What I've Been Reading - 2010, part 2

Among my recent literary diversions was Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. This is a novel set in the Civil War and was the basis for a major Hollywood film a few years ago. The main characters are Inman, a Confederate soldier, and Ada, a woman who had only recently moved to the area Inman came from when the war broke out. The story switches between the two characters, alternating between the journey of Inman back toward home and Ada's struggle to survive and keep her farm near the titular mountain going. The story is apparently based in part on the story of an actual great-great uncle of Charles Frazier named William P. Inman. I wasn't really sure what to expect from this one, but it turned out to be reasonably gripping without being overly shallow. What I particularly appreciated (especially having read Gone With The Wind and being aware of the peculiar nostalgia with which many Southerners view the Civil War) was that despite being written by a North Carolinian and having two North Carolinians as protagonists, the tone of the novel is highly critical of the war, slavery, and the Southern elite who led their states to war, while not painting the Union soldiers as any better. The Civil War is, probably quite accurately, portrayed as an awful time full of desperate characters doing desperate deeds, and others just trying to survive. In fact, a major theme of the novel is how people cope with great hardships.

Having recently acquired two books which collect all of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories (The First Book of Lankhmar and The Second Book of Lankhmar), I decided to start working my way through these fantasy classics. For those who aren't familiar with them, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are two iconic sword and sorcery heroes, on a par with characters like Robert E. Howard's Conan. The two were created by Leiber and his friend Harry Fischer (who also wrote part of one of the stories), and based in part on them (Fafhrd on Leiber and the Gray Mouser on Fischer). Fafhrd is a hugely tall barbarian warrior from the frozen north, and the Gray Mouser is a small but very quick rogue who dresses in gray and occasionally dabbles in sorcery. The two live largely on work as mercenaries and out-and-out thievery and they indulge heavily in drinking and women, but at the same time they are generally decent and good-natured, never engaging in wanton cruelty. Both are intelligent and witty, with the Mouser particularly known for his sardonic humor, but they are also very human and occasionally get fooled. They were among the chief inspirations for the protagonists of Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road, a novel I discussed a few months ago.

The Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories are set in the world of Nehwon, a world that bears some resemblance to Earth in ancient and medieval times, but that is also home to sorcerers, monsters, and other fantastic creatures. The greatest city of Nehwon is the large, decadent city of Lankhmar, where many of the stories take place, though the heroes also travel widely around Nehwon. The stories were mostly published as short stories beginning in 1939 (not all in order of their internal chronology) and only later collected into 7 books (the first four of which are included in The First Book of Lankhmar), so each book is essentially a collection of several separate stories, some more clearly linked than others and in some cases with gaps in terms of the characters' histories. I started the series with Swords and Deviltry and Swords Against Death, the first two books included in the omnibus The First Book of Lankhmar, and at the time I started writing this blog entry I was reading the third, Swords in the Mist [Update: I finished it a few days later]. Leiber's writing is generally quite vivid and has nice touches of humor. Due to the nature of his heroes (who are very much testosterone-driven), it is more likely to appeal to men than women. Leiber generally doesn't attempt to deal with any deep, serious themes, though in the Devourers that appear in "Bazaar of the Bizarre", extra-dimensional merchants who deceive their customers that they are selling wonderful things when it is actually all worthless trash, some might see an attack on unscrupulous businesspeople of our own world. Likewise, one might see the various foreign religions based on suffering martyrs in "Lean Times in Lankhmar" as something of a parody (though not a particularly hostile one) of Christianity, at least as it would have appeared to the average Roman in the early Roman Empire.

As I mentioned, both Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are imperfect heroes, not only in their sometimes shady and unethical deeds, but also in their occasional vulnerability to tricks and traps. In the above-mentioned story, the Gray Mouser is beguiled by the Devourers and has to be rescued by Fafhrd, and in other stories it is Fafhrd who has to be saved by the Gray Mouser. Both have a hard time resisting an adventure, though often it is one or the other who persuades his initially reluctant friend to go along. This thirst for adventure takes them all over the place. In one notable case (Adept's Gambit, included in Swords in the Mist), their journeying takes them (via the interdimensional caves of the sorcerer Ningauble of the Seven Eyes, patron of Fafhrd and counterpart and sometime rival of the Mouser's patron Sheelba of the Eyeless Face) all the way to Earth in Hellenistic times, though it is an Earth with real magic. They end up in the Phoenician city of Tyre[, though they later adventure to the east as well]. It's even possible to date their adventure more specifically, as there is a reference to Philip of Macedon's defeat by the Romans at Cynoscephalae (which took place in 197 BCE) and to Hannibal joining the court of Antiochus (which happened in 195 BCE). I found the latter reference, brief though it was, especially interesting, not only because Hannibal was my favorite figure from ancient history when I was young, but also as the book I had finished immediately prior to Swords in the Mist (which I'll describe below) had a much longer reference to Hannibal, despite being science fiction set in the far distant future.

