It isn't long before Griffin is heading to his dad's hospital room. His classmate Fouad al-Husam has been drafted by the mysterious BuDark and sent to Iraq to investigate anthrax deaths. The truck driver (remember the printers?) has made it back to his base, a defunct California winery (don't forget the yeast) owned by an idiot-savant with enormous lab skills. A plot is becoming apparent, at least to the reader, though the characters still have many clues to stumble upon and piece together.
Which they do, of course. They even get around the rather tricky red herring, and just in time. As thrillers go, Quantico is fairly standard in structure. Since the author is Greg Bear, the pacing is excellent and the technical details are well and inventively worked out. The business with the printers might actually work, as should the aurora trigger and the fireworks. The genetic engineering, on the other hand, seems a bit of a stretch, which is just as well.
The book appeared first in the UK in 2005. This US edition comes from the book clubs, but don't let that stop you. You'll enjoy it.
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Since I enjoyed A. Lee Martinez's Gil's All Fright Diner (reviewed October 2005), I was happy to find In the Company of Ogres in my mail. Martinez is busily having fun sending up the classic tropes, and if the style isn't heavy on bad puns, it still reads a lot like Robert Asprin.
The protagonist is Never Dead Ned, so named because every time he gets killed, he comes back. Indeed, this seems to be his greatest skill, for though he's a pretty good accountant for Brute's Legion, he really isn't much of a soldier. Perhaps this is why he gets tapped to be the new commander for Ogre Company, a group of misfit troopers heavy on ogres and goblins but with a salamander, an Amazon, a siren, some elves, a few humans (who, it seems, are surprisingly hard to kill), and a history of short-lived commanders. He gets off to an inauspicious start when a roc squashes him, but the Red Woman soon shows up to poke him back to life.
In the archetrope for this story, Ned would soon display a talent for leadership, whip Ogre Company into shape, and win a major victory or two (remember Asprin's Phule's Company?). But no. Ned's a nice guy, but a chump. The siren and the Amazon are soon dueling for his attention, but he's still a chump. An evil wizard wants to pluck out his eye and steal his secret power, but he's still a chump. A demon lord is hunting for him, but he's still a chump. The fate of the universe depends on him, but he's still a chump.
Get it? The poor fellow has to grow up, take some responsibility, get control over his inner demon, and get a life instead of another death. Of course, he does, and the reader enjoys a light, entertaining romp.
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Kage Baker has earned praise for her tales of the Company, a.k.a. Dr. Zeus, a future-based outfit that “recruits” throughout time, turns its new troops into immortal cyborgs, and sends them out to fill in the blank spots of history, collect treasures before they are lost, and defend the Company's interests, at least until 2355, when its knowledge of the future stops. The troops are of many human species, even Neandertals and the like, even species that have not yet turned up in the fossil record, and some just don't mingle well with later types. Thus the Company has had to set up places where it can stash the troops it no longer needs. These aren't retirement homes; they're more like file rooms, with the old fellows literally in storage. There is also the “Bureau of Punitive Medicine,” where mad, mad Marco tries his best to find a way to kill those immortals the Company wants to get rid of. Alas, no matter what he does to them, even shredding them down to the skull, their immortal bodies regrow. So he must keep trying.
In The Life of the World to Come (reviewed here in April 2005), we met Alec Checkerfield. He was a “recombinant,” a tetraploid constructed from the genetic material of extinct human species. He was also the third of a trio of clones. The first, Nicholas, met and loved the Botanist Mendoza before he was burned at the stake in the 1600s. The second, Edward, was a secret agent of the British Empire who also met and loved Mendoza before he died. Alec met her too, discovering her in exile on an island 150,000 years in the past. Once more they loved, and she gave him information he needed to move forward in his quest to bring down Dr. Zeus. Then he lost her, and in the search for her, he came across and downloaded the recorded minds of his predecessors.
