Book 35: Fire Watch

Fire Watch

Connie Willis

After reading Doomsday Book and the eponymous story in The Best Time Travel Stories of the 20^th Century, I knew that I had to read more Connie Willis...and I was absolutely right. I don't know what it is about her stories, but Willis continually finds ways to amaze me. Perhaps it is her range- from time travel to post-apocalyptic landscapes to a more typically futuristic space station, Willis pulls it all off seamlessly. Perhaps the power of Willis's talent lies in her ability to make the science fiction conceits almost vanish behind the raw emotional power of her stories: despite sometimes employing standard science fiction tropes, these are not (merely) gee-whiz-wow tales. Willis writes fiction that should be considered alongside the work of the lit-fic critics' darlings, haunting stories that stay with you long after you turn the final page. To choose standouts in a collection like this feels at best like a hilarious understatement, but the stories that have had the strongest effect on me are the horrifying "All My Darling Daughters" (I was continually shocked by the brutality of this story, yet couldn't stop myself from reading forward) and "A Letter from the Clearys," which might actually be more devastating despite employing a far more subtle emotional touch. Fire Watch may have been Connie Willis's first published group of short stories, but it is simply superb, the work of a living master.

Grade: A

Book 34: Mathletics

Mathletics: A Scientist Explains 100 Amazing Things About the World of Sport

John D. Barrow

In a way, everything kind of boils down to mathematics. As someone who is normally sports-crazed, and even more so in an Olympic year, the intersection of physics and human physicality is one that has always fascinated me. When I saw Mathletics, therefore, I needed no second look to immediately yank it off of the shelf. Within, I found a group of loosely related, not-at-all organized tidbits about math and its effects on aspects of numerous sports, a marginally disappointing collection that nonetheless lived up to its billing, if a bit too literally. It's unclear who Barrow's intended audience is, and his general audience may be put off by the complex mathematical calculations and "trust me" attitude. Surely more of the math could be put in layman's terms? The frenetic pace of the book doesn’t help much, either. Though Barrow's inclination to organize the book as a series of vignettes is appreciated, readers are whipped back and forth between types of questions and types of sports, never able to gain a foothold on the subject at hand before the next approaches. And, most disappointingly, the book minimizes the magic of sports and fails to capture the intangibles that make sports so enjoyable and unpredictable. Sure, this is a book about the hard math behind human achievement, but in execution it sucks more of the life out of the subject than may have been necessary. Chapters on certain subjects, such as the real weight of individual events in sports such as the decathlon and modern pentathlon, are enlightening and intriguing, but most of the book passes by in a flurry of numbers and variables, without many conclusions actually sticking in the reader's mind. Mathletics lives up to its billing, but it's a billing that sells the subject matter short, and one that might alienate the most interested readers.

Grade: B-

Book 33: The Best Time Travel Stories of the 20th Century

The Best Time Travel Stories of the 20^th Century

Edited by Harry Turtledove and Martin H. Greenberg

Time travel is a tricky and multifaceted concept, and the idea of an anthology consisting solely of stories that consider the concept and (crucially) its potential ramifications was immediately alluring to me. I'm not qualified to determine whether these stories represent the best of the subgenre's many offerings, but I've encountered enough fiction to know that this collection represents a fine and varied representation of time travel stories. While there are the usual expected duds, as with any short story collection (Robert Silverberg's "Sailing to Byzantium" was absolutely inscrutable to me, despite the promise of a great premise lurking somewhere within), the proportion of mind-blowing greatness to said less spectacular fare was pleasantly high. Almost every story represented a fresh take on the core concept, and the book has a good balance of stories that alternately provide humor, emotional insight, fear, and/or sheer wonder. The best of the bunch, for me, was Connie Willis's "Fire Watch." Though it represents a fairly straightforward narrative, something about the story grabbed me immediately and still hasn't let go; it is a sterling example of the ways in which science fiction can, because of (not despite) its clever conceits, explore the depths of human emotion and the fundamental nature of humanity. Bradbury's classic "The Sound of Thunder" is present, but the omission of "All You Zombies" is a mystery to me. Regardless, The Best Time Travel Stories of the 20^th Century is a riveting collection of top-notch fiction that transcends genre while representing it admirably.

