11/22/63: A Novel by Stephen King — novel #261

  

What is the most devastating watershed moment of your lifetime? Would you change it if you could? Can you be certain the world would be better today if you did?

 

Stephen King’s 11/22/63 grapples with these questions in a mesmerizing thriller.

 

• Author: Stephen King
• American Lit, Science Fiction, Historical Fiction, Suspense, Thriller, Fantasy
• Published: 2011
• My edition: Scribner (eBook)
• Setting: Maine, 2011 and Texas early 1960s
• Awards: 2012 International Thriller Writers Award for Best Novel
• Also by this author (that I’ve read): The Stand; Dark Tower Series

 

In 2011, Jake Epping, a divorced high school English teacher from Maine, discovers a time portal, that always takes him back to 1958. No matter how long he stays in the past, when he reverses his path through the portal, he returns two minutes later than the moment in 2011 when he left.

 

And Jake has the chance to re-write history. He just has to hang out in the past for five years or so, until the title date of November 22, 1963, the date of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Stopping that would be a good thing, right? He can’t go back far enough to stop Hitler. He probably wouldn’t live long enough in the past to stop 9/11, but getting Lee Harvey Oswald, that would be well within his sights (pardon the macabre pun).

 

No brainer, right? It’s almost his duty.

 

But Jake learns several nuances of time-travel. Some of these nuances even have real-world names, like the “butterfly effect”: (in chaos theory) whereby a minute localized change in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere.

 

If you mix the butterfly effect with time travel, well just buckle up. There is no possible way to predict the outcome. And under no circumstances fall in love whilst redirecting the course of human history.

 

Throughout the story, Jake observes that the past is obdurate. It is almost a consciousness that resists Jake. The bigger changes he attempts to make, the more the past resists. I believe this was King’s main point. The past is obdurate. Some people say everything happens for a reason. I don’t believe the past has a conscience, but I do believe it has a sentient director, and he doesn’t need our help.

 

That’s my point, not King’s, but I don’t think his was far off. He makes a strong case, that even if we have the capability, we shouldn’t go messing with the past.

 

My rating 4 ½ / 5 stars

 

 

 

You probably know that King’s novels are all interconnected; some very bluntly, others more subtle. There’s a fairly blunt allusion in this novel. Jake makes a stop in Derry, Maine, the setting for IT, for some lesser time altering, and he learns there was a string of murders, children mostly, some years back. One of the locals tells him…

 

Other folks say he [the murderer] was a local who dressed up like a clown to keep from being recognized.

I love it when I catch those allusions. I’m certain I miss many.

 

King often references other writers. When Jake was describing the town of Derry, and the despairing malaise he sensed, he compared it to Ray Bradbury’s fictional town of Greentown, from the Green Town Trilogy, which includes Something Wicked This Way Comes, Jake states…

 

But there had been hidden horrors in Bradbury’s Greentown too.

Love that. Jake, the fictional character, had read real life Bradbury’s fiction.

 

Elsewhere, Jake’s love interest in the past, Sadie Dunhill, mentions a short story by Bradbury, A Sound of Thunder, that is entirely about time-travel and the butterfly effect.

 

And in the course of the novel Jake reads Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy, and Oswald reads Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

 

Finally two quotations:

 

Sadie reminiscing with Jake about their past…

 

How we danced!

And Jake sometime later to someone else…

 

Dancing is life.

This was an absolutely riveting read. I don’t think I’ve ever read an 800+ page novel so quickly. I’ve loved everything I’ve read by King. I’d welcome your views on Stephen King, and recommendations for what to read next by this prolific author.

 

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A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge (novel #228)

In case you haven’t guessed, that’s the one reason you’re here – to remind the chuckleheads there’s more in heaven than they have dreamed. ~ Pilgrim [a tine] to Johanna [human child], likely an homage to Shakespeare: There are more things in Heaven and Earth Horatio than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Hamlet, Act 1, scene 5

 

A Fire Upon the Deep is a science fiction novel or Space Opera set in the far distant future in the Milky Way Galaxy. There are humans and occasional references to “Old Earth.” And, as the previous statement may imply, there are other sentient beings, some advanced, some primitive.

