Howdy! The September Issue of Ex Libris Reviews is now on-line. As usual, all of my reviews appeared here in the weblog first, but Craig Clarke’s contributed a couple of new ones.

Phillipa Talbot, head of a department in the British Ministry of Trade
and Information at a time when women simply did not hold such posts, is
poised for a promotion when, instead, she resigns her position and seeks
admittance as a postulant to Brede Abbey, a house of Benedictine nuns.
What follows is an amazing tale, to which I simply cannot do justice.

To begin with, it’s a novel.

When you go to the bookstore, you see the fiction divided by category,
which the publishers miscall “genre”. In fact, the genre is the form of
the work–the novel, the short story, and so forth. To publishers, the
word novel means simply any book-length work of fiction. In fact, there
two classical book-length forms: the novel and the romance. Tales of
adventure, of derring-do, of space opera or feats of arms, indeed any
book in which the primary action and conflict and movement is external is a
romance–and the fact is, that’s what I usually read. In the novel
proper, the primary action and conflict and movement is internal.
Accustomed as I am to speaking of premises and plots and all the wonderful
externalities of fantasy and science fiction, I am usually somewhat
nonplussed when faced with writing about a proper novel. Sure, I can
write about the externalities, but to do so is to misrepresent
the story. And yet, I don’t have the vocabulary to speak about the
internals with any assurance. Bear with me, please.

In addition to this basic problem, there is the difficulty of conveying
the feeling of Brede Abbey, the peace that lingers about it and fills
the book from one end to the other, the voices of the nuns raised in
plainsong as the canonical hours pass day by day. To do so I would need
to tell you about stern Dame Agnes, skillful Dame Maura, quiet Dame
Catherine, staunch Sister Cecily, ladies of great faith and holiness–but
I can’t. Godden reveals them herself, so well, so deftly, little by
little filling in each portrait until the whole is revealed that I should
feel like a vandal if I were to attempt to summarize Godden’s prose and
so reveal details out of order.

But I have to say something, or why bother reviewing
the book at all? So here are a few points.

There are a number of crises in the book, involving fiscal mismanagement,
bad vocations, controlling parents, sudden illness, and the like, with
which the abbey community must contend, and Sister Phillipa must, of
course, do her part. But the crises, and the times of peace in between
them, are not the story; the story is about Sister Phillipa’s giving of
herself to her Beloved Lord bit by bit and piece by piece. It is about
redemption; sacrifice, self-denial, submission, hard work, and a joy and
a peace which passes understanding.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Some thanks are in order. I first heard of the book on the 25 of August,
2000, five years almost to the day before I actually opened a copy and
began to read, from an e-mail correspondent named Rachel. She wrote me
again in 2001, and again in 2002, each time prompting me to give the book
a try. And I did look for it, but never found a copy; it had gone out of
print. (Yeah, I know, I could try the library; somehow, I never do that.)
And then Amy Welborn of the blog
Open Book
began working with the Loyola Press on reissues of a series of classic
Roman Catholic novels, one of them being
In This House of Brede. I ordered a copy on-line, and it
arrived, and after a couple of weeks I picked up and devoured it.

So thanks to Rachel, and thanks to Amy; I hope I can repay the favor some
day.

Here’s yet another Norton omnibus, of three novels in this case:
Storm Over Warlock, Ordeal in Otherwhere,
and Forerunner Foray. The first two are directly related
and take place on the planet Warlock; the third is only loosely related
to the first two. All three were pretty good, especially
Forerunner Foray. Ironically, I tried reading the latter
two when I was a kid, and didn’t get very far into either one.

The main difference between Norton’s work and the science fiction being
published today, it seems to me, is primarily one of length–science
fiction and fantasy novels have gotten much, much longer over the last
fifty years, to the point where it takes two or three of the older novels
to fill out a paperback to a respectable length. As a result, current
novels are richer in detail and description, and to some extent in
character development as well, without necessarily adding anything more in
the way of plot or imagination. For example, it’s become
clear to me that most of Norton’s science fiction takes place in a single
consistently realized future.
She doesn’t really call attention to this, and it’s a big enough future
that we rarely meet the same characters twice, but the connections are
there if you look for them.

