will have access to quite a lot of material.

There are a large number of flaws with this idea, however. The first thing that came to mind for me was what happens during a prolonged power outage? My iPhone, with an e-book reader will barely last a day as I use it, and in a situation such as that, it’s going to be going off until I can plug it in. While I can understand the desire to switch to a completely digital library, I can’t understand why this would include eliminating the traditional stacks and contents of the library.

This doesn’t necessarily stem from a desire to keep books because of the tactile feel and ease of reading – that is certainly a consideration, but that is not the sole virtue of keeping books on the shelves. The biggest concern that the teachers should feel here is the missed opportunities for students to utilize a working library in all aspects – being able to accurately locate a volume on the shelves, how to conduct searches, and simply browsing the shelves for related content. These are skills, especially in the humanities and social studies fields that will be vital for students to learn, for one simple reason: there are many archives and libraries with content that is not digitalized, and nor will it ever be, because of the sheer volume. Computers have successfully been integrated into libraries for years now – they are an invaluable resource for tracking books and their locations throughout a library. I myself have my own tracking software on my computer at home, called BookDB.

The introduction of online shopping and browsing, such as like on Amazon.com or BN.com, is something that has never really felt comparable to actually going into a bookstore and browsing the shelves. I’ve come across numerous books, some of which I never would have come across on my own by just browsing the web pages for books. With every advance, you lose something in the process. Nostalgia aside, presence on a shelf can also make or break an author.

What bothers me more is the attitude that books are unimportant. Books are easily one of the most accessible methods in which to introduce a person to reading, as opposed to an e-reader, which is not only expensive, but is a largely inaccessible technology for most out there – you need an internet connection, computer, amazon.com account, and so forth. While the successes of the Kindle are well known, proving that there is a market for it, there is a portion of the population that may not have ready access to something like this. People who aren’t inclined to read aren’t going to go out and go through all the steps, as opposed to a bookstore, where they might browse the shelves and pick up a cheap paperback book.

Another problem with internet only and digital databases is the tendency to rely far too heavily on information gleaned from the websites. Coming from background with a Master’s Degree from an online university and working for the same school, I’ve seen a number of examples of students utilizing Wikipedia as a credible source, as well as other online websites, without carefully scrutinizing or questioning them. Websites such as Wikipedia certainly has their places in the world – it’s a fantastic resource for any number of facts, but due to the nature of its existence, it is hard to trust much of it beyond a glance. Online databases are much more reliable, such as JSTOR, but they can be difficult to access and aren’t universal to much of the general public, unlike libraries or public archives.

My own experience with online and digital learning was a positive one, but the experience was not completely digitally based. Norwich University’s School of Graduate Studies MMH program switched from digital readings to printed coursepacks to alleviate the burden on students printing out everything, and continued throughout to issue books each course. I personally found being able to sit down with a hard copy reading was much easier on my eyes, allowed me to take copious notes in the margins, and were something I could turn to without having to restart my computer after I went to bed.

I personally wouldn’t trade books for anything digital. The lesson here that needs to be remembered is that hardcopy books and digital readings are both delivery methods that bring information to a reader, who then does with it what they will. Physical books have the inherent advantage, in my opinion because they are cheaper for the consumer, easier to handle and don’t require additional hardware to access. E-books are a fantastic idea to supplement a student body, either through digital textbooks that could be easily updated and distributed, but not as a replacement to a library system in place. Libraries are far more than just for pleasure reading – they serve a scholarly interest, and their use is something that needs to be taught. Plus, walking around stacks of books is just an outstanding way to get carried away.

Review: The Magicians

Within the fandom genre, I consider myself a fan of Science Fiction over Fantasy. I’m more intrigued in the sheer variety that Science Fiction presents itself with as well as the notion of humanity (or whatever other race portrayed in any given story) pulling itself up on its own two feet with emperical science. Yet, I find myself coming back, time and again, to fantasy works for the absolute sense of escapism and wonder that I often feel with the books that I pick up. I tend to be particularly picky with fantasy books because it is very rare that a fantasy book will evoke some sort of feeling like that from me.

