Earth Abides  by George R. Stewart
Fawcett Crest, 1949
Category: Science Fiction

I used to really love postapocalyptic fiction.  Other kids got their chills and thrills from Stephen King, V.C. Andrews, Dean Koontz; I used to scare myself silly with Z for Zachariah; Alas, Babylon; On the Beach; Mind-Call and its sequels.  The idea of trying to survive in a world where humanity had been destroyed gave me the kind of excited chill I couldn’t get anywhere else.  Since I grew up in the ’80s, saturated with fears of nuclear war, there was plenty of postapocalyptic fiction around (and movies, and TV shows).  Later my interest waned, probably because the terrors of rearing children were far more real than the possibility of having to scratch a living from the ruins of civilization.  But I still love a good story about the ultimate kind of survival.  It’s been interesting to watch the genre evolve over time.  For example, Richard Matheson’s story I Am Legend, written in 1954, achieved its widest popularity with the recent film version starring Will Smith–at a time when the trend in postapocalyptica was viruses transforming humans into monsters with only a few survivors (and vampire fiction enjoyed an unprecedented popularity).  Before that it was nuclear war, of course, or overpopulation, or accidental nuclear detonation.  Before that, the genre owed a great deal to a new understanding of genetics, viral transmission, and the population explosion of the late 1940s.

Earth Abides was written during the post-WWII baby boom, early enough that fears of overpopulation were not so great as the simpler fear that humanity’s great triumph over nature could not possibly continue–that when populations of any living organism reach a certain point, extinction is inevitable.  Reading the book from the distant future of 2011, Stewart’s concerns on this topic seem absurd.  His theory is based on scientific evidence, but he probably should have learned from Malthus’s example (and Paul Ehrlich should have learned from him) that population growth or size is only one of many factors that influence the survival or demise of a species.  As far as the postapocalyptic premise goes, Stewart’s doesn’t hold up too well with time.  I also think he’s a little too negative about the average intelligence level of a population more than decimated by disease.  There’s a subtle intellectual arrogance that permeates some sections; it’s disguised by protagonist Isherwood Williams’s ("Ish") frequent references to his fellow survivors’ other stellar qualities, but Ish also refers far too often to how few brilliant people remain, and how much he despairs of being the only one who tries to hang on to reading and writing, to completely disguise it.

In most ways, though, Stewart’s book holds together very well.  The prose is slow but very evocative; Stewart has clearly thought out how the infrastructure of civilization would persist after humans are gone; and the ultimate questions of how civilization is built are answered in a way that still makes sense to us.  (Particularly those of us who read Guns, Germs, and Steel.)  Stewart is also remarkably open-minded for a man of his age, if you remember to look beyond the use of the word Negro, which was common usage at the time.  Ish’s mate Em is one of the most important characters to their growing "tribe," and her mother was black.  I figured it out long before Ish did–that made me wonder if Stewart was counting on the blindness of a population opposed to mixed marriages to pull off the reveal, when Em confesses her heritage *after* they’ve slept together and conceived a child.  This moment also provides some unintended hilarity, as Ish goes through the characteristics that should have told him Em was part black and, at the end of a list of physical characteristics, adds "accepting temperament."  Because obviously that’s the sort of thing that’s inherent to skin color.  Still, to readers of his age, this would have been a very big deal, and since I have also read Farnham’s Freehold, which is unabashedly sexist in some very obnoxious ways and was written fifteen years later than Earth Abides, I’m going to give George Stewart credit for transcending the idiocies of his era.

I mentioned that the prose is slow.  This was harder to deal with because for the first 150 pages, I really had no idea what the point of the book was.  Postapocalyptic fiction has survival as the setting and impetus for action, but the point is always to say something about humanity, civilization, or individualism.  Ish wanders around for a long time, drives from California to New York City and back, without an apparent motive.  I was impatient to get to the point, finally.  My guess is that much of that idling was Stewart’s way of establishing the new environment, something that is less necessary now that the genre is so well established.  It would have been nice to read it back in 1949, except that I’d have had to be a woman in 1949 and I don’t think anyone would be happy with that.

Overall, Earth Abides is a very good book.  However, for a more accessible story based on the same premise of viral extinction, I’d suggest the young adult novel The Girl Who Owned A City by O.T. Nelson.  For dystopian postapocalyptic novels (stories set in dystopian societies formed after long-ago disasters) try This Time of Darkness or that one series by Suzanne Collins, don’t remember the titles, but I hear it’s really popular. 

(I’m kidding. I know it’s Gregor the Overlander).

