Books: Islands in the Sea of Madness

So, as the election screamed down the rails like Ozzy Osbourne's Crazy Train, not to mention the economy doing an imitation of the Hindenburg, we were all left with a little excess stress. And if you're like me, one way to deal with all of that is to escape into the world of books. Our loyal readers will know I like Sci-Fi, and the last three books I finished were all on the short list for the Hugos and Nebulas this past year. (The Sci-Fi equivalents of the Oscars/Pulitzers/whatever). Despite theoretically sharing a common genre, it'd be hard to find three books that are more different. I thoroughly enjoyed all of them, and wanted to bring you my recommendations...

The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon

This book is the most recent winner of Sci-Fi's highest annual honor, the Hugo Award for Best Novel. Chabon is one of American literature's brightest young turks, and in this book he's created something so unique that one wonders where he possibly could have gotten his ideas from. The most basic description for it is a noir set in an alternate history, though that doesn't quite do it justice. The story is set in the year 2008, in a district of Alaska specially set aside for Jews. The main language is yiddish, and the capital is the burgeoning metropolis of Sitka, with a population in the millions. Apparently there was an actual historical movement to do just this following the end of World War II, as opposed to, say, the creation of Israel, but it was scuttled by a congressman from Alaska. The novel diverges from our history simply by having said congressman get hit by a car.

Our protagonist is a down-on-his-luck detective, determined to investigate the murder of a heroin addict believed by some orthodox jews to have been a potential messiah despite the impending "reversion" of the District of Sitka to the United States (think of the situation with Hong Kong and China). His world is a cold, rainy place, populated by beautifully sketched characters and conspiracies. The real treat in the novel is Chabon's facility with language, which can make a strange kind of poetry out of descriptions of an old man's coat or a warm doughnut. Great stuff.

Calculating God by Robert J. Sawyer

Unless you count Margaret Atwood, whose occasional forays into the genre have resulted in such classics as The Handmaid's Tale, Robert J. Sawyer is probably Canada's most successful Sci-Fi author. He writes hard science fiction, but general comes at things from an anthropological angle rather than one of physics, which makes him harder to categorize. His most famous work is probably his series that began with Hominids, in which scientists make contact with an alternate universe where Neanderthals became the dominant species of humanity.

Calculating God is obviously the work of the same author, though the storyline and the ideas set out are very different. The book begins, comical in its matter-of-factness, with the landing of an alien spaceship outside the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. An spider-like alien gets out, enters the museum, and asks if it could see a paleontologist. That paleontologist is the book's main character, and the book consists mostly of his internal debates and conversations with the alien, who is far more interested in scientific research than in meeting our leaders.

The twist is that the aliens, based on their observations of the universe, have come to the conclusion that science has proven the existence of God. Their observations of Earth only confirm this. The scientist is an atheist, and we discover he is dying of cancer. So the debates between the two, mostly regarding the nature of life and universe, take on an unusual, fascinating tone. The alien makes the scientific case for the existence of God, quoting statistics about the variance of constants, while the scientist makes the emotional, faith-based case against the existence of God. If there is a God who created the laws of physics, why would he create cancer? What possible being could morally justify so much suffering?

Despite the occasional bit of jargon, the book is one of the quickest, easiest reads I've come across in a while. It's hard to put my finger on why. It would have been easy for Sawyer to fall into the usual trap of Hard SF, to be distracted by the science at the expense of our own enjoyment of the story, but he avoids this with strong characterization, and a vivid depiction of the warm friendship that builds between the scientist and the alien. This is that rare specimen, alien who, without just being a human with pointy ears, feels like a real "person". The book isn't perfect, and there's a totally unnecessary subplot involving terrorists targeting fossils, but it was one of my favorite random finds in a long time.

Halting State by Charles Stross

Charles Stross is a British writer who has a way of making made-up technojargon sound like good, smooth writing. How he does this I have no idea, but I think it has something to do with strong characterization and not being afraid to make bold stylistic choices. Halting State is a lot of things, but one thing it's not is simple to read. It jumps among a number of characters, all the while being written in the second person, mixing a strong scottish brogue with internet-speak both real and imagined. How do you write in a scottish brogue? Again, I'm not really sure, but Stross definitely manages it. ("You cannae understand why the prize twat isna answering his IM") This is a story set circa 2020, and centering around the world of virtual reality gaming. Probably the main through-line is provided by a detective who is assigned to investigate a seemingly impossible bank robbery with real-world implications carried out in a sort of next-gen "World of Warcraft" by a band of orcs "with a dragon along for fire support." Science Fiction was slow discovering the internet, but between this book and others like last year's tremendous Hugo winner, Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge, the the web is building up its own field of SF lit. It's about time.

