Book Review -- THE JUDGING EYE by R. Scott Bakker

Almost two years ago, I sat in a coffee shop in Fukuoka Japan with a latte and a copy of R. Scott Bakker's The Judging Eye. I finished it there, at that coffee shop close to my hotel. Since the second novel of The Aspect-Emperor series has just been published under the title The White-Luck Warrior, I thought it was time to dust off The Judging Eye and post my thoughts on it. For my reviews of The Prince of Nothing trilogy, which precedes this book, see my reviews of The Darkness that Comes Before and its two sequels.

The first thing I'll say is that this book, though comparable in size to the previous three volumes that made up The Prince of Nothing, felt much shorter than they. Indeed, it felt as if more happened in the preceding volumes. Not to say that much of the book is filler. It is rather well-paced, and Bakker does this by shifting perspectives from chapter-to-chapter (and even within chapters, on occasion). He has three major plot threads in this novel--the Empress and the court intrigues of the New Empire against an ancient cult of a mother-goddess, the Emperor and his Great Ordeal to destroy the Consult, and Drusas Achamian and his search for the origins of Anasûrimbor Kellhus and the location of the secret Dûnyain fortress.

As usual, Bakker's worldbuilding is woven into his narrative and dialogue. The cultures and traditions of the various societies are played out through the tale, rather than described, and the reader finally gets to see glimpses of the mysterious Empire of Zeüm and the Nonmen, beyond distant rumors and passing references. Especially well-rendered are the Sranc hunters that range the north and northeast for Sranc scalps that they sell for the Emperor's bounty.

Interestingly enough, Bakker chooses to employ a (by now) old fantasy trope--the journey through the darkness (cf. the Mines of Moria in The Lord of the Rings or the Hall of Kings in The Sword of Shannara, for example). But it serves more than simply a point of tension--it serves as a journey into the psyche of the Nonmen, the pre-human inhabitants of Eärwa. The journey is into far more than darkness, and it breaks the sanity of most of the characters, who are all renowned Sranc-hunters and hard fighting men. The inclusion of the Judging Eye, the ability to see good, evil, or even damnation in the soul of another, as well as the fanatic mother-goddess cult and their White-Luck Warrior, are imaginative complications to the narrative.

The characters themselves are also superbly rendered. Each has deep psychological foundations that Bakker appears to have mapped out and developed, with each character revealing his own mind and heart through his actions and words. Although sex, sexuality, and sexual frankness of narrative are much more toned-down in The Judging Eye (which I actually appreciate), the gritty realism is still there--characters void their bowels when they die, and others urinate themselves when terrified, for example. But, tactfully, Bakker never lingers on these things. They happen, he moves on.

Unfortunately, the tale itself does not carry that psychological and philosophical experimentation that the previous novels provided. Although he repeats much of the questions that he raised (and perhaps answered) in previous volumes, this volume fails to tread new ground. It is really just more of the same. Unfortunately, when I was finished, though I had thoroughly enjoyed this work, I have to say that I was a bit disappointed. One reviewer posited that Bakker had "possibly...gotten a lot of his musings out of his system with his recent SF stand-alone Neuropath." If that's the case, in my opinion, The Judging Eye is actually weaker for it.

It also didn't have much of a buildup and/or payoff. Achamian's storyline, which featured the aforementioned descent into darkness, experienced a great increase in dramatic and psychological tension, which finally snapped to bring us a satisfying climax and exciting cliffhanger. However, the other two main plot threads really didn't peak in the same way. The plot thickened, but didn't achieve any sort of critical mass or breaking point. Achamian's story is mostly what carries the reader through the ending.

This doesn't mean that the book is not excellent. Indeed, it is very good. As a stand-alone novel, it is fun, intriguing, and thought-provoking; as the afore-mentioned reviewer commented, The Judging Eye is still "by some margin still the most intellectually-stimulating epic fantasy book since, well, The Thousandfold Thought." But in light of the intellectual challenge and progression-of-thought by which the novels comprising The Prince of Nothing were characterized, I couldn't help but be a bit disappointed. I am taking into account the fact that this is the first novel in a series, and the threads left dangling at the end certainly made me anticipate The White-Luck Warrior, which seems to be selling much better than The Judging Eye had. There's a lot of potential here with this series, and perhaps Bakker is just getting warmed up.

The Judging Eye by R. Scott Bakker
Style B+
Substance B+
Overall B+

Book Review -- THE DYING EARTH, by Jack Vance

Newton's Second Law of Thermodynamics states that in a closed, isolated system temperature, pressure, and chemical potential will eventually achieve equilibrium. All of the energy tends to even out throughout the system. Sometimes, this is referred to as entropy. When we think of entropy, we usually imagine loss of energy, not necessarily energy equalization. But something is lost when energy is equilibrated. What's lost is vitality, motion. The imbalance of energy permits action, transfer and conversion of energy convey motion and collision. When elements within a system bleed energy off to form that equilibrium, those elements seem to die.

It is this sort of energy death that Jack Vance explores in The Dying Earth. I recently reread my 1960s Lancer SF Library edition of this seminal work of its eponymous genre during school vacation. It's not very long, only 160 pages. Within are six stories set on an unnamed continent in a far, far distant future when the sun has grown dim and the inhabitants of the weary Earth imagine that it will one day gutter and flicker out like an exhausted flame.

Through these tales, Vance explores the theme of innocence--an ironic topic considering the setting is a far distant future where everything is slowly dying. However, through her old age, the Earth has regained a shred of her own innocence, as magic and myth have resurfaced, albeit mixed with science and technology. Vance's language invokes that same sense of the legendary and mythopoeic that Tolkien, Dunsany, and Howard possessed, although instead of dwelling in some mythic past when the world was young, he places his era of legend in a dreamlike future full of nostalgia and misty exoticism.

It was night in white-walled Kaiin, and festival time. Orange lanterns floated in the air, moving as the breeze took them. From the balconies dangled flower chains and cages of blue fireflies. The streets surged with the wine-flushed populace, costumed in a multitude of bizarre modes. Here was a Melantine bargeman, here a warrior of Valdaran's Green Legion, here another of ancient times wearing one of the old helmets. In a little cleared space a garlanded courtesan of the Kauchique littoral danced the Dance of the Fourteen Silken Movements to the music of flutes. In the shadow of a balcony a girl barbarian of East Almery embraced a man blackened and in leather harness as a Deodand of the forest. They were gay, these people of waning Earth, feverishly merry, for infinite night was close at hand, when the red sun should finally flicker and go black.

Countries have strange names, such as Kauchique, the Cape of Sad Remembrance, and the Land of the Falling Wall. We read of "orange-haired witches of the Cobalt Mountain; forest sorcerers of Ascolais, white-bearded wizards of the Forlorn Land," and silk-clad princes of "Cansaspara, the city of fallen pylons across the Melantine Gulf." Vance's prose infuses his perpetually twilit world with a sense of storied history.

The ground rose, the trees thinned, and T'sais came out on an illimitable dark expanse. This was Modavna Moor, a place of history, a tract which had borne the tread of many feet and absorbed much blood. At one famous slaughtering, Golickan Kodek the Conqueror had herded here the populations of two great cities, G'Vasan and Bautiku, constricted them in a circle three miles across, gradually pushed them tighter, tighter, tighter, panicked them toward the center within his flapping-armed subhuman cavalry, until at last he had achieved a gigantic squirming mound, half a thousand feet high, a pyramid of screaming flesh. It is said that Golickan Kodek mused ten minutes at his monument, then turned and rode his bounding mount back to the land of Laidenur from whence he had come.

We may only spend a few pages on the Modavna Moor, but that brief description of Golickan Kodek's ride from Laidenur gives the location weight and feeling, and makes it seem a real and actual place. Though Prince Datul Omaet is only mentioned in passing, the fact that he exists, is a sorcerer, and comes from a city of "fallen pylons" from across a sea makes Vance's world just a little bit richer and more fascinating. Vance doesn't flesh everything out with the thoroughness of a Tolkien, but rather keeps his world open and unmapped like Robert E. Howard or Clark Ashton Smith, enabling him to broaden and expand it at will.

