The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

The Parable of the Sower is the first book in what will now be only a two book series. Before her untimely death, Octavia Butler had planned to write additional Parable books.

The Parable of the Sower begins the story of Lauren Oya Olamina, from her early adolescence until her expulsion from her family's compound (along with everyone else in the compound) when it was overrun by drug-addled, pyromaniac, killers.

Lauren is the prophet of a new religion, Earthseed. The story of her expulsion from the protection of her family and neighborhood is also the story of how she began to develop and promulgate Earthseed.

This is a powerful and beautifully written book.

Patternmaster by Octavia Butler -- book review

Patternmaster is a novel about telekinetic telepaths who live on a planet with "mutes" and clayarks. Patternmaster is the first of several books Butler wrote about the Patternists.

Patternmaster tells the story of the struggle between two patternists. One of them (Coransee) is seeking to take over as Patternmaster. The other (Teray) seeks only to remain free of Coransee's control and live freely with his chosen mate. Both men are the sons of Rayal, the current Patternmaster.

Patternmaster is a quick read and an involving adventure story. Butler uses the book's themes to discuss ideas about subjugation and power and morality. I will read further books in the series to see where she went with the ideas. Patternmaster was Butler's first book to be published.

I've been reading and blogging about other books by Octavia Butler, see:

http://booked4life.blogspot.com/2006/03/parable-of-talents-by-octavia-butler_13.html

http://booked4life.blogspot.com/2006/03/kindred-by-octavia-e-butler-book.html

Spin by Robert Charles Wilson -- book review

Spin is a science fiction novel that is both high concept and highly literate. It is a novel of galactic breadth, but the story is told through the intersecting lives of three people, who are about 12 years old as the novel begins.

The three kids are Tyler Dupree, the son of a housekeeper at "the big house" and the twin children of E.D. Lawton--Diane and Jason. Diane and Jason are bright, well-educated, and well-off. Tyler is bright, but not as bright as Jason--who is being groomed to inherit his father's position and wealth. Tyler is a little in love with Diane, even when they are 12, when the first big event of the novel takes place.

One night, while the adults are enjoying a party in the big house, Tyler, Diane, and Jason are having a kids party in the basement rec room. Jason has a new pair of astronomical binoculars he wants to try out, so all three kids go out into the yard to have a look. Suddenly, while they are looking at the sky, the stars go out. Thus begins the "spin". Which is the name the scientists and media have given to the phenomenon. Not only have the stars gone out, but satellites no longer work, and the astronauts on the space station have lost touch with the Earth.

Spin is told in chapters that alternate between "the present" when Tyler and Diane are adults and are hiding from authorities (while Tyler undergoes some sort of illness/physical transformation) and the past--chapters which chronologically bring the story up to the present, telling us what has happened to each of the main characters along the way.

And what a lot of things do happen. Jason works for a quasi-governmental agency that does Spin research; Diane has joined a millenarian religious cult; Tyler has become a medical doctor. The ways their lives are impacted by the Spin are emblematic of the effects the Spin has had on the worlds' population. Everywhere people are questioning their purpose, the future, and the meaning of life on Earth--and they are wondering who did this and why. They come to call the creators of the Spin Hypotheticals. They wonder if their actions will interest or enrage the Hypotheticals. They even wonder if the Hypotheticals really know or care about their existence.

The plotting is ingenious, but the characterization and development of narrative tension are more than a match. Spin is a terrifically involving work of science fiction. I'll be reading more books by Robert Charles Wilson, just as soon as I can get my hands on them.

http://www.geocities.com/canadian_SF/wilson/

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler -- book review

Kindred is probably Octavia Butler's best known book. Butler found her categorization as a science fiction writer "boring", and classified Kindred as a kind of fantasy/horror novel. Kindred is often used in literature classes--maybe because it's a kind of literary twofer--a fantasy with a Black author and a woman author. In any case, Kindred is un-put-downable.

In short, Kindred is the story of a woman who gets sucked into the past each time one of her progenitors is in mortal danger. The kicker is that the progenitor is a white, Southern, slaveowner and the woman is a modern-day (1976) Black woman. Warning--If you haven't read Kindred, yet, and you want to, spoilers follow.

Dana, the Black woman from 1976 is 26 years old, married, and a writer the first time she gets pulled into the past to save the life of Rufus Weylin, who is about to drown in a river. Rufus is only about 3 or 4 years old, and he has "stepped in a hole" while wading. His useless mother is standing on shore, when Dana pops into the picture, jumps into the water, and pulls Rufus out. As Dana is giving Rufus mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, his father arrives with a rifle and aims it at Dana, thinking she is killing Rufus. Mercifully, Dana is propelled back into her present. When she returns, her husband tells her she's only been gone for a few seconds. Although he can't explain her dripping, muddy return, Dana's husband Kevin finds it hard to believe the story she tells him about where she's been.

Again and again throughout Rufus's life, Dana is pulled into his presence when he faces death. Sometimes her visits last a few hours or days, and sometimes they last months. One time, Kevin grabs Dana as she is about to vanish and is carried along with her. He is forced to remain in the past for 5 years without Dana, when she is sent back to the present while not in his presence.

In Dana's visits to the past, she experiences slavery first-hand. She also learns to like and pity Rufus, even while she reviles him. Dana knows she will only be freed from her unwelcome "disappearances" when Rufus is dead, but she also knows that if he dies before begetting their ancestral link, she will never exist.