Anyway, I enjoyed these; it was especially nice discovering that
Forerunner Foray is a good read after all.

While I was on this David Weber kick, I figured I’d re-read some of his
older non-Honor Harrington books. These are two that I enjoyed the first
time I read them, and I picked them up again with great expectation.

The premise is high space-opera, to say the least. Earth’s Moon is not,
in fact, a moon; it’s a giant warship disguised as a moon. It entered
the Solar System about 50,000 years ago, at which time there was a mutiny
among the ship’s crew. Shortly before the mutineers would have captured
the bridge, the captain invoked certain special programs in the ship’s
Central Computer which drove all crewmembers, loyalists and mutineers
alike, off of the ship and locked the door behind them. Central Computer
was to repair the damage to the ship, and only when systems were fully
functional were any crewmembers to be allowed back on board. Any
loyalist crewmembers–mutineers who approached the ship after
leaving were to be summarily destroyed.

That was 50,000 years ago; and guess what! The descendants of the
loyalists and mutineers are still here. That is, we are they. But, in
fact, the ringleaders of the mutiny are still here too, in person, thanks
to high technology, time spent in stasis, and a penchant for moving their
brains to new bodies as the old ones wear out.

Oh, and a swarm of xenophobic aliens will be swooping down on Earth in five
years or so, and destroying all life they find.

Our hero has to somehow manage to break the power of the mutineers, which
is still considerable, acquire a crew, and defeat the oncoming swarm; and
it isn’t going to be easy.

There’s some fun stuff here, and if you like space opera it’s worth
taking a look at; but they really are pretty light-weight, and
I didn’t enjoy them nearly as much this time around.

I usually like Barnard’s stuff; this one was adequate–I mean, I’ve read
much worse–but there really wasn’t anything about it that grabbed me.
It’s your basic whodunnit, and there are some nicely drawn obnoxious
characters, but that’s really about all there is to say about it.

Nothing to see here, let’s move along.

Like Time Traders, Gods and Androids is an
omnibus of two novels, Android at Arms and
Wraiths of Time. In this case, though, the two novels share
a theme rather than a narrative thread. The theme is a common one in
Norton’s work: a person stumbles into another world, a
world very different from his own, where in order to survive he must take
the place and identity of someone who has just died. Of the two,
Wraiths of Time is the better tale; it’s also one I remember
reading and enjoying when I was kid. Android at Arms has the feel of a
failed experiment–the plot flails around in odd ways, and doesn’t
deliver on all of its promises. Neither of them are particularly deep,
but the writing was pretty good; in places, Android at Arms
reminds me strongly of Jack Vance

The poorly named Android at Arms is the tale of Andas, the
heir to the throne of the planet of Inyanga. He wakes to find himself in
a cell in a strange prison. The power fails due to a lightning strike,
and with it the lock on his cell. He finds that he has been incarcerated
with half a dozen other people, all of them notables on their respective
planets, all apparently captured (no one knows by who) at a pivotal
moment in their planet’s history.

And though it seems like yesterday to each of them that they were last at
home, the last date each remembers are many decades apart. Clearly, some
of them have been on ice for a very long time.

A supply ship comes eventually, and Andas and the others manage to take
the ship and escape. Naturally they each wish to return to their home
planets, and Andas does manage to make his way back to Inyanga–where
decades have indeed gone by, and a man with his name and face is on the
throne. Who is he? Is he an android, put in place after the real Andas
was captured? Or is our Andas, he who escaped from prison, is he an
android, part of a plot that never came to fruition?

It’s at this point that the plot takes a dramatic right turn, and while
the denouement is entertaining enough, we never do find out where the
other Andas came from.