After reading the first two books in the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser collection and before starting the third, I read the last book in a science fiction series by David Zindell, having finally acquired it while in the US (and I had to order it online to do so). I read the first of the books in this series, Neverness, several years ago, and then started on Zindell's follow-up trilogy, A Requiem for Homo Sapiens, including The Broken God, The Wild, and the book I just finished, War In Heaven. The novels are set in a far distant future when humanity has spread throughout the Milky Way galaxy. Neverness is narrated by Mallory Ringess, who belongs to a caste of pilots based on the icy planet Neverness who use complex mathematics to pilot their ships (known as lightships) through what amounts to shortcuts in space, allowing them to travel between the stars much faster than light. Mallory is a highly flawed protagonist; he is quick-tempered, violent and arrogant. In fact, Zindell has said he originally conceived Neverness as a retelling of Le Morte D'Arthur, with Mallory as the Mordred character. But in the final version, Mallory not only overcomes his flaws to do good, but even transcends ordinary humanity. The book is a complex and deep tale, with a great deal of interesting commentary on human nature.

A Requiem for Homo Sapiens tells the story of Mallory's son Danlo. Danlo is born and raised in a primitive (essentially Neanderthal) society, as a result of events in Neverness, but goes on to become a pilot like his father, whose ultimate fate is one of several important questions Danlo seeks to answer in the course of the novels. The trilogy delves even deeper into questions of metaphysics, philosophy, the nature of identity and consciousness, the difference between living in the real world and living in a simulation, and ultimately the meaning of life itself. Danlo is a very unusual hero for a book of this sort, as early on he takes a vow of ahimsa, meaning that he seeks never to harm another, even in his thoughts. This includes non-human animals, which means that he becomes a vegetarian. Ultimately he finds his vow of ahimsa very difficult to hold to, and he is forced to break it on a few occasions, but he nevertheless shows remarkable restraint in many stressful situations (the suffering he is forced to undergo in the last novel is almost unbelievable). But while he is peaceful (mostly), thoughtful and highly philosophical, he is also sometimes almost wildly impulsive (hence his nickname, Danlo the Wild) and daring almost to the point of foolhardiness. One interesting feature he has is a scar (from a self-inflicted wound) on his forehead in the shape of a lightning bolt. Of course this should make most people think of a certain boy wizard from a recent fantasy series. I should note, however, that the book in which he acquires the scar (The Broken God) was published in 1992, so if anybody copied anybody, it was J.K. Rowling who copied Zindell (though more likely it is simply coincidence). Likewise, Zindell used the idea of execution by placing the victim in a Schrödinger's box (I won't explain what that is here, but readers can go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat) before Dan Simmons used it in the Hyperion Cantos.

Due in part to all the exploration of philosophical ideas and in part to Zindell's writing style, the books are not particularly quick or easy reads; in this respect, they are more akin to something by, say, Umberto Eco than most other science fiction novels. In fact it took me a while to really get into Neverness, and in all the books there were occasionally times where I got slightly impatient for the story to move along (though perhaps that is just an indication that my attention span, while better than most people's, is not what it should be). I also won't say that I agree with all of Zindell's (or at least Danlo's) conclusions about the nature of consciousness and life, though having recently read a bit about amino acids, proteins and DNA, I agree that is rather amazing, almost mystical, the way such complex molecules combine to create something that is self-replicating and in its higher forms self-aware. But while I don't agree with everything Zindell says, I enjoyed the books immensely, and if someone asked for evidence that science fiction can be as profound as any other type of literature, this series would be one I'd mention, along with works by Ursula LeGuin, Iain M. Banks, and Gene Wolfe. In fact there are a number of similarities between Zindell and Wolfe (who has praised Zindell's work), one being a use of a variety of unusual and archaic terms to describe people and objects in the far distant futures they describe, though their writing styles are distinct; for instance, Wolfe makes more use of allegory. Another difference is that while Wolfe's Book of the New Sun contains strong echoes of Christianity, the philosophy in Zindell's books owes much more to Hinduism and Buddhism.

