The Barsoom Project
(A Dream Park Novel)
by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes
1989, 340 pp.
Read October 23, 2009

October is historically a very busy month for me. Everyone needs a Halloween costume, and I take advantage of that need to do some fancy sewing, which I enjoy, but which is also a lot of work. More recently, my oldest two children (who might otherwise be past the age of dressing up) have started attending an anime convention which is held in mid-October, and require ever more elaborate garb for ever more obscure fandoms. (Raise your hand, everyone who knows about Soul Eater. That’s what I thought.)

So in retrospect, it makes sense that in the middle of a particularly harrowing week I should pick up a book that is all about being something other than who you are, just for a little while. The Dream Park novels are set in and around the ultimate amusement park, where the main draw is the gaming arenas in which visitors take part in any kind of adventure the mind can dream up: historical reenactments, fantasy stories, mysteries and adventures set in any place, any time, real or imagined. Think of your favorite movie, and then think of being able to take part in it yourself. That’s Dream Park.

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The Barsoom Project is the second of the trilogy of novels (the others are Dream Park and The California Voodoo Game. Some readers will recognize the reference to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars stories, in which Barsoom is the name for a habitable Mars populated by strange animals and alien cultures. In this book, the Barsoom Project is an ambitious enterprise to terraform Mars for human habitation. Cowles Industries (the corporation behind Dream Park) has been angling to get the Barsoom Project off the ground for years, but they need the support of other nations and companies—and not all of them play nice with others, in particular the multinational EnCom and its head, Kareem Fekesh. Thadeus Harmony, deputy director of operations at Cowles, suspects Fekesh to have been behind the program’s sabotage eight years before and has set Alex Griffin, head of Dream Park security, to prevent a second incident.

This time around, the stakes are much higher. Not only will a second disaster mean the end of the Barsoom Project, but the life of a young woman is in danger; Charlene Dula, niece of the ambassador from the orbital colony Falling Angels, has received a number of death threats from groups opposed to space development. Killing her would effectively remove Falling Angels from the project, and their assistance in engineering and construction is crucial. So Griffin has to keep Charlene alive, keep an eye on Fekesh, watch out for saboteurs, and deal with the daily operations of Dream Park. Oh, and Charlene has signed up for one of those interactive games—coincidentally the Fimbulwinter game, in which a man was killed years ago by a player whose rifle had been tampered with. Or is it coincidence? The same player, Michelle Sturgeon, is back to play again after years of unsuccessful therapy, mentally unstable and having suffered a psychotic dissociative break to try to deal with the memory. And she’s Charlene Dula’s best friend.

As dated as the Dream Park novels are, they still provide the thrill of let’s-pretend that on some level we never grow out of. We see not only the events that the players go through, but the behind-the-scenes action of all the dozens of people who keep the illusion alive, from programmers to actors to special effects artists. The book simultaneously provides the escapism of a good adventure with the fun of seeing how the magician does his tricks. The experience is marred slightly by the knowledge that technology and computer programming has not only progressed far beyond what is depicted here, but progressed in a different direction. It’s impossible to fault the book for this, since it was quite forward-thinking for its time (it is, after all, twenty years old), but I think some readers may have trouble getting past some of the archaisms. Still, it’s not even close to the disparity between our time and, say, that Twilight Zone episode where the computer falls in love with “her” programmer and spits out punch cards to show her displeasure, so I think The Barsoom Project is still worth reading.

The real point of reading a Dream Park novel is to experience the game, whatever kind of game it may be. The idea for the series arose in part because of the phenomenon of live-action role-playing games, or LARPs for short. This takes the tabletop role-playing game epitomized by Dungeons & Dragons to a new level, in which players dress as their characters and act out their characters’ actions, often in a public or semi-public setting. To many people, this is just plain weird. We don’t in general like to draw attention to our peculiarities, or be stared at in public, and LARPing does both in spades. But while the public side of LARPing doesn’t appeal to everyone, I think it’s unreasonable to dismiss the impulse for make-believe that lies beneath the display. What is fantasy football, for example, but a grown-up way to play pretend with a sport one truly loves? Would actors really command the enormous salaries they do if we didn’t fully embrace the play-acting they do for a living? And anytime we exercise empathy, we make the conscious effort to see the world as they do—essentially running a role-play in our heads. LARPing is simply the most extreme form of an activity we all engage in at some time.

