Alan Turing, The Enigma by Andrew Hodges

From The Week of March 28, 2010

To a large extent, Alan Turing is the intellectual father of the personal computer. Though his suicide, shamefully brought about by the prejudice of the British government, kept him from seeing his dream realized, I can hope that, somewhere, Mr. Turing comprehends that few souls have had a more profound impact on their century than he. Mr. Hodges' dry account of Mr. Turing's life is far too long and far too mathematical for my tastes, but his subject is so compelling that obsession with detail does not spoil the experience.

Alan Turing had many of life's advantages. Born in 1912, into a pre-war Britain still encloaked in the trappings of empire, Turing was raised in an intellectual family. He was sent to excellent schools which helped to cultivate his prodigious talent for mathematics. His aptitude was such that, when Britain entered WWII and found itself in need of codebreakers, he was recruited to head an elite team at Bletchley Park tasked by the British government to break German Naval codes at which he, and they, were successful. We'll never know to what extent Mr. Turing helped to win the Second World War, but that he had a major hand in breaking Enigma, and that breaking Enigma gave the British government unfettered access to the German chain of command, surely gave the Allies a hand up over their enemies. In any event, it was after the war that Mr. Turing's contributions to our modern world came to light, when, at the University of Manchester, he predicted, imagined, and planned out a thinking machine, a computer capable of performing calculations on its own complex enough to necessitate that he come up with a Turing test for determining whether or not a computer possessed artificial intelligence. But before his work could advance beyond the preliminary stages, his homosexuality was discovered, a truth which ended his work, had his security clearance revoked, and forced him onto medications that would chemically castrate him. Mr. Turing committed suicide in 1954, not long after his conviction on charges of gross indecency, an injustice the Brown government apologized for on September 10th, 2010.

It may mean nothing that Bill Joy, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, three of the giants of the technological evolution of the last 50 years, were born within 18 months of Mr. Turing's death. Or Perhaps the Second World War did far more to advance the journey of the personal computer than Mr. Turing did; this is yet another thing we may never know. But it was Sir Isaac Newton who said, "If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." War may have provided the necessary funding for the research and development of the technologies we use every day, but those technologies had to be envisioned before they could be realized. They had to be invented. And Mr. Hodges convinces, here, that no one did more to shape our present than the brilliant and wronged Alan Turing. (3/5 Stars)

Life And Death In The Third Reich by Peter Fritzsche

From The Week of March 28, 2010

How do dictatorships take hold in democratic nations? How does a people become so desperate for a solution that they convince themselves to hand over their own inalienable rights in exchange for the promise of a return to glory? Is humanity capable of the kind of self-deception necessary for an entire people to be blind to the games of a man like Hitler? To this last, Mr. Fritzsche seems to answer both yes and no, even while his chilling work speaks to the first two as he chronicles the rise to power of a political system anathema to personal liberty.

There are always those willing to trade liberty for security. Benjamin Franklin deduced that much 240 years ago. So yes, some blinded themselves to the devil in the details of the Nazi regime, choosing to believe that the gains under such a charismatic leader would outweigh the sins he would revisit upon them. But while this is true of some, it's simply wrong to paint all Germans with this brush. Many spoke out, wrote letters, organized marches, established resistances. Proud people do not universally succumb to the snake-oil salesman, not even if he does wrap himself in the flag. But of course, dictatorial regimes do not last long unless they are good at not only crushing dissent, but making the rest believe that the dissent was minor, a silly distraction, a plot by external forces seeking to rob the people of their deserved glory.

