Sphere

Sphere
© 1987 Michael Crichton
385 pages

 Norman Thomas is accustomed to government officials asking for his assistance to counsel survivors at plane crashes, but traveling fifteen hours into the middle of the Pacific is a first.   Upon arrival, John finds not an island with aircraft remains, but a small fleet of ships from the US Navy:  and the object of their concern isn’t a crashed vessel at all. It’s a sunken ship…a spaceship….that is three hundred years old.   So begins an eerie psychological thriller, as Thomas and a team chosen to make first contact with unknown life forms are taken by sub deep into the bottom of the ocean, into a lightless world of fear and wonder.

  Johnson came to the Navy’s attention when, during the Carter Administration, he submitted a report to a committee concerned with extraterrestrial life.  It wasn’t a subject he took seriously, but they offered him money for educated guesses, and with a house to pay for he was more than happy to make guesses.  Those guesses have become US policy, and the recommendations he made have become his own hand-picked team of zoologists and other professionals.   From the beginning Johnson and the other civilians suspect the Navy knows more than it is letting on,  but the surprises are only starting: when the craft is breached, it proves to be not of extraterrestrial origin, but is human-made, with English signage and stocked with Coca-Cola!   But the interior of the ship has still more surprises, alien and powerful, and after a hurricane scatters the surface fleet the explorers are left marooned thousands of few below. There, as strange happenings start to claim their lives, the slowly-dwindling survivors begin to question their own sanity.

Sphere  is a remarkably creepy book, a genuine thriller: from the beginning, its developments incite curiosity, and later dread.  How did a human spaceship, whose operating principles and material are far beyond the present’s abilities, come to be buried beneath centuries of coral and the oceans themselves? What was its mission,  what is the meaning of its baffling cargo (a mysterious black sphere), and…why do people keep dying?  Strange animals keep appearing around the underwater habitat,  including a giant squid that can heavily damage it;  the built environment around them keeps adding surprises,  things suddenly being there that weren’t before…and then there’s 'Jerry',  some strange entity attempting to communicate with the crew. “Jerry’s”  conversational skills have an uncanny aspect, familiar yet menacing.   Ultimately, even the psychologist-narrator seems on the verge of cracking up before an explosive conclusion.

 I’ve only read a few of Crichton’s works (Andromeda Strain, Timeline, Jurassic Park, Lost World), but this ranks near the top. It is a psychological thriller, not only because the characters seem to be collectively losing  their mind, but because Crichton’s author-lecture addresses perception, imagination, and reality.  The alien here is utterly alien; this isn’t a Star Trek humanoid with a bumpy nose, or even a SF monster that has a mouth, eyes, and the desire to eat what it sees.   The alien presence here is not comprehensible; the characters don’t even know if they’re seeing an actual sphere, or some part of a transdimensional object that merely looks like a sphere in our plane of existence.  Crichton’s writing may be plain, but what a scientifically-inspired imagination!

New Feature

Although frequent visitors here know there is little I will not read about, some subjects pop up more often than others, and I thought it might serve both me and interested readers if I organized things a bit.  I'm an energetic user of labels, but they don't go far enough. So, for a few select topics, I'll be maintaining....indexes!  Woo!

..yes, I know it sounds terribly exciting. Essentially they'll be lists that I update as I come across relevant books. I've already planned and created three indexes: World War 2, The City, and American History.  The index will have subcategories: WW2, for instance, will have War in Asia and War in Africa sections. More will follow, including one for The Great War.   When I read a book, not only will I add it to the list, as I do my "What I've Read This Year" list, but I will link to the relevant list so that people whose interest is engaged can click through, and see related books without having to wade through page after page using the labels.  The trick will be choosing topics that I read a lot of, and consistently, but which are not so broad that they'd rival the Talmud in length.  There will never be a General History  index, because that would be nuts.    

If you actually read all that, bless you. Isn't organizing things fun? Look for the first couple this coming week.

Aces over Ypres

Aces over Ypres
© 2016 John Stack
286 pages

Charlie Sexton didn't choose the RFC life, the RFC life chose him. Literally.  As the Great War opened in Europe, Charlie was a member of the 119th Artillery, the same unit his father had served in with distinction, but evidently the Army is in need of lunatics to go up in their airplanes as observers. It's like artillery spotting, but thousands of feet up and with only canvas protection from the rifles of two startled armies.   Aces over Ypres is an unexpected aerial thriller from a successful naval author,  one which is set in the skies of the Western Front, at a time when military aviation was still in its infancy. Stack combines aerial combat, espionage, and the personal feud between a German pilot and Sexton for an all-round pageturner.  