 

This was unlike any other Sci-Fi I’ve read or watched. While the Sci-Fi megatext allows for a myriad of cosmos building, Vinge’s novel describes a galaxy that takes some extra concentration to comprehend. The galaxy is divided into four “Zones of Thought”: The Unthinking Depths at the center, then working outward the Slow Zone, The Beyond, and The Transcend. The Unthinking Depths contains only elementary intelligence. The Slow Zone contains some higher intelligent life but almost no artificial intelligence. The Beyond is where most of the novel takes place and contains both highly intelligent life and artificial intelligence approaching sentience. Finally, The Transcend contains the highest intelligences, natural and artificial, known as “Powers”.

 

The boundaries between zones are shifting and the characteristics within each zone change as one approaches the bordering zone. For instance, there are higher intelligence levels in the High Beyond, while at the bottom of The Beyond, intelligence is only slightly greater than in the High Slow Zone. If a ship using artificial intelligence for propulsion and navigation passes into the slow zone, the artificial intelligence will not function properly, speed of light travel is impossible, and the ship and crew may be stranded in the slow zone.

 

That’s a gross over-simplification, but it should give some idea.

 

Similarly, Vinge’s creatures are abstract ideas that also require some deep thinking to imagine. The three main life forms in the story are humans, which are easy enough; Skroderiders, plant-like creatures capable of intelligent thought and speech, rendered mobile by coupling with wheeled vehicles; and Tines.

 

Tines! How to describe them? Doglike, but longer necks, which exist in packs of 4 to 8 creatures forming a single, group-thinking identity. They can survive losing a member or two, but “Singletons” are nearly invalid unless they can join another pack.

 

And I haven’t even hinted at the plot: Pandora’s Box. A group of Human Explorers in the High Beyond discovers a data treasure in the low transcend, and they unleash…I’ll spare the spoiler. Lousy humans; they’re always the villains. There’s a desperate escape attempt that is more than an escape; it’s an attempt to save free-thinking beings. There’s a space chase and an internet-like communications network nicknamed “the net of a million lies”. VERY internet-like.

 

And the ending? Anything but predictable.

 

This was a fascinating but difficult read. Certain aspects were so abstract that they were challenging to comprehend, but the story kept me engaged. I give Vinge high marks for such an unusual setting and narrative. I’d like to see the movie but don’t envy the director or screenwriter.

 

My rating: 3 ½ out of 5 stars

 

 

This novel satisfies the “Natural Disaster” category (title must contain a word or words that denote a natural disaster, in this case, “fire”) in the What’s in a Name 2024 challenge.

 

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A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain (novel #223)

Here I was, a giant among pigmies, a man among children, a master intelligence among intellectual moles: by all rational measurement the one and only actually great man in that whole British world…

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court was originally titled A Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. It is a fantasy satire, and I would also say Sci-Fi since it involves time travel. The eponymous narrator, mechanical engineer Hank Morgan, is transported from 1879 Connecticut to sixth-century England due to a heavy blow to his head.

 

It takes Hank a while to get his bearings and realize what has happened to him. He is quickly arrested and sentenced to death, but he uses his superior knowledge of science and history to convince Arthur and company that he is a powerful wizard. Merlin challenges him, but Hank always manages to outsmart the charlatan wizard.

 

Hank embraces his reputation, earns a position of authority in Arthur’s government, and sets out to improve the nation of “intellectual moles” he finds himself among.

 

…to banish oppression from this land and restore to all its people their stolen rights and manhood without disobliging anybody.

 

His aspirations are not merely scientific. Hank intends to end what, to his 19th-century mind, were outdated societal norms of serfdom, aristocracy, monarchy, judicial system, and the Catholic Church.

 

I was very happy. Things were working steadily toward a secretly longed-for point. You see, I had two schemes in my head which were the vastest of all my projects. The one was to overthrow the Catholic Church and set up the Protestant faith on its ruins – not as an Established Church, but a go-as-you-please one; and the other project was to get a decree issued by and by, commanding that upon Arthur’s death unlimited suffrage should be introduced, and given to men and women alike – at any rate to all men, wise or unwise, and to all mothers who at middle age should be found to know nearly as much as their sons at twenty-one.

 

As one would expect from Twain, there are moments of subtle and sublime humor. In much of the book, Hank and Arthur are traveling the realm incognito, and Hank, on several occasions, has great difficulty in coaching the king on how to act as a simple peasant.

 

The King looked puzzled – he wasn’t a very heavy weight intellectually. His head was an hour-glass; it could stow an idea, but it had to do it a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once.

