The Garden of Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee

All right I'm going to just flat out say it from the start: I seriously considered dropping the series because of this book. If I hadn't been stuck somewhere for three hours with nothing better to do with my time, I probably would have abandoned this book entirely and just bailed. This book is...infuriating. At least it starts out so and while it gets more tolerable to read later on, it definitely fails to redeem itself by the end. As I'm this far I'll probably force myself through the last book and then wash my hands of the whole affair.

Before I get into how messed up this book is, I want to detail the plot. So if you've been following the story you know that two separate capsules, referred to as the Rama vehicles, have visited our solar system. At the end of Rama II three cosmonauts: Nicole des Jardines, Richard Wakefield, and Michael O'Toole, were hurtling out of our solar system at relativistic speeds. The three develop a complicated relationship and eventually manage to produce five children before arriving at a facility referred to as The Node. Apparently the Rama capsules are one of countless projects launched by a mysterious race of aliens to catalog the various forms of intelligent space-faring life in the galaxy. Eventually the main characters are included in a plan to send the Rama capsule back to our solar system once again to collect two thousand humans for an ''observational habitat''. The characters manage to return and meet the two thousand humans who have been selected, a significant percentage of them being former convicts. The humans then establish a society in the environment contained within Rama, and then things rapidly go to shit from there because human beings are awful and we kill everything we don't understand. I'm not sure where the series can go other than whoever built the Rama structures deciding to kill all humans as a safety measure.

So where to start? The thing I noticed first was in the Acknowledgements where the authors said this book was about women, especially their thoughts and feelings. And yes, it kind of is that because the first section of the book is Nicole's journal. But it's pretty much entirely about babies. Like, on the one hand I feel I shouldn't feel surprised because the writers were older gentlemen by the time they were writing this in the late 80's. On the other hand it's almost patronizing in assuming the most important thing in a woman's life is her children and her role as a mother. Nicole is supposed to be this super-accomplished scientist, Olympic gold medalist, brilliant doctor, and all this other stuff, but the only thing that matters to her is her children. And this is why feminists are so annoyed. Obviously being a parent is a life-changing event and I have plenty of friends who are going through that adventure right now. But my friends who are moms don't stop having identities outside of being a mom once they had babies. In this case we really only get to see Nicole as a mom and her identity as a mom and while I understand it's meant to be a lovely tribute, it dramatically limits women into one role for their entire lives and nothing else has any meaning.

The book also brings up a bunch of other serious issues, but instead of focusing on just one and developing it, they bring up a whole host of issues and don't really talk about them. Which is almost more insulting because it feels like the authors were trying to be super serious by talking about human issues but couldn't be bothered to do more than just shove them in. And there are a couple of good examples. For example, one of Nicole's children, Benjamin, has a form of mental retardation. This is a very sensitive topic and it can be hard to talk about but people who have various forms of mental disabilities deserve to be treated with respect. But Benjamin's disability is played more for drama than anything else and we never take time to talk about it.

If it wasn't enough for them to try to tackle mental disabilities, they also decide to tackle AIDS. Like, no, I'm not even kidding, they bring in Space AIDS. It's a virus that is transmitted through blood or semen, attacks the immune system, and is ultimately fatal. And humans being humans, there's an immediate panic among the population and an attempt to quarantine the people afflicted by Space AIDS and make them social outcasts. Now, the book kind of sort of talks about how this ostracization is bad and how hard it can be for people suffering from diseases such as AIDS, but it's very truncated because the story jumps forward so much and we end up seeing things happening after the fact rather than watching them develop over time.

On top of this we have a prominent rape case, an attempt at lynching, racism, and actual xenophobia as humans discover aliens in an adjoining habitat and then launch a war to kill off the aliens and take their resources. The result is there are four or five subjects that could be talked about for an entire book, but instead we sort of get to see them and the ultimate impression is, ''Humans. They're downright terrible, aren't they?''

I didn't want to throw the book against the wall at any point, but I definitely think this falls into the wallbanger category considering how many times I put it down and sighed to myself or said, ''That's seriously not okay.'' I think this was a very ambitious attempt by the authors to talk about a lot of serious subjects, but I think they either weren't prepared or just should have spent all their time talking about one or two subjects instead of kind of sort of mentioning a bunch of subjects not very well. We'll just have to see what happens in Rama Revealed, although I don't have a good feeling.

