Recently in Books Category

Wow, is mankind ever playing with fire. First there was the Skynet thing. Now we're messing around with Europa despite explicit instructions from omnipotent aliens to the contrary. At this point the natural next step is to create a race of slave robots (that are stronger and smarter than us) to serve humanity; or possibly start designing really creepy-looking warp drives for the space shuttles.

The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. --from "The Call of Cthulhu"

But how on earth does someone who can compose the wonderful simile of the ruins "protruding uncannily above the sands as parts of a corpse may protrude from an ill-made grave" manage to let themselves write, not a page later, that the "brooding ruins ... swelled beneath the sand like an ogre under a coverlet"? --Kenneth Hite on Lovecraft

The BBC recently broadcast a radio show examining the life and continuing influence of H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft is the early 20th-century writer of weird fiction who invented the Cthulhu Mythos and penned many stories of "cosmic horror."

I am extraordinarily fond of Lovecraft's writing. In fact, I'd certainly place him amid the crowd of writers whose work has inspired or influenced me throughout my reading life. One thing that intrigues me about Lovecraft is that he's not a terribly good writer in any traditional sense of the word: his recognizable-from-a-mile-away writing style is often clumsy and obsessed with clunky words like "cyclopean" and "squamous" (for a challenge, fit those into your next everyday conversation); his characters are often poorly developed (and there's pretty much one female mentioned--once--in the entire body of his work, and she's a centuries-old undead witch); and he consistently sidles too close to Goofiness when he's trying to evoke Creepiness.

But he's got one thing that more than compensates for any technical failing of his writing: sheer, unadulterated vision. You can see it lurking behind every awkward, adjective-laden phrase, in every earnest description of a monster that's supposed to be horrifying but instead comes across sounding like a hippopotamus-headed tentacled frog. And every great now and then, his vision breaks out of the cheesiness of his writing style and knocks you over with its pure brilliance. Occasionally, amidst all the mad scientists and squid-faced flying ooze monsters, you catch a sanity-shattering glimpse of what Lovecraft is really scared of: a universe that doesn't care, in which mankind and all he's accomplished is just an unnoticed aberration of evolution. Lovecraft throws all that overwrought prose at you to keep you distracted, and then when your attention is diverted, he punches you in the gut with the existential awfulness of his vision.

At the risk of turning him into a cheesy inspirational figure, I like Lovecraft because he's an example of somebody whose ideas were so compelling that his writing deficiencies simply didn't matter. In fact, the strength of his vision and the earnestness with which he pursued it actually took that sometimes-awful prose and made it a work of art in its own right. In religious terms, his ideas redeemed the clumsy way in which he communicated them.

My own introduction to Lovecraft came in the form of a computer game, actually--Infocom's The Lurking Horror. In college I found a collection of Lovecraft stories and, one spring, I spent many a sunny Michigan afternoon reading almost everything he'd written. "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" and "At the Mountains of Madness" were my instant favorites, along with some of his lesser-read, dreamlike short stories. Then followed the superb Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game (a must read for Lovecraft fans, even if you've no intention of playing it) and the realization that some of my other favorite horror stories (Stephen King's It, for instance) were essentially Lovecraft fan fiction.

All this to say: if you've not had the joy of reading Lovecraft, you really ought to head down to your local library and check out a collection of his stories. And a few links if you want to delve a bit deeper:

• Ken Hite, writer of excellent roleplaying books, has been reflecting on each of Lovecraft's stories (the good ones, the bad ones, and the mind-shatteringly awful ones) at his Livejournal. (See his commentary on "Mountains of Madness," for instance.)
• Neil Gaiman wrote a spectacular Lovecraft/Sherlock Holmes crossover story called "A Study in Emerald", which impresses me anew each time I re-read it. (It's the third story down on the page.)
• Lots of information about Lovecraft's life and works.
• "A Colder War" by Charles Stross, adding the Cthulhu Mythos to the Cold War.

I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move. --Robert Louis Stevenson

Michele and I have a road trip coming up soon. It'll take us through what many people would consider the "boring flyover" states (Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas), but it's a route we both enjoy. It's long and flat and hot, but it's a familiar drive, one that we've made many times before. Lots of time to talk, read, and listen to music in the car, and nothing to challenge our rather limited navigational skills--just get on 80 and stay there.

