Thursday, April 9, 2015

Man of More Than Two Worlds

Last September I finished up Frank Herbert’s anthology of short fiction, Eye. My second read since I got this book. The first time I read between the lines to see a strategy lurking there.

Back up for a moment. I read The Road to Dune last spring, a collection of correspondence and excised chapters from Dune. Then I started on the novel after Independence Day and finished it for the seventh time. Don’t need to read Dune often, need to read it every once in a while to remember and reinvigorate. Every time I come up with things I like more, and things I like less. This time around, my opinion was expanded by new knowledge about the novel’s development.

The Road to Dune contains “Spice Planet”. None other than the unpublished predecessor of Frank’s Magnum Opus. He wrote “Spice Planet” around 1960; it is a complete story arc bounding the theme of corrupt aristocracy. A more primitive version of two famous Frank thesis:
  1. power attracts the corruptible,
  2. the dangers of leaders are amplified by the number who follow idiotically. 

Dune develops the dangers of messiahs and strategic resources, knocking the aristocracy down to a tertiary place as the social backdrop. The predecessor draft is clearly less imaginative and expansive; the draft is also smarter in some ways, such as offering a more plausible explanation for how satellite surveillance can be thwarted over the deep desert. Dune proposes an enormous bribe to keep satellites way, an imaginative but stupid method because Frank forgot that spy planes and spy balloons could still loiter over the land. He also forgot his own massive sand storms and high altitude dust could do a pretty good job of concealing targets on the ground. Spice Planet uses computer hacking to spoof spy satellites, an insidious method that could theoretically succeed since no one would think it necessary to send out a confirming air flight. Comparing episodes like these helped to show me why Dune is such a great book despite its lapses… while “Spice Planet” did not need to be published. I’ll explore those details some other time.
  
Catching back up to September, I read The Dragon in the Sea for the first time. Eye contains an excerpt from the first three chapters. I borrowed my brother’s copy to get the rest of the story. Dragon was Herbert’s first novel, originally serialized ten years before Dune. These two separate books share a conviction—religion is a social fundamental. 

What to do with that convention differs strongly in the intervening decade. 

Seen through the eyes of hero Paul Atreides and his mother Jessica, Dune is wholly cynical of religion. While expecting that it will continue to permeate human society, the Duniverse regards religion as opiate for the masses. It goes so far as to call out the warrior-chieftain Stilgar for becoming swept up in messiah worship, “a lessening of the man”. 

Dragon takes almost the opposite approach: religion is a lasting glue for both the individual and the team. Now this debut novel is publicly praised as a work of human evolution; introducing Frank’s reoccurring theme of adaption to psychological pressure. However the actual plot resolution is that future submarine crews must find religion in order to prevent psychiatric casualties. The book even takes potshots at atheists in a framing device; in the early stages of the book, the protagonist muses that efforts to dismiss Jesus Christ as nothing more than a “religious paranoiac” were decisively disproven, while the final chapter features a stereotypical secular scientist, pounding his desk and stereotypically pronouncing “faith” as if it were a dirty word.

Before anybody starts lamenting the infection of faith and politics in fiction, linger a moment longer. Dragon includes a less noticeable framing device that suggests Frank was doing something a little dirty himself.

When I read Dragon, I thought Frank must have been more religious in the 1950s. Or at least being contrarian by pointing out that religion still has a place in a high-tech society. Only he couldn’t be contrary this way because the United States made a show of being extra religious during the mid-Fifties—partly as a response to world war, partly as a response to cold war. Who could Herbert contradict, except an already disenfranchised minority? Then he must have got swept up in the “God is Dead” craze of the Sixties and decided religion was a pure tool of social control with no free virtue.

Until I reread Eye and spotting something else afoot. Something reflected in Dragon. That novel begins and ends with a set of framing devices, including the knock on atheists, including a cheesy interplay with the protagonist’s wife. The novel foresees Dune in ending on a note about wives. Beverly Herbert meant a tremendous amount to Frank according to his own prefaces in later books... although I don’t believe that heartfelt emotion was expressed in the hackneyed conclusion to Dragon.

