Category: Robert A. Heinlein

Serious Literature

Recently I have been reading a novel (more about that later) by William Gibson. Gibson is an accomplished science fiction writer, still mostly known for his 1984 debut novel, Neuromancer. Besides winning the Neuromancer_(Book)Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award, the novel is credited with solidifying the cyberpunk SF sub-genre. I remember reading the book in the mid-eighties, but don’t recall much apart from the fact that I didn’t particularly like it and didn’t see what the brouhaha was about. In retrospect, that may have been due to the fact that I read the book in German translation. In those pre-Amazon times, paperbacks published in the US or UK were difficult to find (even in bookstores in a university city like Heidelberg) and even if available, cost at least two times as much as in US/UK bookstores and three times as much as a German translation. Being a badly-paid postdoc and a voracious reader at the time, the choice was easy, if perhaps not the wisest. Whatever may have been the case, years later (now being a badly-paid scientist) I bought a used copy of the second volume in the Sprawl trilogy, Count Zero. This time the book was in English and I recall liking it, but not much else (well, it is about 30 years ago, so I hope my poor memory may be forgiven…)

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William Gibson, Pattern Recognition. Berkley, 2003, 367 pp. ISBN 978-0-425-19868-1

Rating: 2 out of 10

 

 

 

Anyway, let’s move on to the direct cause for this blog post: the book that I recently read, Pattern Recognition. Like Neuromancer, it is the first novel of a trilogy. Published in 2003, it is already older (readers of my blog may have noticed that I often read or re-read older works). Apparently, Gibson was trying to break through into mainstream literature and succeeded in the sense that the novel was generally well-received and made it onto mainstream bestseller lists. However, to give away my personal evaluation: I did not like it at all and do not think it was a success.

The story is set in the present day and follows a woman, Cayce Pollard, who is allergic to certain logos. She once almost goes into an anaphylactic shock because someone exposes her to a Michelin Man doll. Even though as a science fiction reader I am used to accept unrealistic things (such as Faster Than Light travel or communication), I found this rather hard to swallow. Allergic to the Michelin Man… Really?

Another quibble that I had with the book is that the story is not particularly enticing. But the worst part was the language. The book virtually screams to me “I’m a serious writer!! This is serious literature!! Look how erudite I am!!” In earlier posts I have commented on certain books using flowery or even poetic language. This goes far beyond that and for all the trying, fails miserably. Let me give just one (rather egregious) example (top of p. 82):

She’s long kept track of certain obscure mirror-world pop figures, not because they interest her in themselves but because their careers can be so compressed, so eerily quantum-brief, like particles whose existence can only be proven, after the fact, by streaks detected on specially sensitized plates at the bottom of disused salt mines.

That’s one sentence. That’s right: One! And if after reading it only once you know what it means, you can concentrate on a text better than I can. The first time I encountered a sentence like this, I laughed, but as it went on and on, torturing poor defenseless language this way went beyond funny. I gave this book 2 out of 10, as 1 is reserved for the (exceedingly rare) case that I do not even finish a book. That has happened only once or twice in over 50 years of SF reading. So, I did finish this novel, painful as it was, but the two other volumes of this trilogy will rest unread on my shelves.

Cover_of_the_novel_Aurora_by_Kim_Stanley_Robinson

 

Kim Stanley Robinson, Aurora. Orbit, 2015, 501 pp. ISBN 978-0-316-09809-0

Rating: 9 out of 10

 

 

 

 

Shortly after I read Pattern Recognition, I got to a more recent book, Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson. Robinson is from the same generation as Gibson, he’s just a few years younger and his first novel was published in the same year as Gibson’s, 1984. However, Aurora is as different from Pattern Recognition as night from day. Where Gibson’s language is tortured and shows signs of having been reworked time and again, Robinson’s beautiful writing seems almost effortless, even though I am fairly certain that it was anything like that. Where Gibson’s story is unremarkable, Robinson dazzles us again with his original thoughts and inventions. And where he previously failed to mesmerize me, this time I had trouble putting the book down.