Though the setting has great potential for nihilistic pessimism, Vance avoids that. In a sense, the decay and imminent death of the Earth is an opportunity to rediscover a romanticism. Though the Earth cannot be saved from its ultimate fate, maybe it could be spiritually redeemed through heroism, sacrifice, bravery, and intelligence. Indeed, there's a great strain of optimism that runs through the entirety of The Dying Earth and defies the sun's exhaustion. The mythic lyricism of Vance's prose is very much a return to an older form, and though he's not the master that Dunsany or Tolkien would be, he does a decent job of it nonetheless.

"Far in the past, far beyond thought, so the legend runs, a race of just people lived in a land east of the Maurenron Mountains, past the Land of the Falling Wall, by the shores of a great sea. They built a city of spires and low glass domes, and dwelt in great content. These people had no god, and presently they felt the need of one whom they might worship. So they built a lustrous temple of gold, glass, and granite, wide as the Scaum River where it flows through the Valley of Graven Tombs, as long again and higher than the trees of the north. And this race of honest men assembled in the temple, and all flung a mighty prayer, a worshipful invocation, and, so legend has it, a god molded by the will of this people was brought into being, and he was of their attributes, a divinity of utter justice.

"The city at last crumbled, the temple became shards and splinters, the people vanished. But the god still remains, rooted forever to the place where his people worshiped him."

Magic plays an enormous part of the setting--both in its romantic nostalgia and in its entropic decay.

At one time a thousand or more runes, spells, incantations, curses, and sorceries had been known. The reach of Grand Motholam--Ascolais, the Ide of Kauchique, Almery to the South, the Land of the Falling Wall to the East--swarmed with sorcerers of every description, of whom the chief was the Arch-Necromancer Phandaal. A hundred spells Phandaal personally had formulated--though rumor said that demons whispered at his ear when he wrought magic. Ponticella the Pious, then ruler of Grand Motholam, put Phandaal to torment, and after a terrible night, he killed Phandaal and outlawed sorcery throughout the land. The wizards of Grand Motholam fled like beetles under a strong light; the lore was dispersed, and forgotten, until now, at this dim time, with the sun dark, wilderness obscuring Ascolais, and the white city of Kaiin half in ruins, only a few more than a hundred spells remained to the knowledge of man.

The spells are described as "so cogent" that characters can only fit a limited number of them into their brains at any given time. Upon casting of these spells, the release of magical energy wipes the formulas from the sorcerers' minds. This is exactly what role-playing-gamers describe when discussing "Vancian magic" in games like Dungeons & Dragons. Indeed, E. Gary Gygax and David Arneson were directly influenced by Jack Vance's setting when they were designing D&D, and elected to try to capture the feel of Vance's magical system in their game. This is obviously how Vance's The Dying Earth found its way into Gygax's heavily influential Appendix N.

This interesting mixture of innocence and romanticism amidst decay and entropy is combined with another major theme that runs through his books--justice and redemption. Characters either surrender to their base desires and lusts for power, or they can achieve a sort of moral epiphany and seek to do right. Such characters as T'sais, Turjan of Miir, Etarr, through love, sacrifice, bravery, and loss manage to achieve redemption and have their courage recognized. Other characters, like Liane the Wayfarer and Mazirian, get a satisfying comeuppance. Though Vance's world is dominated by decadence and dark forces, the just, good, and brave can definitely make a positive difference in the world, and Vance's stories are of those exceptional people who manage to overcome obstacles both internal and external.

One may say that all of these good deeds are for naught, since the sun is fading and eternal night is immanent, but the tenor and texture of the narratives do not suggest that this was Vance's aim. Rather, the author seems to feel that his protagonists really do matter and that their actions truly have a positive impact in spite of the looming heat-death of the world. Though cities crumble to dust and the sun continues to fade, magic and wonder still persists, and the world can still be enchanted, right up to the very end.

The Dying Earth by Jack Vance
Style B+
Substance B
Overall B+

"Realism" and Nihilism in Contemporary Fantasy

Leo Grin over at Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood wrote an interesting piece about the decline of modern fantasy, entitled "The Bankrupt Nihilism of Our Fallen Fantasists." By-and-large, the piece is quite reactionary (as is fitting a piece for anything Breitbart-related). Pat's Fantasy Hotlist said, "To me, it all sounds like someone caught in the past, refusing to see the genre we love evolve and grow." Roland's Codex dismissed it as pathetic, saying, "I found it extremely amusing in its fanboyish indignation and intellectual constipation, and would urge you to proceed with all due haste and read it. Hilarity and merriment are to be had!" But he had some very interesting points to make.

First, Grin yearns for a return to the mythopoeic stylings of J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard. This is an odd coupling, because both authors are extreme opposites in a great many ways. Howard wrote for the pulps, and it shows. His protagonists are often scoundrels living on the wrong side of the law, mercenaries escaping from a lost battle, or ne'er-do-wells of any sort. His prose style is fast-paced, action-oriented, and particularly bloody and violent. Tolkien, on-the-other-hand, is erudite, educated, a loremaster weaving a grandiose mythic cycle about an apocalyptic struggle between Good and Evil writ large. Regardless, they do have things in common these days, since Grin seems to see their similarities more as a function of their distance from current fantasy offerings, and especially cites Joe Abercrombie's work.

Second, Grin decries the over-reliance on violence, scatology, sex, and overall shock in order to subvert the established literary tropes.

Endless scenes of torture, treachery and bloodshed drenched in scatology and profanity concluded with a resolution worthy of M. Night Shyamalan at his worst, one that did its best to hurt, disappoint, and dishearten any lover of myths and their timeless truths. Think of a Lord of the Rings where, after stringing you along for thousands of pages, all of the hobbits end up dying of cancer contracted by their proximity to the Ring, Aragorn is revealed to be a buffoonish puppet-king of no honor and false might, and Gandalf no sooner celebrates the defeat of Sauron than he executes a long-held plot to become the new Dark Lord of Middle-earth, and you have some idea of what to expect should you descend into Abercrombie’s jaded literary sewer.

(Ironically, Abercrombie actually admitted that he found this scenario rather interesting, but also admitted that your mileage may vary.) If Mr. Abercrombie's aim was "to hurt, disappoint, and dishearten any lover of myths and their timeless truths," than I applaud his success. I've not read any of Joe Abercrombie's novels, I admit, but in the course of one week, through this article, Leo Grin has managed to polarize the entire fantasy community through his reference to Abercrombie specifically.

Now, for a week, the rebuttals have come pouring in. Adam at The Wertzone said in "Missing the Point" that "the problem is that the author bemusingly names J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard as his preferred flavours of fantasy. Which makes very little sense, as few fantasy authors are more nihilistic than Tolkien and Howard." Adam's argument is iconic of the rebuttals overall, but I'd argue that it is Adam and other respondents to Grin that are "missing the point." This is a straw man argument, especially with regards to Tolkien.

Sure, Beleriand is destroyed at the end of The Silmarillion, and the ending of The Lord of the Rings sees the passing of the Elves from Middle-Earth, the dwindling of the enchantment, a shell-shocked Frodo suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome and unable to live comfortably in the Shire he struggled to save. However, what Adam and so many other critics of Leo Grin are missing is that this is not nihilistic, but should instead tug at a sort of pathos in our hearts. The Latin term "lacrimae rervm" or the Japanese term 物の哀れ (mono no aware) describe a kind of pathos, or sadness, for things mortal and temporary. This is not nihilism, it is the bittersweet nostalgia for things gone, and the idea that "you can never go home again." It's about change and how one deals with change. Indeed, when Grin's description of the hypothetical Abercrombiean Middle-Earth is rebutted with descriptions of everything that was lost as a consequence of the War of the Ring, I am tempted to rip my hair out in frustration and scream, "You're missing the point!"

Grin's right when he describes Tolkien's work as heroic. His characters are ostensibly Good. They show selflessness and self-sacrifice for a greater ideal at every turn. Their victory comes at a terrible cost, but it is a victory and more to the point, their victory is not hollow. Yes, the Elves leave Middle-Earth because the rich magic that permeated the world died with the Dark Lord, but without that loss, the victory would have been cheapened. The Elves had their chance, and Feanor's obsession with vengeance put them on a collision course with tragedy. Now it is Men's turn. Yes, it's sad, but it's sadness that has a point.