Wraiths of Time is more satisfying than
Android at Arms; the characterizations and settings have a
depth and solidity and Andas’ tale lacks.

Our heroine is Egyptologist Tallahassee Mitford, who is asked to identify
an ancient African artifact that’s recently been discovered. It’s not
quite like anything found before; on top of that, it’s quite radioactive.
Tallahassee tentatively ascribes it to the ancient Empire of Meroë, a
Nubian offshoot of the civilization of Egypt. Peculiar events ensue, and
Tallahassee finds herself in another world, in (unsurprisingly) the
Empire of Meroë–but a Meroë not of the distant past but of the present
day, a world in which ancient Meroë was nearly destroyed but was reborn
and is now one of the dominant world powers. She has been brought there
by accident, and the act has proved fatal to the one who brought her, a
priestess/princess named Ashake. Fortuitously, Tallahassee, who is black
as any Nubian, is Ashake’s double, Ashake as she was in our world. She
can touch the ancient artifact, a thing of great power, just as Ashake
could–for Ashake died to bring the artifact back to her world.

Politically, Ashake must not be dead; Tallahassee is compelled to take
her place.

All in all, not a bad book; I rather enjoyed making Tallahassee’s
acquaintance once again.

Two things happened almost simultaneously a couple of months ago. The
first was that my brother pointed out that I hadn’t read any Andre Norton
in years, judging by my published reviews, and that I should do something
about that, especially since a number of her books were come back in
print just now. And then Ian Hamet
reviewed
The Time Traders on
his weblog, and that was the final nudge.

I did read quite a few of Norton’s books many, many years ago, most of
them while I was in my teens. Some of them I liked, some I didn’t; her
“Witchworld” series was famous, for example, but I was never able to get
through the first book. And over the years, I gradually got to thinking
that I’d outgrown her. But with two folks pushing me from two different
directions, I decided to give her another chance.

Time Traders is actually two complete novels,
The Time Traders and Galactic Derelict; both
were written in the late 1950’s. A lot of the Norton re-prints currently
in the stores are similar, packaging two or three of Norton’s classic
novels, so be warned.

The Time Traders is quite good; indeed, it’s surprisingly
good. It concerns a street kid and small-time criminal named Ross
Murdock who’s caught and given a second chance, working as a volunteer on
a top-secret government project called Operation Retrograde. It seems
that the Russians have found the secret of time travel, and have somehow
found a source of superlatively high-tech gadgetry somewhere in the past;
the Feds are resolved to find it and acquire the gadgetry for themselves.
They’ve got a time machine, but they need agents to go back in time and
hunt for the Russians. The agents need to be highly mobile, but they
also need to fit in; in short, they need to masquerade as traders, in
whatever form trade takes in that era.

It’s good, old-fashioned science fiction; and if it isn’t as rich in
detail and setting as the science-fiction being written today is, it’s
pretty darn good for the late 1950’s. And as Ian points out in his
review, Norton predicts the break-up of the Soviet Union with surprising
accuracy.

Galactic Derelict is a sequel of sorts; Ross Murdock and his
boss are present, but the viewpoint character is different. It seems that
the Feds have discovered a derelict spacecraft in the remote past. It’s
abandoned, but as our heroes discover it’s still in working order, and
they get taken on an unexpected tour of the galaxy. Of course the
derelict was found in the distant past, and it commenced its journey
shortly after it was brought forward to the present day, so the galaxy is
a little different than when the ship was built….

I didn’t like this one as well. It lacks the depth of its predecessor;
and though the places they visit have a certain “gosh, wow” quality at
first, they aren’t all that interesting in the long run. I don’t feel
I wasted my time, on it though, and the book’s worth buying for
The Time Traders anyway.

It’s been a full week since I last posted. I have trouble believing that; but I’ve been working hard and reading a lot and with that and piano practice not much else has been getting done. I’ll have to do something about that.

