Review: The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation

The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a 4-star review. My experience was closer to 3 stars, but I think the subject is important and the experience of reading about it is useful for those who haven't spent the last few decades reading about the details elsewhere.

The author, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, lived through the communist revolution that turned Russia into the USSR. He was imprisoned.

I'd like to say that he was imprisoned because he had thoughts and beliefs that didn't align with the dominant Soviet communist ideology, but the reality is that the Soviet communists used prison as a terrorist tactic. Anyone could be tossed in prison for the flimsiest of reasons (or no reason at all).

The ultimate objective of the Soviet communists was to create a populace that would never question communist rules.

My problem with the book is that the first portion of the book is filled with broad-brush descriptions of how people ended up in prison and the other tactics used by Soviet communists. There are few details. No statistics. Few names with details of their cases.

I have spent the better part of 40 years reading about how all communist states treat their people. In those 40 years, I have read more detailed descriptions of the very same circumstances.

Few people had the advantage of knowing what the Soviet communists were doing back when this book was first published. What made this book great at that time was that it revealed so much new information. These were the first experiential building blocks in an argument against communism.

Today we have the benefit of more detailed accounts and analyses. Mortar to fill the gaps between those blocks.

This is a great starting point for someone who has no exposure to the deprivations of communism.



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Review: Way Station

Way Station by Clifford D. Simak
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a 3-star review. That is a charitable estimate of my experience with this book. I was expecting the classic of the SF genre and Hugo Award-winning "Best Novel" to be much better.

The basic outline of the book is that our protagonist, Enoch Wallace, lucked into being contacted by an alien from outer space. The alien, named Ulysses by Enoch, asks Enoch to manage an intergalactic waystation.

Essentially, beings are tossed across the galaxy. Dust and other galactic ephemera limit the distance that can be traveled in a single jump. Waystations are required to permit travelers to reach farther destinations.

There are two major and a few minor elements of this book that undermine the reading experience.

The first major element is the consistent use of internal monologues. Enoch carefully weighs each decision in his mind. He also reflects on the many new cultures and friends he has experienced courtesy of his position as a stationmaster.

We rarely see Enoch interacting with other characters. We do not learn about new cultures and new alien species as part of regular interactions. Enoch just reflects and emotes. This one factor alone almost caused me to not finish the book.

There are extended segments of the book where Enoch is faced with the choice between joining the galactic co-fraternity and leaving Earth or remaining on Earth with the hope that his new knowledge and experiences will help humanity survive. The essence of these sections is that this decision is hard. Not a surprise, but not terribly interesting after the first few pages of dithering.

This book is a classic example of why "showing" is better than "telling".

The second major element is the use of so many different aspects of alien cultures and technologies. One section will focus on a new system of mathematics. Another section will focus on alien "thaumaturgy" as a method for focusing spiritual essence to create a new being.

Some of these sections pay off at the end of the book. There are extended discussions with Ulysses about intergalactic politics influencing where new waystations are located.

Other sections just pad the number of pages. Enoch creates some spiritual friends using alien thaumaturgical techniques. They end up drifting away after Enoch fails to ignore the fact that they do not have and will never have a physical aspect. The presence of thaumaturgical "science" has no influence on the outcome of the book.

It is as if the author could not decide which genre tropes he wanted to use. In his moment of indecision, he found himself using all of them. The result is a reading experience that wastes time on marginally explored and incomplete plot lines.

There were a few minor nits to pick.

The waystation system appears to exist solely for the transport of individual entities. It is never obviously used for the transport of freight. Here in reality-land, most transportation involves moving stuff rather than people. As the galactic system appears to be focused on colonizing new worlds, the absence of any freight traffic is a bit odd.

Within the book, there is an object referred to as the Talisman. It ends up being a sort of McGuffin. The Talisman is a device that is used by a spiritually sensitive person to connect various populations with a spiritual essence. The sensitive person travels with the Talisman to each world. They turn it on and the Talisman's connection with spiritual essence fosters peace for that world/population. As a secondary effect, a world where the Talisman has not yet traveled still experiences a sense of hopefulness, peace, and unity with the rest of the galaxy based on the possibility that the Talisman might eventually visit their world.

