Skin Folk, by Nalo Hopkinson

Today I'm looking at a collection of short stories written by Nalo Hopkinson. This is another one of those books that I picked up from one of the perpetual sales that Goodreads manages to throw my way, and I'm very, very glad that I did. If you haven't heard of Hopkinson yet, I highly recommend checking her writing out. This book in particular reminded my a lot of Neil Gaiman's writing, especially his short story anthologies like Trigger Warning or Smoke and Mirrors. I'm really glad that I picked up this book and I think everyone else should check it out too.

One of the things I really liked about this book was how Hopkinson incorporated her own cultural heritage into her stories. Hopkinson was born in Jamaica with her parents having roots in Trinidad and Guyana, and later emigrated to Canada. Hopkinson incorporates both Caribbean and Canadian elements into a lot of her stories which gives it a very unique flavor. I always really appreciate it when authors incorporate their own unique locations or cultural heritages in their works rather than seeing yet another story set in New York.

Another thing that I really liked about this book was how Hopkinson took a lot of old fairy tales and retold them in a different way. This is definitely a trick that Gaiman has pulled a number of times with great success. Hopkinson, by her own admission, includes a lot of adult themes (aka sex and violence) in her stories, something that I've noticed Gaiman does a lot in his stories as well. The results are stories that make you sit and really think about the results and can really punch you in the gut. It's really good writing that shows Hopkinson really has talent.

Otherwise, this is an anthology of short stories so there's not a whole lot I can say beyond ''these stories are good, go check them out''. It turns out that I managed to pick up another of Hopkinson's books with another Goodreads deal so I'm looking forward to seeing how a full-length book compares to her short stories. This is definitely worth taking the time to read.

- Kalpar

Maus: A Survivor's Tale, by Art Spiegelman

Today I'm looking at a pair of graphic novels created by Art Spiegelman collectively known as Maus. Maus follows the life of Art's father, Vladek Spiegelman, through the 1930's and then through World War II. Vladek and his wife, Anja, were Polish Jews who lived in the city of Sosnowiec. Vladek worked as a salesman and eventually invested in a factory while Anja's family owned multiple textile mills in the city. Life for them in the thirties was fairly good but, as can be expected, when war broke out in 1939 things took considerable turns for the worst. The story is divided into two volumes, volume one My Father Bleeds History, talks about Vladek's life from the 1930's until early 1944 when he was sent to Auschwitz. The second volume,  And Here My Troubles Began, tells Vladek's story of survival in Auschwitz, Dachau, and the last few tense months of World War II before being rescued by American G.I.'s.

Framing Vladek's story of survival is Art's own struggles to interview his father, create this book, and understand his relationship with his father. Based on the evidence, Vladek was a very difficult man to live with, ranging from obsessively hoarding money and valuables, to keeping items that most other people would throw away in case they might come in useful, to strained emotional relationships with his wife and his son. Vladek comes across as a flawed and incredibly human person, and while it's clear that life hiding from the Nazis and living in the concentration camps affected him severely, it may have only exacerbated underlying aspects of Vladek's personality. It makes Vladek appear all the more three-dimensional as a character and as a person. Vladek isn't all good, but he isn't all bad either. Like most people he's a mix, but he took action and managed to survive the worst genocide in human history. It makes him very compelling and realistic.

The subject matter is, of course, hard to talk about. This is the worst abuse of human rights, the worst genocide, the worst of man's inhumanity to man, the worst of uncountable crimes in all of human history. There's a reason it's referred to as only The Holocaust. Any other description becomes inadequate in consideration of the cruelty involved. So many people might justly ask, is talking about the Holocaust in cartoon format, where all the characters are depicted as anthropomorphic animals, really the proper way to talk about this? And incredibly, yes, Spiegelman manages to create a depiction that is not only sensitive but emotionally engaging.