- Kalpar

Gideon Smith and the Mask of the Ripper, by David Barnett

This week I'm reviewing the third full-length novel in the Gideon Smith series, Gideon Smith and the Mask of the Ripper. And I'm going to begin by saying I did not like this book and at one point I became so frustrated and horrified with it that I threw it against the wall. As my readers might remember, I have done this before with another book, albeit for slightly different reasons. However in both cases I felt extremely justified and I'm sure there are other books I've talked about on this blog that have deserved the same treatment.

I'll begin by getting the least-broken bits out of the way. The plot of this novel, opposed to being the globe-trotting adventures we've followed Gideon on before, is confined to the city of London, which proves to be equally capable of giving our intrepid young hero plenty of work to do. The rampage of Jack the Ripper has been going unchecked for over two years and the people of London want something to be done. Gideon and his companions Maria and Aloysius Bent plan to provide aid to the Metropolitan Police to bring this fiend to justice. However, things go awry when Gideon's memory gets erased and disappears into London's underbelly. Meanwhile their good friend, airship pilot Rowena Fanshawe is accused of murder and is in very real danger of being executed. It's up to Bent and Maria to find Gideon and save the day before time runs out.

Overall the main points of the plot are okay. You really have two or three separate plots that sort of intersect at various points but really could be their own story given adequate space and development. Regardless, it makes a very interesting story and you get a strong sense of adventure. I will say for me personally the plot device of Gideon losing his memory feels somewhat hackneyed because it feels like an excuse to get Gideon out of the way so Bent and Maria actually have something to do instead of follow Gideon around. It does lead to some depth of Gideon's character, but I still felt like it could have done better. There's also the creation of an entirely unnecessary love triangle just to mess with Gideon and Maria's relationship, but that's neither here nor there.

The biggest problem I had with this book was its treatment of women. This is something I've kind of noticed in other books and in my review of Gideon Smith and the Brass Dragon I lamented the fact Maria spent most of her time as little more than a sexy lamp, as well as really focusing on the fact Annie Crook had been a prostitute. Which felt like a shame because I could see Barnett write well-developed female characters in the same novel. Unfortunately this book takes the bad parts and makes them worse for no good reason.

At the very beginning we discover that the prostitutes of Whitechapel, frustrated by the police's inability to do anything about Jack the Ripper, declare a strike until the police manage to apprehend the killer. And in a way this makes sense. The prostitutes are seen as expendable and as long as Jack the Ripper continues to only kill undesirables, the police don't have a terribly pressing great desire to put in an effort. So really they're acting in their own best interests. However, the police are immediately concerned by this strike because they believe it's only a matter of time before Whitechapel and the entire East End of London will break into riots because the lower classes can't release their energy with sex so they'll resort to violence.

Let's take a minute to talk about how messed up that is. First of all, it plays into this assumption that men are basically little more than giant Ids and if we can't get our jollies in one way, we'll resort to another. Because apparently we men are all psychotic apes with absolutely no self-control whatsoever and will do anything if you dangle sex in front of us. This is a rather harmful stereotype that only perpetuates this "Boys will be boys" attitude which condones a certain amount of violence, physical, emotional, and sexual from men when it shouldn't be tolerated at all. However, there's also the very unfortunate implication that the ensuing violence caused by these beast-men is the prostitutes' fault because they're on strike. Which is a classic case of victim blaming: This violence that has happened against you and your friends is your fault because you wouldn't have sex with the men who committed it, thus leading them to violence. That's a pretty messed up message and while Barnett may not have meant it that way, that's certainly how it came across to me. And this is within the first sixty pages of the book as well.

However, there's something far, far worse than blaming women for being the cause of violence because they're not serving as a sexual release valve. Poor, poor Rowena Fanshawe falls victim to a trope I detest with an absolute passion: strong women are only strong because they were the victims of sexual violence in the past. (Sorry, I don't know if there's a concise way of saying that other than Strong Independent Woman TM, but let me explain.)

There is an unfortunate trend in fiction, which became very prominent in the 1990's and has never really gone away, where you have a female character who is well developed as a character. However, usually this follows a pattern of a woman who's tough, doesn't follow society's conventions, and is determined to do things her own way. This may manifest in a variety of ways, but in more action-oriented series it tends to result in her being a competent fighter, or in other series being very, very competent at what she does. Unfortunately, the motivation behind her being the best at what she does is almost inevitably because she was the victim of some form of sexual violence in her past.