The entire concept appears to be an attempt to obtain the positive benefits of religion without the perceived obligations and objections that come with belief in a specific religion. It creates an appeal to authority without the need for anyone to submit to that authority.

Which leads to a final criticism. Enoch is of the belief that the various peoples of the rest of the galaxy are in some morally superior to humanity. He presumes that by dint of their acknowledged technical superiority, those peoples are peaceful, cooperative, and otherwise better. Humanity on the brink of nuclear war is considered to be below the standard for acceptance into the galactic co-fraternity. Various non-humans seem to confirm Enoch's self-denigratory perspective.

Yet at the end, a non-human shows up having stolen the Talisman. They are quite willing to commit acts of violence in the furtherance of their unexplored scheme. We also learn of factionalism within the galactic government based on competition for scarce resources as well as for the opportunity of pursuing policies that validate the pride and narrow interests of certain members of the galactic government.

Sounds an awful lot like Earth and the conflicts that occur between our nations and even between various cultural groups within a single nation.

"Waystation" is worth reading once for those interested in the overall history of the speculative fiction genre. Outside of that motivation, I see little to recommend in this book.


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Review: Tower of Silence

Tower of Silence by Larry Correia
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a 5-star review, but it's closer to 4.5 stars.

Why the 1/2 star deduction? There were a few instances where the characters dropped into using early 21st-century idioms. And this is part of a series, so the tale is incomplete.

This is a solid entry in the Saga of the Forgotten Warrior series. Our hero Ashok finds himself on Fortress, a nearby island. He should be dead, but he isn't. And he has to find his way back to the mainland so he can return to guarding Thera.

In the meantime, the prophet Thera and the priest Keta must continue to lead their people despite Ashok's absence.

More people encounter some aspect of the Forgotten Warrior. They begin to suspect that their culture is not all they were told.

I don't want to go into too many details as they would spoil this book and it is a tremendous read. I will say that for a book with so many serious characters, it also has well-crafted moments of bust-a-gut humor.

There is never a page where you aren't interested to see what comes next.

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Carolyn Callendar - In Memorium

The year was 1981.  I was taking Advanced Composition in my junior year of high school.  Carolyn Callendar had the misfortune to be teaching the class that year.

Mrs. Callendar taught the class every year, so she bears some responsibility for what followed.  

It was a great class.  She gave us daily and weekly assignments.  Mostly they were writing prompts that we could take in any direction.  Such an open-ended invitation proved advantageous to our group of young writers.

Mrs. Callendar had her preferences.  One of us had a knack for ethereal treatments that I will stereotypically describe as "butterflies, flowers, and rainbows".  That student always got an A on their work.  The rest of us had to work for it.  Or so it seemed to us at the time.  Young student writers have a tendency to be precious about their early work.

My personal favorite piece was an extended bit of poetry that I produced in collaboration with my best friend.  It was a dark and moody piece that was inspired by the works of Stephen King, Edgar Allen Poe, and who knows what else.  We had the "dark" knob turned up to eleven.  Naturally, we both lost our copies so it exists now as a vague reminiscence of our clear literary genius.

As one might expect, the class went through phases.  The band RUSH released their quintessential album, "Moving Pictures", that year.  The second track was the science fiction inspired song "Red Barchetta".  The titular automobile had been saved in an old white-haired uncle's barn.  A relic from before the Motor Law being chased down by gleaming alloy air cars.  The driver was subsequently saved by a one-lane bridge that the air cars could not cross.

We were largely unaware that RUSH's primary lyricist, Neil Peart, had found inspiration in a piece of fiction that was first published in the November 1973 issue of "Road and Track".  That story, A Nice Morning Drive written by Richard S. Foster, told the story of an old MGB roadster.  Rendered obsolete by wave after wave of modern automobile safety standards had made surviving car crashes not only likely but predictable.  The drivers of the newly designed cars expected to walk away from accidents unscathed.  As a result, drivers of these Modern Safety Vehicles began targeting older vehicles leaving them in mangled heaps.  Those driving older cars were likely to be left in a similarly mangled condition.  The price for driving a classic.  And so the driver of the old MGB engages in a race for his life pursued by a pair of MSVs.

