The Apocalypse Codex by Charles Stross

Bob Howard is a computer programmer whose work almost opens a door to another, darker dimension. The right computational transforms, it turns out, are ways to tap into other locations, other dimensions -- in other words, magic -- and to make contact with the often Lovecraftian entities living there. Such skills are not allowed in a freelancer, so Bob is “recruited” by the Laundry, the British secret service arm that defends the realm against supernatural threats. This is Stross’s 4th Laundry novel, and he continues to produce an entertaining mix of geekness and Lovecraftian horror, while also poking at the bureaucracy. I enjoy the subgenre that combines spy fiction with supernatural fiction, which also Tim Power’s great novel Declare and Mike Mignola’s BPRD  and Hellboy comics.  But nobody does what Stross does, combining humor with horror, computer geek culture with magic.

This time, large-scale American fundamentalist cults are also the target. The Laundry becomes interested when American preacher Ray Schiller seems to be cozy with the Prime Minister. But the Laundry can’t investigate the PM directly: that’s an iron rule of all British secret service. They instead hire two outside consultants -- a powerful witch and her military-trained companion -- to follow Schiller back to Colorado and see what he’s up to. Bob, who seems to be (unwillingly) on a management track, is sent along with them, to act as monitor and control. 

But of course everything is far deeper than that. Schiller is intent on converting the whole world so that he can bring back Jesus -- or what his cult thinks is Jesus, but is really a sleeping elder horror. Schiller is using parasitic brain worms, administered during what the worshipers think is communion, to control parts of the congregation, and is intent on sacrificing thousands to wake the sleeper.
Along the way, we get crazed fundamentalists, the American paranormal blackops organization (referred to as the Nazgul, for reasons that become obvious), a small army of zombies that are supposed to prevent anyone from waking the sleeper, what look an awful lot like stargates (and one in Colorado Springs, no less) leading to the dead planet where the elder god sleeps, and plenty of geeky gadgetry that combine technology and magic, such as a digital camera that also functions as a “basilisk gun,” a circuit board attached to a pigeon claw that can make the holder invisible, and so on. 

It’s a fun ride, deftly mixing humor, action, and horror. And of course, it’s open ended, so we can expect to see more of Bob Howard and the Laundry in future.

Hide Me Among the Graves -- Tim Powers (a review)

Tim Powers once explained that, in writing his novels, he looks at history and tries to come up with explanations behind the strange events.  Why, for example, did Blackbeard act the way he did?  Why did Henry Ford capture Edison’s last breath? Why did some of the events of the cold war turn out the way they did? 

But in some of his novels, it’s more than history: he looks at the works of the poets -- the great British romantic poets in particular -- and explores what’s revealed there. What if some of what Byron, Keats, and Shelly eluded to in the poetry was actually a refection of events?  That’s the subject of his earlier novel The Stress of Her Regard, and he returns to that in his latest novel, Hide Me Among the Graves.  The new novel is a set in the world of the earlier one, though I hesitate to use the word “sequel.”  It is, but you don’t have to read the earlier book, since  it was compete in itself, as is the latest one, and you can in fact read the new one without even really knowing that a couple of the characters were the focus of the first novel. 

The poets this time are lesser ones:  the Rossetti’s. Christina, as a girl, had inadvertently reanimated one of the Nephilim -- a vampire -- setting events in motion that seriously impact the lives of those around her. This vampire, her “uncle” ohn Polidori (once a physician to Lord Byron), like all of its kind, is possessive, killing anyone who any in his “family” love. Even a prostitute who her brother Gabriel visits garners Polidori’s attention. At the same time, the vampire who was -- or who had inhabited -- Boudica is also stirring, tied to Edward John Trelawny, friend of Shelley (and possessor of his jawbone) Byron. Polidori and Boudica aim to have their “children” conceive a child, the birth of which will cause an earthquake and destroy London. 

Powers skillfully weaves in the events in the lives of the poets -- the Rossettis as Algernon Swinburne -- as well as echoes of their poetry (such as Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market”) into a compelling, thrilling, and sometimes downright scary narrative. It’s rich in the sort of detail that makes Powers’ novels feel so real, in ways that most similar fantasy/horror novels don’t.  As you read, you find yourself wondering if there were “Hail Mary Men” (sellers of birds, named for a play on the word “ave”) in Victorian London, selling birds for supernatural reasons.  Or pubs under bridges where people tried to connect with vampires.  Or young children, “mud larks,” who searched for ghosts in the river. It all feels compelling real as you read, in large part because Powers has worked it all out with such detailed logic.