So he's a fairly strange fellow as The Machine's Child opens. Alec, Edward, and Nicholas are time-sharing a single body, and it is not always clear who is in charge. Alec's AI, Captain Morgan, runs his time-ship, disguised as a giant schooner, and plots the steps toward bringing an end to the tyranny of Dr. Zeus, making Alec immortal, and finding Mendoza once more. Of course, she turns up in a drawer at the Bureau of Punitive Medicine. Once the Captain has helped her regrow a body and restored some of her memory, she happily if a bit childishly accepts Alec as her love and ignores the way he shifts speech and manner as Nicholas and Edward come to the fore. She also displays much more of her nature as a “Chrome generator,” an emitter of strange energies that do strange things with time. And the plot moves on toward 2355 and crisis and perhaps the end of Dr. Zeus.
But Dr. Zeus has other foes as well. For instance, there is Budu, a giant of an Enforcer, slope-browed in the old, old style, put on ice until his one-time protégé Joseph found him and began laboring to restore him to life and potency. There is also Suleyman, who seems to play a more patient game.
In the end, 2355 is closer than ever. Alec, his other selves, and Mendoza are in a very strange state. The Captain is in possession of what he needs to make Alec immortal and perhaps do other things as well. And at least one more volume will arrive in due time.
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Of historical interest is Erle Cox's Out of the Silence, first published in Australia in 1919. The tale is rooted twenty-seven million years in the past, when global cataclysms destroyed human society, except for three time capsules bearing individuals whose mission it would be, if they were ever awakened, to restore the glory that was. Cox's prose feels overly simple and unsubtle today, but any reader familiar with Edgar Rice Burroughs will not find it strange. The tale is fairly straightforward, beginning when winegrower Alan Dundas, digging a water hole for his stock, unearths a huge metal dome. Before long he finds the way inside, discovering both obstacles and marvels, and awakens Earani. In due time, the question must be faced: Will Earani save the world, or must the world be saved from her? Her ancient society was founded in the principles of eugenics popular in Cox's time, when overt racism was much more prevalent than it is today. Cox has been criticized for his racist content, but as “Book Wrangler” John Costello notes in his postscript, Cox deserves considerable credit for foreseeing—and condemning—the rise of the eugenic state represented a little later in the twentieth century by Nazi Germany.
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Bruce Boston is one of the premier poets of science fiction and fantasy, but he doesn't write only poetry. Flashing the Dark is a collection of forty short items. Some are long enough to call stories. Some are situations or paragraphs, prose poems or reflections or even jokes (such as “Shaggy Flea Story"). In all cases, the language is that of the poet, carefully chosen, sometimes cryptic, and the imagery is well off the beaten track.
I enjoyed it.
Today it is not at all uncommon to find women's names on science fiction and fantasy stories, but for many years the perception was that SF&F was a male field. The writers were mostly male, or at least had male names (such as James Tiptree, Jr.!) or androgynous names (e.g., Andre Norton) or used only initials (e.g., C. L. Moore). And of course only males ever read the stuff!
Sho-ah, as they say out in the country. The truth is that women were among the very first writers in the genre, they've been with us ever since, and they've been reading it, too. If you want proof, get a copy of Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century. Editor Justine Larbalestier has assembled eleven samples of SF&F by women, beginning with Clare Winger Harris's “The Fate of the Poseidonia,” which appeared in the June 1927 issue of Amazing. Today's reader is struck
by how much better it is than many other tales of similar vintage as well as by Gernsback's condescending tone toward it and its author. Is that enough to label it “feminist,” as an example of the difficulties posed women by the society of the time? If not, the accompanying essay by Jane Donawerth is quick to point out that it features a strong woman and is concerned with, among other things, “illicit reproduction” in the form of miscegenation and television.
Television? Yeah, I thought that a stretch too, but that's what happens when you turn academics loose, as Larbalestier has done with all the stories here, by Leslie F. Stone, Alice Eleanor Jones, Kate Wilhelm, Pamela Zoline, James Tiptree, Jr., Lisa Tuttle, Pat Murphy, Octavia Butler, Gwyneth Jones, and Karen Joy Fowler, besides Harris. Many of these are writers we have no problem recognizing as feminists today. Beside them, a Harris must seem quite tame. But it is worth remembering that there was in fact a time when a woman who asserted herself by such things as writing a story and putting the manuscript in the mail was committing an act of revolution.
