Colonization: Second Contact

Colonization: Second Contact
© 1999 Harry Turtledove
598 pages

A few weeks ago I read the Worldwar series by Harry Turtledove, which depicts what happens when lizard-like aliens who call themselves the Race invade Earth. While they expected to face humans armed with swords and spears, they found instead tanks, machine guns, jet aircraft, and atomic weaponry. Unprepared for this, their planned conquest quickly stalled as they found themselves running short on supplies and constantly stymied by the ever-changing tactics of their human foes. At series' end, the two sides -- human and Race -- agreed to a truce of sorts, wherin the Lizards maintained control of most of the southern hemisphere and China.

Second Contact is set twenty years in the future -- in a world where humans and Lizards have grown used to living beside one another. Driven by Mother Necessity, technological progress has surpassed the progress of the real 1960s. Humanity has left the warm and safe confines of Earth to explore parts of the solar system. We're told Nazis landed on the moon -- "Das ist one small step for a man, one giant leap for the Deutsche Volk!", I'm guessing -- and Americans have landed men on Mars. (I'm not altogether sure why: our main reason for exploring Mars is to see if there was ever life there, to settle of the question of 'Are we alone'. The precense of the Lizards seems as if it would have made that a moot point.)

There are three major spacefaring nations -- the United States, the Greater German Reich, and the Soviet Union. Britain and Japan have also poked around, but they are not major contenders. Hitler and Stalin have both died -- in their places are Himmler (head of the SS, which maintained the Nazis' death camps) and General Secretary Molotov. Earl Warren -- who presided over the "Who Shot JFK?" commission in real life -- is the president of the United States. Now that they are no longer fighting Lizards, the various nation-states are once more subjected to friction. Britain is slowly becoming a client state of the Reich, and the Nazis and Soviets still despise one another. The Lizards, meanwhile, have been fighting problems of their own. The Chinese Civil War never concluded with a Communist victory here (1949 was the year China became "Communist" in real life), but Mao's fighters have not given up -- and they are being supplied by the Soviet Union.

Tensions between humanity and the Lizards increase when their colonization fleet arrives. The fleet of the 1940s was purely for conquest: it was male-only, and contained no supplies for making Earth theirs. The colonization fleet carries building materials and females, however -- the tools for reshaping the Earth the way the lizards want to see it. Interestingly, females do not seem to be relegated to breeding stock: they hold rank in the Race's hierachy. This first book focuses on how Earth has changed in the last twenty years with the precense of the Race, exploring how human cultures and the Race have impacted one another. It also provides plenty of political intrigue: a mainstay throughout the book is the question of what the United States intends to do with the large space station it is building in deep space. Also, an un-named power keeps attacking the Race, which annoys them greatly.

This first book in the Colonization series was extremely interesting. What I like about Turtledove is that his books often employ political and cultural stories -- not just military. I'm not too much interested in military matters, with the exception of looking into how wars shape society. (There are other exceptions: I've written several papers on early air warfare, for instance.) I look forward to continuing the series.

Tosevite males wore robes and headpeices of cloth to shield themselves from the sun the males of the Race found so friendly, while the females swaddled themselves even more thoroughly. The Argentine Big Uglies, who lived in a harsher climate, wrapped fewer cloths around themselves. Fotsev had trouble understanding the reasons behind the difference.

When he remarked on that, Gorppet answered "Religion," and kept on walking, as if he'd said something wise.

Fotsev didn't think he had. Religion and Emperor-worship were the same word in the language of the Race. They weren't the same here on Tosev 3. The Big Uglies, not having had the benfefit of thousands of years of imperial rule, foolishly imagined powerful beigns made in their image, and then further imagined that those powerful beigns had created them in their image rather than the other way around.

It would have been laughable, had the Big Uglies not taken it so seriously. As far as Fotsev was concerned, it remained laughable, but he did not laugh. [...] If [the local Tosevites] thought they had to bow down five times a day to revere the Big Ugly they had writ large in the sky, easier to let them than to try to talk them out of it. [...]