 

Meanwhile, there is intrigue in King Arthur’s Court and treachery. There is a great contest between Hank and his few minions against the entrenched traditions of Knight Errantry, with a bit of pot-stirring by Merlin. I’ll spare the spoiler of how it ends.

 

Overall, I was disappointed. I’ve loved everything that I’ve read by Twain and wanted to read this for decades. I expected hilarious dialogue and farcical circumstances but found only a few bits to snicker at. But it wasn’t merely the doom of high expectations. I felt that Hank, and by proxy Twain, held humanity in contempt.

 

But finally it occurred to me all of a sudden that these animals didn’t reason; that they never put this and that together…

 

Well, there are times when one would like to hang the whole human race and finish the farce.

 

And yeah, there are times when I feel that way, but in this novel, that seems to be the prevalent theme. Not a fan.

 

Still, it was a read I needed to check off the list. I’m glad I read it, glad I’m done.

  

My Rating: 3 ½ out of 5 Stars

 

 

This novel satisfies the Chess Piece category in the What’s in a Name 2023 Challenge.

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Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (novel #222)

Thinking back now, I can see we were just at that age when we knew a few things about ourselves – about who we were, how we were different from our guardians, from the people outside… ~ Kathy: first-person narrator

 

Never Let Me Go is the tale of Kathy H. She tells us she is thirty-one years old and a carer. The reader doesn’t know what this means, but it sounds like a good thing, and Kathy is proud that she’s been a carer for over eleven years, which is apparently well beyond the norm. Her long tenure is partially due to her being a very good carer.

 

Ishiguro uses this device throughout. Kathy uses phrases or descriptions of events that don’t make sense initially, but slowly, the reader infers the meanings and settings.

 

Most of the novel is Kathy’s account of her childhood, education, and relationship with her two best friends, Ruth and Tommy. In their childhood and adolescence, they are at Hailsham, a boarding school in England. They are clearly a privileged set but also closely controlled and sequestered. Their teachers, known as guardians, and the rules at Hailsham are an odd mix. In some ways strictly regimented; in others strangely permissive. The guardians are never cruel and seldom even harsh, though they are somewhat aloof.

 

The school seems to be preparing the children for some special role in society. When their training is complete, they become carers.

 

But carer…is not the ultimate role. There is another function the reader begins to grasp with outrage and horror. The children slowly understand their fate by degrees, like the reader, but unlike the reader, the children calmly accept their future and even seem to almost look forward to it.

 

Thinking back now, I can see we were just at that age when we knew a few things about ourselves – about who we were, how we were different from our guardians, from the people outside – but hadn’t yet understood what any of it meant.

 

My Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

 

 

Never Let Me Go has to be considered dystopian, though most of the time, it doesn’t feel like it. It is also Sci-Fi, though it doesn’t feel like that either. It raises some very relevant bio-medical ethics questions. I say relevant because they could be applied to different medical ethics today, and I don’t believe it is impossible that they may become relevant in a precisely similar way.

 

This novel satisfies the You or Me category (book with “you” or “me in the title) in the What’s in a Name 2023 Challenge.

 

 

The title is taken from the title of a song by real-life singer Judy Bridgewater. Kathy obtains a cassette tape of Bridgewater that includes the song. It resonates with Kathy, though she cannot explicitly explain why.

 

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Second Foundation (Foundation #3) by Isaac Asimov (novel #203)

A circle has no end ~ Arcadia Darrell

Second Foundation is the third book in the Foundation trilogy. There are subsequent prequels and sequels, but the trilogy stands complete.

 

Foundation (book #1) – Hari Seldon, the Galaxy’s preeminent psychohistorian, scientifically predicts the fall of the Galactic Empire and creates The Foundation to mitigate the ensuing chaos and suffering.

 

Foundation and Empire (book #2) – Seldon’s predictions prove accurate, and the benevolent intentions of the Foundation are confounded by the emergence of a mysterious conqueror known as the Mule. There are rumors of a Second Foundation at the far end of the Galaxy.

 

Second Foundation (book #3) – The Mule is rendered harmless, and The Foundation attempts to right the Galaxy and return to Seldon’s plan. However, members of The Foundation grow suspicious of The Second Foundation, never wholly convinced of its existence, and seem to work at cross purposes. It may be that hope of reconciliation and sparing the galaxy many millennia of suffering rests with Arcadia Darrell, the precocious granddaughter of Bayta Darrell, hero of book #2.

