Casino Royale (James Bond Novels)

Ian Fleming

We listened to the audiobook of this on the way to Missouri.  I haven't seen the movie, yet, but since the book focuses on Soviet-era espionage, I'm assuming that a movie version set in modern times will have to be drastically different.  Another thing that would have to be different is that I hope that the movie, unlike the book, doesn't spend an entire quarter of its content describing one game of bacarat. 

I understand now why the movies are more popular than the books.  This book is terrible.  James Bond is a misogynistic idiot who, at one point, is fantasizing about a female associate agent, thinking that she's such a proud person that having a sexual relationship with her would "have the sweet tang of rape" every time they sleep together.

She's the only female character in the story, and of course she turns out to be a double agent.  Yes, I know it's a spoiler, but the story's already spoiled, so deal with it.

After listening to this book, I've come to the decision that Ian Fleming is not a very good writer, and was possibly not a very good person, either.  That, and his mother probably beat him daily with a roulette wheel.

This book would be enjoyed by anyone who wants to learn how to play bacarat or likes men who fantasize about rape.

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The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, Book 3)

Philip Pullman

This morning while waiting for the plumber, I finished The Amber Spyglass, the third book in the "His Dark Materials" trilogy, by Philip Pullman, the series which started with The Golden Compass.

I was, unfortunately, mildly disappointed with this ending to the imaginitive series about multiple worlds and an eternal struggle between control and freedom.  This book was imaginitive and did tie up the loose ends, but somehow dissatisfying.  It is perhaps because after much anticipation, some of the solutions seemed a little too easy, a little too pat, and a little too much like Pullman was tired of his own material.

That also seems evident in how scattered this book was, running in different directions and not really sticking to the central story.

Still, overall I enjoyed the series and would recommend it to anyone who likes fantasy or science fiction.

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And now back to our regularly scheduled programming...

Yes, I've been out for a few days, and I blew my Blog365 in the first month.  It was a combination of winter depression, a new computer game to play, and a complete lack of anything interesting to say.  You can only do so many VoxHunt's and QotD's in a row before they all start to sound the same... or just as lame as they really are.  Anyway, back into it.

The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials, Book 2)

Philip Pullman

This is the second book in the "His Dark Materials" trilogy by Philip Pullman, the first of which is The Golden Compass.  It's in this book that we start to undertand the theme of the series, which is why if I had to guess the first book is the only one that will be made into a movie anytime soon.  But, I don't have to guess... according to IMDB, The Subtle Knife is being made into a movie.  It will be interesting to see how much they dumb down the anti-religious themes to actually get it into the theaters.

The Subtle Knife takes place in three separate realities, now intertwined by the hole opened between the worlds by Lyra's father, Lord Asriel.  A new character named Will, a little boy from our own reality, plays a major role, becoming the wielder of a knife so sharp that it actually has the ability to cut through the fabric of space and create openings between the parallel universes.

While ostensibly a book for the YA market, this book has some dark, brutal scenes in it.  It's much more of the fantasy genre than the children's genre, though it happens to star children as the main characters.

This book would be enjoyed by anyone who likes reading fantasy and isn't offended by anti-religious themes.

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Margaret: Daddy, what is a "might-have-been"?

Dearth: A "might-have-been"?  They're ghosts, Margaret!  I daresay I "might-have-been" a great swell of a painter, instead of just this uncommonly happy nobody - or again I might have been a worthless idle waster of a fellow.

Margaret: You?

Dearth: Who knows?  Some little kink in me might have set off on the wrong road.  And that poor soul I might so easily have been might have had no Margaret.  I'm sorry for him.

Margaret: And so am I!  The poor old daddy, wondering the world without me.

Dearth: There are other "might-have-beens" - lovely ones, but intangible.  Shades, Margaret, made of sad folks' thoughts.

- Dear Brutus, Act II, by J. M. Barrie.

Is it possible that this author of Peter Pan also invisioned, in this lesser-known work first performed in 1917, the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum physics?

What follows is an extreme simplification of the theory, and is about all I understand of it, not being a physicist myself, and therefore might be wrong.