(Still kidding.  The Hunger Games now occupies the same cultural space as the Harry Potter series–you need to know about it even if you’re not going to read it.)

The Girl Who Could Fly  by Victoria Forester
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008
Category: YA/Juvenile
UNFINISHED

This one looked very promising at first.  I like stories about kids with psychic powers working together, enough so that I’m willing to overlook a certain amount of cheese.  While The Girl Who Could Fly doesn’t exactly tip the cheese-o-meter, it’s definitely a kid’s book–probably not something that will appeal to adults the way many juvenile and YA novels do.  The style is average; the description of how Piper McCloud, the titular protagonist, learns to develop her talents is well done.  The author is a first-time novelist (though a long-time screenwriter) and that fact is obvious in some of her narrative choices, primarily in how she attempts to use a self-aware third-person narrator a la Roald Dahl, but doesn’t sustain that POV throughout. Readers in the eight- to twelve-year-old group will probably not notice the flaws, and the idea and descriptions are very interesting.

What is not so forgivable–and the reason I stopped reading–was a major plot twist that depended on reversing the stated meaning of earlier events.  At a key point in the story, Piper learns that Conrad, a fellow gifted student, actually knows the truth about their "school" (basically, it’s EEEEvil) and has been trying to fight against it.  This would have been an excellent plot twist, because Conrad has been nasty and antagonistic to her, and it turns out that his actions were to keep her from being lulled into somnolence and thus losing her powers.  Except for one thing.  The reason we know about how nasty Conrad was is that those scenes were told from his point of view–including his thoughts about how much he loved hurting people and how he would get so angry he needed to hurt others.  This includes, by the way, the time he plotted to kill Piper herself.  The author’s own explanation didn’t suggest that Conrad needed to control his thoughts so the bad guys wouldn’t find out, or fake thinking about being a bad guy.  Forester apparently thought it would be more dramatic and compelling if we heard Conrad plotting to hurt others, but didn’t carry this thought through to its logical conclusion.  Is this the sort of thing young readers notice?  Maybe not.  I doubt it, though.

So now I’ve reached the first book on my list that I choose not to finish.  I reached a point, years ago, where I decided that I was never going to make myself read a book that I didn’t enjoy.  I believe this for the same reason that I don’t believe in "must-read" books; that’s usually shorthand for "I liked it a lot and I think everyone is Just Like Me and should read it and if you don’t like it then you suck."  There’s no book offers such a unique experience that you can’t get that experience from some other book.  Even the books I love, and rave about, and think are amazing–some of you reading this won’t like them.  You’ll think they’re boring, or pretentious, or you can’t accept the underlying premise, or you just don’t read X genre.  And except for that last one (you may have certain genres you won’t read, and I won’t push it, but don’t expect me to be sympathetic to that excuse) you’re probably right–for you, that’s a pointless book.  If you can’t do it yet, learn to put down a book you dislike.  It’s one of the nicest gifts you can give yourself.

A Canticle for Leibowitz
by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
1959, 313 pages
Read April 14, 2010

Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s only published novel is one of the great postapocalyptic novels of the twentieth century.  I’m fond of postapocalyptic fiction, books that deal with the aftermath of total annihilation of a civilization, because it is ironically a literature of hope and triumph, and I love the contradiction.  Everyone at some point in life has to ask the question “if something bad happens, what will I do?” and postapocalyptic stories offer a vicarious exploration of the worst bad things ever.  The fear of nuclear war in the last half of the twentieth century produced some wonderful examples, which is where A Canticle for Leibowitz comes from.

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The book’s a contradiction in itself, a story centered on Catholic monks but with a faith that sometimes veers away from the doctrines of Catholicism; a science fiction novel that sometimes takes long tangents into philosophy or religion.  There is so much discussion that I would call it boring, at times, and yet I’m never bored by it.  The story begins many years after nuclear war has devastated the world and mankind has plunged into cultural darkness, with scraps of ancient learning and history preserved only by the monks of the Blessed Leibowitz.  The reader is aware, as the monks are not, that Leibowitz was simply an engineer who survived the nuclear war and founded a group dedicated to protecting books during the anti-literate age that followed; his followers venerate even a blueprint of a machine part just because his name is on it.  Each section of the book is a novella that describes different periods in the gradual reawakening of civilization, and each mirrors some period of our own history.  Miller’s great question is whether we are doomed to keep repeating the same mistakes, as the novel begins with the Dark Age of Man and ends yet again with civilizations at war over the whole earth.  As with most Cold War postapocalyptic fiction, the answer isn’t as important as the fact of asking the question.