The decision to depict Jews as mice is an incredibly brilliant one on multiple levels. First, there is the history of Jews being described or depicted as vermin in Nazi propaganda, pests that needed to be wiped out for the health of the Reich. Spiegelman effectively reclaims that imagery and turns it on its head. Mice, after all, are survivors. Mice hide, mice scavenge, and despite being hunted ruthlessly, mice are still around. For the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust who hid, who scavenged, and who managed to survive, a determined mouse is an apt symbol.

I have not read many Holocaust survivor stories. I'm familiar with the narrative in Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaining, another Auschwitz survivor, so there are many similarities in there, but any story by a Holocaust survivor is going to be very emotionally heavy. Maus is no exception, because it not only tells the story of the Holocaust, but also explores the life of the survivor afterwards and shows how years of life spent hiding and suffering can have lasting effects on individuals. We see Vladek surviving not just in the past, but in the future, and it shows we can never really leave the past behind.

I think I would definitely recommend this story to people. It's a very hard read just because of the emotions involved and I find myself thinking maybe I shouldn't have plowed through the books in a couple of days. But it's a very emotional and very real story and well worth taking the time to check out.

- Kalpar

Head On, by John Scalzi

Today I'm looking at a book recommended to me by Angela of the Doubleclicks, Head On, by John Scalzi. This book is a sort of sequel to another of Scalzi's novel, Lock In, however this book is a stand-alone novel so you, much like myself, can read Head On without having read Lock In. The book is set sometime in the near future after a disease known as Haden's has affected approximately 1% of the world population. People affected with Haden's Disease are literally locked inside their own bodies, unable to move and dependent on intensive care for the rest of their life. The only way people with Haden's can interact with the world are through the online community called the Agora or through personal robots transports colloquially known as threeps.

Head On begins with the death of a player in a Hilketa match. Hilketa is a new sport that has developed using the technological improvements created in the wake of the Haden's epidemic. Hilketa is a team sport utilizing threeps who engage in gladiatorial combat, a level of violence that other sports can only dream of. And despite the violence between the threeps, the Haden athletes remain safe in their creches, watched over by their caretakers. At least, until Doug Chapman dies very publicly during a pre-season game. The suspicious suicide of a league commissioner gives FBI agents Leslie Vann and Chris Shane a murder investigation with major implications.

Like most Scalzi novels this book is a really quick read because Scalzi keeps the action running nonstop and his writing is incredibly tight. I think this is Scalzi's greatest strength because it makes his books really easy to read. This is especially true for a murder mystery because it makes time all that much more of the essence. As the bodycount continues to rise, Shane and Vann are in a race against a deeper conspiracy and there's a very good chance that they're the next targets.

I also liked the level of realism that comes with Scalzi's depiction of the future. Like a lot of good sci-fi writers he takes things that already exist and moves the into the realm of possibility. Although I'm not quite up on where robotics are currently (because bipedal motion is actually hard to replicate), usage of drones is becoming far more common. I think it would have been a little more realistic for Scalzi to include a scene where someone loses contact with their threep due to bad wifi, but having it happen a realistic amount of times would get annoying pretty quickly so I can forgive Scalzi just sidestepping that problem.

Another plotline that I thought was interesting was the government's repeal of subsidies and tax credits for Hadens which will make many of them unable to afford a personal threep. This certainly has some real-world parallels with increasing health costs and the issues many people with disabilities face. Scalzi could almost create an entire book talking about this subject alone, although I think that could be either part of Lock In, or perhaps in another novel Scalzi does in this universe. But I think to go too much into it would have taken away from the murder investigation.

Overall, I think this book is a really good choice to read. As usual, Scalzi's writing is tight and accessible, fun to read, and just a good sci-fi novel. I should probably read more of Scalzi in the future because I enjoy his writing so much. But this is definitely a sci-fi murder mystery worth reading.