Grade: A

Book 32: Out of the Past

Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present

Neil Miller

Gay and lesbian history is still very much in flux in the contemporary United States, as evidenced by recent and foreseeable election results and court cases. Neil Miller's attempt to distill American and, to a lesser extent, western queer history is admirable in its scope, even if that scope is primarily limited to the period between 1870 and the mid-1990s. Though he focuses on the United States, Miller occasionally (but perhaps too-briefly) forays into Europe and, in one welcome instance, Japan, allowing the reader to glimpse other gay cultures and the influence they had on one another. One major problem in writing the history of a subculture, especially one as consistently castigated as various gay communities, is the temptation to retroactively define various individuals' sexualities. He admirably acknowledges the difficulties inherent in labeling those who never labeled themselves, and when focusing on particular individuals (as he often does), he presents contextual evidence for the assumptions he, alongside others, has made. His history is less of an effort to claim famous historical figures or events for homosexuality and more of an attempt to trace the development of homosexual community and societies' views thereof. Importantly, the book tracks different definitions of homosexuality, often in conjunction with greater contextual histories that capture the feel, gay and otherwise, of settings such as the Old West, interwar Europe, and San Francisco after World War II. Miller includes both grand histories of gay movements and intimate personal biographies of queer figures (suspected, admitted, or otherwise) that personalize his book, which avoids the dry, de-personalized, and sanitized feel of most sweeping histories. Equally accessible to history majors and more casual readers, Miller's book is peppered with literary excerpts and first-hand accounts that serve as useful suggestions for further reading and as miniature glimpses into the history that Miller recaptures throughout his book. Out of the Past presents a thorough and accessible overview of gay and lesbian history; though not without its flaws, it certainly is a more than adequate introduction to the topic for gays and straights alike.

Grade: A

Book 31: Finding the Game

Finding the Game: Three Years, Twenty-Five Countries, and the Search for Pickup Soccer

Gwendolyn Oxenham

Out of college in her mid-twenties, Gwendolyn Oxenham, her boyfriend, and two friends set out to discover how soccer, the game she loves, connects communities around the world beyond the lights of the Premier League and the World Cup. During her journey around the world, Oxenham documented the group's attempts to find, and participate in, pickup soccer games and other non-professional matches. While her love of soccer and her appreciation of the game's ability to unite people across language and cultural barriers are evident throughout, Oxenham occasionally lapses into preachiness or misplaced self-congratulation. The book can't quite decide whether it's an exploration of the global nature of the game or a travel/self-discovery memoir. While both of these elements sometimes coexist in harmony, there is often a tension between them as the writing whips back and forth. The writing is sufficient and the passion more than enough to sustain the story as the group proceeds through its many adventures, both expected and, well, less so. From initial disappointments in Trinidad and Argentina to surprising success on the rooftops of Tokyo, Oxenham and company chase the game, but throughout much of the book there's a feeling of emptiness as the travelogue eclipses more meaningful analysis. The chapters on Iran and Israel stand out for their brilliant combination of straightforward storytelling and examination of the political ramifications of their journey. While hopeful activists praise soccer's ability to unite disparate Jewish and Palestinian communities, Oxenham witnesses a more complicated situation on the ground as sides of each ethnicity meet on the field but ultimately leave in their own isolated pockets. In Iran, the situation is more tense as the group must weather the tensions that plague any Americans visiting the country, let alone a group intent on mingling with anyone and everyone, despite the warnings and discouragement from the official tour guides. Readers will be drawn to Oxenham's obvious appreciation for soccer and for the entertaining stories of her round-the-world trip, but those hoping for Finding the Game to present a deeper examination of meaning may ultimately be disappointed.

Grade: B

Book 30: How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

Charles Yu

Charles Yu has a lot of very interesting, and reasonably novel, ideas about time travel. Unfortunately, access to those ideas in How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe is restricted to those who can wade through an uncomfortably prickly thicket of over-wrought, self-important prose at the same aimless pace as the plot (such as it is) dictates. There's cleverness, to be sure, in Yu's use of his own novel within the plot, but it is played for trite, self-serving ends instead of contributing at all to the story (such as it is) or characters (such as they are). There's nothing wrong with mixing science fiction and very literary fiction, as Yu does in his novel, but this book exemplifies the way that each genre can individually go wrong; the synthesis fares little better. On the "literary" side, Yu's main character is the most transparently Mary Sue of them all, the plot plods at a pace that would make glaciers feel like gazelles, and the prose is woefully overwritten with a haughty and alienating holier-than-thou attitude. As for science fiction, this book provides a labyrinthine, half-constructed world that celebrates its incompletion and embraces a nonsense theory of time travel that is hastily, though not at all effectively, retconned in the book's final act. The science in science fiction needn't be hard, or plausible in the real world, but surely it isn't too much to ask that it is more than a convenient excuse for an author to feign seriousness and plead for nerd credibility. Surely it isn't too much to ask that it kind of makes sense?

