What I've Been Reading -- June 2011 to August 2011, Part 1

I haven't read a huge variety of books over the summer, but nevertheless on writing about most of those I have read, I discovered that there is rather a lot of ground to be covered. So I am splitting my commentaries into two parts, in part to avoid having an enormously lengthy post, and in part because I haven't finished writing about a couple of the things I've read. So here is part 1; I hope to post part 2 sometime in the next week or so.


Complicity by Iain Banks
Complicity is a thriller by Iain Banks, who is the same person as the science-fiction writer Iain M. Banks (his mainstream – i.e., non-sci-fi – work is published under the former name). The main character is Cameron Colley a cynical left-wing journalist who has something of a drug problem (mainly amphetamines, alcohol and cigarettes), a married girlfriend, an addiction to a computer game vaguely resembling Civilization and an obvious dislike for authority. His part of the story, which takes up the majority of the novel, is told in the first person. However, certain parts (including the opening scene) are told in second person, something that is somewhat unusual in novels. In these parts, the main character is a serial killer who targets rich and powerful people who have egregiously abused their power. These parts are often quite graphic, though I was able to read them in part because I knew it was fiction, but also because I couldn’t help a slight degree of admiration for the killer’s inventiveness in making sure the victims were killed (or in one case assaulted) in ways that were “appropriate” to their crimes. Not that such vigilante justice should be considered appropriate, especially these sorts of brutal assaults, but if anyone (fictional or not) deserves such fates, it would be people like these (though in the case of the murderer’s first victim, we aren’t ever told exactly why he was targeted, though it is possible to guess).

As is often the case in Banks’s novels, it is not immediately obvious what the parts about Colley (and the occasional references to his past) and the parts about the murderer have to do with each other. The connections between different elements only begin to become clearer as the novel progresses. Naturally, much of the plot is driven by the mystery of the murderer’s identity and motives, and the attempts of the authorities to apprehend the killer. The novel is a fairly grim but exciting, and Banks raises some interesting questions about the nature of justice in a society where the powerful often get away with murder. He doesn’t really attempt to answer these questions definitively, but merely by raising them he ensures that Complicity is thought-provoking as well as darkly entertaining.


Philip K. Dick, Greg Egan, George R. R. Martin and Orson Scott Card
Off and on over the past few months I’ve read a number of sci-fi and fantasy short stories, including tales by Philip K. Dick, Greg Egan, George R. R. Martin and Orson Scott Card. Philip K. Dick’s stories tend to be a little bit bizarre and at the same time a bit old-fashioned (some of them resemble episodes of The Twilight Zone). Two of the ones I read recently were about different types of post-apocalyptic futures. In one the world is dominated by a caste system in which Asians are on top and whites (often dismissed by those on top as smelly and ape-like) on the bottom and most technology is forbidden (though some of the whites secretly preserve it – thus the story in some respects portrays whites as actually superior, despite the reversal of traditional racial stratification in America). In the other a technological society dominated by robots has been overthrown by an anarchist revolution, and an anarchist team traveling the country to stop attempts to reorganize society along technological lines encounters a hidden society held together by a robot that escaped. This story is also ambivalent, in this case about whether the anarchists or the robot and its followers are in the right.

Greg Egan’s stories are quite different from Dick’s, being more recent and focusing on hard science. The one I read most recently focuses on the nature of human consciousness, told through a character in some ways reminiscent of the protagonist of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Other stories focus on advanced mathematics, genetics, and bioengineering. The George R. R. Martin story I read was set in the same world as his Song of Ice and Fire fantasy novels, though at an earlier time. The novels have recently gained additional prominence due to the adaptation of the first novel, Game of Thrones, as a popular television series on HBO. The novels are complex, with a vast number of characters, and grim, with major characters killed off with surprising frequency. The short story, one of several featuring the same two characters, is much simpler and less bleak, though it also has some moral ambiguity at its heart. Orson Scott Card’s short story features his character Alvin Maker in a 19th century America in which history has diverged somewhat from that of the real world. A few famous people from real history appear, though in this alternate America their life stories are different from those we are familiar with.


Meditations by Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
Meditations is a collection of writings by Marcus Aurelius Antoninus based on the principles of Stoic philosophy, originally titled in its original ancient Greek “thoughts addressed to himself”. Marcus Aurelius, as he is generally referred to, lived in the 2nd century CE, and reigned as Roman Emperor from 161 CE to 180 CE. At the time he took power, the empire was at its height after a series of generally successful reigns by his predecessors Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius. During his reign, however, the Roman Empire was struck by wars with the Parthians and various German tribes, and most seriously by plague (believed to be smallpox or possibly measles). This was devastating to the empire, killing much of the population, eventually including Marcus Aurelius himself (the film Gladiator’s version of his death, which has his son Commodus murdering him for disinheriting him, is certainly false, especially since Marcus Aurelius had already made Commodus co-emperor). So despite being by most accounts a very capable ruler, Marcus Aurelius ruled in a time of great trouble that saw the beginning of Rome’s decline, and he also suffered substantial personal tragedy, including the deaths of many of his children in infancy or when they were still quite young. Perhaps these factors, as much as his educational background, encouraged his interest in Stoicism.

Among the notable themes of Meditations is the idea that life is short and each individual is in the grand scheme of things quite insignificant, so pursuing fame or praise is pointless. “This life is short. Both he that praiseth and he that is praised, he that remembers and he that is remembered, will soon be dust and ashes. Besides, it is one corner of this part of the world that thou art praised, and yet in this corner, thou hast not the joint praises of all men, no nor scarce of any one constantly. And yet the whole earth itself, what is it but as one point, in regard of the whole world [universe]?” In many ways, this resembles one of my favorite books in the Jewish scriptures, Ecclesiastes, with its constant refrain that everything is “meaningless” and there is “nothing new under the sun” (indeed, Marcus also says “there is nothing that is new”), or the soliloquy that William Shakespeare gave to Macbeth (“Tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day…”). He emphasizes several times that not only will everyone die, but eventually even those who remember them will be forgotten. But he also declares that death is not something to be feared, as humans are but “a mixture of elements, resolved into the same elements again.” Above all, he repeatedly reiterates the importance of rationality over emotion.

