The Saturday Morning Post (No.2)

I've reread three books in June, two of them old favorites, and one from so long ago that I had no recollection of it. The first, one of the favorites, is Flashman and the Mountain of Light. I picked it off the shelf to read early in June while waiting for The Book That Wouldn't Burn to arrive from the library. The second book is John Masefield's The Brid of Dawning, a sea story that I no doubt read some 30 years ago, and remembered nothing about it. And the final one, another old favorite is Patrick O'Brian's H.M.S. Surprise.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

 Flashman and the Mountain of Light by George MacDonald Fraser A+

After last month's two books set in India/Burma in the 1840’s, and with none of my free books I had on hand appealing to me, I selected this Flashman book off my shelf to reread. Truly, this book is an order of magnitude better than those two previous historical fiction books set in India and Burma, Sands of Truth and Windrush. Fraser really knows how to write, and because he writes in the first person, he can showcase his vastly entertaining skill with words by having them “written” by the central character of the story, Flashman, which makes the character himself all the more entertaining.

What I mean by this is that when a writer had a distinctive voice – think of Chandler or Wodehouse – their writing risks overshadowing the story when written in third person, as their distinctive style can insert the writer between the story they are telling and the reader, perhaps outshining the story being told. In some cases, this might be the author’s intent. But if not, by using a first person narrator, their wit and styles becomes that of the character and comes from within the story – fleshing him or her out as they tell their story, in their style, keeping the story itself in the fore.

This Flashman story set in 1845-46 India. Flashman is sent as a secret agent to Punjab city Lahore in the guise of an attorney to settle the question of who is entitled to a treasure held by a British bank. The Punab is ruled by a child, with his drunken and luscious mother, as regent. The Punjab has a large, European trained army that is itching to drive the British from India, waiting only for an excuse. Fraser seamlessly inserts his (anti)hero, Flashman in to an extensively researched historical event, the first Punjab War – which includes footnotes highlighting the various historical events and people. The two book covers suggest something of how Flashman fits in to history. This combining fiction with real history facts and facets that are often too unbelievable to be fiction, makes for both entertaining and educational history. This is the way I like my history. Highly recommended.

The Bird of Dawning by John Masefield C+

This is a sea story written by a fairly well known British author, first published in 1933. At the age of 15 in 1893, Masefield went to sea as an apprentice in a Cape Horn windjammer. He became ill in Chile and abandoned the sea, working at odd jobs in the U.S. before returning to London in 1897 to become literary editor of the Speaker. He went on to publish many books of novels, prose, and poetry until his death in 1967. 

The novel is set on a tea clipper in the late 1860's, a time when tea clippers raced from China to London with the new crop of tea. A time when hard nosed Scottish ship owners would spend a fortune building fast, yacht like sailing ships, manned by large crews, hard-driving captains, especially designed to bring the first crop of tea each year from China to London in the least amount of time. In the Great Tea Race of 1866, five ships arrived in London within three days, the leading three ships within hours of each other after a voyage of 99 days from the far side of the world. I came across Basil Lubbock's The Tea Clippers while exploring the stacks of the University of Wisconsin Library while in college, and fell in love with the romance of tea clippers and the sea stories he told of their exploits over the decade or so of their brief heyday until steamships and the Suez Canal replaced them.

This novel is a fictional account of a tea clipper that is struck on a foul night by a steam ship, It sinks, leaving 16 survivors in an ill provisioned boat in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. Having been trained as a sailor, Masefield writes about their plight and the measures taken to deal with their situation in extensive detail, probably more than most casual reader would need, or care to know. Even I found it so, plus shipwreck survivors in a small boat is not one of my favorite tropes. It does, however have some twists and turns, that I won't spoil and ends with an exciting race; a fictional account similar to the ending that Great Tea Race of 1866 that I mentioned, which lifts it up from a simple C to a C+.