It all comes to a satisfying and exciting confusion, effectively pulling together all the characters and plot points. It feels like, at this point, it’s all come to a close, but who knows. Perhaps in a couple of years, Powers will decide it’s time to explore what was really going on in the work of Yeats. 

Powers is one of my favorite writers, and a certainly recommend his latest. 

My Hugo Nominations for Best Novel

Working on program for Renovation really cut into my reading time, but since September, I’ve been starting to catch up -- at least enough to nominate for the Hugos. I particularly made an effort to read some highly-regarded novels, but I also read a few of the major short story anthologies. (And now I need to read the magazines I’ve been piling up for two years.)

A month ago, based on my reading at that point, I’d have called it an OK year for novels, with a couple of strong choices, but certainly not more than that. But over the last two weeks, I’ve read three very good novels, which will be on my ballot, so I’d now call it a good year. Though two of my nominees are actually from 2010, eligible based on the extended eligibility rule that gives works not published in the US in their initial year of publication extra time.

Alastair Reynold’s Terminal World is another very strong work from Reynolds. It’s a hard SF story and an adventure story (with parts that even have a steampunk feel). It takes place on a remarkable world (the secret behind which is part of the conclusion, so I won’t go into much detail), and the world itself is one of the novel’s great strengths. But it also achieves much of its power by refusing to be tied down: every time you think you know what kind of novel you’re reading and where it’s going, it changes direction and does something new. It starts in an environment that is somewhat reminiscent of Vinge’s zones of thought: a city built on an ascending area, where the technology possible varies depending upon where you are -- from sophisticated computer technology at the top, down through 20th century, then Victorian, and finally to really primitive areas. As characters are forced to descend, gear they are carrying stops working. But at this point, when you are sure you now know what kind of novel you’re in, it changes, as the characters travel across planet, running into various people and cultures, reminiscent in its way of the works of Jack Vance (Big Planet, for example). This happens several times. All in all, it’s a great story, and leads to a satisfying conclusion (though one that leaves it open for more).

In The Quantum Thief, Hannu Rajaniemi creates a post-singularity post-human future where the lines between physical and virtual blur. Advanced technology allows people to appear any way they want, to exchange (or hide) any information, to communicate by actually sharing memories. As the story starts, the main character, a thief and conman, is imprisoned in a “dilemma prison,” where copies of himself re-enact the prisoner’s dilemma countless times. He is rescued by a mysterious woman who, along with her sentient space craft, draft him into a quest in exchange for his freedom. The plot, while interesting enough to carry the reader along, is secondary to the setting. Rajaniemi has created a future as complex and as strange as much of the best of Stross. This was a very impressive first novel, and I’m looking forward to more from him.

The Children of the Sky is Vernor Vinge’s sequel to his classic A Fire Upon the Deep. It picks up where that books left off: with the humans who had stopped the Blight stranded on the tines’ planet. The novel mostly focuses on the struggles between humans and tines, tines and other tines, and amongst the humans themselves. Many of the children were still in cold sleep when the Blight was defeated, and question the history told to them. After all, that history tells them that their parents had made the dreadful mistake of releasing the Blight, and that the people they were now with had done something to strand them on this backward planet. The natures of the various conflicts explore a number of issues, but perhaps the most interesting part of book involves the choir: the huge group mind found in the jungle areas, and believed by civilized tines to be stupid: complex thought, they believe, isn’t possible with that many members of a collective. All their evidence shows that, in their own society, when two tine individuals (usually made up of 4 to 6 of the dog-like aliens) gets to close to another, thought breaks down. And they are right -- and wrong. Vinge explores issues of the emergence of intelligence, as well as what does and does not make a “person.” This is a very good book, and its only real “flaw” that it’s not quite as good as its predecessor (but since A Fire Upon the Deep is one of the best SF novels of the past 25 years, very few things are).

China Mieville’s Embassytown is perhaps the closest thing he’s written to the new space opera. In a far future interstellar society, humans have established an outpost on a planet whose intelligent inhabitants, the Ariekei, speak with two voices -- and who don’t even understand what comes from a single voice as communication . So human ambassadors are pairs of people who are able to communicate as one. But the issue of Language (as the Ariekei language is referred to as) go deeper than that. For the Ariekei, Language and thought are tied together, such that Language is a direct representation of reality: the concept of lying is not only unknown but virtually impossible. A few Ariekei are trying to approach lying via simile, which they externalize with the help of humans. The main human character, Avice, acts out and becomes a simile for them. All of this is setup for a complicated plot that explores the nature of communication and thought but also comments on the imperialism of the interstellar culture. It’s another very good book from an author who continues to expand his range.