It is because it didn’t do this, I think, is what I really liked from Lev Grossman’s latest novel, The Magicians. In this fantastic addition to the fantasy genre, Grossman puts together a book that is radically different than just about every other fantasy novel out there, breaking a lot of the very common elements that seem to define the fantasy genre. On a first glance, The Magicians doesn’t seem to be very different from any number of well known fantasy books. A boy in his teens is brought to a magical academy, where he learns the various arts of magic, in a school that is hidden from the rest of the world. Without presupposition, anyone would immediately label this as any part of the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. Within the modern day world that Grossman puts together, Quentin, our protagonist, and his friends, are fans of the Fillory series that sees a family of children stumble into a magical world where they often help to fight for good and right in an epic quest. Again, someone would identify this plot as that of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. While this book certainly has been influenced by these, and more – J.R.R Tolkien’s epic The Lord of the Rings is mentioned a couple of times, not to mention the game Dungeons and Dragons, it cleverly turns many of the ideas and themes that defined these pillars of the fantasy genre on their heads.

Grossman’s fantasy world is no different than our own. This story takes place largely in our world, with the normal staples referenced for proper placement, but with a side world of magic. Unlike the rediculously cartoonish version that J.K. Rowling presents (which, even as a fanboying 13 year old, never made sense to me), Grossman’s alternative world functions in much the same way – magic is dull, time consuming and work. The people who study at colleges for magic study (such as Brakebills, in New York), graduate and enter the dull working world and fail to see that their lives have become essentially meaningless. There is a fantastic quote in the book that stuck with me:

“This wasn’t Fillory, where there was some magical war to be fought. There was no Watcherwoman to be rooted out, no great evil to be vanquished and without that everything seemed so mundane and penny-ante. No one would come out and say it, but the world wide magical community was suffering from a serious imbalance: too many magicians and not enough monsters.” (Grossman, 210)

What Grossman has essentially done, was insert real life into fantasy. The mundane aspects are there, but along with that is the cynicism and skeptical nature that one feels for life the more you learn from it. This book comes at a particularly interesting point in my own life where I find the text to be highly relatable. We enter college and expect to change the world, only to find that real life is far more dull than anybody bothered to tell us. The Magicians carries with it a resentful, sullen approach to fantasy, something completely contrary to the grand themes that most fantasy novels portray. Indeed, the main action and villain in the book hardly appear at all; just once early on, and in the last quarter of the book, when the characters stumble upon their quest. Even then, their quest is not a noble one, it is scattered, disorganized and brutal, where they turn out to be pawns in a far larger story that helps to tie the entire book together.

There are other elements to fantasy that Grossman stumbles upon that seems to be largely untried ground, at least with some modern works, the effects of magic and power upon a magician. While books such as Lord of the Rings look to the corrupting influence of power, Grossman expands this a bit and utilizes the theme throughout the story. His characters are unhappy creatures through most of the book, and one character hits it right on the head when they note that magicians are different because they are in pain, and from that pain comes the willpower and drive to succeed and make magic. Another character looks back towards the end of the book and wonders at the sheer power that the students are exposed to so early on, and speculates as to just what type of influence that would have upon them. But, for all the corrupting influences that magic might have upon its users, it is clear by the end of the book, when Quentin has retreated from its teachings, that there is still an irresistible pull and wonder to it that makes it hard to walk away from.

I like this approach to a story, changing the entire focus. In essence, it is Harry Potter, grown up. When I first read Rowling’s series, I was in the middle of high school, and couldn’t have made any critical points about the book if my life had depended upon it. Now, it is as if those major elements have undergone the same sort of transformation and growth that I’ve gone through in the past decade or so since I first read the books. Grossman’s fantasy is darker, far more adult and much more interesting from a storytelling perspective, I think, than all of Rowling’s series put together.