Gorppet must have been thinking along related lines, for he said, "If they are going to have these absurd notions, why do they not have the same ones, instead of arguing about who is right and who is wrong?"

(The Race's relationship with middle-eastMuslims, especially after the rise of militant fundamentalism led by Khomeini, is funny.)

This Week at the Library

Books this Update:

• I, Asimov, Isaac Asimov
• Buy Jupiter and Other Stories, Isaac Asimov
• Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel, Frances and Joseph Gies
• Great Feuds in Science, Hal Hellman
• Writings on an Ethical Life, Peter Singer

(Click titles for individual commentaries.)

This week is unusual in that I have more nonfiction in it than fiction: it hasn't been that way since the summer. Asimov and Turtledove's series have much to do with that. My intended reading was nonfiction-only, but I was able to read the two Asimov books while taking breaks from my papers. I think it's interesting that I managed to read five books in the same week that I worked on three papers.

The first book I read was Isaac Asimov's extended biography. I didn't mean to read it through, but Asimov has that effect on me: once I started reading it, I didn't like to stop. Asimov's biography is large and written in a personal style: it seems like an intimate conversation between the reader and the man. Asimov writes about his life, his work, and his views about death. One particular opinion he expressed was on the relationship between television and reading. Television, he said, was a passive activity: it supplies every aspect of the story, so the viewer need only to receieve. In reading, though, the information you are provided with is limited, so the reader's mind has to actively construct the world about which he or she is reading: he has to provide the scenery and sounds and so forth.

I also read a collection of twenty or so short stories by Asimov called Buy Jupiter and Other Stories. The title is a fun, which Asimov is fond of. The majority of the stories were new to me, and almost all were enjoyable. There were a few I didn't quite get, but it didn't help that I was reading with a headache.

Next I read Frances and Joseph Gies' Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages. The Gies have written a series of books on life in the medieval era, and I have enjoyed all of them thus far. This latest has quickly become my second-favorite. The Gies are quite thorough: they begin by surveying the technology of the ancient era, establishing where it was when Rome began its decline. They show that there was no real "fall" of technology of knowledge: it slowly faded in the north, but lingered much longer in southern France and Italy. They write a narrative of the medieval era that depicts society slowly changing over time, arriving at new inventions as it does. As ever, the Gies force me to broaden my percetions.

After this I moved on to a history-of-science book. Hal Hellman presents ten feuds of science -- hence the name Great Feuds in Science: Ten of the Liveliest Disputes Ever. The stories begin with the beginning of science as we know it -- with Galileo. Galileo was important in that he taught his students to rely on observable evidence. He popularlized Kepler's notion of a heliocentric universe, bringing him in conflict with the Church. The feuds that follow track science's course: Newton and Lebniz fighting over who discovered calculus first, followed by the "evolution wars" and Kelvin's fight with the geologists over the age of the Earth. The book ends with social science, with a feud that epitomizes the nature versus nurture debate. All in all, interesting.

Lastly I read Peter Singer's Writings on an Ethical Life, in which he attempted to use sheer rationale to construct ethical arguments about vegetarianism, abortion, euthenasia, infantacide, practical living, and political systems. He attacks both conservative and liberal positions, and if you read this I suggest you commit time to it: some chapters aren't light reading. I thought some of his arguments were too unemotional: people are emotional creatures, and any ethical system has to consider that.

Pick of the Week: I, Asimov, Isaac Asimov and Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel by the Gies.

Quotation of the Week:

1. "It always seems to me that it's not hard to be nice to people in small ways, and surely that must make them more willing to be nice in small ways in return."
2. "There are no nations! There is only humanity. And if we don't come to understand that right soon, there will be no nations, because there will be no humanity."

Next Week:

• The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke, Arthur C. Clarke
• Life in a Medieval Village, Frances and Joseph Gies
• Colonization: Second Contact, Harry Turtledove

Writings on an Ethical Life

Writings on an Ethical Life
Peter Singer, © 2000
329 pages, plus an index

Almost every Friday, I listen to an online show called "Point of Inquiry", which features 20-minute (or so) interviews with various personalities. While the show is produced by a skeptical think-tank, its guests are not necessarily involved in the skeptical movement -- the host, D.J. Groethe, often interviews religious philosophies and personalities. Last week, he interviewed Peter Singer -- and I was interested enough in what he said to find one of his books.