Characterization is generally pretty good, with individuals such as Mallory, Danlo, Leopold Soli (Lord Pilot at the beginning of Neverness), Mallory's great friend Bardo, and Hanuman (Danlo's best friend and worst enemy) being fully realized. Even the goddess encountered by Mallory and Danlo (a number of entities in Zindell's galaxy, some originally human and some not, have become essentially gods and expanded to dominate large areas of space) has a distinct, if to some degree unfathomable, character. A few characters are more simplistic; Betram Jaspari, for instance, first encountered by Danlo in The Wild, is almost a caricature of a crazed fundamentalist religious fanatic, even down to "kill them all and let God sort them out", though I suspect Zindell may have done this deliberately. The plot generally holds together well, though a few plotlines are dealt with in what some might view as a slightly cursory manner. There was only one major point which to me seemed unresolved, and that had to do with how a certain event near the end of War in Heaven could be consistent with the identity of the apparent narrator of that book (I won't be more specific as I don't want to give too much away).

The books also contain a few minor but interesting (to me, at least) references. At one point in War in Heaven, Hanuman appears to quote Joni Mitchell; he says, "We are stardust, we are golden", which, while it is entirely appropriate to the theological point he is making (he has taken over as the head of a religion centered on Mallory Ringess), also happens to be a line from "Woodstock". This might have been unintentional if Zindell didn't know the song, but I think it was done on purpose. Also, at another point in the same novel, the commander of one of the warring forces of lightships and other space ships designs a battle plan based on that used by Hannibal at the battle of Cannae (here spelled Kannae, much as Jesus is referred to as Jesus the Kristoman). Zindell actually spends a whole page on Cannae and Hannibal's victory there, which I found particularly interesting since, as noted above, Hannibal was the figure from ancient history who most fascinated me when I was young, and I didn't expect even a reference to him in a novel set many thousands of years in the future, much less a whole page.

To sum up, I'd recommend any of the novels I've discussed, though they all appeal to different types of readers (or different tastes in the same reader). I hope the majority of the books I read in the months to come are as good.

UK elections and other news

The recent UK parliamentary election had an interesting result; the first hung Parliament, as they are called, since 1974. This means that no party got a majority of the seats, so either there will be a minority government or a coalition government. The Conservatives got the most seats, but even they are well-short of a majority, and so they are now trying to make a deal with the third-place Liberal Democrats. If that doesn't work out, the Conservatives might try to form a minority government, or the Liberal Democrats might join forces with second-place Labour, though the two would also need the support of several small parties such as the Scottish and Welsh nationalist parties in order to reach a majority.

Having read through a (admittedly very cursory) summary of the main parties' positions on key issues (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8669043.stm), I have to say that I think it's regrettable that the Liberal Democrats didn't do as well as pre-election polls seemed to indicate they might, as they seem fairly progressive on many issues, being better than Labour on at least a few. That they are generally closer to Labour politically has been pointed out in a number of articles on the results, which is one reason their negotiations with the Conservatives will be difficult. Apparently a leader of the Scottish nationalists has already urged the Liberal Democrats to join with them, Labour, the Welsh nationalists, and the Irish nationalist parties in a "progressive coalition" rather than joining the Conservatives, though Liberal Democratic leader Nick Clegg has said that as the winner of the most votes and most seats, the Conservatives should have the first opportunity at forming a government.

As for the Conservatives, while their leader David Cameron seems to be fairly moderate on a number of issues and as a whole they seem better than the US's Republican party, they are still too far to the right on some issues for me to be eager to see them in charge. There were even a number of their candidates for MP who are climate change deniers, though I don't know how many of those got elected. The biggest hindrance to their making a deal with the Liberal Democrats is that the latter may insist on substantial moves towards electoral reform. They want a radical change in the way MPs are elected, one that not coincidentally would mean more seats for them -- but it's a reasonable position for them to take, as under the current system, the smaller parties, including the Liberal Democrats, end up with proportionately far fewer seats then their percentages of the total votes. Many Conservatives, on the other hand, oppose changing the current system, which is more favorable to them. Labour, on the other hand, has expressed greater willingness to support electoral reform, though the system they prefer is different from the one favored by the Liberal Democrats (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8644480.stm).

I'd probably most like to see a progressive coalition like the one mentioned above, though one problem would be that either the unpopular Gordon Brown would remain as prime minister, or (more likely, given the news that he is quitting as Labour leader) there would be a prime minister (i.e., the new Labour leader) who had not actually been running for the position in the election. There's also the fact that the governor of the Bank of England is rumored to have remarked privately just before the election that whichever party ends up in charge will in the long run end up out of power for many years into the future, as it will be forced to take many steps that are sure to be unpopular. If this is the case, perhaps it would be better if the Conservatives end up in charge after all.