Reading over other reviews of this book, I can see a number of critics and reader who just don’t get the purpose of the book. While it does appear to be very similar to the aforementioned Harry Potter and Narnia series (there is no way to escape comparisons here), it is the themes and tone that sets this book far apart from them. The Magicians presents a far more realistic setting in a fantasy world, because that suits the characters, casting away the usual black and white morality with one that is far more gray. There are few clear cut moral resolutions here. Every character is damaged in their own way – Quentin, tired of life from early on, Alice, who has grown up with parents who are unable to see their meaningless purposes in life, Penny, who is so standoffish that he is an outsider, Janet, who is so consumed with herself that she must be the center of all problems and Eliot who is consumed with greed and lust. Throughout, the characters are often confronted not with a clear and present danger, but with the simple problem of finding their way in the world as role models and loved ones let each other down, or as childhood standbys turn out to be far more than they appear, such as what happens with the Fillory series within the book.

The Magicians is a thoughtful, interesting and dark read. Like his predecessors in the genre, Grossman has put together a highly imaginative and creative tale. While I often turn to fantasy because of its escapism, I was absolutely enraptured with its view of the modern world through a slightly different lens, one that I can not only relate to, but agree with almost completely. While I’m usually a Science Fiction fan, this book completely captivated me throughout, and is likely going to be on my list of top fantasy works.

Book Review: Explorers House

While growing up, a staple around my family’s house was the National Geographic Magazine. I have many fond memories of paging through the magazines throughout the years, for the fantastic pictures from all around the world as well as their fantastic maps that seemed to come with every issue. Even to this day, I refuse to throw out any copies that I come across. Indeed, I have a large box in the bottom of my closest of back issues, with a handful from the early 1960s, a couple from the mid-1990s and some from the past decade. The National Geographic is a wonderful magazine, one that has both inspired and opened my eyes to the world.

This made the most recent book that I’ve finished, Explorers House: National Geographic and the World It Made, by Robert Poole, such a fun read over the past month. Chronicling the history of the organization, Poole examines the chain of events that helped to shape the iconic, yellow bordered magazine over the past century or so that it has been around.

In 1888, a group of men gathered in the Cosmos Club in Lafayette Square in Washington DC to organize a group that would foster knowledge, geography and an understanding of the world to members, and in doing so, launched one of the greatest organizations that has ever existed. After a short meeting in which the Society’s name and bylaws were created, the group began to meet regularly, where they would host speakers, moving from place to place. The official magazine was commissioned later in that year, a collection of maps, charts and articles, and was irregularly published for the first couple of years.

Things turned around for the struggling group in 1899, when Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the Telephone, along with Edwin Grosvenor, who would take on the Society and work to expand it far beyond its origins in Washington DC. The Bells and the Grosvenors would become dynasties throughout the magazine’s history, to the point where Gilbert Grosvenor, part of the fifth generation involved with the Society, is still the head of the board of directors. Poole moves through the history of the magazine largely focusing on the intertwined nature of the Grosevnor family and the National Geographic magazine, charting its rather colored and spectacular history, examining all aspects in concise, and at times, somewhat am apologetic manner, especially during eras where magazine articles reinforce racism or anti-semitism at various points throughout.

What is most remarkable is the changes that the magazine has undergone, and how it was an exemplary medium from the start. The magazine is only the most visible part of the Society, which issues grants for scientific and exploration endeavours, as well as working to educate about the world around us. The Magazine, which went from a small part of the Society, became a much more important part of the Society’s growth over the years, introducing pictures, and through it, the rest of the world to the United States through the efforts of its reporters and photographers. Photography is what the magazine is known for, and this is indeed a great focus of the book, which notes how the magazine changed as technology improved. As new editors and overseers of the Society came and went for the magazine, each seemed to leave a lasting impression on the magazine, through the style of writing and reporting, photography and overall outlook for the magazine, which garnered millions of subscribers because of its quality reporting and photographs.