Writings on an Ethical Life is a collection of selected chapters from various books of his, taken from books like Animal Liberation and Practical Ethics. He writes on a variety of topics: environmentalism, vegetarianism, abortion, euthanasia, living ethically, and so on. He attempts to arrive at ethics through strict rationalism. According to the New York Times Book Review, "Singer's documentation is unrhetorical and unemotional, his arguments tight and formidable, for he bases his case on neither personal nor religious nor highly abstract philosophical principles but on moral pisitions most of already accept".


I almost think that some of Singer's arguments are too rational. We can't seperate ethics from emotion, for we are emotional creatures and those needs must be considered. Singers' rationalizations are typically built on utilitarianism, or at least a form. Utiliarianism is a ethical philosophy that advocates that we should base our decisions on whatever provides the greatest good for the greatest number of people. My own ethical philosophy tends toward this, butI'm leery about going too far.


The chapters on abortion, infantacide, and euthenasia constitute a good bit of the book. Singer attacks the idea that human life is necessarily sacrosanct: he attacks both conservative and liberal issues, including my own that "humaness" starts with the development of the brain. I find it particularly difficult to summarize or comment on his views on any of these (with the exception of euthenasia, which I view as a right) It's safe to say, though, that whatever your views are, Singer challenges them. His arguments are all based on a kind of utiliarianism: he suggests that in some cases it's best to kill a deformed fetus or even an infant, in the interests of the quality of life. I agree with this, but what unsettles me is the emotions surroundin the death of a baby. I have been raised in a culture that views the death of a baby as more tragic than the death of an adult, and even I can't go against that without feeling uncomfortable.

His last chapters deal with the good life -- with the value of treating people well and responding to their needs. In "Darwin for the Left", he writes that the political left ought to adopt Darwinian thinking: to realize that human beings are naturally inlcined to look only after their own self-interests and that we should push for a system that takes this into account and doesn't ignore it the way current governments do -- ones that expect people to behave themselves and live by ideals.

It was an interesting, if slow and difficult, read.

Great Feuds in Science

Great Feuds in Science: Ten of the liveliest disputes ever
Hal Hellman © 1998
192 pages, plus bibliography and index

Last week I wanted to read a little science, and while roaming through the shelves, my eyes found this book. It looked interesting, so I checked it out. The book has ten chapters, each on a historical scientific "feud":

1. Galileo versus Pope Urban VIII: An Unequal Contest
   
2. Wallis versus Hobbes: Squaring the Circle
3. Newton versus Lebniz: A Clash of Titans
4. Voltaire versus Needham: The Generation Controversy
   
5. Darwin's Bulldog versus Soapy Sam: Evolution Wars
6. Lord Kelvin versus Geologists and Biologists: The Age of the Earth
7. Cope versus March: The Fossil Feud
8. Wegener versus Everybody: Continental Drift
9. Johanson versus the Leakeys: The Missing Link
10. Derek Freeman versus Margaret Mead: Nature Versus Nuture

The author introduces the 'contestants', providing brief biographies, then moves on to the conflict between the two (or more, in the case of "Evolution Wars") contestants. While I've heard of some of these conflicts, there were were a few (Wallis versus Hobbes, for instance) that were complete unknowns to me. Overall, the book was fairly interesting, and helped to add background to conflicts I've read about in brief -- like Cope versus March, which is mentioned in an inside in Spangenburg and Mosers' history of science series. According to Spangenburg and Moser, they were less scientists and more entrepreneurs who thought of nothing of dynamiting their fossil sites after they were done to prevent other people from finding out about anything they'd missed.