How do dictatorships take hold? Fear. Fear of instability, fear of not being able to feed your family, fear of being worthless and useless. How do people convince themselves to hand over their liberties? By telling themselves that this can't possibly be worse than what came before which, when you're starving and miserable, isn't that hard to do. Mr. Fritzsche's ruminations on human nature, in both allowing the Nazis' rise and in protesting its excesses, are fascinating and worthwhile for anyone curious about how they might react in a similar situation to that which confronted the downtrodden Germans of the early 1930s. This is poignant work, particularly in the accounts of those who saw the dark future ahead and were powerless to stop it. (3/5 Stars)

Methland by Nick Reding

From The Week of March 28, 2010

Methland is an exceptional piece of thoughtful journalism, the likes of which comes around only once in a great while. Mr. Reding brings together the micro and the macro views of his subject, linking one, small, Iowan town's struggles with Crystal Meth's impact on its economy and its citizens to the broader, socioeconomic changes in America since the 1980s. And he accomplishes this infusion without overly editorializing, or inserting himself into the narrative. Either this is a credit to the compelling nature of Methland's subject matter or Mr. Reding's own ethics is unclear, but this forceful work is better for letting the powerful pictures Mr. Reding paints speak for themselves.

For nearly 30 years, the landscape of Middle America has been changing for the worse. Since Ronald Reagan's implementation of Trickle-down economics necessitated the weakening of big unions, jobs have been disappearing from small and midtown America, relocating to big cities where city-halls eager to be a destination for jobs and the taxes their holders provide, offered big business tax incentives they couldn't refuse. What jobs remained were bought up and new corporate policies implemented which can be boiled down to, "do this job for crap pay, or we'll bring in illegals to do it for you, or, better yet, we'll just move the factory to Mexico." Under conditions like these, it doesn't take long for poverty to set in as wages decline and jobs evaporate, and where there is poverty there will always be drugs.

This is the grim portrait Mr. Reding paints. But though it's a bleak future for the heartland of America, there is some reason for optimism. In hard times, we fall back upon good people to do good work, to make the hard calls. These are the people Mr. Reding focuses on in his study of Oelwein and the Meth trade: the mayor trying to save his town by revolutionizing it, the prosecutor trying to protect his town by coming after its leeches, and the man of god trying to uplift his town by soothing it. Prosperity eventually begets stagnation. Poverty, for all its ugliness, begets opportunity.

It may be that Mr. Reding's snapshot in Methland is a little too neat for some. It may be that readers will disagree with where he has laid the blame for the current mess. What cannot be disputed, though, is the extent to which poverty drives people to desperation. The casualties of the Meth trade chronicled here have shattered their lives in the pursuit of a drug that literally destroys the ability of their brains to experience pleasure. That is simply not something anyone would volunteer to do, no matter how potent the drug. The violence of the trade and the harm that it does are risks taken when people feel as though their backs are to the wall. And so it's little wonder that Mr. Reding's list of culprits for the current state of disrepair includes everyone from the politicians unwilling to legislate, to the big business willing to take its ball home and refuse to play unless it can play by its own rules. And those left to be squeezed between? Souls who could've made lives for themselves if things had just been a little bit easier.

This is a moving read which travels from the desolate streets of smalltown America to the vibrancy of the halls of power, comfortable here, there and everywhere in between. (5/5 Stars)

Anthem by Ayn Rand

From The Week of March 21, 2010

Ayn Rand will forever occupy a special place in 20th century history. Her philosophy is valuable but arduous, her literature is edifying but long-winded, and her essays are penetrating but pompous. Perhaps, if you have achieved as much as Ms. Rand has, your work is inevitably shot through with virtues and vices. What cannot be questioned, though, is the intellectual ferocity with which she attacked what she believed to be against the liberty of man. And to that end, Anthem is a powerful and concise statement.

Coming in at around a hundred pages, Anthem concerns a nameless man and a nameless woman whose love drives them to transgress the laws of their future, totalitarian society. The society itself is utilitarianism run completely amok, to the extent that those born into the society are assigned jobs by the state based on their perceived aptitudes. And as individualism has more or less been surrendered to this state, the need for names has been done away with. Everyone is completely equal, therefore, no one need be named. Everyone has a job to do, they will do it well, they will be rewarded. Rinse, lather, repeat... This is all they know until this lovestruck couple venture out of the narrow confines of their world to be together and, in doing so, realize that their society is not at all the all-knowing authority they thought it to be.