Going back over some of the earlier issues that I have stashed away is absolutely fascinating, especially when compared to the more current issues. The writing style of the ones from the 1960s tend to be in more depth, longer, written in the first person and tends to be far more upbeat in topic, while newer issues take on a far more critical look at the world around us, examining conflicts and problems around the world in shorter, more report-like articles. One thing that has remained constant between them is the stellar photography that helps to reveal the world.

Explorer’s House is a fantastic read about a fantastic organization, one that has touched many points in history, from the discovery of the North Pole, the first ascent up Mount Everest, the first man on the Moon and almost everything in between. With magazines and newspapers around the world seeing drops in readership and advertising revenue with the introduction of new media, it will be a hard time for the magazine, but I for one am inspired to resubscribe after lapsing for years.

This Is My Bookshelf

I bought a new bookshelf today to help accomodate the vast overflow of books that I’ve accumulated during the past year and a half at my apartment. Since I’ve moved in, I’ve aquired a couple hundred new books in all numbers of genres. I had a number of piles, then towers of books springing up in very strange places all over my apartment, and the time was needed to find them a new home. A trip to Staples later, and I found such a home, a five-shelf, seven foot tall tower bookshelf. After a little construction, it was up and running, and a couple hours later, it became home to all of my history, biography, geek, science and space books, all now proudly on display. The piles are now gone, and the remaining shelves have been freed up a little, so I’m not too afraid of them bursting apart any more under the stress of overburdened shelves.

I love books. I can’t say why or how, really, but looking at my new shelf, now neatly organized by genre, then by author and title, I’ve found myself sitting and letting my eyes wander across the titles and the brightly coloured spines. There’s one about the 82nd Airborne in Normandy, the British Military during the Victorian era, the Spitfire aircraft, the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, the Paris 1919 peace conference, Kit Carson, the origins of the US Navy, Smallpox, comic comic books, Isaac Asimov, Roy Chapman Andrews, Apollo 13, Dwight Eisenhower, Salt, the Falklands and on and on. At my fingertips is a thousand journeys, stories and personalities, bound together with some paper, glue and ink, almost beckoning me to discover something new.

I suppose that there is a pretentious nature to this display, and I’m okay with that. Some people deck out their cars with the finest of accessories or toys or mud, while others display their degrees on the wall. I guess I want to demonstrate that I’m well read, versed in a number of different fields, eras of history, people, concepts or opinions, while still realizing that I haven’t read all of these. My own journey is one of learning, and looking at this shelf, I can see that there’s still a lot of distance to go there.

My main concern right now is that after all of the books have been settled in their proper place, shifted back and forth, there’s no more space left for the inevitable next couple hundred books that will be coming through the door to join them.

The Year of the Moon

2009 is a lunar year. The film Moon was released earlier this month, to much critical success, the 40th anniversary of the first manned lunar landing approaches in July, and fittingly, there is a new book that examines the history of Apollo 11, Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon, by Craig Nelson. In a wonderful PR move, the publisher, Viking, will release the book on July 13th, just days before the anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11- Just enough time to read it and know exactly what’s going on for that party that you’ll be out, when someone will mention Apollo 11.

The thing is- this book really isn’t about Apollo 11. The front of the book states this, it’s a fairly comprehensive look at the mission, but this book accomplishes much more than simply looking at this extraordinary story in vivid detail: it looks at the entire sequence of events that lead up to that moment when Neil Armstrong uttered those famous words: That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. This is an incredibly important thing, I believe, because not a whole lot of people know about anything beyond those words, and that some old guy walked around on our nearest satellite. Armstrong and that other guy (Buzz Aldrin, who deserves just as much, if not more credit to the space program than Armstrong) are mere footnotes in this story, just two people out of the 400,000 people who helped to bring them to that point.

