Fiction, Reviews

‘All Men Dream of Earthwomen,’ by John C. Wright

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“The Designers swore—they swore upon their souls, even those that do not have souls—[that] man could be molded to any shape as needed, and that his taste would follow, like any other arbitrary convention. They said the soul of man would somehow still see beauty there, after the beauty had vanished.”

Amphitricia said, surprised, “They were right, weren’t they?”

I gave her a long look, and said gravely, “All men dream of Earth-women.”

I enjoyed science fiction when I was a kid, when the stuff available to me was simple enough for my simple mind. Later on, I began to find most SF kind of cold-blooded – but I also found the best works dauntingly complex. So I don’t read much of it anymore. But I’m fond of John C. Wright, and I figured I’d try his recently released story collection, All Men Dream of Earthwomen.

I found it challenging – a bit like Gene Wolfe, but – unlike Wolfe’s work – just comprehensible enough to accommodate my simplicity. It was also engaging, provocative, and highly enjoyable.

 About a third of the book consists of the novella that provides the collection’s title. It’s set in the far, far distant future, when Earth is a dimly-remembered home world to dozens of (sometimes barely recognizable) humanoid races, bioengineered to survive on whatever planet they’ve colonized.

The hero of All Men, James Ingersoll, is (or claims to be) a librarian, an emissary from a distant, high-gravity planet whose inhabitants are immensely strong. He comes to an Earth space station to negotiate for historical information. When he sees a man trying to kill a beautiful earth woman, he leaps in to rescue her, which oddly gets him into legal trouble due to the myriad nonsensical regulations that govern the station. However, it also makes him an instant celebrity, which – in this society – literally constitutes sudden wealth. As he shakes things up in the traditional manner of hard-boiled heroes, his true mission is revealed.

One particularly fun feature of this story is that it’s footnoted, explaining obscure earth references for readers of the future. These footnotes are very often wildly wrong, in a thought-provoking way.

Ten short stories follow – each of them a highly inventive picture of a possible distant future, where many things have changed but some remain constant. These stories are outstanding in their variety and inventiveness.

I should mention one consideration that will give many Christian readers pause – there’s quite a lot of female nudity, especially in a couple stories (among the best of them, too). The nudity isn’t gratuitous; it’s integral to the stories’ meanings. As a child of Pietism, I find this a little hard to handle in the context of Christian fiction – but I also think Wright may be Right.

It occurs to me that in our times, when a new kind of secular Puritanism has taken hold, it may be the duty of Christian writers to take the initiative in celebrating sex – not Sex as a commercial commodity, but old-fashioned, organic, procreative, heterosexual sex. Every kind of sexual congress is celebrated in our popular culture today, except for the kind that makes babies. It might be time for us to champion Procreative Sex, and manly men and feminine women, as a kind of subversive art. There are still plenty of young people who are curious about that kind of sex, in spite of all the advertising to the contrary.

In any case, for those willing to handle its challenges, All Men Dream of Earthwomen is a very fine story collection. Cautions for sexual situations (as mentioned) and for some rough language.

I do have to report that this book could have used better proofreading. There are lots – I mean lots – of misspellings, wrong words and word omissions.

Music

3 Reasons Nat King Cole should Have a Biopic

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“I’m an interpreter of stories. When I perform it’s like sitting down at my piano and telling fairy stories.” – Nat King Cole

Nat King Cole, the stage name of Nathaniel Adams Cole (1919-1965), has always been one of my favorite singers. He won a Grammy for “Midnight Flyer” and had 28 Top 40 hit songs. Mel Tormé and Bob Wells’s 1945 piece “The Christmas Song” is a Nat King Cole piece in my mind; I don’t care who else has sung it.

Cole also made famous a beautiful lullaby by Alfred Bryan and Larry Stock, “A Cradle in Bethlehem,” written in 1952.

John Rowe notes the musician whose 100th birthday was last year should be on someone’s list for well-produced biopics. He offers these reasons:

  • Nat King Cole’s jazz style has drawn many followers and imitators.
  • He is one of the most popular singers of Jazz standards and class pop music.
  • He broke racial barriers with kindness.

(via Lars Walker on Facebook)

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Man Who Lived By Night,’ by David Handler

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Then I popped open a bottle of lager and watched part eight of a sixteen-part series on BBC 1 called Giant Worms of the Sea. Whoever thinks British television has it all over American TV has never actually watched any.

David Handler returns with his ghost-writer hero, Stuart “Hoagie” Hoag, in the second series installment, The Man Who Lived By Night. This one takes him into the treacherous world of British Rock ‘n Roll.

Tristam Scarr is his new interviewee. Lead singer of a top British group called Us (a little like the Rolling Stones, a little like the Who), Scarr lived a life of excess and notoriety, and is now one of two survivors of a group that numbered four at its peak. He lives like a hermit in a palatial house on a massive English estate, but is a wizened shell of himself, subsisting on baby food. He wants to tell his life’s story – including his shocking allegation that the two group members who died young were in fact murdered.