 

I found it riveting, filled with suspense, intrigue, human interest, and plenty of unexpected twists, especially in this concluding book. But I was a bit disappointed. I thought the suspicion The Foundation developed for The Second Foundation somewhat incongruous. They were ordinarily strict disciples of Seldon’s plan, and if The Second Foundation was part of the plan, it didn’t follow that they would attempt to subvert it. There is an explanation, but I thought it was weak and unconvincing.

 

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the trilogy. I’ll read more Sci-Fi by Asimov, but I don't think I'll read more in the Foundation series. The trilogy wrapped it up nicely, and I’ll leave it there.

  

My rating for book #3 and the trilogy as a whole: 3 ½ out of 5 stars

 

 

 

In my review of book #1, I mentioned that I believed the setting to be the distant future of Earth’s humanity, but that Asimov is never explicit on this point. In book # 3, there are some obvious clues that this is so. One character refers to another’s efforts as quixotic, a definite reference to Earth literature. The narrative also explains the standard time measure of the Galaxy as consisting of seconds, minutes, hours, and years based on the solar time of some planet lost in history.

 

For reason or reasons unknown to members of the Galaxy at the time of the era under discussion…

 

…before Man had spread beyond a single, now-unknown world.

 

And the synopses of other Foundation series books confirm Earth’s origin of the story.

 

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Foundation and Empire (Foundation #2) by Isaac Asimov (novel #202)

…” intelligence”, “espionage,” and “spy stuff” are at best a sordid business of routine betrayal and bad faith. ~ Capt Han Pritcher

 

The opening quotation isn’t significant to the story, but it amuses me it as it applies to my day job.

 

In Foundation, Hari Seldon, the Galaxy’s preeminent psychohistorian, makes a startling prediction or scientific prophecy: the fall of the Galactic Empire and 30,000 years of chaos before a new galactic empire emerges. Shortly before his death, Seldon surreptitiously creates the Foundation, a consortium of his followers intent upon mitigating the 30,000 years down to 1,000 – a possibility under Seldon’s prediction.

 

In Foundation and Empire, the Galaxy is several hundred years into the interregnum. The Foundation has already survived several “Seldon Crisis,” an eventuality Seldon predicted would make the difference between 30,000 and 1,000. But an unforeseen threat emerges. An enigmatic and powerful conqueror known as The Mule subdues the crumbling remnants of the Empire, other independent worlds, and even the Foundation. This would seem to doom Seldon’s plans, but even as the Foundation crumbles, there is renewed hope. There are vague rumors of a Second Foundation at the far end of the Galaxy.

 

Hope to find the Second Empire seems to lie with an unlikely group: husband and wife team Toran and Bayta Darrell; prominent Foundation scientist Ibling Mis; and the Mule’s jester, Magnifico, who has defected to the custody of the Foundation trio, and who is particularly devoted to Bayta.

 

Like Foundation, the first in the trilogy, Foundation and Empire, ends abruptly and without closure. To find out how it all ends, I’ll take up the third book Second Foundation. The title can be confusing. Second Foundation is the third book in the trilogy: Foundation (#1), Foundation and Empire (#2), Second Foundation (#3). The title refers to the second mysterious Foundation hidden somewhere and presumably the last hope of defeating The Mule and reducing the interregnum from 30,000 to 1,000 years.

 

My rating is 3 ½ out of 5 stars

 

 

 

 

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Foundation by Isaac Asimov (novel #201)

"A civilization falling. Nuclear power forgotten. Science fading to mythology – until the Foundation had stepped in."

 

In a far distant future, during the waning years of a vast galactic empire, a single scientist, Hari Seldon, is charged with treason precisely because he is predicting the end.

 

Seldon is the galaxy’s preeminent authority on psychohistory, which he has advanced to such fidelity that he is able to predict major events in future human history: in this case the fall of the Galactic Empire and the ensuing 30,000 years of chaos and suffering. Seldon purports the fall is certain and unavoidable, but that with intervention now, the 30,000 years can be mitigated to merely 1,000 before the rise of the second Galactic Empire.

 

The trial is part of his plan. It is helpful to be smarter than everyone around you, especially the unbelievers. With some clever subterfuge, Seldon is “sentenced” to exile on a distant world, along with his disciples, which is exactly what he wanted. There, he begins forming the Foundation that will intervene to spare humanity the unnecessary 30,000 years.