And then there's the author himself. Yu seems to use the novel as a vehicle through which to examine and, possibly, repent for his own sins. Unfortunately, it reads as an in-joke. Everywhere Yu has a possibility to resurrect the interesting bits and cast aside his apparently insatiable need to focus endlessly on himself, he takes the book in yet another incomprehensible direction. The novel commits the worst of all possible sins: it is deliberately obtuse, constructed to make self-congratulating critics writhe with pleasure after forging some fabricated sense of meaning out of the intentionally obscure. How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe is alienating, insulting, and a horrific insult to literary fiction and science fiction, unifying them in a Frankenstein's monster of everything that's wrong with literature.

Grade: D

Book 29: Three and Out

Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football

John U. Bacon

It's unclear why Michigan fans would really want to re-live the three years now referred to as the "Rich-Rod Era," when the perennial power's fortress came crashing down in a melodrama played out across national news outlets and computer screens. It is undeniable, however, that it is a compelling, if painful, story, and the depth of Bacon's unprecedented access certainly presents a unique opportunity to peer inside a major college football program. Bacon's respect and fondness for the program are evident, but they don't infringe on his ability to present his account with an attitude of fairness. His biases do emerge from time to time, but the book maintains an air of journalistic thoroughness. It is clear that Bacon attempted to seek accounts from all of the main players, and the book usually hesitates to draw firm conclusions without a significant amount of fact-checking and first-hand accounts. Unfortunately, however, for all that, the book often reads as a straightforward recapitulation of events that I, for one, remember quite clearly and would rather forget. What promises to be a far-reaching expose (of sorts) of big-time collegiate locker rooms becomes, instead, a list of plays, scores, and games, with the most damning inferences restricted to a preparatory chapter on the end of Lloyd Carr's tenure rather. Instead of a hard-hitting attempt to expose why Rich Rodriguez failed at Michigan (for it cannot be argued that he did), Bacon presents the same myriad of possibilities that have already been considered and argued about ad nauseum throughout the fanbase. Though Bacon clearly has the insight, information, and ability to weave a compelling account of the stakes of college football and the game's impact on modern academia, his account is merely a day-to-day type story we all know far too well, with items of interest scattered and fairly infrequent. While Bacon's inside view of major sports is appreciated, sincere, and well-written, it reads more as background than as an investigation, which is, after all, perhaps its primary purpose. It is hard, however, to read Three and Out without sensing a missed opportunity, and it's hard to know whether to credit the author for sticking fairly strictly to what he witnessed or to fault him for a lack of attempt to cast a wider net.

Grade: B+

Book 28: Titanic: The Long Night

Titanic: The Long Night

Diane Hoh

The story of the Titanic is one of historical fact that lends itself especially well to works of fiction. The grand contrast between the wealthy on the promenade deck and the nearly penniless immigrants on E Deck, the arrogance of the Gilded Age, and the well-known and lasting images of the ship's final hours all provide perfect story fodder, all without the necessity of adding anything original. This provides an interesting challenge for writers aspiring to set their stories on the liner, requiring enough originality to stimulate the imagination, but enough fealty to the well-known storylines to maintain credibility. Titanic: The Long Night errs on the side of familiarity both with regard to the ship's story and its characters, and though the book doesn't particularly suffer for it, what emerges is an oft-told tragic tale of young love. Hoh makes the usual rounds, visiting many of the usual sights around first class and a riotous party in the third class common room. The stories and characters are familiar, but compelling enough to maintain readers' attention throughout the novel, and there is a very real sense of suspense throughout, aided by the possibility that the main players might well die by the end of the novel. Though there are naturally some losses, none are particularly surprising, and the ultimate conclusion is a fitting, if expected. There are times when Hoh tries too hard to shoehorn modern politics into an earlier context, though this does make the novel more relatable for teens, who are its most appropriate, and likely its intended, audience. Despite the fact that the book treads a well-worn path, Hoh is skilled enough to create a compelling story, and the characters rise enough above stock level- though only just in many cases- to allow readers to care. In the end, the book is precisely what it aspires to be: Titanic: The Long Night is a satisfying, middle-of-the-line romantic story that efficiently utilizes the well-known facts of its setting to appeal to a modern audience.

