It's already December and I still haven't mentioned the new arrivals to the reading shelf in October or November, so I guess I'll take care of that now. Better late than never, eh, ms Clack? There have been quite a few recent additions (thanks to re-enrollment with the Science Fiction Book Club).
Here are the new additions:
Men of Mars - I've never read an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel, but his characters and novels are so widely referenced that I'm sure they must be worth a try. This hardcover collects three ERB stories: A Fighting Man of Mars, Swords of Mars, and Synthetic Men of Mars. Maybe I'll give the Tarzan novels a try if I like these.
The Last Theorem - Arthur C Clarke and Fred Pohl co-wrote this novel, Clarke's last before he died in March of this year. It sounds like a more sci-fi oriented version of a Dan Brown thriller, which works for me.
Inside Straight - i read and enjoyed the original Wild Cards novels edited (and partially written by George RR Martin))years and years ago, so I've been hoping to pick this first volume of new stories up for a while. Sadly, it will probably now sit on my reading shelf for months before I get to it.
The Scourge of God - This is another in the SM Stirling post-apocalyptic Change novels. I've really enjoyed all of these so far and survival may be on all our minds in the near future.
Little Brother - Neil Gaiman recommended this novel by Cory Doctorow, so I thought it would be worth a read. Neal Stephenson also came highly recommended, but Snow Crash wasn't really the life-changing experience I had been led to believe it was. I guess we'll see...
The Stand - I had always thought this was another of Stephen King's horror novels, so I had never considered reading it (horror just isn't my genre). But the comic book adaptation came out a few weeks ago and I discovered that this novel is actually another Cell-like apocalyptic novel. So of course I had to get it.
Brisinger - This is the third dragon novel by Christopher Paolini, the teenage wunderkid. The first two, Eragon and Eldest, were good - not great - so I guess I mainly picked this up because I'm a completist.
Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show - The only Orson Scott card novels that I've really loved have been the Ender's stories, so I'm not entirely sure why I picked this paperback up. It was signed by OSC himself, so that may have influenced my decision.
And Their Memory Was a Bitter Tree - I had to get this collection of Conan stories when I saw the cover and interior illustrations by Frazetta and a couple by Brom. I'm a sucker for Frazetta art. Sadly, many of the stories in this collection are also in The Bloody Crown of Conan, which is sitting beside it on the shelf. Sadly, I've only read 1.8 books in the past few months (Travel Team and On the Road, which is pretty disappointing as a whole).
I moved my unread comic stack (which was down to about 10 issues of Battlestar Galactica that I stopped reading due to having missed an issue) with my unread Conan magazines on the shelf. But I have also, in the past couple of weeks, picked up a bunch of new comics - a few of which will probably be getting a mention sooner or later.
Oh, I almost forgot the other cool acquisition from the SFBC re-enrollment: Sword Song: Sisterhood of Steel, a collection of artwork depicting various tough girls with swords or other medieval-type weaponry. Most seem to subscribe to the Red Sonja school of armoring oneself - chain mail bikinis abound. Except when they don't. There was also one other non-reading-material acquisition that I might mention later if I get around to it. We'll see.
I finished my first Salman Rushdie novel, Shalimar the Clown, in September. I'm not completely sure how much of what I read was completely fictional and how much was based on actual events in the tiny, war-torn nation of Kashmir, but it certainly felt real. And when I finished the novel, there were actually a few reports through different Internet news sources of events in Kashmir that could have come right out of the book, they were so similar. So I'm guessing the Kashmir part was only fictional as far as the names of the people and towns. And that's a scary thing.
Salman Rushdie tells an intriguing story, just enough of which is fact-based to make it seem very real. It's similar to the Dan Brown model of story-weaving, but Rushdie's story isn't just an "thriller/adventure novel" like one of Dan Brown's. It's a thoughtful look at the conditions of the Kashmiri people, the human condition regardless of where you call home. and the dangers of religious fanaticism. To be fair, it does have just a little bit of suspenseful action, violence, and some sex-stuff too - just like a Dan Brown novel! But there are no intellectual - yet ruggedly handsome - college professors to be be seen anywhere. (Hey, did Dan Brown steal Indiana Jones from Lucas & Spielberg? Hmmm....)
What's most interesting about Kashmir is the diversity of religious beliefs there and how little friction it causes until extremists get involved.
It was winter, so they were huddled round the fire in her hut. The goats were in the barn he had helped her build. He heard the clanking of the small brass bells around their necks. His daughter was in a condition not unlike a trance. She was at once there in the hut and somewhere else as well. She could hear what he was saying, but she was also listening elsewhere. She said, "My husband tells me. He has crossed the mountains to meet the iron mullah. The iron mullah says that the question of religion can only be answered by looking at the condition of the world. When the world is in disarray then God does not send a religion of love. At such times he sends a martial religion, he asks that we sing battle hymns and crush the infidel. This is the fundamental urge. When the infidel has been crushed there may be time for love, although in the iron mullah's opinion this is of secondary importance. Religion demands austerity and self-denial, says Bulbul Fakh. It has little time for the softness of pleasure or the weakness of love. God should be loved but that is a manly love, a love of action, not a girlish affliction of the heart. The iron mullah preaches to many hundreds from men from many parts of the world. They are preparing for war."