One reason we're especially excited about this trip is that it's the last big road trip we'll be making before (Lord willing) the baby arrives in autumn. (Oh, and if you don't know--we're having a baby.) We're trying to steer clear of the notion that Our Lives Will Change Forever once Baby arrives (yes, "Baby"--trust me, you don't want to hear the array of Byzantine, ancient Mesopotamian, and Tolkien-derived names we've put on the list of Possible Baby Names), but there is that sense that we need to be extra deliberate in our enjoyment of this trip, since we might be making just a few minor lifestyle changes once our cute little broodling joins the family.

Odd as it may be, I mentally associate traveling through the Midwest (highway 80 in particular) with our marriage. While Michele and I were dating, I made the drive between west Michigan and Chicago countless times. The Saturday-morning drive to Chicago was a joy because at the end of the trek Michele was waiting; the Saturday-evening drive back to Michigan was a joy because I had just spent several hours with my future wife. (But credit where credit is due: I want to thank my indefatigable red Chevy Cavalier, the Dandy Warhols, and Depeche Mode for making those trips a bit more manageable.) Once we got married, the travel continued, along the same route even (Michigan to Chicago) but extended further out to Nebraska, where Michele's family lives. The Cavalier, which I figure has put in its time, has been retired; but the Dandy Warhols and Depeche Mode still keep us company along the route.

For both of us, road trips also mean books. I have a little habit of choosing a book to read on each road trip we take. (Usually more than one, actually, but I always designate which book is the official Road Trip Book.) I love reading in the passenger seat as Illinois and Iowa roll by outside. Invariably the experience of reading my chosen book gets woven into the road trip experience, so that my memories of one are permanently intertwined with the other. Last year it was Alan Moore's Watchmen; before that it was Umberto Eco's Baudolino; Nabakov's Pale Fire and Bruce Sterling's The Difference Engine (written with somebody else, I forget who) happened in there somewhere, going all the way back to our honeymoon road trip along highway 80, which was accompanied by the decidedly unromantic Six Armies in Normandy by John Keegan. This year it's A.S. Byatt's Possession: A Romance, and I've already cheated by reading the first 50 pages before the road trip's begun.

So we've got a road trip coming, and I'm mentally and emotionally ready for it. If Baby can hear us yet, s/he will be treated to our comfortable routine of Generation X music, political banter, and nostalgic reminiscing about the days when The X-Files was still good, people treated each other with respect, and the Fourth Crusade had not yet sacked Constantinople. I hope Baby enjoys it, because Lord willing and the creek don't rise, the three of us have many years of these trips ahead of us.

I am sure that those of you who follow politics have heard about Mitt Romney's incredibly significant and newsworthy gaffe. When asked to name his favorite book, he cited Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard.

Cue a whole lot of snickering and mocking overanalysis by every blogger and pundit in the universe--all of whom no doubt curl up each night in their favorite cozy chair to read from a dog-eared copy of Crime and Punishment. A presidential candidate who likes a book about (snicker) aliens? A candidate who appreciates a nice pulp sci-fi story? God forbid a candidate respond to that question with a title that falls outside our vaguely-remembered high school Intro to World Literature syllabus. Thank goodness the pretentiati is on hand to assure us that anyone who would read, let alone enjoy, such a novel is, obviously, unfit for any sort of serious position in government. Can't have our betters and those Europeans snickering at a U.S. President, can we?

Fortunately, Romney was quick to recant, assuring a worried public that his favorite novel is really Huckleberry Finn. Clearly, that's an answer straight from his heart, and isn't just a book title deemed by his political consultants as the Book Most Likely to Evoke a Positive Response from the Most Potential American Voters. (Let me guess: other Romney favorites include apple pie, the Bible, the soulful poetry of Maya Angelou, and freedom; and his heroes include Jesus, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr.) Good save, Romney, good save. For a minute there I was worried that I'd spotted a glimmer of an actual interesting personality beneath the soulless political mask, an honest-to-goodness quirk that hadn't yet been sanded down into inoffensiveness by focus groups and asinine political cliches.

I exaggerate a little; Romney has not completely renounced his enjoyment of pulpy sci-fi. And a few brave defenders are standing up to the literary snobs. But this shocking scandal has got me on the defensive, as I enjoyed Battlefield Earth as a teenager and did not grow up to be Scientologist or an illiterate. Whether or not you think that presidential candidates should be reading B-grade sci-fi, mark my words: Romney's Battlefield Earth answer was the most honest thing you're going to hear from any candidate for the next 18 months; and it was us who, at the first sign of deviation from the predicable norm, mocked him into repenting (so we could then mock him for flip-flopping). Xenu help us--it's going to be a long and stupid campaign season.