There’s been a lot of talk in the blogosphere and elsewhere about
Intelligent Design over the last few weeks, and I’m afraid that much of
what I’ve seen is appears both sloppy and uninformed, to wit, many
pundits have equated Intelligent Design with Creation Science. They are
undoubtedly linked, in that both posit a Creator,
but they are most definitely not identical.

Broadly speaking, Creation Science is the attempt to enlist scientific
evidence to support the proposition that the Earth was created as
described in the book of Genesis–that is, that it was created in six
days some six-thousand years or so ago. No doubt I’m ignoring some
subtleties, but I believe that’s the general picture.

I’ve known fine and honorable people who find this to be a reasonable
position; as for me, I’ve never found it intellectually acceptable.
The conviction of science, based on innumerable observations, is that the
universe is not thousands but billions of years old. I’m fine with that.
The geological record indicates that the Earth itself is millions of
years old. OK by me. Dinosaurs once roamed the earth. Okey-dokey.
Current life-forms appear to have derived from simpler, more primitive
life-forms.

I’ve no problem with any of that. When it comes to drawing sound
conclusions from physical evidence, the scientific method is the best
tool yet found. If the consensus of the brotherhood of geologists is that
the fossil record shows that dinosaurs must have lived millions of years
ago, I see no reason to demur.

Where I disagree with the hardline evolutionists is not on their
observations and analysis, but on their philosophy, which is strictly
materialist. Richard Dawkins’ faith–I use the word advisedly–that
random chance and time are sufficient to explain the world we see about
us today is based on his belief that only the natural world, that which
can be seen and felt and measured and experimented upon, is real–that
there is no supernatural realm, that the supernatural is, in fact,
inconceivable, that the Almighty cannot exist because He cannot be measured.

Perhaps he’s right, but whether he is or not isn’t a scientific
hypothesis. You can’t run experiments on God to see whether he exists or
not; the idea is ludicrous on the face of it, rather like a character in
a novel shouting his loudest in hopes of taking the author by surprise.

So though I cannot accept the Creation Science view, no more can I accept
the strict materialist line either. I accept the fossil record simply
because I don’t believe that the Creator of the Universe is a liar. He
speaks through His creation as he speaks through the Bible, and the two
(as St. Thomas Aquinas taught) can never truly be in conflict.

So far as I can tell from my reading, the Intelligent Design crowd fall
into my camp. On the one hand, they believe that the Almighty God
created the universe and all that is in it; on the other hand, they
accept the geologic record. The chief difference between the ID’ers and
the strict evolutionists is not scientific but philosophical. Where the
strict evolutionists take it on faith that evolution is the product of
time and chance and natural processes, the ID’ers believe that the
Almighty had a hand in things. The crux of the Intelligent Design
argument, as I’ve seen it expressed, is that certain biological features
are “irreducibly complex”–that is, they consist of a constellation of
innovations which as a set are indeed very useful to the organism and
enhance its ability to survive, but independently are neither here nor
there. The example that I saw was the flagellum of a paramecium, which
has many complicated parts, all of which are needed to make the flagellum
work. Any one of the parts could have arisen as a mutation; but there
would be no reason for it to have been preserved in the population long
enough for the other parts to be assembled into a complete package.

I am not concerned here with defending this view, and especially not as
I’ve stated it; I’m not a student of Intelligent Design, and might have
presented it badly. My point is that the ID’ers are not intending to
pooh-pooh or otherwise reject the fruits of scientific observation.
Rather, they are pointing out places where they believe the best
scientific explanations break down–and suggesting that those are the
places where God might have taken a direct hand. In a sense, they are
treating the geologic record as a whodunnit, and dusting it for God’s
fingerprints.

Myself, I think it’s a losing game. Current science might not explain
the cases they point out; not having studied it, I don’t know one way or
the other. If it does not, then the evolutionists have a job ahead of
them–to explain, in a way that’s more than hand-waving and invocations
of random chance, just how these irreducibly complex features could have
arisen. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if, given time and chance, they
come up with an answer that works–which would leave the ID’ers grasping
at straws.

