Month: April 2023

Kindred, by Octavia Butler

On By Christopher TuthillIn Fantasy, Reviews, Science FictionLeave a comment

I found Kindred to be such an amazing achievement; wonderfully written, creating such a believable, harrowing world. I plan to read the rest of Butler’s novels in due course, but had to let my thoughts on this one simmer for awhile. This isn’t light beach reading or something you pick up to be distracted. It’s considered one of the monumental works of 20th century science fiction, deservedly so.

Dana, an African American writer, is transported back to the antebellum south, and this is where the horror begins. It is hard to do this book justice, but the day to day life of a slave in the American south is described in great and horrifying detail. Dana becomes the protector of young Rufus Weylin, the heir to a plantation, and she later learns that he is one of her ancestors. Dana travels back and forth between the 1820s and 1976, finding that while she has been in the past for several hours, days, or months, she has usually only been gone for comparatively short periods of time in the present.

Slaves on the Weylin plantation are brutalized, raped, and tortured, and yet Weylin’s father, Tom, their master, is considered by the slaves to be mild in comparison to other slave owners. Families are casually torn apart to pay debts, or in some cases just to prove a point. Dana’s account of these atrocities gives the reader an idea of what slave life was like, and the unimaginable horror of just surviving and enduring.

The book is set during the bicentennial, which is when it was written, and this setting is significant, given how much America was celebrating at that time. But this book is a clear reminder of our brutal, racist, genocidal past. It’s something we must reckon with, if we want to make this country more just and fair.

Kindred is a book everyone should read. It’s a landmark of American literature, a brilliantly written and researched novel and a powerful work of literature. The characters are very nuanced and have so much depth to them. The depiction of the slave community, and the brutality they were subjected to, are so moving and heartbreaking. They are faced with unthinkable choices for their survival, and Dana’s struggle to help them and eventually be liberated has echoes of historical slave narratives, as many critics have pointed out. Butler has said in interviews that she wanted “to make people feel history,“ and she succeeded brilliantly.

Contact, by Carl Sagan

On By Christopher TuthillIn Reviews, Science FictionLeave a comment

“We all have a thirst for wonder. It’s a deeply human quality. Science and religion are both bound up with it. What I’m saying is, you don’t have to make stories up, you don’t have to exaggerate. There’s wonder and awe enough in the real world. Nature’s a lot better at inventing wonders than we are.”

“She had studied the universe all her life, but had overlooked its clearest message: For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.” –Carl Sagan, Contact

Carl Sagan had a rare gift for making extremely complex subjects accessible to non-experts. Coupled with his passion for educating the public, he was truly a one of a kind renaissance man who brought the wonder of science to millions. His novel is something no one who enjoyed Cosmos, or his other popular works, should miss.

Contact is the story of how humans might one day communicate with an extra terrestrial race, made plausible by Sagan’s knowledge of science, physics, astronomy, and his talent as a writer. Ellie Arroway, the astronomer/hero of the novel, discovers a signal through a radio telescope, and sets out to decode the message with the help of scientists from around the world. Politics, religion, and mass hysteria become a volatile mix when the public gets wind of the project.

It turns out Sagan’s gifts weren’t limited to teaching and science. He was a poetic writer as well, and the novel is so well written, with such attention paid to characterization, along with scientific explanations for what the astronomers are actually doing. I was impressed with the way he melds hard science with a touching story about a somewhat lonely astronomer, and her efforts to change the world. Sagan also takes religion and politics seriously, and has empathy for those struggling with faith as a result of the discovery of life beyond earth.

In reading Sagan’s work, I get the feeling he was an optimist who loved people, who loved science, and who felt it was in our best interest for the public to be educated on matters that we too often leave to researchers and don’t understand. But he was also a realist, and hoped that we could overcome our petty nationalistic struggles for the good of all humanity. The book shows the interplay of these complex human issues: the nations of earth come together to solve the puzzling message, but soon after, they begin bickering over who will control the message, and who will get credit. The idea of non human intelligence terrifies political and religious leaders, who don’t want their power threatened, or to admit that we might just be a backward, primitive race in comparison to the extra terrestrials.