The story is about a generation ship, traveling to a nearby star system. Coincidentally, the first “serious” science fiction novel that I ever read was Robert A. Heinlein‘s Orphans of the Sky. It was in the summer of 1968 at an astronomy camp organized by the late Bert van Sprang. That novel blew me away and ever since I have hardly read anything for fun other than science fiction.

Back to Aurora. Even though he was not the first to come up with this idea, Heinlein’s treatment of the generation ship theme was seminal. However, Robinson’s take is much more realistic. In fact, I think it is the most realistic description of what such a ship would look like and which problems its passengers/inhabitants might encounter than I have ever read before. I won’t go into further detail: read this novel for yourself!

I only have just one tiny quibble: I don’t buy Robertson’s explanation of why interstellar colonization is bound to fail. However, that really is just a minor point and while I suggest to avoid Pattern Recognition, I heartily recommend Aurora!

Recent Reads: John Varley, Thunder and Lightning series

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John Varley, Red Thunder. Ace Books, 2003, 411 pp. ISBN 0-441-01162-4

John Varley, Red Lightning. Ace Books, 2006, 351 pp. ISBN 978-0-441-01488-0

John Varley, Rolling Thunder. Ace Books, 2008, 376 pp. ISBN 978-0-441-01772-0

John Varley, Dark Lightning. Ace Books, 2014, 341 pp. ISBN 978-0-425-27408-8

Rating: 9 out of 10

John Varley has been one of my favorite SF authors for a long time. He’s not hugely productive: his website lists 13 novels and 6 short-story collections in a career spanning 40 years since the publication of his first novel, The Ophiuchi Hotline. His books have invariably been highly original, coming up with surprising concepts and gadgets every couple of pages. He also has a keen sense of humor and a penchant for composing phrases that stay with you for years. My favorite is the opening line of Steel Beach: “‘In five years, the penis will be obsolete’, said the salesman.” (Personally, I would have phrased this slightly different: “‘In five years’, the salesman said, ‘the penis will be obsolete’.” Judge for yourself which version you prefer…) Besides being a gifted author, Varley is an avid fan of Robert A. Heinlein, one of my favorite authors.

Varley’s Thunder and Lightning series consists of 4 novels and is an homage to Heinlein’s juvenile novels. In consequence, the main characters of each novel are all adolescents. The series is a feast of memories for any Heinlein enthusiast. Almost any personage bears the name of one of Heinlein’s most famous characters. The first novel in the series, Red Thunder, introduces us to Manny Garcia and his best friend Dak. Mannie is fascinated by space travel but has little hope of eventually becoming an astronaut, as his family is poor and he spends most of his time that he is not in school helping his family run a more or less dilapidated business, the Blast-Off Motel, close to Cape Canaveral. Early on, the friends meet a former astronaut, Travis Broussard, and his brilliant physicist cousin, Jubal. And on it goes. For example, the protagonist of the third novel, Rolling Thunder, is Manny’s granddaughter, Podkayne, and those of the fourth novel, Dark Lightning, are the twins, Cassie and Polly. Of course, there are many more and probably also some that I didn’t recognize because I read the relevant Heinlein novel too long ago. That is also the reason that I recently (re-)read all four volumes of this series. I had originally bought the first volumes when they appeared and read them at the time. For some reason I didn’t buy the fourth volume, Dark Lightning, when it came out in 2014 and only recently became aware of my omission. However, when the book arrived and I started reading it, I soon realized that I didn’t remember much more than rough outlines of the previous three novels, so I stopped reading and (re-)read the whole series in the space of a little bit more than a week. It was an exercise that I can heartily recommend!