H. M. S. Surprise by Patrick O’Brian  A+

I written about how much I admire the writing style of Raymond Chandler, P. G. Wodehouse, and George MacDonald Fraser, and I do, but the writing style of Patrick O’Brian is, in my opinion, every bit their equal, though subtler. His writing style is very different than these others, and though his style may take a little getting used to, it is every bit as clever and delightful, while being perhaps more insightful and literary. Though it is written in a modern, if unique style, it is written in such a way as to suggest the period of which the novel is set. Found families are a trope these days, and a ship's crew in the days of sail is very much a found family. The books feature many shipmates who follow their captain from ship to ship, so that the stories are filled with both old friends as well as new characters, unique for each story. His books are a perfect blend of great literature and exciting genre fiction, fiction that in the 21 book series takes the reader around the early 19^th century world, several times over, with many unexpected events and interesting ports of call.

This is the third book in the series. I’ve read all but the last two or three books at least twice and probably three times, so I could just pick this title off the shelf to read, knowing where I was in the saga. Not only is this one perhaps my favorite, but it takes us to India, something of a theme these last two months.

The story opens with Captain Jack Aubrey in temporary command of the frigate Lively while the ship’s captain, a member of parliament is sitting with parliament. They are on tedious blockade duty in the Med, keeping an eye a French fleet in harbor. He is ordered home to return the ship to its captain, and to stop along the way to pick up his best friend, Stephen Maturin, who, though he usually sails with Aubrey as the ship’s surgeon, is also a volunteer secret agent for the British. Maturin had gone to the Spanish/French controlled island of Minorca to meet with Spanish resistance groups. However, it had been leaked to the French that Maturin might be a spy, and so they had taken him into custody. Aubrey must rescue him in a daring night raid. After this episode, in order to “rehabilitate” Maturin, i.e. to make the French think they made a mistake about him being a spy, he is to be sent as an aide to a diplomat bound for Kampong in Indochina. Being very well regarded by the boss of British naval intelligence, and knowing that Captain Aubrey is aware of this second, secret occupation, Aubrey is appointed captain of the frigate, Surprise, that will carry the diplomat to Kampong. The story then relates various incidents at sea during the long voyage, first to Bombay. In India the ship is refitted after a harrowing passage south of the Cape of Good Hope, giving us a taste of India. And when they sail on to Kampong, they eventually come upon a French squadron consisting of a ship of the line and several frigates that have been sent to the India Ocean to disrupt British trade. This leads to a sea battle in between the French squadron and the East India Company's yearly convoy of large merchant ships bringing a vast quantity of tea and good from China to London, aided by the Surprise.

The series is best read in order, and though every book has its own story, there came a point where the series simply became one 21 volume novel. I have read other books of this period and in this sub-genre from a number of other writers including C. S. Forester, Alexander Kent, and Dudley Pope, and I can say that O'Brian's books stand head and shoulder above them, not only in writing, but in bringing in the world and society of the time period into his stories.

If you have any taste for historical fiction of this period and/or the sea, be sure to give Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey and Maturin books a try. I can not recommend them enough.

Coming up next week: Three cozy mystery/medical/monster urban fantasy books. Stay tuned.

My Top 10 Favorite SF Books of All Time

I recently watched a Media Death Cult video on the viewers' favorite books and I have to admit that haven’t read more than one or two of them. Still it got me to thinking about my favorite books of all time. So I racked my memory to come up with a list of my ten favorite SF books. This proved to be rather hard since I've forgotten 97% of them. On the flip side, it means that if I do remember them, and remember really enjoying them -- they're a candidate for the list.

Before I begin, I should note that “all time” is the trick words here. What I’ve done is try to recall what were my favorite books during my nearly sixty years of reading SF, in one era or another. They are not necessarily my favorite SF books today. Indeed, most of them would not even being the running today, since my tastes have evolved over my lifetime. Still, at one time, they were my favorite books and I still recall them fondly because of that.

All but two of the books come from my early years of reading SF in the 1960’s and early 1970’s when I was reading  50 to 100 books a year. This means that most of the books are classic SF. I'm not going to list them in any order, and I’ll save my recent favorite books for last. 