- Kalpar

White Trash: The 400 Year Untold History of Class in America, by Nancy Isenberg

Today I'm looking at the book White Trash, a book that talks about the history of class in the United States, specifically poor whites living in the American south from the early colonial era into the modern day. Throughout the centuries this underclass has has been called a number of things: waste people, clay eaters, crackers, white trash, hillbillies, and rednecks. This underclass has been consistently stereotyped as poor, lazy, sexually licentious, uneducated, and morally suspect. Isenberg illustrates that these stereotypes about poor whites, which have been extended to poor blacks as well, have been persistent through the centuries and Isenberg draws on multiple sources to make her point. Obviously covering four centuries makes this book more a broad overview than a detailed investigation but I think Isenberg does a very good job of making her points through the book.

When the United States was first colonized by England the major source of colonists, especially in regions such as Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, were what were considered ''waste peoples''. England had a not insignificant population of unemployed people who, due to the harsh poor and anti-vagrancy laws of the time period, were often in and out of prisons or forced to wander from location to location. In times of war this expendable underclass were pressed into service to fight in Britain's military and in time of peace they were expected to either find work or die through starvation or on the gallows. For colonies thousands of miles across the Atlantic and with high death tolls, an expendable population made ideal candidates to be dumped in the colonies. If they died, then they wouldn't be a burden on the home country. If they managed to learn how to work and thrive, perhaps they could become of economic benefit to the mother country. This stereotype of the poor as inherently lazy and needing to be forced to work is one of the most consistent and has perpetuated to the modern era.

As the South developed into a slave economy, the underclass of poor whites developed an important racial component, which has remained an important aspect of American class and racial relations into the modern era. African-Americans and other racial minorities have been the subject of systemic racial discrimination perpetuated by white elites. The real genius of this system is that so long as the poor whites have blacks to look down upon, they willingly perpetuate the system. Poor whites are often no better off than the poor blacks, but as long as there is the feeling of superiority to someone else, they are willing to participate in the system. This is best illustrated in the rebellion of 1861 in which poor whites were overwhelmingly conscripted into insurgent forces while the rich planter class, who began the rebellion, were exempted from military service including the exemption of all individuals owning more than twenty slaves. Poor whites were the muscle that perpetuated the slavery system.

The latest trend relating to poor whites is the almost voyeuristic pleasure that American culture has taken in looking at the lives of poor, mostly Southern, whites. Isenberg specifically mentions figures like Sarah Palin and Honey Boo Boo, although the growth of popularity in the blue collar comedy group including Jeff Foxworthy and Larry the Cable Guy is definitely in the same vein. The growth of the Tea Party and its ideology, although not mentioned by Isenberg, definitely feels like a continuation of the same ideas. Poor whites are manipulated by white elites into attacking (usually) racial others and acting against their own interests for the benefit of white elites. Based on Isenberg's evidence it appears that the issues we are dealing with today is only a continuation of a centuries-long tradition.

Overall I thought this book was pretty interesting if brief and fairly shallow in its investigation of race and class relations in the United States. However Isenberg makes a consistent argument that poor whites have consistently been seen as an expendable, degenerate breed for four hundred years, useful to white elites when fighting or helping oppress other groups, but largely exploited or ignored by elites when no longer useful. I think this is a book well worth reading to gain insight into both class and race relations in the United States that has shaped political debates to this day.

- Kalpar

The Phoenix Unchained, by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory

Today I'm looking at the first book in a series co-written by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory. Now, I've sort of talked about Mercedes Lackey before on here, and her novel Gwenhwyfar is by and far is one of my favorite books of all time and hands down the best reinterpretation of Arthurian legend I've ever encountered. I've also encountered Lackey in the Bolo series and a few of her other books so I was willing to give this one a try to see if it was any good. I don't think I've read anything by James Mallory before so this was a good opportunity to look at more stuff.

As much as I hate to say it, this book is pretty paint-by-the-numbers fantasy fare. The book begins with two adolescent boys who are on the cusp of manhood. Harrier is the youngest son of the harbor master in the great port city of Armethalieh and destined to take over the duties of harbor master himself one day. Tiercel meanwhile is the eldest son of a minor noble family, heading for the university and a probably uneventful career in Aremthalieh's civil service. However a book that Harrier gets for his naming day leads to Tiercel attempting ancient High Magic, a practice that has been extinct for a thousand years since the Flowering that ended the war with the Endarkened Ones. It's soon revealed that Tiercel has the ability to use the High Magic and must leave his home behind to find someone to teach him how to use his abilities before they end up killing him.