Ms. Rand savages the notion of a planned economy with this short story which is all the more potent for its brevity. Though she's clearly taken liberties with Communism which has never asked its adherents to relinquish their own names, she has pointed out the gravest flaw with centralized planning, socially and economically. The moment that the State is given a stake in the welfare of the people, it suddenly has a vested interest in managing that welfare. And if it is in the business of managing welfare, then isn't it logical for the State to promote certain practices which it considers beneficial to its subjects? And can it not, conversely, punish those same subjects for harmful and selfish behavior which deprives the general public of the individual's best efforts? Ms. Rand demands that Communism answer to its endgame. Where does centralized planning end? Where does the sacrifice of personal liberties end? And it's a question that the Welfare State will be struggling with for decades to come. For it seems to me that Ms. Rand's brand of personal liberty is as anti-societal as the Welfare State's is anti-libertarian. The answer must be located somewhere in the gray middle.

This is a wonderful story infused with serious, intellectual force. (5/5 Stars)

Beggars In Spain: Sleepless 01 by Nancy Kress

From The Week of March 21, 2010

First published in 1991, this first in a trilogy from Nancy Kress, is a study in a modern odyssey which, while inventive in concept and operatic in scope, fails to find its full stride.

In the early 21st century, a wealthy magnate, obsessed by his own weakness, sets about the task of genetically engineering his unborn children with the stated goal of eliminating their need to sleep. And though his dream is realized beyond his wildest imaginings, the fateful experiment proves to have profound consequences for Earth when it is realized that the Sleepless, as the children of this experiment come to be called, are extraordinarily gifted children who, upon growing to adulthood, cease to age. The sleepless, numbering only in the thousands, begin to harness the economies of the world, out-performing regular humans to such a painful extent that, eventually, there is simply no need for most people to work anymore. The labor necessary for the functioning and advancement of society is not only lifted from the shoulders of humanity, but the Sleepless, in their superiority, essentially promise to take care of everyone else, putting their unmatched powers to the forwarding of society.

This is an intense and fascinating sociological novel which has clearly had a great deal of thought injected into its crafting. The characters are interesting, the dilemmas are ethically engaging, and the sense of tension between the sleepless and the humans keeps the reader connected to the plot. However, Ms. Kress has bitten off, here, far more than can be comfortably chewed. The novel spans about a century of human history. And though many of the characters are the same, thanks to their non-aging, too many formative events are skipped over in the interests of brevity. Clearly, Ms. Kress has written three or four distinct stories here and packaged them into one, but they fail to knit together in a satisfactory manner because some of the sections, particularly the early ones, are much stronger than the sections which come later. And so as the story moves farther away from what we know and onto highly speculative ground, it trades in its sociological potency for some pretty mundane, science-fiction tropes: the rise of the renegade faction of mutants who refuse to conform, the inflaming of anti-mutant sentiment among mainstream humanity, the formation of a renegade cult of mutants who remove themselves to orbit under the leadership of their quasi-religious and completely nutty leader... Sound familiar? What begins with both feet firmly planted in the tradition of speculative, social commentary disappointingly devolves into Star Wars. Just too jarring a transition in a single book.

The first half of Beggars in Spain is great work and I salute Ms. Kress for the thought she put into her project. But this work would have greatly benefited from being divided into three or four parts, with each part fleshed out to make a novel. This would have provided much needed continuity which was sorely lacking in this set up. (3/5 Stars)

V For Vendetta by Steve Moore

From The Week of March 21, 2010

I have a hot and cold relationship with dystopian science fiction. I can't get enough of it! And yet, every bite of that forbidden fruit just doesn't taste as sweet as it should. Perhaps we all have our own, private notions of what the future would look like, if twisted darkly, and that these imaginings clash with the visions we encounter from others. Nonetheless, while this dissonance is in play with V For Vendetta, the book's pacy plot, savage characters and Big-Brothery villainy overcome its flaws and my dissonance to succeed where other stories of its like have failed.