Similarly, Robert E. Howard's works are not all blood, gore, and violence. Solomon Kane is one of the most compelling of all Howard's characters and one of my personal favorites. The Puritan demon-hunter is driven by his faith in God and his unquenchable desire to right wrongs. He constantly faces horrors that would warp his mind, but he fights off (of all things) a Lovecraftian nihilism by relying on his faith and adherence to Good. Conan may be selfish and ultimately out for "number one" but he has a code of honor and, by-and-large, has little patience for tyrants and those who would slaughter innocents. He is not a morally ambiguous character--his morality is right there, up front. Yeah, he's an unscrupulous character, but that does not make him morally ambiguous. Nor does it make Howard's world nihilistic. Howard saw the barbaric characters of his stories as men walking a thin gray line between darkness and light, order and chaos, civilization and savagery, decadence and nature, and it was their will and their wits that brought them triumph, even against darknesses that were dredged up from the blackest pits of Lovecraftian nightmare. Yes, civilization would eventually be washed in the blood of Turanian, then Pictish, then Cimmerian invasion, and then cataclysm, but Howard didn't like civilization much anyway, and saw strength, honor, and will in the barbarian kingdoms of European yore. That is not nihilism.

I think that this over-adherence to nihilism on the part of so many commentators and bloggers is a desperate attempt to divert the main thrust of Grin's argument. It isn't so much nihilism, per se, but a matter of taste. Some say de gvstibvs non est dispvtandvm, but I'm not so sure.

The other side thinks that their stuff is, at long last, turning the genre into something more original, thoughtful, and ultimately palatable to intelligent, mature audiences. They and their fans are welcome to that opinion. For my part — and I think Tolkien and Howard would have heartily agreed — I think they’ve done little more than become cheap purveyors of civilizational graffiti.

Abercrombie himself responded to Grin's comment:

We’re on sides, now? No one told me about sides. What are the sides? Of what? And on which side am I? I love Tolkien, after all. I’d like to be on his side. Grew up with The Hobbit. Read Lord of the Rings every year. I’m a great admirer of his. Without Tolkien there’d be no fantasy as we know it, and certainly no First Law. When it comes to an epic tale with moral clarity set in a supremely realised fantasy world, he pretty much knocked it out of the park.

Abercrombie sets up another straw man here, and proceeds with it. Leo Grin is right--there are sides. Just because Abercrombie admires Tolkien doesn't mean he's not participating in a movement of literary degradation. If Leo Grin is to be believed, Joe Abercrombie's work utilizes "cynicism, profanity, scatology, dark humor, and nihilism" to put the tropes of the fantasy genre "back together into a Frankenstein's monster designed to shock, outrage, offend, and dishearten." His book, The Heroes has been cited as an utterly ironic piece in which the main characters are most certainly not, and partake in the slaughter of innocent civilians (including women and children), rape, and murder. So, in order to avoid just another umpteenth retelling of The Lord of the Rings, modern fantasy requires foul language, scatology, immoral anti-heroes, graphic sex, sickening and upsetting violence, and rape. In other words, it needs to realistically depict the graphic realities of medieval life, warfare, and death because Tolkien didn't do that (although Howard approached it).

As I go through earlier 20th century works of fantasy fiction, I find them chock-full of sex and violence. It's just not graphic. I have to ask why George R.R. Martin finds it necessary to describe, in detail, one character's sexual experience in A Feast of Crows, where Poul Anderson simply ended a chapter of Three Hearts and Three Lions as Holger carries an elf princess off to bed. What was the rationale behind it? Sex is a part of life and shouldn't be avoided in literature, but I don't need a pornographic description of what happens. Similarly, Robert E. Howard's warriors would wade through buckets of blood, but it was always described with a certain panache that is most definitely lacking in a lot of contemporary fantasy. They seemed less like men and more like forces of nature in combat, and the violence of the scene was woven into the tale like thread. This is different from reading about some young maiden trying to hold her intestines inside herself after a mercenary decided to gut her. I'm trying read an adventure tale, not watching a Rob Zombie flick.

Nevertheless, de gvstibvs non est dispvtandvm. There is no disputing taste. Your mileage may vary. However, I have to ask, is the reason so much graphic and cold-bloodedly disturbing sex and violence being included because the authors can't actually write well otherwise? Everybody's known since Shakespeare that sex and violence on gratuitous levels will sell, but that real art is something that isn't readily accessible, and difficult to produce. Shakespeare purposely made Titus Andronicus an over-the-top schlocky gore-fest, either to capitalize on the crude "sex and violence sell" reality or to subvert it and show how hollow and mind-numbingly unartistic buckets of blood truly are. It's just another kind of spectacle, and anyone who actively enjoys reading about innocents being slaughtered in a novel needs to read about the much more recent (and true) Rape of Nanking and see if they still enjoy that sort of stuff. As an historian, I've read my fair share of civilians getting massacred and really don't need to spend dozens of pages dwelling on it in a fantasy novel.

Brian Murphy compares the over-the-top tasteless (in my opinion) graphic horror of Richard Morgan's The Cold Commands with Tolkien's description of how Shelob captures, tortures, and finally drains her victims. Describing Tolkien's passage he had this to say:

That to me is a great piece of writing. It tells you plenty about the cruelty and maliciousness of Sauron and his relationship with the giant she-spider (which he half-hates and half-fears, but tolerates as a valuable guardian into Mordor).

As for the gory details, it allows my mind to fill in the rest. Tolkien goes on to explain that Shelob cares not for wealth or power, but spends all her time brooding on her next feast. "For all living things were her food, and her vomit darkness," he writes. That's about as nasty and explicit as Tolkien gets.

When compared to Richard Morgan's excerpt, Brian went on to say this:

As for that passage, man, it’s brutal. It’s effective, and horrifying, and well-done. But it’s not why I read fantasy. It jerked me back into reality with its clinical descriptions of flensing and tearing blood vessels. Perhaps Morgan intended this scene as a condemnation of torture. It vaguely reminded me of the real-life practice of waterboarding, albeit turned up to 11. I don’t know. I read it and it just felt — too much.

Brian Murphy pretty much sums it up. We're dragged out of a story and thrown into the real world where people are tortured in Gitmo and religious fanatics blow themselves up. Fantasy is many things, but it is most certainly a brand of escapist literature as much as anything else, and to rob the genre of its escapist facet ultimately cheapens it. In the excerpt of Morgan's book that Murphy quotes, we're presented with a torturous execution that is intensely described, with little omitted. We're drawn a picture of agony, blood, viscera, and being eaten alive. It has an impact, but lacks the elegance of the Tolkien passage that Murphy quoted before it. There was no real vibrancy or flair to the description. Just a cold, calculated explanation of how these characters were dying. What ever happened to Hemingway's Iceberg Principle, where what's not said carries more weight than what is said?

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy nihilism in my literature, and graphic sex and violence--to a degree, and so long as there is a point to it all. I adore the works of James Ellroy because he grabs the hardboiled noir that Chandler and Hammett birthed and runs with it to it's logical conclusion. Noir is inherently nihilistic, but it's supposed to be. Ellroy's stuff is grim, gritty, shocking, upsetting, but that's because it is supposed to be. He's epitomized the genre. Reading a tragic and pessimistic novel like The Big Nowhere is an incredibly cathartic experience. It can be depressing, but my overall experience was actually cleansing. Fantasy wasn't designed to be nihilistically cathartic but instead nostalgic, perhaps a postmodern re-enchantment of an otherwise mundane world.

It's hard to feel nostalgic about a bunch of raiders lining women and children up in front of a fortress and burying axes into their heads until the garrison capitulates. That's not cathartic, either. It's simply disturbing and upsetting.

R. Scott Bakker has this to say to Leo Grin:

you might say that Grin thinks this is fantasy’s vocation, to endlessly eulogize, and that writing that strays into the baroque or revisionary are not only morally and imaginatively bankrupt, they are symptomatic of some great disease of the soul that is presently claiming the world and humanity.