Copyright (c) 2006 Tom Easton
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BRASS TACKS
Dear Analog,
I am enjoying “A New Order of Things” very much. It's the kind of story I've liked in Astounding/ Analog since I began reading it in 1950.
The August 1953 issue of Astounding contained Poul Anderson's “Sam Hall,” which told of the close oversight that a government can impose. I couldn't help thinking of the story when I read about the work that the NSA has been doing since 9/11. Cleve Cartmill's story in March 1944 foretold the atomic bomb. I hope that “Sam Hall” isn't as good a prediction.
Kenneth B. Bley
Los Angeles CA
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So do I, but it's an eerie and sobering experience to reread it now....
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Dr. Schmidt,
In all of the fifty or so years I have read this magazine and its predecessor, I have not once offered my comments or criticisms of the content. There have been occasions when I felt that stories or editorials fell somewhat short of perfection, but I could never see value in criticizing a person's craftsmanship whether I approved of it or not.
Once in a while I do, however, weigh in on disputations that I believe are in need of some light and air. I am referring specifically to Mr. Flynn's critique of Dr. Cramer's article wherein Flynn insists that essentially there was no separation between the science and theology insofar as methodology is concerned. In the first place, science as a separate discipline was unknown. There were theologians and there were so-called philosophers seeking answers to the mysteries of the natural world, some of the time in concert and other times in conflict. Christian theology relied on a tautological system that allowed observable phenomena to be joined with, and in support of, Church dogma while, at the same time, excluding inconsistent, logical conclusions. Then as now, religion was highly politicized, and providing simplistic answers to a largely ignorant population is an ancient method of winning support.
Flynn's assertion that heliocentricity was rejected by the Greeks is not supported by the historical record. Sanskrit texts from the eighth century BC in India describe the sun as “the center of the spheres.” An astronomical text called Shatapatha Brahmana states that “The sun strings these worlds—the earth, the planets, the atmosphere to himself on a thread.” Also: “The sun never sets nor rises. When people think the sun is setting, it is not so; they are mistaken.” If that's not heliocentric enough, the famous Greek philosopher, Aristotle, in his work, On the heavens, wrote: “At the center is fire, and the earth is one of the stars creating night and day by its circular motion about the center."
My point is that Christian theologians choose the theories that best suited their purposes, much the same way many critics do today. In the modern world, we see half-baked theories presented as science in support of political goals. Religious leaders are no more qualified to pass judgment on issues of science than they were in the Middle Ages and to speak of ethics as a function of religion strikes me as the purest example of an oxymoron. I believe that the only worthwhile ethos is the search for knowledge.
I recently worked on a project about the life of Giordano Bruno, who was brutally tortured and burned by the Vatican inquisition at the end of the sixteenth century. My research necessarily turned up a lot of details about Galileo, Kepler, and others of that period who fell into disfavor with the Christian hierarchy. I look forward to Mr. Flynn's interpretation of that era with interest.
One final note: I personally know Mr. Flynn and mean him no disrespect. I do, however, object to his “Michaelus of Easton” signature. While he may be in Easton, or at Easton, he definitely is not of Easton. As my Uncle Clayton used to say: “A mouse can build a nest in the oven, that don't make it a biscuit."
Thank you for many years of entertainment and elucidation.
R. K. Glover of Easton, now in Tennessee
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Michael Flynn replies....
All that because I pointed out that geocentrism was rooted in Aristotle rather than theology? Forsooth! A long comment containing many points of dispute necessarily requires a long reply. Too long. So I can only respond to selected points. Edit as you like. For the details, I refer the Brasstackians to Grant's Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages, Lindberg's The Beginnings of Western Science, and the collection edited by Lindberg, Science in the Middle Ages, as well as Aristotle's On the heavens and Ptolemy's Syntaxis, a.k.a. Almagest.
1) My letter was not a critique of Dr. Cramer's article—which was as always excellent—only of the easy folk-wisdom passed that the Church insisted the Earth was in the center of the World for theological reasons when it was for reasons of Aristotelian physics, and was in conformance with the then-ascertainable empirical evidence. That it was congenial to their theology was lagniappe. Oresme pointed out what Augustine had written ages before, that passages once thought narrative might well be poetical, allegorical, or phrased “in the common sense.” Heck, we still say “sunrise.” In many ways, Galileo would have had an easier time of it had he been born three centuries earlier.