The game in The Barsoom Project is different from that in either of the other two books in that it’s not primarily for entertainment, but for personality adjustment. Rather than a typical adventure played for points, this is a Fat Ripper game. Despite its name, a Fat Ripper doesn’t make its participants shed a lot of pounds; it’s intended to get people to think about how they eat and why, and to become more aware of how they treat their bodies. While most of the players in The Barsoom Project are overweight, at least one of them is painfully thin, and all of them come with different reasons for participating. Max Sands, pro wrestler, is there more because he thinks his brother Orson really needs the experience; Trianna Stith-Wood, who is quite beautiful and sensual despite her extra weight, is a professional chef who doesn’t really like food; comedian Johnny Welsh needs to lose weight to keep performing. And Michelle Sturgeon, alias Eviane? Her motives are more complex, and her physique reflects how she has deliberately neglected the body that made her so successful in the first Fimbulwinter game. I like how issues of body image and weight are dealt with on many different levels, not just the casual assumption that all fatness is the same and happens because of laziness or bad character.

And, of course, it’s a very exciting game all by itself. Half of the plot centers on the redemption and healing of Michelle Sturgeon, while the other half is a mystery in which Griffin has to figure out who Fekesh’s inside man is before any more deaths can occur. This is not my favorite of the Dream Park novels, but it’s an engaging and interesting read even twenty years after its first publication. Sometimes it’s fun to escape reality into a world where everyone’s job is making that happen.

Alcatraz Versus The Knights Of Crystallia
by Brandon Sanderson
2009, 336 pp.
Read November 8, 2009

I can never make up my mind whether Brandon Sanderson is a genius or just really, really twisted.  On the one hand, he may be the only person since the ancient Greeks who successfully and believably used a deus ex machina ending to wrap up a series.  (Come to think of it, I’m not sure even the ancient Greeks found that device satisfying.)  His books have a good blend of creative magic, solid worldbuilding, and believable characterization, and the quality is consistent.  He’s one of the authors whose books I will buy simply on the strength of who wrote them.

And then…there’s Alcatraz.

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I don’t mean that these are bad books; they’re very good.  But they are also the wildest combination of humor and tension and free association and literary theory and just plain goofiness since James Joyce threw away his comma box.  And ol’ Jim didn’t have the low-brow, pie-in-the-face, fart-joke sense of humor that Sanderson shows himself capable of.  The Alcatraz series is part fantasy, part humor, part inverted logic, part high drama, part hidden meaning, and all a very satisfying story—but one that lends strong support to the theory that Sanderson is, in fact, out of his mind.  How else do you explain the literate, easily-distracted dinosaurs, magical powers that look like mistakes, or the Great Kitten Conspiracy?

Alcatraz Versus The Knights Of Crystallia is the third volume of the series.  In the first few pages of the book, there’s a humorous tirade about people who read middle volumes of the series before earlier ones.  I realize that some of you reading this blog have not read the earlier books and that I’m putting you in that same position by starting with book three.  Unfortunately, I’m not in a position to review all three at once because I am a) extremely busy and b) extremely lazy.  (This is an example of the kind of logic you find in an Alcatraz book.  You Have Been Warned.) 

So I’ll sum up:  In Alcatraz Versus The Evil Librarians, young Alcatraz Smedry has been raised by dozens of foster families because he seems to cause accidents wherever he goes.  On his thirteenth birthday, he discovers his true heritage as a member of the Smedry family, possessors of unusual Talents and able to wield magically sensitive Lenses made of a kind of glass.  They are in a war with the Librarians, who control what we think of as the real world and distort all the knowledge we have to fit their agenda.   The Smedry talents all seem, on the surface, to be curses: the ability to fall down, to always be late, to break whatever you touch.  But if the ability to fall down takes you out of the path of a bullet you didn’t see coming, or you arrive too late to board a plane that then crashes, how is that not a valuable talent?  In the second book, Alcatraz Versus The Scrivener’s Bones, Alcatraz learns a lot more about the Librarians and their different sects, his own Talent, and the truth about his parents.  The book ends with a dramatic confrontation at the Library of Alexandria (you thought it was destroyed? More Librarian lies!) that leads to Alcatraz and his companions going to the Free Kingdoms—which is where book three picks up.

The most obvious difference between this book and the first two is that it takes place outside the “real” world, in the kingdom that is the Smedry ancestral home.  Now Alcatraz is the outsider—and yet he isn’t, because in this place, he’s a hero.  One of the people he meets is even a novelist who writes books about Alcatraz’s adventures, or at least what he imagines these adventures to be.  Naturally, Alcatraz develops a swelled head at all the adulation, which leads him to neglect his friends—particularly the young Knight of Crystallia Bastille, who is in trouble with her order because of her actions at the end of book two and could really use his help.