Sound familiar? It should if you read fantasy. This particular salad of attitudes and concepts – moral certainty writ on a cosmic scale – is precisely what you find in almost all premodern works of fantastic fiction, everything from Upanishads to the Holy Bible. Consider the hyperbole. Consider the way he structures his oppositions in the above quote: on the one side you have the sacred, the treasured and the cruciform, while on the other side you have, well, shit and piss.

I'm tempted to break out Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane, a landmark study in how "religious man" establishes the sacred by delegating it as "special" and "not profane"--that is, not mundane, mortal, or carnal. Indeed, fantasy often tapped into that throughout its growth and development in the early 20th century. The problem with Grin, apparently, is he sees fantasy itself as a sacred touchstone of our culture, and sees it's deconstruction and infusion with the profane to be blasphemous, a mark of Western civilization's self-loathing and willful self-destruction, and inherently political.

Soiling the building blocks and well-known tropes of our treasured modern myths is no different than other artists taking a crucifix and dipping it in urine, covering it in ants, or smearing it with feces. In the end, it’s just another small, pathetic chapter in the decades-long slide of Western civilization into suicidal self-loathing. It’s a well-worn road: bored middle-class creatives (almost all of them college-educated liberals) living lives devoid of any greater purpose inevitably reach out for anything deemed sacred by the conservatives populating any artistic field.

Well, Grin, if it is a sacred touchstone, then in this postmodern world where religion has become evil, the sacred has literally become a profane force in the eyes of many, then one must expect this sort of reaction.

The deconstructing and subverting of genre tropes is not always a bad thing. One of my favorite fantasy series is Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, a trilogy which preserves the rich sense of re-enchantment that Michal at One Last Sketch talks about, while simultaneously subverting a number of fantasy's tropes. Loads of characters die, medieval warfare is bloody and horrific, the realities of medieval life are not ideal in the least. And yet that makes the actions of the protagonist all the more heroic. No, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn does not simply churn out the same old tropes, but subverts almost all of them subtly, delicately. Overall, author Tad Williams wrote a fantasy series aimed at adults that doesn't require the graphic sex, violence, or scatology of other authors in order to get its points across.

Now, I have yet to read Joe Abercrombie's work. I'm not a big fan of historical fantasy, mostly because I am a historian and I can't help but nit-pick what's wrong half of the time, and from what I've gathered, that's primarily Abercrombie's oeuvre. Not to say that Abercrombie does a bad job or has inconsistencies--I just prefer not to read historical fantasy. I'm not bashing Abercrombie. But considering how his name has fueled a lot of this divide, I cannot help but ask why? What about his work, specifically, did Grin (and others) find so damn objectionable?

I am , however, insisting that Grin's argument not be dismissed out-of-hand, like Joe Abercrombie, R. Scott Bakker, the Wertzone, et. al. have. Once you scrape away the political hyperbole from Grin's argument, you can't help but realize that everybody missed the point and ended up shooting the messenger.

Theo at the blog for Black Gate actually made one of the best defenses for Grin's argument I've seen. In his piece, "The Decline and Fall of the Fantasy Novel," Theo argues that Grin is correct, the tragic heroism and mythic tenor of both Tolkien and Howard have given way to an ironic, barren landscape bereft of anything sacred or meaningful. There's nothing worth defending, and that's depressing and disheartening. For me, what I find depressing is the unnecessary gratuity of sex and violence making such literature more "adult" or more "literary." I find it quite depressing, and can't help but compare it to the gritty Dark Age of comic books during the early 1990s, when "adult" and "mature" wound up really being quite immature, adolescent at best, and unnecessarily graphic. Shock was not followed by awe, but by disinterest. (For more on this, see Michal's post on "Adult" Fantasy at One Last Sketch.)

I do not want to read a Tolkien knock-off. I've had enough of Terry Brooks' Shannara. I read fantasy to visit places that I wish were real and enjoy stories of heroism, adventure, and of individuals overcoming immense obstacles. I love books with strange monsters and magic. Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn is a magnificent subversion of fantasy that tragically flies under everyone's radar as "just another fairy tale," when it should actually be a model for postmodern deconstructive fantasy. Indeed, Williams' work inspired George R.R. Martin to start A Song of Ice and Fire in the first place!

There's plenty of heroism in Martin's books, too. Although he was, unfortunately, lumped into this, I see Martin's books as trying to bridge a gap between the real and the fantastic. Yeah, Martin's got a lot of gratuitous violence, but to his credit, he's not a fan of it himself. He's writing the story he wants, or perhaps needs, to tell. One of the reasons that A Storm of Swords took so long to come out was because he had such a difficult time writing the Red Wedding scene. Events such as that do not make his work nihilistic, and indeed the career of Daenerys Targaryen, if anything, is full of heroism--her character grows to develop a strong sense of justice and good. The use of perspectives makes the various characters much more real and human, and therefore understandable--their own inward struggles can make them heroes or villains in ways that a simple straightforward narrative could not. I honestly do not find Martin's work to be nihilistic in any way. Pessimistic, yes, but nihilistic, no.

There's a long list of great books to which I can point that subvert fantasy tropes and do so tastefully, without resorting to the sort of stuff that Leo Grin decries. I just finished reading Glen Cook's The Black Company, a novel about a mercenary company that works for the bad guys. The book is fraught with pessimism and darkness, but I'd not go so far as to say it was nihilistic. Similarly, I'm rereading Jack Vance's The Dying Earth, and it deals with nihilism while still maintaining a sense of fantastic wonder--the very nihilism itself of Vance's stories is part of the overall enchantment and sense of awe, which is achieved without gratuitously graphic sex, violence, or scatology. In Lord Foul's Bane, Thomas Covenant rapes a woman, but Stephen R. Donaldson doesn't give us a thick paragraph description of all her cries and his thrusts, nor are we ever treated to a phrase like "engorged member." Indeed, the guilt of this deed is something that torments Covenant's conscience for the rest of the series--something that seems to stand in direct opposition to the current "nihilistic" and "morally bereft" trends to which Grin objects.

This is where I respond to Matthew David Surridge's rebuttal to Theo's article (the one that defend's Leo Grin). When Surridge evokes a number of early-to-mid 20th century examples of rape, murder, moral ambiguity, etc., I have to shake my head and reiterate, "you're missing the point!" It's all about the presentation, otherwise, why would Grin have made such a fuss about language, scatology, and graphic description of sex and violence? Yeah, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser were cut-throat thieves, ne'er-do-wells, and sex-crazed. However, there were levels to which even they wouldn't sink. The same is true for Conan. When Surridge cites Conan's pursuit of the ice-princess in "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" as having "rape" as his intent, Surridge is being hyperbolic--Conan's intent is revenge because she tried to have him killed for sport and amusement. Again, it's about the description and the presentation of events, and someone seems to be missing the point.

Grin's point, I think, in reality, goes back to what Michal at One Last Sketch said about fantasy being "adult."

However, my problem with these “new takes” on the genre is that they don’t, actually, do anything new. Strip away the swears and the sex and you’re left with works not much different from their predecessors. Yes, there may be moral ambiguity, but Lord Dunsany, Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith also wrote amoral worlds. Sara Douglass has much less depth than Morgan; ignore the strange creature sex and the novels don’t much reflect the lofty themes she urges writers to pursue. We are told to strive for realism in our fantasy, yet I don’t see much inherently realistic in the word “fuck.”

The only thing that makes these books adult is that we, adults, try to bar children from reading them. We often fail. Writing sex doesn’t make your book mature unless you do something with it. I used to sneak my mother’s romance novels when I was ten to skip to the dirty bits: it’s not, in itself, a particularly adult thing to write about, or even talk about. Head into any schoolyard and you’ll hear language that would make even, I warrant, Ms. Douglass blush.

It does, however, give a false sense of legitimacy to a work. Because we don’t want children reading them, we can automatically label such books “adult.” No longer need we piddle around in a sanitized Middle Earth where no orc would dare say “shit” even if he really wants to; we can be depraved as we like.