In principle, the four books can be read independently, but in my experience the series makes much more sense when they are read in close proximity. The story is in the best traditions of the Golden Age and Heinlein’s proclivity for private initiative as opposed to (usually inept) government action is faithfully maintained. The action starts with a space race between China and the United States to be the first to land on Mars, which the US is losing. Badly, in fact, because the propulsion drives of their space ship blow up before Mars is even reached. Enter Manny and his friends, who, armed with a drive based on limitless energy (an invention of Jubal), build a spaceship on a shoestring budget of $1 million, using second-hand space suits and an old railroad tanker car. And although they start building only after the American and Chinese missions have already been launched and are well underway, the continuous propulsion that Jubal’s limitless energy source makes possible, allows them to arrive on Mars first, before the Chinese. Basically as an afterthought, they rescue the survivors of the US mission on their way home.

The second novel, Red Lightning is set a generation later on Mars, which has been colonized and where a now adult Manny owns a hotel, while his mother still manages her motel in Florida back on Earth. If you know Heinlein, you won’t be surprised that one of the subplots involves Earth trying to impose its will on the Martian colonists. The main plot concerns a disaster on Earth, which is struck by an unknown object, and Mannie and his family and friends travel to a Florida devastated by a huge tsunami to search for his mother. During all this, Mannie’s son Ray finds his soulmate and their daughter, Podkayne, is the protagonist of the third novel, Rolling Thunder. The fourth volume is set aboard a generation ship, named Rolling Thunder, and the protagonists are the twin daughters of Podkayne and Jubal, Cassie and Pollie.

I am not going to describe the plots in more detail, so as not to spoil the fun for anybody who has not yet read these books. Suffice to say that there are several original inventions that are vintage Varley. For example, Red Lightning (which starts with one of the shortest opening lines that I’ve ever seen: “Mars sucks”) starts with a vivid description of Ray Garcia-Strickland, Mannie’s son, riding his surf board down from Phobos to Thunder City (yep, there’s a pattern here…), something that is made possible by the low Martian gravity, the thin atmosphere, and Jubal’s limitless energy invention. This space surfing is something many adolescents do and is considered about as safe as ocean surfing in Florida. An added original touch is that many kids cover the underside of their “surf board” (more like an open miniature space craft) with chemicals that burn off during descent, leaving a brightly colored sparkling trail, kind of like a fire cracker.

According to a 2009 interview on Republibot, the fourth volume is the last one in the series, but to me it feels that the story isn’t finished yet. And I, for one, would love to learn how things develop further now that Jubal has invented a drive that permits immediate displacement over stellar distances!

Favorite science fiction classics (I)

Below I briefly describe some of my favorite science fiction novels, in no particular order, together with some of the reasons why I love these books.

Soon to come: how the experience of science fiction writers can help us write better scientific articles, so stay tuned.

This is the story of Lazarus Long, who by chance of genetics (and selection for longevity)  basically is immortal and at the start of the story is about 2000 years old (and the ancestor of a large part of the human population of the inhabited galaxy). The book can be read on different levels and if read as just an adventure story, provides ample diversion and amusement. On a deeper level, the book has more to offer. Once the more liberal mores of the Sixties allowed it, Heinlein started exploring the bases and boundaries of our traditional morals. Where Stranger in a Strange Land addressed religion and even cannibalism, this book is about love, not skirting touchy issues like incest. The book contains many challenging ideas. Let me give just one example from the many that fill this book to the brim. At one point the main character gets cloned, but with an original twist: his clones are female because they got two copies of his X chromosome. When his clones fall in love with Lazarus, we are faced with serious moral questions. As always, Heinlein doesn’t fail to challenge the reader. As a hard-core libertarian, it should be no surprise that Heinlein’s ideas of what is permissible between consenting adults diverge rather drastically from those of most people. But agree with him or not, he does make one think, which is what a good book should do. It made me reflect a lot about the concept of sin and what is right or wrong. My personal conclusion was that sin is when you harm somebody else and this harm could have been avoided by your (in)action. Time Enough for Love provides food for thought, much thought, almost enough for a lifetime.

