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.

Art Is Not A Competitive Sport

https://www.pngkit.com/view/u2q8e6i1i1e6y3e6_award-transparent-best-seller-clipart-free-library-best/.

This is another conversation with the clouds.

Art is not a competitive sport. And yet people turn all sorts of art forms into one. Why? I guess for the thrill of a horse race or a dog fight. There are activities that are inherently competitive – business, for example. But there is nothing intrinsically competitive about the act of creation, of bringing something new into the world. And what is equally important, all art is subjective. It is personal. It is yours to judge. So how can it even be a competitive activity?

Before I proceed further, perhaps I should issue this disclaimer. I think I was in eighth grade when I entered a piece of art in some sort of student art show. It was of a graphic design version of a rocket ship in black and white. It didn’t win anything. That has left me a bitter man for the last sixty years. This bitterness may color my attitude towards awards for art in general, and in this post, the various awards for speculative fiction and fantasy. Just say’n.

So, back to my premise. Art, the creation of something new in the world is not a competitive activity. And that the appreciation of art is entirely subjective. There are no objective measurements for the intrinsic value of art. It is all in the eye of the beholder. If one cares to, one can make a comparison between pieces of art, but that is still subjective. This fact, however, has never stopped people from making a dog fight out of all forms of art. Art, music, books, movies, fashion, design, architecture, indeed, almost any creative endeavor will have contests and awards. Some are determined by juries, other by popularity, but they’re all still subjective judgments. And as artistic judgments they are meaningless. What works for one doesn’t have to work for another. And what works for a million doesn’t mean it has to work for you. Everyone has the right to make their own judgment.

However, let’s be honest, these contests and awards aren’t meant to judge art. They’re meant to serve publicity and commerce. An award means recognition, which can then be parlayed into money. But money, well, isn’t mentioned in polite society, so it is better to pretend all these award are “honoring” the art, rather than generating publicity, and hopefully, sales to follow.

To go from the general, to the specific, let’s talk about awards in speculative fiction.

In the speculative fiction and fantasy field, there are many contests and awards. I’ll just mention just three; The Hugo Award Contest run by the World Science Fiction Society, the Nebula Award Contest run by Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and the Locus Contest and Award sponsored by Locas Magazine. Each year they hand out awards in various categories from novels to fans magazines. The winners are determined by popularity. Between six and eight thousand speculative fiction fans pay the WSFS money to be able to vote for their favorites in various categories. Some 2,000 professional speculative fiction and fantasy writers choose the winner of the Nebula award, and less than a 1,000 fans pick the Locus winners.

Over the last 40 years, this process has produced only 5 unanimous winners. If art was a competitive activity, and the criteria objective, one would think that there would be a clear winner each year. And when you consider that many of the people making these selections are a small group, most of whom have some connection to the publishing industry, they should be aware of any objective criteria that can be applied to speculative fiction book. Thus, if books could be judged objectively, there should be a universal winner most years.

But of course, there is no objective criteria to judge the artistic merit of a work. So now we are looking at the subjective – and perhaps business loyalty – of these judges. Is their judgment worth anything?

The fact is that more than 50 million SF & F books are sold each year, to likely over a million SF & F readers. This means that less than 1% of those readers decide what is best. And in at least one award, the Nebula Award, the voters are hardly impartial, being peers, friends, and/or rivals of the writers whose work is under consideration. One has to believe that many WSFS members are not casual readers, but people who have connections to specific publishing business that may compromise any impartiality in their choices. Thus, it is hard to believe that apparent popularity is a valid yardstick of worth in these very industry insider awards.

Which brings up the question of what is actually eligible to be judged. Half of the SF & F books sold are indie-published, and for all practical considerations, invisible in this selection process, since this is an exercise of traditional publishing, to promote traditionally published works.

In short, any way you care to look at these awards, winning has no real meaning regarding the craft and creativity of the works nominated and awarded. It is, simply, a yearly exercise in marketing.The best that can said is that awards represent a triumph of the marketing department. I’m certain that this conclusion comes as no shock to anyone. The primary purpose of these awards, and all other such awards for creative work, is to generate recognition that can be turned into money. Winning an award, and indeed, even being nominated for an award, allows a publisher and author to add a “Winner of...” or “... nominee” badge to their books, bios, and websites in the hope that this badge will lend increased credibility for the quality of the book, author, or what have you, which will then lead to increased sales. I assume it works. Heck, if you can buy a jar of orange marmalade that is served to the Queen of England, it has to be good, doesn’t it?

