What I've Been Reading – April 2012 to June 2012

The following are some comments on most of the books I read over the past few months, with one major exception. I also managed to finish Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged in this period, but while I mention it in some of my comments on other books, I decided to do a separate posting on it, as I already had enough other books to write about, and if I want to take the time and space point out even some of the problems with Rand's ideas, it would add a lot to an already lengthy post.

Against a Dark Background by Iain M. Banks
Against a Dark Background is a science fiction novel by Iain M. Banks, an author whose work I have discussed previously. This book, like The Algebraist, is not set in the Culture, the society that forms the background for most of his science fiction, though some have pointed out that in the case of this novel it could still be in the same universe. Though it wasn’t one of his first published books (it came out in 1993), it was rewritten from a draft that dated back to 1975, well before his first published novel, The Wasp Factory (1984).

Against a Dark Background contains a number of features that are familiar to readers of Banks’ novels: a complex plot, a strong element of mystery, and frequent use of flashbacks that reveal more and more about the characters’ backgrounds. In this case I was able to guess some of the answers to the various mysteries fairly early, but I was still surprised by some of the plot twists. Another similarity between this novel and many other Banks novels is a noticeable flawed protagonist. Sharrow, the protagonist of this novel, is not so bad at the time the main action of the novel takes place. She is still somewhat arrogant and self-centered, but she does care about those around her and is concerned about the consequences of her actions, often feeling guilty for harm that others suffer even when her own responsibility is arguably limited. But as a child and a teen, particularly in her relations with her half-sister, she was often downright nasty (not that her sister was that wonderful either), and the prank she pulled on the family android was downright evil. Still, the reader still ends up sympathizing with her, in part because many of her antagonists are clearly worse.

The “dark background” of the title could refer to any number of things. There are the dark machinations taking place behind the scenes and the dark state of political society in Goltier, the world Sharrow lives in (this is, after all, a society where a powerful organization can legally obtain a license to hunt down and kill someone). Indeed, despite the fairly advance technology that appears in the novel, it becomes clear that Goltier is actually is in a kind of Dark Ages, as it has a history that stretches back many millennia and it was at times in the past much more advanced. The dark background could also refer to the isolation of Goltier and the system it belongs to in the universe, or even the darkness in the souls of some of the novels’ chief characters.

In any event, Against a Dark Background is another solid novel from Iain Banks. While it doesn’t have some of the more unusual features of a few of his novels (such as the use of reverse chronology for half of Use of Weapons or the atypical narrator of parts of Feersum Endjinn), that is not necessarily a negative for most readers, and it has all the elements that make most of his novels among the best out there. Anyone who has enjoyed other novels by Iain Banks will almost certainly like this one too, and new readers will find it a good introduction to his work.

Freedom from Fear by Aung San Suu Kyi
This is a collection of essays and speeches by Aung San Suu Kyi and a few more essays about her, selected and edited by her late husband Michael Aris. Several of the essays are from a time prior to her involvement in the struggle for democracy in Burma, which began in 1988. These include a biography of her father Aung San, an introduction to the history and culture of Burma, and two scholarly essays. The biography of Aung San, while painting an overall picture that is clearly very positive, is nevertheless written in a remarkably objective tone, to the extent that if the introductory paragraphs were removed, a reader would probably not even guess that it was written by his daughter. It is true as she points out at the beginning that she didn’t really remember her father, as he was assassinated when she was 2 years old, but her matter-of-fact tone is still impressive, and she doesn’t seem to gloss over mistakes her father made, and the positive view of him is supported by what little I’ve read about him elsewhere. The essay about the history and culture of Burma is also clear, concise and highly informative, and it strikes me as about as good a short introduction to the country as can be found anywhere. The scholarly works, one a comparison of intellectual life in Burma and India under British colonialism and the other a study of Burmese literature and its relationship to nationalism in the same period, are interesting and straightforward, without the excessive use of academic language with weighs down most essays of that nature.

The middle part of the book is mainly taken up by essays and speeches of Aung San Suu Kyi about democracy and related issues from the period beginning in 1988 when she returned to Burma and became a leader in the struggle against the country’s authoritarian military government, as well as a few interviews and discussions. While a few of her views might be considered overly idealistic, for the most part she argues her case with precise logic. Among the excellent points she makes are those pointing out the absurdity of claiming that democracy and human rights are somehow unsuitable to particular cultures, an assertion made by non-democratic governments in places ranging from Burma and China to Singapore. It was also refreshing to read some good arguments for selflessly struggling to improve one’s society as a sort of antidote for the absurdly self-centered viewpoints of Ayn Rand, whose book I was plowing through at around the same time.

The last part of the book includes several essays written by others about Aung San Suu Kyi’s background and experiences in the pro-democracy struggle. Two deal mostly with the time before 1988 when she was living in India and the UK (among other places) and the other two mainly with the post-1988 period. The one that struck me the most was the one written by a British woman who was her classmate and close friend at Oxford. Though of course very positive, it was also revealing (if not surprising) to read that Aung San Suu Kyi was rather straight-laced even as a young woman, to the point of being somewhat prudish about sex. Of course it is precisely this sort of rectitude that has given her the strength and charisma to fight a tyrannical government for so long, so while I may not agree with her views on such things, there is no question that her strong principles are an important part of what makes her such an admired leader.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
A Thousand Splendid Suns is the second novel by Afghan-American writer Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner. It is centered on a pair of Afghan women who come from very different backgrounds but eventually find their lives closely entwined. In both cases, their family background and upbringing seems slightly unusual for Afghanistan – Mariam is the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy businessman in Herat and grows up with her mother in almost complete isolation from the outside world, while Laila is the daughter of an usually enlightened father who encourages her to become educated – but many of the hardships and tragedies they endure are unfortunately all too typical.