Sagan’s book brings to bear a whole world of philosophical, scientific, religious, and personal ideas, and I feel it is a must read. It might even inspire you to read more about astronomy and physics, and learn more about the SETI project. As an avid, lifelong reader of science fiction, I don’t know how I didn’t read it for all these years, but I’m so glad I picked it up. At times, I was reading the book hearing Sagan’s voice from Cosmos. His legacy is really secure. I finished it wishing he had written more science fiction. Like scientist/fiction writers such as Asimov, Clarke, or Frederick Hoyle, he might’ve had a long and distinguished career as a science fiction writer, as well.

A Plague of Demons, by Keith Laumer

On By Christopher TuthillIn Reviews, Science FictionLeave a comment

I’ve been reading authors who are new to me lately, in an effort to try to fill in some gaps in my knowledge. For my birthday, a good friend of mine with impeccable taste sent me a copy of a science fiction collection by Keith Laumer, A Plague of Demons. Laumer reached the height of his career before I was born, so I hadn’t known about him, but I knew it had to be great if my friend recommended it.

I was not disappointed. A Plague of Demons, the novel that leads off the collection, leaps off the page at you from the first sentences. A military thriller/action adventure/science fiction novel, it has a breakneck pace that never lets up, and is filled with surprises and wonders that will reward any reader. I had so much fun reading this and I can’t wait to read more Laumer. In fact, I was at a book sale today and picked up a couple more of his books.

In the near future, the hero, John Bravais, is sent on a secret mission to North Africa, where armies are fighting in a gentlemanly fashion, under the supervision of UN inspectors. Bravais soon learns, however, that demonic aliens are entering the fray, hiding themselves until they can clandestinely kill soldiers and–get this–steal their brains. Why are they doing this? Bravais decides to find out, and spends the rest of the book alternately chasing these demons down and being hunted by them. There is a secret society of humans who try to help him in his quest to thwart the aliens, but the task is almost impossible, since the aliens have far superior technology and are hiding everywhere on earth. They disguise themselves as soldiers and can strike whenever they wish.

I don’t want to reveal too much of the plot, but it turns out the aliens have been abducting soldiers from battles for their brains since at least as far back as the ancient Romans. They take the brains back to their homeworld, place them in giant robots, and use them to fight their wars.

Does this sound bonkers? Yes, but in the best sense of the word. The writing is so lively and the dialogue so sharp that I was laughing out loud. Laumer does a great job with setting up expectations and traps for the reader, and it all reaches a very fun and exciting conclusion. There is one hilarious and action packed scene in which dozens of human soldiers, trapped in their enormous, tank like roboskeletons, attack their oppressors. They are a ragtag bunch from every era of human warfare, yelling Old English and Viking and World War One and Napoleonic battle cries as they take up humanity’s fight against the aliens.

I’d rate this one five stars out of five. It has a bit of everything, and is so fun to read. I love this era of fantasy and science fiction, you never know what kind of story you’re about to get when you start. I’m adding Keith Laumer to my list and want to read more, as will every reader who encounters his work.

Carl Sagan

On By Christopher TuthillIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

“We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

I’ve been reading this book, as well as Sagan’s excellent novel, Contact, and am once again so impressed by his writing. Like Arthur C. Clarke or Frederick Hoyle, he might’ve had a long career as a novelist, had he been so inclined.

This particular quote above, from The Demon Haunted World, reminded me a lot of all the op-eds and articles that have been appearing lately, purporting to explain AI and the proliferation of chatbots. These pieces are often written by non-experts, and then parroted back by technocrats with even less understanding of science. Yet people confidently speak of ‘the algorithm’ as if somehow that means they understand it. Sagan was correct, I think, and we are in trouble. Most of us don’t know how any of this technology really works, yet we are chartering a path to allow it to control so much of our lives.