Of course, there is the element of “honoring” works, companies, and people, for their contributions to the industry. While there may be an authentic desire to do so, these organizations can not just settle for just “honoring” people. This too, must be turned into a winner take all contest. Oh, one can say, “I’m honored to have been nominated.” But that’s what the losers always say. And competition always creates far more losers than winners. Really, how is that honoring people? Why not just put the nominated honorees in a cage and have them fight it out like chickens or dogs? Wouldn’t that be a spectacle? I truly think it’s a shame that it seems that we can’t just acknowledge accomplishments, without making it a spectacle of it.

As I said at the beginning, art is not a competitive sport. But business is. And publishing is a business. Authors write books to make money. Books and stories, are written and published in one form or another to make money. And there is an objective criteria for judging the “best” in business. And that is, what earns the most profit. Period.

So, if it is important to determine the “best,” why not look, not at the subjective art, but at the objective reality of commerce. The best book, story, magazine, or any other contributor in the field is “how much money did they bring in?’’ Crass, yes, but objective, and can easily be justified – money, is after all, what the publishing business is about. One can write and publish for noble reasons, but at the end of the day, sales pays everyone’s wages.

So what I say, is let’s see your books – the ones with all those columns of  numbers – for each entry, so we can see what one made the most money. Then we'd known what one which really is the BEST. I can get behind that awards program. But until then, I will continue to look on these silly awards contests as the elaborate commercials they are.

It's the award season, let the dogs loose.

My Library -- Edgar Rice Burroughs (Part Two)

Edgar Rice Burroughs 
photo credit: http://www.tarzan.org/bio/26.jpg

This is the second part of “My Library – Edgar Rice Burroughs.” In my first entry, I described how I was surprised to discover that my memories (such as they are) of becoming a fan of ERB were wrong. I had read only half a dozen or so of his books during the my first 5 years of reading speculative fiction.  And, for lack of any other explanation, I must have become a big fan of his in the 1968-69 time period, based on fan club material I still have from that time period. Now, in this post I will explore why I think Burroughs came to have had such a lasting influence in my idea of what a story should be.

photo credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chessmen_of_Mars

I will begin in a roundabout way. While searching for some photos of Burroughs to illustrate my posts, I came across an article from the Saturday Evening Post issue of 29 July, 1939

https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2018/11/how-to-become-a-great-writer/

that perhaps provides some clues. It is an entertaining and very tongue in cheek article by Alva Johnston with the title of; “How to Become a Great Writer.”

It opens with the line, “Everybody sooner or later turns out to be a writer. Get deep enough into anybody’s confidence, and you find that he has manuscripts.” and adds that “...the people are smart. They are on the right trail. Writing is the shortest cut to affluence except inheriting big money.” Right. He does, however, goes on to say that Hollywood was, in 1939, desperately short of writers, and that good ones earned $5,000 a week or more for screen work and that radio-script work writers could earn salaries in 5 figures, per week.

photo credit: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9Dgm1HELxr6x1vwUF1HnmomejpzdD3K2GmvUozhUkPCjPJmFKevFEFi3a1uoCCuOgTAqS7acJtR9djzvxzxIz-m2Uz1TcwPXSNFe8E29XEmFnyCFvtB6k_1DC7877il10h_YHmc_wmSwp/s1600/02_a_venus_stjohn_pirates.jpg

Alva bases “greatness” in the title of the article on three criteria; “1) The size of the writer’s public. 2) His or her success in establishing a character in the consciousness of the world. And 3) The probability of his or her being read by posterity.” (I’ve had to add “or her” to Alva’s copy to make it a little more modern. In 1939 it seems writing was very male, at least in Alva Johnston’s view.) And judged by these tests, Mr Johnston says that "Edgar Rice Burroughs is first and the rest nowhere."

He then lists the “main rules for literary training that can be gathered from the experience of Burroughs. They are: 1) Be a disappointed man. 2) Achieve no success at anything you touch. 3) Lead an unbearably drab and uninteresting life. 4) Hate civilization. 5) Learn no grammar. 6) Read little. 7) Write nothing. 8) Have an ordinary mind and commonplace tastes, approximating those of the great reading public. 9) Avoid subjects that you know about.”

