Peter Sean Bradley

The Life of Theseus by Plutarch

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R153SLKC7EHZSY?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

I read this for the Online Great Books.

I found this to be difficult reading. Plutarch's interest was in writing biographies that would teach moral virtues to their readers. Theseus certainly ranks as chief among those who can model such virtues, mostly because he was a legendary figure, rather than an actual person.

That said, however, one of the most interesting things about the Life of Theseus is that Plutarch treats Theseus as an entirely mortal man. There is no sense in the text that Plutarch thought he was writing about a legend.

All of the legendary details are here. Theseus defeats various brigands who rob and kill in a variety of improbable ways. He frees Athens from Minos. In Plutarch's version, there is no minotaur and a realistic explanation is given for the labyrinth. Daedulus dies near Sicily, but it has nothing to do with flying.

Plutarch packs on the details. I wondered what sources Plutarch was able to use.

I probably should have come up with a few moral lessons, but, unfortunately, that seemed to elude me in the details.

Crimson Lake by Candice Fox

I was induced to read this book while watching the Thomas Jane TV series “Troppo,” which is an adaptation of this book. In other words, it has the same leading characters and setting, but the mystery has been changed for reasons known only to the Gods of TV Adaptations.

Ted Conkaffey is an ex-cop, who is living under the threat of criminal prosecution for a very convincing set of circumstantial evidence linking him to the brutal rape/assault on a twelve-year-old girl. He has fled to the “Top End,” i.e., steamy, sweaty Northern Australia. While there he meets Amanda Pharrell, who runs a private investigation business in Crimson Lake, Cairns, and the Top End.

Amanda has her own dark past. She was convicted of murder as a juvenile and served serious time in Queensland Women's for that murder. The victim was a popular fellow classmate. The murder is inexplicable and no one has tried to understand it. People write it and Amanda off as psychotically evil.

So, Ted and Amanda are the pariahs of Crimson Lake.

Amanda is hired to find a missing writer, which leads them through the paces of the mystery. Both face the hostility of everyone around them, particularly Ted who is labeled a “pedo” and is being followed closely by two of the local constabulary, who have made it their personal mission to run him out of the Top End.

The mysteries work out nicely. I enjoyed the setting in tropical Australia. I found the characters engaging enough to follow them on future adventures.

Can't say more in favor of a book than that.

The Reincarnationist Papers by D. Eric Maikranz

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RPGRFSWCBHTF2?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

The setup of this book is that the author has found three volumes of Bulgarian memoirs. The memoirs narrate in the first person the story of an arsonist who discovers that he is one of the very small minority of people who perfectly recall their past lives. Life, for them, is not a matter of starting from scratch, but, rather, a continuation of one life through a succession of bodies.

There are about thirty such people in the world. They have formed a society called the Cognomen for their mutual benefit and friendship. The arsonist, Evan, is discovered by a member of the Cognomen by chance and taken to their home base in Zurich, where he is admitted to the society and learns about the past lives of a couple of members.

The story was competently written. I enjoyed it and felt involved in the writing. The problem I had is that the element of “conflict” was mostly missing. Certainly, I wanted to know about this mode of existence and the society of reincarnationists. So, the question of what's going on provides some conflict, but of a minor sort. Likewise, Evan has some problems with the hedonism of his mentor, but this is minor. He also gets involved in a theft, which leaves him in a dire situation, but at the end, since he reincarnate, the situation does not seem so dire.

Maybe that's the theme of the book - reincarnation solves everything?

There are a couple of books that this reminds me of. Steven Brust has a couple of books called “The Incrementalists” which involve personal survival by a small group of people able to implant their psyches into the minds of other people (who are than suppressed.) Michael Marshall Smith The intruders is also a story of a secret society where people can arrange to have themselves reborn.

There are some attempts at deep thinking where the character has discussions about whether the Reincarnationists are divine, or, at least, kind of divine. None of this was really deep. Most of it was mildly insulting to the thinking capacity of anyone who takes spiritual issues seriously

The book accomplished what it set out to accomplish. It did not do more than that. Of these three similar stories, The Intruders is the best as a story.

Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer

Please give a helpful vote for my Amazon review - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R36JONQM5YNDUT?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

I came to this book while watching the Hulu serialization based on the book. The book and series do not have a lot in common. The book does not make any mention of the investigating officers, while the series is centered around these apparently fictional characters. Similarly, while the murders of Brenda Lafferty and her daughter are the centerpiece of both narratives, the book spends far more time on Mormon culture than the series. Another difference is the major dysfunction of polygamy while the series seems to want to make the issue about “blood atonement.”

Brenda was murdered by her brothers-in-law, Ron and Dan Lafferty in July of 1984. Ron believed that he was being given revelations by God. One revelation advised him to kill his sister-in-law and her infant daughter. Ron and Dan were convicted of first-degree murder in 1985 and Ron was sentenced to death. Thanks to the speed of our justice system, Ron died of natural causes in 2019.

Krakauer provides a “warts and all” history of Mormonism. I had heard a lot of this in passing but I had never followed up for the details. For example, I didn't know that the Mountains Meadow Massacre involved the execution of 140 unarmed pioneers who had surrendered to a Mormon militia (after being attacked by Mormons in the guise of Paiute Indians.)

Krakauer places the blame for Lafferty murder on the Mormon tradition of polygamy and authoritarian religion. Krakauer distinguishes between mainstream Mormonism and Fundamentalist Mormonism, although he does not separate the two.

Joseph Smith surreptitiously disclosed his revelation of polygamous marriage only to his closest allies. It was up to Brigham Young to share the revelation with the broader Mormon community after Smith was killed and the Mormons had left for Utah. The adoption of polygamy caused a schism. In 1890, a new revelation repealed the requirement of polygamy, which led to more schisms. Those who held to polygamy became the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (“FLDS.”)

Krakauer's description of the fundamentalists is eye-opening. The fundamentalists have created their own communities, often quite sizeable (See Colorado City, Arizona.) In these communities the local prophet holds sway, assigning 12-year-old girls to marriages with 60-year-old men with multiple wives. Incest crops up regularly. Women are taken away from men if the man displeases the prophet. A reader forms the opinion that polygamy bestializes both the men and women who come within its culture. I came out of this book with the conviction that we should be waging a war on polygamy that is every bit as strong as our war on trafficking (because in many cases it seems to be the same war.)