Why am I content to sit here, blogging in our west Michigan apartment, when I could be writing books like this?

If this were the late 1970s, there would also be a boxed wargame (with 1500 playing chits) detailing this exact scenario. I'm halfway tempted to create it myself.

(Spotted at the Judge a Book by its Cover blog.)

Reason Magazine (which I'm finding to be an increasingly good online read lately) has an interesting interview with Vernor Vinge about the Singularity and related topics. Very thought-provoking stuff. The whole concept of the Singularity is, my wife assures me, crazy; but it's a fascinating idea nonetheless. Anyway, if you, like me, eagerly anticipate the day when the stars are right and our AI overlords will take over to make things right again, go check out the interview. And if you've not read Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep or (my favorite) A Deepness in the Sky, hasten thee to a library and check 'em out--they represent some of the best sci-fi I've read in years.

Since I subjected you to my thoughts on vampires in my last post, I figured that I might as well share my specific thoughts on one of the two vampire-themed novels I mentioned: Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian. Note: mild spoilers follow.

This is quite the ambitious novel: it's a loose modern retelling of Dracula from the perspective of several generations of historians who are hunting for clues through letters, diaries, and manuscripts. The book's narrator is the latest in a long string of historians to get obsessed with everybody's favorite Impaler; and as the plot develops, she of course begins to suspect that Dracula himself is still lurking about causing mischief.

The good:

• Dracula (and vampires in general) are way cooler when they're portrayed as terrifyingly evil supernatural villains, not angst-ridden, sexually-ambiguous Anne Rice antiheroes. Fortunately, Kostova paints Dracula and his ilk as unabashedly Evil, while avoiding any hint of "I vant to zuck your blood" campiness.
  
• The story is told largely through the medium of letters and manuscript excerpts from the Middle Ages to the modern day. For the most part, it works, and adds a lot of flavor to the story.
  
• Lots of cool details about life in early Cold War Eastern Europe. Definitely more interesting than the usual European History sites (Paris, London, etc.).
  
• Plenty of clever references to Stoker's Dracula.

The bad:

• An overly sappy Hollywood ending sort of spoils the wonderfully melancholy tone of the book's first 600 pages. The book almost manages to be a heartbreaking story of love and loss, as the curse of Dracula takes its toll throughout the lives and deaths of several interesting characters, but the ending doesn't quite work.
  
• Most of the letters and manuscripts use the same voice and writing style, even when they're supposed to be different people writing in different decades. It doesn't kill the story, but it requires some extra suspension of disbelief.
  
• Perhaps this is just a feature of the Historical Mystery genre, but the plot involved an awful lot of this: Protagonists go to Site A, where they find a clue leading to Site B. They go to Site B, where they find a clue leading to Site C. They go to Site C... etc. etc.

All that said, this was a fun book. It's not summertime right now--I am, in fact, trapped somewhere in the ice-encrusted depths of Michigan winter--but this would be a perfect summer read. More involved than your typical pop fiction, but not too weighty. With vampires!

(Cheesy vampire picture from the old TSR Ravenloft boxed set.)

Note: I don't know where I'm going with this, but I feel like talking about vampires. You've been warned.

Call it the Year of the Undead, if you will. Thus far in 2007 I've read exactly two novels, and both of them were about vampires: Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, which was quite good, and Tim Powers' The Stress of Her Regard, which was superb. I did not intentionally set out to read two books about the unquiet dead--I did not realize they had that subject in common until I cracked the covers--but I'm glad I did.

I've always found vampires to be fascinating, as far as unholy abominations go. I loved Stoker's Dracula as a kid; Dracula served for years as the perfect model of the horror-story villain in my mind. He was cruel, vicious, and predatory; he was also patient, intelligent, and exceedingly clever. My favorite horror villains are those that simultaneously play on both existential and visceral fears, and Dracula did just that: on the one hand, he's an unnatural, spiritually disturbing horror that casts doubt on everything we believe about life, death, and a benevolent God; and on the other hand, he's a near-unstoppable physical threat that wants to punch holes in your throat with his teeth and suck the lifeblood from your body. (Other horror-story villains that fit this model are the creature from Alien, which I've discussed before, and Stephen King's "It," which manages to be both an alien cosmic horror and a child-eating evil clown that lives in the sewers.)