Hosseini’s prose is very clear and straightforward, so the book is not at all a difficult read in that sense. Some of the terrible experiences that the protagonists have to endure are less easy going, but not everything is so black, and the book ends on a positive note. One thing some Western readers might have a little difficulty with is some of the cultural attitudes, such as when Mariam’s mother speaks positively of honor killings, saying her own father should have killed her when she got pregnant, or when Mariam herself quickly takes to wearing a burqa. But particularly in the latter case, Hosseini effectively puts the reader in the women’s position, making it easier to understand their acceptance of things that outsiders may see as symbols of oppression. That isn’t to say that Hosseini himself is advocating this kind of thing; it is clear his sympathies lie more with people like Laila’s father. But he is good at conveying other points of view, showing the reader that such things are not as simple as they seem to Westerners.

This novel gives the reader an excellent idea of what it must be like to be a woman in Afghanistan, and for the most part it’s not a pretty picture. At first, during Mariam’s childhood and again in the early part of her marriage, one gets the feeling that things could be much worse…then they do get much worse. The same is true for Laila. But as I said, while Hosseini paints a bleak picture of women’s lives during the civil war and under the Taliban, he does express hope for the future. Given some of the things I’ve read about the problems women still face there today, I only hope he doesn’t turn out to be too optimistic.

Stardust by Neil Gaiman
Stardust was Neil Gaiman’s first solo prose novel. Gaiman originally rose to fame as a writer of graphic novels, and Stardust was originally published as a "story book with pictures" in collaboration with illustrator Charles Vess. The book is best characterized as a fairy tale for adults. He was consciously influenced by “pre-Tolkien” English fantasy, though the book is also reminiscent of one of Tolkien’s more old fashioned fairy stories, Smith of Wootton Major, which was in the same tradition.

The prose style is clear and simple, and the story is engaging. As a story for adults, it has its dark elements – there is death and other unpleasantness. But it’s no more dark than the original Grimms' Fairy Tales, probably less so. The tale begins in the village of Wall, which is named for the wall it is located next to. The wall has only one opening, and the villagers stand guard on it all the time, permitting no one to go through – except on one day every nine years, when a market is held on the other side of the wall. The market is attended by people from all over the world, and by people from the world on the other side of the wall, which is, of course, Faerie. First the young villager Dunstan Thorn becomes entangled with a woman he meets at the market, and then eighteen years later his son Tristan becomes even more deeply involved in Faerie.

Stardust is very entertaining, and anyone who likes traditional fairy tales is sure to enjoy it. There has also been a movie adaptation, starring Charlie Cox, Claire Danes, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Robert De Niro, among others (I haven’t seen the film version, but reviews were generally positive). The novel is a good choice for an easy, enjoyable read.

Steel Beach by John Varley
Steel Beach is a science fiction novel by John Varley. It portrays a large human civilization underground on the Moon. This is the largest of several human settlements in the Solar System (though the others are only mentioned in passing), as humanity was kicked off the Earth by a vastly more advanced alien civilization almost two centuries before the novel begins.

Steel Beach is narrated by Hildy Johnson, a cynical veteran journalist who writes for one of the Moon’s top tabloids. Technologically, the Lunar civilization is highly advanced, and everyone’s basic needs are taken care off, largely by the omnipresent Central Computer which oversees all aspects of Lunar life. Human lifespans have been artificially extended, all but the most serious injuries – those involving direct, massive damage to the brain – can be repaired, and people can replace organs, radically alter their appearance, or even change gender at will (Hildy is male at the beginning of the novel, but fairly early on becomes female – which seems to have been his original gender). On the downside, most people seem to devote much of their time to fairly frivolous seeming activities – the largest religion is one that celebrates television and the cult of celebrity – and others, in a sense, drop out of society by moving into artificial recreations of various Earth locations from the past called Disneys (Hildy spends much of his time in Texas, a Disney based on the 19th century frontier state). More seriously, more and more citizens are attempting suicide, and sometimes succeeding.

The novel touches on a lot of different topics, including memory and perception of the past and present, gender and sexual orientation, suicide and the motivations behind it, privacy, personal fulfillment, personal freedom and non-conformity in a societal context, and human evolution and genetic engineering, all in the course of a story that, while not particularly action heavy, keeps the reader’s attention. In part because I was reading them at the same time, I began to mentally compare this novel to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, perhaps because it covered a little of the same ground. The comparison became more apt late in the novel when Hildy becomes involved with a group called the Heinleiners, who take their inspiration from the science fiction writer Robert Heinlein. Heinlein was well known as a right-wing libertarian, so he had much in common with Rand. Like her, he had some disturbing ideas in some of his novels, and also like her he didn’t show much subtlety in arguing his points. Through Hildy, Varley shows considerable sympathy for the Heinleiners, though he also notes their faults, referring to them as “crotchety malcontents” (it’s also not clear whether the Heinleiners – or Varley – agree with all of Heinlein’s sometimes disturbing positions on certain issues; their main thing is individualism and personal freedom). While I suspect from this that I would disagree with Varley on a number of things, he presents his ideas objectively enough and tells his story well enough that any philosophical differences I might have with him didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the novel, which was in sharp contrast to my experience with Atlas Shrugged (or some of Heinlein’s novels, or that matter).

Varley’s prose is well-written and interesting, in that he, in the character of the narrator Hildy, deliberately slips into various dialects and styles at different times, depending on what he’s writing about. He is often witty and, as noted above, generally avoids ranting on political and social issues (though he discusses them and does sometimes offer definite opinions), unlike his apparent inspiration Robert Heinlein, an author he is often compared to. For that matter, I should say that many of his ideas (or what ideas are conveyed through the novel) are agreeable, such as a more open attitude toward sexuality and a positive portrayal of women. While I might agree more strongly with the left-leaning stance of writers like Ian Banks and Kim Stanley Robinson than with Varley’s libertarian sympathies, I enjoyed Steel Beach and would be willing to pick up another Varley novel if I come across one.