Finally, Jo Walton’s Among Others is a joy to read. Mor, a young, unpopular Welsh girl, sent away to boarding school (in England), keeps herself going by reading science fiction and fantasy. She has an injured leg and thus can’t participate in sports, which contributes to her being unpopular, but also gives her time to read as much as many of us would like to. She eventually finds other SF readers, and even plans to go to an Eastercon. The book is delightful, and it’s made me want to re-read a lot of Delany, Le Guin, Tiptree, Zelazny and others that Mor talks about. What makes it a fantasy is that Mor can see fairies, and also has some magical abilities. She’s avoiding her insane mother, who tried to use magic to become a “dark queen” (and Mor of course makes the appropriate Tolkien reference), who was defeated only by the efforts of Mor and her now-dead twin sister, with the help of the fairies. But all of this is really a secondary part of the novel: the real focus is the story of Mor growing up, coping, and essentially becoming an SF fan.

The above five novels are what I nominated. Also deserving of some consideration are the next chapters in two very good ongoing fantasy series: George Martin’s A Dance with Dragons and Patrick Rothfuss’s The Wise Man’s Fear. Both are well done, and I thought about both for the ballot. But both -- particularly the Martin -- are also parts of a larger work, and don’t stand on their own. Trying to read A Dance with Dragons without having read the previous books would be close to impossible. And this makes it a bit harder, when evaluating the book in hand, to decide whether it’s award worth. But that being said, both are well worth reading. And Scott Westerfield’s Goliath, a satisfying conclusion to his YA steampunk series, is also a fun read.

Finally, I’ll note that there are several things I really want to read that I haven’t yet read (such as the latest Charlie Stross novel). But I will read anything that does make the ballot before voting.

Doctor Who Series 6: A Look Back

With “The Wedding of River Song,” series 6 of Doctor Who comes to a close, and the major mystery of River Song is addressed. I’ll start by saying that I enjoyed the season a lot, but at the same time I felt a bit of a let down. Part of this was that, while overall good, it wasn’t as good as Series 5 (which was almost as good as Series 4, the best series to date of new Doctor Who). And part of it was that, while the season had several very good episodes -- “The Girl Who Waited,” “The Doctor’s Wife,” “A Good Man Goes to War,” “The God Complex” -- the overall arc of the season wasn’t as compelling and the conclusion certainly not as satisfying or clever as that of last year. Moreover, at least one key question that was raised by the Doctor himself at the end of Series 5 -- what caused the Tardis to explode -- was ignored.

Part of the issue with the arc is that it feels unfinished or rushed. Some parts of it really don’t feel like they fit together the way the pieces of a Moffat story like “Blink” did or the way that Moffat pulled everything together last year in “The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang.” which finished things in a way that was clever and tied together lots of what had happened during the season. There is some of that in “The Wedding of River Song,” but the whole episode felt like it needed more time to effectively cap off the season. Perhaps if it were a two-part episode, or even a somewhat longer episode (like “Journey’s End” in Series 4), perhaps we could have had an answer to why the Tardis exploded or even why the Doctor was dressed in a tuxedo and what he said to River to make her change her mind at the end of “Let’s Kill Hitler.”

I’m coming to the conclusion that Moffat is a great writer but not yet up to Russell Davies’ level as an editor. Davies agonized over what to cut from each episode -- both from his own scripts and from those by other other writers -- and almost always wound up with episodes that felt right -- not rushed and not padded. Several episodes in the Moffat years -- this year especially, though there was some of it last year -- felt like more was needed, and the way to accomplish that would have been to edit the episode just a bit differently.

Part of my reaction may also be that I wasn’t sure what to make of the Silence as adversaries. They made for a creepy season opener, but the problem with them is the whole concept gets wobbly when you look at it too closely. They’ve been directing us throughout history? Really? Not only does that undermine any accomplishments of the human race, but it also has implications for all the Doctor’s previous activity on earth. Were they controlling UNIT throughout the third Doctor’s time? And what happens when you kill them? If humanity if fighting back, killing them, and then forgetting them, wouldn’t we be tripping over Silence bodies everywhere? This is a case where less would have been more -- the Silence as a threat in one area, at one point of history, rather than worldwide, throughout history.