Marcus Aurelius, like most Stoic philosophers, placed little stock in worldly pleasure. He also expresses a low opinion of his own status as ruler and military leader declaring that “to [the title and credit of a philosopher] also is thy [i.e. his own] calling and profession repugnant. And yet his philosophy was not all negative. He repeatedly talks of the necessity of tolerating others, even those who do you harm, and of disregarding the insults and attacks of others: “It is reported unto thee, that such a one speaketh ill of thee. Well, that he speaketh ill of thee, that much is reported. But that thou art hurt thereby is not reported; that is the addition of opinion, which thou must exclude.” He also advocated acting positively for the benefit of others and of treating others kindly. He placed the good of the community over that of the individual (“That which is not good for the beehive cannot be good for the bee”), and went so far as to express the idea of a universal brotherhood of humankind: “And my nature is to be rational in all my actions and as a good and natural member of a city and commonwealth, towards my fellow members to sociably and kindly disposed and affected. My city and country as I am Antoninus is Rome; as a man, the whole world.” He refers several times to entity the translator renders as God, though this is not the Judeo-Christian god but the divine animating principle of Hellenistic and specifically Stoic philosophy (the one mention Marcus makes of Christians is negative), and he also refers to the traditional gods, though he condemns superstitious belief and takes a somewhat agnostic approach at times.

I don’t agree with all of the ideas Marcus Aurelius expresses or all the rules of behavior he prescribes, and even those that I do find reasonable are perhaps not so easy to follow (and judging by the occasional tone of strong self-criticism, he apparently found them difficult as well). But much of what he says is thought-provoking (though I should note that historians generally believe he was summarizing previous Stoic ideas rather than expressing completely original thoughts). I was particularly struck early on how just after coming off the internet where I had been gotten sidetracked into reading some particularly ridiculous comments by various people (something I generally try to avoid) practically the first thing I read was Marcus’s statement that one of the many people he thanked for making him what he was had taught him “not to be offended with idiots”. Again, I may not be able to follow such a stricture, but I certainly found it apt at the time. So, all in all, Meditations is an intriguing though not exciting read. However, if possible it would be best to seek out a more recent translation, rather than the very archaic one I read (though that probably helped it function better as a sleeping aid).


The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay
Guy Gavriel Kay is a writer of fantasy and historical fiction who began his career in the field by assisting Christopher Tolkien in assembling J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion. Other than The Fionavar Tapestry, the trilogy which formed his first published work, all of his novels have used places and periods in actual Earth history as direct inspiration. Thus, among the books I’ve read, Tigana is based in a country that resembles medieval Italy, A Song for Arbonne is based in a country that resembles medieval Provence (and has neighbors that resemble Italy and Germany), and the two-part work The Sarantine Mosaic is based in a land that resembles the Roman (Byzantine) Empire under Justinian (this work is the most closely based on real history of the ones I read, with numerous places, events and individual characters loosely or even fairly closely based on real places, events and people, though the ultimate course of events diverges from that in the real world). The Lions of Al-Rassan is likewise based on Earth history, in this case Spain (or Al-Andalus as the Moslems called it) at the time when the Muslim realms in the south were beginning to decline in the face of internal divisions and attacks from the Christian kingdoms in the north.

The land of Al-Rassan, or Esperana, is home to the people of three major religions, the Asharites (based on Moslems), the Jaddites (based on Christians), and the Kindath (based on the Jews). The Asharites of Al-Rassan have long dominated the peninsula, but their last caliphate has broken up into separate kingdoms, and the Jaddite kingdoms of the north are growing in power, and seek to reclaim the south of what they call Esperana for their religion. The Kindath are a minority without a homeland, usually tolerated by the Asharites (less so by the Jaddites) but occasionally subject to persecution by both. There are several major protagonists, including the female Kindath physician Jehane bet Ishak, the young Jaddite soldier Alvar de Pellino, the famed Jaddite commander Rodrigo Belmonte (loosely based on Rodrigo Díaz, better known as El Cid), and the Asharite poet and warrior Ammar ibn Khairan (more loosely based on several individuals from Moslem Spain).

The Lions of Al-Rassan is in many senses more of a historical novel than a fantasy, despite being based in a place other than the real world. Not only does the land closely resemble medieval Spain, but there is very little trace of the supernatural, unlike in most fantasy works (there is one character that can “see” close family members in visions, but that’s it). As in most of novels by Kay that I have read, there is a lot of political intrigue, and characters are faced with moral dilemmas and conflicts of loyalty. Kay likes dramatic scenes and revelations, which though they may occasionally stretch credulity, are nevertheless an attraction for me as I have always enjoyed such things in books (Gandalf’s appearance to Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli, for example) or movies (such as Darth Vader’s revelation to Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back). Kay’s books always have several such scenes, and this one is no exception. He also is adept at creating emotional scenes, probably more so than any other fantasy writer I’ve read. While he doesn’t kill major characters with the regularity of George R.R. Martin, he does do so at times, and he doesn’t shy away from occasionally nasty scenes. But in general, this book, like his others, is largely about relationships and human feelings. With well-written prose, a dramatic plot, and complex characters, The Lions of Al-Rassan is equal to Kay’s other works, and is one of the better fantasies/historical novels out there.