Hoagie, accompanied as always by his faithful, fish-eating beagle, Lulu (aren’t there quarantine rules for bringing animals into the UK?) moves in with Scarr and begins the interviews. But he has an ulterior motive for being there – his ex-wife Merrilee is starring in a London play, and their sparks re-ignite (is it adultery to sleep with your ex-wife?). As in the previous novel, somebody appears to threaten Hoagie (and, even worse, Lulu), but he will persevere and bring the shocking truth to light in the end. In considerable style.

I’m not as interested in the rock world as I am in Hollywood, so this book was slightly less interesting to me than the previous one. But enough sacred cows got poked here that I still had a good time (though it’s weird to read a book of this vintage and see celebrities now dead or aged described [sometimes lampooned] as young, sexy, and current).

Recommended. Lots of fun. Not too much objectionable stuff.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Man Who Died Laughing,’ by David Handler

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“It’s that way in my business, too,” I said. “You’re only taken seriously in literary circles if your stuff is torturous and hard to read. If you go to the extra trouble of making it clear and entertaining, then the critics call you a lightweight.”

I’m surprised I never heard of David Handler before. The Man Who Died Laughing, his first Stuart Hoag mystery, was a lot of fun, in some ways a (relatively, it was published in 1988) modern riff on the old Thin Man formula.

Stuart “Hoagy” Hoag is a literary flash in the pan. He had tremendous success with his first novel and won money and acclaim. Then an industrial-strength case of writer’s block gripped him, and he’s written nothing since. He lost his beautiful actress wife (though they’re still friends), and is now living in a tiny, squalid New York apartment with his fat basset hound, Lulu (who only eats fish). He’s out of money and just days from living on the streets, when his agent gets him an offer to ghost-write an autobiography for a Hollywood comedian.

Desperate as he is, Hoagy doesn’t want to write the life story of Sonny Day, formerly half of a legendary comedy team called Knight and Day (think Martin and Lewis, with strategic differences. Sonny was the crazy one). Sonny is notoriously hard to work with, and in any case, Hoagy is wracked with self-doubt, and embarrassed to have fallen this low.

But Sonny shows up personally in his apartment (bodyguard in tow) and as good as bullies Hoagy into taking the the job. Gradually, he and the comic develop a working relationship – the man is more likeable than expected, but also prone to tantrums and bouts of irrationality. But through their interviews the reader begins to understand a troubled man with a cohort of personal devils, seriously trying to get off the sauce and rebuild his life and career.

But there’s someone out there who will go to any length – even murder – to prevent a certain fact from coming to light.

The Man Who Died Laughing was delightful to read. As you know, I like my mysteries character-driven, and this format – relying heavily (though not exclusively) on interview transcripts – seemed to me a fresh and original way of constructing a mystery.

I liked it a lot, I laughed and began to care. I recommend it highly.

Music, Religion

The Word Was Made Flesh, Merry Christmas

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This is the real meaning of Christmas: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14 ESV).

This does not mean God posed as a man for a few years, casting an illusion on everyone in order to influence them with well-spoken sermons.

It does not mean God sent his spirit into a man for a time, having found someone who was sufficiently humble to indwell for divine purposes.

It does not mean that God actually is a man who lives eternally on another plane but for a season he came to Earth to do things.

It also does not mean that Jesus was only a man who connected dots like no one before him and introduced some darn good principles to Western civilization.

It does not mean that a uniquely spiritual man called on divine power to perform marvelous works and speak with wisdom beyond the scope of mortal reason.

Those ideas are a bit easier to understand. The truth is beyond us. Christ Jesus, born as a child to a poor, virgin woman, was the Word of God from the beginning, both with God and actually God. The invisible, eternal God became a mortal man. That doesn’t make complete sense to us, but it is the only hope for ourselves and all the world.

Merry Christmas.

Creative Writing

Stay, a Flash Fiction

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He set his mug on the former family table near the one that was already there. Poured coffee in both and spooned a dried red-green spice mix into hers.

Her shivering hands gripped the other mug, skin sagging by the knuckles, nails long and intertwining. She spoke in tremorous tones through slack lips.

“She cannot come back.”

He lifted the mug, her hands locked around it, to her mouth to guide the potion in.

“Binding me . . . won’t bring her back.”

His heavy sigh could have broken glass. “You took her from me,” he muttered, “but you didn’t intend to stay?”

This flash fiction story was written for Loren Eaton’s Advent Ghost Storytelling.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Vanished,’ by Brett Battles

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I’m a fan of Brett Battles’ Jonathan Quinn series of thrillers, about a “cleaner” – a man who works as a contractor for espionage agencies, getting rid of evidence – and bodies – for them. The latest book is The Vanished.

Nine years ago, Quinn and his team attempted to provide protection for a brilliant scientist, in part as a favor to her sister, who was an agent. The job went bad, and the scientist was spirited away (not involuntarily, I might add). Since then, the agent sister has been inactive on the job – obsessed with finding and rescuing her sister.