This description sounds very much ABC Afternoon Special, doesn’t it?  What keeps it from turning into a simplistic morality play is the way Alcatraz is characterized.  The conceit of the series is twofold:  the books are being written by a much older Alcatraz, who already knows how it’s all going to end and points that out frequently; and Alcatraz’s description of himself is as a liar, a traitor, and a villain.  Alcatraz-the-writer goes to great lengths to remind the reader that he’s not trustworthy, and that he will betray his friends and their principles in the end.  And yet the young Alcatraz he’s describing often does selfless and noble acts, admits his mistakes, and tries to change.  Which of them is truer?  Is Alcatraz-the-writer revealing more than he thinks, or should we take his statements at face value?  He’s the ultimate unreliable narrator, so can we even assume he’s telling the truth about being a liar?

In Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians, Sanderson brought up an important question:  how can anyone know truth if the source of their knowledge is tainted?  In Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia, the answer to that question is—question everything.  Never assume there’s nothing left to learn.  If Crystallia has any flaw, it’s that those sections of serious material are a little more obvious than in the earlier books; they’re not overt enough to be didactic, thank heavens (and I say that even though I completely agree with the philosophy Sanderson expresses) but I’m not entirely sure they won’t drag certain readers out of the book.  Although I was very glad about the declaration the reformed Librarian Himalaya made when she stopped fighting her natural ability to organize.  When the Archive (not a library!) was first described, all those piles of books covered with dust and mildew, my shriveled librarian’s soul cried out in anguish.

You will find these books in the juvenile section of your bookstore or library.  Grownups, don’t be put off by this.  Adult readers will almost certainly get more out of the series than kids do, particularly if they know to look beyond the story.  Adult readers of science fiction and fantasy can amuse themselves by keeping track of the authors Grandpa Smedry swears by.  Kids love the humor and the magic and the fart jokes.  In my judgment, this is a series with very broad appeal, and I recommend it most highly.

(Also: the Great Kitten Conspiracy is real.  Nothing that fluffy can be up to any good.)

Sylvester; or, the Wicked Uncle 
by Georgette Heyer
1957, 410 pp.
Read October 27, 2009

I’ve already mentioned that I love Georgette Heyer’s novels.  This is one of my all-time favorites.  My copy is badly worn from reading, which in this house means it has been read too many times to count.

Most recent editions of this book show the title simply as Sylvester, including mine, but I like the original title listed above; it’s so Gothic, and the novel itself is sort of reverse-Gothic.  The titular character is the Duke of Salford, wealthy, highborn, courteous to a fault—but maybe not for the right reasons.  At the beginning of the novel, he approaches his mother with his plan to marry.  He has, oh, five well-born girls he’s sure would be happy to marry him, although each has some flaw that annoys him, and he wants her advice on choosing one.

His shocked Mama begins to suspect that her dear son is just the teeniest bit arrogant.

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The problem is that Sylvester really is good and decent to his servants and social inferiors, and he would never behave badly to anyone.  He’s just a little too aware of his position and always expects to be treated with the highest respect, and while he’d never make a point of his rank, he gets arrogant when people forget it.  But the dowager Duchess doesn’t know what she can do about it.  She does mention that there was a girl she had hoped he would marry: Phoebe Marlow, daughter of her good friend Verena.  Sylvester agrees to look her over.  No, he’s not arrogant or anything.

Meanwhile, Phoebe has a problem of her own.  She has absolutely no interest in marrying the Duke of Salford; she danced with him once during her London season and realized very quickly what high esteem he held himself in, especially since he didn’t remember her at all.  Unfortunately, she’s terrified of her stepmother, who has emotionally abused her all her life, and her stepmother is determined that this ugly duckling she’s been raising will make an excellent match.  While it’s true that Phoebe is not very beautiful (described as brown and too thin, with “a pair of speaking gray eyes”) she has other skills, notably writing.  And this is where the real problem lies:  after that London season, she wrote a novel skewering the members of society, and she made Sylvester her villain!

Phoebe’s attempt to escape an unwanted marriage ends up throwing her into close company with Sylvester, and they discover in each other an unexpected affinity.  But with Sylvester’s pique at being so vehemently refused by Phoebe (who is, after all, a nobody), and Phoebe’s chagrin as she learns more details of Sylvester’s life and finds that they coincidentally match in almost every detail with her villain Ugolino, their path to romance is anything but smooth.