Octavia Butler said she wrote Kindred in order to try and make people "feel" slavery. I think she was pretty successful in her goal, even though Kindred is not my favorite among her novels. There is a plethora of information about Kindred on the web. Here are some sample links:

http://www.wab.org/events/allofrochester/2003/interview.shtml

http://www.webenglishteacher.com/butler.html

http://www.freebooknotes.com/book.php3?id=1223

Molly Ivins, the FBI, and Librarians

I was just sitting at the reference desk, reading American Libraries, when I ran across this quote from Molly Ivins, "Another reason to worry about a huge domestic spy operation is it will inevitably be manned by nincompoops. Take this 2003 memo from an FBI agent railing at what he perceived as dreadful restraints by John Ashcroft's Justice Department: 'While radical militant librarians kick us around, true terrorists benefit from [Justice's] failure to let us use the tools given to us.' Yep, time after time, it's those radical militant librarians impeding those pitiful, helpless agents at the FBI."*

I had to look up the whole column it came from, and post a link--it's priceless.

http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/1/2006/1290

*American Libraries, March 2006, p.32

The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier -- a book review

The Brief History of the Dead is the story of a city inhabited by the dead, but not all of the dead. The people inhabiting the city are the dead who are remembered by the living. To add to the peculiarity of their situation, the dead have recently been decimated by a pandemic plague among the living. It seems there may be only one person left alive on the Earth, a young woman named Laura Byrd.

At one point during the novel, a character among the dead sits down to figure out how many people each person remembers, and comes up with a figure somewhere around 40-50,000. If that sounds high, try thinking about everyone you've ever known or met up with often enough to have a memory imprint. Think of the person you see on the corner every day while you wait for a bus, or the child you were "best friends" with for a few weeks in the third grade, or the mailmen you've come to greet as familiar over a period of years.

Life among the dead is not what you'd expect, or at least not what I'd expect. People continue to go to work, run restaurants, and even panhandle. One man goes to a great deal of trouble to destroy some evidence there will soon be no one left to find. A recovered alcoholic continues to eschew beer with his lunch. An old married couple rekindles lost love. A man seeks out the library and old phone books from the city of the dead, looking for his long-dead brother.

Meanwhile, Laura Byrd is having a pretty tough time of things. She's alone in the Antarctic in a research station owned by the Coca-Cola company. She's been sent to the Antarctic on a research trip in the company of two other staff members, but the two men have gone off to see whether they can find out what has happened to their communications--no messages have come in for weeks, and the team was expecting to be retrieved.

The story is intriguing on its own, but additionally, the interior thoughts of the characters and the actions and thoughts of the people living in the city of the dead are beautifully realized.

Brockmeier has previously written a short-story collection, a novel, and a children's book. For more information about him and his work, see the following:

http://www.listeninglib.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=3313

http://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/brockmeier/

The Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler -- book review

The Parable of the Talents is a book written in the form of journals and commentaries. The journal portions are written by a woman known as Olamina (except for a couple written by her husband Bankole). The commentary sections are written by Olamina's daughter.

Olamina's story is of an amazing life. She was forced from her home as a teenager. While on the road she met a much older man, Bankole. Bankole was a medical doctor and owned some family land in an area safer than the post-apocalyptic Los Angeles where Olamina had lived. Olamina, Bankole and people they met on the road formed the nexus of a new community called Acorn. Acorn was a community modeled on the philosophical system or religion that Olamina had conceived--Earthseed.

Olamina is a prophet, but this is the story of a very human woman and the ways in which she worked to make her dreams real. It is also the story of her vision, Earthseed, and of her daughter, Lauren, and of a world nearly destroyed by its leaders and the more unfortunate of humanity's proclivities. Reading The Parable of the Talents in 2006, it is hard to believe it was written before the presidency of George W. Bush and the attendant ill-considered military adventures. This is an engaging and shattering book.

Quote:

From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

Choose your leaders
------------with wisdom and forethought
To be led by a coward
------------is to be controlled
------------by all that the coward fears.
To be led by a fool
------------is to be led
------------by the opportunists
------------who control the fool.
To be led by a thief
------------is to offer up
------------your most precious treasures
------------to be stolen.
To be led by a liar
------------is to ask
------------to be told lies.
To be led by a tyrant
------------is to sell yourself
------------and those you love
------------into slavery.

Octavia Butler died recently (Feb. 24, 2006) as the result of head injuries brought on by a fall on a cobbled walkway. Some reports speculate that the fall may have been the result of a stroke.

You can learn more about Octavia Butler and The Parable of the Talents in the following web sites:

http://cyberhaven.com/books/sciencefiction/butler.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octavia_Butler

http://authors.aalbc.com/octavia.htm

Arthur & George by Julian Barnes -- Book Review

Arthur & George is the story of two men and how their lives intersected. Arthur is Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes stories. George is George Edalji, a half-Indian, half-Scottish solicitor. The story is told in chapters that alternate between the two protagonists (each chapter has a heading Arthur or George) until their lives intersect (at which point the chapter headings change to Arthur & George.)

Arthur leads a life of genteel poverty as a child, due to his father's weakness and alcoholism. Still, his extended family has enough money and connections that he is very well educated. He is also the beneficiary of his mother's strength of will and character, along with her storytelling ability.

George is raised in a village vicarage by loving and highly moral parents. His mother is Scottish; his father a Parsee who converted to the Church of England and became a clergyman. While George has two parents of strong character and convictions, he is hindered by the racial prejudice of the village population. Nevertheless, his intelligence and ability allow him to become a solicitor, and he is on his way to achieving the stability and good fortune he seeks when calamity in the form of grave injustice overcomes him.

It is this grave injustice that brings Arthur and George together. The narrative is so skillfully woven, that as a reader I could see exactly why each of the characters could have behaved in no way other than they did. While the central story is drawn from a set of historical incidents, Barnes has truly brought the story to life in this book.

Julian Barnes has written numerous books and essays, and you can read more about him here:
http://www.julianbarnes.com/