I love the interweaving of theology and faith with intellectualism.  Miller converted to Catholicism when he was 25, and it’s been said that he wasn’t as doctrinally correct in his beliefs as he could have been, but there’s a strong sense of faith underneath the dogma in Canticle.  Faith in what, I can’t say: Catholic concept of God, more abstract idea of deity, some natural force that underlies religion…who knows.  Religion and its devotees are an easy target in fiction, and I always like seeing a strong positive characterization of the faithful.  In this book, we actually get both sides represented, and that’s even better.  There’s also the intersection of Catholicism and Judaism in the regular reappearance of the “old Jew,” who may or may not be immortal and may or may not be Leibowitz himself.  It adds just the right touch of fantasy to the story.  Benjamin (or Eleazer, or Lazarus) isn’t sure himself how old he is; he could be the Wandering Jew of legend, or he could have been born in time to witness the first great destruction and somehow managed to live long enough to see the second.

A Canticle for Leibowitz does not end happily.  At least, that’s how I felt years ago when I read it for the first time.  I’m not sure anymore what this ending means.  Is it a condemnation of mankind, unable to break the cycle of global destruction?  Is it hope for the future, leaving this world for another?  Though the story ends with some of the followers of Leibowitz leaving Earth for colonies on distant worlds, how likely is it that all their preparations will not end in just the same way?  I’d like to imagine that the act of leaving symbolizes a break in the cycle, but that in itself is discouraging: can humanity only overcome its self-destructive tendencies by leaving the whole world behind?  And how much more depressing can this review get?

I think I’m more interested in asking the question than in knowing the answer. (Not about how depressing this review can get, the other thing.  There is no bottom to that rabbit hole.)  What is it about people that makes us, as a collective, so prone to destructive behavior?  Miller’s implication is that unenlightened individuals with power do stupid things even when they know the consequences.  I figure that there are too many intelligent people in positions of power for that to be true.  So if we’re going to destroy civilization as we know it, it will be our own fault.  Miller’s vision of a postapocalyptic world makes me hope that we are as capable of salvation as of destruction.

Now I have to go read something truly cheerful.  Possibly with bunnies and kittens in it.  And frolicking.

Moving a 2200-square-foot house and 4,000 books turns out to be rather draining. There’s all the packing, for one. (If you are planning a move any time soon, I highly suggest you call my mother-in-law, who is a very demon for packing and has way more energy than I do.) Then there’s the moving. We hired movers, and this was a good thing, but they started getting these pained looks every time they brought in a stack of book boxes and I said “Those all go downstairs.” And then the unpacking, which is the least strenuous but takes the most time. It’s a little like Christmas, if Santa came into your house and put all your stuff in boxes so you don’t know where your toothbrush is (not in the bathroom box) or what happened to half your drinking glasses (still haven’t found those). But in the end, you have a wonderful new home full of stuff.

And, in my case, a basement full of boxes and not enough bookshelves.

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I’ve now bought and built 8 full-size bookshelves and 3 half-width ones. Since I’m not made of money, I had to compromise on real wood and go for the best of the build-it-yourself ones. Mine came from Ikea, where they take building even those particle board shelves seriously. These shelves are sturdy and attractive, with features you don’t normally get in DIY bookcases. The back bottom edges have half-ovals cut out of the bottom so they will fit neatly over a baseboard. There’s a kit with metal brackets to allow you to slot a half-wide shelf diagonally into a corner and set up the adjacent shelves evenly. It adds a surprisingly sophisticated look to the library. I also love the height, which at almost 80” has them towering over all my old shelves. They were terribly intimidated by the newcomers and had to retire to bedroom duty.

Unfortunately, I still need a lot more bookcases, and I’ve run out of walls to put them against. Finding a true free-standing bookcase is difficult. Library suppliers have them, of course, but those are expensive and a lot fancier than I really need. Ordinary bookcases have this sad tendency to fall over if you stand them in the middle of a room. I could bolt them to the floor, probably, but that will have to be the last resort. It’s hard enough bolting the bookcases to the wall when you don’t have a power drill.

Still, it’s starting to look like a library, and someday the boxes will be gone and there will be wingback chairs in front of the fireplace and life will be sweet.

I’ve been reading a lot and planning several long reviews, but until I get to them, here’s a taste of what I’ve read in the first quarter of 2010:

The Empress of Mars, Kage Baker (read January 26, 2010): Baker’s Company series ended in 2007, but there are still many stories to be told in that world. If you haven’t read the main series (beginning with In the Garden of Iden) you should definitely not read this book. Not because it won’t make sense, but because you will miss the entire subtext that reveals what’s really going on with this story. At the very least, I suggest reading the short story collection Black Projects, White Knights so you will know about the Company, their immortal cyborg agents, and a few of the personalities who crop up in this novel. I enjoyed The Empress of Mars quite a bit. It was expanded from a novella, and that shows in the book’s occasional choppiness, but by the end it all comes together well.