Overall, though, I enjoyed the season. Matt Smith is a superb Doctor, different from but every bit as good as David Tennant. Amy is a good companion, and the big pleasant surprise of the season was how much Rory grew and what a great job Arthur Darvill is doing with the role. And I loved seeing more of River and hope that she returns for more episodes in Series 7. Damn, it’s going to be a long wait for Series 7.

Reading on my new Nook: The White Company

I bought a Nook e-reader about a week ago, and I just finished reading the first book I bought in eBook format: Arthur Conan Doyle's The White Company (I had previously read a PDF of John Scalzi's novella The God Engines on my daughter's Nook, but that was much shorter and was a PDF and not a format actually designed to be read on a device like the Nook, so it didn't really provide as good a view of what reading on the Nook is like.

I really liked the experience. Reading on the Nook feels in many ways very similar to reading a real book. The form factor is similar. The way you hold it is similar -- even more so if like me you buy a cover for the Nook that flips open like a book. Navigation is similar, with a simple button on the side for paging forward or back. You can also set bookmarks to allow you to jump to a previously marked spot, and many books come with tables of contents that allow you to navigate to predefined locations. There is also a search capability, though I haven't yet used that. (I also haven't used the ability to add notes or to highlight text.) Even nicer, the Nook, while heavy enough and large enough to feel "real" (unlike, say, a smart phone), it's light enough so that no book can make your arm feel tired after a while.

In summary, I'd give a very solid recommendation to the Nook for reading many types of books. What won't work on a Nook? I'm not planning on buying major history books, since many good ones include lots maps, which are best viewed as you read. I'm currently reading the Landmark Herodotus, which features hundreds of maps, and I'm often reading with fingers marking one or more maps that I keep looking back and forth at as I read. This wouldn't work nearly as well on a Nook. Likewise, I doubt most textbooks would work well, again because it's more difficult to do frequent flipping back and forth to multiple locations.

I've said what the Nook has, but I haven't said what I think it's missing. The two big things I've run into so far is the ability to organize your library better. The current "by author, by title, by date" views are fine if you have a dozen books, but will be a pain when I have hundreds. And for navigating withing a book, it really needs a "go to page" feature, where you can specify a page number.

As for The White Company, it's a good historical novel by Doyle. It's set during the Hundred Years War between England and France, and follows Alleyne, a young man who grew up in a monastery but now finds himself out in the world. He connects with two men -- another outcast from the monastery and an archer, back from the wars to recruit Sir Nigel Loring to return to lead the White Company. They meet Sir Nigel, Alleyne falls in love with Nigel's daughter, and they (the men, not the daughter) head off to war. All along the way, they have adventures, tangling with pirates, rescuing a young woman and her father from thieves, jousting with mysterious knights, and so on. It's all great fun.

The character of Nigel sometimes seems like a cross between Don Quixote and the characters in those romances of chivalry that Cervantes was responding too. He is over gentle and over mannered to a fault, at one point even urging the Black Prince to put him to death rather than going back on his oath to hang the man who was Captain of the White Company. At his extreme, he can be exasperating, but the great cast of characters around him makes up for that.

It all concludes in a major battle, with the White Company pitted against a much larger Spanish army. Nigel's chivalry frankly gets many killed and almost gets the main characters killed, but it does give Alleyne a chance to distinguish himself. That, coupled with the timely news that his nasty, cowardly brother in England has been killed and that Alleyne is no longer landless, means that he can wed Nigel's daughter. Which of course he does on returning to England, arriving just in time to save her from going to a nunnery.

Again, great fun if a bit implausible. The ebooks also includes Doyle's other novel about Sir Nigel (Sir Nigel), which I hope to read sometime in the next few weeks.

The Voyage of the Space Beagle by A.E. van Vogt

About a dozen years ago, I reread a number of works of A.E. van Vogt and concluded that, while van Vogt was not very good at the novel level (re-reading The World of Null-A resulted in my agreeing with Damon Knight’s dismantling of it), he had written a number of still powerful short stories. The latest version of The New York Review of Science Fiction featured a long article by Joe Milicia on The Voyage of the Space Beagle, so I decided to re-read it.