Although Schmitz is perhaps best known for his short stories, I personally love his writing most because of two novels. The Demon Breed (1968) is a true space adventure and, although skillfully written, not a high flyer. The earlier The Witches of Karres, however, is a completely different caliber. I remember reading it for the first time and I still wish that it would be possible to read it for the first time again! It’s unadulterated space opera, but not an ordinary one. It’s a crazy book, but fun crazy. From the main character’s home planet (“Nikkeldepain”) to the invaders from another universe (“Worm Weather”), to the magic beings (” vatches”) governed by mysterious klatha energy, this book is big fun from beginning to the end. Sure, it’s not grounded in any real science, which usually for me is a big no-no, but if you are having as much fun as this book provides, who cares?

I read this book shortly after it came out and it was one of the first LeGuin novels that I read (the first one having been City of Illusions). It is part of the Hainish Cycle, a number of novels that are set in the same universe. The novel plays on a cold world, named Gethen. In a poetic way and a style that was completely new and fresh, Le Guin describes the world and its climate and, more importantly, its inhabitants. Although never confirmed with certainty, it appears that the Gethenians are the result of a genetic experiment to create a human race adapted to the severe climatic conditions of Gethen. Besides some obvious metabolic modifications, the most important difference between Gethenians and the rest of humanity is that they are sequential hermaphrodites: most of the time they are neuter and not interested in sex, but once every month they become sexually receptive and in a complex interaction with their sexual partner differentiate into either a male or a female form. They have no predisposition to being male or female and the same individual can be the father of one child and the mother of another. Being androgynous most of the time obviously has implications for a society that is much less focused on sex than ours. Le Guin was not the first to describe a society made up of human hermaphrodites (Theodore Sturgeon‘s 1960 Venus Plus X may have been the first), but this novel is deeper and more poetic than anything that came before. Again a novel that makes you think: by describing an alien, albeit human, society, Le Guin stimulates us to reflect on our own society, and its morals, conventions, and idiosyncrasies.

 

Postscript: All of the above works were written in the sixties and seventies of the last century. That does not mean that I don’t like contemporary science fiction. On the contrary, I think that some of the stuff produced nowadays far surpasses anything written before, even in the Golden Age. But the above books I read in my formative years and they have stayed with me my whole life. Several of them have influenced my life in a very real way. Not because I wanted to emulate anything in these books, but because they made me think and showed me that many things that I took for granted were, perhaps, not as self-evident as I thought. In a future post, or more likely several posts, I’ll discuss some contemporary novels and writers that I particularly like.

The science in fiction: From gravity to microbiota

When talking about the science in science fiction, we often concentrate on technology or cultural developments that were correctly predicted in a novel. Of course, we all know that science fiction is not written to come up with correct predictions about the future, but comparing older novels with current developments is fun, nonetheless. At least as much fun is the opposite: where did novels get it completely wrong and why. One of the earliest examples is of course Jules Verne‘s De la terre à la lune (From the Earth to the Moon; 1865) in which three explorers are sent on a voyage to the moon aboard a “spaceship” that basically is a huge hollow bullet, fired from a gigantic cannon. Apart from the possibility (or, rather, impossibility) of such a launch mechanism, the novel contains a big mistake that nowadays even a kid in high school will immediately spot: the travelers are subjected to gravity all the way to the point where the gravitational fields of Earth and Moon cancel each other out and then experience a short period of weightlessness. After this their capsule turns around and they are henceforth subjected to the gravity of the moon. However, while the physics of the late 19th century certainly would have been able to predict accurately the weightlessness that the travelers would have experienced throughout the trip (apart from a brief moment at launch), it is easy to see how Verne could have made this mistake. Even much later, in the 1960s, even educated writers got much wrong about acceleration and the effects of its presence or absence. Hugh Walters (and not just him, either) had his astronauts lose consciousness at every launch because of the g-forces they were subjected to, for example.