In other election news, the Philippines have held a presidential election in which it looks like the winner is Benigno Aquino III, the son of the recently deceased former President Corazon Aquino and her assassinated husband Benigno Aquino, Jr. As there were a number of candidates, Aquino probably will not end up with a majority, but the latest count shows him well ahead of the second-place vote-getter, former President Joseph Estrada. While I know too little about the younger Aquino to be able to guess how he is likely to perform, his mother, while not perfect, was one of the better and perhaps more importantly cleaner leaders the Philippines has had (Estrada was removed from office over corruption, and outgoing President Gloria Arroyo also faces accusations of corruption, as well as of vote-rigging in the previous presidential election), so one might hope that he will also be okay, or at least better than the other candidates would have been.

Another major news item is that US President Obama has announced that he is nominating Elena Kagan to the US Supreme Court. In a number of ways she seems like a good choice, as she is apparently liberal (though little is known of her views on a number of major issues) but also capable of building consensuses by reaching out to conservatives. She is also known to be highly intelligent and capable. I have read a criticism of her from the left for her failure to win the recent big case on corporate political speech before the Supreme Court (though I have some doubts about how much she deserves the blame for that), and another on her handling of military recruiters at Harvard when she was dean of the law school there (basically she tried to bar them from campus due to the military's discriminatory policies towards gays and lesbians, which the writer argued was bad as despite its flaws the military still is the defender of the nation -- an argument I have limited sympathy for but can understand). We'll see what else conservative opponents may manage to dredge up, but for now she seems like a decent selection.

Arizona, Immigrants, and More

As most people in the US and many outside of it know, the US state of Arizona recently passed a law under which local law enforcement officials would have to check the immigration status of people if they had reason to believe they were in the US illegally, or something to that effect. This law has stirred up yet another debate on the topic of immigration and how to deal with the large number of illegal immigrants to the US. It has also conveniently brought up another issue on which the right wing element in the US can attempt to bash Obama and other Democratic leaders.

I have not read the text of the law itself, though the key provisions have been quoted or at least described in a number of news reports. The other day Arizona passed a further revision to the law, in part aimed at countering some of the criticisms. For instance, the law now states that police cannot use race in determining whether to check someone's immigration status, supposedly eliminating the possibility of racial profiling (but does anyone seriously believe this provision will mean that Hispanics won't be checked far more often than anyone else?). Also, supposedly police are only supposed to check someone's immigration status if that person has been stopped for another possible violation of the law. This is certainly better than allowing spot checks of anyone they feel like hassling, but as traffic violations and even violations of local ordinances qualify, people can still be checked if they are stopped for speeding or littering or other minor things.

So what's wrong with having the police checking immigration status? Lots of things. As many critics have pointed out, the police have plenty to do already, and they really don't need to be dealing with immigration matters when they could be out dealing with serious crimes (it's odd how conservatives generally believe in being tough on crime and yet support things that make it harder for the police to their jobs). Also, illegal immigrants will be much more reluctant to deal with the police in any way, so they won't report crimes or be willing to act as witnesses. Theoretically, they should be safe to do so under the modified law if they themselves are not being investigated, but they could hardly be blamed for not counting on that.

Oddly enough (or perhaps not so oddly), among the political figures who have criticized the Arizona law are Jeb Bush (W.'s brother and the former governor of Florida) and Karl Rove, people who I rarely agree with on anything. Another normally idiotic politician, Texas Governor Rick Perry, didn't directly criticize it, simply saying it wasn't right for Texas. But perhaps it is not entirely strange that this group doesn't endorse the Arizona approach, as they are all part of what might be called the Bush circle, and immigration was one of the very few areas where W. was actually pretty sensible. Most of the rest of the right-wing crowd, however, is all gung-ho for any draconian measures against illegal immigrants. On the plus side, a lot of religious groups, including some evangelical Christians, are opposing the law and calling for more progressive immigration reform (http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20100505/us_time/08599198632000).

There is a particularly irony to the hostility toward illegal immigrants from Mexico in a state like Arizona, because Arizona, along with California, Texas, and New Mexico, once belonged to Mexico, so in a sense Mexicans, if not other Hispanic immigrants, could say they have a right to live in these places based on history. Of course most Americans would see it otherwise; after all, we stole these places from Mexico fair and square, and it was a long time ago. But it is ironic nevertheless.