You Missed Election Day

...In Canada. Yes, the Canadians held an election yesterday, and it seems that not even they cared. It was the lowest recorded voter turnout in Canadian history, at 59% or so. It was an election without many major issues. Polls put the economy at number one, but the worst of the global crisis has mostly passed over Canada, due to tight regulations already in place for the nation's financial industry. In the end, the Conservative Party gained seats but not enough for a clean majority, with a total of 143 Stephen Harper, extremely popular in Canada, will remain the nation's Prime Minister. The once-mighty Liberal Party lost substantially once again, being reduced to only 76 seats. There are also two other major parties, the separatist Bloc Quebecois, which stayed about the same with 50 seats, and the ultra-liberal New Democrats, who continued to gain strength and now have 38 seats.

The Liberal Party governed for 12 consecutive years (1993-2006), mostly under Jean Chretien, but in recent years have been hit by the so-called "Sponsorship Scandal", revolving around corruption and political favors among party members in Quebec. Also, during the 90s, the Canadian Right was split following the near-total collapse of the "Progressive Conservatives" in 1993, when that party went from the majority to having only 2 seats, and the far-right "Reform Party" emerged but was mainly limited to the western part of the country. The Reform Party was extremely controversial in Canada for its advocacy of positions associated with the modern American Republican party. It was openly Christian, anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, and also wanted to end the Canadian policy of bilingualism. Following a few unsucessful attempts at reunification, the Reform Party, "Conservative Alliance," and the vestiges of the Progressive Conservatives merged in 2003 under the more-moderate Harper and in 2006 gained a plurality.

This was an election, as stated earlier, that really failed to get going. Stephane Dion, the Liberal leader, was painted, seemingly succesfully, by Conservatives as a weak leader, a sort of Canadian Dan Quayle, and it seems he will soon be replaced. Many criticized Conservative policies, such as a $45 million dollar arts funding cut (can you imagine how low that would be on an American election agenda?), as well as Harper's seeming to take a "wait-and-see" approach to the economy. There was also a business about them trying to bribe a dying independent with life insurance that never really caught on. Other parties, especially the Bloc and NDP, were quick to declare victory at the end of the night because the Conservatives didn't have the majority they wanted, while some criticized the election itself as a wase of money.

Other interesting bits surroundng the Canadian election:

-The Green Party made waves, increasing its national vote totals substantially to around 6%, but failed to win a single seat. By contrast, the Bloc Quebecois had 10% of the national vote, but will have 50 seats. Green Party leader Elizabeth May was seen by many as having had the strongest showing in the debates, but lost to Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay in her own Nova Scotia riding. Many felt the Green Party helped take seats away from the Liberals in this election, in addition to the usual NDP cut.

-One issue that cropped up was a 2003 speech by then-Opposition Leader Harper, in which he called for Canada to send troops to Iraq. It was recently revealed to have been directly plagiarized from a speech by Australian Prime Minister Howard that was delivered only two days earlier. The staffer who supposedly wrote the speech ended up having to resign. It's interesting to point out that, though Harper is in power, he has thought better of sending a Canadian contingent to Iraq, as such as move would certainly be wildly unpopular in Canada.

-Chris Reid, a Conservative candidate in a Toronto district, dropped out of the election after statements on his blog gained media attention. The statements? That he wanted to legalize concealed carrying of handguns. In Canada, that's apparently so far outside the mainstream as to end Reid's political career. Here in Ohio, by the way, "Conceal/Carry" is legal, with a permit. A lack of success in Toronto, where Conservatives hold zero seats out of 22, ended up being a major piece in that party's failure to win a majority.

-Then there's the case of NDP candidate Andrew McKeever from Durham, Ontario. I'll just quote Wikipedia:

announced on October 3 that he would resign from the election campaign after it
was revealed that he had posted comments on Facebook in which he called one
war activist a “fascist bitch” and threatened to beat up another person. Mr.
McKeever wrote comments peppered with expletives and calling the operators of a
war resister website “Nazis.” McKeever was also quoted as saying “I like the
part in Schindler’s List when the guard starts waxing the prisoners.” McKeever’s
decision to drop out of the race came with just over a week left in the
campaign, meaning his name would remain on the ballot. One week before the
publication of McKeever's resignation, NDP leader Jack Layton defended McKeever
and refused to make him step down.

-More NDP... Julian West, the party's candidate in Saanich, BC, dropped off the ballot after details surfaced regarding his conduct at an "environmental event" 12 years ago, where he went skinny-dipping and then asked two teenagers to bodypaint him. This may be the first bodypainting scandal I have heard of in world politics.

-Independent candidate David Popsecu, running in Sudbury, was invesitgated for "hate speech" after he responded to a debate question about gay rights with "homosexuals should be executed."