As I say, the basic proposition is not one that’s scientifically
verifiable one way or the other. But insofar as there is evidence for or
against the supernatural, that evidence is surely in the plus column, for
most men and women, in most times and places, based on the evidence of
their senses and the world around them, have rejected the notion that the
natural world is all there is. If you are strict materialist, you might
well believe that you are right and the vast bulk of humanity through time
has been wrong, that you are smarter than they are; and perhaps you’re
right. It must surely be comforting to think so, anyway. For my part,
I’m confident that there is a God, that He did create the universe and
all that is in it, and that His fingerprints are all over the place.
Trying to find them is a worthy goal; but it’s not mine. I’d rather take
it for granted and move on.

But to return to my main point, the equation of Intelligent Design theory
with Creation Science is simply false, and it doesn’t behoove honest men
and women to keep repeating it.

Hold on to your hats, it’s old home week in the Honorverse.

Crown of Slaves is the first full-length novel set in Weber’s
Honorverse that doesn’t directly involve Honor Harrington herself.
Coincidental in time with War of Honor it involves a grand
pageant of characters from all over the Honorverse with a plot that’s
really too complicated for me to even attempt to explain it.

Anton Zilwicki is sent by Queen Elizabeth III as Manticore’s envoy to the
funeral of the Solarian League’s leading opponent to genetic slavery.
The funeral is to be held in the star nation of Erewhon, which makes
things tricky. Erewhon is one of the charter members of the
Manticore-led Alliance against the People’s Republic of Haven, but the
government formed by Baron Highridge at the end of
Ashes of Victory has been doing its darnedest to alienate
all of Manticore’s allies–at least it seems that way–and Erewhon has
recently been flirting with Eloise Pritchart’s new Republic of Haven.
With Zilwicki go his wife, Cathy Montaigne, formerly Countess of
the Tor, his daughter Berry, whom he adopted at the end
of “From the Highlands” in
Worlds of Honor #3: Changer of Worlds, and also by Ruth
Winton, daughter of Prince Michael’s wife Princess Judith. Remember Judith?
She was captured by the Masadans as a young girl and led a successful
exodus of women off-planet–with Prince Michael’s help.

Zilwicki and his charges travel to Erewhon in a ship provided
by–for all intents and purposes–the anti-slavery organization called
the Audubon Ballroom, a group his wife has supported for many years, and
also a group that helped him rescue his daughter Helen from the
Scrags under Old Chicago.

Of course, fanatic revolutionary Victor Cachat had a hand in that rescue
as well; and he’s come to Erewhon as the envoy of Havenite President
Eloise Pritchart. And Manticoran Captain Michael Oversteegen is
in-system as well, just to keep an eye on things.

Of course, there’s a plot by Manpower Unlimited, working with a group
of Masadan terrorists and the aforementioned Scrags, to kidnap Princess
Ruth; an amoral and ambitious Solarian officer who’s taken to playing
power politics of a particularly dirty kind; and and an Amazon of a
Solarian Marine Lieutenant who thinks that Victor might just be her cup
of tea.

There’s a lot to like about this book; it’s wickedly funny in spots,
the action sequences are good, and it’s completely unpredictable. Both
Weber and Flint are good spinners of tales, and it was fun watching them
work together. On the other hand, a number of the characters, notably
Victor Cachat and Lieutenant Thandi Palane, are (not to put to fine a
point on it) monsters. They are on the right side, mostly, and are
fighting against the Bad Guys, but there’s too much moral ambiguity and
sick violence in them for them to really be Good Guys–and yet, the
authors mostly treat them as Good Guys. If they are monsters, one can
hear them saying, then at least they are Our Monsters. There’s a thin
line between encouraging the reader to identify with seriously flawed
characters and praising those characters for their monstrosity. Weber
and Flint don’t quite cross that line–at least, I don’t think they do.
But this is an uncomfortable book in places nevertheless.
praising