The defining, 0-to-10 scale of dystopian fiction is pessimism, with 0 being fluffy fiction with pretentions to be Dystopian and 10 being "I'm off to get some razorblades because there's no longer any point in living." V For Vendetta comes in around a 7. For though its characters are violent and cruel, and though the totalitarian government is mammoth and unstoppable, a thick vein of anti-establishment triumphalism runs through the story, a vein which pumps some serious energy in the form of hope into the lives of the eponymous V and his new protege, Evey. Caught out on a dangerous, London street after leaving a party later than she planned, Evey is, in good, damsel tradition, plucked from the grubby hands of men who intend her harm by a masked vigilante with exceptional, physical prowess. Delivered into the vigilante's lair, Evey is offered the opportunity to return to her normal life, but though she wavers, as anyone would, she ultimately opts to follow in her master's footsteps, learning from him and, in the process, taking upon herself his great mission of setting back to right what went so spectacularly wrong. Though V is something of a cartoon -- imagine Batman without all the gadgets and the butler --, Evey is a believable heroine with believable fears and understandable incredulity at the situation into which she has been thrust. V may get his name in the title, but it's Evey who carries the story.

These novels are always, to varying degrees, warnings to the people, to be mindful of big institutions which take unto themselves powers they should not have. And to the extent that this book will convince anyone to act more responsibly should totalitarianism come a-knockin', it is a failure. No, this is good fun in a dark world. And nothing more. But good fun is worthwhile. (3/5 Stars)

Imperial Life In The Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran

From The Week of March 21, 2010

We can and will, as a society, debate the merits and the mistakes of the 2003 Iraq War. We'll attack it on grounds ideological, political and even practical, but we'll never come to a full understanding of it. There are some events in the world that are too complex and too secretive for us to individually digest. We will simply never have enough information to comprehend their truth. So what do we do? How do we come to grips with matters as important as these?

We can examine what life is like, on the ground, for the Iraqi people. Mr. Chandrasekaran endeavors to do just that by first exploring the Green Zone, the lavish, American, secured compound deep inside Baghdad, and then expanding his travels out into Baghdad proper, where the streets are dangerous, the rule of law dubious and the shattered lives as plentiful as sand in the dessert. Mr. Chandrasekaran chronicles a few of these beaten down Iraqis, descendants of a proud people now bowed under years of dictatorship and war. He follows their attempts to build new lives out of the rubble of their country while suicide bombs and American policies pound down around them.

Interwoven into these real world experiences is a history of the civilian occupation of Iraq. Mr. Chandrasekaran narrows his focus down to the vital decisions, under Paul Bremmer, that shaped the years to come, siting in particular the calamitous decision to disband the Iraq Army and send countless thousands of armed young men into the streets without any prospect for employment. A clusterfuck of the gravest order, a decision which surely defined the state of Iraqi life until 2007 when the troop surge and the Sunni Awakening began to knit some semblance of Iraqi life back together again.

Though Mr. Chandrasekaran is unsparingly critical of Mr. Bremmer and of the flawed decision making exhibited by his civil administration, he also communicates that, in many ways, there's simply no good way to go about nation-building a conquered country. A mixture of wounded pride and cultural miscommunication will inevitably doom all such efforts. A more nuanced approach is called for, not only to avoid the death and destruction that result from flawed policy, but to avoid the astronomical amounts of cash that have to be sunk into rebuilding a nation with any sort of success. Meanwhile, as Mr. Chandrasekaran so vividly portrays, Baghdad is divided between the slice of Americana that exists in the Green Zone and the lawless and war-torn world that suffers beyond its air-conditioned walls. (3/5 Stars)

Jim Morrison by Stephen Davis

From The Week of March 14, 2010

This will not be the last biography of Jim Morrison, the larger-than-life frontman of The Doors, but it must surely be considered one of the most human. Mr. Davis, while revealing himself to be a fan of this most influential of 1960s bands, maintains a certain distance from his subject, presenting the facts as he sees them to his readers while largely withholding judgement of the actions described. It is a difficult stance, occupying a kind of awkward middle ground of neither total objectivity nor total fandom, but I found Mr. Davis' centrism rewarding, animating his chronicle from a collection of facts into portraits of real lives of real people.