But now Quinn and his team have been temporarily sidelined by their employers. Shocking news from France motivates them to travel there and try to rescue the sister on their own. This will involve merely getting past the security of one of the most technologically advanced corporations in the world.

The main thing that distinguishes The Vanished as a story is that author Battles decided to set it in 2020, incorporating the whole business of Covid-19 lockdown protocols. That makes some things harder for them and some things easier, but did not (for this reader) make the story much more interesting. As you know, I’m a reader who likes character-driven stories. The Jonathan Quinn series is generally pretty good in that department, but this story was mostly about procedures and technology. I didn’t find it compelling.

But it’s a good series. You might like this one better than I do.

Music

Christmastime: Let Us Be Merry; Put Sorrow Away

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In a week, we will be set upon by Christmas. I hope you, your friends, family, and neighbors will receive God’s transforming grace to know with confidence what the Lord has done by taking on flesh and living as one of us.

The Christmas carol in this video, “A Virgin Unspotted,” used to be very popular and can be found in many variations. The music, “Judea,” was written by William Billings in 1778.

Billings was a tanner who taught himself music and was friends with men you know from the American Revolution. Britannica states, “His music is noted for its rhythmic vitality, freshness, and straightforward harmonies.” That’s what I love about this song. The joyous chorus that dances round the room.

The words come derive from a 1661 carol called “In Bethlehem City,” which appears in many versions and was originally paired with a tune that has been lost. The writers of Hymns and Carols of Christmas state, “The carol has appeared in one form or another in most of the old collections of songs, and was a popular subject for the broadside trade. Interestingly, it almost never appears in hymnals.”

I came to know the song through The Rose Ensemble album, And Glory Shown Around.

Poetry

A Threshold Crossed: 30 Robertson Poems

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Each threshold crossed a point of no return;
each turn of the door knob a turn of fate.
Take each step boldly, confident you’ll earn
access to behold some mystery great
with import or delight, that dawn will break
on an undiscovered country with stores
of adventure and peril that can slake
the greatest thirst––all this and so much more
awaits you on the other side of every door.

“Enter” by Steven R. Robertson

Robertson spent November 2020 writing a poem a day, the above being his first offering (I hope he doesn’t mind me copying it here.)

Poetry is a difficult art, easy for good-hearted folk to do badly. That’s isn’t a sin, of course. If they enjoy crafting their poems, who can say they have wasted their time? Robertson’s poems are rather good, each in a different style. The one above is a Spenserian Stanza.

Short poems like these are a bit like flash fiction; they present you with an idea or emotional picture and sometimes a clever turn of phrase, but they are easily sipped up and forgotten. Reading these things within a social group may motivate readers to pause long enough to reflect on them. Do blogs still provide that kind of social group, or has the world moved on to shinier things?

Photo by Gisela Bonanno on Unsplash

Reviews

Netflix film review: ‘The Professor and the Madman’

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Back in 2015, I read Simon Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman (which I reviewed here) as part of my graduate school work. It was one of the few pleasures that course of study provided me. So I was delighted to learn that a movie had been made of the story, and that it was available on Netflix.

According to what I see online, star Mel Gibson (who plays Prof. James Murray, head of the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language project) was very unhappy with the way the film was made. He and writer Farhad Safinia sued the producers, and they finally came to an undisclosed settlement. Apparently the film we have is not the one Gibson dreamed of.

I’m glad I read about that after I’d seen the film, because what I saw pleased me immensely.

Overall, the movie covers events as described in the book. Dr. William Minor (Sean Penn), an American military surgeon unbalanced by his experiences in the Civil War, murders an innocent London laborer, under the delusion that he is an Irishman who’s been persecuting him. Judged insane, Minor is confined to the Broadmoor Insane Asylum. His life begins to find some focus again when he answers Prof. Murray’s appeal for volunteers to hunt out historical citations of various English words for the dictionary. Working obsessively with books allowed him by the asylum director, he provides the project with a much-needed boost.

Meanwhile, Prof. Murray, who lacks a university degree but got his position through plain expertise in languages, suffers professional and social opposition from the scholars at Oxford University Press. A long-distance friendship arises between him and Dr. Minor, but it’s only when he finally goes to present Minor with a first printing of part of the work that he discovers his friend is a madman.

Meanwhile, Minor – though still delusional about many things, is tormented by guilt and attempts to get his pension money conveyed to his victim’s widow. At first she rejects his help angrily, but in time her genuine desperation and his genuine remorse result in a strange affection – leading to a shocking outcome.

As in all dramatic productions, events are rearranged and re-molded to suit the creators’ vision. And dramatic moments happen that never happened in our world. But the film’s vision, as I perceived it, was a very fine one. It has to do with guilt and forgiveness and love, and the importance of work in our lives. It doesn’t rise quite to the level of Christianity, but there are Christian themes all over the place.

The depiction of Victorian England is rich and convincing. The performances are excellent.

My one great complaint is that in one scene, a character – an Oxford scholar, no less – misuses the phrase, “begs the question.” That just isn’t done, old man.

Cautions for very disturbing scenes of violence and insanity. Not for the kids.