Edmund Hamilton. City at World’s End (1951)

     Edmund Hamilton. City at World’s End (1951) A tale from the so-called golden era of SciFi, and it shows. The plot is simple: an atomic “super bomb” rips the fabric of space-time and projects Middletown, a city of some 50,000, millions of years into the future. The Sun has cooled to a red dwarf, the Earth’s core has cooled, too, and the planet is almost devoid of life. The scientists find a domed city, all 50K citizens move to it, an attempt to contact other people brings starships to Earth. The galactic government (run by humans, of course) wants to evacuate Middletown to a better place, but the people resist. A process to start a heavy-atom fusion-fission cycle in the earth’s core works, and lo and behold, grass starts growing, etc. But John Kenniston, the protagonist, decides to go with the star-folk, among whom he has found a possible future mate.
     There are several questions that nag a modern reader (me) of this book. One is sociological: what will the citizens of Middletown do? The mills have shut down to conserve energy, so there’s no work. Lack of work means lack of purpose, yet when the earth is warmed up, people happily return to Middletown. To do what, exactly? Another is biological: without green plants, where is the oxygen on this ancient Earth coming from? A third is cultural: were people in the 50s really so blind to the fact that women are less likely than men to wax hysterical in a crisis? Or that a uniform is no protection against the kind of panic and hysteria that is ascribed to the ordinary people of the city? Or that older folk are more likely to adapt to new situations than younger ones? And so on.
     Of course there’s no sex, just a chaste kiss now and then, and vague references to future plans and such. There is also the assumption that scientific people are not prone to hysteria, panic, fear, depression, or any of the other effects of the kind of shock that the citizens of Middletown undergo. In other words, this is an essentially adolescent fantasy, displaying the lack of awareness typical of that age. The aliens are generally friendly, and not really alien. The government is shown simplistically as bureaucratic. Hamilton gives us future humans who, after millions of years, are essentially the same as modern humans, who are said to be primitive and emotional. IOW, Hamilton seems to be unaware of what he is writing. No doubt the constraints of paperback publishing at the time (“not more than 50,000 words, please”) and the limitations of the demographic for which he wrote account for some of these flaws, but not when one considers that Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein, etc were writing around the same time. The book is a neat example of the popular culture of the late 40s, early 50s, but doesn’t have much interest beyond that, at least for me. * (2004)

Martha Grimes. The Anodyne Necklace (1983)

     Martha Grimes. The Anodyne Necklace (1983) Seems like Grimes names her books after pubs. This one is the locus of a D&D style game that eventually provides the clue needed to recover an emerald necklace and solve a couple of murders. Well done, but Jury, the ‘tec, is oddly bland and empty. The other characters tend to be rather more 2D than most, so that the books fails to satisfy. As a police procedural, it doesn’t quite convince, either. A beach or airport read, not more. A few very irritating typos. *½ (2004)

J. Burnley, ed. Penguin Modern Stories 1 (1969)

     J. Burnley, ed. Penguin Modern Stories 1 (1969) Modern is the operative word here: these stories are modern in that curiously restricted sense that never meant contemporary. Current stories aren’t ‘modern,’ they are just stories being written now. There is a deliberate bleakness of vision, an attempt at depicting “real life”, that feels false in these stories. Or maybe it’s the earnestness with which the writers present their ideas, as if no one had ever understood that people are fearful, petty, hypocritical, and very, very confused about life.
     No doubt a generation or two from now people will find some value in these stories; now, I find them of “historical interest” only. That is, they are reminders of a time when writers and other artists very self-consciously set themselves up in opposition to bourgeois tastes (itself a misnomer, since it’s really just common taste, and is shared by all classes at all times). They were heirs of Shaw and Ibsen, but by the time they wrote, the iconoclastic rebellion of Late Victorian and Edwardian times had become the received wisdom. Or rather, it had become merely fashionable. But then fashion relies on the appearance of revolt and change, it must constantly generate the illusion of being in the forefront, while following a safe couple of steps behind.
     The writers (William Sansom, Jean Rhys, David Plante and Bernard Malamud) already seem dated, and their talents seem to me to have been wasted. In other words, it was the fashion to appear to be out of fashion, and that never works. But it takes a while to realise that, and a writer’s life may be done by the time he discovers that he must write what matters to him, not what appears to matter to the taste-mongers. By the time these ‘modern’ stories were collected, Updike and Munro (for example) were already writing, and they made no attempt to be ‘modern.’
     I didn’t read all the stories, skimming most of them. I don’t know if there was ever a #2 in this series; probably not, for by the late 60s a different style of epater les bourgeois had displaced the ‘modern’ one. Not a keeper. * (2004)