Another mistake that probably only few people have noticed (mainly because the book is much less popular than Verne’s) is Robert A. Heinlein‘s Sixth Column (1941). It’s far from Heinlein’s best, but, then, even Heinlein’s weaker books are always worth a read. It was published almost a year before Pearl Harbor and portrays a future in which Japan and China are unified under a common emperor as “Pan Asia” and on a conquering spree. After annexing India, they take on the United States and after an apparently rather brief war occupy the country. The story follows a group of researchers hidden in a secret base in the Rocky Mountains who, just at the moment of surrender, discover a new powerful weapon. It is based on a kind of hitherto unknown radiation (not from the common electromagnetic spectrum, but from spectra resulting from different combinations of electrical, magnetic, and/or gravitational forces). These new types of radiations can have several effects, ranging from inducing severe fear to killing specifically some groups of organisms, while leaving others unharmed. Indeed, the researchers get on the trail of this weapon at the start of the novel when a mishap kills almost all people in the base, but not their laboratory mice and rats.

Later on as the story unfolds, one of the scientists realizes that the weapon can also be used for good, namely to cure infectious diseases. To put this to the test, he infects himself with anthrax and then heals himself by using the appropriate radiation to kill the anthrax bacteria. In fact, he also notices that a heavy head cold also disappears and realizes that by killing all microorganisms in his body, he has significantly improved his overall health. When I read this in the middle 70s or so, I already knew that this was incorrect: killing all his gut bacteria would at least have caused some digestive problems for this brave self-experimenting researcher… By now, of course, we know that such a treatment would have much more profound effects.

Recent research has revealed that the composition of our microbiota can influence almost anything you can think of. Having the right gut microorganisms may provide children with a more adaptive response to malnutrition (see also here). And your gut microflora may influence your susceptibility to psychiatric disorders such as depression. Of course, there is no way that Heinlein could have foreseen any of this, as microbiology was just in its infancy at that time: the first antibiotic, penicillin, had been discovered only a decade earlier and did not come into general use until more than a year after Sixth Column was published.

The discovery that our gut bacteria influence our brain and affect things like mood and such was probably a surprise for many people, even neuroscientists who have rightly described this finding as a paradigm shift. In retrospect, as with so many things, it’s much less surprising of course. We habitually try to influence our psychological state by using chemicals, be they recreational drugs or psychopharmaca like antidepressants. That different gut microorganisms, by producing different chemicals (or different quantities of the same chemicals) eventually entering our bloodstream, influence our psychological state is therefore perhaps unexpected, but not really too surprising. Perhaps also unsurprisingly, this has made the view that our behavior is molded by our genes in interaction with environmental influences even more simplistic than it already was. After epigenetics, now our microflora adds additional complexity. And just like genotype and environment complicate things by displaying complex interactions and covariations, it is to be expected that effects of our microbiota will depend on our genes and our environment (and any combination thereof), making things even more complicated. It really makes one wonder, given the current state of our knowledge, about the chances for success for the hugely expensive Human Brain Project.

Given the state of science in 1941, we should probably also credit Heinlein with some insights that were ahead of his time. In the same staff meeting where the above-mentioned scientist confesses to having infected himself with anthrax, the commander next directs the discussion to how best to use their discoveries for propaganda. The head scientist leaves the meeting disgustedly: he’s only interested in science, clearly implying that social science is not real science. In response, the commander reflects on why mass psychology, and psychology in general, would not be a valid field of scientific inquiry. One of the biologists knows the answer to that one: psychology is not a science, because it is too difficult. In a time when experimental psychology was still in its infancy, that’s quite a remarkable insight. In fact, given the above remarks about genes, microbiota, interactions, and what not, things are quite more complex than even Heinlein could have thought. Despite all the advances that we have made since the 1940s and the concomitant improvements in, for example, mental health, we are not at risk to be out of a job anytime soon, as we are still far from understanding how our brains work.

As I have said before: good science fiction makes you think…