And there you have it. Strip away all of the sex and violence and I have to ask, do these works really mean anything? If Joe Abercrombie's books were bowdlerized, would their stories lose their impact? If so, why? I know R. Scott Bakker's work would suffer, not because his work is bereft of substance but because he is dealing with deeply psychological and philosophical subjects, attacking our assumptions through a gigantic thought-experiment of a fantasy series, and doing something that the genre honestly really hasn't done before. But can the same be said of Morgan, Douglass, and Abercrombie? Are they trying to be relevant by having their characters swear, smear feces on their swords before battle, and rape twelve-year-old girls while on chevauchée? Does this actually make them adult, sophisticated, literary? Do you need this stuff in order to be more realistic? What purpose does the inclusion of scatology, foul language, graphic violence, sex, and torture actually serve in the novel? Is this really going to prevent a writer from merely mimicking Tolkien?

Or perhaps somebody is just throwing the baby out with the bathwater?

Book Review -- FRANKENSTEIN, or A MODERN PROMETHEUS by Mary Wollenstonecraft Shelley

"These thoughts supported my spirits, while I pursued my undertaking with unremitting ardour. My cheek had grown pale with study, and my person had become emaciated with confinement. Sometimes, on the very brink of certainty, I failed; yet still I clung to the hope which the next day or the next hour might realize. One secret which I alone possessed was the hope to which I had dedicated myself; and the moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding-places. Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay? My limbs now tremble, and my eyes swim with the remembrance; but then a resistless and almost frantic impulse urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit. It was indeed but a passing trance, that only made me feel with renewed acuteness so soon as, the unnatural stimulus ceasing to operate, I had returned to my old habits. I collected bones from charnel-houses and disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame. In a solitary chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house, and separated from all the other apartments by a gallery and staircase, I kept my workshop of filthy creation; my eyeballs were starting from their sockets in attending to the details of my employment. The dissecting room and the slaughter-house furnished many of my materials; and often did my human nature turn with loathing from my occupation, whilst, still urged on by an eagerness which perpetually increased, I brought my work near to a conclusion."

Thus, the modern Prometheus of the title goes about his work, setting himself upon a path that would lead him to commit one of the greatest sins possible--rejection and loathing for one's own child.

Mary Shelley is the daughter of Mary Wollenstonecraft (author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and William Godwin (author of An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice), and the wife of Percy Bisshe Shelley, the renowned Romantic poet who died at a tragically young age in a shipwreck in the mid-1820s.

Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein after vacationing in Switzerland with her husband and a few other notables, including the Romantic poet Byron, when they all agreed to attempt to write a ghost story. Only Mary Shelley actually managed to scrawl out an entire novel, the rest were better at poetry than prose, apparently.

Frankenstein is a horror novel, but the horror is personal and internal, not external. It is a very tragic tale, in which the protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, is a self-absorbed "Prometheus" who is so engaged in the prospect of creating life from the base material parts that he doesn't consider the reality of what he is creating. Daydreams of being worshiped as the creator of a new species are dashed at the awakening of his "monster," which he perceives as hideous and malformed only once the animating spark is endowed. Frankenstein's great sin, however, is not the creation of his monster, but his sudden and irrational rejection of it. Indeed, the monster is not much of one, at the beginning, but becomes one when he learns only cruelty and hate from the humans that surround him.

This is an incredibly misunderstood book, in my opinion. The horror is not actually of the monster, but of the black depths of the human soul--our fear and revulsion of that which we do not understand. H.P. Lovecraft wrote that the oldest and strongest emotion in humans was fear, and the oldest and strongest fear was that of the unknown. This terror in the face of the ugly and unfamiliar can lead to hate and abuse--the sort of treatment that the monster suffers. It learns, at the hands of humankind, to be a murderer and to avenge its wretched existence against its tormentors, and it focuses its hatred on the man most responsible for his miserable state--Dr. Victor Frankenstein.

There isn't much that I can say after having read Harold Bloom's "Afterword" (from the Signet Classics August 2000 printing). In his words, Frankenstein "is an important book, though it is only a strong, flawed novel with frequent clumsiness in its narrative and characterization," but nevertheless "contains one of the most vivid versions we have of the Romantic mythology of the self, one that resembles Blake's Book of Urizen, Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, and Byron's Manfred... ."

I've not read those works, but Bloom gives enough of a representation for Prometheus Unbound in his "Afterword" that you can get a gist, and I'm familiar with Blake's interesting mythology and prophetic poetry. Indeed, Mary Shelley's work is rife with references to a great many inspirational works--one of which is Milton's Paradise Lost, which plays a vital role in educating the monster and is perhaps the catalyst that sets him in vengeful antagonism against Frankenstein.

I will leave the analysis to others far more suited than I, and the Signet Classics edition has a decent bibliography for further references. Nevertheless, I'll endeavor to assess the work, though I can only doubt my qualifications to undertake so daunting a task.

First, the story itself is deep, but not entirely eventful. Those expecting a tale full of dreadful screams and horrific acts of brutality might find themselves disappointed. In Aeschyline style (can I say that, or must I say Aschylus-esque?), most of the murders take place "offstage" although the details of one are relayed through flashback.

The horror, however, comes forth through how these murders impact the psyche of Victor Frankenstein. Each one drives him further and further from something human and deeper into a sort of animalistic desperation. In this, as the analysts often note, the dichotomy of Frankenstein and his monster crystallizes, and the two are revealed to simply be reflections of one-another. Thus, the horror is created in the mind of Frankenstein himself, as well as the monster, who had suffered at the hands of humanity indescribably during his brief period of innocence.

Second, the prose itself feels a bit forced at times. It is revealed in the Forward that Percy Shelley edited much of the novel, and is responsible for some of its unnecessary verbosity. Although at times, the prose can be exquisite, at other times, it can be wantonly purple. I felt the hand of Percy throughout the novel strongly, simply because there were times when the dialogue and the description of things were stretched. Brevity was ignored in some places, and the forward even pointed out a number of instances where a plain, quick, and simple sentence was made needlessly complex by Percy for the sake of satisfying his poetic taste. While this might work in meter, I don't think it works quite well in prose, which may be one of the reasons many poets don't seem to make good prose writers and vice versa.

At these moments I wept bitterly and wished that peace would revisit my mind only that I might afford them consolation and happiness. But that could not be. Remorse extinguished every hope. I had been the author of unalterable evils, and I lived in daily fear lest the monster whom I had created should perpetrate some new wickedness. I had an obscure feeling that all was not over and that he would still commit some signal crime, which by its enormity should almost efface the recollection of the past. There was always scope for fear so long as anything I loved remained behind. My abhorrence of this fiend cannot be conceived. When I thought of him I gnashed my teeth, my eyes became inflamed, and I ardently wished to extinguish that life which I had so thoughtlessly bestowed. When I reflected on his crimes and malice, my hatred and revenge burst all bounds of moderation. I would have made a pilgrimage to the highest peak of the Andes, could I when there have precipitated him to their base.

It's beautiful, it's descriptive, it's poetic, but it slows down the narrative to a snail's crawl at times. I won't say much about it, though, because at least the Shelleys are doing something with the language rather than simply rattling on about the temperatures of tea or going on and on about a certain woman's rich appearance like someone we know. This is, therefore, an extremely minor nitpick, but the Shelleys engage in this sort of poetic rabbit-trail so often it does become tiresome at times.

Nevertheless, aside from that complaint, I must admit the novel, though around 180 pages, seemed awfully short. I read it on the subway over a period of two weeks, while reading other books. This adds up to probably about six or at worst seven hours spent on the novel alone, not including the forward and afterword. Perhaps it is because I had become so accustomed to reading long, meandering history books or epic fantasy novels spanning 400+ pages (at minimum) that Mary Shelley's novel seemed to simply fly past (with small print, in fact!).