1. Starman Jones, Robert A Heinlein. This is my favorite of Heinlein book. Farm boy with a photographic memory inherits an astro-navigator's books and saves the day when the ship he is serving on gets lost. Or something like that. I think it is my favorite Heinlein because I liked his juveniles the best and this one has just a hint of romance in it that was quickly shut down. Heinlein didn’t do romance in his juveniles. The fact that I can still remember the basic plot of the story is telling since, I can’t say that for most of his juveniles. I reread it in my early 20’s and was surprised at how much of what I remembered wasn’t actually in the book. A testimonial to how much a young reader’s imagination adds to a story. Back in our day, at least, we spend our days making up stories while playing, and this skill lingered on into adolescence. From my records of the period, I can say that I rated it “E” for excellent together with Space Cadet, a book that I have no recollection of.

Credit:  http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?258176, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48787509

2. The Star Conquers, Ben Bova. This book is a military SF, story with space battles, and an appealing young hero. Reading the Wikipedia description doesn’t bring back the story for me. I loaned this book to a friend 30 years ago to read to his son, and every time I see him he offers to return it, but since I know I'll not read it again, I tell him to keep it. Still it was a favorite of both of ours. I seem to recall that the sequel, Star Watchman wasn’t as good. I guess he wrote two more in the series years later. Who knew? I rated it a “E” back then.

3. Galactic Patrol, E E Smith. The best book, by far, of the Lensmen series. A space opera on a vast scale. I haven’t reread it, and would likely find it too grand and nonsensical for my tastes these days. I made a galactic wargame board game out of it, at the time. Still, its another “E” book in ‘65.

4.Ossian’s Ride, Fred Hoyle. An adventure set in Ireland. A recent graduate is recruited by British secret service as an amateur agent and sent to Ireland to discover the secret of a wildly successful company with amazing technology. It has a lot of hiking around Ireland, and, in a way, foreshadows my appreciation of the books like John Buchan’s 39 Steps which had his hero tramping around Scotland. I recently reread this book for the third time at least, and, indeed, I still enjoyed it. I first read it in 1966, but I wasn’t rating books that year, it seems.

5. Highways in Hiding, George O Smith. To begin with, the version I have has a wonderfully evocative cover by Roy G Krenkel, The story is a mystery story that centers around two opposing secret organization dealing with a deadly disease brought back from space. Road signs are modified by one group to lead people in the know to contact agents. This is another book of travel, thought this time it was road trips around the pre-interstate US. At the time there seemed something romantic about getting into a car and taking to the open roads which appealed to me back in the day. These days, an hour in a car is about all I can take. No contemporary rating for this book either.

6. Sands of Mars, Arthur C Clarke. I count this as the first adult SF novel I read. How could you not like a book about Mars – a Mars still unexplored by remote spacecraft when I read it. A Mars that anything could go? The hero was a middle aged SF writer visiting Mars that he wrote SF books about early in his career, which seems a strange hero for a young teen. Indeed I find in my records of the time that in 1965 I rated it only a “B” so I guess its memory must’ve aged well. The thing is that I remember it when 97% of the books from that period I have no recollection of at all, That must mean something. Plus, I know I reread it. On the other hand, another Clarke book, Dolphin Island I rated an “E” though I believe it was a juvenile. In any event, I have no recollection of the story.

7. A Princess of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs. One of my perennial favorites. But even with so much to love about it, there's still so much I wish was better – bigger, fuller, with deeper characters. I’ve reread this book probably four or five times. I read it to the kids at bedtime. In 1971 I rated it ***½, which is a little above average. But like Sands of Mars, it seems to has aged well, and I now consider it the best of ERB's books. Contrast that with his Venus series that I rated “E” back in ‘65, but never have had any interest in rereading. The first three books of Barsoom are one of my favorites for all their flaws.

8. The Witches of Karres, James H Schmitz. I’ve read this book several times -- indeed, after pulling it out of the bookshelf for this post, I'm rereading and enjoying it once again. I’m a sucker for stories set on spaceship, and worm weather was such a cool idea. So cool, in fact, that I sort of borrowed it for an episode in my Bright Black Sea. I must have acquired the book prior to 1968 as it is on my inventory for that year, but I have no record of when I read it or my original rating.

The last two entries on this list are recent books (relatively speaking) and are still very much in favor.