Elementary particles behave in a random fashion.  How they behave is, by some degree, determined by chance.  For instance, there may be a 10% chance that a particular neutron will decay within a particular second, and a 90% chance that it won't.

The problem this presents for physicists is that in physics thing's aren't really random.  For instance, if you were to toss a coin, you might think that there is a 50% chance that the coin will be heads-up when it stops.  The truth is that chance is illusory, in this and in every case.  The illusion of chance is created by the fact that we, as humans, couldn't possibly know, measure, or calculate all of the variables that will decide whether the coin will land heads or tails.  If we could know everything about the coin, the pressure being applied to it by the person flipping it, the weight variable caused on the two sides by the impressions on the coin, etc., and knew how all of those factors would weigh on the outcome and how to calculate it, it would be theoretically possible to predict with 100% accuracy which way the coin would land every time.  In other words, it only looks random because we don't know all the facts.

Not a Gambler

But elementary particles are just that - elementary.  They consist of nothing smaller but pure energy, which has no further characteristics.  So, if there is a 10% chance that the neutron will decay, why is it that sometimes it will decay, and sometimes it won't?  Is it true, then, that some parts of the universe are left to pure chance, while everything else has a root cause?  The concept lacks aesthetic appeal to physicists, and is one of the reasons why Albert Einstein didn't like quantum theory, stating famously that "God doesn't play dice."

So enter the Many Worlds Interpretation.  The Many Worlds Interpretation posits that every time there is a chance that a quantum particle may behave one way or another, the universe splits off into two parallel versions of itself, one in which the neutron decayed, and one in which it didn't.  Since these quantum variations are happening around us all that time, that means that based on the theory, there are infinite numbers of parallel universes branching out all the time.

We can think of MWI as positing that universes are "created" every time an elementary particle could randomly do one thing or another, but of course that would require unfathomable amounts of energy to come out of nowhere all of the time.  Rather, these universes exist already, and we are reaching them by following various paths along the probability matrices of the quantum particles.

Did Not Win the ASPCA Award

It's important to note that proponents of MWI don't just like the theory for its aesthetics.  It also solves a number of paradoxes famous to quantum physics, such as the Schrödinger's Cat paradox.  In that thought experiment, a device is set up to kill a cat in a box if a radioactive atom decays.  There is a quantum probability that the atom may or may not decay, and we won't know which it was until we look in the box.  So, until we look in the box, is the cat alive, dead, or some bizarre, mixture of the two, since we don't know yet what the result of the cosmic dice shoot was?  By applying the Many Worlds theory to the problem, the simple answer is that in one universe the cat is alive, and in the other universe the cat is dead.  Looking in the box simply confirms to us which universe we're in.

For science fiction fans such as myself, where MWI becomes interesting is when it is extrapolated to the macro level.  The decaying of a single atom, with the exception of the poor cat, has little effect on whether any of us live or die, or make it to work on time, or even win the Lotto.  Taken in the agregate, however, quantum effects make all the difference in the world, literally.  In other words, every event that happens that could have gone one way or another, came out the way that it did because of a general drift in the quantum probabilities that ultimately effected that event. 

So, if I notice that the light has turned red too late and slam on the brakes, there are a myriad of factors that will determine whether I slam into another car trying to cross the intersection or whether I slide on through, unharmed.  Ultimately, those factors boil down to quantum probabilities, and so in some universes I slid on through the intersection.  In this one, I T-boned someone.  In fact, anything that is possible, no matter how improbable, happens in at least some of the universes.

Dear Brutus explores these ideas, realizing that our choices lay out ahead of us like a myriad branching paths.  We think that we are making a choice, but in fact universes exist in which we take each of these paths, though some universes are more prevalent than others.  The universe we are in now is the result of paths taken, and paths not taken are lost to us forever.

Dearth: Three things they say come not back to men nor women--the spoken word, the past life and the neglected opportunity.

- Act I

Those of you who have read the Golden Compass recently will recognize the theory explained nicely there, as well.  In Dear Brutus, the characters get to visit those "might-have-been" worlds, shades made of sad folks thoughts, lovely, and intangible.

