Her Fearful Symmetry

Having explored the Sci-fi time travel genre this past February and March, one of my top five favorites was Audrey Niffenegger's debut novel, The Time Traveler's Wife  . So it was only natural that, upon my going off in a different direction, Niffenegger's second novel, Her Fearful Symmetry would make the reading list this month.

Just as Octavia Butler had done with fledgling , Niffenegger broke from the time travel genre - Butler writing a vampire novel and Niffenegger writing a ghost story.

Without going too far into the plot, I'll hit some of the high points. Julia and Valentina are 20 year old identical twins - the daughters and nieces of estranged identical twins, Elspeth and Edwina. Early in the novel, Elspeth dies of leukemia and leaves her nieces her flat, located beside Highgate cemetery in London, and slightly more than £2,000,000 with the stipulation that they move from the U.S. to London and live in the flat for one year. The young girls' parents are forbidden to enter the flat.

Niffenegger is a very talented and creative writer, but unfortunately the majority of her work is in the form of so-called "novels in pictures" (visual books) which aren't going to work on a Kindle. According to what I've read online, Niffenegger is currently working on two novels - one is a sequel to The Time Traveler's Wife which was supposed to be ready by 2018 - that's four years ago and we're still waiting. The other novel in progress is The Chinchilla Girl in Exile. No word on it either.

The Massacre of Mankind

Stephen Baxter's The Massacre of Mankind is the only sequel to H.G.Wells' The War of the Worlds authorized by the Wells estate. Baxter had previously written a sequel to The Time Machine - evidently the Wells estate is pleased with his work.

For what it's worth, so am I.

The sequel takes place 13 years after the events in Wells' novel. The narrator of this work, Julie Elphinstone is the sister-in-law of the narrator of the first novel - Walter Jenkins. Jenkins' name is not given in The War of the Worlds . I'm not sure how Baxter came to choose the name, but I suppose he had to have some name, after all.

Julie Elphinstone does make an appearance in the original novel, as do a number of other characters appearing in the sequel; her ex husband, Frank (brother to Walter), her younger sister-in-law, the "artillery man" Albert Cook and the widow of the astronomer Ogilvy to name a few. Also mentioned in the sequel are Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill and George Patton.

The novel is essentially an alternative history. The 1914 war between Germany and France takes place (with Germany the winner) although England and the U.S. do not enter the war. Julie Elphinstone travels from the U.S. to England aboard the RMS Lusitania which wasn't torpedoed by a German U-boat.

Baxter does a good job sticking to the view of the solar system as held by Percival Lowell and the "smart folk" of Wells' time. The descriptions of Mars, Venus and Jupiter are wrong by today's standards, but it suits perfectly to the feel of an H.G.Wells sequel.

You won't find any spoilers in this post. You can go elsewhere for that.

My only criticism of the sequel is the length. Baxter's sequel is nearly triple the number of pages in Wells' book......just a bit too long for my tastes, but overall a pretty good read.

Visitors to the Blog

Out of curiosity, I went to Google Analytics to check on the visitors to this blog. Here is a screen shot of the cities where the visitors came from - April 01 until April 21.

Reporter at U.S. News & World Report in a Panic Over Abortion Restrictions

Kaia Hubbard, a general news reporter at U.S. News & World Report, appears to be especially worried about the state of abortion in the United States. Although she can, presumably, write on any number of topics, her topic of choice appears to be the increase in the number of States putting restrictions on abortion. Four months into 2022, she has written eleven such stories - with five of those eleven being written in April alone. 