Krakauer touches on the question of the Mormon doctrine of Blood Atonement. One of the more shocking features of Mormonism - at least, early Mormonism - is that there are some sins that Christ's Passion could not atone for. To these sins, the early Mormons taught that only the death of the wrongdoer could suffice.

Finally, the question of revelation and sanity was raised. It seems that when Mormons go “nuts” they go nuts in a stereotyped way where they will claim to hear the Heavenly Father telling them things, some of which seem like confirmation bias, e.g., “remove Brenda Lafferty.” At which point, they are free to do whatever the Heavenly Father wants, which frequently corresponds to what they want, without remorse, such as slicing the throat of an eighteen month old baby girl. The matter of fact way that this lunatics go about responding to the revelation is inhuman. at one time, Ron told Dan that the Heavenly Father had revealed to Ron that he should kill Dan. Dan thought this made sense, so he initially cooperated with the murder attempt.

These people are not insane. They have a logic that fits their assumptions. They have the same mindset that informs other people who are equally capable of following the logical entailments of other intangibles like love, freedom, or socialism.

The book was interesting. I'm sure that a Mormon apologist would be offended by it. Krakauer pulled no punches in his description of Mormon history or the dysfunction of the FLDS communities. I suspect that there is context that would make the recitation of Mormon history less awful. I also got a sense that polygamy may be a constant attraction to some devout Mormons, people who want to follow the teachings of the church no matter what. There were a lot of stories of such people hopping the fence to Crazyville on the polygamous train.

The Dosadi Experiment by Frank Herbert

Did you know that Frank Herbert wrote a book about a planet with such an extreme environment that it breeds a superior race of humanity that is highly disciplined, smarter, and tougher than the rest of humanity? This population has access to life extension and if turned loose on the rest of the galaxy, will overturn everything.

You probably have, but this is the other one.

The Dosadi Experiment is set in Herbert's Consentiency universe. “Universe” is used loosely since there was just this book and “Whipping Star.” Both featured Jorg X. McKie, Sabotageur Extraordinary of the Bureau of Sabotage. BuSab was created to throw a monkey wrench into the government and thereby protect individual liberty.

We could use one of those now.

The Consentiency is populated by a variety of interesting and quirky aliens, including the frog-like Gowachin. They have kidnapped a mixed population of humans and Gowachin, which they have kept isolated on the poisonous planet of Dosadi for generations. The habitable area of Dosadi amounts to a few square miles inhabited by millions. Competition is intense.

Now, the lid is about to blow off the Dosadi experiment.

Because he was trained in the Gowachin's perverse legal system, McKie is tasked to go to Dosadi to investigate what the Gowachin were doing.

The story comes to a head in a courtroom scene where death is on the line.

I read this in its Galaxy serialization. I enjoyed it. The story mostly holds up, although there is a bit much of Herbert's tendency to make his characters appear far more insightful than they actually are.

Nonetheless, if you have a choice between the 79th instalment of the Dune saga - The Master Bakers of Dune - or this one, give this one a shot.

Sick Souls by John Kaag

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2GFQKLCMDI2GA?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp


This book is an interweaving of three topics: (a) Jamesian philosophy, (b) James' biography, and (c) the author's reaction to William James. The best part of the book is the author's treatment of the third topic. A reader going into this book looking for a systematic treatment of William James' life or the philosophy of pragmatism is going to be disappointed. Kaag's interest in James is ultimately limited to the theme of staving off depression and suicide.

Author John Kaag starts his book with the observation that “William James's entire philosophy, from beginning to end, was geared to save a life, his life.” Shortly therafter, Kaag offers this as the core point of James' philosophy in that regard: “To such a culture, James gently, persistently urges, “Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.”

Anyone familiar with James' “Will to Believe” will recognize this as the gist of James' religious philosophy: a person can come to believe by acting and thinking as if they were already a believer. From that perspective, one can then assess the value of the religion adopted. This certainly seems a “pragmatic” and practical approach to problems that are typically insoluble by mere reasoning, and, hence, is why James' philosophy is called “Pragmatism.”

Kaag follows James' life from youth to old age. This account provides a good survey of James' biography. It should serve a fledgling Jamesian scholar as a springboard to dive deeper into James' life. By calling this a survey, I don't want to disrespect that depth that Kaag brings to his subject. He provides the reader with quotes and excerpts from James' letters and other writings. However, again, the purpose of the book is to explore the issue of saving one's life from ennue and angst.

The best part of the book is the author's biographical interaction with James. This part can be very affecting. The author describes his own problems with existence, e.g.,. confronting a suicide, the death of his marriage, finding love after the death of his first love, having a child and, then, having his second marriage fail. I became more interested in the author's life than James, which is probably not the impact the book should have had. With respect to those travails, Kaag applies and discusses James' theories of psychology to explain his own conflict and resolution.

This is a good book for those with an interest in William James or psychology.

Find Me (Inland Empire #1) by Anne Fasier

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R35WT2ABQNEBZX?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

This is a better than average, very entertaining mystery.

Reni Fisher is the daughter of a serial killer. Worst still, as a child she participated in the “games” whereby her father captured his victims. She grew up, joined the FBI as a criminal profiler, had a nervous breakdown, and is now on leave in her beloved Mojave Desert.

Now, her father has promised to reveal where he buried the bodies if his daughter meets him.

Daniel Ellis, a police officer with his own dark past, has been assigned to the Fisher case.

I'm not much of a mystery/thriller reader, but I found this to be tense, with attractive characters and a well-written plotline.

The Statesman by Plato

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R3P90KY445UET0?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

This is another book I read for Online Great Books. Again, if it wasn't for the seminar discussion after reading the book, I would have been lost in left field.

This is the second of a planned series of three books - Sophist, Statemen, and Philosopher. “Philosopher” never got written. Why Philosopher was not written is fodder for speculation. This dialogue also features the visiting philosopher who interacts with “Young Socrates,” who is a young friend of Socrates. Socrates has only a few lines at the beginning of the dialogue.

The visiting philosopher again applies the taxonomic approach to identifying what makes for a statesman. The visiting philosopher concludes:

“VISITOR: Then let us say that this marks the completion of the fabric which is the product of the art of statesmanship: the weaving together, with regular intertwining, of the dispositions of brave and moderate people—when the expertise belonging to the king brings their life together in [c] agreement and friendship and makes it common between them, completing [311c] the most magnificent and best of all fabrics and covering with it all the other inhabitants of cities, both slave and free; and holds them together with this twining and rules and directs without, so far as it belongs to a city to be happy, falling short of that in any respect.