This is a problematic trope for a number of reasons. First of all it greatly cheapens the traumatic experience of sexual violence that far too many women suffer today and can cause long-lasting mental and emotional problems that can severely affect them for the rest of their lives. Sexual violence is a serious issue and needs to be talked about in a responsible manner. But having "strong female characters" be the victims of sexual violence isn't the appropriate way to handle this.

Secondly, it creates this stereotype that the only motivation a woman can have to become the best at whatever she does is because she was the victim of sexual violence in her past. And that's incredibly limiting for female characters, forcing all of them into the same box when they really don't need a tragic past of sexual violence to provide them motivation. Male characters have, for centuries, had a variety of different motivations to do the things that they do, and sometimes they don't have motivation beyond just wanting to be the very best at what they do. And in some cases, making your female character a victim of sexual violence is completely unnecessary. As I talked about in my review of On Basilisk Station, Honor already had plenty of reasons to hate Pavel Young: he was a vain, spoiled aristocrat who was getting shunted onto the fast track for promotion because of his family connections rather than any actual ability. Adding sexual violence to that mix just felt unnecessary and incredibly unfortunate.

So to return to Mask of the Ripper, in this case it is poor Rowena who falls prey to this trope which I hate with a passion. As you may remember in my previous reviews I actually liked Rowena as a character. She's a fairly standard steampunk character, the woman who doesn't abide by society's standards and is involved in something not seen as traditionally ''feminine'' in this case, being an airship pilot. In addition Rowena doesn't mind bedding a hot guy when she gets the chance because airship pilots have a very good chance of dying young so she takes her pleasures when she can. All of this was well and fine and I thought she was a very well-written character. Unfortunately in this novel we learn that Rowena's motivation for becoming the woman we all know and love is because she was the victim of sexual abuse in her past. And this is completely unnecessary because of what else we learn about her in this book.

We learn that Rowena is actually the daughter of a famous airship pilot who actually went missing in the Indian Ocean some twenty years ago. Her mother ended up marrying a rather lackluster businessman who relies on Rowena's mother's fortune to keep his enterprises solvent rather than his actual ability. Rowena does not care for this at all and eventually runs away from home to become an airship pilot. Barnett could have done all of this without the sexual abuse and that would have been a perfectly fine backstory for her, wishing to rebel against her failure of a stepfather and take up her father's profession. In fact, if Rowena was a male character, she probably would have had the same backstory, but without the sexual abuse. But because she's a woman we have this added extra, and extremely unfortunate element.

So overall, this book is really bad. There are some interesting bits but due to how it treats women I ended up throwing the book at the wall. I'm willing to give Barnett the benefit of the doubt and say maybe he didn't intend for it to come across that way, but it only illustrates how insidious these tropes have become and why we need to point them out, challenge them, and try to correct them wherever we go. I would not recommend people read this book and I think I can safely say I'll be stopping this series after this book.

- Kalpar

Stranger in A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein

I want to preface this review by going a little bit into my experience with Heinlein who I don't think I've really talked about on this blog terribly much. Way back in the 1960's and 1970's Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke, became the famous ''Big Three'' of science-fiction literature. Which isn't to say they were the only authors writing at this time. Philip K. Dick, Larry Niven, and Ray Bradbury were all writing stuff at the same time, the Big Three just happened to be the most famous. My mom, happening to be a sci-fi fan during this era, accumulated a small library of cheap science-fiction paperbacks including what's been described as an ''unhealthy'' amount of Heinlein books. Being a budding science-fiction fan myself, she handed me a copy of Tunnel in the Sky when I was in eighth grade and I spent a good part of my high school years reading a variety of Heinlein's works.

Anyone who's read several of Heinlein's books can tell you Heinlein gets....odd. His early works tend to be thrilling space adventures when a young man (and it's almost always a man) uses grit, ingenuity, and some extensive mathematics and engineering skills to conquer space problems for fun and profit. His later works get...weird. Creepy, lecherous old man weird. Let me put it like this: Asimov was kind of like your awesome grandpa who let you help him build robots in his garage and Clarke was like your cool uncle who let you help him build rockets and took you scuba diving. (Clarke really liked scuba diving.) Heinlein was your creepy uncle who lived on a farm somewhere out in the backwoods to get away from the ''gubment'', lived with a bunch of ''special lady friends'', obsessively carried an AR-15, and walked around stark naked when the weather would allow it. Individually these would be eccentricities, but together they make up a whole big barrel of crazy and it really started showing in his later books. The odd thing is I'm not sure Stranger in a Strange Land, published in 1960, was after he went into his crazy old man phase but it's definitely got a lot of the hallmarks.