Jim Morrison had an amazing and yet difficult life. The son of an admiral in the US Navy, he was expected to follow in his father's footsteps. And when it became obvious that Mr. Morrison wanted nothing less than to serve, the cord that connected him to his family was cut, casting him out into the world of the weird and the wonderful where Mr. Morrison found comfort and kinship. From difficult youth, Mr. Morrison slid ass-first into stardom which seems to have come, to himself and to the band, as something of a surprise. The greater surprise for the rest of the world was how short that stardom was to last, no more than five years from the flickerings of fame to the fateful night in Paris which found the icon dead of an overdose. But those five years... Has anyone ever been on such a fantastic ride? Has anyone been more aware of himself on that ride, the extent to which he was using himself up? To understand that he would die young but refusing to care is an incredibly powerful sentiment which hangs over this whole book as a kind of badge of courage. For say what you will about the man, and many have and many will, Jim Morrison was courageous and heroically alive in a way that 99 percent of us will never be. He was free. His freedom killed him, but what must he have learned in exchange for paying that price? What must he have seen, in and out of his strange and genius mind?

Mr. Davis has penned a balanced look at both the man and the band, hailing their importance in rock while pointing out that they were often a miserable live band, owing to attitude and to drug abuse. His portrayal of the drummer as something of a self-righteous hypocrite is just as memorable as the love-and-hate affair Morrison had with his famous girlfriend. And though we conclude with an icon's premature death, Mr. Davis lingers on the notion that legacy always outlives the man. This is true of Shakespeare and, at least for 40 years, it is true of Jim Morrison. (4/5 Stars)

Lady Knight by L. J. Baker

From The Week of March 14, 2010

I found Lady Knight by accident, searching through a catalogue of books for another title which I enjoyed only a fraction as much as I enjoyed this lovely tale from Ms. Baker which follows the star-crossed love a female knight has for a noblewoman trapped in a loveless, arranged marriage. Though Ms. Baker's prose flows well, it's clear that she wasn't quite sure what to do with a few of her supporting characters. The knight's cousin, a powerful priestess, would seem, by the attention lavished upon her by the author, to play a larger role in the tale than she ultimately does, something of a manipulative but secondary villain. But these weaknesses of structure do not ruin a good read.

Fantasy fiction all-too-rarely entertains alternative voices with alternative relationships. One would expect science fiction and fantasy to be the most inclusive of the atypical, gender and sexuality. Sadly, this does not seem to be the case. But this is to Ms. Baker's benefit for it's clear that much of Lady Knight's punch comes from the unusual gender roles and relationships presented. Make the eponymous knight a male and this is not much more than B-grade fantasy whose story's been told a thousand times before. (3/5 Stars)

The Men Who Stare At Goats by Jon Ronson

From The Week of March 14, 2010

There are some tales so bizarre, so firmly planted on the extremest fringe, that they become difficult to define. Is this a genuine attempt at uncovering the whackjobs who occupy our world, or are we in the hands of an author who is just as whacky as the whackjobs he seeks to expose? The blurred line is, if intentional, a credit to Mr. Ronson's distinctly British humor which delights in each of the interviews included in this piece of rewarding, laugh-out-loud journalism.