Plato. Plato: Complete Works (p. 402). Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Well, gosh, that's nice, but a little bit impossible to achieve in our fallen world.

The dialogue itself is not easy to follow since it seems to jump tracks periodically. However, the reader does get a nice discussion of the various forms of government - monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy and their distorted counterparts. This is a review of Plato's Republic and a preview of some of Aristotle's writings.

The Green Man by Kingsley Amis

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RKMI42UFH6F8I?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

Maurice Allington has a problem: How is he going to get his wife and his friend's wife to agree to a “three way”?

Also, his home/restaurant is haunted.

This is a good if eccentric book. Maurice is, to put it nicely, a cad. He is an alcoholic who probably runs a 2.0 BAC before lunch. He has recently been saddled with his daughter after her mother died. He has a new young wife that he ignores. And he has that obsession with having an orgy, which is just creepy and weird and doesn't turn out anything like what he imagines.

His restaurant/pub/home also has a reputation for being haunted. As the story goes on, the reputation slowly moves from myth to reality.

The story works. As a literary writer, Amis is more interested in character than plot. The characters are well-drawn. This could be a decent movie/mini-series. The ghost story initially takes up little space in the story, being crowded out by Maurice's life problems and his caddishness. Over time, as the ghost element becomes more real and threatening, it naturally becomes more pressing.

The oddness of the book was underscored when God - I think - made an appearance to Maurice - because no one would ever believe Maurice had a visit from the Almighty.

This is a quick read. It's odd but enjoyable.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RKRRYN8MCP9LB?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

I was doing a science fiction stream on the “50 Greatest Books of Science Fiction.” My daughter had insisted that I put this on the list. Since I hadn't read it, I thought it would be a good idea before I recommended it.

Even without reading Slaughterhouse-Five, I knew it belonged on the list. It has had a cultural resonance far beyond science fiction as has Kurt Vonnegut. I knew the outline of the book vaguely. Frankly, it's amazing that I went 60 years without reading it.

Slaughterhouse-Five was Vonnegut's great effort to come to literary terms with his experience as a POW in Dresden when the city was burned to the ground. Yet, the Dresden incident is really a fraction of the story, which, as everyone knows, involves his protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, living a conventional life, surviving Dresden because he was housed in a deep cave/slaughterhouse, becoming unstuck in time, being kidnapped by the Tralfamadorians, who put him in a zoo with a naked film star, and otherwise leading a perfectly normal life. All of this is told in Vonnegut's light, easy to read style. The effect is light and amusing with a fair number of humorous aphorisms. Vonnegut provides fan service with references to Kilgore Trout and Howard W. Campbell, Jr., the fascist spokesman/central character of “Mother Night.”

I recommend it.

As I read this book, I began to doubt that this was science fiction at all. What it really seems to be, to me, is a story about an aging man suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. It seems that he doesn't reveal his being “unstuck in time” to anyone until he is past middle age and his wife has died. At that point, his daughter worries about his mental health. Billy Pilgrim seems to be a sad example of someone who has suffered a trauma - Dresden, obviously - and has never quite processed it. The Tralfamadorian incident seems like science fiction wish-fulfillment.

The fact that this book is ambiguous and can be read on different levels adds to its charms.

Alternate Routes (Vickery and Castine 1) by Tim Powers

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1KTT6D3XYEJIF?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

This book is archetypal Tim Powers' fare. The book sets a fantasy within an urban, hyper-modern setting. In this case, the setting is the freeways of Los Angeles. You probably did not know that when a being possessed of a will goes past another being with a will, a force is generated much like electricity is generated when a magnet is spun around a wire or vice versa. The force permits some short-term vision into the past or future. This effect is normally not large, so you need locations where there are a lot of moving “beings with wills” going past stationary “beings with wills.”

Like freeways, for example,

You also were probably unaware that the ramifications of this field is to expand possibilities such that at the margins of these fields, or, say, close to freeways, it is easy to reach out into other possibilities to talk with beings who think they are the same people as people who have died in this world.

Likewise, you probably didn't know that there was an obscure government agency, known as the Transportation Utility Agency (the “TUA”) whose job is to interview ghosts - or “deleted persons” - in order to get intelligence on otherwise unknown things for the government.

All this is true in Tim Powers' world.

Sebastian Vickery was a Secret Service agent who stumbled onto these truths while on the job. When the TUA tried to kill him, he shot first and is now an outlaw surving on the margins among those who have turned the “current” into profit. His existence is up-ended when a TUA agent from his past - Ingrid Castine - warns him that the TUA have a lock on him through the ghost of his dead wife and are about to terminate him with extreme prejudice.

From that point on, we have slambang action on the highways of Los Angeles and intrigue among both the marginal grifters who work with the “current” and the TUA bureaucracy. The action is fun and exciting, but, for me, the real charm was in seeing the marginal world that Powers creates and the rules he imagines for those trafficking in ghosts.

But, of course, being Tim Powers, the story could not be told without extra helpings of obscure mythology. This time we get Daedulus, the Labyrinth, and the Minotaur. Interestingly, Powers, who is a Catholic, put a number of gratuitous Catholic references in the story. Thus Vickery goes to Latin Mass. There was an abacus that became a rosary. I am not sure what that was all about, except it probably was another layer of symbolism for literary critics to unravel.

Honestly, I enjoyed the portions of the story set in our world. I live imagining that there is a deeper world just behind our own. When the story shifted to the other world, it lost me. The other reality was not very interesting. Likewise, the ending set in the fantasy world of myth was hackneyed and silly compared to the real-world struggle. I certainly understand that Powers is fascinated by Jungian archetypes, but the shift from freeways to minotaurs interrupted my willing suspension of disbelief as a reader.

That said, I am going to read the next volume in the series because I did enjoy this one.

And Then She Vanished (Joseph Bridgeman #1)

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RM6LCKS284UKY?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

I enjoyed this book, but I found it to be a bit too formulaic. So, I'm not giving this book an unfavorable review or trying to wave anyone off from reading it, but I will say that if you have a fondness for time travel stories, you will see this as not offering anything really new.