More seriously, a lot of the anti-immigrant rhetoric is absurd and overblown. The wild claims by people like Lou Dobbs that illegal immigrants commit a disproportionate amount of crimes, or the idea that illegal immigrants are just hanging around taking advantage of public services and not contributing anything to the society are completely divorced from reality. Most illegal immigrants have to work hard for very little pay, and anyone who would exclude illegal immigrants from vital medical services or education is seriously lacking in conscience. Even granted that their parents have done something illegal (though nothing like assaulting or robbing someone, and only out of a desire to find a better life for themselves and their children), how can anyone seriously advocate keeping the children of illegal immigrants out of school, or depriving their mothers of maternity services (I can't say for certain that there have been serious political moves to go that far, but I know I have seen comments to this effect from some of the more rabidly xenophobic people on the Internet -- particularly ironic, as a lot of the same people are anti-abortion)?

Of course, hostility to immigrants is hardly a new thing in the US, despite the fact that the country is largely an immigrant nation. Early Americans railed against German settlers, in the 19th century there was profound hostility towards Chinese immigrants and to a lesser degree Irish immigrants, in the early 20th century it was immigrants from eastern and southern Europe (and still the Chinese) who were the targets of anti-immigrant rhetoric. But all these people have since become vital parts of the American population, and have contributed a great deal to the country, as have many Hispanic immigrants as well (not to mention those Hispanic people whose ancestors were living in Texas et al even before the white settlers came).

Some (for instance: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/opinion/02rich.html) have also pointed out that there is a subtle racist undercurrent to a lot of the hostility among the right-wing toward not only illegal immigrants but also Obama. While I think this is sometimes exaggerated -- that is to say, I don't think most tea partiers are overtly racist, and not all are even subconsciously racist (I am aware that the group does include some blacks and Hispanics); there is certainly an "us-versus-them" element to all of their rhetoric. "Take America Back"? From whom? Liberals, minorities, gays, young people, "socialists", non-English speakers, immigrants, and environmentalists? Whoever it is, they have as much right to America as the tea set (I should probably just refuse to use the "tea" name to refer to these people -- it's putting me off tea, which I like to drink). Unfortunately, xenophobia and other forms of "us-versus-themism" have a long history, not only in America but among humanity as a whole (even today, most countries are still probably worse than the US in this regard). To a large degree, it's part of human nature. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to overcome it, and things like this Arizona law are a step in the wrong direction.

Update: On a somewhat related topic, the news of the attempted bombing in Times Square in New York has also given rise to absurd rhetoric. On argument is about whether the suspected bomber, as a US citizen, should be allowed his constitutional rights. Aside from the fact that in this particular case the suspect has continued to cooperate even after he was read his Miranda rights (at a somewhat delayed point in time), why shouldn't he get the same treatment that murderers, rapists and serial killers get? What's the use of having constitutional rights at all if they can be suspended freely? Aren't a lot of these people saying the bombing suspect shouldn't be granted his rights under the Constitution the same people who are so paranoid about government power. To give him credit, even the normally ridiculous Glenn Beck stated that as the suspect is an American citizen, he should be treated as such. But unfortunately many of his fellow right wingers don't seem to agree that the Constitution they claim to love so much should be respected. [Update: Unfortunately, even Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder is now talking about pushing for an exception to Miranda rights for suspects involved in foreign terrorism. This is unnecessary, as there is already an exception in cases involving immediate threats to public safety, and further erosion of constitutional rights for the sake of fighting terrorism will be ultimately self-defeating -- as was the case with the so-called Patriot Act.]

In addition, there has been talk in Congress of a law to strip citizenship from anyone who is actively involved with terrorist organizations. As many law experts point out, such a law probably wouldn't be upheld by the Supreme Court (though with this court I don't know how they can be sure). But that it would even be seriously proposed is bad enough. For one thing, it is so broadly worded that anyone in any way shape or form represents an organization officially considered a terrorist organization, such as Hamas (say as a lawyer, lobbyist, or negotiator) or gives money to them (possibly even indirectly, such as through a charity run by such a group) could lose their citizenship. Some extremists might say they deserve to, but imagine how many Irish-Americans, for instance, could have lost citizenship in the latter 20th century under such a law for support to the IRA? And what about American terrorist groups? If people who write a check to a Hamas-run charity should lose their citizenship, then why shouldn't people like Terry Nichols (convicted of assisting with the Oklahoma City bombing) lose their citizenship? For that matter, should people like that be deprived of their constitutional rights when arrested? Or is it only in cases of foreign terrorism that the Constitution should be tossed in the garbage? But while this proposed law to involuntarily strip citizenship from people is unlikely to survive a challenge even if it passed, it's worth taking note of which congresspeople publicly support it (including supposed moderates like Joe Lieberman and Scott Brown).