Andre Norton. Uncharted Stars (1969)

     Andre Norton. Uncharted Stars (1969) A picaresque adventure story, in which shape shifting, hyperspace, mind-reading, narrow escapes, etc, figure prominently. A swords’n’scorcerers fantasy transposed into a technological universe, in other words. Murdoc Jern continues his quest for the zero stones with the help of Eet, a mutant pussy cat who teaches Murdoc to use what little ESP powers he possesses. The ending promises further adventures, as Eet is transformed into a human-type female of spectacular beauty. I don’t know if Norton produced more stories in this series; but as the characters don’t drive the plot, I don’t feel any real loss if she didn’t. The cover blurbs praise the book rather extravagantly. ** (2004)

M. C. Beaton. Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell (2001)

     M. C. Beaton. Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell (2001) Agatha and James have married (I missed the book(s) in which this happened), but they are not as compatible as they thought they might be. James takes up with a local hoyden, is attacked by person(s) unknown, and disappears. A few days later, the hoyden turns up very dead, and both James and Agatha are the obvious suspects. The tale focuses on Agatha’s attempts to clear her name by finding the murderer, with the help of Sir Charles Fraith. They succeed of course, but not without the usual near-death experience that Agatha suffers in every case. James and Agatha agree to a divorce, so we will see her as a single middle-aged woman in future. I suspect these aspects of the story relate to M C Beaton’s own life, but whether as reflections or variations is impossible to tell. Better plotted than others, somewhat more characterisation, too, but still basically fluff. ** (2004)

M. C. Beaton. Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage (1996)

     M. C. Beaton. Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage (1996) Agatha’s wedding to James is stopped when her long-lost drunkard husband Jimmy shows up. A day later Jimmy turns up dead in a ditch, strangled by a man, or so it seems. Wanting to clear themselves of the obvious suspicions, Agatha and James investigate, and turn up a tangled history of blackmail. Further murders complicate the case, but in the end justice triumphs, while true love languishes. Agreeable but not memorable fluff. Beaton can write better (she did in the first couple of books in this series.) *½ (2004)

M. C. Beaton Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet (1993)

     M. C. Beaton Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet (1993) This time, a new vet with googly eyes and a smooth manner disturbs the ladies of Carsely, until he is murdered. Agatha finds out that he has conned loadsadough out of his smitten victims, and of course has made enough enemies that the field of suspects is satisfyingly large, his partner among them. Both lust and money figure in the motives. Plotting is creaky, style is slapdash and superficial; Beaton is simply churning out this series. Agatha’s continuing romance with her neighbour and sleuthing partner James Lacey is tied into the plot, but isn’t really necessary. *½ (2004)

Kingsley Amis What Became of Jane Austen? (1970)

Kingsley Amis What Became of Jane Austen? (1970) Amis wrote occasional pieces, mostly book reviews it seems, and 30-odd are gathered in this collection. The overwhelming impression is that of a man with a clear sense of his own taste, and a rarely disguised contempt for those who disagree with him. Amis is also given to gratuitous insult of people he doesn’t like, such a sociologists. Much of this rudeness adds nothing to his argument or explication, but appears in the form of well-turned epigrams or similes, which must have cost him some effort to produce, hence his inability to leave them out. That being said, the essays are entertaining enough, and I do happen to agree with his (late) recognition of the pernicious influence of the Leavises. The title essay attacks Austen on the grounds that Mansfield Park fails in its moral judgments. Not having read that book, I can’t comment; but his throw-away comments on Pride and Prejudice indicate that Amis prides himself on enjoying a contrarian taste.
     The couple of personal pieces that round out the collection, especially his memoir of his father, make him appear somewhat more amiable, which suggests that his curmudgeonliness was largely a pose, a judgment that he would no doubt strenuously deny. An entertaining collection, which makes me think that I should read a couple of his novels. * to ***

Evanescence

Evanescence
2013-05-08
     This evening, we watched a documentary about Yousuf Karsh, portrait photographer. Towards the end, the curator of his estate mentioned that printing his negatives is becoming ever more difficult, because there is less and less paper and chemistry being produced. A historian wondered how much of the mass of digital images being made would be available for historians 20, 30, 100 years from now. He didn’t answer, but we can surmise it will be a very small, and randomly biased, sample. There were a few shots of people working with digitised imagery.
     I’m digitising my collection of negatives and slides, an interesting, frustrating, sometimes heartbreaking, and often tedious job. Tonight’s session was interrupted by getting the garbage ready for tomorrow: I threw out several of Jon’s floppy diskettes that were no longer readable. I’d used my best utilities to scavenge what I could from them, but most of the data was gone. Jon may have copied some of the data to his hard drives, but it will be almost impossible to tell. He also left some notebooks, most of the notes recording data for games he played, but here and there he wrote poems and bits of prose. These will be digitised, too, but we will keep the paper copies: paper will last longer than floppy disks or hard drives or DVDs.
     All data eventually vanishes. We have records from certain periods of the past only because the bureaucratic mind desires records, hoards facts and data. At one time, most data was created by bureaucrats. Then printing drove a demand for new content, and writers and poets left records of their works in progress, notebooks and diaries and drafts of essays and stories. Now, most content is created by digital media, and most of it is of no more (or less) permanent interest than casual conversation. Very little of this will be kept for any length of time, and even less will ever be examined. Automated data searches will no doubt flag what’s worth keeping, or worth using for whatever nefarious purposes the State has in its bureaucratic mind. But most information has very short-lived value. As it is, the scraps of paper that survive the decades and centuries do so as much by accident as by design. Later generations have different notions of what’s important to know or understand. What we wish to be remembered by may not matter to our descendants.
     Evanescence is the fate of all information. Electronic information will vanish more quickly than anything our ancestors produced: information that requires electricity to be read is doomed to obsolescence. Only an obsessive regimen of repeated conversion to new media will preserve it for more than a decade or two. For ourselves, we can at best hope for being recorded in some living memories and some randomly surviving hard copies of photographs or text, and perhaps a few artifacts that mattered to us, or that we created.

Carola Dunn. Murder on the Flying Scotsman (1997)

     Carola Dunn. Murder on the Flying Scotsman (1997) I bought this because of its setting (I collect fiction with a railway motif or setting), which Dunn describes quite convincingly, even for people like me who have direct experience of steam trains in England. To create the 1923 social milieu Dunn relies too much on cliche, that is, she’s writing to her presumed audience’s expectations. She also imports a good deal of late C20 political and social values. It’s unlikely that a Detective Inspector, his sergeant, and his detective constable have no racist attitudes whatever, for example. But apart from such (very American) flaws, the pastiche works very nicely, and afforded a few hours of pleasure. The heroine, Daisy Dalrymple (who’s a Hon), is charming, if a little too demure when it comes to pursuing her love interest, the dashing Inspector Fletcher, a widower whose daughter Belinda has stowed away on the train that Daisy is taking to Edinburgh (where else?). There’s a murder on the train, a mess of family members that all want what they believe will be a sizeable inheritance, a sinister threat or two, and so forth. Plot complications abound, characters are agreeably two-dimensional, and much fun is had by all. Would make a nice little TV series of the less demanding sort. **½ (2004)