In order to fully understand the first lunar landing, one must go back to the start. While there are other books out there that cover the space program in far more detail – University of Nebraska’s Outward Odyssey series, for example – this book does the remarkable job of doing it in a single volume, getting all of the important details that went into NASA, but also pulling in the smaller peripheral details that gives the book a bit more interest. Nelson has done an incredible job of balancing the technical and human sides of the story, allowing neither to really overwhelm the reader, and is able to deliver a fantastic history. The story of Apollo is scattered throughout the book, at all levels of the production, design, training and preparations that went into the mission, starting all the way back to the Second World War, with the first military rockets developed by the Nazis and by Werner Von Braun, who would later turn himself over to the United States forces. From there, he leads a team that worked with the United States military until 1958, when NASA was commissioned by President Eisenhower. We meet the Mercury 7 astronauts, and look quickly to the missions that brought us into space, and the missions that would lead us to the moon, which were just as important as the actual landing itself.

This is where the book shows its true colors. Rather than being just examining the history of American space flight, there is a genuine look to how this all fits together in American history, as the Cold War raged onwards. The entire space race was a byproduct of the arms race that very nearly brought about our self-destruction at various points in the 1960s. Interwoven throughout this story is the delicate balance that the United States and Soviet Union rested upon, and it is quite clear that while the plaque that rests on the Tranquility Base landing strut proclaims that we came in peace for all of mankind, this is a particularly ironic statement, considering that much of the space program had roots in military technology.

For all of my bluster about this book being most than a reiteration of the Apollo mission reports, this book is quite possibly one of the most engaging and one of the better reads about the Apollo 11 mission. Details are numerous, and I get the impression that this was a rather hard task to accomplish, something that was largely glossed over in my own education. This was an enormously difficult and complicated program to pull off, and after this read, I am rather astonished that we were able to pull it off. This was a task that engaged hundreds of thousands of people, with enormous yields that go unappreciated by the general public, with amazing advances in communications, medical and engineering technologies that we use every day.

Recently, I’ve heard people say that all we got back from the moon was a sack of rocks (and offered up a free bag to taxpayers). While I’m astonished at the lack of vision that seems to be permeating the public when it comes to the space program – the book cites that 27% of people in my generation find it unlikely that we actually landed on the moon – I will remind you that the benefits are there, and tangible. Something that Nelson mentions early on in the book has stuck with me, where he notes that not a single dollar was spent on the moon – it was all spent on Earth. Hundreds of thousands of people were employed by NASA and the aerospace industries that helped to make it a reality. That number undoubtedly increases when all is said and done. The scientific findings alone are also astonishing, and have provided new insights to the birth of our planet and solar system. Even beyond that, there are numerous implications for utilizing the moon as a source of energy, from either the mining of Helium-3 from the surface or from Solar energy (where, as Mr. Nelson notes, a lack of cloud cover and a fairly constant view of the sun will come in handy), which could potentially help with the coming energy problems that we’re going to face in the coming decades.

Apollo was more than just bringing back rocks. It pushed the boundaries of what was possible, helped to unite the world for one extraordinary, singular moment in our history when we most needed it, and showed us what was possible. This book does a fantastic job of explaining it all in an engaging manner, but like Apollo 11, it is all about the stepping stones and wonderful couple of hours that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spend on our nearest neighbor, and essentially ends with that mission. Sadly, after Apollo 17, the lunar missions ended, and NASA changed gears to the Shuttle program and low orbit missions to save costs. Nelson reserves the end of the book for a quick look at the past couple of years, and brings out his soap box to explain exactly why we need to return to space, for the fuel crisis, to beat the inevitable landings of China and India, but because it is in our nature to explore. We will return to the lunar surface someday. I can only hope that it is sooner, rather than later, because this is what the country and the world needs right now, something far more important than all of the technical and scientific accomplishments that came with Apollo: Hope.

The Book Of Lost Things

I love stories. From a young age, I’ve loved listening and reading them, as a child who was never terribly inclined towards sports or other activities. From a very young age, I have been fairly shy around other people, instead usually to turn to books for company – this is not to say that I’ve been antisocial all my life – as people often let me down or disappoint far more than books do. It’s with this basis that I love our ability to imagine.

