"Stranger Than We Can Imagine: An Alternative History of the 20th Century" by John Higgs

 

Publisher: Signal Books (McClelland & Stewart)
Copyright: 2015
ISBN: 9780771038471

When I first read the title of this book I assumed that it was going to be looking at possible alternative histories of the 20th century i.e., taking some aspect of real history and seeing what would've happened if something else had taken place.

In actual fact this book is an examination of the influences various events and beliefs had on a number of different things that actually occurred in the 20th century. These topics are for example: Einstein's discovery of relativity, the influence of modernism on art and society, how the war influenced imperialism and nationalism, how individualism grew during the century, The rise of science fiction and how it influenced people, the development of space travel, changing attitudes towards sex and their influence on society, the influence rick music and other facets of the life of teenagers, chaos theory, and much more.

Each of these topics is covered in very good detail, and sometimes from an expected angle, with a great discussion of how the other influences and events mentioned in the book are support them. The various chapters are definitely related to each other and make for an extremely interesting read.

Without a doubt a full book could be written on each of these topics as well as more. But this book will definitely whet the readers appetite to look for more information if they are so inclined.

Highly recommended!

"The Fabulous Riverboat" by Philip José Farmer (1918-2009)

 

Publisher: Berkley Medallion

Copyright: 1971

ISBN: None listed

"The Fabulous Riverboat" is the second novel in the Riverworld series, which is set sometime in the far future when all people who ever lived on earth are resurrected along the banks of an enormous river. No one knows why they were resurrected, or by whom but some are determined to find out.

This novel has it has as its primary character Samuel Langhorne Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain) who is determined to get to the headwaters of the river, and to do so decides to build a paddle-wheel riverboat.

Some of the other characters you'll meet are the Viking chief Erik Bloodaxe, Lothar Von Richthofen (brother to the Red Baron), Prince John Lackland (brother to Richard the Lion Hearted), Odysseus, and Herman Goering also makes another appearance.

I my opinion this novel wasn't quite as good as "To Your Scattered Bodies Go", which I reviewed 2 weeks ago. This is primarily because the time span is in the order of a number of years, but should be many decades. The main reason I come to this conclusion is because they were using technology that would not have been known, or even thought of during the time of Clements. It is true this is explained somewhat by the fact that other more modern engineers assisted him, but it still did seem a little too much of a stretch. The techniques used to build the riverboat also seemed to advanced, to be able to be performed with essentially very rudimentary tools and techniques. I'm sure there are many who will disagree with this, but that's why I said it was my opinion.

In addition to this the characters themselves didn't seem to be quite as well-developed as they were in the first book. This may be because a lot more people have read Clements' books as opposed to those of Burton and therefore have a context to frame his character, but I still feel it would've been nice to see more character development. On the other hand there was some good interaction between Clements and some of his neighbouring peoples with regards to discussions about race, and how Clements portrayed this in his novels.

Race relations do play a large part in the latter part of this novel, so a reader should be prepared for some rather strong language, if that is a concern.

Even with these draw backs, I did enjoy the book as it has been many years since I first read it.

"Dynamic Characters: How to Create personalities that keep readers captivated" by Nancy Kress

 

Publisher: Writer's Digest Books
Copyright:1998
ISBN:0898798159

Nancy Kress is an award-winning author and colonist for writers digest magazine. In this book she looks at a number of different topics that all relate to characterization, how the characters influence the plotting, and the story's world view.

The book itself is separated into three major sections the first is creating strong and believable characters: the externals, the second is creating strong and believable characters: the internals, and third she goes into a discussion of how character and plot interact and influence each other, and how they work within the story's worldview.

Each of the sections is separated into a few sub-sections. For example in the first she talks about things such as what's in a name, the role of setting in creating a character, dialogue and how to enhance characters through it, how to make dialogue read naturally, amongst others.

In the second part she deals with such things as using a character's attitudes, their dreams and news casts to enhance the character. She also looks at how to make the bad guys better, Creating an unsympathetic protagonists, etc.

The third section has sub-sections such as starting in various places within a story and still establishing a plot, point-of-view, secondary characters and their influences on plot construction, basing stories on real events, and much more.

I found this to be an extremely well written book, that is very informative and gives excellent advice and examples. The vast majority of the examples are chosen from very well known books, which therefore gives the aspiring writer even more information to ground their characters on.

Well worth the read, but also good advice for practising authors.

"To Your Scattered Bodies Go" by Philip José Farmer (1918-2009)

 

Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons

Copyright: 1971

ISBN: 0425028097

The Hugo award winning novel"To Your Scattered Bodies Go" is the first book in Farmer's very popular River World series. In which every person who has ever lived on earth is resurrected from the dead and finds themselves naked on the banks of as immense river. There is no explanation as to why they are there, or what they are supposed to do.

The primary character in this novel is a Sir Richard Francis Burton. For those who don't know, Burton was a real person, and is the translator of One Thousand and One Nights (also known as the Tales of the Arabian Nights), he's the co-founder of the Royal Anthropological Society in Britain, the discoverer of Lake Tanganyika, and accomplished many other exploits during his life. Even with all these credits to his name he was an extremely controversial figure who was not well liked by many in the world, especially many religious leaders.

Burton is somewhat unique in the story, as he was one of very few characters that woke up prior to arrival on the shores of the river, and therefore was aware that other beings were manipulating them. Some of the other characters he meets are Alice Hargraves Little, Herman Goering both of whom play rather significant roles in Burton's quest to find out what is really going on.