Runner, Thomas Perry (read January 28, 2010): I am addicted to the Jane Whitefield series, despite the fact that I only started reading it after Perry stopped writing it. It was complete chance that I saw this book on the shelf in a library I normally don’t frequent. You know what it’s like when you find a beloved book you didn’t even know existed? I let it sit around the house for a few days to build up the anticipation, and it did not disappoint. In this series, Jane Whitefield helps people disappear, usually people who are in immediate danger. However, with each book it becomes more difficult for her to do her job, particularly after she gets married. In Blood Money, the previous book, Jane seems to give up on her work entirely. Runner gives her a reason to take it up again, years later—but this story also addresses the dilemma she finds herself in, whether to have a normal family or to do the thing she has a gift for. The final sentences of the novel are chilling, because she finally makes a choice…and I’m not sure how to feel about it. Start this series with Vanishing Act or Dance for the Dead; Vanishing Act feels like a prequel to me now that I’ve read all six.

Confessions of a Tax Collector, Richard Yancey (read February 3, 2010): The author of the Alfred Kropp books and the Printz-award-winning The Monstrumologist tells the true story of how he used to be the most hated man in America: an IRS agent. Yancey is a brilliant writer and always fully in control of his story, and this book is so well structured and so narratively satisfying that it could easily have been fiction. It’s a story not only about the inner workings of the Internal Revenue Service, but about the author’s development from a self-centered adolescent (emotionally, not chronologically) to a rapacious and talented agent to a mature and responsible man. I highly recommend this book, though with a language warning (they’re IRS agents, of course they swear like sailors, how else do you expect them to survive the job?).

Blackout, Connie Willis (read February 9, 2010): Willis hasn’t published a novel since Passage, nine years ago, and with Blackout the drought has ended. Willis returns to one of her favorite subjects, World War II, but with a much broader scope than any of her previous novels. I forgot while I was reading it that it is the first part of a duology (at least), and that threw me when I got to the end and found…it wasn’t. Willis moves between at least five major POV characters, all of whom have interesting stories, but I found I was more interested in the side characters than the main characters. Nevertheless, I am looking forward to the sequel, All Clear, due out October 19.

Lots and lots of P.D. James mysteries (read January through March): I discovered, or rediscovered, P.D. James last fall…but that’s sort of a stupid way to put it, isn’t it? Like she was missing and I intrepidly tracked her down, instead of what I actually did, which was start buying her books at the thrift store because they were there. These mysteries are profoundly satisfying in their own unique way, with the combination of mystery puzzle, literary style, and extraordinary characterization. Something about the style reminds me of Josephine Tey, which is never a bad thing.

I plan to give more attention to some of the other books on my list soon. First up, the latest in the Dresden Files, Changes. If I ever get the David Bowie song out of my head, that is.

Dune
by Frank Herbert
1965, 541 pp.
Read November 30, 2009

I read Dune for the first time when I was thirteen. I loved it, but I know I didn’t really understand it. What I loved was the depth of worldbuilding and politics, the vivid descriptions of Arrakis and the Fremen, the “magic” (I had no knowledge of the real-world practices behind the Bene Gesserit techniques) and the genetics. The sandworms, even. I remember imagining what it would be like to live in such a dry, desolate place, living off your recaptured body moisture—I was at the time living in upstate New York, which to me seemed a little like Duke Leto’s home world of Caladan, and the idea of leaving such lush beauty for an arid desert let me empathize with Lady Jessica’s longings for that lost home.

(We moved to Texas just a year later. Hah hah neener neener on me.)

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I picked Dune up again this week after I don’t know how many years on a whim. Sometimes I wander around the house muttering about how there’s all these books and nothing to read; in that mood I want something specific, something that evokes a particular emotional or mnemonic response, or something that will occupy a few hours without dragging me in so deeply that I neglect everything else I have to do. I wouldn’t have thought Dune qualified, but the mind wants what it wants, I suppose.

The story is essentially as I remembered it: Duke Leto of Caladan is ordered by the Emperor to take over government of the planet Arrakis, sole source of the spice that is crucial in some undefined way to the Spacing Guild and therefore extremely valuable. Leto’s predecessor and long-time enemy, the Baron Harkonnen (a thoroughly vile and repulsive person, not that we needed this to hate him), had mismanaged the planet and was forced to withdraw. Secretly, though, the Emperor is working with Harkonnen to betray Leto and bring down his House, because he’s too popular in the government. Leto knows it’s a trap, but is going anyway because he’s a noble guy.

