R. Buckman. Can We Be Good Without God? (2004)

     R. Buckman. Can We Be Good Without God? (2004) Of we can. Buckman argues the case with material from a variety of sources, but his main argument is for atheism. He does a good job, but his style is somewhat breathless and often pedestrian (a curious combination, come to think of it). The book would have done better in half the length, and its two main theses might have been more gracefully argued in medium length essays. He points out that religion is a social good, but is often perverted into an excuse for evil. Persing’s work indicates that the right brain is responsible for religious and spiritual experiences, which agrees with other research that it’s the integrator of experience and knowledge: seeing the whole picture could well lead to the kind of ideas we label spiritual. Because like all human propensities, religious experience and insight can be used for both good and evil, Buckman is inclined to argue that we should at the very least be as skeptical and critical of our religious impulses as of our other ones. Good advice. The book won’t convince the believer, but it may help him or her to develop a more thoughtful and empathic expression of it. Because of the style, only **½ (2010)

Ursula Leguin. The Compass Rose (1982)

     Ursula Leguin. The Compass Rose (1982) This collection of short stories displays a range of fantasy, psychology, naturalism, realism, satire, and more, that one does not expect after reading Leguin’s more conventional novels. But whatever mode or genre she chooses, Leguin manages to make the central character real to us: the naive, task-centred young psychiatrist who treats a political “patient” in a near-future fascist state, and slowly comes to understand the nature of the oppression that she serves, is especially well-done (The Diary of the Rose). But even the most strange notions, such as that all worlds are the dreams of souls who don’t know they are dreaming (The Pathways of Desire), and that our objective reality results from our dream-selves becoming independent of the dreamer, is made plausible because the characters in the story come to that insight. By keeping her narrator strictly objective, Leguin presents us with what the characters know and understand, which makes us take on their p.o.v., and by the time we realise how fantastic is the idea that Leguin is working out, we’re hooked, and believe it – at least while we read the story. *** (2010)

Judith Merril. Survival Ship and Other Stories (1973)

Judith Merrill. Survival Ship and Other Stories (1973) Merrill’s selection of her own stories, published in Canada. The title story proposes the then daring notion that women are a) better suited to running a starship; and b) that the few men they bring along are their sex toys and inseminators. Several other stories deal with gender roles and relations, an issue that must have bothered Merrill, who had three husbands, all SF writers, and all (judging from the limited biographical knowledge I have) rather immature when it came to gender roles.
     Still, the stories are all interesting, as much as a reminder of the themes that exercised the SF writers of the 60s and 70s, most of whom did not write space opera or hi-tech action pulp, but preferred to speculate on variations on human cultural notions and values. Merrill was also a better than average imaginer of aliens, and her stories about human-alien contact are all worth reading. The saddest is about a race of humanoid giants who love all lifekind as a child does, just because it’s there. But when they come out of stasis and begin to make contact with the (very low-ranking) pilot who is moving the ship towards the docking station, the military man in charge of the operation gives the signal to destroy the ship, aliens and human and all. **½ (2010)

Ursula Leguin. Planet of Exile (1968)

 

     Ursula Leguin. Planet of Exile (1968) One thing Leguin does extremely well: She imagines whole societies, from the inside out. In this book, we have the terrans, marooned on a planet with a 60 year orbital period; and the local aboriginals, the hilfs (“highly intelligent life forms”).
     The plot involves a mating between Jakob Alterra, the leader of the dwindling human colony, barely holding out in the city by the sea, and facing probable extinction after 100 generations on the planet; and Rolery, the granddaughter of Wold, the hilf chieftain of the Tevara (both place and tribal name), who had a terran wife (she died in childbirth). The coming winter, with attacks from the Gaals, another race of indigenes, complicates the story, and provides the opportunity and impetus for the terrans and the hilfs to co-operate in holding off the Gaals, who have, for the first time ever, united under one leader, and destroyed the allies of Tevara, and want to loot it of grain and people on their migration south.
      The book feels thin and incomplete, it’s hardly more than a novella. We would like to know a good deal more about the hinted at undercurrents of desire and conflict in both societies, and a good deal more of the back story. There is a brief speculation that the star’s radiation has pushed humans into adapting to the local bio-chemistry, and that Jakob and Rolery will have children. The last line makes clear that Jakob thinks of the planet as his home. It is no longer a Planet of Exile.
     Leguin gives us the events from several human and hilf points of view, which enables us to feel and imagine living on an alien world in contact with an alien society. Of course, the hilfs aren’t really that alien. Leguin (the daughter of anthropologists) invents both societies as variations of human ones. Still, the POV trick works: we briefly engage in the lives of the characters, and we care enough about them to be glad that Jakob and Rolery will found a family, that terrans and hilfs will produce a hybrid race. This compensates for the skimpiness of the narrative as a whole. **½ (2010)