He goes on to describe ERB’s life and Tarzan in Hollywood movies. And, dear to my heart, is how he “escaped grammar.” It was a lucky accident. “He (ERB) was sent first to a private school in Chicago which held that the teaching of English grammar was nonsense and that students should absorb grammar through Latin and Greek. Edgar absorbed no Latin and Greek. He was then sent to Phillips Andover, which, assuming that all freshmen were thoroughly drilled in grammar, ignored that subject. Phillips Andover quickly waived on young Burroughs, and he was sent to military academy, which paid no attention to grammar. Edgar thus became an uninhibited writer, free from the anxieties about moods and tenses which kill spontaneity. Burroughs doesn’t know whether he is grammatical or not, and cares less.”

photo credit: https://www.edgarriceburroughs.com/artwork/

Burroughs is clearly a fellow after my own heart – or perhaps, more correctly, the reverse, I am a follower of Burroughs. I was no doubt taught grammar in high school. I remember that we (as in the class, not necessarily me) learned how to diagram sentences, and such, but I have retained little of what was taught today. I know what a noun is, and a verb, and maybe an adverb, but beyond that…well, the less said the better. And I can’t diagram a sentence today to save my soul. However, I have always maintained that you don’t need to be able to take a car apart and put it back together in order to drive it. Enough. I’ll save that rant for another post. Back to Burroughs.

I’m not going to claim that Burroughs was a great writer. He was, however, a great pulp writer. Perhaps the greatest. He had an amazing imagination which filled his stories with a that all important “sense of wonder.” And with it, he could slyly slip in a bit of satire as well. His narrators and characters were relatable. I’m a sucker for first person narrations, and I always enjoyed traveling along with his narrators. His writing was straightforward, approachable. Like P.G. Wodehouse, he had a story pattern that he used over and over, but, like Wodehouse, he used it well, and made it fresh, at least in his best works. That said, from the few ratings I have preserved, it is clear that his stories didn’t always wow! me.

photo credit:http://thejohncarterfiles.com/2011/04/the-roy-krenkel-ace-cover-art-quiz/

I’ll be honest, all that said, I have no more desire for revisiting his stories, than I have for most of the other books I read during that time of my life – with the notable exception of the first three books of the Martian series. I’ve already read those books at least four times. Heck, I even read them to the kids as bedtime stories when they were young. For all its shortcomings, A Princess of Mars is still one of my very favorite books. Oh, today, I would certainly like a more completely drawn narrator, and I would certainly like a princess with more agency, and well, I simply wish there was more to every element of the story. My imagination these days can’t fill in all the sketched in spaces in these pulp tales. But for all its shortcomings, it is still a great book.

Still, as I said, I think that ERB was the greatest pulp writer of his age. Period. He gave them wonderful worlds, bristling with creativity and imagination. He wrote escapist literature, but, at his peak, you escaped.

photo credit: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/476044623084413343/

In some ways, he is the anti-Heinlein, in that his stature has only grown in my view over the years, even as Heinlein’s shrunk. Part of that growing esteem I have for ERB is that I’ve come to realize just how much of an influence Burroughs has had on my own writing. The basic formula of episodic adventures, tied together with the thread of a romance, especially when related by a first person narrators, is the formula I use for my stories. Of course, I’d like to think that many other wonderful writers who I’ve read, writers like John Buchan, H. Rider Haggard, P. G. Wodehouse, Patrick O’Brian, Raymond Chandler, have also contributed to my ability to write and entertain. But I know that I owe a great debt to Edgar Rice Burroughs. I feel fortunate that I discovered him at an age when I could fully appreciate his work.

photo credit: https://www.reddit.com/r/FantasyArt/comments/cz5noj/frank_frazetta_art_for_savage_pellucidar_edgar/

My Burroughs Collection

My Library -- Edgar Rice Burroughs ( Part One)

photo credit: https://alchetron.com/Edgar-Rice-Burroughs

A rather strange thing happened when I started researching my old papers for this post. I found that my current impression of my early relationship with Edgar Rice Burroughs’ works seems to be all wrong. From the photo of my ERB collection below – some 60 books (including at least half a dozen duplicates) – it would seem that I was a huge ERB fan back in the day. I can remember pouring over an Ace catalog (I used to get books from Ace by mail order) with a long list of ERB’s books. They had titles like The Pirates of Venus, and Lost on Venus, which, not knowing ERB at the time, I imagined them to be some sort of typical, Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, Revolt on Venus type of story. I ordered the Venus books, and from the list below, you can see that I loved them. But going over the various other lists of books that I read over the next five years, I don’t find any evidence of when I came to be a tremendous fan of ERB. I was authentically surprised by this.