No Turning Back

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Shallow Grave for Flowers

A small, dead bundle of flowers found in a hole at 11,000 feet on a dry ski slope.  What's the story behind them?  Well, how about this one:

Alec decided that today was the day.  This was the day he would ask Sarah to go steady with him.  They hadn't kissed, yet, or even really talked, but he knew that she had feelings for him as he had feelings for her, and that they would work through such details after she was wearing his Star Wars comm badge.  (He didn't have a letter jacket, not being a dumb jock.)  He didn't ski, but he knew she loved the view from up here and that she came skiing every Saturday when the lifts were open.

So, steeling his courage, he took the gondola up the mountain and watched the skiers make the round trip until he saw her.  She was unmistakable, her beauty distinguishing her even in all that heavy snow gear.

As she came to a stop near the ski patrol station, he trudged his way over to her in his loafers, which were filling up with snow.

"Sarah?" he said, tentatively.

Sarah looked around, unsure who had called her name.  Her gaze fell upon Alec, and he felt his heart race.  She removed her ski goggles, which had given her the cutest little racoon-like sunburn pattern around her eyes, and said, disbelieving, "Alec, right?  From algebra?  What are you doing here?"  She said it while looking him up and down.  Alec was sure this was because she was checking him out, not because she was amazed at his lack of fashion sense or clothing appropriate for 11,000 feet.

"Well," said Alec, pulling a pathetic bunch of yellow flower out from behind his back, "I wanted to give these to you, Sarah, my love, and tell you finally of my true feelings for you!"

Sarah stared for a moment, and raised one hand to her head as if she wanted to try to wiggle some wax out of her ear, but her heavy ski gloves kept her from attempting it.  Finally, a smile broke out on her face.

"Yes!", thought Alec.  "She's happy!  She's smiling!  This must mean she loves me, too!"

The smile grew larger, and then she started to giggle.  And she started to laugh.  And the laughter got harder, and louder, and harsher.  Alec couldn't believe his ears.  She was laughing at him!

She was laughing so hard, she didn't notice when he gave her... no, not a push, not a shove... just the tiniest, most insignificant of nudges.  She could have stopped herself, except she was laughing too hard.  Slowly, she picked up speed, sliding down the slope.  When she finally realized what was happening, she tried aiming for the sign to the Coonskin slope.  After all, it had padding on the post, and it could stop her decent!  Unfortunately, she didn't start turning in time.  She went over the edge and tumbled down, down, down the sheer side of the mountain, head over heal over head, and died at the base of the slope.

Alec couldn't believe what happened.  He cried, partially because his love was dead, and partially because she had laughed at his advances.  His tears froze the moment they left his eyes, and shattered upon the ground.  One after another, his tears fell, gouging a small hole in the earth.  Finally, after what seemed like hours, Alec dropped the flowers in the hole as a grave for his true love, and left.

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Originally posted on my old blog on April 25th, 2006:

The Time Traveler's Wife

Audrey Niffenegger

I just got done reading The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger.

Every once in a while, a long while, if you are an avid reader, you will find a book that defines you in a way.  The Time Traveler's Wife is like that for me.  It's the story of Henry and Clair.  Henry is a time traveler of the involuntary sort.  For him, time travel occurs like epilepsy.  Stress and flashing lights can induce it, but sometimes it happens without warning.  He'll be cooking dinner, for instance, and suddenly he's deep in the past, sans clothing, trying to figure out where and when he is.

The title of the book is The Time Traveler's Wife, but of course I identified more with Henry, and while the POV jumps back and forth between Henry and Clair, Henry seems to be the soul of the story.

There's a definite resonance between this book and another that I felt was difining of me, and that was Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five.  Both books, of course, deal with an individual who involuntarily time travels, but there's much more to it than that.  The difference is that Henry's character is traveling bodily into the past (and less frequently, the future), where he can actually meet himself.  Vonnegut's character, Billy Pilgrim, has a consciousness that time travels, but he's in his own body in that time period every time it happens.