Though it feels like the novel has few events within it's brief 26 chapters, it is, nevertheless, quite the page-turner. Though at times the verbosity of the prose caused my mind to drift a few times and I found myself having to re-read whole pages, I still found myself pulled through the book by the plot. Though most of the characters are a bit too archetypal to seem anything more than the two-dimensional models they are, I found the monster and Victor Frankenstein to be quite interesting. His love and hate seem almost arbitrary depending on what he wants at any given time, whereas the monster's desires seem somewhat stable and unchanging. This makes them more interesting than the stock-characters that populate the rest of the novel with their overly predictable behavior. It is difficult to sympathize with Victor Frankenstein, for from the very moment his creation breathes life, he casts the eight-foot-tall infant from him, and the two years that it wanders and sojourns in squalor teaches it to be as cruel as the humans into which it had blundered. The monster should invoke our pity, as should his victims. Nevertheless, I still felt for Victor Frankenstein's losses at the hands of his monster, partially because of the imbalance--Frankenstein gave life and little else, but the monster took away from Frankenstein that which he himself had wanted.

The impact of the book is incredible, and has spawned a great many adaptations, some of which are more faithful than others. There is, of course, the classic 1931 James Wale film starring Boris Karloff as the monster (often mistakenly named for the doctor) and Colin Clive as Henry (note the name change) Frankenstein. The film has become the most iconic representation of the story, recognizable to everyone, and reflects the technological advances of the century between the novel's publication and the movie release by adding an electrical element in the re-animation of the dead matter. As a pop culture touchstone, it's weight is everywhere, and Colin Clive's ecstatic cries of "It's alive, it's alive!" express heartfelt jubilation to present a perfect counterpoint to the terror that will be unleashed.

The irony is that the film did irreparable damage to people's understanding of the book. The focus went from Victor Frankenstein's heartless rejection of the monster and the fruits of his own cruelty to Henry Frankenstein's desire to "play God" and the repercussions of his hubris. The most humorous treatment to come out of the pop culture cauldron is probably Mel Brooks' The Young Frankenstein (ahem, FrankenSTIEN), where the doctor and the monster forge a loving bond with one-another, reversing the tragedy of the novel for comedic purpose.

All-in-all, the book is far more important for the ideas it conveys than for the style in which it was written, or the complexity of the plot itself. The ideas are incredibly powerful, and lace the narrative with a great deal of meaning that goes far beyond the simple passage of events. Mary Shelley's invocation of such works as Paradise Lost and the monster's "education" should make the importance of the ideas themselves abundantly clear to the reader. Therefore, this book has earned quite high marks. It shouldn't just serve as a cautionary tale to scientists, but also as a source of moral challenge to the reader, who will find the both Frankenstein and his monster simultaneously abhorrent and pitiable.

Frankenstein, or A Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollenstonecraft Shelley
Style A-
Substance A
Overall A-

Book Review -- A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ by Walter M. Miller Jr.

This December has been extremely sparse for me when it comes to posting and for this, I guess, apologies are in order. Nevertheless, I'd finished this particular novel for almost the entire month, so there's little excuse for the tardiness of this review.

Having flown as a tailgunner during the Second World War and participated in the destruction of the ancient Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino, Walter M. Miller Jr.'s novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz, is a product of his subsequent meditations on war, knowledge, and faith in the wake of his wartime experiences. The only novel Miller ever published which garnered any significant literary attention, A Canticle for Leibowitz wrestles with several conflicts which are far more poignant today than even were during the early 1960s when the novel was first published.

Before setting pen to paper, Miller had explored a number of themes in short stories published in science-fiction magazines. Among these, he especially focused on the ideas of technological regression and orders of priests that would preserve knowledge against the ravages of time and human ignorance. His experience writing this sort of struggle, combined with post-apocalyptic literature (born from the growing awareness in the 1960s of MAD), his faith and Catholic background, and his own reservoir of memories from World War II, would coalesce into a short story that would become the first segment of A Canticle for Leibowitz.

A Canticle for Leibowitz was originally three novelettes that were originally published in F&SF in the mid-1950s. This is evidenced by the subtle shifts in writing style between the three segments. After heavy editing, the three sections were sewn together into one single narrative of an abbey constructed 600 years after a "Flame Deluge" (read: nuclear holocaust) and continuing for a millennium thereafter. This abbey, the eponymous Abbey of St. Leibowitz, is the actual protagonist of the tale, and the people around it are all supporting cast. The first segment, "Fiat Homo" (i.e. "Let There Be Man") , chronicles the "miraculous events" which lead to the canonization of the former Beatus Leibowitz into the roll of saints. The second, "Fiat Lux" ("Let There Be Light") describes simultaneous struggles that could shape the destiny of the abbey and determine the way knowledge is preserved and disseminated in the future. The final section, "Fiat Voluntas Tua" ("Thy Will Be Done"), describes the distant future, where man is once again reaching beyond the boundaries of the Earth, but is also poised to destroy himself in another Flame Deluge.

One of the most obvious conflicts that Miller wrestles with is that of faith and knowledge. The reader is well aware that Leibowitz was originally a Jew and an engineer in the employ of the U.S. military. However, a series of seemingly "miraculous" coincidences (a chance discovery of articles in a sealed bunker having once belonged to Leibowitz, for example) result in his canonization as a saint in the Catholic Church. This is an extreme irony that should, by no means, go unnoticed. The presence of the mysterious, eternal old Jew that wanders throughout the three sections should rivet the audience's attention on this irony. There's almost a childish ignorance with which the monks handle the newly discovered articles which some might see as mocking. However, I do not (see below). Francis' character is purposely simple and unintelligent, but Miller is certainly not expressing the entirety of the abbey as being as childishly dull. Their knowledge is limited, which is why they work so diligently to preserve what little has survived.

Miller isn't simply presenting a simplistic dichotomy of knowledge vs. faith. The conflict is one of method and attitude, as well as control. This is very much personified through the character of Thon Taddeo, a brilliant young scholar who is nephew of the Mayor of Texarkana (an incredibly powerful kingdom). He achieves the privilege of examining the library of the Abbey of St. Leibowitz, where the only copies of many materials from the world before the Flame Deluge are preserved.

The conflict between preservation and application of knowledge emerges as the highlight of the second segment, and is, indeed, the pivot point upon which the entire novel turns. Thon Taddeo seems to predict the more modern and vocal atheist scientific thinkers of our own era, such as Richard Dawkins. Although Thon Taddeo does not claim atheism outright, he directly challenges the faith of the monks by attacking the very core of their mission--the preservation of knowledge. He embodies the hubris of secular scholarship and scientific achievement.

"Tomorrow, a new prince shall rule. Men of understanding, men of science shall stand behind his throne, and the universe will come to know his might. His name is Truth. His empire shall encompass the Earth. And the mastery of Man over the Earth shall be renewed. A century from now, men will fly through the air in mechanical birds. Metal carriages will race along roads of man-made stone. There will be buildings of thirty stories, ships that go under the sea, machines to perform all works.

"And how will this come to pass?" He paused and lowered his voice. "In the same way all change comes to pass, I fear. And I am sorry it is so. It will come to pass by violence and upheaval, by flame and by fury, for no change comes calmly over the world." --pp. 214

Thon Taddeo's choice of "prince" is not coincidental. That Thon Taddeo also repeatedly refers to Mayor Hannegan of Texarkana as "prince" should not go unnoticed by the reader. Miller was steeped in Catholic lore. By invoking the word "prince," Miller is calling our attention to Ephesians 6:12, which states that a Christian's war is against principalities, powers, and the forces of darkness, not against flesh and blood. The choice of the word "prince" also has a Machiavellian resonance, which will be further expressed in "Fiat Voluntas Tua."

Miller strips Thon Taddeo of his hubris and pride throughout "Fiat Lux." In a later chapter, Thon Taddeo attempts to argue that the species of Man that caused the Flame Deluge was not the species of human that inhabits the post-apocalyptic world. The Abbot rightly dresses him down, accusing him of attempting to distance himself and his colleagues and their scientific achievements from the achievements that caused the Deluge. Dom Paolo, the Abbot, argues with Thon Taddeo that such knowledge must be kept from mankind "until he is wise," and that once science and technology have tied themselves to the terrestrial and the political, then another Flame Deluge is inevitable.