Links: Human Evolution and the Colonization of Space (Plus Fast and Furious)

There are several current events I considered writing about in this entry to my blog: the elections in Greece, the presidential run-off election in Egypt against the backdrop of power grabs by the military, the questionable impeachment of Paraguay's president, the terrible Supreme Court decision overturning the Montana law restricting corporate spending (and thus upholding their likewise terrible Citizens United decision), the much better though still imperfect Supreme Court decision overturning most of Arizona's draconian anti-immigrant law, or President Obama's excellent but overly delayed executive order halting deportation of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US as children (Time had an excellent article on young undocumented immigrants in a recent issue, but it's not available online). But instead of writing anything about things going on now, I'm just providing a link to a long but fascinating article on how humans may evolve when we colonize space. It has a number of serious typos that lead me to suspect it was scanned and transferred to the Internet by a computer, but otherwise it is highly readable and quite thought-provoking. Of course most of it is pure speculation, dealing as it does with things that will happen far in the future if they happen at all, but since we may start seeing the first truly permanent human settlements away from Earth in the next few decades or at least during this century, it seems reasonable to start thinking about it. Coincidentally, I just finished a book that deals with some of the same issues, a science fiction novel by John Varley called Steel Beach, which I hope to briefly discuss in a future post along with other recent reads.

I was going to limit this post to that one link, but yesterday I happened to read an article on the Fast and Furious operation, a story that I hadn't been following closely but which has gotten a lot of attention in the US, particularly in Washington. The irony of Republicans, who along with the NRA bear a lot of the responsibility for the sheer volume of absurdly powerful guns that are sold in the US, using the controversy around the operation to attack the Obama administration was apparent to me, but I accepted the standard view that the original operation was at the very best incompetently run. This article, however, provides an entirely different view. Whether its version of events is the correct one I can't say, but it certainly sounds plausible and seems to be backed up by considerable evidence, though there is naturally a substantial "he said, she said" element in the testimony of the agents involved. In any case, it provides an interesting alternative perspective.

The Allure of Street Maps: The Streets of Taipei, Webb Chapel Road, and US Highway 75

Recently I bought an old street map of Taipei dating from the late 1960s. Since I knew that Taipei had been built up a lot over the past few decades, I was curious about which roads had been built back then, and which areas were still completely undeveloped. A few changes I knew about, as they happened after I first came to Taiwan or not long before, but others were new to me. Among other things, I found that several of the districts in Taipei have had their names changed in the intervening time. For instance, the district now officially known as Wanhua (萬華) was once called Longshandistrict (龍山區), after the famous old temple at the center of the settlement originally known in Hoklo as Bangka (艋舺). The district now known as Zhongzheng (中正區), after the name the dictator Chiang Kai-shek gave himself was simply the City Center district (城中區); it was probably renamed after he died, a number of years after this map was published. However, this doesn’t mean Chiang wasn’t shameless enough to have things named after him when he was alive; the road in front of the Presidential Office was known as Jieshou Road (介壽路), which can be translated to “Long live Chiang Kai-shek” (“Jie” is a character in his name, and “shou” means long life), and the road that ran in front of the Taipei train station and then more or less parallel to the railroad running east was called Zhongzheng Road. The part near the train station was later made part of a new east-west thoroughfare then being built named Zhongxiao Road, and the part that angled northwest along the railroad was renamed Bade Road.

Aside from these interesting discoveries, it was also interesting to discover that in blocks to the east that were almost completely undeveloped, there were already a few smaller streets, most of them with more winding or diagonal routes than the big roads that were in the process of being built, or the smaller streets that were built later. Many of these older roads are still in existence, though some of their names have been changed and sections of them are often gone. Several of them still stand out somewhat on today’s maps in comparison to all the other streets with their straight lines and right angles.

Looking at this old street map of Taipei and comparing it to today’s maps also brought to mind my early interest in maps, which dates back as far as I can remember. So today I’m going to reminisce a bit about some of the streets and roads that fascinated me way back then. This sort of thing is really only interesting to geography buffs, and not even many of them will be that interested in my musings, unless they are familiar with the roads in question. So those readers not into geography might want to search the other entries in this blog for something more to their fancy.

I first became interested in maps when I was a preschooler. My mother tells me she drew a map of our living room, I believe it was, for me when I was two or three, which sparked my interest (I rather quickly surpassed her in map reading, as I have a vastly better sense of direction). By the time I started elementary school, I was already in the habit of poring over street maps of Dallas, the city we lived in, and tracing the routes of streets I was familiar with to their ends. I did the same with maps of Texas and even the US. In later years, my interest in maps grew beyond following the routes of individual streets and highways to political and historical maps, but today I want to reflect on that fascination with street maps and with particular roads.

When I first got into street maps, I very quickly picked out favorite streets, roads and highways. While it’s understandable that I would be particularly interested in roads I knew, I would even have a decided preference for one road I knew over another, and come up with various reasons for the superiority of my choice. I had a favorite in each of three categories of roads: small residential streets, larger city streets, and highways. My favorite residential street, not surprisingly, was the one I lived on in preschool and early elementary school, a street called Coral Hills Drive (we moved onto another nearby street when I was nine). This was one of the longest residential streets in our immediate neighborhood, as it looped around the middle of the area. In one or two places, a street crossing it even had a stop sign (usually there were no traffic signs on any of these smaller streets). So there was no doubt in my mind it was the most important street in the neighborhood – all the more so because I lived on it.

Of the larger city streets, my favorite was one called Webb Chapel Road (sometimes written “Webb’s Chapel Road”). I’m not entirely sure why I picked this one over similar roads nearby like Marsh Lane and Forest Lane, but I think it was because when I was about four or five we would sometimes walk a short distance along it to go to the neighborhood supermarket (which went through a number of incarnations, though at first it was an A&P), and also because the church where I went to kindergarten was located on it. Both Webb Chapel Road and Marsh Lane had names that dated back to the 19th century white settlement of Dallas County. Isaac Webb established a church in Farmers Branch, located on what became Webb Chapel Road. Marsh Lane led to the land owned by another early settler, Thomas Marsh. When I was young, Webb Chapel Road was a multilane road down to Royal Lane, just southwest of where we lived. South of there it narrowed to a two-lane road, though it was widened in the subsequent decade or so until by the time I was in high school it was multilane for its entire length. Its northern terminus was in Carrolton at Belt Line Road (another interesting road to trace on a map, as it circled nearly the entire city of Dallas, mostly through the suburbs). Its southern terminus was at the edge of Love Field Airport, just south of Northwest Highway. I would trace the route on our city maps and relish the occasional opportunities to actually go to one or the other of the road’s ends.