The Voyage of the Space Beagle was originally published as four shorter works in Astounding and later turned into a fix-up novel by van Vogt, who added material to tie things together a bit more. It involves the voyages of the interstellar -- and eventually intergalactic -- exploratory ship the Space Beagle as it encounters for different alien beings or races, each of which becomes a threat to the ship that must be solved. Van Vogt is at his best during the encounters with the aliens that made up the original short stories. The aliens are memorable and often alien, and the crew has to come up with ways to defeat incredible threats. The two most memorable are “The Black Destroyer” and “Discord in Scarlet.” The former features a large cat like being (Coeurl) that is incredibly strong, can control magnetic fields, is very smart, and wants to kill and consume the crew. (It actually wants to consume what it thinks of as “id” which has no relationship that I can see to the Freudian term but really seems to mean life force or potassium, which somehow van Vogt combines. Science is not van Vogt’s strong point.) In the latter, the encounter an Ixtl, another super-powered alien, the sole survivor apparently from the dominant civilization of the previous cycle of the universe, that can walk through walls, is extremely intelligent, and wants to capture the crew so it can lay eggs in them, eventually to repopulate the universe with its kind. Both stories are great examples of the better type of pulp adventure of the early Campbell Astounding.

The novel is at its worst though in what van Vogt added to turn it into a novel. First off, we have many scenes of the scientists squabbling over which department should run the ship, with some ignoring the best solutions to problems for political reasons and sometimes resorting to outright thuggish behavior. Then we have the main character Grosvenor, the “Nexialist.” Van Vogt was fond of jumping on the bandwagons of various psychological theories, ranging from dianetics to general semantics. Nexisalism is the hobby horse of this novel. At first, a Nexialist is described as sort of a scientific inter disciplinarian, someone who can take what the specialists of various fields are doing and come to conclusions they might miss. But van Vogt doesn’t stop there. He manages to combine this with hypnotism and mind-control, making Grosvenor into a superman of sorts. It’s all rather silly and detracts from the more interesting parts of the novel.

In the end, The Voyage of the Space Beagle is worth reading for what’s good about it -- the very enjoyable short stories buried within -- but marred by the types of issues that effect a number of van Vogt’s longer works.

Wake by Robert Sawyer

I continued my Hugo reading with WWW: Wake by Robert Sawyer. Sawyer typically does a good job of combining realistic and interesting characters with generally thrilling concepts, and Wake is no exception.

Caitlin a teenage math genius who was born blind. Her eyes work, but the signal is garbled on its way to her brain. A research scientist in Japan develops a possible solution: essentially an external signal processor that transforms the signal between retina and brain. The device -- which Caitlin calls her eyePod -- eventually works, but has a side effect. In one of its modes, it enables her to literally see the World Wide Web, which appears to her as geometric shapes connected by lines.

But in viewing the Web, Caitlin sees something else. There is an information-containing process in the background, a cellular automata. Information theory confirms that what she is seeing isn’t just noise, and it first she and those around her assume that it’s perhaps an NSA monitoring process. But it isn’t: an intelligence has developed in the Web’s information systems. She sees it, and it, following the info feed from Caitlin’s eyePod, sees her.

Sawyer does a very good job of showing how a Web entity -- which Caitlin comes to think of as the Phantom, based on a term Hellen Keller used to describe her own pre-aware state -- as bit by bit it becomes aware of itself and its surroundings. At first, it has no idea what the data all around it is. It “sees” ones and zeroes but has no idea what they mean. But by watching Caitlin and her attempts to teach herself to read after she gains sight, it begins to understand. And what Caitlin realizes what she’s dealing with -- an intelligence, not just background noise or an NSA process -- she helps it along, taking an active role in teaching it.

Equally well done is Sawyer’s portrayal of Caitlin, both as a person who has never been able to see and as a person who suddenly can see. He is very detailed in both parts. For example, when Caitlin gains her sight, she can’t read. Of course she’s been reading braille for years, and is a wiz on the Web, with a blog (under the name Calculass), and can write. But she has never seen letters, let alone words, so she must learn, but by bit, starting with “A is for apple” style primers. It’s watching her do this that helps the Phantom understand what the data streams are, as it relates the ASCII bit pattern for “A” with the picture of the apple.

Unfortunately from a Hugo voter’s perspective, the book isn’t complete. It’s really the first third of a longer novel. The major plot line at least comes to a reasonable pause point, but subplots are only partially developed. An interesting side story about a chimp that begins to paint in a representational fashion -- clearly a step toward awareness, in parallel with the main story -- isn’t really tied in and the last part of it we see in this book is a cliff hanger of sorts. I’m sure Sawyer will tie it in more strongly in the next two volumes, but form the perspective of just this book -- which is after all what I need to vote on for my Hugo ballot -- it’s incomplete.

So, even though I enjoyed Wake and plan to buy the next volume, it will be behind several other novels on my ballot.