Brief anger flared in the old priest's eyes. "It's time you met our founder, I think," he growled, pointing to the carving in the corner. "He was a scientist like yourself before the world went mad and he ran for sanctuary. He founded this Order to save what could be saved of the records of the last civilization. 'Saved' from what, and for what? Look where he's standing--see the kindling? That's how little the world wanted your science then, and for centuries afterward. So he died for our sake. When they drenched him with fuel oil, legend says he asked them for a cup of it. They thought he mistook it for water, so they laughed and gave him a cup. He blessed it and--some say the oil changed to wine when he blessed it--and then: 'Hic est enim calix Sanguinis Mei,' and he drank it before they hung him and set him on fire. Shall I read you a list of our martyrs? Shall I name all the battles we have fought to keep these records intact? All the minks blinded in the copyroom? for your sake? Yet you say we did nothing with it, withheld it by silence."

"Not intentionally, "the scholar said, "but in effect you did--and for the very motives you imply should be mine. If you try to save wisdom until the world is wise, Father, the world will never have it."

"I can see the misunderstanding is basic!" the abbot said gruffly. "To serve God first, or to serve Hannegan first--that's your choice."

"I have little choice, then," answered the thon. "Would you have me work for the Church?" The scorn in his voice was unmistakable. --pp. 224-5

How similar to the likes of Dawkins and Hitchens does Thon Taddeo sound! He nakedly prefers science to serve a selfish, venal master who cannot even sign his own name. His scorn for religion is incredible. He identifies religion with ignorance and darkness--an identification that is quite prevalent in American "common knowledge" today. Thon Taddeo puts his faith in science and technological advancement and erroneously believes that humans will not repeat the Flame Deluge again.

This results in the advanced setting of 3781, in which the Mayorate of Texarkana rules much of North America and is on the brink of nuclear war with a fierce rival power in Asia. Meanwhile, the abbot and monks of St. Leibowitz prepare to send a ship with their entire archive and the next Pope to a distant colony and continue on. It is in this chapter that the struggle between science and religion unites with a broader overall struggle between ethics and morality--especially regarding the euthanasia of fallout survivors who suffer from a lethal dose of radiation. The callous disregard with which the Mayorate of Texarkana authorizes doctors to prescribe euthanasia for "hopeless cases" disgusts Abbot Zerchi, and he forbids the clinic that sets up in his abbey to hand out euthanasia slips.

The names of the Abbots are as interesting as their personalities. Miller is astute and carefully sets up a scenario of beginning-to-end for the earth. "Fiat Homo" is the rebirth of the world, as the title ("Let There Be Man") suggests. Abbot Arkos' name hearkens back to the Book of Genesis, since his name is drawn from the ancient Greek work ἀρχή meaning "origin," "beginning," "first cause." Abbot Arkos is plagued by doubts regarding the enrollment of Leibowitz among the canonized saints. Dom Paolo, who dominates "Fiat Lux," is a much different character, who stands at a crossroads between ages. He battles his physical ailments valiantly in order to secure a future for the Abbey of St. Leibowitz and the Church as well. Abbot Zerchi closes the book by dominating "Fiat Volantus Tua" with his unwavering moral courage and determination to do what he believes is right, no matter the cost. The alphabetic play from A to Z in the names reflects Miller's speculative future as having a definite beginning, as well as a most certain end.

Throughout the novel, there also appears a certain old, weatherbeaten Jewish man who surfaces in each segment of the novel. He is still searching for the Jewish Messiah, and is apparently deathless (perhaps due to a mutation from radiation). Through him, Miller invokes the legends of the Wandering Jew of legend. However, he puts a very different spin on the character than is found in medieval folklore. The Jew (who is called Benjamin by Dom Paolo) assists Brother Francis' discovery of the hidden fallout shelter and its contents by scrawling "צל" (Hebrew letters tsade and lamedh) on the entrance--events which lead directly to Leibowitz's canonization.

I feel I should also mention how Miller handles mutation in this novel. Especially at the end, when mankind has fully realized and rediscovered the fruits of its technological manifest destiny, the children of the first Flame Deluge still walk among the unaffected, a poignant irony as the Mayorate of Texarkana stands on the brink of participating in a second Flame Deluge. Much of this is encapsulated in Rachel, the infant unconscious second head that grows from the shoulders of the elderly Mrs. Grales. Mrs. Grales begs for Rachel to be baptized, even though she has never been conscious. Abbot Zerchi is witness to Mrs. Grales'/Rachel's transformation at the end, in which Miller seems to suggest symbolically (through Rachel that is) that the mutants shall inherit the Earth.

Importantly, Miller reminds us of the role of the Catholic Church as a preserver of knowledge. The erroneous image of the Dark Ages after the collapse of Rome being a time of widespread ignorance is prevalent in the atheist forum. But that is simply so much propaganda. The reality is that the Church played a vital role in preserving knowledge through scriptoria. The statement that history is written by the victors is largely false--history is written by the literate who care. This is the reason we have lavish histories of the "barbarian" Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England, but no histories of the various Celtic nations of pre-Roman Gaul or the advanced kingdoms of medieval sub-Saharan Africa. The truth is that without the Catholic Church, Western European history would have been as blank and empty as other "barbarian" peoples'.

Ronald Numbers says in Myths and Truths of Science and Religion that there is no evidence that "the Church prohibited autopsies and dissections during the Middle Ages" nor "killed off ancient science" nor "suppressed the growth of natural philosophy." The Age of Enlightenment was made entirely possible by the preservation of knowledge provided by the Catholic Church during the whole of the medieval period.

Miller taps us on our shoulder and sets his Abbey of St. Leibowitz forth as an encapsulation of the entire Church during this so-called "Dark Age." Their struggle to preserve knowledge and the meticulous care they take in copying manuscripts and illuminating them is folded into their faith. From one angle, this reverence for the knowledge, even if poorly understood (such as Francis' illuminated copy of the circuit blueprint), may seem absurd, as if Miller were mocking his subjects. However, Miller understands the power of ritual and symbolism, especially in the Catholic faith. This deep reverence ensures care and preservation of the original materials. Miller doesn't shrink from the negative side-effects, such as the conflict in the abbey over the lighting machine borne from a sentiment that preservation of knowledge has nothing to do with application. Nevertheless, Miller boldly confronts our assumptions regarding darkness, stupidity, ignorance, and the Church. Indeed, the Abbey of St. Leibowitz had been singularly responsible for building and maintaining the school in the nearby town of Sanly Bowitts (which had "achieved a fantastic literacy rate of eight percent") in "Fiat Lux."

There is much more to write about this novel. It's a immense masterpiece--carefully written and revised by its author. Miller's work is rife with hidden meanings and carefully crafted writing. His characterization is phenomenal. Each person is fully defined and realized. Nevertheless, the most important character of the story is the Abbey itself, and its inhabitants create a picture of a bastion of faith, determination, curiosity, humility, and moral courage on its behalf. Miller's prose is adequate, although in "Fiat Lux" (and moreso in "Fiat Volantus Tua") he digresses into lengthy passages in which characters ruminate on the fate of mankind and the destiny of the Abbey a bit much. Regardless, this novel is a deep and multi-layered work of exquisite genius, and certainly demands a re-read sometime in the near future. It definitely deserves to be enrolled in the literary canon.

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.
Style B+
Substance A+
Overall A

Book Reviews -- Asimov's FOUNDATION TRILOGY

It's been about two weeks since I've last posted. A lot has happened since then. I took a vacation in Fukuoka, Japan during the Korean holiday of 추석 (Chuseok). That put me out-of-touch for the better part of that week. I'm stumbling through Democracy in America, but I find de Tocqueville to be incredibly depressing, since I can't help but lament how much American culture has abandoned its original shape and principles in favor of consumerism. The return from Japan bummed me out a great deal. I am deeply in love with that country, which causes no end of consternation with my Korean and other non-Korean associates here, who take my indifference toward Korea to mean I hate it (which I don't).

So, I decided to revisit an old flame in order to raise my spirits--Isaac Asimov's original Foundation Trilogy.

Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation, although chronologically starting earlier than Foundation itself, aren't nearly as interesting, and are mostly redactive set-ups for the stories in this book.