My favorite highways were without question Interstate 45 and US Highway 75. They were the highways we followed to go to Galveston to visit my maternal grandfather (who when I was in elementary school moved into an apartment in Dallas – near the southern end of Webb Chapel Road) and to go to Huntsville to visit my paternal grandparents after they moved there from California when I was about five. Interstate 45 was relatively short for an interstate highway; indeed technically it wasn’t one at all, as it didn’t extend outside of Texas. It ran from Dallas to Galveston (I should note that while I’m using the past tense, for most of these roads their routes are still the same today – except in the case of US Highway 75), which is a substantial distance, but not nearly as long as many other interstate highways.

Interstate 45 paralleled the route of the older US Highway 75 and for much of the route they were the same, though Interstate 45 bypassed the centers of most of the towns on the way, while US Highway 75 went through them. While I rarely had the chance to go any distance north on US Highway 75 in person, when tracing it in this direction on US maps I made an interesting discovery. Not only did it run all the way north through Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota to the Canadian border, it actually continued into Canada. Of course in Canada it was not a US Highway, but it kept the same number, extending as Manitoba Highway 75 to Winnipeg. Most other US Highways that reached Canada had a different number designation on the other side of the border. While there may have been other international highways like 75, I didn’t discover any. So once again I was able to feel that I had picked a particularly special road as my favorite in its class.

Sadly US Highway 75 is no longer what it once was. It seems that the part of the highway running south from Dallas was decommissioned, with parts of it becoming Texas State Highway 75, and others being re-designated as parts of other highways. The rest of US Highway 75 is apparently intact, as is Manitoba Highway 75 (though the US-Canada border crossing on the highway was closed a few years ago, so it’s not possible to stay on 75 all the way). But the part that first attracted me to the highway is gone. What’s surprising is that this was done way back in 1987, when I still lived in the US and had even started driving myself (though most of my highway driving in subsequent years was between Dallas and Austin, and so on a different route). If I noticed at the time that US Highway 75 had disappeared south of Dallas, I don’t remember doing so. A few years ago I happened to look up the highway online and found out it had be decommissioned. Of course this is no longer the big deal to me that it would have been when I was five or six, but it’s vaguely disappointing nevertheless.

But things change, whether for the better or not, and it’s still fun to follow the changes. The next thing I need to do is get some street maps of Taipei from the era of Japanese rule; not only do I want to take a close look at the layout of the city then, I’d like to find out what the major roads were called before the KMT came to Taiwan and renamed them all. So nearly four decades after I first started to look at maps, they still fascinate me.

Commercial space flight and Egyptian elections

One positive news item from the last week was the launch of SpaceX's unmanned Dragon spacecraft and its successful docking with the International Space Station, making it the first commercial spacecraft to dock with another spacecraft. Though the mission isn't over (Dragon still has to return to Earth), this marks a major step towards developing a private space industry. While I'm certainly not one of those who believes that private enterprise is inherently better than government programs, there are advantages to having private companies becoming involved in developing space. While the initial steps into space inevitably had to be made by large governments like those of the US and Russia, since only they had the resources, having only a half dozen governmental space programs, all subject to the vagaries of political and economic circumstances, involved in launching spacecraft limits the possibilities for developing space.

As I mentioned in discussing the recently announced plan to mine asteroids, I wouldn't want to see space treated the way Earth sometimes has, with companies engaging in indiscriminate and destructive exploitation. However, most of the current crop of private entrepreneurs involved in space, while they may want to make a profit, seem to care just as much or more about advancing space exploration in positive ways. This is something that I am very much in favor of, no matter who is doing it. So I am glad to see SpaceX succeed, and I hope its competitors will also be successful in their ongoing efforts. It will also be interesting to see how this mission affects debates over funding for NASA. There has been talk in Congress about cutting some of the funding for developing commercial space flight, so that rather than funding efforts by two companies, NASA would have to pick one. This seems a rather odd thing for many of the ostensibly pro-free enterprise people in Congress (particularly from the Republican party) to advocate, as you'd think they'd want to encourage competition. On the other hand, they want to restore more funding for planetary exploration, a part of NASA's budget that was cut in the Obama administration's proposal, and I agree with those who want that funding restored. But then I am in favor of increasing NASA's overall budget, despite the budget problems the US has, so that all of these efforts can be fully funded. Admittedly, in the current climate, this is unlikely, but perhaps successful space missions like this one will help change a few minds on both sides of the political divide in Washington, not to mention among the public.

Another major news item was the first round of voting in Egypt's first open presidential election. The two top vote-getters, who will face each other in a runoff election, were the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi (or Morsy) and Ahmed Shafik, who was the last prime minister under Mubarak and is supposedly on good terms with the military leadership. This is not a particularly encouraging result, as a win by Morsi would leave the Brotherhood in control of both the presidency and the legislature, which might be dangerous to Egypt's status as a relatively secular nation. Granted, the Brotherhood is fairly moderate (especially in comparison with the ultra-conservative Salafists) and disclaims any interest in immediately imposing Sharia law. But Morsi did make some rather disturbingly fundamentalist-sounding remarks in campaigning, though that may have been mainly an effort to attract Salafist support. A victory by Shafik, on the other hand, would be viewed by many as a restoration of the old regime. Shafik claims that he has no intention of going back to the Mubarak era, but few of those who were active in the revolution trust him. His "law and order" platform appeals to many ordinary Egyptians tired of the chaos of the revolution, but unless he openly calls for reform of the police agencies responsible for all the human rights violations committed under Mubarak (and since), I certainly wouldn't support him. It's no wonder one Egyptian liberal said being asked to choose between Morsi and Shafik is like being asked how you want to commit suicide. If I were an Egyptian, I certainly would have a hard time choosing between these two dubious candidates. There was at least one positive sign for the future in the election, though, in that leftist candidate Hamdeen Sabahi unexpectedly came in third place. It would have been far better, though, if the runoff were between him and Morsi, or better yet the more moderate Islamist Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, who only came in fourth, despite leading in some pre-election polls. As it is, Egyptians will be stuck with Morsi or Shafik (probably Morsi).