My ERB Collection

Here’s my lists of ERB books I read from my “Science-Fiction Books I have Read” dated, 1/6/65.

Pirates of Venus E

Lost on Venus E

Carson of Venus E

Escape on Venus E (It seems that I was a big fan of the Venus series.)

Tanar of Pellucidar C

The Cave Girl C

Beyond the Farthest Star E

The Land That Time Forgot B

The Warlord of Mars B

The Mastermind of Mar C

A Fighting Man of Mars C

Clearly, outside of the Venus series (which I’ve not reread), ERB books were, at this stage, rather hit or miss affairs. There were no new ERB additions in the list I made in September of 1965. And it seems that I did not read even one ERB book in either 1966 or 1967, as I recorded every book I read during those years. Another list dated, March 1968, adds only The People That Time Forgot, and Thuvia, Maid of Mars to my ERB have read list. The only other “books I read” list dates from the years, 1970 &, 71. It show that I read A Princess of Mars with an “A” rating, and The Lost Continent, with a “B” rating in April 1971.

It would seem that I wasn’t much of a Burroughs fan at all, based on those lists. But then, how can I explain the ERB related material I still have, pictured below?

The “Barsooniam Bazaar” has a 1968 date. The Barsoomian, #14, a quarterly fan magazine ($2/year), is also copyrighted 1968. The Burroughs Bulletin,#18, the fan magazine of The Burroughs Bibliophiles ($3/year) also is dated 1968. All of this would seem to indicate that I was a pretty devoted fan of ERB by 1968.-- though not devoted enough to actually subscribe to these clubs. I’m cheap. But where are all the ERB books that inspired this interest in ERB? They are certainly not recorded in my records of the time.

From the dates of this material, I must have started collecting the bulk of my ERB books when Ace started reissued ERB again in 1968 & 1969. Many of my copies I own now, that I would’ve bought new are “G” series $.50 versions rather than the “F” series $.40 books from the early 1960’s. And since there is a blank span in my records of books I read, from March 1968 to 1970, this would seem to be the time frame when I got into ERB. The Lost Continent copy I have is stamped “9-69” giving some credence to this theory. And the “G” series books I own don’t have “Neldner’s Point Loomis” stamped on the inside, so they are not from the card shop that supplied me with most of my SF books prior to 1968. I started college in the fall of 1968, and, come to think of it, that “9-69” stamp on the book may have been the practice at the University Book Store. One other piece of evidence is that my Ace paperback version of Richard A Lupoff’s book, Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure, came out in 1968. I’m guessing that my interest in ERB took hold in the summer of 1968. I may well have been rereading A Princess of Mars in 1971.

Image credit: https://recoverings.com/blog/the-ace-books-title-font-mystery/

That said, the hardcover books, and most of the Ace Tarzan books are books that I picked up second hand from charity rummage sales and such, whenever I came across them as an adult. While I’m not a big fan of Tarzan, I wouldn’t pass up a cheap ERB book, especially the Ace books with their Franzetta and Krendel Jr covers.. Of all the SF paperback covers I’ve seen in my life, I think the Frank Frazetta and Roy Krenkel Jr. covers for Ace’s ERB books are, collectively, the best speculative fiction covers ever. Period.

And that, I guess covers the nuts and bolts of how my Burroughs collection came to be.

But why do I have 60 Burroughs books on my shelves? Why did I at least look into joining the Burroughs societies? It’s not like I tried to join the Heinlein or Norton fan clubs. Did they have any? So what was it about Edgar Rice Burroughs that even today, makes him special in my mind?

Since this post is running long, and I have much more to say, I’ll answer those questions next time. So stay tuned for Part Two of My Library – Edgar Rice Burroughs

image credit:  https://fritzfreiheit.com/wiki/A_Princess_of_Mars

image credits Left: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Princess_of_Mars

All My Books Are Sale Priced in Amazon's non-US Stores

Just a short note to my potential non-US customers. All my ebooks now carry a suggested retail price of $.99 or the equivalent in your local currency. This sale will run at least through July 2020 and after that, we'll see how it goes. Hopefully this will have no adverse effect on the books that are free in the US store. But Amazon, being Amazon, who knows?