Judith Merril. Tesseracts (1985)

     Judith Merril. Tesseracts (1985) Judith Merril (1923-1997) was known as “the mother of SF.” Born and raised in the USA, she moved to Toronto, and spent the last third or so of her life there. More on Wikipedia's page about her.
     She wrote a number of stories and novels herself, but she will likely be remembered as a first class anthologist. This collection of SF stories by Canadian writers shows why. Merril was not afraid to go beyond the conventional modes, tropes, and motifs of the genre. The result is a collection of tales, anecdotes, classic SF, experimental writing, poetry, satire, and surrealistic pieces that defy classification.
     In one story, the old people decide they are birds, and take to perching in trees. The story ends when they migrate south. In another, the reality of the story changes every few sentences. In a third, society has devolved (my term, deliberately) into a mass of “enclaves”, each of which represents a social experiment. In the most conventional story, a burglar discovers the apartment’s owner hooked into a joy-terminal, and rescues her from what may be attempted murder, or attempted suicide.
     As might be expected, the most common tones are irony, cheerful acceptance of the crazy, and elegy. Since the mid-80s, SF has moved more towards elegy and terror. This collection can be read as one of the last examples of an SF that, at least indirectly, offered hope. An excellent collection. *** (2010)

John Mortimer. Rumpole and the Age of Miracles (1988)

      John  Mortimer. Rumpole and the Age of Miracles (1988) Rumpole’s sense of justice is in some ways merciless. That’s why the injustices of the legal system upset him so. He has no scruples when it comes to winning a case, whether it’s a brief at the Old Bailey or some developing situation in Chambers. Not that his clients necessarily like what he does for them: He demonstrates Nigel Timson’s innocence by showing that his prospective father-in-law (a Pillar of the Establishment) is a crook, which costs Nigel his fiancee. None of these stories ends in a pure happiness; in every one, someone more or less innocent is hurt.
     The saddest story concerns the Culps. The father is a small time dealer in antiques and secondhand goods. His son is middle-school boy. His place is used as a drop-off for a crate of guns, of which Culp knows nothing at all. But during the raid, a Secret Service man is killed; and someone has to pay for this affront to law and order. So Culp Sr is framed, and Culp Jr is sent “into care”, despite Rumpole’s attempt to appeal to Phillida Erskine-Brown’s maternal instincts. But Phillida has just had to steel herself against the loss of her son to Bogstead, and so the appeal fails. I didn’t read this story, because I’d seen it in the TV series, and that was depressing enough. *** (2010)

Patrick Hamilton. The Charmer (1953) (orig. Mr Simpson and Mr Gorse)

     Patrick Hamilton. The Charmer (1953) Originally titled Mr Simpson and Mr Gorse, retitled and reprinted in 1989 to take advantage of the Masterpiece Theatre version of the novel. Two reactions: I’m impressed by Hamilton’s narrative technique, a nice example of the ironic distancing; and the video is quite different from the novel.
     The plot is simple: a psychopath named Gorse woos a middle-aged fool of a woman named Plumleigh-Bruce, and absconds with her money. Hamilton uses a carefully organised series of Parts and Chapters. His narrator knows a good deal more than his characters, or than he reveals in this story (the second of a trilogy), which he tells from the vantage point of knowing the rest of Gorse’s life. But his carefully controlled, quasi-documentary, almost journalistic, and contemptuous narration keeps us reading. It also distances us from the rather repellent characters. Neither Gorse nor Plumleigh-Bruce are pleasant people, nor are Simpson and Major Parry, the other two rivals for Plumleigh-Bruce’s hand (or rather, money and plump charms). Hamilton despises them, but his dispassionate judgmental style draws us in, and we are both fascinated and repelled. Besides, we want to know whether they will get their comeuppance. Plumleigh-Bruce does, of course, and the last sentence assures us that Gorse will die. The hints about his subsequent career suggest it will be at the end of a rope. Reading all three parts of the trilogy would answer any questions we might have. ***½ (2010)
      The Masterpiece Theatre adaptation (1989) of the trilogy makes Plumleigh-Bruce a much more sympathetic character, and changes a number of plot points, chiefly having to do with Gorse’s relationship to Simpson. To call the video an “adaptation” of Hamilton’s novel is an exaggeration: it is many ways a new composition. ***½ (2010)