I will admit that I hadn't read (or in this case listened) to it, but I was always a little curious about Stranger in a Strange Land. Whenever I'd look at another of my mom's books they always seemed to have the phrase: ''by Robert Heinlein, author of Stranger in a Strange Land'', as if that was the only book of his worth noting. Starship Troopers occasionally got mention, but Stranger took unusual precedence. So, much like my decision to take a class on Nietzsche, I decided to look into it to see just what all the fuss was about. Unlike Nietzsche I have come to greatly regret my decision.

Our plot begins with a human child, Valentine Michael Smith, being born during the first manned expedition to Mars and very quickly becoming an orphan. Much to the surprise of the second expedition that comes some twenty years later, V.M. Smith has been taken in by the native Martians and raised as one of their own. So although Smith is biologically a human, he thinks like a Martian in a manner utter alien to all human understanding and devoid of the thousands of bits of emotional cues, social proprieties, and other bits of information that human beings accumulate through their lives and don't realize they know. Which makes human beings, and Earth itself, confusing and downright baffling for Smith. On top of this he happens to be heir to a fortune beyond comprehension, doubly so for Smith since Martians don't have stocks, corporations, or even money, and by a technical bit of human law the de jure sovereign of Mars. On its own these would be interesting plots that could be used for an entire book exploring all of the complexities of just one of these problems. Unfortunately two of the three are resolved by the halfway point of the book and Smith spends the rest of the book being Space Jesus. I wish I was kidding about that but no, he becomes Space Jesus. I don't even feel bad about spoiling the book in this review because while it may have been groundbreaking and scandalous in 1960, it's little more than bigoted pseudo-philosophical trash half a century later.

This book is filled, and I mean absolutely filled, with tedious and long-winded arguments about differing philosophies and in this case religion as well, some of which I've heard before in other places. Of course, Heinlein is almost famous for his author tracts which range from the vaguely fascist culture of violence and force espoused in Starship Troopers to the communist eugenic utopia depicted in Beyond this Horizon. But in Stranger in a Strange Land, especially the second half of the book, it feels like the book's just absolutely filled with author tracts. It wouldn't be so bad if they weren't just littered all over the book and filled with the same pop-philosophy garbage that makes sweeping generalizations about cultures and civilizations that can either be refuted with a bit of research or are so vague and general that they're difficult to refute because of their incompleteness. Heinlein even goes so far as to try and defend cannibalism, claiming every culture has practiced it at some point and claiming transubstantiation of bread and wine is the exact same thing as roasting someone and eating them. It's so broad an argument that it'd take forever to refute it in detail and utterly ridiculous in its conclusion.

The religion ones especially just go over the same tired points that have been iterated a thousand times elsewhere, and much better than they were here. There's the pointing out that with the plethora of religions in the world, many claiming to be the One True Religion, it certainly raises the possibility that none of them are right. Or maybe all of them. But it's done in such a high-handed and imperious manner that I found myself, a more or less atheist, wishing they'd just shut up about it already. And of course there's the pointing out that while the Bible contains some teachings of peace, it contains some fairly awful teachings as well. In this case the story of Lot, and his decision to offer his daughters up for a gang-rape instead of offering up his mysterious guests, is given as an example.

But the decision to criticize Lot for offering his daughters up for a gang-rape comes across as absolutely hypocritical considering the sheer amount of sexism that seems to pervade this book. Part of it is definitely a product of its times. The rampant casual sexism of the 1960's was one of many things that touched off Second Wave Feminism, after all, and rightly so. But I feel like this goes a step beyond  that. Heinlein goes to considerable lengths to argue that a woman's natural state is to be an object to be viewed with lust by men, and women should feel honored by the attention and enjoy such attention. This is utterly offensive to both sexes in a number of ways and I'll try to enumerate here but I'm sure this argument will be incomplete. First of all, people are not objects. This should go without saying but unfortunately even today there are people who appear to be somewhat confused on the subject. Every woman is a living, breathing, human being with her own wants, desires, fears, ambitions, and the thousand million things that make her a fully developed human being. To this day we are still fighting against this...assumption that women exist on this earth merely to be eye candy for men. This assumes that a woman's worth is entirely wrapped up in her physical appearance and everything that makes her more than just her tits and ass is utterly irrelevant.