As an aside, going back to space, an unusual astronomical event will be taking place a week from now (June 5 or 6, depending on location). Venus will pass in front of the Sun as seen from Earth, an event known as a transit of Venus. These take place in pairs eight years apart, separated by gaps of over a century. The last transit of Venus took place in 2004, but the next won't occur until 2117. So if it is a clear day, it will be worth making the effort required to see it (of course one can't look directly at the sun without special protection, so one of the standard methods for observing the sun -- which will generally be mentioned in any article about the transit -- has to be used). I'm not certain I'll manage to see it myself, since we frequently get cloudy weather. In any case most of the transit as seen in Taiwan will take place in the morning, so I'll probably only see the later part even if the weather is good. Still, I hope to at least get a short look at some point.

Some links and news briefs

Since I haven't had time to write about anything at length lately, here are a few links to interesting articles.

In this news article, a human rights report issued by the Taiwan government pointed to the concentration of media ownership as a matter for concern. This is certainly a serious problem, particularly given the pro-China slant of one of the largest media groups, the Want Want Group. Despite their silly name, their power in Taiwanese media is a serious matter. There are other problems with Taiwan's media not mentioned here, such as overly partisan reporting and an obsession with trivial, sensationalized stories (not that these problems are exclusive to Taiwan). With regard to the concentration of media ownership, I might note that in another article I read recently, on problems with media freedom in Balkan countries such as Macedonia, someone mentioned that the problem there wasn't a lack of media outlets, but that there were two many competing for too little money, resulting in a tendency to go for easy sensationalism rather than tackling difficult stories, and that they would be better off with fewer but better funded media entities. This makes sense, but obviously there's a happy medium where you've got enough news sources to ensure that a variety of viewpoints are being presented, but not so many that they have engage in cutthroat competition. For that matter, as I noted, even with a narrow concentration of media power in a few hands Taiwanese media still engage in sensationalism. But this is a complex issue, with the media and the public both deserving a share of the blame, and an in-depth discussion will have to wait for another day.

A big news story internationally was Chen Guangcheng's escape from his village to the US embassy in Beijing (two of the many related stories can be read here and here). The thuggish behavior of the local officials in Chen's home village in Shandong has been in the news before, but his escape forced the US to deal directly with his plight. I won't comment on how they did except to say that they could have been more forceful in their dealings with China. As for China, what is particularly disgraceful is that they openly tolerate this kind of behavior by local officials -- at least until the local people rise up in large numbers, in which case they will sometimes be forced to step in. While Chen is hardly the only dissident in China to suffer from severe oppression and mistreatment by the authorities (something which neither the US nor concerned people around the world should forget), his case further exposes how far China has to go to become a nation that shows even minimal respect for human rights.

Finally, here are a couple more links to articles on unrelated topics (though the first has some relationship to the two above): one is about how a judge in the US ruled that a recent law relating to detention of terror suspects violates the First Amendment, and the second is about the pluses and minuses of the huge charitable foundation started by Bill and Melinda Gates. Both of these articles raise some interesting points that are worth expanding on, but for now I'll let them speak for themselves, other than to say I think the judge made the right ruling.

Mining the Asteroids

Recently there have been some news reports about a new business venture formed by a number of prominent billionaires from the IT industry that aims to do something that science fiction writers and futurists have been talking about for a long time -- mining asteroids. While this may strike some people as overly ambitious, they do seem to have a fairly well thought out plan. Some commentators have nevertheless pointed out that it may still take decades to make money on such a venture. While the platinum-group metals that the consortium wants to mine are immensely valuable, the up-front costs of prospecting, mining, and transporting all those heavy metals back to Earth will be immense as well. Others, however, believe that it will be feasible for the group to make a profit in the foreseeable future. Furthermore, as far as humanity as a whole is concerned, if the venture succeeds, it will have benefits beyond financial profits for its backers. Humanity will have taken the first major step toward long term exploitation of space, and the material the group mines will provide a great boost to technological development, as many of the metals in question are vital to many modern devices.

Another question that has been raised about this kind of venture is an ethical one. Is it right for humanity to start strip-mining in space, considering all the damage that has been done by such practices on Earth? I have mixed feelings about this question myself. Some may argue that we shouldn't worry about environmental issues in an environment that lacks any form of life and therefore has no ecology to be disrupted by our destructiveness. But I disagree with the notion that life alone has real value. After all, the value most people see in a place like the Grand Canyon doesn't come primarily from the plant and animal life it is home to. There are a lot of spectacular spots in other places in the Solar System, such as the canyons and volcanoes of Mars, that should be preserved as much as possible. Certainly, as has been pointed out when people talk about mining the Moon for helium-3 (for use as a fuel for nuclear fusion), few people on Earth would be particularly happy to see the familiar face of the Moon covered with huge scars left by the kind of mining that would probably be necessary.

On the other hand, for humanity to have any hope of expanding beyond the Earth, it will be necessary to exploit the resources of space in some way, and asteroids seem like a reasonable place to start. While many of them are no doubt very fascinating places, the fact remains that most of them do not have the aesthetic appeal of most larger Solar System bodies. What's more, there are a lot of them, so taking one or two of them apart doesn't seem like as great a loss as it might be if that were not the case, especially since many of the near-Earth asteroids that are the most likely targets may well end up being destroyed sometime in the next few hundred million years anyway by hitting the Earth. Since mining a few of them will eliminate any threat they might pose someday, I would on the whole be in favor of doing it. However, I would also be in favor of insisting that the targets for mining be chosen with great care, and that planetary scientists be given an opportunity to take a good look at them before the mining robots move in. While I am not against exploiting the resources of the Solar System, I think it should be done as responsibly as possible, in contrast to the careless destruction that humanity has often unleashed on Earth.