Now put that framing notion of wives up against the stories in Eye—those written before 1970 are focused on characters with so-called nuclear families. Or who feature the traditional housewife and working husband.

In Eye, I realized that Frank had turned his own orbs on audience appeal. A lot of his short fiction had been aimed at fifties family value readers. It was how he gave his stories both a social credibility and a cushion for the more challenging ideas. Dragon probably was written with a sympathy for the Christ, but it was written for a Cold War audience.

This is a sharp contrast to my own fiction. I have a set of seven novels planned for this first part of my bibliography, and none of them have the traditional White Protestant nuclear family. The closest is probably Hammer of Witches, but in that novel virtually every character is separated from their spouses and children. Indeed, I open Revelation Range with the discovery of the destruction of a family. At best, my books deal with broken families, estranged families, and childless professional couples.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

On Killing - Dirty Harry Wants You!

On Killing: 
The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society
(1995, 1996) by Dave Grossman

Download the full review from brianranzoni.com!
Go to the short review on Amazon.com!

It's not often that I read a bad book with a good reputation, so it is bittersweet to bite into On Killing. The text teases me with more baloney than a cynical critic can possibly chew--it took me four months to write the review--and yet I am horrified to see that people still eat it up. Obstensibly, On Killing is about its subtitle: "The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society". But Reader Beware! From the front cover in, Grossman plays havoc and unleashes the bats from belfies.

The creepiest claims crawl out of otherwise sedate prose, often cloaked in the authority of scholarship. So I don't blame people if they miss the thesis: post-Sixties media, particularly video games, movies, and television, is programming Americans into homicidal zombies at a scale to rival nuclear holocaust. To get there, the reader first has to navigate 300 pages of heart-rendering tales about soldiers and trauma, liberally dotted with poems and pat assertions. If this sounds like a massive non-sequitur for a central argument, you could be right.

In form, On Killing is a patische of popular 1990's genres: the self-help book, the warrior's code book, the moral panic book, and the attack modern liberalism book. There are so many competing interests, as the author attempts to demonstrate expertise across a range of subjects, that it tends to diffuse the objectives.

The result reads like the effort of a science enthusiast, not a scientist. Unable to settle upon a hypothetical methodology, it veers from the specious to the ludicrous. Most notably the heavy use of conspiracy theories, neologisms, and urban legends. The supporting quotes and case studies have a habit of contradicting Grossman’s own points. Otherwise, they tend to be irrelevant; many chapters and sub-chapters consist entirely of padding. A pattern of long and fallacious set-up, followed by weak punch-lines.

Which is why I’m disappointed that so many adults disagree with me. Reading other reviews on Blogger and Amazon.com, it is apparent that intelligent, educated, experienced elders have appraised this book with all the insight of a potato chip (if you will pardon a return to the food metaphor). I could hardly find any critical reviews at all, positive or negative, not even in a Google search. Indeed, the more lunatic the book gets, the less fans seem to challenge it. As each argument goes on, it becomes more nakedly erroneous or hysterical, until the hot air sends both the book and its readers into flight from reason—the falcon cannot hear the falconer. And if a Yeats reference isn’t enough for you, consider that all those 1930’s dictators were correct--that a big lie, told often enough, becomes truth. The common credulity can also be expressed as a cinematic methaphor--Bug, the stage play and movie where a good-but-broken hearted woman is swept up into the delusions of her schizophrenic boyfriend.

No wonder the wise folks fall for this foolishness. Yet you don’t need me to pump-start your brain. All that is required is to break the hypnosis of rhetoric—from there, you can restore your intellectual will against pseudo-intellectual ills.

"It begins innocently with cartoons..." - page 308.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Footfall - Elephants Attack!

Footfall (1985) by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
Download the full review from brianranzoni.com!