All of this seems very important, but the real story centers on Leto’s son Paul. His mother Jessica (Leto’s concubine, and there’s another story there) is Bene Gesserit, which is a sisterhood trained in mind-body discipline and control, body language reading, pitching one’s voice to command another person, and many other fascinating but improbable (at least on the level the Bene Gesserit function) mysterious abilities. The secret goal of the Bene Gesserit is an enormous human breeding program devoted to producing the Kwisatz Haderach, a male Bene Gesserit they intend to control. Jessica was supposed to give Leto a daughter, but loved him so much that she bore him a son instead. Now it looks like Paul might be the one they’ve been waiting for, but there’s something odd about him—something the Bene Gesserit did not anticipate. It turns out Paul’s mind is truly unique—and once he arrives on Arrakis and starts ingesting the spice, which is in absolutely everything on the planet, the strange compound alters his mind to the point where he begins to see all possible futures, including one where he leads the Fremen natives of Arrakis in a jihad that rages across the galaxy. Even as Paul tries to avoid this future, he’s drawn further into a reality where he will have to rule Arrakis…and ultimately the Empire.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that my younger self had completely missed the point of what Frank Herbert was doing in this book. For one thing, I must have been totally unaware of how pervasive the influence of Islam was. I don’t even remember picking up on any references to Arab language or culture. This is probably a good thing, because it’s not a book about Muslim people or religion as we understand it. It’s more as if Islam had been a formative force millennia ago and then drifted forward, transformed by cultural shift and migration to hundreds of other worlds. There’s not even a correlation between the Fremen and a lost Muslim race, despite their culture alone still retaining a lot of words and customs we would recognize as Arab/Islamic. (If anything, the revelations about the Fremen being forced from one world to another make them sound more like a lost tribe of Israel—another thing they definitely aren’t.) The point is that Herbert created a universe with Islamic underpinnings that lacks most of the aggressive religiosity I think Westerners expect whenever that faith is brought into a story. It’s a little bit surreal.

But the real weirdness was in seeing the politics with an adult eye. The Dune universe is bleak and vicious, full of political intrigue and plotting, a place where you can never really trust anyone. This forces all the characters to subordinate normal human desires to a coldly logical system where decisions and actions are based on trying to guess what everyone else will do. It is one of the more depressing milieus I’ve ever read. Except…underneath that veneer, almost everyone is acting out of some baser emotion: love, greed, jealousy, hatred, fear. Even when those emotions are negative, it’s still a reminder that men and women will always be free, on some level, as long as they are human. Key to this insight in Dune is the story of the traitor who betrays Duke Leto to the Baron (and no, I’m not saying who it is; Herbert tells you right up front). Like all of Leto’s closest allies, this man seemed incorruptible; and he was, as far as logic went. The Baron suborned him by making use of his emotions—and in return, the traitor struck back at the Baron through his hatred. As the novel progresses, that stark political intrigue never goes away, but it’s increasingly possible to see what lies underneath.

Herbert has done a brilliant job of creating a fully-realized universe and a plausible world. The copy of Dune I have now has several appendices which I know weren’t in the copy I owned years ago, detailing the ecology of Arrakis, how the government of the Empire works, etc. I really wish I’d had the glossary back then; I had no idea which words Herbert invented and which were just obscure English words. (And which were common English words Herbert was using in a bizarre way. “Geriatric” spice? What’s that supposed to mean? The spice is older than other condiments? It makes you old? It’s crotchety in the morning and needs a hip replacement? I eventually figured out that Herbert meant it provides longevity, but that one really had my thirteen-year-old brain spinning.) It’s all this detail that makes the story work, I think. You need to be able to believe in the world before you can believe in the actions that motivate the characters. People do things in this story that are simply too barbaric to credit, until you realize just how valuable spice is to a lot of different people. The way Herbert has set things up, it’s definitely a commodity worth killing or betraying for.

I suppose my unease over the story comes more from my distaste for that kind of universe than anything else. Despite the futuristic setting, the society is practically feudal—in every sense of the word. There’s the beauty of having your word be your bond and the loyalty Leto’s men (and later Paul’s) have to their lord, but there’s also the near-total control the lords have over their people and their lands, the abuses of property, the lack of any impartial court of justice for those who’ve been wronged, and an apparent lack of innovation or growth among the commoners. It’s one thing to look back in time at a period that’s now over, but to see feudalism in the distant future…? I love this book, but I wouldn’t want to live there.