Basically this book feels a lot like most epic fantasy quests which have been churned out ever since Lord of the Rings first hit shelves. Now, this isn't to say that epic fantasy quests are bad, there's a lot to be said for them and a lot that can be done with them. But it is kind of frustrating when they all seem to come out the same in the end. Obviously this book isn't exactly the same as Lord of the Rings but it fits pretty heavily into the fantasy quest mold. There's an epic battle brewing between good and evil, the latest in a conflict that's been going for thousands of years, and we have some young heroes who have to leave home and go fight evil, gaining new powers and abilities on the way. They expect the journey will be fairly short and uneventful, but they soon end up on a larger quest that will take them further away from home than they ever expected. There's even a point where they get rescued by a ranger-type character, actually a member of the Forest Watch, who's a centaur. Now, I did like Samara and I thought the idea of including centaurs was kind of neat because you don't usually see those in fantasy.

Overall I think this book was okay, but as I said I felt it fell a little too easily into the standard epic fantasy genre. It's okay and I can't point to anything specific that's wrong with the book, but there's nothing about the book that makes it stand out in any particular way. The arrival of a unicorn at the end of this book made the future potential kind of interesting but the first book leaves a lot to be desired.

- Kalpar

Bismarck, by Alan Palmer

Today I'm looking at a biography of Otto von Bismarck, known to students of European and German history as the Iron Chancellor of Prussia who united the disparate states into the German Empire in the nineteenth century. Bismarck has always been a controversial figure, his focus on militarism and authoritarian rule is seen as a foreshadowing of the atrocities of the Nazi regime half a century later. However, Bismarck also was a firm supporter of modernizing Prussia and Germany and later in his administration he would pass comprehensive social security plans for German workers, hoping it would cut any desire for socialist revolution in Germany. Bismarck is ultimately a figure of contradictions. A reactionary autocrat of the first order who promoted social welfare reform. A man often depicted in military uniform, but only served as a soldier for a year and became a Landwehr reserve lieutenant before pursuing a civil career in the diplomatic corps. A member of the Junker aristocracy and yet always seemingly apart from them. For a man who redrew the map of Europe Bismarck remains a puzzle to historians.

The career of Bismarck almost didn't begin. Evidence from his early days suggest that Bismarck played the role of ''wildman Junker'' to the hilt, followed by a pack of hunting dogs and getting in numerous duels during his time at university. In fact, Bismarck didn't do so well at university, despite his later genius at handling both international relations and managing Wilhelm I of Prussia and later Germany. With the death of his father, Bismarck spent nine years working as a gentleman farmer, trying to manage his estates and actually turning a profit. It's probable that if there was any school where Bismarck learned how to negotiate, how to manage people, and the importance of having multiple plans, it was probably the Frankfurt Diet of the German Confederation. Although his time in the diet was much ridiculed by his opponents, it probably still served an important purpose in his education.

Still, even with his experience in the diet it is surprising that Bismarck became chancellor at all. After making numerous enemies at home with his brash actions, Bismarck was sent as ambassador to Russia, a task he loathed because of the social interactions involved. For someone widely regarded as one of Europe's greatest diplomats, Bismarck had a hatred for social galas or even spending time in the capital. Bismarck was far happier to retire to his country estates in Altmark or Pomerania than among the glittering elite of nineteenth century Europe. In truth, Bismarck was only selected for chancellor and minister-president of Prussia because of an ongoing constitutional crisis.

A handful of reforms had been enacted in Prussia in the nineteenth century, including the creation of a parliamentary body, the Landtag. William I had wanted an increase in expenditure for the vaunted Prussian military which required approval from the Landtag, however a majority of the Landtag wanted a reduction in the compulsory military service from three years to two, something that William I was unwilling to negotiate on. Bismarck, never one to be worried by upsetting parliamentary niceties when it was to his advantage to do so, simply used the previous year's budget and governed without the Landtag under the auspices of a crisis, a constitutional position he had explored some years earlier.  The taxes got collected, the troops got equipped, and Bismarck had freedom to rule without parliamentary interference.