The similarities are subtle but more important.  Both characters, Niffenegger's and Vonnegut's, exude an air of stoic resignation about their plights.  There's nothing they can do about it, so they hang on for the ride and try to take things in stride.  They're depressed about it, probably, but they deal and move on.  It's a character type that I always identify with.  C. J. Cherryh's books are filled with characters like this, which is probably why I like them so much.  They are reluctant heroes, much put upon, and they cope because they have to.

The blurb on the cover from the Chicago Tribune says that The Time Traveler's Wife is "a soaring celebration of the victory of love over time."  I have to wonder if they read the same novel I did.

There's a spoiler coming, so if you want to read the book and be suprised, you may want to stop here.  It's interesting to talk about spoilers, because the book is full of its own spoilers, where a time traveling Henry accidentally tells himself or Clair about something that will happen in the future.  But I digress.  The spoiler I want to reveal is that Henry knows when he will die.  He's witnessed it, in fact.  Both the witnessing version of him and the version that died were time traveling into the past, but on one of his jaunts into the future he also looks up his own obituary, and he knows where in real time he died.  After being shot, he returns to the present before he gives up his last breath, so that is when the obituary is dated.  Like the Cyclops in that cheesy fantasy movie Krull, he has forseen the moment of his own death.  He knows like a man condemned to execution the exact date and time that he will expire, and the governor isn't making an eleventh-hour pardon.

The triumph of love over time?  Perhaps, but death trumps love.

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Sunday morning, we went to a session called "Zooming to the Silver Screen: When Books Become Movies."  Panel participants were Melinda Snodgrass (moderator), Doug Beason, Steven Gould, William Stout, and Carrie Vaughn.  The focus of the panel was to discuss movies that were actually better than the books that they were made from, which is rare, but does happen.  One of the common themes at the conference was authors lamenting the fact that editors rarely edit, anymore, particularly when the author is successful, much to the detriment of the literature.  I think one of the reasons movies are sometimes better than the books upon which they are based is that the act of making it a movie sometimes forces the screenwriter to cut out the deadwood.

Other times, the ideas behind the story are good, but the writing itself is boring or just too unbelievable to follow.  Pretty much anything by Philip K. Dick falls in this category.  The ideas are compelling, but given half a chance the movie has to be better than what the author actually wrote.  Unfortunately, that's not saying much, and many times movies based on Dick's ideas are still pretty aweful (Total Recall, Minority Report) with the occasional near-gem (Bladerunner).

Immediately after this was the Guest of Honor Presentation, in which the Toastmistress Jane Lindskold grilled Vernor Vinge for an hour and a half about where he comes up with his ideas, how he writes, etc.  One of the many things discussed was the fact that Vinge (pronounced Vin-gee) had introduced the concept of a "technological singularity" to describe the idea that the predictable extrapolation of artificial intelligence is that someday machines (or humans enhanced by machines) will become so intellectually advanced that present-day humans would not even be able to comprehend their culture or world.  The term singularity, here, is borrowed from astrophysics, in which it describes the central point of a black hole, which is both infinite and immeasurable.  In the same way, the advance of intelligence in machines is increasing at an exponential rate, and as with any exponential curve that curve must eventually become too steep for unaided humans to keep up.

How does this relate to science fiction?  It means that if you are writing about humans in the very far in the future at all, you have to come up with some reason why humans haven't all become replaced by machines.  It turns out that science fiction writers have been doing this for some time.  In Isaac Asimov's Foundation books, for instance, artificial intelligence is considered somewhat taboo, and robots are shunned.  Planets that do use robots become stagnant and eventually die out because they rely on the robots too much, so they don't advance artificial intelligence any further.  In the Dune series, by Frank Herbert, artificial intelligence is somewhat of a religious taboo. 

In Vinge's own books, Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky, quantum mechanics operates differently near the center of a very large gravitational object, like a galaxy, than it does at a distance from that center.  Phenomenon like quantum tunneling, etc., are more noticeable on planets closer to the galactic core than out on the rim, meaning that computers are harder to build and won't work as efficiently near the core, but will work great out near the rim.  The result is that computers of immense power, even beyond the ability of humans to understand, are capable in the dark places between galaxies, but impossible to build near the galactic core.