Thoughts on The Calculating Stars

image credit: https://www.tor.com/2017/09/14/cover-reveals-mary-robinette-kowal-lady-astronaut-books/

This is another entry in my series of remarks and observations directed at the clouds – which is to say, an opinion piece.

Having joined the Tor.com ebook club, I am occasionally offered a free ebook, usually titles that they are using to promote the release of a new sequel and such. The Murderbot novellas were such books, as were a number of mostly fantasy novels and novellas, which I sampled, and did not get past the first page, or chapter. The most recent free book is The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal. Kowal’s novel winner of the 2018 Nebula Award for Best Novel, the 2019 Locus Award for Best Novel, the 2019 Hugo Award for Best Novel, and the 2019 Campbell Memorial Award. Since the price was right, the book is speculative fiction rather than fantasy, and very highly regarded, I eagerly downloaded my ebook copy and dived into it.

The book is an alternative history of the American space program of the 1960’s. In this story, an asteroid strikes the east coast in 1952, triggering an extinction event. An accelerated space program is launched that echoes the actual 1960’s program, but with the aim of establishing colonies on the Moon and Mars before the earth becomes uninhabitable. Its premise is a classic speculative fiction story. Fred Hoyle’s The Black Cloud coming immediately to my mind.

It did not, however, click with me. I found myself, at the halfway point, skimming through the book in the hopes of just getting it done. Not good. Realizing this, I called it a day. I’m not one who feels obliged to finish a book I don’t care for. After giving The Calculating Stars half a book to hook me, I couldn’t find a reason to continue.

Having read only half the book, I can’t really review it. But I will share my thoughts about the first half, just between you, me, and the clouds.

In many ways, The Calculating Stars should’ve clicked with me. I prefer first person narratives. The story is one. I prefer smaller stories. The first half of the story, anyway, is not grandiose. I like to spend my reading time with pleasant characters. The supporting characters are, for the most part, likable, though I confess to having lost track of them, given the very episodic nature of the story structure. Given that my stories are episodic in nature, that too, should not have been a problem. So it had a lot of things going for it. But…

Thinking about it, I think there are two aspects of The Calculating Stars that failed to click with me – the narrator and the premise.

I’ll start with the narrator, Elma York. She was born in Charleston SC in the early 1920’s, the daughter of an army officer, eventually a general. He taught or encouraged her to take up flying. During World War Two she was one of the group of female pilots who flew airplanes from factories and bases to other bases, freeing men for combat duty. She is a mathematical genius, earning a PhD in mathematics and physics, at some point. She is happily married to another PhD, a well known rocket scientist. At the start of the story, she is working in the government bureau, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics doing computations. She has emotional scars from her college years, when she was called to the head of the class and made to shame the male students with her ability to do math in her head that they had trouble doing on paper. This seems to have given her a great fear of calling any attention to herself – at least that is how I read it.

The problems I have with her is, first, both she, and her husband, are comfortable ignoring the fact that she’s a PhD. She’s known simply as Mrs. York (rather than Dr. York) and despite her brilliance, works in a fairly menial capacity, presumably because that’s all women were allowed to do. Yet, I find it hard to imagine that any woman of her accomplishments, even in 1952, would have settled for this situation, especially someone with her bravery and determination. While she is not quite content with her status, she wants to be an astronaut, she doesn’t really ever stand up for herself, nor, for that matter does her husband. Secondly, growing up in the south of the 1920’s and 30’s, in the household of a fairly important army officer, I would think that they would’ve had a black servant or two – a cook, a maid, a nanny, and certainly yardmen and such. She would’ve been familiar with blacks, and would’ve had a definite opinion of them, one way or the other. She is, however, written as if she grew up in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. She treats the black characters as if she is first meeting black people, and their lives are a mystery. Race relations is touched on in the story, but tiptoed around. Her treatment of them, as a southerner just didn’t feel authentic. And lastly, despite her accomplishments, she comes off as rather needy… She simply doesn’t make sense to me, at least in the first half of the book – which is probably due to me being clueless. Perhaps these issues are resolved by the end of the book, but in the first half, she never struck me as being the person she would have needed to be to have achieved what she achieved. I found it hard to relate to her, and the often mundane nature of the story she relates.