The image of Bismarck that emerges from his time as chancellor is a man of extreme moral flexibility. Bismarck will make friends with you one day and then stab you in the back the next if it was beneficial to his plans. Bismarck does not seem to be guided by any political ideology or philosophy and appears to have very little patience for people who do. His goal, as Palmer describes it, seems to be power for himself, and uniting Germany under Prussia was merely a means to expand that power for himself, as exhibited by Bismarck's own frustrations with rampant nationalist ideologues.

Another of Bismarck's strengths was his ability to have an extra plan, or two, or three for him to fall back on if his first plan didn't go through. As Extra History put it in their biographic series of Bismarck, the first rule of being Bismarck was ''Always have a plan''. This fit perfectly with his moral flexibility, and throughout his career Bismarck worked to never be in a position where he was forced to commit definitively to anything he didn't want, something that later leaders of the German Empire did not have the skill or ability to do. Which underlines the biggest weakness of Bismarck's system: it doesn't work without Bismarck.

Bismarck was an autocrat through and through, down to his inability (or perhaps unwillingness) to imagine a system that existed without him. He did try to groom his eldest son Herbert for the position of Chancellor, but Herbert proved unequal to the task and only served in a variety of posts in the diplomatic corps. Bismarck's position as Chancellor of the German Empire was added to the constitution of the empire as an afterthought, rather than as a key part. He existed independent of and unaccountable to the Reichstag, serving only at the pleasure of the emperor and so long as that was the manageable, aged William I, Bismarck had free reign to do as he pleased.

As long as Bismarck remained at the center of the system, the elaborate network of alliances, treaties, and agreements, the ad hoc nature of the machinery of government in Germany, everything worked in spite of its inherent weaknesses. But once the autocrat is gone, the entire machinery falls apart. This is even illustrated during Bismarck's administration by his frequent retreats to his estates, when all major decision making is either put on hold, or people must make the pilgrimage to Bismarck to get decisions. Crises that didn't get his immediate attention soon spun out of control until Bismarck was once again at the helm.

In this way, Bismarck is a quintessentially European figure displaced in time. A moral opportunist and autocrat of the first order in earlier epochs could have become king or established a dynasty. In the industrializing nineteenth century, Bismarck was faced with things he could not control or perhaps understand. A figure of contradictions, Bismarck will remain a person of great interest to historians for years to come.

- Kalpar

The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God's Holy Warriors, by Dan Jones

Today I'm looking at another book from Dan Jones about the Knights Templar, one of the crusading orders of knights established in the years after the first Crusade. Although the Templars were not the only international crusading order they are far more well known than the Knights Hospitaller or the Teutonic Knights, and far beyond the smaller orders such as the Livonian Sword Brethren or the Order of Santiago. Jones speculates a little on the enduring popularity of the Templars as an order, but the majority of the book focuses on the history of the Knights Templar from their founding in 1119 to their spectacular downfall starting in 1307 and concluded by 1312.

In hindsight the most surprising thing about the First Crusade is that it succeeded at all considering how poorly organized the entire venture, and most later crusades were. The main advantage of the crusaders was the fact that Jerusalem and much of the Levant existed at the time in a border region between the Fatimid, Shia caliph's capital in Cairo and the Sunni Abbasid caliph in Baghdad. The division between Egypt and Mesopotamia allowed the crusader kingdoms to survive despite their weaknesses and it was largely when both flanks acted in concert that the crusader kingdoms were in most danger.

An inherent problem of the crusader kingdoms was a lack of resources, specifically money and manpower, the two most necessary resources for prosecuting a war. The original mission of the Knights Templar was to provide protection for Christian pilgrims visiting sites such as the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. This original mission quickly grew to the Knights Templar, as well as the Knights Hospitaller, being an elite military force. However the Templars and Hospitallers had significant advantages over the secular rulers of the crusader kingdoms. In their founding charter the papacy granted numerous rights to the holy order which gave them significant benefits. The Templars were made responsible only to the pope, immune from almost all taxation, and granted lucrative rights regarding religious ceremonies and rituals. Coupled with this were the numerous donations of land and resources made by pious Christians in Europe, the Templars became incredibly rich as an organization.