The authors are fairly throrough, although some articles -- "Evolution Wars"-- were stronger than articles like a "A Clash of Titans". The last article on "Nature versus Nurture" was particularly interesting to me. I am interested in both biology and sociology, and so the question of whether our genes or socialization are more important in determining how we act and how our societies function. This author seems to give the impression that the nurture argument is more odminant, at least in the specific case that it examined -- Margaret Mead's experiences in America Samoa.

All in all, fairly interesting and well-organized. If you pay attention to the dates and themes, you may realize that the book starts at the beginning of science as we know it -- Galileo's insistance on observation -- and moves through the history of the centuries following, up to the development of social science in the 20th century.

Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel

Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages
© 1994 Frances and Joseph Gies
291 pages, plus notes, an extended bibliography, and an index

The Gies' various books on life in the middle ages have continued to delight and entertainment, and so I looked forward to this particular book. My anticipation was only heightened by the fact that I am interested in pre-industrial technology, particularly concerning architecture and craft. The Gies did not disapoint, and this book has become my second-favorite Gies book -- the first being Life in a Medieval City. The book consists of seven chapters.

The first, "Nimrod's Tower, Noah's Ark", examines popular conceptions about technology in the middle ages. The Gies are forever forcing me to broaden my perceptions about the middle ages, and they do so again -- and again and again -- in this book. In "Triumphs and Failures of Ancient Technology", the Gies track the growth of technology up until the decline of the Roman Empire. They cover water wheels, road-building, weapons, smelting technology, astronomical tools, horse equipment, handicraft, and the like. In the chapters to follow, they move chronologically through the middle ages, ending with a chapter titled "Leonardo and Columbus". Another chapter, "The Asian Connection", is tucked in between the end of the early middle ages (500-900) and the beginning of the economic revival of the early 11- and 1200s. This particular chapter focuses on how technology and learning drifted west fro the Arab world, India, and China.

This is definitely one of the most interesting books I've ever read. The Gies cover a nearly unbeliable about of material in only three hundred pages, and I'm at a loss as to how to properly summarize it. They write about bridges, cathedrals, ship-building, glass-blowing, road-laying, pottery-making, iron-forging, masonry, the growth of universities, the development of art, water wheels, proto-industrial looms, the spice trade, crossbows, the Columbian exchange, mail armor, the Greek disdain for manual labor, trebuchets, cannons, the Roman preference for tehnology over natural philosophy, sanitation programs in cities, Leonardo's technical drawings, the birth of paper -- I could go on and on. All of this is informed by primary-source materials, from which the Gies quote liberally. They also use medieval depictions of water wheels and clock towers and so forth to illustrate what they are writing about. Joseph Gies once edited the technology articles for the Encyclopedia Brittanica, and his knowledge comes through in technical explanations. I didn't understand all of his explantations -- especially in regard to complicated mechanisms like printing presses and clock towers -- but many were.

The Gies also fit all of this into a general narrtive about the development of the medieval world, and I could appreciate this all the more, having read their other books. This book was enormously interesting: I really can't say that too many times. I reccommend it eagerly to anyone who is interested in the medieval era or the history of technology. I only wish the Gies had an official website.

Buy Jupiter and Other Stories

Buy Jupiter and Other Stories
Isaac Asimov, © 1979
207 pages

Today while in the library taking notes for my two term papers, I read through Buy Jupiter and Other Stories. I did not intend to finish it, but I realized I was finished with my notes ahead of time, and rather than starting my first paper an hour before lunch, I decided to return to and finish Buy Jupiter. It is a collection of some 20+ short stories by Isaac Asimov, each with generous afterwords and forewords. It turns out that I am not the only fan who adores these little asides by Asimov -- apparently he was written to by fans who thanked him for them.

Many of the stories are quite brief. There were about four that I didn't quite "get", but there were also some stories that really struck me and have become favorites. I'll mention a few of the stories: all are not necessarily favorites.

1. "Buy Jupiter" concerns the reaction of Earth when aliens approach requesting to buy the planet of Jupiter. The conclusion is rather comedic.
2. "The Founding Father" is about the crew of five Earthmen who crash on an Earth-like planet with an atmosphere of ammonia. They labor to make it livable. Excellent conclusion -- one of my favorites.
3. "Button, Button" features an inventor who uses German sentence structure whenever he grows emotional. As a student of the German language, I found that particularly interesting.