I lived through the 1950’s & 60’s, and in reading this story I never experienced even a glimmer of recognition for the time period. The same can be said for the setting and larger backdrop of the times. The backdrop of the post-asteroid world is merely hinted at with a quoted news story at the beginning of the chapters. “Mrs York” doesn’t relate much beyond her immediate concerns. Indeed, even the space program, which she is part of, mostly plays out in the background. Every so often we have a rocket launch viewed from the control room, and that’s it, at least in the first half of the book. And even her focus on everyday life doesn’t seem to bring that life into context. Once you get past the premise, there’s not a whole lot of speculative fiction in this the story – at least in the first half. And that brings us to the premise.

One of the main reasons I stop reading a book is that I find something too stupid to want to continue reading. Given the praise this book has generated, I turned a blind eye to its stupid premise. But in the end, with the story just dragging along, I could no longer ignore its nonsensical premise. That premise is, that because of the greenhouse effects, due to the amount of water put into the atmosphere by the impact of the asteroid, the earth will gradually heat up and become uninhabitable. Well, okay, I’ll give that a pass. Nothing is simple, and I would suspect that there would be a lot of unknown unknowns that might mitigate the effects somewhat, but what the heck, let’s go with it. The solution to saving humanity that the story proposes, however, doesn’t get that pass. The solution we are supposed to buy is that humans need to rapidly develop rocket ships in order to use them to escape earth and set up colonies on the moon and Mars. (Another very old and familiar premise.)

But think about it. Why would we go to all the trouble of developing a space program from scratch so that we could set up self-supporting bases on harsh, faraway, airless and/or uninhabitable worlds, in order to escape our someday uninhabitable world? I mean, if you can establish self-supporting colonies millions of miles away, and only after you perfect a whole new technology just to get there, why would you not set up those same colonies here on the earth? It would be several orders of magnitude easier, far less expensive, and it would save many, many times more people than any moon colony would. I simply can not imagine that establishing a colony on the airless, radiation bombarded moon would be easier than building underground self-supporting underground shelters here on earth – near the poles if need be.

So, long story short. The premise makes no sense to me. I suppose it makes the book more dramatic, and easier to option for a movie deal. But the reality is that the story is not all that dramatic. I have to believe that a similar story could’ve been told against an alternate cold war space race against a more accomplished Soviet Union, with, perhaps, greater effect.

All art is subjective. I don’t write criticisms. I write how stories, TV shows, and art strike me. This story, despite my best efforts, just didn’t appeal to me. Things about it just seemed off. I found that I could not relate to the narrator. It failed to make me suspend my disbelief. And well, the premise is silly. That said, I recognize that this book has much to say about the struggle for equality, something that should be said. I’m glad it found an audience.

My Library -- Robert A. Heinlein

Robert A Heinlein
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Ah, the elephant in the room. When it comes to speculative fiction fans of the early baby boomer era, the ones who discovered speculative fiction in their youth, there is one dominate figure – Robert A Heinlein. All of us must have read his “juveniles” in hardcover, with those distinctive black & white interior illustrations. And for many of us, he was one of our favorite, if not our favorite speculative fiction writer. I find that I have a dedicated list of the books of his that I either owned or read from back in the day. The two other dedicated lists I have are for the books of Andre Norton, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Starman Jones
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Though I read most of the juveniles as library books, I do have some of those books in mass market paperback in my collection as well, purchased in the mid to late 1960’s. However, I first got to know those books on the Greendale Library book shelves. They may’ve held them all. They were mostly good, even great, and were, along with the works of Andre Norton, they were the perfect introduction to speculative fiction.Starman Jones was my favorite SF book for quite a while, along with Ben Bova’s Star Conquers. Everyone has their favorite Heinlein juvenile, and it seems that Starman Jones was not a common pick. But it was mine. Looking back, and looking forward, I think it was my favorite for two reasons. The first was its opening set on a farm. Every summer my mom would take us kids back to her childhood home, a dairy farm in Wisconsin for two weeks, so that the farm setting resonated with me. The second reason is that there was just a faint hint of romance in the story. Though, perhaps I just read that into the story. In any event, given the appeal of Edgar Rice Burroughs books had on me, with their common thread of romance, I think this had to be a factor as well.

Starman Jones
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These juveniles were perfect for a very specific age in one’s life. I reread Starman Jones, just six years later, and I was surprised how “thin” the story actually is. When I first read it, I had been making believe all my life as a child, and I suspect that this ability allowed me to flesh out the story with my own make believe. Later, as that ability faded, and I was left only with the book Heinlein had written, I found it rather disappointing. In any event, I read all of his juveniles, and still remember the plot of Tunnel in the Sky, though all others, have left no specific memories. I think I enjoyed Citizen of the Galaxy a lot, and seem to recall that The Star Beast wasn’t very good at all.