Of course, as I write this, there are still eleven days remaining in the month; still plenty of time for her to double down.:

Abortion Rights Imperiled on 49th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade
Four Governors Races That Could Decide Abortion’s Future
States Advance Abortion Bans Expecting Roe’s Fall
Florida Passes Mississippi-Style Abortion Ban
State Supreme Court Ruling Dooms Challenge to Texas Abortion Law
Idaho Passes Texas-Style Abortion Ban
Missouri Is Eyeing a Ban on Abortion Beyond its Borders. It’s Happened Before.
The Anti-Abortion Movement’s Post-Roe Agenda: Inconvenient, Illegal, Unthinkable
Oklahoma Governor Signs Abortion Ban
Florida Gov. DeSantis Signs Abortion Ban Into Law
Kentucky Law ‘Effectively Bans’ Abortion

The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

In February, during my journey thru Sci-Fi Time Travel novels, I reread H.G.Wells' The Time Machine , soon followed by Stephen Baxter's sequel, The Time Ships . Now that I'm reading works by writers I had included in my recent time travel adventures and who are also writers of non-time travel novels, I knew I'd be rereading Wells' The War of the Worlds before going on to Baxter's sequel to that novel, The Massacre of Mankind .

Like The Time Machine , I had last read The War of the Worlds in 2017. Naturally, I'd wanted to refresh my memory before going on to The Massacre of Mankind . It's amazing what five years can do to an old man's recollection.

Of course, Wells got a lot of the science wrong in the novel. That's to be expected. I suppose Martian creatures didn't seem so far fetched in 1897. Never the less, the book is a nice read; just imagine while reading the book that you're living in the time when bicycles were more ubiquitous than automobiles, the Wright Brothers hadn't made their first flight, and the "smart" people believed there were actually canals on Mars. 

The nice thing about this novel is that Wells has humans behaving as humans. 

Wells had stated that the idea for the book came to him after a discussion he had had with his brother Frank, regarding the effects the invading British had on the aboriginal Tasmanians during the 19th Century.What would happen if Great Britain were invaded by a superior civilization? 

Thank goodness for earthly pathogens and microorganisms - the Martians were "slain, after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth" and all's well that ends well.

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

Going back to the list of writers I included in my recent time travel adventures but who are also writers of non-time travel novels, I come to Kurt Vonnegut's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. Having read Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five during my time travel phase, this book was the obvious choice. Two characters from Slaughterhouse-Five - Kilgore Trout and Eliot Rosewater - made their first appearance in the 1965 novel.

I had been a Kurt Vonnegut fan in my teen years and had, of course read God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater ages and ages ago. Like all of the Vonnegut novels I read in my teen years, most of the Rosewater book had faded from my memory. Pretty much the only thing I can recall from that early reading is the mentioning of Kilgore Trout's paperback, Venus on the Half-Shell . In later years (1974) Philip José Farmer wrote a novel of the same name - using the pseudonym Kilgore Trout. There was a bit of a kerfuffle over Farmer's book. Vonnegut reluctantly gave permission to Farmer to write the book, although later Vonnegut was angry over a poorly written article concerning Farmer's getting Vonnegut's permission. The article was probably as badly written as the previous sentence.

As a side note - when I read Venus on the Half-Shell in 1975, I was like many who mistakenly assumed that the book was Vonnegut's own creation.

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater is humorous - though hardly a knee slapper. I appreciate Vonnegut's writing now with a bit of nostalgia. I don't know, however, if I'd like Vonnegut nearly as much if I were only now discovering his work.

Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler

At the first of this month, I concluded my  two month  adventure with time travel by choosing to head off in a different direction with my reading. I decided to look at some of the writers that I'd read in those time travel days, and read some of their novels which are not related to time travel. The writers include - but are not limited to - Tim Powers, Octavia Butler, Kurt Vonnegut and Audrey Niffenegger.

Having finished reading Powers' Declare I continued on to Octavia Butler's science fiction vampire novel, Fledgling. I enjoyed Butler's time travel novel, Kindred so there was no question but that I'd be reading more of Butler's novels. The majority of Butler's novels are parts of multiple series. Although I will one day get around to reading Butler's Patternist, Xenogenesis and Parable series, I wanted to read a "standalone" novel this month and the only other novel, besides Kindred, that fits that category is her final novel, Fledgling.