Charlie begins with the book without the slightest in going up in an airplane, and the experience doesn't too much grow on him.  He is instantly in the soup, branded a coward by an officer who wants to smear Sexton's reputation to save his own.  The work is difficult, to say the least:   ripping through the air and staring at a surreal landscape below, one with recognizable landmarks yet so far removed from everyday experience as to be unrecognizable,  and tasked with trying to make meaningful observations and scribble them down on an actual map.   Stack's experience with conveying the power and energy of the seas translates well here; despite its thinness, the air has a presence, one which can destroy a plane that isn't cared for by its pilot and mechanics. When the war begins, airplanes were merely used as recon tools, but Stack depicts the development of regular aerial warfare with Sexton as his text subject. Within a few weeks observers are toting rifles with them to take pot-shots at enemy scouts; later, they are given hand held machine guns to do more than scare the enemy away.   Stack doesn't hesitate to kill or maim recurring characters, and Charlie is shot down at least twice -- and by the same German plane, flown by a man with a score to settle. But Kurt, the man on the other side, isn't his bloodthirsty enemy: he's a talented pilot and a loving brother with a score to settle against the English airmen.

Although this is a decided break from Stack's forte, his bringing to life of both English and German pilots, engendering a reader's care about them, and then throwing them into combat against one another makes for a compelling story by itself...to say nothing of the constant aerial drama, the attempts to keep out of "Archie's" way, and a little spycraft on the side.  Considering that this only covers the first few months of the year, ending before the one-year mark, one hopes a sequel could be in the works.  It's certainly refreshing to see aerial fiction that doesn't jump into WW2-style dogfighting.


Related:
To the Last Man: A Novel of the First World War, Jeff Shaara. Read this when it was released in 2004, and I still remember the story of the American airman.

Diving Companions

Diving Companions: Sea Lion - Elephant Seal - Walrus
©  1974 Jacques-Yves Cousteau
304 pages

Before David Attenborough, there was Jacques-Yves Cousteau, who helped invent SCUBA gear and used it in expeditions across the globe to explore the unknown right here on Earth: the life of the oceans. The journeys of the Calypso and her exploring minisubmarine resulted in a series of books about whales, dolphins, and the like, but Diving Companion collects Cousteau's adventures with more far-flung creatures: sea lions, elephant seals, and walruses. The book combines a  travel diary and nature commentary, throwing in a little Eskimo anthropology as a bonus. Unusually for the series, there''s also a chapter on the coastlines and islands of Alaska, which were studied enroute to the Artic. There, sea otters receive some lingering and affectionate attention.

 The stars themselves are a related family, cow-like creatures which at some point took to the sea again. Most of them make their habitat in cold zones, protecting themselves with large sheaths of fat. Their diets vary from species to species; sea lions are quick enough to go for fish, while elephant seals are relegated to less-fleet-footed starfish.   Although they are all wary of human contact, being hunted species, the crew of the Calypso found them approachable from a crawl. (The humans literally crawled on the beach and became one with the herd.)  In an effort to see how they might adjust to living and working in humans, Cousteau's men attempted to capture test subjects and keep them on the boat, both in a cage and in a large pool. The elephant seals, the grumpiest and most intimidating of the three, thwarted every attempt at capture.  Two sea lions were brought on board the Calypso and seemed to adjust to captivity, even keeping near the boat when unleashed, but they exhibited a marked sadness and were eventually freed.  An orphaned walrus pup was also adopted, and because of its young age grew very much attached to the humans.    Although much of the book is certainly dated now, like the balance established between the Eskimos and the walrus population which nourished them, as well as the increasingly-dangerous state of elephant sea concentration onto one island,   these are creatures worth reading about -- especially the beautiful sea lions.

Driving with the Devil

Driving with the Devil:  Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels, and the Birth of NASCAR
© 2006 Neil Thompson
411 pages

Oh Rapid Roy that stock car boy

He's the best driver in the lan'

He say that he learned to race a stock car

By runnin' shine outta Alabam'
(Jim Croce, "Rapid Roy")

Today’s NASCAR is big business on par with the NFL, but it didn’t  start out that respectable.  The inventors of the sport were backwoods rebels, supplying populations with forbidden liquor.   Savvy drivers and genius mechanics combined to outwit the law by night, and each other on the weekend -- but as their sport grew, it attracted big money and men who wanted to turn out the rabble and put it on par with Indy car racing. Driving with the Devil opens with sections on the Scots-Irish, Prohibition, and the rise of car culture before focusing on one man’s campaign to wrangle or impose order on an increasingly popular sport in the postwar years.  Who knew whiskey and racing would make such a good combination?