Because the Templars had access to such tremendous resources, they were able to arm and equip a dedicated fighting force of knights and sergeants. Soon the Templars were assigned the garrison of numerous strategic castles in the Levant and Templar contingents made a significant portion of any crusade army. For much of the book Jones focuses on the military history of the Templars and their battles in Egypt and the Levant. There are brief mentions to the more business-aligned aspects of the Templars, such as their involvement in the trade hub of Acre and their fleet of galleys used for both military and commercial uses. I actually would have liked to see more about that because Jones briefly makes the argument that the Templars in many ways were a medieval version of a corporation and NGO rolled into one. I would have appreciated more time on the more economic aspects of the Templar order, but I can see where for the most part their income came from being a major landowner which isn't terribly interesting.

The ultimate irony is that while their wealth enabled the Templars to field major armies against Muslim powers, it also made them a target among Christians at home, especially Philip IV of France. This became especially prominent after the collapse of the crusader kingdoms and the Latins had to fall back to the isle of Cyprus. While the military orders and eastern Latins tried to raise support for renewed Crusading efforts, the European leaders were largely more concerned with local affairs and dynastic struggles. This lack of enthusiasm for continued crusades left the Templars and other military orders at loose ends. While the Teutonic Knights had their own campaigns in the Baltic, the Templars and Hospitallers were faced with the prospect of being merged into a single military order.

Ultimately it was Philip IV of France who ended the Templars, which was fueled by his need for money to perpetuate his military campaigns at home. Jones illustrates that Philip had attacked other targets including churchmen and French Jews to not only cement his power but increase his personal wealth. Jones shows that Philip was initially alone in his persecution of the Templars, and several fellow monarchs were confused at his persecution of the Templar order. Even Edward II only began his persecution of the Templars when it was beneficial for his own personal ends. Most rulers were fairly lax in the persecution and suppression of the Templar order in their own lands when ordered to do so at behest of the pope, so the most significant persecution appears to have occurred solely in France, famously ending with Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master of the Templar Order, and numerous other officials being burned as heretics. Jones argues that a significant part of the allure of the Templars is their dramatic end, compared to the Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights who still exist today albeit in a far smaller and limited form.

This does raise the question of why the Hospitallers, an equally wealthy and powerful organization, wasn't the target of suppression and most of the Templar resources were merged into the Hospitallers. What I've heard about the Teutonic Order is that they were able to play the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope off each other, ensuring their continued existence, but it leaves me wondering why the Hospitallers were able to survive. Maybe there's another source that will answer these questions but I think it's something Jones could have answered.

Overall I think this book is really interesting because of the history that it covers. Jones is a very dedicated medieval historian so you can really tell he's enjoying his subject matter and it really shows in the book There are some areas where I'd like to have seen more development and historical detail, but otherwise I think this book was pretty good.

- Kalpar

The Spider Network, by David Enrich

Today I'm looking at a book that deals with the history of the LIBOR fixing scandal that started in the early twenty-first century and resulted in a trial and conviction of Tom Haynes in 2015. Enrich makes a fairly strong argument that Haynes, the only banker convicted for the LIBOR scandal and sentenced to fourteen years in prison as an example, was used as a scapegoat by the financial industry. Considering that none of the other multiple bankers involved in what appears to have been a major conspiracy or gotten incredibly light sentences it seems pretty obvious that Haynes was used as a scapegoat. Enrich goes into great detail with the evidence available to show that the LIBOR fixing scandal was a wide-ranging and institutional problem rather than the actions of a few rogue actors.