As a teenager, Joseph Bridgeman experienced a trauma that shaped his life when his sister disappeared. Years later, Joseph is muddling by, using his psychic talent for knowing the provenance of objects by touch to run a failing antique store. He is persuaded to visit a hypnotherapist who unlocks his latent ability to travel in time. He then uses that ability to do what you must surely think he will do based on the premise I've already mentioned.

The story moves along in a pretty logical, connect-the-dots fashion as Joseph learns the limitations and rules of his power. (One of the rules is that the further he goes back, the less time he can spend in the past.) We meet his supporting cast of characters, who are all likable and supportive. Joseph gets breaks in moving forward in his efforts just as he needs to get those breaks. He's a likable guy. The story is likable. In the end, we are shown that there is a league of time travelers who protect the timeline, or at least that's my inference.

It's a nice book. In some ways, I saw this as a kind of superhero origin story.

I had problems with it for a number of reasons. First, the time-travel element is pure fantasy. Joseph travels through time by wishing it, or, if you prefer because he has a gift for time travel that was unlocked by hypnotherapy. This is handwaving that I would normally give the author as part of the “suspension of disbelief” deal a reader has with the author, except, second, the author had already spent his credit on the psychic ability to know provenance by touching. I understand that the latter is part of the package for time travel, but I really think that the more handwaving an author tosses in the more it seems like Superman's brand new power.

Again, nice book, it can't hurt you, but not a lot of nutrition.

Nightwings by Robert Silverberg

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R39E5NDYPB3YEV?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp


The last time I read this, I was in my middle teens around 50 years ago. Silverberg was one of the “go-to” writers for young science fiction readers. He was an author whose works you had to read, like those of Heinlein, Clark, Asimov, Farmer, etc. In the 1980s, Silverberg essentially dropped off the map for me. I wasn't interested in his Maljipoor stories.

I probably haven't read Silverberg in the last four decades, but a recent YouTube on classic science fiction novels got me interested in Silverberg again. So, I decided to pick out a story I dimly remembered mostly as flashes of image. I was surprised in fact to see how much of the story's plot and characters I remembered.

Nightwings is a novel composed of three novelettes. The first part “Night Wings” is the best. The story is set in the far distant future, maybe 40,000 years in the future. Our time is dimly remembered as the First Cycle. The story is set in the Third Cycle, long after Earth has slid into backwardness and poverty from the height of the Second Cycle. The inhabitants of Third Cycle Earth know that they have lost their greatness. They live among the great architectural wonders of the prior world and know that they can't ever build such things ago.

Silverberg effectively communicates that the Earth of the Third Cycle is buried under its own history. The Third Cycle world is organized into various guilds in a hierarchical fashion under the Dominators, Masters, Defenders, Indexers, and the rest. The feel of the story is medieval, not Divergent. The guild system was set up to provide stability to the Earth after it had fallen from its peak of glory.

Earth has more problems than a loss of glory. An alien race has promised to conquer the Earth in order to avenge an ancient slight to their ancestors. They are not prosecuting their mission with alacrity. It seems that the promise of revenge has been outstanding for thousands of years.

In the face of this threat, Earth has organized a guild of Watchers, whose job is to use a kind of telepathic device they cart around at set intervals during the day to scan the galaxy for the invading force. Once they detect the invasion force, they are to give a warning, and then their life mission is over.

The focal character is an old Watcher. He has walked along the land bridge from Afreek to Talya to visit Roum. A feature of the book is the familiar strangeness of the world. He is in the company of a Changeling - a human subspecies created to be mutant monsters during the Second Cycle - and a Flyer - another human subspecies created during the Second Cycle with wings that can be used only at night when they do not have to fight solar radiation. They meet the Prince of Roum, visit the sites of Roum, and the Watcher learns that his long watch may be ending.

The story begins with these classic lines:

“ROUM IS A CITY built on seven hills. They say it was a capital of man in one of the earlier cycles. I did not know of that, for my guild was Watching, not Remembering; but yet as I had my first glimpse of Roum, coming upon it from the south at twilight, I could see that in former days it must have been of great significance. Even now it was a mighty city of many thousands of souls.”

Silverberg, Robert. Nightwings (p. 5). Open Road Media. Kindle Edition.

That is the perfect opening to set the hook. It communicates a sense of nostalgia for our future. We learn so many things obliquely. We know we are on Earth, but that it is a different Earth.

My earlier self could not have recognized that this story may have influenced Gene Wolfe's magisterial “the Shadow of the Torturer” in its nostalgia for our future amidst a world that has declined from greatness.

The next two parts follow the old Watcher as he joins the guild of Rememberers and then makes his way to Jorslem to be rejuvenated.

The story moves along cleanly, telling a captivating story. The world sketched by Silverberg is surprising and engaging. I liked the character of the Watcher.

The Nightwings portion of the book won a well-deserved Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1969.

19 Souls (Sin City Investigations Book 1) by J.D. Allen

Please give my Amazon review a helpful review - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RZABMWSD2ZRAL?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

Jim Bean isn't his name. Jim is a Las Vegas private investigator hired by a woman looking for her brother. Jim is barely scraping by and he welcomes the retainer but what he does not know - and this is not a spoiler because it is revealed within the first two chapters, and long before Jim finds out - the woman, Sophia, is psychotically obsessed with the “brother,” Dan, and will kill anyone who stands in her way.

The story moves through the paces as the threat that Sophia poses to Dan and everyone else who is convenient for her to achieve her aim of kidnapping Dan and reducing him to a happy relationship with her. Sophia becomes something of a terminator who is incredibly effective at anything she sets her mind to, whether it is hospital software sales or the infiltration and execution of FBI agents. I don't want to make this sound absurd. Sophia is depicted as deadly effective within the realm of reason, and we could easily see this as a movie starring one of the stock female “girl power” actressess, maybe Gina Carrano?

For his part, Jim Bean comes across as a decent guy. There is a backstory that explains his name change. The backstory involves a false rape accusation that ruined the young Jim's dream of joining the FBI. Apart from that backstory, which is there but not crucial to the story, Jim comes across as a rough and tough private investigator, more inclined to use his fists than his mind.

This is the first story in the series. So, we get introduced to the supporting cast: Double O - the huge bounty hunter with a heart of gold; Ely - the computer hacker; Detective Miller - the friendly cop. We might even have seen Jim's love interest in the form of a pretty, tough FBI agent.

I am not much of a mystery/thriller reader. This book seemed like a better than average example of the genre. The characters were likable; the villain was threatening; the pages turned.