What I've Been Reading – January 2012 to April 2012

On the Beach by Nevil Shute
Nevil Shute’s On the Beach, published in 1957, is one of the earlier and better-known of a kind of post-apocalyptic science fiction novel that was understandably common during the Cold War, namely those set in a world where a nuclear war has taken place. While in some such novels the war takes place in the course of the story (for example in Pat Frank’s Alas Babylon) and in others the war has taken place many years previously (such as in The Road or Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Wild Shore), in On the Beach the war ended only a few months previously. The war itself seems to have been the result of a combination of nuclear proliferation (such that even several small nations have nuclear weapons), misunderstandings, and opportunism, such that almost everyone with nuclear weapons used them (interestingly, though the book was written before the Sino-Soviet split in the days when most in the West thought of communism as a monolithic menace, in the novel the USSR and China also attacked each other). What’s more, most of them used bombs with cobalt that made them even more radioactive than standard nuclear weapons. The result is that most of the world is so radioactive as to be uninhabitable, and the radioactive fallout is being gradually carried southward to the as yet untouched regions of South America, southern Africa, and Australia, where the story is set.

The novel focuses on a small group of people and the ways in which they cope with the impending threat. Peter Holmes is an Australian naval officer who serves as liaison officer with American submarine captain Dwight Towers, who commands the last functioning vessel in that part of the world. Towers is introduced to Moria Davidson, a friend of Holmes and his wife Mary, and they become attracted to each other. Holmes and John Osborne, a scientist who is a distant cousin of Davidson, join Towers and his crew on two trips with the submarine to investigate conditions in the irradiated north, with the second voyage going as far as the American coast. After this voyage, the various characters, like everyone around them, are left to find ways to fill their time as the end approaches.

For much of the novel, many of the characters act as if there is no disaster looming over them, doing things such as planting gardens that won’t grow until after the radiation comes or in Towers’ case buying presents for his children in America, who are certainly dead. The same characters at other times acknowledge the coming end; it’s almost as if they are consciously avoiding thinking about what will happen by living their lives in as normal a manner as possible. A few people, such as the almost absurdly naïve Mary Holmes, really do find it difficult to believe that the radiation threat is real; others, such as Davidson and Osborne, are more realistic but still find ways to cope. Of course, as the radiation gets closer, it becomes harder and harder for people to act as if everything is normal, and things begin to break down, but not into violence (except in the form of dangerous auto racing like Osborne and some others engage in), just fewer and fewer people bothering to show up for work or keep things clean.

Shute’s portrayal of the way people might face an unavoidable looming disaster does at times seem a bit optimistic. I am inclined to think there would be a bit more riotous living. Not that there isn’t any in the novel; Moria Davidson at first spends a lot of time drinking, only quitting because she falls in love with Towers, and an elderly relative of her and Osborne joins with other members of his club in an effort to drink up the club’s entire store of alcohol. But Towers, for instance, continues to faithfully follow the regulations of the American navy even when his submarine is all that’s left of it and he’s the highest ranking American naval officer in the world. What’s more, he insists on remaining loyal to his dead wife and so even when he takes a fishing trip to the hills with Davidson when the end is near, he refuses to sleep with her. Interestingly, when the book was made into a successful movie starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, and Fred Astaire, this was changed, constituting perhaps the movie’s biggest deviation from the novel. Shute apparently was quite upset with the change, and even Peck (who played Towers) apparently argued against it. They do have a point in that Towers’ devotion to duty is a major component of his character, and this is violated by his having sex with Davidson. But nowadays it does seem a little difficult to believe even a man like that would turn down sex with a woman he is strongly attracted to if he also knows his wife is dead and he himself only has a short time to live. But perhaps it would have been more likely in the more conservative era in which the book takes place (there are a number of other little things in the book that indicate how much has changed in the decades since, such as how much smoking goes on – the officers even smoke in the submarine! – and in the roles of women, though Davidson is refreshingly intelligent, helping to make up for characters like Mary Holmes).

Regardless, On the Beach is an interesting and at times moving read. As might be expected, it doesn’t have what could be called a happy ending, but for the most part it isn’t overwhelmingly bleak or depressing. Nevertheless, it makes a strong case against the use of nuclear weapons (though some might dispute the accuracy of Shute’s portrayal of the dangers of radiation), so it’s no surprise that both it and the movie based on it played a major role in getting the anti-nuke movement going. It’s also thought-provoking; if the world was faced with an unavoidable disaster that would kill everyone at more or less the same time (highly unlikely, of course, but not completely impossible – an asteroid or comet on a collision course with Earth that was discovered to late to deflect would fit the bill), how would society react? Would most people live their last days with a degree of dignity, as they do in this book, or would everyone just go crazy? And how would they face the very end, particularly those with families including young children (an issue addressed poignantly in the novel)? For those who like a decently-written book that speculates on this kind of thing, On the Beach is worth picking up.

Traveling Music by Neil Peart
Among the non-fiction books I have read in the past few months was Traveling Music by Neil Peart, which is a travelogue, an autobiography and a book about music rolled into one. Peart, for those who don’t know, first gained fame as the drummer and lyricist for the Canadian rock band Rush, but he has also written a number of books that have been well received, though this is the only one I have read so far. Since he is a professional musician, it should come as no surprise that the book’s music theme is tightly intertwined with the other themes of the book. Nevertheless, it seems more appropriate to address what Peart has to say about music in my music blog, so I will mainly concentrate on other aspects of the book here.

The book has a rather ambitious structure, though that may not surprise those familiar with the music of Rush. The chapters are labeled Verse One, Chorus One and so on, and include an Intro, a Middle Eight and a Rideout. A line of lyrics introduces each one, and all these lines, with a few more lines between each of them, make up a song (or rather the lyrics for a song, since as far as I know they haven’t been set to music). The Verse chapters tell the story of a road trip Peart took from his LA area home to Big Bend National Park in Texas, and the music he listened to in his car on the way, interspersed with his recollections about earlier trips, often by motorcycle, to the places he was passing through or similar places elsewhere. The chorus chapters tell the story of his youth, from his childhood in Ontario and the development of his passion for music, to his move to England at 18 to pursue his musical dreams and his return to Canada where he joined Rush. The Middle Eight mostly covers the part of the road trip actually spent in Big Bend, with the following chapter (Verse Four) covering his return trip to California. The structure breaks down a little with the final chorus, as this leaps from his joining Rush to a bicycle trip he took in Africa, but as this is perhaps the most interesting part of the whole book, it is hard to object. The final verse covers events after his Big Bend trip, especially a big concert Rush played at along with bands like AC/DC and the Rolling Stones in Toronto to help the city recover from the problems caused by the SARS epidemic, and the Rideout is essentially an epilogue on how he put the book together.