Chiefly, The Men Who Stare At Goats concerns Mr. Ronson's investigation into an US military program's attempts to channel the controversial powers of the paranormal into a stable, coherent, tangible doctrine which would allow the paranormal's various disciplines to be used as weapons against America's enemies. This investigation takes Mr. Ronson from California to Ohio, to Washington D.C., where army generals, cult leaders and hermit mystics are interviewed and their knowledge digested. Mr. Ronson deliberately withholds judgement on his subjects which is a wonderful choice. It allows the insanity to hang out there, alone, naked to the world.

Though it's fairly safe to conclude that the paranormal won't be troubling us in the near future, a disturbing trend emerges in Mr. Ronson's tale, the power that belief in the supernatural has over American society. He chronicles a popular, overnight talk show, Coast to Coast AM which regularly entertains notion of the weird and has, at times in the past, done harm as a result of not shooting down the theories of its guests, theories which, when disseminated, do real damage to real people. It's a strange thing to read a book about figures on the fringe, only to discover that the millions of people who believe them must also be fringe. At this point, can the fringe be considered fringe? It seems unlikely.

The Men Who Stare At Goats is a concise and laugh-filled riot which, unless you are on that growing fringe, is sure to entertain. (3/5 Stars)

All Tomorrow's Parties: The Bridge Trilogy 03 by William Gibson

From The Week of March 14, 2010

Though this final installment of The Bridge Trilogy brings the bifurcated characters of the first two novels together to pay off the series, All Tomorrow's Parties sags heavily under the weight of what it is forced to carry. Mr. Gibson is at his best when he welds the superficial onto the important, exemplified by Chia (a school girl) being introduced to the Assembler, a technology that will forever change her world. But whereas the superficial was well-refined in the first two novels, here it is set aside for expediency, that is, the culmination of what this whole trilogy is about. He who can anticipate the future can control information. He who controls information can manipulate it to their advantage and to the detriment of others. This, in a nutshell, is the lesson of the trilogy. This is where we've been headed since we first met Berry Rydell. But while this lesson is philosophically satisfying, the enjoyableness of the first two novels has been the characters and they seem to suffer, here, for being more obviously puppets for the thrust of Mr. Gibson's brand of technological theology.

Laney's deterioration into what he feared most is heartbreaking to watch, while the re-introduction of Berry and Chevette is welcome and amusing. Yet, having the two casts together somehow doesn't amalgamate into something greater than its parts. This may be a reach to explain why I enjoyed this conclusion less than Virtual Light and Idoru, but it just doesn't come alive as it should.

Nonetheless, this is rare fiction, the likes of which comes along only once every few years. Mr. Gibson has a gift and the reader is unquestionably blessed to watch that gift at work. (3/5 Stars)

Idoru: The Bridge Trilogy 02 by William Gibson

From The Week of March 14, 2010

Though Idoru exists in the same world, at roughly the same time, as Virtual Light, its progenitor, the reader is introduced to a cast of new characters and settings. While this frees the reader up to read Idoru as a stand-alone work of fiction, and while I believe this to be the best book of the trilogy, excising Berry, Chevette and the rest of Virtual Light's characters so completely from the story is jarring.

We shift our focus from disunited California to Tokyo where Colin Laney, a productive but brain-damaged American, is hired on by the loyal lieutenant of an aging rock star. Laney is ordered to turn his special talents -- Laney's disability seems to have given him unusual powers for intuiting bits of critically important data out of a sea of mundane information -- towards finding out if the rock star (Rez) is being manipulated by his enemies into marrying an artificial intelligence. Laney's world eventually collides with Idoru's second main character, Chia, a disaffected schoolgirl from Seattle who is designated by her chapter of the Lo/Rez fan club to travel on her own to Tokyo in hopes of finding out if Rez is serious about marrying the eponymous Idoru.

Though the story here seems superficial, Mr. Gibson uses the characters in Idoru to speak to a broader movement in his trilogy, chiefly that information has become the most valuable commodity. This truth not only makes the holders of information important, it makes the finders of information extraordinarily valuable. Though a story about the importance of information is hardly novel, Mr. Gibson's approach interweaves this notion with the excitement and risk of new, revolutionary technologies and comes out with a finished product which delights both intellectually and superficially.