Many of the stories feature a first-person narrative voice, which is unusual for Asimov's short stories -- at least the ones I've seen. The book is an exceptionally quick read.

I, Asimov

I, Asimov
© Isaac Asimov, 1994
Doubleday, New York

Ben Bova visited me [in the hospital] and, noticing the manuscript spread over my bed, asked what I was doing. I explained. "In this autobiography," I said, "I'm including every stupid thing I can remember having said or done."

"Oh?" he said, eyeing the pages. "No wonder it's so long."

I am currently working on the research for two history papers as well as a number of sociology papers, and so am in the university library quite a bit. I hole myself up in my favorite little corner, reading and taking notes, composing a narrative in my head. Every hour, though, I take a break from the accounts of war and wool-trade and read a little. I read Communism by Richard Pipes in this manner, and this week I read I, Asimov in the same manner -- or almost. I, Asimov is considerably more difficult for me to put down, and I went through 20+ "chapters" at a time before finishing it today. I had to get it out of the way -- I was already hooked, and trying to work while having already sampled it was distracting.

I, Asimov is as you might imagine an autobiography by Isaac Asimov. I have already read one such autobiography -- It's Been a Good Life, edited by his wife and composed of excerpts from this book, others, and letters. It's Been a Good Life was considerably shorter than this, and I wanted to read more about his life after I finished it a month or so so back. The book is not expressly organized chronologically: while the topics themselves are arranged into a loose chronological framework, Asimov often goes back and forth between various areas of his life. The book was written in 125 days, and he wrote the sections as they came to him -- hence the fluid nature. The sections number nearly two hundred, but they are not lengthy like chapters -- some are only a page or two long, while others are considerably longer.

Asimov was born in Russia, although his parents moved when he was scarcely three. He could not speak Russian, or read it, and did not consider himself a Russian by any stretch of the imagination. His father was more or less a secular Jew, as was his mother, and consequently he was not raised with religion -- although he did go to Hebrew school to learn the Torah and Hebrew after his father began working for a synagogue. At first he resented this, as he did not see the use, but realized when he was older that any knowledge is usable. To paraphrase him, "Having familiarized myself with Greek myths and the darker Norse myths, I realized right away that I was dealing with Hebrew myths." Asimov learned to read and write at an early age and took immediately to the public library. His father was in no position to censor his reading to "proper" literature, and so he read anything he had a mind to. His family ran a candy store with an accompanying magazine rack, and it was through this story that Asimov read pulp fiction magazines, which introduced him to their fan clubs and eventually the world of writing.

While he wanted to write for a living, he thought this was not possible and so went to college. His father wanted him to become a physician, but he detested the medical art and went into biochemistry instead. He worked for the army during World War 2 and was drafted at the war's end. After this, he finished his PhD and began teaching. He began writing nonfiction on the side, which gave him outside income. The writing eventually became so popular that when he was relieved of his lecturing duties at Boston University he was able to write full-time and make a substantial living at it.

It's a large book, but very readable and very enjoyable for an Asimov fan like myself. He wrote about so many topics in the book that it is difficult to do it justice. He wrote about his experiences with Star Trek conventions, for instance, and describes how he met and befriended various personalities like Lester del Ray and Carl Sagan. Asimov describes the worlds he lived in -- the world of authors, graduate students, New Yorkians, soldiers, intellectuals -- in considerable detail and always with that informal style of his that makes the book read like a direct conversation with the reader. Asimov is frank about his abilities and his shortcomings -- as well as those of others. I greatly reccommend the read. Here are two quotations I found likable enough to write down:

1. "It always seems to me that it's not hard to be nice to people in small ways, and surely that must make them more willing to be nice in small ways in return."
2. "There are no nations! There is only humanity. And if we don't come to understand that right soon, there will be no nations, because there will be no humanity."