While stopping by the bookstore recently, I came across an intriguing book – The Book of Lost Things, by John Connelly – and armed with a coupon e-mailed to me that day, I bought it, and found that it was one of the better fantasy books that I’ve read recently, and has reminded me of my simple love for stories, which this book is largely based around – a love for stories and the limits of imagination.

The book’s premise is fairly similar to one of my favorite films, Pan’s Labyrinth, which came out in 2007. David, a young English boy in 1939, has had a troubled life – his mother passed away from a wasting illness, and his father shortly fell for another woman, Rose, who bore him a son. David is resentful of this new family, and grows angry at the divided attention and the supposed replacement of his mother. He soon experiences a sort of episode – a blackout – and when he recovers, he begins to hear books whispering to one another. At this point, the London Blitz is well underway, and when trying to run away, a German bomber crashes near his house, and David is thrust into a fantasy world.

This is the interesting part of the book, and where there are a lot of parallels to Pan’s Labyrinth, but also to other well known stories, such as C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series, as well as Grimm’s Fairy Tales and even Life on Mars. Throughout the book, the reader is never entirely sure as to whether David has really been thrust into an alternate world, populated by fantastic creations, or whether he is lying injured, much as Sam Tyler is in the TV show, or even it the entire experience is a sort of psychotic break, a device that David utilizes to escape from a world that he hates so much.

The ability to hear books whisper to one another is a fun concept, and is helps to reinforce what happens to David goes through. In this world, we come across a number of fairly familiar stories or concepts as David journeys onwards in an attempt to find his lost mother, but later, to return home. Various incarnations of the tales, such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Sleeping Beauty, the heroic knight, werewolves and vampires make their appearances, often with far more brutal and violent twists that are more reminiscent of the Grimm’s Fairy Tales than their sanitized Disney versions. (However, the Seven Dwarves as a sort of communistical band who felt that they were repressed by the Capitalistic classes is downright hilarious) Essentially, this world of David’s has been created from within his own knowledge of stories, a creation of his own imagination, one that is borne out of a sort of self-realization and psychology that helps mend his own hurt nature.

The story elements, upon looking back, are really quite simple, and throughout, I found myself catching what would happen next and realizing where the plot was going next, which gives the book an air of predictability to anyone who’s listened to enough bedtime stories. But where that might have annoyed me in most books, it really didn’t here – this was a story with a good character arc, one that is reminiscent of the classic stories of the growth of a hero – a brash, angry young man who sets off to prove himself to the world, only to discover his own nature, and thus the character growth beings until you reach the happily ever after at the end. However, while there are many elements to this story that are much like the fairy tales that we are all familiar with, it feels far more realistic. The epilogue, of sorts, recounts the remainder of David’s days, in a way that really doesn’t fit with the rest of the tales that I’ve come across, giving the antagonist – the Crooked Man – a grain of truth to his predictions and proclamations.

While the book is fairly clear about what the entire experience was, it can easily fit into any of the three descriptions – David fell into a coma, he created the world because of trauma or he really was catapulted into this other world. The ambiguity of this is a very nice element, while one is clearly correct, they all are essentially part of what happened. Looking back at this, it really doesn’t matter to the overall part of the story – this story is more about the arc of the hero, self-realization and growth to beyond his angry and frustrated youth.

What the book really feels like, now that I’ve finished (and my copy was deceptively long, with a sort of notes and interview that takes up the last hundred or so pages of the novel) is an homage to the classic stories. There’s a grain of humor and twisting of some of the classics that only a modern author could get away with, but what it shows, most of all, that these stories and one’s imagination are still relevant and important. There are values to these stories that still permeate to the beginnings of the Second World War, and indeed, to the present moment, where some of the basic elements of good and evil are laid out. This book is about stories, and like David finds, how they can talk to you.