If this was true for both sexes, and men exist only to be attractive eye-candy for women to lust at it wouldn't be slightly better. Equally demeaning and equally awful, but better by a tiny fraction. But oh no, instead Heinlein argues that women don't care about a man's physical appearance. (Something which I know is patently false from first-hand experience.) Women care about a man's inner being, his soul if you want to call it that. So go ahead, don't put any effort into your appearance. Be a giant blob for all we care. It's your soul that women really care about. The ridiculous double standard isn't even the worst part, it's just this assumption women have no value beyond being sex objects. I will admit that there are people who are exhibitionists and do get some measure of pleasure from being objects of desire, especially strangers, but I feel that's on a different level. First, it's their choice to put themselves on display in situations of their choosing, rather than constantly being on display all the time. Or all the time if they choose to be. The point is, they make a conscious decision. This leads to my second point that exhibitionists, at least I hope most of them, understand that this is not the normal state of affairs. To put it in BDSM terms, you don't force your kink on other people, you only share it with their consent. What Heinlein argues in this book is a woman's value is directly proportional to her sex appeal.

The absolute cherry on top of this ice cream sundae of rampant sexism was the statement, and I'm more or less quoting here: ''Nine times out of ten when a girl gets raped she's asking for it.'' Casually stated by a female character as if it were a matter of fact. At that point I seriously considered throwing my Kindle across the room, consequences of broken electronics be damned, because if there is one thing I cannot abide it is victim blaming. (Well, okay, Nazis certainly top my list of things I cannot abide, but victim blaming takes a very close second.) If I had a physical copy of this book I probably would have thrown it against the wall repeatedly and then began tearing it apart. As a bibliophile I do not like to see books defaced or damaged, but in one line this book earned all the wrath I could possibly bring to bear on it. Amazingly I had the presence of mind to keep pushing through and managed to finish it with much exasperation and eye rolling, but no further incident.

Beyond the sexism the book indulges in a variety of other forms of casual bigotry which, again, half a century ago may have been acceptable but are absolutely abhorrent by today's standards. The example of a Muslim character, Dr. Mahmoud, being nicknamed ''Stinky'' and eventually called that by everyone, including his wife strikes me as casual racism. I can't see why he'd be nicknamed that except out of some assumption that Arabs can't be bothered to bathe on a regular basis and I can't see someone, especially a highly educated linguist able to learn Martian, tolerating being called such a demeaning nickname. (Perhaps I am overreacting, but it certainly bothered me.) Furthermore there's a casual homophobic remark which establishes a firm heteronormativity within the book, dismissing homosexuals of both genders as poor deluded souls or aberrations that cannot truly understand happiness. Again, this was perfectly acceptable by the standards of fifty years ago, maybe even encouraged, but it's absolutely unacceptable by today's standards and, hopefully, the future's as well.

Finally, on at least a stylistic note, I cannot count how many times I noticed a character being a response with ''Eh?'' or ''Huh?''' or ''Hm?'' before answering the question they've just been asked. It got absolutely infuriating after a while, as if every character in the book was going deaf and needed things to be repeated. Yes, it probably makes for more realistic dialog and I know that I've done that myself in the past, but the sheer number of times it was repeated began to grate on my nerves after a while.

I do not know if Stranger in a Strange Land enjoys the prominent place it used to in the pantheon of science-fiction literature. At least among my group of friends Starship Troopers, even with its fascist leanings, is the more famous of Heinlein's books. If Stranger is still held in some vague sense of esteem, I will say that it definitely should not be in any respect. It's pop-philosophy attempts at pseudo-intellectualism fall far short of rigorous study and make typical sweeping generalizations Furthermore they feel like a never-ending parade of intellectual masturbation where we make absolutely no progress whatsoever and discover nothing that hasn't been talked about more competently somewhere else. In addition, the rampant and casual sexism, a step beyond what you might typically find in a Heinlein book, is so extreme as to be positively abhorrent and push the book into utterly intolerable ranges. To quote an old bibliophile saying, ''This is not a book to be set aside lightly; it is to be thrown with great force.''

- Kalpar