Below is my current collection of Heinlein books:

Like my Norton collection, what is missing is telling. So what is missing? First is Stranger in a Strange Land. I did have a paperback copy, but I got rid of it. Now I usually keep all my books, so when I get rid of a book, you have to know that I really, really didn’t like it. Stranger in a Strange Land falls into that category, as does my Science Fiction Book Club edition of Farnhan’s Freehold. I can still remember selecting that as one of my monthly selections, and being really disappointed it when I got and read it. Beginning with Farnham’s Freehold and Stranger in a Strange Land, Heinlein and I started to part ways. My records show that I finished Stranger in a Strange Land on 24 Jan 1966. Following that, I read Gulf,(?) Podkaybne of Mars, Glory Road, Assignment in Eternity and The Puppet Masters all in 1966.

Glory Road was the last of Heinlein’s new books that I enjoyed. Though, strangely enough, I only recently discovered that I had a copy of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress on my shelves. I have no memory of ever reading it, much less owning it. But there it is. However, I can not find it listed on any of my lists, so I may’ve picked it up sometime in the early 1970’s after I stopped recording books I read. Who knows?

Starman Jones
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Once again, taking out my “Science- fiction Books I Have Read, 1/5/65” list, I find that at that date I had read and rated the following Heinlein books:

Starman Jones E

Space Cadet E (No memory what so ever.)

Double Star A (ditto)

Starship Troopers B (I’m surprised I rated it that high.)

The Star Beast C (I guess I remembered correctly)

Tunnel in the Sky A (I know I read this twice.)

Rocket Ship Galileo B

Farmer in the Sky B

Between Planets A

Time for the Stars B

The Door into Summer B (Another book that I am surprised I rated it this high.)

Citizen of the Galaxy B (Only a B, but on a later list it is upgraded to an E, perhaps I reread it.)

Podkayne of Mars B

Have Spacesuit, Will Travel B

The Rolling Stones B

Waldo & Magic, Inc C & A

The Green Hills of Earth B (I’m surprised that this collection of short stories is rated so high.)

In short, a solid “B” writer. With a couple of standouts, and a couple of average books. By the end of 1965, I had added, but not rated; Orphans of the Sky, Methuselah’s Children, The Puppet Masters, Revolt in 2100, The Man Who Sold the Moon, Farnhan’s Freehold, Red Planet, and Beyond this Horizon to my list of Heinlein books read. And as I already mentioned, I read six more Heinlein books in 1966. I also have an undated list of only Heinlein books – 33 in total – with my ratings. On it, I had rated Waldo, The Star Beast, Farmhan’s Freehold, 6XH, and Stranger in a Strange Land all “C”s None of my lists include The Moon if a Harsh Mistress.

Farmer in the Sky
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From these lists, it would seem that Farnham’s Freehold was the book that started to sour my relationship with Heinlein. But I rated it a “C” so it could’ve been worse, and I continued to buy Heinlein books after Farnham’s Freehold, I guess I took Farnham as just one of those bad apples every writer occasionally produces. I also remember that, while I purchased them, when I came across them, I was never a huge fan of Heinlein’s short stories from the 40’s in those anthology books published by Signet. However, seeing that I seemed to have rated them in my Heinlein only list as “B” books, it is possible that my later falling out with Heinlein has colored my recollections of them. In any event, in 1966 I read five Heinlein books, starting with Stranger in a Strange Land, and only one of his books in 1967. My list of books I read for 1970 has no Heinlein books. Clearly, by the time he wrote I Will Fear No Evil, Heinlein was history.

Between Planets

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I did try, in the 1980’s or 90’s, to read several of his later novels, but I found them so bad – sorry soapboxes for Heinlein, the self-styled philosopher, to preach his strange philosophy from – that I couldn’t get more than a couple of chapters into them. A sorry end, in my opinion. If he aspired to be a philosopher, he should have published his ideas and insights in non-fiction books, not plow them, into fiction “stories.” These days, the more I learn about the man, the less I like him. So, unlike Andre Norton, I no longer have any fond memories of this pillar of my early speculative fiction reading. I guess that rereading my favorite story only half a dozen years after I first read it, and finding it lacking, tells the story of Robert A Heinlein in my life.

Robert A Heinlein
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