The wikidedia description of the plot of the novel is much better than I could write :

The novel tells the story of Shori, a 53-year-old member of the Ina species, who appears to be a ten-year-old African-American girl. The Ina are nocturnal, long-lived, and derive sustenance by drinking human blood. Though they are physically superior to humans, both in strength and ability to heal from injury, the Ina depend on humans to survive. Therefore, their relationships are symbiotic, with the Ina's venom providing significant boost to their humans' immune systems and extending their lives up to 200 years. However, withdrawal from this venom will also lead to the human's death.

Butler had a unique take on the idea of vampires......I can't recall reading anything quite like this. It's very different from the standard Dracula legend.

Of course, other than the plot description posted above, I've no intention of providing "spoilers". Needless to say, I'm a huge fan of Octavia Butler, and I highly recommend Fledgling to those who enjoy Sci-Fi and Fantasy fiction.

Declare by Tim Powers

With the arrival of April, I decided to leave off my exploration of time travel novels and move on to something slightly different. I would look at the time travel novels and read other types of novels by some of the writers who had been on the time travel list.

I wanted to go on to others books written by the likes of Octavia Butler, Kurt Vonnegut, and Audrey Niffenegger ( to name just three). I had started my time travel adventure with The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers and thought it would be appropriate to begin April with another Tim Powers novel.

Big mistake.

Although I didn't hate The Anubis Gates , I didn't give it a very high rating, so I shouldn't have been surprised that this other book by Powers, Declare , wouldn't be a favorite either. It isn't that I hate Declare , it's just seems to drag on. It's not my cup of Vodka. The book has been described as "a supernatural spy novel" but it doesn't come off, in my view. The supernatural mumbo jumbo seems a bit pointless and the spy novel portion is ho hum.

As I write this, I've read 82% of the novel....it seems like I've been reading it forever, with no end in sight. I'm determined to finish the book, although I don't foresee my changing my opinion on the novel. 

The plot is non-linear, shifting back and forth in time from the 1940s to the 1960s. Sometimes, as with Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five the non-lineal skipping works. However, I see it as adding nothing to this story.

One character, Kim Philby, is based on a real person. In the novel, Kim Philby stutters. I don't know if the real Philby stuttered, by I found his dialog in the novel to be off-putting. I'm hoping he really did stutter, otherwise having him do so in this novel would be especially lame.

The March Reading List

April has arrived, and with it comes the list of books I read in March.

March is, of course 3 days longer than a normal February so naturally the list for March will include more books than the previous month.

Like February, the books I read In March were exclusively Sci-Fi Time Travel novels. Honestly, some were much better than others. Not only will this post contain the list of books read in March, but I'll also give my picks for the top five time travel books (read since my quest began in February).

First, the Top Five:
1) the "Oxford Time Travel series" by Connie Willis. This is actually a four book series, but for the purposes of my "top five" list, I'm counting the series as one book.
2) The Time Traveler's Wife   by Audrey Niffenegger.
3) Kindred   by Octavia Butler.
4) Slaughterhouse-Five    by Kurt Vonnegut.
5) The Time Machine   by H.G. Wells and it's sequel The Time Ships   by Stephen Baxter. Although these are two different books by two different writers, again for the purposes of my list, I'm counting these as one book.

Although some others were less than my favorite, there are two that deserve to be mentioned as the worst. The Thief of Time  by Terry Pratchett (which I couldn't bring myself to finish) and Time Enough For Love  by Robert Heinlein.

This month I'll be reading non- time travel books written by some of the writers in my time travel list. I've already put eight books in the queue. These will include books by Octavia Butler, Connie Willis, H.G. Wells and Stephen Baxter. More on that later.

So, here's the list for March.

The Time Traveler's Wife   by Audrey Niffenegger.
Tourmalin's Time Cheques  by F. Anstey.
The Langoliers  by Stephen King.
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August  by Claire North.
The End of Eternity  by Isaac Asimov.
The Chronoliths  by Robert Charles Wilson.
The Accidental Time Machine   by Joe Haldeman.
Tau Zero   by Poul Anderson.
Slaughterhouse-Five   by Kurt Vonnegut.
Kindred   by Octavia Butler.
All You Need Is Kill    by Hiroshi Sakurazaka.
The Masks of Time   by Robert Silverberg.