The book is basically a chronological collection of short stories that were first published separately in the early 1940s in Astounding Magazine. These segments were collected into a single volume by Gnome Press in 1951 and chart the first hundred-fifty years of the Foundation. The premise is simple--the 12,000 year-old Galactic Empire (cue "The Imperial March") is declining, and will gradually collapse, though no one realizes it at the time but Hari Seldon. The mathematical genius, though the science of psychohistory, predicts the future, and works out how to shorten the 30,000-year barbaric interregnum to a brief 1,000-year rise of a Second Empire. The kernel of that Empire is the Foundation.

Asimov's prose is without flair, but that isn't necessarily bad, and is, indeed, refreshing in these days of word-bloat. Orwell would never have complained about Asimov's brevity, in fact it would have been seen as a strength. And indeed it is. The pacing and terseness of prose is an effect of the medium of transmission--the pulps. Like Lovecraft and Howard in the decades previous, Asimov's early work was, for the most part, serialized in magazines. This created a need for rapid pacing and swift plot development. Thus, since word-space was at a premium, many of the futuristic features (clothes, devices, buildings, vehicles) largely go undescribed, leaving the details up to the reader's imagination. After being raised on the visuals of Star Wars and the many incarnations of Star Trek, I had very little trouble filling in the gaps.

Asimov's writing is, of course, dated. Computers do not exist in his interstellar universe, simply because, in 1941, when he was writing, the ENIAC hadn't even been built yet. IBM was still NCR--National Cash Register. Laser weapons don't exist, but instead "nuclear blasts" are aimed at enemies. Granted, nuclear tools are present, but they are incredibly small--cars, planes, even flashlights and refrigerators run on perfectly safe atomic energy. These features can be abrasive to the modern reader who cannot understand why the characters pore over microfilm projectors rather than just pulling up entire books on their PDAs, but I could get past it easily.

The stories' plots develop rapidly. Most of them can easily be read in 45-minutes to an hour (depending on how fast you read). Characters have a tendency to be somewhat flat, but Asimov doesn't have a great deal of leg-room in which to work--they are flat quite by necessity in my opinion. The dialogue is rather bland and unimaginative, I'll admit, and this is actually the greatest weakness of the stories, because most of the action occurs offstage. We'll see characters plotting a coup, for example, and then, in the following chapter, they'll be discussing how their coup was successful, but we never actually see the coup happen. I'm not certain why. But this is a primary feature of Asimov's story-telling, and it feels like I'm watching a Greek play and not reading a science-fiction story some of the time.

Granted, this is a feature of much science-fiction. Although Frank Herbert wrote an incredible story with Dune, he wrote very little about the actual battle fought against the Harkonnen. It is as if any author writing science-fiction before Star Wars either couldn't grasp the ability to describe space-warfare or ground combat effectively or excitingly, or they believed it was far to gauche to explain the grittier aspects of their universes. After Star Wars you see a vast difference in attitude towards futuristic warfare, especially from Kevin J. Anderson and Dan Simmons (see my previous posts on the Hyperion books).

What makes this book so incredible is the "high concept" that drives the entire story. Asimov explores the concept of psychohistory--the capacity to predict the movements of vast numbers of people. What is fascinating is how each crisis that arises was predicted by imperial mathematician Hari Seldon's psychohistory. The Foundation weathers its storms simply by "going with the grain." Historical forces basically drive the Foundation through its evolution from a single, insignificant planet into a major political force on the edge of the galaxy. Asimov's main character of the story isn't anything more than the big concept itself. How do individuals interact with this concept is also a question. Although Asimov doesn't spend a great deal of time on it, one has to wonder how much individual initiative and free will count throughout the stories' development. The individuals that act throughout the various crises that the Foundation finds itself in all seem to operate in an almost Daoist fashion--they kind of "go with the flow"--there is always an obvious solution to all of the problems and the characters simply behave as if there were a natural impetus drawing them and their Foundation toward that solution. Asimov is obviously not a proponent of "great actor history" and seems to believe that people are (deterministically) a product of their space and time.


Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov
The first half of this book (about 90 pages) is the final death-throes of the Galactic Empire and their attempt to conquer the Foundation. And this is, perhaps, the most frustrating book to read.

On the upside, the book is full of intrigue and plotting. General Bel Riose is a believable military man who is as ruthless as he should be. We certainly get a feel, from the dialogue, for the different regional accents and dialects that have been developing during the past 200 years of Imperial disintegration. We also get the feel that the stories in Foundation are seen as history by the characters, who are, in many ways, scions of the first book's protagonists. Plans are hatched, and the ultimate victory of Seldon's Plan is ironic, but interesting. You have the definite feeling that history truly marches as Hari Seldon had plotted. The deeds of individuals are subsumed by psychohistory. Everything works out in such a way as to leave the reader somewhat satisfied regarding the historical inevitabilities that Seldon prepared. As an historian myself, I find this all fascinatingly reflective of structuralist views of history.

The second half is a bit longer and a bit better, and a major monkey-wrench is thrown into Seldon's Plan, and the reader is left wondering, How the heck is this going to turn out alright for the Foundation? This is good. The story in Part II is excellent, moves well, and has less off-stage action than the first. The characters are a bit more fleshed-out than in the first half, and the dialogue throughout this book is overall better than in Foundation. You can see how Asimov has been growing as a writer.

On the downside, again, there are no space battles. The entire book (both parts) are about war yet, disappointingly, action is described as having happened off-stage. In addition, I feel that the censors had a bit too much fun with one particularly foul-mouthed character, a professor with the penchant for saying, "unprintable" in place of any other "colorful adjective." I have a feeling that this was not the writer so much as the censor having a good time. In addition, transitions are handled horribly. There are no spaces between paragraphs when one scene ends and another begins. The reader is jerkily pulled from one situation to another perhaps minutes or hours later. This feature did not exist in Foundation, and it gives the book a slightly sloppy, not-quite-final-draft feel to it.


Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov
About a decade separates the last penstroke of this book from the first penstroke of The Psychohistorians, the opening story in Foundation, and the reader can see how far Asimov has come. Characters are far more dynamic and interesting in this book than in the previous volumes. Compared to other writers, however, Asimov's characters are still somewhat wooden in their behavior, with a few specific exceptions--and these exceptions do a lot in demonstrating Asimov's growth as a writer.

This book has even less action (as in, guns blazing) than the previous two. However, more things seem to be done on stage, as opposed to off, in this book and though it moves less it seems to pull the reader in a bit more. The bulk of the story is devoted to intrigue. If I were to compare this book to a film, it'd have to be Clerks, since the best parts are when characters are just sitting around talking to each other.

Asimov's dialogue develops the plot entirely, and carries it on it's shoulders. Dialogue is the key to this narrative. Asimov isn't interested in what is going on outside of the discussion room--indeed, the story reflects this. Gigantic space battles between fleets of warships are unimportant in the Grand Scheme of things. Interestingly, Asimov's narrative style and the elements of the story itself have finally achieved a sort of synthesis in this regard.

The dialogue serves to increase the tension and reveal what the characters are thinking--which ultimately revolve around the location of the Second Foundation and the reasoning behind all of their deductions. The book keeps you guessing. Just when you think you've found the Second Foundation, it turns out that they were one or two steps ahead of you and they have you all figured out.

Morality is ambiguous. I'm not certain if I really like the Second Foundationers, and can honestly see why the original Foundation might consider them a potential threat, although the two were originally supposed to work toward a single goal from "opposite ends of the galaxy."

The "big revelation" as to the location of the Second Foundation feels like Asimov painted himself into a corner. It just feels so forced, like he needed some enormous twist but was incapable of working it out in any way. Sure, the reasons and rationale behind the actual location of the Second Foundation do make sense, but it seems... well... stupid. Forced, as I had said earlier.

Nevertheless, this book is probably the most solid of the series and probably the most interesting one. Its pacing is good, things develop swiftly, and you definitely get a feel for the gigantic forces of history at work. All-in-all, a pretty solid book. But, still, like most of Asimov's novels, they are better read because of the uniqueness of his ideas rather than for the quality of his prose and the dynamism of his characters. And, believe-it-or-not, those ideas were better expressed in the original Foundation, despite his growth as a writer in this later book.


Foundation
Style B-
Substance B
Overall B-

Foundation and Empire
Style C
Substance B-
Overall C+

Second Foundation
Style B-
Substance B-
Overall B-