Steve Paikin. The Dark Side (2004)

     Steve Paikin. The Dark Side (2004) Paikin, host of TVO’s Studio 2 and Diplomatic Immunity, and a political junkie by his own admission, wrote this follow-up to The Life, intending to show the price politicians pay, and succeeds admirably. He also wants to persuade us the we underrate and undervalue politicians, partly because they have badmouthed each other so much that we believe they are all villains (mud does stick to the slinger), and partly because they are an easy target for our frustration with all the things that inevitably won’t go right in our lives. He comes close to succeeding in this second aim, too, but I suspect that most of the people who will read this book will already be half persuaded. But since accepting his thesis entails a good deal of blame for our own stupidity, persuading others will be much harder.
     Paikin’s style is easy to read, he is a journalist after all, and he tells a good story. This book was a prize I won for my phone-in to CBC North about my relationship with Joe Clark, a man whom I still admire, and who in his interviews with Paikin comes across just as I remember him. A book worth reading, once anyway. **½ (2004)

Ruth Dudley. Murder in a Cathedral (1998)

     Ruth Dudley Edward. Murder in a Cathedral (1998) Blurbed as “Ebullient ... stylishly written, funny, and sometimes touching”, this potboiler is anything but. I started it some months ago, laid it aside as boring, took it up again, and finished it. The only draw was the plot: who would be killed, and why? As it turns out, the first corpse is a suicide, the rest are murder victims. The murderers are a couple of sex-obsessed, fundamentalist, wannabe televangelists, but they don’t get much on-time, so that the solution is more than a bit of a cheat. Not a keeper. (2004)

A. Hewins, ed. The Dillen: Memories of a Man of Stratford (1982)

     A. Hewins, ed. The Dillen: Memories of a Man of Stratford (1982) Angela Hewins edited and arranged the stories told by her husband’s grandfather, George Hewins (1878-1977), in the last three years of his life. They constitute a wonderful portrait of the town and of the man himself. Born to a very poor girl, probably out of wedlock (but this and his true paternity are never established), he was raised by his maternal aunt, a tough and shrewd business woman, who took pity on the small baby, the runt or ‘dillen’, and looked after him until he was able to fend for himself.
     That fending for himself was not easy in a country and at a time when there was no unemployment insurance, when what welfare there was handed out grudgingly, carefully and meanly matched to the recipient’s degree of respectability. George ran into the edges of the law, but never was a thief. He married young; his Emma was the love of his life, and they made the best of their hard circumstances, managing to raise eight children to young adulthood, and six of them beyond. George took what work he could get (he was a bricklayer by trade), and was called up in WW1 because he had enlisted in the reserve some years earlier. He came back injured, incapable of steady work, and surviving on an army pension. The story ends shortly after that return, and we hear nothing about the second half of his life. But it’s clear that his resourcefulness, good humour and resilience were inherited by his children and grandchildren. The fact that his oral autobiography was recorded, edited and published bespeaks solid middle class success by his grandson Brian.
     The book was given to Mother by Aunt Rosemary (n.d.), and Mother made marginal notes about some of the people. These show a connection with the Morgans via the Theatre, as both George and Emma had work there, and George did some maintenance and garden work for the librarian, who was Uncle Peter’s first boss and mentor. A thoroughly enjoyable book, but one that breaks your heart. ****  (2004)

C. Hager and P. Wegenstein P. Steyrtalbahn (1998)

     C. Hager and P. Wegenstein P. Steyrtalbahn (1998) A history of the STB, with colour and black- and-white pictures, maps, some drawings. Description of the line, roster, a couple of personal accounts of bike trips along the remaining right of way, station track plans, etc. Unfortunately, insufficient information and no drawings of the rolling stock, nor drawings of the stations. Also, the map shows the line only, lacking topographical and other information which would set the line in its larger context. Otherwise, an excellent resource for the modeller, the fan, and a pleasure to read, since it’s written in a clear and readable style (perhaps explained by the fact that neither author has an academic title). **½ (2004)