Martin's Booklog

Imperial Earth – Arthur C. Clarke

Published on May 3, 2009

Cover of Imperial Earth

Imperial Earth
Arthur C. Clarke
305 pages
published in 1976

The last Arthur C. Clarke book I’ve read was Rendezvous with Rama back in 2002; unfortunately it was the news of his death that brought me to read another, as a private homage. I had read Imperial Earth before, in Dutch, as Machtige Aarde and liked it, though it never became a favourite. It seemed a good idea to reread this rather than one of the more obvious classic Clarke novels, to get a good idea of the strengths of Clarke’s later works. Imperial Earth was written and published in 1976 and set three hundred years later, at the United States’ quincentennial, which to be honest immediately dates it for me. On the other hand it is refreshing to read a sf novel that has the US still existing three hundred years in the future, rather than as subsumed into a world government or fallen apart into a Balkanised mess. At the very least setting the book at the quincentennial signals how much of a seventies book this is.

Imperial Earth starts on Titan where despite the harsh circumstances a flourishing colony has been established, which makes its living supplying hydrogen for interplanetary fusion rockets as the only place in the Solar System where hydrogen was abundant enough to be worthwhile to harvest and gravity light enough to be able to do it cheaply. It was through the drive and will of one man, Malcolm Makenzie, that the Titan colony became a reality and he and his family have ruled it since. That same drive meant that when it became clear he suffered from too much gene damage due to space travel to produce children the normal way, he instead let himself be cloned on Earth. His son did the same and Duncan Makenzie is the second generation of Makenzies to be born this way, now old enough to do the same himself and fortuitiously invited to the quincentennial celebrations of the birth of America.

The Secret of Sinharat – Leigh Brackett

Published on May 2, 20091 Comment

Cover of The Secret of Sinharat

The Secret of Sinharat
Leigh Brackett
94 pages
published in 1964

Back when I was twelve I discovered a novel starring a brave Earthman transported to ancient Mars, a dying world of grand canals and encrouching deserts, populated by noble and barbarian races slowly sinking in decadence. I’m of course talking about Leigh Brackett’s pulp Mars stories rather than Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom series, which I never read until much later. But that Leigh Brackett novel was my first exposure to both Brackett and that grand pulp idea of a dying Mars filled with ancient secrets and half forgotten ruins of a greater past. To this day I still like Brackett better than Burroughs, not just I encountered her first, but because she’s the better writer.

If Leigh Brackett sounds familiar but you’re sure you’ve never read any of her stories, it might just be because you remember her name from the credits of The Empire Strikes Back, the second and best Star Wars novel. You see, apart from writing some of the best pulp science fiction ever, Brackett also had a long and distinguished career as a Hollywood script writer, working on such movies like The Big Sleep, Rio Bravo and The Long Goodbye. But it’s her science fantasy I like best.

Science fantasy is that subgenre of science fiction that has all the trappings of science fiction, –aliens, other planets, blasters and aircars — but which actually read a lot like sword and sorcery in disguise, with strapping barbarian heroes fighting degenerate warlocks using superscience of an earlier age that they barely understand. It’s very romantic, not very plausible or much concerned with realistic science. Science fiction in that grand pulp tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs. And like Burroughs had his John Carter, Brackett has Eric John Stark, the outlaw with a twenty year Moonprison sentence on his head, raised by a strange non-human tribe on Mercury, (in)famous on three planets as a barbarian and renegade, but also as a man with his own code of honour.

Revelation Space – Alastair Reynolds

Published on May 2, 2009

(I actually read this book way back in February 2004, but only now finished the review. Surely some kind of record?)

Cover of Revelation Space

Revelation Space
Alastair Reynolds
614 pages
published in 2000

Alastair Reynolds’ is the Netherlands most famous science fiction writer –even if he is British. He works for the European Space Agency in Noordwijk and has lived here since 1991 you see, which may not make him Dutch but it sure means we’ll claim him as a writer. If Canada can claim everybody who has even flown over the country as one of their own, so can we. Revelation Space is his first novel; I’m not sure why I didn’t pick it up earlier. Reynolds started getting published in the early nineties, in Interzone and later became a regular in Gardner Dozois’ Year’s Best Science Fiction anthologies. It is therefore not a great surprise that his first novel is remarkably accomplished with none of the weaknesses of the typical first novel.

Revelation Space itself is an attempt to write semi-realistic Space Opera, without the miracle technology and artifacts of classic space opera, which mainly means no faster-than-light space travel. There’s still plenty of other, more “political correct” miracle technology on display though, like artificial intelligence, nanotech and handwaved quantum mechanic stardrives. Each of these technologies may be just as unlikely or be breaking as many laws of physics as FTL travel, but those haven’t been fetishised
as taboo, you see.

Candle – John Barnes

Published on May 1, 2009

Cover of Candle

Candle
John Barnes
248 pages
published in 2000

Candle is that rarest of creatures: an optimistic, upbeat John Barnes novel and what’s more, it’s set in the same universe as Kaleidoscope Century, one of his darkest novels ever. Candle is not a direct sequel however, though it does have one or two scenes that mean more if you have read Kaleidoscope Century. Good news to those turned off by Barnes’ nature as a dark and sometimes outright sadistic writer and which was on full display in that earlier novel.

Several decades after the Memewars, Earth is united under the benign leadership of the surviving meme, One True. Everybody on Earth carries a copy of Resuna and together these copies form One True. Humanity is quietly happy, working to repair all the damage done during the wars of the 21st century. Those that didn’t take kindly to having a meme running their minds for them emigrated to Mars if they could or disappeared in the wilderness to live outside of civilisation. The last of those cowboys was hunted down and reintegrated into society years ago though.

So when one night Currie Curtis Curran is waked from a deep slumber by the voice of One True calling him by his old cowboy hunting nickname Three Cur it comes as somewhat of a shock that there is still a cowboy out there — and not just any cowboy, but Lobo, an old enemy that had cost him much of his squad members eleven years back. Currie thought he had killed him in the last ambush he ever laid, but here he was again, seemingly not even having aged either. So now Currie has to come out of retirement again for one last hunt…

The Wartime Kitchen and Garden – Jennifer Davies

Published on April 28, 2009

Cover of The Wartime Kitchen and Garden

The Wartime Kitchen and Garden
Jennifer Davies
224 pages
published in 1993

I got this for my partner who’s much more into gardening, cooking and social history than I am. Tanks and planes and proper military history is more my forte, whereas she likes to know how ordinary people lived through the war. The Wartime Kitchen and Garden was therefore right up her street, as it examines how rationing and the loss of overseas food supplies impacted wartime Britain, the problems it caused gardeners and cooks both domestic and professional and how they had to adapt to new demands made on them. This book was part of a BBC series of the same name, which I never saw as it was broadcast long before I had cable.

When World War II broke out in September 1939 Britain was for its food supply largely dependent on foreign sources; one way or another these quickly became unavailable. Some food sources were physically out of bonds through German occupation, the supply of others was made much more risky through increasing U-boat warfare, while the British government limited the supply of yet others, prefering to spent money and shipping space on tanks, planes and other weapons… Fortunately the British government wasn’t entirely unprepared for this, having learned from the experiences in the previous war and immediately introduced rationing as well as replacement schemes to substitute foreign supplies with domestically grown food. Which meant that during the war the British people ate less, ate different foods and had to grow more of their own food themselves. Despite this austerity their dieet may however have actually been much healthier than it was before or since, just less fun…