Courtesy of Neil Peart's retelling of A Nice Morning Drive in Red Barchetta, a series of automobiles entered our classroom zeitgeist.  We subjected Mrs. Callendar to seemingly endless stories that involved red sports cars.  The model of the car would shift to suit the moods and tastes of various authors.  Sometimes it was only glimpsed under a protective tarp.  Other times the car would tear along country roads kicking up a stream of fall leaves.

We began to perceive that Mrs. Callendar was dissatisfied with our seeming enchantment with red sports cars that appeared in our work.  So we shifted to blue sports cars.  She was not amused.  I think she secretly was amused.

Our appreciations of the roadster (red, blue, or otherwise) lasted a few weeks before Mrs. Callendar put a kind but firm end to our vehicular ruminations.  Automotively-inspired expositions were no longer acceptable subject matter for the course.  A few essays later in the year reprised our earlier fascination with motorized conveyances.  She accepted these brief automotive interludes with humor and grace while simultaneously assuring the class that she would throttle any attempt to return to those halcyon days of transportational bliss.  The fuel gauge was on "E" where cars were involved.

Mrs. Callendar retired a few years later.  She and her husband moved to Georgia where they enjoyed the company of their grandchildren.  She also enjoyed playing bridge and reading books, naturally.

Carolyn Callendar passed away in 2022.  While I don't know what comes next, I'd like to imagine that somewhere she is at the wheel of a red roadster from a better vanished time.  Naturally, she would be gaily driving along with the top down, the wind whipping her hair, and stirring up a steady stream of autumnal yellow, red, gold, and brown.

Sexualizing Children??

This entry is part of an ongoing conversation taking place from time to time at File770, among other locations.  As is frequently the case in passionate discussions, the topic tends to shift depending on the speaker.

For the most part, my interlocutors are aghast at the many legislative efforts to limit the books that are available in public libraries and public schools.  And honestly?  I share their concerns.  Many of the books that end up being impacted by these initiatives are things that I read decades ago.  Many of the newer titles are equally unworthy of attention either legislative or administrative.  

Reasonable people can disagree about the relative merit of a children's book that features a farting main character.  No reasonable person would suggest locking up a teacher or a librarian for including it in a school library.

The problem is that books featuring farting characters, or books by George Orwell (irony!) are not the subject matter that is driving the issue.  Focusing on farting characters or on "To Kill a Mockingbird" or any other largely inoffensive work is a purposeful attempt to deflect the discussion away from the core issue.

Sexualizing children.

What follows is very much my part of an adult discussion that involves adult materials.  If raw images of sexual body parts offend you, then please move on to something else.  I have some very nice book reviews to read.

For everyone else...

Review: Aliens: Bishop

Aliens: Bishop by T.R. Napper
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

T.R. Napper gets invited to play in the world of Aliens. Here we learn that Colonial Marines Master Sergeant Apone has a brother. His brother is a Captain in the Colonial Marines who is charged with tracking down Michael Bishop. Bishop is the progenitor of the Bishop series of androids. He also has a desire to investigate and exploit the xenomorphs.

The mission to track down Michael Bishop reveals an opportunity to recover the physical remnants of the Bishop android from the Aliens movie. (That is the one with Newt.) Eventually, it becomes clear that Michael Bishop has grown more xenomorphs. Captain Apone wants some payback for the death of his brother.

The events of the book take place after the Aliens: 3 movie as one of the survivors of the prison planet eventually becomes part of the story.

Napper does an outstanding job of filling out each character with unique motivations and history. There are many events where characters are faced with choices that pit a desire to settle past grievances with the desire to survive in the face of low chances of survival. Collectively and individually, they demonstrate the grit needed to rise to the most lethal of challenges.

The book provides us with a raft of new characters and events without breaking the lore of the Aliens fictional world.

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Review: System Collapse

System Collapse by Martha Wells
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While I have thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the books in The Murderbot Diaries, I found this installment to be a bit pointless. We don't learn anything new or interesting about Murderbot.

Read the rest of the series. It's very well written. If there ends up being an eighth installment, then be sure to read this book. But if this is the end of the line, then you can stop at the sixth installment and not have missed much.

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