Finally, a word on Idoru's characters. Laney is exquisitely tortured by his disability which hangs over him like the
sword of Damocles, while Chia is so naive that she can't even seem to conceive of how much danger she's in. But as good as the mains service the story, Mr. Gibson's supporting characters burn even brighter. Rez's search for love in any form as he descends from the zenith of fame is poignant, as is the undying loyalty of Blackwell, his chief of security. Most potent, for me, is Laney's domineering ex-boss at Slitscan which is a sort of futuristic
Entertainment Tonight on steroids. Kathy is wonderfully repugnant and, to the extent that she is in the novel, is a treasure. They all bring life to the best of the Bridge books. (4/5 Stars)

Virtual Light: The Bridge Trilogy 01 by William Gibson

From The Week of March 07, 2010

Virtual Light: The Bridge Trilogy 01 by William Gibson

Neuromancer was the formative novel of my youth. It rocked me in ways I cannot describe. It changed forever my tastes for fiction even while setting an almost impossible bar for other works to achieve. For this, I'm eternally grateful to Mr. Gibson. As a consequence of Neuromancer's brilliance however, The Bridge Trilogy cannot hold up. There's greatness here, in all the important aspects of literature, but there's a kind of pointlessness to it all that detracts from the trilogy's power. Case had a hand in changing his world forever; can Berry claim the same? Let's find out.

Set on a near-future Earth dominated by celebrity, media and information technology, a bike courier, Chevette, comes into possession of a pair of glasses which prove to be extraordinarily important to a group of shadowy figures who'll do about anything to get their hands on them. One of the factions hires Berry Rydell, a discredited police officer turned security guard, to put his cop's nose to good use and find the glasses and their keeper before his competition get there first. The story weaves its way through a dystopian California divided into two distinct states, north and south. We linger longest on the Bridge, a kind of artificial community which has occupied the earthquake-crippled Bay Bridge, connecting Oakland with San Francisco. It's here that our story flourishes, an amazing, diverse community which receives the full measure of Mr. Gibson's wonderful imagination.

For a novel pre-dating the Internet -- it was originally published in 1993 --, Mr. Gibson was cuttingly prescient about our obsession with celebrity culture in a world where information is as ubiquitous as the media. So while some of the details haven't born out -- not that he ever claimed they would --, Mr. Gibson's cultural analysis is bang on. This allows Virtual Light to age far more gracefully than most science fiction. The setting and the characters shine, here, more than the plot does. Berry and Chevette are adorable in their sad, earnest, mismatchedness. And the greedy, self-interested agents pursuing them are three-dimensional portrayals of people who sold themselves to the system. A great start. (4/5 Stars)

Defend The Realm by Christopher Andrew

From The Week of March 07, 2010

To an extent, historians can't win. If their publications are too dry, we criticize them, as
I have done, for not animating their characters. However, if they err on the side of being too slick, too flashy, then we wonder how much literary license was taken with the facts. Is there a happy medium, or are there just readers with different tastes? That question needn't be settled here, for, coming in at 1,100 pages and weighing in at three pounds, there is little slickness about this mammoth history of Britain's domestic security service, MI5.

Christopher Andrew, a respected historian, was given access to MI5's actual files in this unique collaboration between the public record, as represented by academia, and secrecy, as treasured by the security services. The project's stated goal? To produce, for MI5's centennial, an authorized biography of the service, from its founding in the lead-up to the First World War, through to its noteworthy shift of responsibility from Soviet spying to counter-terrorism. And to the extent that we are educated in the most important cases MI5 has worked on, Mr. Andrew's history is meticulous and, as far as we know, thorough. But that's the problem with Defend The Realm; meticulousness is all we are offered. The personalities of the MI5 directors are given some attention, as are a handful of important operatives, but there's no grasp of MI5's culture, or personality. Defend The Realm is an utterly precise, but ultimately humorless look at one spy service's century of operations in the shadows and, to my knowledge, there isn't a single story about pills, hookers and a foreign dignitary together in a hotel room. Now, that wasn't the book's purpose, but if the character, the flavor, is missing, what else was too sensitive or too embarrassing to print?