Grade: B+

Book 27: The Unthinkable

The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes- and Why

Amanda Ripley

For situations so aptly called "unthinkable," disasters of all varieties tend to occupy a large portion of our collective imagination. Hardly a week passes by when the 24-hour news cycle isn't hysterical about an earthquake, shooting, or accident, and yet this fascination is paired with a strange reluctance to really think about these incidents from a practical perspective, ignoring why they happen and focusing instead on how we react and how we might better train ourselves to survive. Amanda Ripley briefly lays out this scenario at the beginning of her fascinating book The Unthinkable, and brilliantly answers her own call for answers. Written for a general audience, Ripley is sharp and informative without being condescending or overly technical. The book is certainly for the thinking reader, but actively engages its audience. While this buddy-buddy feel can occasionally get annoying, the book maintains its focus on practicality, never straying far from the realm of actual historical incidents and their demonstrable effects. This makes the book an effective mix of history, psychology, and neurology, written with the assistance of those involved in all aspects of disastrous incidents, from survivors to neuroscientists.

The effort to locate and directly collect survivors' testimonies lends a great deal of credibility to an otherwise casual book, and allows Ripley to create both a framework and compelling individual stories. She tells her tales is a meaningful order, utilizing a specific incident or theme as the backbone of each particular chapter and tracing human reactions from the onset of trouble (or even before) through the heat of the moment. Aside form simply making sense, the organizational scheme lends the book that sense of narrative that is so often lacking from nonfiction and insists that human nature maintains its rightful place at the center of the work. The writing is as accessible as the content, and while Ripley's interest occasionally strays, the diversions are at least interesting and tangentially related to the matter at hand. Most importantly, the book follows through on its premise, offering integrated insights into historical events and providing a basic framework both for future study and, to a lesser extent, for practical action. She is persuasive without being preachy and offers practical solutions for the problems she presents. The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes- and Why is among that rare class of nonfiction books capable of informing and entertaining a wide audience of receptive readers while retaining a sense of focus, mission, and perspective.

Grade: A

Book 26: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

Robert A. Heinlein

As someone who thoroughly enjoys science fiction, it's somewhat embarrassing to admit that this is the first work I've read by one of the genre's giants. This book, often regarded as one of Heinlein's finest, came with a lot of heavy expectations, and it stands up fairly well, though with a few hiccups. Narrative duties fall upon a central character who speaks the lunar dialect, which is essentially a stripped-down English with some borrowed slang from other languages. The dialect seems reasonable enough as an extrapolation, but its tendency to drop articles and pronouns creates an instinctive negative reaction to the speakers, which may cause readers to doubt their intelligence. Though the problem is ameliorated with time, and particularly during long sessions with the text, the language occasionally undermines the political ideas that permeate the novel. While Heinlein absolutely excels at throwing readers directly into the setting, both temporal and physical, with remarkably efficient brevity, he is less adept at exploring the politics that form the backbone of this novel. The plot centers around the political relationships between the Moon and Earth, and much of the main characters' screen time is spent in deep discussions, which often seem reductive or naïve. On one occasion, a character strongly advises against trusting a cache of information to a computer, while both speaker and author completely fail to recognize that this kind of "mistake" is, in fact, central to the entire premise of the plot

Heinlein isn't particularly assisted by his characters, who tend toward stock molds despite some valiant efforts to differentiate them. The young gun drawn in over his head, the newly-awakened AI, the all-knowing gray-hair, and the token female are all present.  Despite these and other missteps, the plot moves along fairly briskly, especially considering its more ideological construction and focus. The politics behind the events may be introduced in a somewhat clunky manner, but the whole thing plays out believably enough, and the novel excels as a thought experiment. The utter completeness of Heinlein's vision of a future lunar colony is amazing, and he considers many subtle aspects of a prison colony finding its identity, such as the effects of a highly unbalanced gender ratio and the forms of justice available when murder by airlock is a viable solution. The societal aspects of Heinlein's future are just as interesting, if not more so, than the politics, and his handling of them displays his ability to foresee and explain without much overt prodding, an ability unseen in his handling of the politics. While modern readers will question the novel's gender politics, and rightly so, it all hangs together as a reasonable, if undesirable, possibility.  As a whole, the book is a worthy thought experiment that can spur intriguing discussions over 45 years after its initial publication. While The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress may not excel on all levels, it certainly contains enough interesting fodder to justify its place on a list of high-ranking, lasting science fiction stories, even if it doesn't warrant quite as much praise as it has garnered.

Grade: A-