Superb Space Opera (Conclusion)

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1UID9BXMKXXXE?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

The Killing of Worlds (Succession 2) by Scott Westerfeld

I gave the predecessor book - “The Risen Empire” - a five star rating, even though it turned out to be only the first half of a single novel. Normally, I feel like I've been “baited and switched” when I found out that The Risen Empire was not a complete novel in itself. However, I thought the story was so creative and engaging that I overlooked this offense, which is usually a mortal offense in my mind. I particularly liked the sociological world-building, which I discussed in my review of the first book.

This book turned out to be better than the first from the perspective of the Space Opera genre. The story picks up where the last one ended, namely, with the crew of the Lynx preparing for a heavily lopsided battle against the battleship of their enemy, the Rix Cult. Westerfeld has a grip on the technology of his story and the various strategies that it would allow. We see Captain Laurent Zai use the technology to cobble together a battle plan, and then brilliantly alter the plan when it comes into contact with the enemy.

At the same time, we also skip back to the home planet, where Zai's lover, Senator Nara Oxham, is engaged in political games against the Risen Empire, who is willing to nuke the planet of Legis XV in order to protect his “secret.”

The story is exciting and engaging. It moves from slam-bang military actions in space to tense political confrontations on the home front. We get a perspective from a Rix soldier and from the Rix AI “God.”

I liked the characters by the end of the first book, but in this book, the characters become even more sympathetic. In the first book, we see Zai put off the expiation of his Error of Blood by paying the Penalty of Bood by the single word transmitted via quantum entanglement by Nara: “Don't.” In this book, we see more character development. Zai is a tragic character in a tragic situation, but his belief in duty, and his evolution to a higher sense of duty, make him admirable. Nara is the idealist who becomes a pragmatist.

It seems that Westerfeld probably intended to write further books in this universe. The story ends with an opening gesturing at a civil war in the Risen Empire. That never comes in this book. This book was written more than a decade ago, so it seems that project has been shelved.

Don't Believe a Word by David Shariatmadari

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R3V9ZO6ZXT6M94?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp


If you are a language nerd, then you will start finding that books on linguistics begin to run together. They often make the same revelations and cover the same territory. This book had a lot of that going on.

Nonetheless, each such book has its own nuance. This book had enough new details to make it stand out. For example, to boil it down to a nub, it seems that Noam Chomsky's universal grammar is probably passe. The author makes the point that language is a tool and we should expect tools to work in certain ways if they are to get their job done. That is the reason, rather than some deeply buried genetic grammar gene, that languages have similar features. As a dabbler in this area, I hadn't realized that Chomsky was passe (or maybe going passe.)

Shariatmadari also made some interesting points about language density. People can comprehend only so much, so denser languages are slower, and faster languages are less dense.

Shariatmadari's writing was accessible. I enjoyed his presentation and the material in this book.

Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R4RQJR6IJSPHF?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

This is a very oddball zombie book. A strange affliction has turned the human race into the walking dead. The human population - the “MoFo's” as the book denominates us - has been turned into mindless flesh-hungry shambling beasts.

Worse, they aren't feeding their pets.

This novel is set in Seattle and features the life of a crow named S.T. after his owner loses an eyeball and reduces himself to a lifetime of walking into the basement walls.

ST is a very clever crow and realizes that domestic pets are in trouble. The gist of the story involves ST getting acquainted with the natural world, including college crows, released zoo animals, and evolved mindless humans that nature is trying to reset.

The story is probably overlong as ST moves from point A to point B to point C, etc., etc., as he tries to solve his problems. Likewise, the story plays around with some environmentalist tropes about human beings constituting a cancer on the world and the animals are too self-aware. However, the story redeems itself with the humor of ST's running commentary and not a few very funny observations. There is a chapter from a house cat's perspective that is spot on and absolutely hilarious.

This is a lightweight book, but it was not a bad read.

Rabbinic Judaism Debunked by Eitan Bar

This is a polemical book written by a Christian Jew. The gist of the argument is that Judaism is impeached by the Rabbinical Jewish doctrine of the Oral Torah.

The oral Torah is the set of unwritten law purportedly given by God to Moses at Sinai. The oral Torah supplements the written Torah. The oral Torah provided the basis for the Mishnah upon which the Talmud was a commentary.

I don't think non-Jews (or American reformed Jews) understand the role that the oral Torah plays in orthodox Judaism. For my part, I was surprised to find that most of the well-known rules are found in the Mishnah and not in the written Torah. The oral Torah, Mishnah and Talmud are not accepted by all Jews, including the Karaites and Reformed Jews.

Bar's argument is use the Talmud to highlight the importance of the Talmud to Orthodox Judaism. Bar supports his argument with quotations from the Talmud. Some of the quotes are eyebrow-raising, including some that suggest that the Rabbis get to tell God how the laws are to be interpreted. Since this is a polemical work, I suspect the quotes are in the text but that these quotes may be susceptible of a more charitable interpretation. Chalk this book up as an interesting survey of a maximalist interpretation of the influence of the Talmud.

Superb Space Opera.

The Risen Empire (Succession 1) by Scott Westerfield

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1OXEMT9NPUM25?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp


They don't write them like this anymore. The surprising thing is that the author is Scott Westerfield, who I've seen only (but never read) as the author of “Hunger Game” knock-offs. This book is entirely different from that genre and is probably one of the best space operas I've read in a while. (Well, since at least the Praxis series by Walter Jon Williams.)

What impressed me was the world-building. The story is set in a war between “the Risen Empire” and the “Rix Cult.” The culture of both combatants is weird from our perspective, although the Risen Empire is the home of our focal characters, and, therefore, the “good guys,” while the Rix Cult has lost its humanity.

Both societies are organized around different ideas of immortality. For the Risen Empire, immortality is given to a chosen few, who are given some kind of symbiont at death. The symbiont uses nanotechnology to repair the dead organs and return the dead to some kind of life, but for most it is a vague kind of existence disconnected from the living. (Others - such as the 1,600 year old Risen Emperor- remain fully engaged, as do some Risen Generals to a lesser degree.) Over time the Risen have become very numerous and wealthy, while the living live and die as they always have. For many of the living, the prospect of immortality defines their existence; they are willing to do anything - even commit suicide when they fail - in order to be a part of a system that rewards some with immortality.