For all its scholarliness, this is a fascinating collection of rivalries, engagements and politicking that is worth reading if you're interested in matters security. The book is structured like a pyramid, traveling linearly through the history of MI5. The founding and its initial years are given the most time, while each successive decade of service has a narrower and narrower scope. The book's last great hurrah chronicles the fall of the soviet Union because, though it touches on MI5's new objective of counter-terrorism, details are simply inadequate to consider this last section worthy of an authorized history. A flawed but interesting work which will not at all slake the thirst of those who believe that spying isn't so nearly lifeless as this. (3/5 Stars)

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

From The Week of March 07, 2010

There has been, it seems to me, a significant upswell in interest in the Tudor dynasty: their rulers, their women, and their attendants. Surely no other hundred-year patch of history has been so obsessively tilled, so speculated upon, than that which starred Henry VIII and his daughters. Unquestionably, the Tudor dynasty has some fascinating figures deserved of this loving attention, but surely other stretches of time, with equally interesting characters, have been forsaken in favor of another portrait of the century of Shakespeare. Could it be that the world's best historians are British and British historians can only get off on the Tudors? Perhaps. And yet Wolf Hall throws all this out the window, making a bonfire for my antipathy as it steals my heart and earns my admiration.

In Wolf Hall, Ms. Mantel wastes little time distinguishing herself from Philippa Gregory. Her prose is peerless. It's economy of phrasing nods respectfully to Hemingwayian minimalism, but it's the emotion she's able to generate from her fairly stoic subject that truly impresses. Thomas Cromwell, henchman-in-chief to a rather childlike Henry VIII, is, outwardly, the essence of stoic, relentless determination. But Ms. Mantel's skill grants her hero an internal personality just as dynamic as the external one Cromwell shows to the world. And this is where the novel succeeds so well for Ms. Mantel has clearly set herself the task of imagining the psyche of a man who has been, for the most part, cruelled by history. Someone had to be the mastermind of Henry VIII's bloody reign. And given that the king's propensity for violence largely corresponds to the period after Cromwell replaced the executed Thomas Moore as his chief minister, fitting Cromwell for the black hat made sense. And yet, this is a man who raised himself up from remarkably -- for his time -- modest means to become a statesman, a thinker and an advocate for the powers of the state over the dominion of religion. Can such a visionary of the future, democratic state be such a villain?

Ms. Mantel's ministerial novel covers the first half of Cromwell's life: his struggles, his family, and his rise to prominence. But even as he attains fame and fortune, the enormity of which surely outstrip even his wildest dreams, sorrow stalks his every step. For the order of the world cannot be overturned, not without exacting its price in blood. While Cromwell is the shining jewel of this novel, Ms. Mantel's deftness with dialogue doesn't desert her when it comes to the historical giants within Cromwell's orbit. The pompous and petty Cardinal Wolsey puts in a potent appearance, as does a wonderfully conceited Thomas Moore who comes off here as a rather savage soul. My favorite satellite, however, is king Henry who is oddly innocent in Ms. Mantel's tale. But then if there had never been anyone to thwart your will, if you were surrounded by sycophants who praised your deeds and forgave your sins, if you were so isolated from the world that your only contact with the people is through their representatives and not the people themselves, would you not also be childishly innocent? It's a fascinating choice, but one that rings true.

This is an outstanding piece of literature. Yes, it is historical fiction; but for the research Ms. Mantel conducted, this story is entirely conjecture. But the quality of the work is measure by the sound of its authenticity and, in Wolf Hall, the sound is as sweet as angel song. (5/5 Stars)