I love this book because Phoebe and Sylvester are so charming.  It’s true Sylvester is arrogant, but that arrogance comes in equal parts from not having had anyone to pop his ego and from his grief over his twin brother’s death.  Without actually meaning to, Phoebe fills that role.  Phoebe is smart, witty, and sensitive to others, so her pain at having described Sylvester so accurately without meaning to is very moving.  I especially like that after she has tried repeatedly to make restitution, only for Sylvester to treat her rudely, she loses her temper and refuses to be a doormat any longer.  And Sylvester’s heartbroken cry to his mother, after proposing to Phoebe and being furiously turned down, is so much more effective in contrast to the man he was at first.

Once again, Heyer has come up with a satisfying romance and a cast of wickedly believable characters, including my favorite Regency fop, Sir Nugent Fotherby.  Really, Nugent?  Who names their kid Nugent?  But then, I was raised on ‘70s cartoons, where the only Sylvester I’d ever known was a lisping, incompetent cat—so I never imagined a Sylvester could be so attractive.

In This House of Brede
by Rumer Godden
1969, 376 pp.
Read October 19, 2009

This is one of my favorite books and, I think, one of the best books ever written, which is why it’s so wonderful that it’s finally back in print after all these years.  I most often come back to it on a Sunday afternoon, when I want something that deals with religion and faith and sacrifice.  What is really interesting is that I am inspired by this book even though I am not Catholic—because this is a story about a monastery for nuns.  (I bet most of you didn’t even know nuns had monasteries, but they do.)

Set in England and spanning the years 1953 to 1967, In This House of Brede tells the story of Brede Abbey, a fictional Benedictine monastery, and the women whose vocations have brought them to live and serve there as nuns.  (Interestingly, the timeline of this book parallels Godden’s own religious journey; she began studying Roman Catholicism in the 1950s and converted in 1968.)  The plot centers on two very different women:  Philippa Talbot, a successful career woman who finds religion relatively late in life and, in her forties, gives up everything she’s earned to take religious orders; and Elspeth Scallon (known throughout the book by her name in religion, Sister Cecily), a twenty-three-year-old woman whose parents, friends, and former boyfriend all fight her commitment to Brede Abbey every step of the way.  Their stories run parallel to one another in demonstrating the kinds of challenges would-be nuns face, one in fighting her own demons, the other in hiding from them.  As the Prologue says, Brede Abbey’s motto is Pax, peace, but a strange peace of hard work and little comfort—the peace of God, not the peace of the world.

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Other members of the cast include the new Abbess, Dame Catherine; the “two pillars of the community,” Dame Maura and Dame Agnes, who stand in constant opposition to one another; the proud and weak-willed Dame Veronica; saintly Dame Beatrice, loved by all; the novices, Sister Hilary and Sister Polycarp (what a name); and so many more.  Every one is a personality and every one has a part to play.

Much of Rumer Godden’s work is about character, and that is certainly true of this book.  The events of the plot are interesting, particularly when the Abbey decides to start a sister monastery in Japan, of all places, but there is never a point where the story is more important than the people living it.  Every event contributes directly to someone’s growth of understanding, of faith, of love.  Contrariwise, every event arises directly from a particular character’s flaws, weaknesses, or sometimes strengths.  The result is a triumph of characterization that depends on only a few light strokes of Godden’s brush, leaving the reader with the strong sense of actually knowing these women.

I think, ultimately, that this is what makes In This House of Brede such a powerful story about religious faith.  Writing about religion often comes dangerously close to didacticism, especially when the writer has strong religious beliefs.  Godden’s emphasis on characterization allows her to show not why the reader should believe in God, but why these women (and, by extension, people in real life) do.  Regardless of one’s own feelings about religion in general or Catholicism in particular, it’s impossible not to see the powerful impact faith has on Dame Philippa and Sister Cecily and the rest.  I especially feel a connection to Dame Philippa, who has so many physical and intellectual roadblocks to overcome.  Pride is her greatest stumbling block, but not always in the form you’d expect it.  There’s the scene in her Latin class where she’s tired and overwhelmed from a restless night and utterly humiliates the teacher out of pride in her own skill at Latin, but more subtle are the times when Philippa doesn’t even realize she’s acting out of pride, such as when she uses her worldly knowledge to propose a solution to the Abbey’s financial problem that would totally undermine their religious mission.  And the end result of Philippa’s sublimating her own will to that of God is not that she becomes a mindless drone, but that she becomes paradoxically stronger and more able to help those around her.

When I read this as a teenager, I almost wanted to become a nun.  As I grow older, I realize that what I want is that peace that comes from doing something you believe in, however hard or messy it might be.  For most people, it’s impractical to live in a cloister as the nuns of Brede Abbey do.  But maybe it’s possible to build a little place of solitude, physical or metaphysical, to dedicate to whomever or whatever we believe in, to be our house of peace.