For their part, the Rix Cult make it their mission to infect the information system of hyper-advanced planets, creating AI (artificially intelligent) Gods who control everything on the planet. The Rix has evolved the human form to stock its military with the most efficient fighters in the galaxy. Individually, they are more than a match for any mere human soldier.

The story starts with a Rix attack that takes the Emperor's niece - who is a 1,600-year-old immortal - as a hostage while the information system of Legis XV. Captain Laurent Zai of the Cruiser Lynx is on the spot to attempt a hostage rescue. Any failure will mean that he has made an “Error of Blod” which will require suicide and a loss of his chance at immortality.

From there, Westerfeld hops from perspective to perspective to tell his story. We see a recon expedition by flying crafts less than a millimeter across. We skip back to the home planet of the empire and see the political machinations through the perspective of an empathic senator (who is also the lover of Captain Zai.) The stakes escalate as the Lynx is commanded to attack a Rix battleship in a suicidal mission.

This is all fast-moving, exciting stuff. We get to know several of the characters to empathize with their impossible situation. Westerfeld has really thought out a lot of the implications of his technology and the strategies that it would entail. I found the book fully immersive, particularly with respect to the alien societies that we don't see that often anymore.

The book does something that usually mortally offends me, namely, it is not a complete book. It simply stops at the point where the Lynx is preparing to take on the Rix battleship. However, I enjoyed the book so much that I was willing to overlook this mortal offense.

One Day all this Will Be Yours by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RXRGJ9RDPZFOX?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

The last man on Earth sat in a room.

There was a knock on the door.

It was a time-traveler, of course.

This is a fun romp. The length of the story is in the novelette length, so it makes for a quick read.

The protagonist is the last survivor of the Time War, which has fractured time. He is the last survivor mostly because he has worked hard to kill everyone else. Now, he is sitting at the first stable point where time begins again. He spends his time farming and murdering time-travelers who land on his piece of paradise. Then, he learns that there is a time-traveling civilization in the future, and he is its founder.

This is a development that he will not accept.

The story is a fun, lightweight, amusing tale of how he tries to keep his perfect world.

Ogres by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1GIGA4FS2OECI?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

This was a surprisingly engaging and effective novelette. It was marked out by a surprising premise and a unique voice.

The voice was the second person - the story was told in the “you” voice as some unknown narrator tells the story about the main character seemingly to the main character. This technique worked for two reasons. First, a large part of the story defaulted to the third person, and, so, seemed conventional. Second, it didn't dawn on me to ask until the last page, “who was telling the story?”

The story itself was engaging. Torquell is a young peasant in a world where ogres rule. Ogres seem to be a different species that is twice the height, weight and strength of the human population. Ogres can eat meat and seem to have a taste for human flesh. The ogre population is the aristocrats and rulers of this world. They have beaten the human population into submission, but Torquell rises up and kills an ogre, and, finds himself an outlaw. Through this outlawry he discovers the truth of the world he inhabits.

The secret is kept well-hidden by author Adrian Tchaikovsky. I had the answer in view as one of my two possible solutions based on my earlier experience with reading Colin Kapp's “Manalive,” which had the same premise. This story is far superior to Kapp's story, however, because its ending hits like a prize fighter's fist and leaves the reader to reflect on the nature of heroism, compromise and victory.

This was a short read that moved at a good clip. It is well worth the read.

The Scholars of Night by John M. Ford

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RIHBFSLCLQ2YU?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

If I were more of an aficionado of the spy genre, I would probably have given this four stars. There seemed to be some improbable plot developments, but, on the whole, in most spy action stories, these kinds of improbabilities occur.

I really liked this story despite these improbabilities (and despite a plot twist that could be spotted miles away from the reveal.) Undoubtedly I found the main character a Diplomacy-playing history professor to be empathetic, probably because in law school, I played Diplomacy and I was a history major in college.

The story's protagonist is Nicholas Hansard. Hansard is a history professor who moonlights as a consultant for a mysterious intelligence service named the “White Group.” In the course of one investigation, he unmasks his beloved mentor as a Soviet agent.

It is important to keep in mind that this book was written in 1988. At that time, the Cold War was going strong and the Soviet Union was still in business. The story communicates the sensibilities of a time now lost to history.

Hansard is talked into doing another job for the White Group, namely verifying the provenance of a newly-discovered play by Christopher Marlow. In the course of this job, Hansard stumbles into a parallel mystery involving a plot to trigger World War III by stealing a piece of Cold War high technology.

I enjoyed the historical angle and watching Hansard go through his intellectual paces as he attempts to figure out the Marlow mystery. He is almost brought into the modern spy mystery by accident and the final part of the book seems more James Bond than George Smiley. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the story throughout the whole thing.

Anthology by Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2MQSNLK6WBDVT?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

In 1936, the thirty-three year old politician/barrister Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, was taken out into a field by the Spanish Republican government and executed. Jose Antonio was the son of the former Dictator of Spain. He was also the founder of the Spanish Falange, the Spanish crypto-fascist movement.

I know the Falange only by name as a movement tossed into the same stewpot as “Fascist” and “Nazi.” Beyond that I knew nothing.

I still don't. This book is a collection of excerpts from speeches and writings of Jose Antonio. It is possible from this resource to outline some of the ideas that went into the Falangist movement. Jose Antonio's essential point seems to have been the need for “unity.” This needs to be understood not only as unity between social classes, but also between regions of Spain, some of whom - Catalonia - were looking for independence. His answer to these problems was to exalt Spain, patria, and nationalism. This emphasis was in opposition to his opponents who were being supported by international Communism, which sought to eradicate Spanish tradition tout court.

Jose Antonio sought to avoid being lumped into the “Fascist” category. He refused to attend an international conference of fascists because he felt that the idea of an international movement was incompatible with the notion of nationalism. He also pointed out that there were substantial differences between National Socialism and Italian Fascism, not the least difference being the German embrace of romanticism, an attitude that he disdained. Interestingly, he mentions Aquinas as support for his positions on two occasions. Hitler never would have done such a thing.

Jose Antonio condemned both the Right and the Left. He wrote that the Right preserved tradition but did nothing to help the poor. He wrote:

“The Right wishes to preserve the Patria, to preserve unity, to preserve authority; but it ignores this anguish of the man, the individual, the fellow-creature who has nothing to eat.