 

Seldon only survives the first 40 or 50 pages, depending on the version. The rest of the tale narrates four different epochs of future history. Each separated by a “Seldon Crisis”. Seldon occasionally reappears, via prerecorded hologram, to guide his future disciples along the way. The leading disciple, Salvor Hardin has the following to say, about Seldon’s psychohistory:

 

The Foundation, as he [Hari Seldon] says, was established as a scientific refuge – the means by which the science and culture of the dying Empire was to be preserved through the centuries of barbarism that have begun, to be rekindled in the end into a second Empire.

 

…the future isn’t nebulous. It’s been calculated out by Seldon and charted.

 

There is occasional reference to a Second Foundation, at the opposite end of the Galaxy, which does not come into play in this book.

 

Which is my only complaint. This book, Foundation, is incomplete. There is no closure. It ends abruptly and unsatisfyingly. I knew it was the first in the Foundation Trilogy, and this is one of the reasons I’m not a big fan of trilogies. You never know, without reading reviews and risking spoilers, if any one book can stand alone, or if you must commit to the entire thing; in this case – the entire thing. I intended to do so regardless, but I would have been rather annoyed had I intended to read a single book only to be left hanging. It’s semantics really. Trilogy vs. series. In my opinion, the Foundation trilogy should really be labeled Parts I, II, and III – and in many publication formats today they are, but I don’t believe they were originally labelled that way.  

 

Enough of that. I still enjoyed it very much. Thus far, it’s a bit different from many Sci-Fi novels, as there are no aliens. The only sentient life forms are human. It is probably, the far distant future of Earth’s humanity, colonizing other habitable, but uninhabited worlds. Asimov is never explicit on this point, and there may be some big reveal later, though I doubt it. I think these specifics were left out to allow the reader to infer as they like.

 

My rating 3 ½ out of 5 stars

 

 

This book satisfies the category: Wild Card Classic, in the Back to the Classics 2022 Challenge.

 

The Author, Isaac Asimov is considered one of the "Big Three" of Science Fiction, along with Arthur C. Clarke and  Robert Heinlein

 

There is a device Asimov uses throughout that I found interesting. In his future galaxy, there is no mention of God. There is a religion but it worships the “Galactic Spirit”. It is never personal. Hence, expletives employ cosmic references: By Space!, or I Swear by the Universe, or Great Galaxy!

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Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (novel #191)

And with that anger, he [Ender] decided he was strong enough to defeat them –
the teachers, his enemies.

 

Ender’s Game is a Sci-Fi fantasy set in Earth’s future. Ender is a child prodigy and at age six is in training, along with other gifted children, to assess their suitability to be Earth’s hero and the savior of the human race. 

 

Some decades earlier, Earth was attacked by a superior insect-like alien force, un-affectionately known as the Buggers. Humanity was on the verge of annihilation, when one pilot saved the world in a miraculous and bold maneuver.

 

The powers that be believe it is only a matter of time before a new and larger invasion force returns. They intend to pre-empt the attack, by bringing the fight to the Buggers. They also believe that children, with their aptitude for multi-tasking video games are humanity’s best hope. 

 

And in test after test, Ender rises to the top, as the best of the best. After he clears Battle School in record time, he is sent to Command School in deep space. Some of his fellow students are part of his command team. They practice and drill, and practice and drill against the computer simulation – the game – of Ender's Game.

 

But there is a dark and carefully guarded secret about the game, that neither Ender, his team, nor the reader can guess – until an amazing climax.

 

(I have to smugly boast that I caught on to the big reveal, a few paragraphs before Ender. It was staggering).

 

There is a slightly anti-climactic chapter, which is prologue to successive books in the Ender-Verse.

 

My rating 3 ½ out of 5 stars

 

This was a reread, but nearly as good the second time, and in some ways better when I knew the secret all along, though it lacked the same WOW! If you don’t like Sci-Fi, you might still like Ender’s Game. The human drama drives the plot more than the technology or aliens. I’ll read more in the Ender-Verse. Have you read Ender’s Game? What did you think.

My version: I have a leather bound Easton Press edition, signed by Orson Scott Card - a gift from my daughter.