2) Natural philosophers, even those like Oresme, Heytesbury, and others who were also theologians, did not use revelation to determine a question in philosophy, although they sometimes did use them for illustration. See Oresme's On the causes of marvels, for example.
3) Why are they “so-called” philosophers?
4) The Latin Christians were not so much “tauto-logical” as “auto-logical,” and came in for much criticism for this by later humanists and Protestants. In Quomodo substantiae, Boethius famously tried to axiomatize Christianity in the manner of Euclid's elements. As Berengar of Tours wrote [Rescriptum contra Lanfrannum], “it is incomparably better to act by reason in the apprehension of truth.” And, of course, Aquinas’ Summa theologica is the masterwork of this genre. We may suppose them successful or not, as modern tastes run; but the attempt to apply logic even to their own religious beliefs was remarkable and historically unparalleled. So much so that Luther would later rebel against “that whore Reason."
5) Citing an “inconsistent, logical conclusion” that was “excluded” would be helpful to those of us of an empiricist disposition. The only one I can think of was whether accidents can exist without inhering in a substance; e.g., can there be “white” without a white “thing"? Yet, this was hotly debated, despite the obvious theological consequence. In any collection of millions of people, there are bound to be disagreements.
6) As William of Ockham pointed out, you cannot prove the existence of one thing by the existence of another. What the ancient Indians may have believed tells us nothing about the ancient Greeks.
7) The Aristotle quote, from On the heavens, Book II, Chapter 13, is bowdlerized. It actually reads: “But the Italian philosophers known as the Pythagoreans take the contrary view. At the center, they say, is fire, and the earth is one of the stars, creating night and day by its ci
rcular motion around the center” [emphasis added]. The Stagerite continues: “In all this, they are not seeking for theories and causes to account for observed facts, but rather forcing their observations and trying to accomodate them to certain theories and opinons of their own.” I.e., Aristotle was citing the religious beliefs of a fringe group in order to refute them. (They thought Fire was a “nobler” element, and so deserved to be in the center. So, oddly, religious convision was a source of heliocentrism, not of geodentrism. A lucky guess is not science.) For interested readers, classics.mit. edu/Aristotle/heavens.2.ii.html shows the danger of proof-texting an isolated sentence here or there. (One wonders whether the Indian quotes also suffer from the same defect of context.)
8) If “the only worthwhile ethos is the search for knowledge,” why not perform medical experiments on Jews? Why not dictate whom people are allowed to marry, and whether they are allowed to have children? Why not eavesdrop on private conversations? Why not, as Hume proposed, burn all books except those concerning “experimental reasoning” or “quantity or number"? It might be that a search for understanding, or even for love or beauty, may be more worthwhile.
9) Regarding Bruno, it was quite a feat to be excommunicated by Catholics, Calvinists, and Lutherans, and to be kicked out of Oxford by the dons and fired by each of his successive patrons. Interested readers may try Bruno's Ash Wednesday Supperhere: www. math.dartmouth.edu/~matc/Readers/renaissance.astro/6.1.Supper.html and discover how little his mysticism owed to genuine science. The translator commented wryly that the Copernicans ought to have burned him.
10) The Galileo affair is too long a tale for Brass Tacks, but arrogance, professional jealousy, flamewars, friendship betrayed, anti-Florentine prejudice and anti-Spanish paranoia, international politics, the challenge of Protestant literalism, a possible forgery, and the lack of convincing empirical evidence may indicate a more nuanced event than the usual black-and-white morality play. Galileo wrote to Peiresc [22 Feb., 1635]: “But my most holy intention, how clearly it would appear if some power were to bring to light the slanders, frauds, strategems, and trickeries that were used eighteen years ago in Rome in order to deceive the authorities!” And again [16 March]: “[Y]ou have certainly understood which was the true and real motive that caused, under the lying mask of religion, this war against me...” If Galileo figured there was more to it, I'll go along with him.
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