9.Johannes Cabal The Detective, Jonathan L Howard. This is one of my current favorite books. In fact, I just reread it. It is the second book in a series of five featuring the necromance Johannes Cabal, and is my favorite of the series, perhaps because it is a take on an old fashioned detective story and set in a mythical Balkan country, like A Prisoner of Zenda. Howard is one of those British authors with a clever, witty style that I really enjoy reading in my old age. Each book in the series is a little different, with a nod to Lovecraft, plus werewolves, vampires, and the devil himself. Normally these types of stories would not be my cup of tea, but his writing draws me in.

10, Shades of Grey, Jasper Fforde. This is my all time favorite speculative fiction book. In part because of Fforde's writing – cleaver, witty, endlessly imaginative, all of which plays a large part in my enjoyment of the story. It can be read as satire or absurd fiction, which again wouldn’t be my cup of tea, but not only is the writing wonderful, but he still manages to make the narrator and other characters seem like real people in a very unusual world where there is a strict cast system based on the color that they can see. I’ve read this book maybe four times – and will pick it up and read it again. I guess it’s my “comfort read.” Unfortunately its sales did not justify continuing on with the planned trilogy so that, Painting by Numbers, and The Gordini Protocols were never written, leaving so many mysteries left mysteries. The only bright side is that it did not give Fforde the chance to screw it up. I’ve read almost all of his adult novels and while the last two novels written after Shades of Grey were witty and endlessly imaginative, I couldn’t help wishing I was reading the last two books of the series. Life can be cruel.

So those are my nine favorite books. However, as a bonus, while looking up my old ratings for these books in my papers from the era, I found my top 22 book list from the mid-1960's. Heinlein dominated it.

1 Starman Jones – Heinlein

2 Star Conquers – Bova

3 Tunnel in the Sky & The Stars are Ours! – Heinlein & Norton

4 Sixth Column – Heinlein

5 Galactic Patrol – EE Smith

6 Space Cadet & Farmer in the Sky – Heinlein

7 Dolphin Island & Islands in the Sky – Clarke

8 Time Traders – Norton

9 Crossroad of Time & Citizen of the Galaxy – Norton & Heinlein

10 Outside the Universe & Raiders from the Rings – Hamilton and Nourse

11 Sargasso of Space & Plague Ship – Norton

12 Space Viking – Piper

13 The Star Kings – Hamilton

14 Revolt on Alpha C – Silverberg

15 Robot Rocket – Rockwell

16 Venus Series – Burroughs

The Constant Rabbit, A Book Review

The Constant Rabbit by Jasper Fforde

Published in the UK by Hodder & Stoughton July 2020 (In the US Sept 29 2020)

A book review

I’m a big fan of Jasper Fforde’s work. His Shades of Grey novel of 2009, is probably my favorite speculative fiction book of all time. It was set to be the first of a trilogy, but sales of Shades of Grey disappointed and the remaining two books were canceled. Instead, we have two books, Early Riser, of 2018 and now, The Constant Rabbit of 2020, though he did write three YA books from 2010 to 2014, which where turned into a TV movie.

The Constant Rabbit is foremost a story about bigotry, making it a very timely read. It is also a story about personal redemption. It is set in an alternate England and concerns the efforts of a very vocal, and violent right-wing faction, inside and outside of government, that are bigoted against a certain element of the English population of this story – rabbits.

Rabbits? Well, yes. The blurb:  “England 2020. There are 1.2 million human-sized rabbits living in the UK. They can walk, talk, and drive cars, the result of an Inexplicable Anthropomorphising Event fifty-five years ago.” In addition to rabbits, several foxes, weasels, and other animals were also made large, human-like and intelligent during this Event. And it seems that similar happenings have occurred in other places around the world. For example, the intelligent bears in Washington state can shoot hunters in self-defense, which hunters find unfair. The Event is never explained, but then, neither are the crop circles, which continue to appear, in our world, without explanation.