As a point of reference, the "iron mullah" referred to in the previous excerpt is a Muslim jihadist leader named Bulbul Fakh who arrives in a Kashmir village to polarize the Muslims against their non-Muslim neighbors, but is driven out by all the townspeople when his true divisive nature is revealed. He goes into hiding in the mountains and continues to preach his litany of hate to the terrorists-in-training there instead.
I had planned to share several other excerpts from the book that I found interesting either for their insight into life in Kashmir, the true brutal nature of a jihadist, the universality of human nature or just to display the writing skill of Salman Rushdie, but I've been too lazy to transcribe any of the others. If you're really interested, let me know and I'll upload the pages I scanned that contain these excerpts (be warned: there is profanity on many of these pages).
And speaking of India (though this has nothing to do with Kashmir, Salman Rushdie or Shalimar the Clown)...
If not for the Mumbai attack that left around 200 people (many non-Indians) dead this past week, nobody would have been any more aware than usual of the craziness in India. And even with the spotlight on India for a brief time, it's doubtful that many people have considered that the Mumbai massacre has bigger implications due to its effect on India's primary export: cheap labor.
Regarding the Mumbai attacks, it seems a good number of people don't understand the context of the attacks. Whoever pulled off the attack is thinking in terms of financial warfare those of you thinking "oh this is much a do about nothing" are still thinking in terms of conventional warfare. But body counts are pretty much meaningless in the context of global financial warfare as the Fortune 500 are far more concerned about their interest rates than they are a loss of 200 or so human lives. Every world leader with an IQ over 70 is shaking in their boots right now. Reason being the effects of the attacks on the Fortune 500 and Dow 30 will be, at the very least, as follows:
A) the cost of insuring their outsourced operations goes through the ceiling
B) the cost of providing security goes through the ceiling
C) the cost of capital (interest rate) for any projects outsourced to India and elsewhere just went through the ceiling
With so many companies as highly leveraged as they are, it doesn't take much to push them over the edge. Jack up their interest rates, jack up their insurance premiums while drastically escalating the amount of money they need to spend on security and a whole bunch of them will be plunged right into insolvency.
The answer to the question of "will they be moving their operations back to U.S. soil" is "no, they won't be as the loans they've been getting from the Big Banks are based on the assumption of ultra-cheap outsourced labor. Without these artificially cheap loans, many of them will simply go out of business as their entire business model was predicated on low-cost loans, the issuance of which was predicated on unfettered access ultra-cheap outsourced labor."
I wonder how smart all these companies that have based their business model on outsourcing all their labor to India are feeling now? If you can't tell, I'm not all that sympathetic - though I do realize that this is just going to make the economic hardships worse in general, not better, for people in the U.S. And that's not a good thing for anyone.
Man, I'm such a downer. It's no wonder nobody reads this drivel.
My long unawaited comments on a very fine Star Wars novel, Star Wars: Allegiance.
I mentioned that I was reading a very satisfying Star Wars novel when I talked about Gene Wilder's My French Whore in May, but I never got around to saying what had actually been so enjoyable about Allegiance, so I'll try to remember now...
It was written by Timothy Zahn, the guy who may have been responsible for bringing Star Wars back from the brink of nowhere about 15 years ago when he wrote the Thrawn Trilogy novels that expanded on the post Return of the Jedi adventures (set five years after the events of Return of the Jedi) of Luke, Leia, Han and Chewy. The Star Wars universe is now full of these novels, so it probably doesn't seem like that big a deal to your average fan, but back then there weren't a million novels and comics with Star Wars stories around.
Allegiance was not only entertaining, but also different from the other Star Wars books out there (those that I've read, anyway). Granted, Luke, Leia, Han & Chewey were all in the story - as were Vader, Palpatine and the Zahn-favorite, Mara Jade (the events in these books take place well before the Thrawn novels), but they weren't really the central figures.
The story centers on a group of Imperial stormtroopers who have begun to question the true motives of the empire.
Finally, the blaster fell silent. Grave held his sharpshooter's pose another couple of seconds as the echoes faded away, then laid the weapon down on the shelf in front of him and pulled off his helmet. "It was like something out of the Clone Wars," he said, not turning around to face his friend. "The whole town - everyone. Slaughtered where they stood."
"I know," LaRone said soberly. "I was just talking to Korlo Brightwater = you know, the speeder scout? He told me he'd heard the official report's going to say the rebels launched an ambush during the search."
"Not a chance," Grave said firmly. "I was on the rooftop sniper-suppression duty, and I didn't see a single person so much as poke his nose up there. Even rebels are smart enough to go for the high ground in a fight."
"Maybe," LaRone agreed,feeling a twinge of doubt. "Still, I suppose there could have been rebel activity in one of the sections of town I didn't see."
"Of course there could have been," Grave retorted. "And since none of us could see everything, everyone can persuade himself that's what happened. Typical ISB foggery." He snapped his T-28 back up to his shoulder and fired off another half a dozen rounds. "Only they couldn't stuff up our ears, could they?" he growled as he lowered the weapon again. "And every shot I heard came from an E-11."
It's not easy for the stormtroopers to just abandon their loyalty for the Empire they thought they were serving (that becomes more and more obviously not what they thought it was as their eyes are opened). Each of them is a patriotic, right-thinking, good person under his shining white armor. The book's title reflects the strength of their convictions.
It's interesting to think that some of those "bad guys" on the side of the Empire might actually just be "good guys" waiting to see the light (actually, now that I think about it, a lot of the rebels were Imperial deserters - you just never hear much about their time serving the Empire).