It perhaps shouldn’t be a surprise that Peart is a reasonably decent writer, considering all the wordy, literate lyrics he has written for Rush. At first I felt he might be a little too wordy, as his prose occasionally felt a bit strained, but either it got less so further along or I just got used to his writing style (probably the latter). His travel stories kept my interest, as did his tales about his early life. Various little things stuck out for me. One was a place early in the book where he quotes himself from an interview as saying he’d read that “everyone has an inner age that they think they are, regardless of their actual age. I really think of myself as being about thirty.” As I have had similar thoughts (I certainly have trouble thinking of myself as forty), this resonated with me, as did another thing he said early in the book, in this case quoting from a letter to a friend: “I’m constantly tormenting myself over some dumb thing I said or did five, ten, or fifteen years ago. Actually flinching at the memory, and cursing myself. Like that helps.” I do exactly the same thing, so in some ways it’s nice to know that others do it too.

One thing I could not help being somewhat curious about was his political beliefs. It is well known that Rush’s first really successful album, 2112, was largely inspired by the work of Ayn Rand. However, while he only made a few isolated comments in the book that indicated his thoughts on political, social and environmental issues, it was clear that he was not by any means an extreme conservative or even a libertarian along the lines of Ron Paul. A few comments hint at an opposition to the invasion of Iraq, which had only recently occurred. While this is also a position that many libertarians like Paul held, Peart also expresses sympathy for conservation efforts, indicating a much “greener” bent than most libertarians, who are content to let developers and businesses do what they want to the environment. At one point, he calls himself a “homophile”, in reference to a particular fondness for gay people. In talking about his travels in Africa, he also talks about his efforts to support the promotion of birth control in Africa, as what he had seen made him realize birth control is essential to solving the problems of poverty in the region (as he points out, simply giving people medicine and food may prevent many children from dying, but unless the birth rate is cut, this means more people and thus greater strain on limited resources). He strongly criticizes a statement the Pope made against birth control in Africa, a great contrast to the stance of the right wing in America recently over the requirement that birth control be included in insurance plans at religious-affiliated institutions.

Peart only mentions Ayn Rand herself in a couple of paragraphs, where he talks about picking up a copy of The Fountainhead in London. He says it influenced him a lot, but also that he grew “into and, largely out of Ayn Rand’s orbit…along the journey to a more nuanced philosophy and politics.” Admittedly, it is not difficult to be more nuanced than Rand. Having recently managed to read nearly a third of her lengthy polemic in the guise of a novel, Atlas Shrugged (which I will write about when I finally force myself to finish it, or when I decide to give up), I know that her world view is almost completely lacking in nuance. Nevertheless, it is a credit to Peart’s sense as well as his intelligence that he has moved beyond her way of thinking. I learned later that he has been more specific about his political orientation in other places, referring to himself as a “left-leaning libertarian” or “bleeding-heart libertarian”, the latter in a blog post where he is expressing sympathy for undocumented immigrants and dislike for the excessive power of the Border Patrol. Aside from Rand, Peart mentions a number of other books and authors who influenced him, including, unsurprisingly, the Lord of the Rings and a little more unexpectedly a sci-fi novel by Samuel R. Delany. He also quotes Barbara Kingsolver, author of The Poisonwood Bible (who as a liberal feminist and advocate for equality and biodiversity is almost a polar opposite of Rand).

Peart does occasionally show traces of the kind of self-centeredness that one might expect from a disciple of Rand in that he sometimes seems to find it difficult to see things from the perspective of others. He mentions that someone called him “Machiavellian” for recruiting a guitar player he liked out of another band. Though the comment obviously stuck with him, he still seemed to have missed the point, as he remarks “I didn’t see the harm – I’d have a better guitar player, and the guitar player would have a better band.” True enough, but it was probably not so great for the other members of the guitarist’s original band. He also expresses little sympathy for fans who approach him in public. Though from what he says he isn’t actively hostile to them, he certainly seems uncomfortable with being recognized. To some extent, I can sympathize, as I can imagine that it gets tiresome eventually. I don’t particular care for being stared at or bothered while I’m engaged in something either, so I can understand why he wouldn’t like it. On the other hand, I think I might mind it a little less if people stared at me or approached me because they admired my personal accomplishments (rather than simply because I’m of European ancestry, which accounts for most attention I receive from strangers in Asia). It must be admitted that at least one of the "fans" Peart tells about was rather creepy, and encounters of that sort would certainly make most people more concerned about their privacy. Regardless, Peart doesn’t come across as the most easy-going person one could meet, though he would no doubt be quite interesting to talk to if you could engage him in a conversation (and for that matter, I can’t claim to be always be considerate or friendly towards strangers, so I can hardly condemn Peart for a few flaws of that sort).

All in all, I’d say Traveling Music is a successful book. Having found the part about one of his cycling trips in Africa (in which he and the small group of fellow cyclists he traveled with visited Mali and Togo, among other places) particularly interesting, perhaps someday I’ll check out his first book, which talks about his first African bicycle tour. I’m also curious about the book before this one, which tells of the tragedies that struck him in 1997 and 1998 when his daughter was killed in a car accident and his wife died of cancer, and of the long motorcycle journeys he took to help him recover. While if I had to choose one travel writer to read, I’d probably pick someone like Bill Bryson, Peart writes as well as many others, and while I may not make a special effort to search out his books, I would not be adverse to reading more of them.

Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn: The Stone of Farewell and To Green Angel Tower by Tad Williams
My fiction reading time over the past couple of months was mainly taken up by The Stone of Farewell and To Green Angel Tower, which make up the remainder of Tad William’s fantasy epic Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn (I wrote about the first book, The Dragonbone Chair, in an earlier post). Generally speaking, the later books fulfill the expectations set by the first. We see more of the people and creatures that populate the world of Osten Ard, and the plot becomes steadily more complex, to the point where I was beginning to wonder how Williams would manage to resolve all the plot threads and mysteries satisfactorily. For the most part, he does so, even though it means the last few chapters of the book are packed full of revelations and last-minute plot twists. But for most of these, there is enough foreshadowing throughout the epic that they are not completely jarring, and in a few cases I had more or less guessed what the characters would learn some time before they did. While some might find a few of the coincidences too neat, Williams handles them well enough that most readers will not mind, especially those who prefer to have all their questions answered at the end (the only minor thing that I didn’t see any explanation for was some of the items in the villain Pyrates’ tower).

In the course of the epic, Williams occasionally explores some deeper issues. The whole story is infused with a moral ambiguity that sets it apart from earlier epics like the Lord of the Rings. Several of the major villains only descended into evil as a result of misguided attempts to do what is right, and the heroes are also forced into morally ambiguous actions. Issues of racial prejudice and ethnic stereotypes crop up even among those supposedly on the same side. The protagonist Simon grapples with issues of maturity and self-identity, as well as broader social issues like when waging war with all its attendant horrors is an acceptable course to take. Simon is still sometimes maddeningly foolish, as is the princess Miriamele, who like Simon is still in her mid teens. At times the failure of Simon and others to fully share their knowledge with their friends is puzzling, though admittedly much of it is in the form of dreams which the dreamer may not always remember clearly upon waking. Miriamele’s uncle Josua, meanwhile, struggles with problems of leadership, with his tendency to feel personally responsible for every one of his followers sometimes interfering with his ability to make difficult decisions. Other characters struggle with various personal issues as well as the fight with the enemy. Though the characterizations are not perfect, they are good enough to make most of the characters more interesting than those that populate many other fantasy novels, and Williams’ handling of deeper issues, while not always subtle, is nevertheless subtler and defter than, say, R.A. Salvatore’s. The world of Osten Ard is also depicted fairly vividly. While it may not have the depth of Tolkien’s Middle Earth or the gritty realism of China Miéville’s Bas-Lag, it is nonetheless interesting and serves well as a setting for the novels.

I don’t want to delve into the plot here, in part because it is too long and complicated and in part because I don’t want to give anything away for those who haven’t read the books. I will say that while Williams is not as prone to kill off major characters as George R.R. Martin, he does do so on occasion, so the reader can never be quite sure who will survive. While the books are not as dark as some others I’ve read, the characters do sometimes get into some pretty nasty situations, and they don’t always escape unscathed. For the most part, the plot moves along fairly quickly. Occasionally the series does feel a bit like a “Bloated Epic”, as Williams himself called it in his acknowledgements, threatening to collapse under its own weight. But generally speaking Williams is able to juggle all the plot lines in a way that holds the reader’s interest. The series is definitely on the long side, with each of the first two books and each half of the last book being 700 to 800 pages long, so the whole thing totals somewhere in the neighborhood of 3000 pages. But then George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series is already on its fifth book out of projected seven, each of them of about the same length as the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn books, and Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series will total 14 books when the last of them is published, so in comparison, the time investment required for Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn doesn’t seem like much. For those who enjoy lengthy fantasy epics but don’t necessarily want to spend half a year or more on one (or even longer waiting for the next volume in an unfinished series), Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn is a good choice.

Good election news

Having recently done a post on a couple of elections where no positive result could have been expected, it's good to be able to celebrate some more positive election news. On April 1, a by-election was held for 45 seats in the Burmese parliament, and despite some irregularities and other issues making the elections less than completely free and fair, Aung San Suu Kyi and her party won in a landslide, taking 43 seats. They even won seats in the Burmese capital Naypyidaw, which was only built in last decade and is populated mainly by government officials, military personnel, and their families. This result clearly shows the enduring popularity of Aung San Suu Kyi and the desire of most Burmese for further reform and democratization. The government seems to have accepted this result, which was not the case with the 1990 elections that the NLD also won in a landslide. But of course one reason for that is the one which mutes any jubilation those of us who support positive change in Burma may feel at this outcome, namely that even with this victory, the NLD will be a tiny minority in a parliament dominated by the military and its proxies. The bicameral Burmese parliament has a total of 664 seats, so the NLD's voice in the government will remain small. The real test of the government's willingness to allow real democracy will come in the next few years, first through how they work with the NLD and then when the next general elections come and the NLD has a chance to take a larger share of power (though according to the constitution imposed by the military, they appoint 25% of the seats). Also, despite the great improvements we have seen, reports indicate that serious human rights violations continue in some areas. So while these elections are a good sign, there is still a long way to go.

Going back a little further to late March, another positive election result came in the presidential run-off election in Mali. In the past few years, incumbent president Abdoulaye Wade made a number of moves transparently designed to help him stay in office. He tried to lower the minimum percentage of votes required to win a presidential election in the first round from 50% to 25%, though he dropped that effort in the face of massive protests (if he had succeeded, he would have won in the first round of this year's elections, held in late February, as he was the top vote getter with a little under 35%). Then, early this year, he got a ruling from the nation's Constitutional Court that the constitutional limit on presidential terms did not apply to his first term in office, as it began before the constitution came into force, which meant he could run for a third term. In a maneuver reminiscent of Vladimir Putin, he had also restored the seven-year terms that Senegal's presidents had previously enjoyed, after a brief switch to five-year terms. But despite (or perhaps rather because of) all this, when it came down to the run-off between him and Macky Sall, he lost overwhelmingly, even losing in his own constituency. Nationwide, Sall (who promised to restore five-year terms) got almost two-thirds of the votes after gaining the support of the other major candidates from the first round. Ironically enough, what makes this result particularly positive is the reaction of Wade himself, who openly conceded defeat and wished Sall good luck. Despite his maneuvering before the election, Wade has to be commended for heeding the voice of the people, unlike many other African leaders (Zimbabwe's Mugabe being the most egregious current example). While how well Sall will govern remains to be seen, Senegal's immediate future looks better than that of many other countries in the region, such as Mali (where I almost feel sorry for the leaders of the recent coup, who seem to have bitten off more than they could chew).