And:

“The Right is the attempt to perpetuate an economic system even though it be an unjust one, and the Left is at heart the desire to overthrow an economic organization even though in its overthrow many good things should be ruined.”

This observation was written in the dungeons of Security Police Headquarters before his execution:

““Right” and “Left” are barren and incomplete values. The Right, through seeking to ignore the distress and urgent economic demands of the times, end up by depriving their religious and patriotic appeals of all human validity. The Left, through closing the minds of the masses to what is spiritual and national, end up by degrading economic conflict into the savagery of wild beasts. Today two total concepts of the world stand facing one another; whichever wins will finally break off the customary alternation. Either victory will go to the spiritual, Western, Christian, Spanish concept of life with all the service and sacrifice it involves, but with all the individual dignity and national honor it possesses, else victory will go to the materialist and Russian concept of life, which beyond subjecting Spaniards to the savage yoke of a Red Army and a ruthless policy, will disintegrate Spain into local republics.”

On the other hand, the Falangists were committed to totalitarianism and to the cult of a Heroic Leader, who had not yet appeared.

I am not sure this is worth reading as a way of getting historical insights into the history of Spain. The character of Jose Antonio in himself seems interesting and heroic. His writings may have some insights but for the most part they seem to be limited to their era.

The Talmud - A Biography by Barry Scott Wimpfheimmer

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R7A3RRGITWMAX?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

This book exposes my Dunning-Kruger knowledge of Judaism. Obviously, I've heard of the Talmud. I've used the expression “Talmudic” to express a complicated and deep way of reasoning about complex problems. I had an understanding of the Talmud as commentary around - literally surrounding - scripture. But, in point of fact, I really never thought to question the superficial picture I had.

This book - The Talmud - A Biography - is part of a series that looks at the origin, reception and life within the community of religious texts ranging from Augustine's “The Confessions” to the Tibetan “Book of the Dead.” A reader might think that this is a dry topic area, but it is surprisingly lively.

In this case, my reading brought back memories of law school. The Talmud appears as something akin to a case book, where various cases and excerpts from cases, are apparently tossed in more or less randomly with the organization limited to an opaque topic, e.g., “Consideration.” The law student is supposed to tease out a thread that connects the texts provided into something approaching a coherent schema, usually aided by a sage law professor and dialectical interrogation of the text. It is an often sterile and frustrating project, but it does serve the goal of teaching law students “to think like a lawyer.”

Law school as yeshiva.

The Talmud is a commentary on Mishnah that uses an intellectual process called “Midrash.” Mishnah was a commentary that extracted or collected legal precepts from the Torah, according to the author:

“The Talmud is a commentary on an earlier law code, the Mishnah, which was published orally by the rabbis around the year 200 CE.”

Wimpfheimer, Barry Scott. The Talmud: 57 (Lives of Great Religious Books) (p. 9). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.

“The early rabbis engaged in scholastic activity in small ad hoc disciple circles; each consisted of a charismatic rabbi surrounded by a handful of students.66 In the period immediately surrounding the destruction of the Second Temple and for the next hundred years, the rabbis engaged in two pedagogical practices—one primarily interpretive and the other primarily a mode of organizing the interpreted material. The interpretive method of study was called midrash while the organizational articulation was called mishnah.”

Wimpfheimer, Barry Scott. The Talmud: 57 (Lives of Great Religious Books) (pp. 32-33). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.

Although I think the author does a great job of explaining the development of the Talmud, I think he skips over the connection of the Talmud to the Torah by way of the Mishnah. For example, he mentions the concept of the “Oral Torah” a handful of times in this book, and, then, mostly as a synonym for the Talmud:

//The theology of the rabbis is often characterized as a doctrine of two Torahs: a written Torah produced with ink on parchment, and an oral Torah produced in an unwritten ether of transmission from teacher to student, that encapsulates ideas of Judaism not contained within the verses of the written Torah's text. This helpful characterization of rabbinic theology ends up producing the oral Torah as an analog to the written—one could imagine the oral Torah as a virtual text containing all the traditions missing from the written Torah. In the opening to Ethics of the Fathers, in contrast, Torah is not a text but an abstract concept. Moses is not receiving a second (oral) book.64 Moses receives an idea of Torah more powerful than any tangible book.

Wimpfheimer, Barry Scott. The Talmud: 57 (Lives of Great Religious Books) (p. 29). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.

I'm not sure that is entirely right. I think that the Mishnah is the “oral Torah,” allegedly passed down from Sinai, until reduced to writing in the second century. The Talmud is therefore a commentary on the Oral Torah, not the written Torah, albeit there may be some cross-over between oral and written Torah. In short, I don't think we get a feel for the uniqueness of the Talmud in the life of Judaism, but, then, this is a book on the life of the Talmud, not Judaism as such, so that may be expected.

Wimpfheimer uses a real-world example to give a feeling for the Talmud. The example - like a good law school hypothetical - involves the improbable story of a dog who steals some bread, which, because it has a coal on it, starts a fire in a haystack. The issue is who is responsible for how much of what? In this case, it seems that someone is liable for the entire price of the bread - the dog owner? - but someone is only liable for one-half of the hay - the fire owner? The hypothetical - or “law” - is found in a Mishneh, which forms the basis of a centuries long dispute in the Talmud about who is responsible for what and why. Different legal theories are trotted out - property liability v. personal liability - to explain the result. No answer is definitively arrived at, but the discussion and its discursions are cryptic and interesting.

Like I said, law school.

There were two Talmuds - Palestinian and Babylonian - prepared by various schools of rabbis in the two locations. The two Talmuds contain much overlapping material, with the Palestinian Talmud being closed earlier and the Babylonian Talmud containing more material. The author treats the Babylonian Talmud as normative.

Over time, the Talmud became more or less “canonized” throughout the Jewish world. “Canonized” here does not mean “added to the Tanakh.” Rather it means something like a text that defined normative Judaism:

“By the early modern period, the Talmud was entrenched as a canonical work whose authority was essential to the traditional community and its ritual, family, and commercial life. In different ways, Sabbateanism, Hasidism, Frankism, Reform, and Zionism all established themselves by separating from the traditional community. The Talmud served as a finite stand-in for that community.

Wimpfheimer, Barry Scott. The Talmud: 57 (Lives of Great Religious Books) (p. 188). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.