 

Film rendition: The 2013 film with Asa Butterfield as Ender and Harrison Ford is decent, though it can hardly do it well in two hours. In the book, Ender’s training takes six years, but the child actors in the film don’t age, so it seems like all the training is done in a few months. But the biggest flaw in the film was the moment of the reveal about the game. They dumbed it down to make sure the audience got it, and it wasn’t as powerful.

 

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (novel #147)

"Those who don’t build, must burn."

On the surface, Fahrenheit 451 is a about book burning.

But a bit deeper, it is…"a love letter for books." ~ Neil Gaiman in the foreword 

Bravo! Mr. Gaiman.

But I should probably include a few details. It is a dystopian world where books are banned, for If people read, they tend to think – and thinking never leads to happiness. The protagonist is fireman Guy Montag, but in this setting firemen do not put out fires, they burn books. As Fire Chief Beatty put it…

It’s fine work. Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn ‘em to ashes, then burn the ashes. That’s our official slogan. 

Beatty also comments on the worthlessness of books.

…books say nothing! Nothing you can teach or believe. They’re about nonexistent people, figments of imagination, if they’re fiction. And if they’re nonfiction, it’s worse, one professor calling another an idiot, one philosopher screaming down another’s gullet. All of them running about, putting out the stars and extinguishing the sun. You come away lost.

But in spite of the Beatty’s doctrine, fireman Montag is waking up.

I don’t know. We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren’t happy. Something’s missing. I looked around. The only thing I positively knew was gone was the books I’d burned in ten or twelve years. So, I thought the books might help.

And like all dystopian novels, someone – in this case Guy Montag – must fight against the madness. Of the dystopian novels I’ve read: Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World, A Clockwork Orange, I liked Fahrenheit 451 best, probably because it ends with hope.

But that’s the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and worth the doing.

And Montag remembering a portion of the Revelation

And on either side of the river was there a tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

Yes, thought Montag, that’s the one I’ll save for noon. For noon…When we reach the city.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

 

This book satisfied square G-4, A Banned Book, in the 2020 Classic BINGO Challenge. I don’t believe this was widely or commonly banned, but nonetheless ironic, that a book of a world in which books are banned, should have been a banned book.

Oh and, 451 degrees Fahrenheit?

The combustion temperature of paper.

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The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham (novel #133)

My way of life, my plans, ambitions, every expectation I had had, they were all wiped out at a stroke, along with the conditions that had formed them.

The Day of the Triffids is a post-apocalyptic, sci-fi novel set in England, mid 1950s. A meteor shower leaves nearly all the earth’s human population blinded – all but a small remnant like the hero, and first person narrator, Bill Masen who was recovering from eye surgery the fateful night of the meteor shower. Artificially blinded by his bandages, Bill awakens to a world that makes no sense to his remaining senses.

When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere. ~ opening line

Bill, slowly comprehends what has happened. The unfolding horror is exacerbated by a second, and seemingly unrelated cataclysm – triffids – a mobile, poisonous, and apparently sentient plant species turns aggressive and carnivorous.

Man – is no longer the dominant species on the planet. 

There are others, like Bill, spared by freak circumstance, including of course a beautiful, young, slightly needy, but strong-willed woman. The sighted survivors are faced with three dilemmas: forming groups (there are conflicting visions of the future state of human civilization); what to do with the blind (trying to help them may only impede rebuilding society); and exterminating the triffids, though some were resigned to mankind’s new role – that of prey, seeking merely to survive.

Bill, and others choose to hope.

…perhaps they were at the beginning of something, after all, rather than at the end of everything.

I was excited to read this thriller as classics do not include a lot of sci-fi or horror. Plus, I thought the premise was intriguing, and I was very quickly rewarded. Wyndham doesn’t waste time setting things up. Through Bill, the reader must slowly, but immediately make sense of a world gone mad. 

I was quickly rewarded, but in the end a bit disappointed. I wasn’t disappointed with the ending, which leaves the fate of humanity still in doubt, but rather with how Wyndham got to that end. It felt as if he tired of his own story. After the first half or more of the book covered a few days, then a few weeks, some of the final chapters cover years in a few paragraphs. There was just so much that Wyndham could have delved deeper. It’s a great story, but for me, poorly told especially the second half. Wyndham used the novel to promote a distinct world view or political agenda, but he was pretty subtle, so I don’t object. Even fictional characters must have opinions after all, and it would be a boring world of literature if they were all the same as my own.