I was highly impressed with Mr. Vinge, particularly with the fact that he has done all of his writing while having a whole "day-career."  Many authors have day jobs, but he has had a full-time career, and still managed to become a published and well-regarded fiction writer.  It gives me hope.

After lunch (which I will write about later), we came back for "Slime Creatures from Outer Space: Creating Aliens."  Panel participants included Yvonne Coats (moderator), Doug Beason, Mark Ferrari, Jane Lindskold, Laura J. Mixon, and David Thomas.  This was a panel about how to create believable aliens in your fiction.  The consensus seemed to be that no matter what we do as writers, it won't equal the strangeness that an alien species is likely to possess.  Aliens in science fiction tend to be humans altered in ways that are metaphorically useful, not nearly as odd as real aliens would likely to be. 

I actually don't have a problem with this; as fiction writers, we have to keep our characters, whether human or alien, sympathetic and identifiable for the reader.  Making our characters so bizarre an incomprehensible that the readers couldn't possibly care about them is not conducive to good fiction.  Furthermore, I don't really subscribe to the notion that intelligent life would be totally inscrutible to humans.  If they (the alien species) are similar enough to us to develop technology, then they would have to have a lot of traits in common with humans, even if they came to have those traits by a completely different evolutionary path.

Following the "Slime Creatures" panel, appropriately enough, were the "Green Slime" awards, in which books, movies, and other commercial science fiction ventures are given awards for being particularly bad science fiction.  I don't remember who all won, but I remember that the Sci-Fi Channel was mentioned several times.

Then, it was the closing ceremonies, and the conference was over.

There was a post-conference party in the Con Hospitality Suite which we attended.  This party is called the "Dead Dog Party," and we didn't stay long.  Most of the people there seemed nice enough, but like a typical Mensa meeting there were one or two blow-hards that seem intent on showing everyone that they are smarter than the other smart people, nerdier than the other nerds, and generally just more of a fan than you.  They also really don't like being corrected when they talk off the top of their head and get facts wrong.

It's late now.  'Night.

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Fool Moon (The Dresden Files, Book 2)

Jim Butcher

This is the second book of the Harry Dresden series by Jim Butcher.  The first book, Stomfront, about the only openly practicing Wizard in Chicago - part hardboiled detective, part CSI analyst, part Harry Potter - blew me away, and I know that I will read every book in this series.

That being said, this book wasn't quite as good as the first.  It had too many subplots and not as much of a coherent story arc as the first.  Still, it was a very good read (or listen, since what I have is the audiobook read by James Marsters), and I am still eagerly looking forward to the next one.

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Strix and I went to a presentation tonight at the Salmon Ruins (named after the family that owned the site before it was made into a city park), by the author of a fictional novel set in Chaco Canyon during the height of the Anasazi population of the region.  Much of the presentation had to do with the astronomy of the Chaco Canyon ruins.

Fajada Butte

The Anasazi had a very advanced knowledge of astronomy.  Petroglyphs atop Fajada Butte are set in the rock in such a way that it marks exactly the date of the Summer and Winter Solstice, as well as the Spring and Autumnal Equinox.  The ruins themselves were oriented perfectly to catch the rays of the solstice and lined up with the minimal and maximum moon phases.

Pueblo Bonito

The book is a murder mystery, set at Pueblo Bonito, which was the largest living structure in North America from the time of its completion around 1100 A.D. until the 1800's, with over three hundred rooms.  We bought a couple copies of his book, Shadows of Chaco Canyon, and I look forward to reading it.

I also had to buy a couple copies because Strix and I were the only ones to show up, and I felt sorry for him.  But it was an interesting presentation.

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Storm Front (The Dresden Files, Book 1)

Jim Butcher

I listened to this on CD, and absolutely loved it.  Now I have to get the whole series.  I understand that there is a TV series of this now on the Sci-Fi Channel, called The Dresden Files, but not having cable I haven't seen it.

Jim Butcher has managed to come up with a very intriguing mixture of high fantasy, hardboiled detective fiction, humor, horror, and police drama.

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