The narrator, Peter Knox, is employed by the government’s Rabbit Compliance Taskforce, as a “spotter”, since he is one of the rare humans that can tell rabbits apart. This talent serves to aid in every sort of legal matters concerning rabbits, from drivers licenses, to marriage, to criminal activity. The story centers around a female rabbit, Connie, who was a friend of Knox from his college days. She and her husband move into the village, next door to him. The anti-rabbit leaders of the village want the rabbits out, and want Knox to help them move them along. But though Knox still likes Connie, he has a guilty secret – he was involved in wrongful arrest of Connie’s second husband, who was later murdered by anti-rabbit thugs, which complicates his relationship with her and the rabbits.

This village drama is set against a looming large scale crisis – the government’s plan to rehouse all the rabbits into a single large colony in Wales, where they can be better controlled. Knox is tapped at work to track down a rabbit believed to be part of the rabbit underground.This rabbit soon has connections with his not only his new neighbor, but with his daughter as well, forcing him to make hard and dangerous choices. Dangerous, because his bosses at work are ruthless. There’s a blood thirsty group leader who happens to be a fearful anthropomorphized fox who threatens to gouge out one of his eyes and eat it if he doesn’t cooperate. In short, Knox is between a rock and a hard place, and must try to navigate the complicated and threatening situation as best he can.

While the story is full of Fforde’s wonderful flights of wit and imagination, the story itself is grim, dark, and sad. Bigotry, with the support of government and the complacency of the majority who don’t care enough, is hard, if not impossible, to defeat. And there is no easy victory in this story. Indeed, I think either the author or the editors realized that the story was so grim that a solution is foreshadowed in a number of passages throughout the last half of the book to offer some hope.

As much as I am a fan of Fforde, I’m not a fan of dark stories filled with unpleasant characters. And while Fforde’s wit, imagination, and writing can make me smile, I have to say that this story was too dark for me to enjoy to the fullest. And well, I could never help but wonder what I could’ve been reading if Fforde had applied all his wit, creativity, and talent to the third book of the Shades of Grey series.

In his afterword Fforde says “I am indebted to my agent… and editor … who interpreted a very troublesome first draft of The Constant Rabbit in a positive manner, and were sufficient bold to see that the core idea was sound and something good may come out of it.” While I would hope that it sparks a conversation about the evils of bigotry, which is all to the good. There is, however, still troublesome elements remaining in the story itself. Namely, the ending doesn’t follow from the story he wrote.

I like small stories about people. I don’t mind a story set against great events impact on the characters. In this book, that great event is the government’s decision to move all 1.2 million rabbits to one colony in order to better keep them in check and exploit their labor. Knox works for the agency in charge of this rehousing, and it would seem that his assignment is important in this plan. I think. I think finding one of the underground agents of the rabbits would lead them to the spiritual leader of the rabbits. Taking her into their custody would, perhaps, insure the smooth rehousing of the rabbits. Though the connection isn’t very clear. In addition, Knox becomes involved in the affairs of the rabbits as well, meeting this very spiritual leader, who arranges certain events that will affect Knox’s life. In short, it would seem that our narrator is at the heart of something big, even if he doesn’t know just what it is.

However, when we reach the climax of the story, nothing he did, or happened to him, seems connected to the ultimate outcome. In part this is because the climatic outcome is pulled out of thin air. And even then it has problems, for other characters are given choices that our narrator isn’t – for no apparent reason within the story – only because of the storytelling.

So what we have is one story, on a personal level, as our narrator is torn by the ruthless bigotry of his employers and the leaders of village vs his fondness, if not love, for Connie, and his growing regard for the life and philosophy of the Rabbit Way. The crisis of the rabbit rehousing is playing on the green screen in the background. Knox makes sacrifices to redeem himself in the eyes of Connie and the rabbits, but in the end, those sacrifices are just that – they have nothing to do with the greater events the story is played against. Indeed, while he shows up for the climax, he has nothing to do but help make cucumber sandwiches, which pretty much sums up his involvement.

As a writer, I have issues with this story in that regard. Fforde is writing a satire, and perhaps this disconnect could be a deliberate choice to highlight the fact that to defeat something like so widespread as bigotry, an individual can only do so much – really, so very little – which is nevertheless, worthwhile. However, as a reader, my concern is more for the characters and story, than for the lessons it may be trying to teach, and so this story does not really work for me. As always, your millage my vary.