My father was a fan of science fiction and horror, and of course both Niven and Pournelle adorned his shelves. Footfall, a semi-hard science romp against communist space elephants, wasn't the first of their books to cross my path, but it is perhaps the weirdest. Published during the early years of SDI and Space Shuttle mania, the book was a concious attempt to sell fans on Ronald Reagan and his expensive efforts to win the Cold War.



Despite the rather obvious politics of the book, it remains a fun story. It helps me, at least, that the book offers a glimpse into certain mentalities of my childhood. With a cast of dozens, characters sometimes disappear as quickly as they arrive, but the authors deserve credit for trying to give us a global view of a world war, even if seen through the bifocals of West versus East. I found the alien technology to be particularly fascinating. The authors worked to make the aliens advanced, but plausibly so. Their portrayal of military space systems--and the importance of orbital power--is perhaps terribly pat. Nevertheless, it remains as inspiring techno-drama.

They don't skimp on the non-military tech either, giving the invaders a realistic insertion into our solar system. Warp drive and teleporters need not apply here. Nor exotic detection--those space commies are picked up on astronomical plates, and the book does well in showing how even a large alien ship could hide in our own solar system for years, feeding off asteroids while it refuels and assembles its invasion force.

Don't fret that the book will wear at your ideological edifices--it is far too goofy and dated to suceed at its goal. A year later the Challenger exploded and people began to realize the space plane was a bit more difficult to manage than the Saturn-style rocket. Meanwhile, SDI and its sucessors climbed higher and higher into that deficit sky, producing so little for so many tax dollars and resources. On the other hand, I think the basic concept of a shuttle and space weapons are sound; they just needed a lot more sense and farsight to make them sing. So there's no shame in reading this book, no matter your own beliefs. Reading it may even illuminate some of the tropes and icons which unconciously emerge in my own fiction.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Welcome to My Swarm of Villains!

You read right--this is Brian Ranzoni's review blog for all things book, movie, and video game. It has three jobs: to entertain you, to educate you, and to earn a bit of your money in return. I chose Blogger because it helps me to minimize the amount of stuff I'm storing on brianranzoni.com; don't wanna keep all my eggs in one basket. Also, it helps me to link reviewed products to Amazon.com, giving me a little bit of ad revenue to help support my website. I write for a living, folks. You don't trade essays for milk down at the supermarket.

But even if you do not spent a cent here, I thank you for spending your time and attention. If I fail in my mission to amuse or to inform, then exercise your consumer right to notify me.

Another thing you should know about what I do... My reviews have a higher standard of evidence and logic than most websites I encounter. But they are not scientific studies--they are personal opinion. I do not feel obligied to back everything I say with a proper topic sentence and supporting paragraphs linked to a works cited page. Therefore, my reviews should only be treated as a guide--always check out the subject for yourself. Even if I tell you not to read a bad book, not to watch a bad film, or not to play a bad game, you should ignore me and find out for yourself. Personal experience is one of the only sources of knowledge that hold weight with me.

Likewise, you have no obligation to invest in something that I think is the bee's knees. In accordance with my Uncle Jim's Rule, "If you could die doing it, don't." My corollary: "If you could waste money doing it, don't".

This is all disclosure, and I believe in it, because even if it gives some ammunition to critics, it also buys reader respect.

I might condenscend to you in these pages. I might make jokes that offend rather than enlighten. I will falter in scholarly methodology. I live in a politically and academically partisan state, where people are so busy butting heads with each other that the only common ground is the battlefield. This influenced my rhetorical methods.

But I always assume you have a fucking brain in your head, and that you have the intellectual and emotional maturity to handle my voice in the Internet noise. My contribution to the problems of poverty and ignorance is to force us both to think smarter, faster, and harder. Hopefully, you smile or frown along the way.

Some Fine Print

I write 10-15 page reviews and upload them to brianranzoni.com as portable document format files (.pdf). So my posts on Blogger are basically capsule summaries with some helpful links. This will always include a .pdf download link to my full review, another link to my main website, and a product link to Amazon.com.

It's not necessary to visit my website to learn more about the book, film, or game in question... but you can read Facebook comments there, cruise links to related products, and learn more about my own art.