Early American history is besotted with liquor,  distilled beverages being  the chief source of income for many pioneers and a frequent source of conflict between  the people and the government. In an age of meager transportation options, distilling corn or other grains into potable beverages was the only way to sell produce inland, and attempts to impose taxes on said liquor kicked off more than one rebellion, including the famed Whiskey Rebellion of 1791.  Long before Prohibition barred the production and sale of alcohol, Americans had a history of fighting for their untampered tippling.  During Prohibition, liquor continued to be produced in the mountainous woodlands of the mid-south, and delivered to urban centers through young men desperate to escape rural poverty – desperate enough to risk their life and freedom speeding or sneaking through unlit paths through the hills and woods to places like Atlanta.   Bootleg driving put special demands on cars; not only did they need to be faster than the revenuers, but they needed to handle high speeds on rough roads without destroying the cargo.   Boys and men fascinated by the new machines developed a culture of study and tinkering, learning to master and improve the engines that Ford had wrought. Not content to exhibit their work or drink in the flush of adrenaline by night, drivers and mechanics began pitting their talents against one another in farmfields, racing for bragging rights and money.

Auto racing already existed as an organized sport before these bootleggers’ races;  the American Automobile Association organized races for the same reason Henry Ford did, to popularize automobiles.   The racecars used there, however, were specially and solely designed for racing:  the bootleggers were racing ‘stock’ cars, factory-built for consumers, and then modifying them to their own needs.  Bootleggers weren’t the only ones racing, but their nightly practice gave them a leg up – as did their organizations. Raymond Park, who operated one of the most notorious north-Georgia bootlegging operations, also fielded one of the first racing teams -- which included a wizard with Ford engines named Red Vogt, and two superb drivers,  Lloyd Seay and Roy Hall, the latter a man with such a following that he inspired two songs.   Running races wasn't just  backwoods fun, though; Parks and men like Bill France realized money could be made organizing and promoting the races. This was an uphill battle, what with the law watching their drivers and World War 2 suspending automobile production and sending drivers out into the wild blue yonder -- literally, as one driver joined a B-29 crew.  Racing was a dangerous sport, too, to both drivers and spectators: during one race a blowout sent a car into the crowd, with seventeen hospitalized and one buried. Not all deaths happened on the course: after winning a national championship, wheeling idol Lloyd Seay was shot in the woods over moonshine finances.

Slowly but steadily, France's organization drew in the majority of drivers,  attracted by his larger cash rewards, his talent for producing races that were genuine shows, and the opportunity of winning acclaim by racing against the biggest names.  France's forcefulness, that energy that helped make  his races a success, was also directed against drivers who wouldn't play ball, either by cheating on him by racing in other leagues, or cheating in the races with illegal modifications.  Eventually France would succeed in creating an institution, NASCAR, that had cleaned itself up for the big-city newspapers: the bootleg heroes were either playing nice, dead, or had gotten tired of fighting with Big Bill.  Either way, the ranks were filling with drivers outside the cast of whiskey-trippers, as young men around the South and even outside it wanted to try their hand at racing for cash.

Watching billboards race around in circles has never sparked my interest, but Driving with the Devil certainly  held it.  There is immediate attraction in the cast of characters,  poor farmboys making a living by running from the law, delivering liquid refreshment through skill, adrenaline, and more than a little luck. Admirable, too, are the mechanics like Vogt who were introduced to new machines and so devotedly studied them that they created a weapon on wheels  -- and the delightful chaos of '39 Fords tearing circles in red dirt,  careening over cliffs or into lakes, has lot more appeal than modern racing.  This is the story that Neil Thompson delivers, ending as 'modern' NASCAR with its paved oval tracks and truly national appeal is taking off.  As a story, it's superb, but as a book it has few issues under the hood. Thompson chronically repeats himself,  and sometimes to absurd levels. Towards the end, for instance, cited facts occur twice within a single page turn. A little editing would fix that, but somewhat more questionable are the historical allusions Thompson makes, like having Hitler refer to Lindbergh as the leader of American Fascism. This defamation is taken seriously by Thompson, who also believes the KKK supported Prohibition out of racial motives, when it was part of their full complement of social police hypocrisy. When it comes to writing about the whiskey and racing, however, he sticks closer to the facts.