Wimpfheimer makes the interesting point that there were three regions in Europe that took different approaches to Talmud, which, in turn defined their respective communities:

“The southernmost Jewish community, the Spanish/North African community, is referred to as Sefarad in Jewish medieval sources. While North Africa remained under majority Muslim control for the entire five-hundred-year period, Spain was a region perpetually contested by warring Muslim and Christian armies. During this period, Spain begins as a Muslim region and becomes a Christian one; even as a majority Christian region, though, Spain remained deeply affected by Muslim aesthetics and traditions. Spain's majority culture was philosophically and scientifically advanced, and Jews were schooled in both philosophy and science. Between Ashkenaz to the North and Sefarad to the South was Provence. This region includes the Northeast region of Spain (including Barcelona and Girona) and the Southern cities of France (including Marseilles, Toulouse, and Montpellier). As the buffer between the traditional Jews of Ashkenaz and the intellectual Jews of Sefarad, the Provençal Jewish intellectuals were mediators. Out of this mediation emerged the reinvigorated Jewish mystical tradition known as Kabbalah.

Wimpfheimer, Barry Scott. The Talmud: 57 (Lives of Great Religious Books) (pp. 101-102). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.

According to Wimpfeimer, Talmudic writings are broadly divided into two:

“Another nascent distinction within the content of the curriculum also began to develop in which there was a compartmentalization of rabbinic ideas into buckets that would eventually, in the post-Talmudic era, come to have fixed identities as halakhah [law] and aggadah [non-law].1 This dichotomy has been central to the study of the Talmud because it is useful for picking up on inherent variations within and among different Talmudic passages.

Wimpfheimer, Barry Scott. The Talmud: 57 (Lives of Great Religious Books) (p. 41). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.

Halakhah is the boring, legalistic stuff; Aggadah is the fun myth, tradition, wisdom, story-telling stuff. My understanding, though, is that this distinction is not a matter of how the material is organized, the same portion of the Talmud might contain both.

Wimpfheimer gives an example of aggadah:

“By the rules of midrashic interpretation, an unnecessary feature in the text marks this feature as extraneous and open to interpretation. R' Dimi accepts the invitation of the marked text and imagines that the preposition teaches that the Israelites did not stand at the base of the mountain but literally underneath it. God severed the mountain, lifted it and held it above them like a barrel. God threatened the Israelites with the mountain until they accepted the Torah. God's bullying Israel into accepting the Torah is significantly at odds with a basic contextual reading of the biblical story. In the biblical account, the Israelites are so eager to accept the Torah that they commit to following the strictures even before they know the particulars. Elsewhere in the Bible, Israel's enthusiasm is a motif that explains God's singular love for the people, their specific chosen-ness.55 Not only is the midrash at odds with the basic biblical account, there is good evidence that the Talmudic midrash attributed to Rav Dimi is based on an earlier midrash that was specifically designed to highlight Israel's strength of commitment.

Wimpfheimer, Barry Scott. The Talmud: 57 (Lives of Great Religious Books) (pp. 86-87). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.

God threatening Israel with a floating mountain is unexpected, but it is colorful.

There have been Jewish movements that did not accept the Talmud. The Qaraites were one such Jewish group. I was surprised to learn that Reformed Jews do not accept the Talmud, which may explain why I know so little about the Talmud, i.e., not only am I not Jewish, but the Jews I know don't know the Talmud.

In any event, I thought this was an excellent introduction to a subject which, frankly, plays a substantial - not large, perhaps, but substantive - to Western civilization.

Ship of Fools by Richard Paul Russo

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R31T4ITVOH7XAY?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

This turns out to be one of the best science fiction books I've read in a long time.

Actually, that's a bit of a misnomer - it's actually a mash-up of science fiction and horror. Nonetheless, despite the horror elements, the topic of “first contact” is a classic theme of science fiction, and this is a “first contact” on steroids.

The story is gothic. The narroator of the story, Bartolomeo, is a deformed member of a multigeneration ship, the Argonos. The Argonos can move faster than light, but there are still long transit times in interplanetary space. The Argonos itself seems to be quite large; I got the sense of it being the size of a small asteroid. There are different levels in the ship which approximate the social classes from aristocrats at the upper level to impressed dregs who want off the ship in the depths. (Strangely, the “crew” seems to be outside of the class system.) The whole thing is ruled by a Captain, a position which is mostly hereditary but subject to the control of an oligarchy known as the ship's executive council.

Stranger still, there is a Christian (Catholic or Episcopalian) bishop on the ship and he is almost as powerful as the Captain. The bishop plays the heavy in the story.

The population of the Argonos is demoralized. They and their ancestors have been on the ship for so long that no one remembers the mission. It seems that they make contact with inhabited worlds every decade or so as they wander aimlessly in the outer zones of human expansion. How that expansion preceded them, whether there is a civilized core, who sent them out, is unknown and unexplained. Although the fact that the ship incorporates a massive cathedral and has a bishop seems to suggest that its purpose may have been to support a Christian mission to the outer galaxy, but this is speculation, and if that was the case, then the mission is forgotten, although the bishop seems very heavy-handed in his evangelical agenda.

The Argonos receives a distress beacon. If there is one thing we have learned from watching the Alien movies, distress beacons are never good.

The Argonos investigates and finds that the human colony appears to have abandoned this planet, named “Antioch” by the bishop. Bartolomeo learns that this appearance is deceptive when he discovers a strange structure that presents the tortured bodies of the settlement. The Argonos executive council decides that (a) this happened a long time ago, (b) it's not their job to investigate disturbing mysteries, and (c) there's no time to leave like now.

They leave, but on the way out they discover an abandoned alien ship. As far as they know, no human has ever discovered an alien intelligence before. So, they have - HAVE TO! - investigate. Bartolomeo is assigned the investigation of the spooky, empty, alien spaceship where people die in freak accidents on a random basis.

At this point, the story moves into horror territory as the demoralized atmosphere of the Argonos transforms into the creepiness of shadows and echoes. Is the ship empty? Could it be a trap? What about those hundreds of colonist bodies impaled on spikes and tortured?

This story has conflict on a lot of levels. There is a political tension between the bishop and the captain, between the captain and Bartolomeo, who had been life-long friends whos relationship has grown sour, between the social levels on the ship, between those who want to cut and run and those who want to investigate, and, mostly, between, the fear of the unknown and the reality of discovery.

The writing was nicely introspective when that was appropriate. It kept my interest from start to finish, which is saying a lot these days.