My rating: 3 1/2 of 5 stars

 

There are parts of the story very reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (one male, with multiple female mates for rapid repopulation) and Stephen King’s The Stand (the sudden culling of humanity).

This is the first time I’ve read The Day of the Triffids or John Wyndham. Have you read this novel…this author? What did you think?

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The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein (novel #116)

That we were slaves I had known all my life – and nothing could be done about it. ~ Mannie

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is set on the Moon, 2076. The Moon was originally a penal colony, but by this point is a bit more than that. Some residents like the main character, Manuel “Mannie” Garcia O’Kelly-Davis are native and free residents of Luna. Mannie is a farmer, but he is also a computer whiz who does free-lance work for the Lunar Authority when their super computer acts up. 

Life on Luna, also sometimes called The Rock: There are no cells for the convicts, as there is no escape. If escape were possible, it isn’t practical, because after about six months on Luna a human’s body cannot reassimilate to Earth’s gravity. There are few rules, as those who don’t get along, don’t live long. There is water on Luna, far below the surface and Luna’s primary commercial enterprise is the growing of wheat which is exported to earth. There are about 3 million Loonies (vs 11 billion Earthworms), with men outnumbering women 2 to 1, so many women have more than one husband. Loonies live in airtight underground cities which are connected by tubes (subway trains).

The one supercomputer that runs nearly everything on Luna is a High-Optional, Logical, Multi-Evaluating Supervisor, Mark IV or Holmes IV. And guess what? Holmes is sentient. Mannie nicknames it Mike, short for Mycroft, as in Mycroft Holmes, and Mike calls Mannie – Man his one friend.

Well the Loonies get fed up with Earth’s tyranny, and rise up in rebellion. They can’t possibly win, and yet…

Best part – know who their leader is? – Mike the computer, but only Mannie, and two others, The Professor “Prof” and Wyoming “Wyoh” Knott, know they are being led by a machine. Wyoh is Mannie’s love interest, though Mike also kind of likes her.

Have you ever considered the difference between Sci-Fi and fantasy? It can be a fuzzy distinction, but my understanding is this: Sci-Fi is at least theoretically plausible given current understanding of the physical laws of the universe. Fantasy is not thus encumbered. There is often a little fudging on the rules, but that’s the main distinction. (Star Wars is fantasy; Star Trek is Sci-Fi). 

And The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is Sci-Fi. In ways beyond just the technology/science, Heinlein really spins a plausible tale.

Robert Heinlein is one of the “Big Three” authors of English Sci-Fi along with Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke and now I know why. I read mostly classics – and there are many classics that I admire, that I concede their greatness, but that weren’t precisely fun to read. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was just a ton of fun (though a ton would only feel like 333 lbs. on Luna). It was pure escape – thoroughly enjoyable, but also admirable. 

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

 

Excerpts:

That we were slaves I had known all my life – and nothing could be done about it. ~ Mannie

Prof had emphasized that stickiest problems in conspiracy are communications and security, and had pointed out that they conflict – easier are communications, greater is risk to security; if security is tight, organization can be paralyzed by safety precautions. ~ Mannie

Mike had no degrees. Simply knew more engineering than any man alive. Or about Shakespeare’s plays, or riddles, or history, name it. ~ Mannie

Mike didn’t miss a word; his most human quality was his conceit. ~ Mannie

But one thing must be made clear. Earth’s major satellite, the Moon, is by nature’s law forever the joint property of all the peoples of Earth. It does not belong to that handful who by accident of history happen to live there. The sacred trust laid upon the Lunar Authority is and forever must be supreme law of Earth’s moon. ~ representative of Luna Authority

Besides the Mycroft Holmes nod to the writings of Arthur Conan Doyle, there are many other literary references: 

Mannie once recites: "Curiouser and curiouser" from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland  

And later says "I seem to have wandered into Looking Glass Land."

Prof once says: "not my original idea but remembrance of things past" – using the title of Proust’s great work

Mannie says about Mike "You’re our Scarlet Pimpernel, our John Galt, our Swamp fox, our man of mystery." Citing from Baroness Orczy and Ayn Rand

Mannie refers to hiding something by "Purloined Letter". Reference to Edgar Alan Poe

A group of child spies for the revolution are called "Baker Street Irregulars", in reference to Sherlock Holmes’ young assistants.

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