Dracula is a great, inhuman threat; he long ago shed what passed for his humanity. Stoker doesn't do much to humanize Dracula, offering only a few tidbits through which to empathize with the vampire--most notably Dracula's final smile (of relief, presumably) upon being staked and destroyed. Much has been made of the sexuality of Dracula, and while there's certainly material in Dracula to fuel that interpretation, I never found it to be terribly interesting. Even if we subject Dracula to a lot of pop-Freudian analysis, the creature that emerges is most analogous to a sexual predator, and thus still belongs firmly in the category of Evil. That's the way I liked my vampires: unrepentently evil, fated to be taken down in the end by a plucky band of heroes.

I avoided reading Anne Rice's vampire novels for quite some time, knowing that they did away with the vampire-as-villain tradition and replaced it with undead who were angst-ridden, sexually ambiguous, and more or less sympathetic. When I finally got around to reading Interview with a Vampire, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. Interview, at least as I read it, retained (with lots of purple prose) the existential horror of the vampire condition but struggled with whether or not the vampire's loss of humanity was a free choice or an inevitability. The vampire Lestat argues that the vampire's undead state removes him from the reach of any moral limitations, whether they're imposed by God or constructed by human society. The novel's protagonist, the vampire Louis, feels the pull of this nihilistic philosophy but fights to retain his humanity. The idea that Lestat might be right--that vampires, removed from the possibility of grace, have no reason not to fully embrace their predatory instincts--lurks menacingly behind the story at every turn.

This is, behind the sometimes gratuitous and lurid surface of the story, the stuff of an old-fashioned morality play, and I found that it fit rather well with my vision of Dracula as an inhuman Evil. Dracula was a being who embraced the power of his vampiric state at the cost of his humanity and conscience. A vampire that refused to renounce his humanity would be, in a sense, not a true vampire at all, but a human being cursed with a particularly dreadful fate--not a villain.

Unfortunately, Anne Rice's sympathies seemed to lie more with the nihilistic vampire Lestat and less with the tortured vampire Louis. The sequel to Interview stars Lestat, who is actually revealed to be a world-famous goth-rock star; I've never made it through this novel despite at least three attempts to finish it. My feelings about this were best expressed years ago by a Mars Hill Audio interviewee (I unfortunately forget his name) who remarked that without the backdrop of moral struggle, Rice's vampires stopped being interesting characters and became ridiculous parodies of themselves: "superheroes with fangs," I think may have been the phrase he used. At this point, we've moved well beyond the (intriguing, to me) stark morality of the traditional vampire and into some sort of post-modern silliness, and it's here that I lose interest. In the end, I decided that while Rice's take on vampires was a somewhat intriguing one, I really preferred the more black-and-white Evil Undead in the Stoker tradition.

Both of the books I mentioned above--The Historian and The Stress of Her Regard--feature vampires (or vampire-like creatures, in the case of Her Regard) that draw more heavily from the old-school Stoker-esque Dracula than from Rice's morally-free undead. The Historian is the most straightforward about this, as it's actually a book about Dracula. Her Regard features stranger and more complicated vampires, but they're definitely alien and evil, at least by any human standard. To which I say: bring on the garlic, crucifixes, and wooden stakes! Those old-fashioned morally Evil vampires always were the most interesting kind, and I'm glad to see them cropping up after a decade or two of morally ambiguous undead.

How can you not love a book that presents, with a perfectly straight face, the following two lines?

The man gaped at her. "Are the apes after Kenny? I knew something like this would happen." -- p. 134

Doyle kept his face impassive, but his mind was racing. God help us, it's Romany again, he realized. What in hell is the man up to here? What can he hope to gain by brainwashing Lord Byron and turning him loose to make semi-treasonous speeches? -- p. 203

Both quotes are from Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates, a time-travel novel that was definitely one of the best books I read this year. A very fun read, if you're looking for something entertaining and a bit light-hearted. Really, I can't recommend it enough.

I'm having a bit too much fun with LibraryThing's UnSuggester, which analyzes your book preferences and recommends books that you probably wouldn't like. From the main page:

Bring on the guilty reading pleasures!