Great fun!

Related:

• "Racing Extinction with Leilia Munter", a recent episode of StarTalk Radio with an..environmental-activist-NASCAR- driver?
   Neil deGrasse Tyson, host of StarTalk Radio: Do you know what NASCAR stands for?
   Eugene Mirman, cohost: National Auto....'moonshine' is in there, isn't it?
• Last Call: the Rise and Fall of Prohibition, Daniel Okrent

After the Prophet

After the Prophet: the Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split 
© 2009 Lesley Hazleton
256 pages

When Muhammad lay in his deathbed, legend has it that he cried to God for pity on those who would follow him. With no sons and no explicitly ordained heir, the question of succession was left to the faithful – to the murky realm of politics. There, the man many viewed as Muhammad's biological heir, his son-in-law Ali, was repeatedly passed over, despite faithful service to the succeeding caliphs – and when, twenty years later he was finally acknowledged caliph, was assassinated. After the Prophet is the story of Ali’s plight, of his and his sons’ martyrdom, with a concluding chapter on the long-term consequences of their deaths for Islam. It is highly narrative, drawing chiefly from oral histories given written form, and its figures are storied characters. We have an old and corrupt king, degenerate sons, wicked advisers, and scheming women – all set against a family which is depicted as too noble for their own good. The result is a history of a long-running personal feuds, where drastic changes like the conquest of Persia or the development of Islamic law courts are only mentioned incidentally. This is an intimate, mythic history where emotions run close to the surface, where characters are frequently covered in blood and tears, their actions charged with cosmic importance.

In the delivery of facts I wasn’t particularly impressed with After the Prophet, but she succeeds very well in demonstrating how the emotional weight of Ali’s downfall was felt by Iranian revolutionaries, who saw in the deaths of early activists against the Shah an echo of Ali’s own defenders and their martyrdom. This success is a small part of the book, its epilogue, but it builds on the emotional drama which has been steadily growing throughout the history, and gives the story a proper finish in establishing why reading it is important in the first place, given the United States’ apparently interminable adventures around the Persian Gulf where so many Shiites are concentrated. For those who have no idea what the difference between Sunnis and Shiites is, this a mythic beginning.

Related:

• Destiny, Disrupted A History of the World through Islamic Eyes, Tamim Ansary. Also narrative history, but far more substantive. 
• Ornament of the World,  Marie Rose Menocal. While its subject is Andalusia, Islamic succession politics forms the first few chapters. 

ST: The Patrian Transgression

The Patrian Transgression
© 1994 Simon Hawke

Annnnnnnnnnd kickoff for the Warp Speed Challenge! In The Patrian Transgression, the Enterprise arrives at the planet Patria to investigate a plea for help. According to the planet's leaders, the Klingons are supplying weapons to a terrorist organization, threatening to destabilize the republic completely. The Patrians would like the Federation's help, but when Kirk beams down to the planet he is contacted by one of the rebels and told that the powers that be are lying to him.  On the heels of this revelation, Kirk learns that Patria employs a relatively new police force called the Mindcrimes Unit, who are telepathic and target those who merely intend to commit crimes.  While a Mindcrimes agent's word is good as evidence in courts, they are also empowered to end the threat on sight -- shooting alleged criminals in cold blood.  Perhaps the rebels are in the right all along, but sympathy is hard to come by given that they're holding innocent civilians and Spock hostage.  Ultimately Kirk and company unravel a criminal conspiracy with a couple of layers of complexity. The Patrian Transgression makes for enjoyable light Trek reading, as the author has a fairly good handle on the characters and produces quite a few good lines of dialogue.  More unusually, it is McCoy who gets the girl of the week, this time an attache to the Federation ambassador. (Kirk is too busy arguing with the diplomat to play Romeo.)  The opening third is quiet, but the action and tension really pick up from there.  Star Trek Voyager later played with the idea of "thought crime", but the Enterprise crew are never targeted for violent thoughts here like Torres was.   Transgression makes for a fun start to this challenge series.

Next up will be a TNG novel; I'll be following a TOS-TNG-DS9 pattern as long as the books permit.