This is a very entertaining read, and I would recommend it to anybody who likes essentially classic science fiction, although some have classified this more in the fantasy genre.

"The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World" by Steve Brusatte

 

Publisher: William Morrow

Copyright: 2018

ISBN: 9780062490421

It has taken me a little while to get around to reading this book due to a bit of a backlog I’ve had to work through, that and working for a living tends to chew up a few hours in the day - mind you the latter isn’t much of an excuse as I work in Palaeontology all day long. But in any case the wait was well worth it as this book was a fascinating read.

Dr. Brusatte takes the reader on a journey from the Permian Period some 252 million years ago right up to the time of the Late Cretaceous and the extinction of the dinosaurs due to a rather pesky comet/meteor that hit the earth in the Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago. Even though this extinction event was hotly debated by many for a number of years it is now accepted that this is what brought the Cretaceous and the reign of the dinosaurs to an end - with exception of the birds that is, yes birds are descended from dinosaurs. For a good read on this check out “T-Rex and the Crater of Doom” by Walter Alvarez which I reviewed back on November 23, 2020.

The book starts by introducing the reader the world of Permian Period and explains the dawn of the dinosaurs, how they became more dominant, the effects of continent drift on their distribution. It then moves on through the next couple of chapters to discuss the tyrant dinosaurs, and of course many peoples' favourite bad boy T. rex.

There is an excellent discussion on how dinosaurs likely took flight, and in each section there is a good discussion of the dominant species, and how they lived. The final chapter deals with the end of the dinosaurs, and how they died out.

This book was extremely informative, and would make a wonderful introduction to anybody who is interested in dinosaurs, it is an easy read that would be suitable for readers from the higher elementary school grades (after all everybody knows an elementary student who knows all the dinosaurs, right?) right though to seniors. I believe it would also make a great introductory text for first year university as this is the type of book that most students would actually read, as opposed to some of the textbooks typically assigned.

Highly recommended.

"We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" by Philip K. Dick (1928-1982)

 

Publisher: Citadel Press

Copyright: 1987

ISBN: 0806512091

This is an anthology of 27 of Philip K. Dick's short stories, all of which are well worth reading. The title story "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" may be recognizable to many as it was the inspiration for the two movies entitled "Total Recall" the first starring Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1990, and the second starring Colin Ferrall in 2012. While neither of these movies followed the story too closely they were obviously influenced by elements in it.

Many of the other stories in this anthology deal with a post-apocalyptic world in which humans are trying to survive. One of the better ones being "Planet for Transients" in which the world has survived a nuclear war, but it has changed so much that humans are no longer the dominant life form. The first story in the collection "The Cookie Lady" I found to be a really great read, but I'm not going to spoil it for you as it isn't very long.

All in all this is a very good introduction to the late Mr. Dick's work, and I'm looking forward to reading more. I'm not sure why I'd never read any of his stories before, but it might be because I used to have a definite dislike for short fiction, as when I was young I had read some rather poor work, and this guided me towards only reading novel lengths work for many years. I have since come around.

I think you'll like this book.

Enjoy

"The End is Always Near: Apocalyptic moments, From the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses" by Dan Carlin

 

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Copyright Date:©2019

ISBN: 9780062868046 

Dan Carlin for those of you who don't know is the host of the "Hardcore History" Podcast which has been running for close to 15 years if I'm not mistaken. Mr. Carlin is a fantastic storyteller who blends real history, but not always the way you were told into both his podcasts, and now his first book. The podcast and now this book invites the listener and reader to think about what really happened in history, what people were thinking, and where we as supposedly rational humans might be headed.

"The End is Always Near" takes the reader on a journey that examines the Bronze Age collapse, the way children were raised historically, the fall of the Assyrian Empire, the Roman Empire vs. the Barbarians (everyone who wasn't Roman), the various epidemics and pandemics that have scourged the world over time (which as I am writing this we are in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic is rather frightening), the nuclear age and the attacks on Japan in 1945, the horrors of the wars in Europe and how they can be compared to what happened in Japan.

This book is absolutely full of fascinating information, but the information may at times be a little shocking, especially to people who have gone through the school system in the last 30 years when the material being taught has been sanitized.

This would make a fantastic text book for a high school or a 1st year University history class.

"Race Against Time" by Piers Anthony

 

Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates 

Copyright: 1973

ISBN: 0812531108

It's 1960, in a typical American town. Or is it? John Smith is your typical high school aged teenager, but he's discovered some things about his life are a little odd. For instance, he has a dog that can climb trees, he has a girlfriend he's never met but whom he is required to write to each week, and has been told that he has to marry. To top this all off his parents always seem to be taking notes about what he's doing.

The above is generally what is on the back of the book, and what got me interested in this story when I first bought it many years ago. The story follows John Smith's explorations into why his life is a little odd, after all even he knows dogs shouldn't be able to climb trees. Is it ventures lead him to meet other people who are in the same situation as him, and what they discover is rather startling.

I had read some of Piers Anthony's stories before, and always found them to be quite intriguing as he definitely likes his plot twists. He likely is best known for his Xanth series of 44 books (which I haven't read), but he has many other novels and series in genres such as fantasy, thriller, urban fantasy, and children's fiction.

It was a very good book, that is well-suited for teens, young adults and so on.

Enjoy.