To provide a brief explanation, LIBOR is an acronym for the London Inter-Bank Offer Rate. This rate is supposed to represent the actual cost to London banks to borrow money from other institutions, providing an average institutional interest rate. By reflecting the rate at which banks can borrow money it in turn affects at which rate banks are able to loan money to ordinary consumers like you and me. This means that minor changes in LIBOR can have huge economic impacts. Among these economic effects are the trade in derivatives based on LIBOR.

Now this is where it starts to get complicated. Broadly speaking a derivative is a financial security whose value is derived from some sort of asset. This includes simple products such as stocks and bonds, but includes more complex instruments such as futures contracts, credit default swaps, and interest rate swaps. Among these instruments are derivatives whose value can increase or decrease based on whether the LIBOR goes up or down. As Enrich explains it in the book, these derivatives can be roughly explained as bets on whether LIBOR would go up or down. And based on the volume of trades in derivatives traders and brokers could make huge profits by even minor changes as little as a tenth of a percentage point.

Where this starts to get shady is how LIBOR gets determined. LIBOR is reported by the individual banks and there has been very little oversight of how LIBOR is set by the banks. This meant that as long as banks stayed within a certain band of expected values, banks could game the LIBOR system and push the overall rate in their favor. Enrich provides ample evidence that multiple bankers, brokers, and other organizations saw the manipulation of LIBOR for economic gain as a perfectly normal and acceptable practice.

If there's one thing I've taken from this book, it's that there is an underlying toxic culture within Wall Street and other financial institutions. It seems that booze-fueled benders and trips to strip clubs are par for the course among the biggest and baddest traders, not to mention blatant kickbacks and other free perks. In this cutthroat culture all that matters is who makes the most money, no matter how they make the money. It suggests that the culture among financial traders is in need of a massive reform and massive regulation.

I think this book is really interesting in how it illustrates the toxic culture of the financial sector and why people who are asked to do nothing but make money and are given little or no oversight will do plenty of questionable or downright illegal things just to get ahead. It makes a pretty strong argument in favor of a reform not only of the regulation of the industry, but also a reform of the dog-eat-dog culture as well.

- Kalpar

Babel-17, by Sameul R. Delany

Today I'm looking at another older science-fiction novel that I picked up on sale on Amazon. Babel-17 is set in a distant future where the humans of Earth have formed together into an Alliance for mutual defense with three alien species against the Invaders, a splinter group of humans and four other alien races. Recently the Alliance has suffered a series of mysterious sabotage attacks at their most secure facilities. The only clue uniting these attacks are coded messages that they have been unable to identify or crack that they call Babel-17. Out of desperation the military turns to Rydra Wong, the most legendary poet of the age, in the hope that she will be able to decipher Babel-17 and provide some clue as to when and where the next sabotage attempt will be. Wong puts together a crew and heads out into the depths of space to gather more information and decipher the mysteries of Babel-17.

This book has some really interesting ideas but it almost feels like it was necessary flavoring that was thrown into the book because it was a 1960's science-fiction novel and it needed to have some weird stuff in it. For example, cosmetic surgery is incredibly common among the portion of the population that works on spaceships, compared to the tattoos of sailors in previous centuries. There's also a concept of triples where people engage in what we'd call a closed triad, which is seen as unusual but not uncommon. Furthermore humans continue exist beyond death as discorporate entities who can fulfill important jobs on ships that would drive a mortal human insane. All of these are really interesting ideas but they seem to provide flavor to the book more than anything else.

The plot of the book centers around Babel-17 which goes into some territory that I'm not 100% on. Obviously I'm not a linguist so I'm no expert but this book leans pretty heavily on the trope of Language Equals Thought. The more I think about it the more unsure I am. A major point is that Babel-17 as a language has no concept of I and is somehow so insanely precise that it manages to unlock telepathic superpowers. I'm left with the feeling that I just didn't understand the plotline that Delany was trying to create with the language angle. Maybe if people know more about linguistics they might get more enjoyment out of this book but I'm afraid I was left feeling confused more than anything else.

Overall this book has some interesting ideas and I think it's worth checking out but I can't say whether I really understand it or not.

- Kalpar