Litany of the Long Sun

Litany of the Long Sun is the first half of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. It takes place in an artificial habitat in the distant future. Though the world is technologically advanced, the people who live in it do not know how it works and live a primitive existence. The story displays a blend of religion and strange technology.

The main character is Patera Silk, an augur (oracle) for a small manteion (temple) in a poor district. At the start of the story, Silk receives a revelation that he believes is from one of his gods. When Silk discovers that his manteion has been purchased by a crime boss named Blood due to unpaid taxes, he hatches a plan to sneak into the man's villa and force him to give it back. While inside, he runs into a strange woman named Mucor and a woman named Hyacinth working there as an escort. Silk falls and hurts his ankle and gets captured by Blood and his henchmen. Blood makes an agreement to sell back the manteion to Silk for a large sum of money, which Silk doesn't have. But before he leaves, a doctor named Crane fixes his ankle and sneaks him a weapon.

Silk makes plans to use the weapon to steal the large sum of money. He is so obsessed and committed to this goal that he barely thinks about the moral questions, only that he has to fulfill his duty to his gods. The next day Silk visits a brothel where one of the women has died. He discovers that another woman there is a spy and deduces that she works for Dr. Crane. As the first half ends, Silk performs an exorcism for the dead woman and a goddess manifests at the ceremony.

At the start of the second half, Silk officiates the dead woman's funeral and a vision manifests on the screen of the manteion, the first in decades. Then he realizes that Chenille, Dr. Crane's spy, has been possessed by a goddess. This possession is some sort of advanced technological ability, and the goddess is apparently an artificial intelligence. Now Silk hatches a plot to blackmail Dr. Crane, but to do this they need to travel to the nearby lake and fine the ruling council.

Here the story gets more interesting as Silk start to uncover a plot and learn more about Dr. Crane. Silk stumbles into a series of secret tunnels under the lake and the city. He discovers a chamber full of people who have been asleep for centuries. When one of the sleeping women wakes, he realizes she has been possessed by Mucor and exorcises her. Silk learns about the history of the habitat and his own gods, though he has trouble reconciling what he learns with his beliefs.

The strange things Silk sees and learns make the second part of the book more compelling. The first half is a bit slow, what with Silk's single-minded focus on Blood and his crazy scheme to compel Blood to give his manteion back. With the second half, forces become apparent such as the missing calde (ruler) of the city, the mysterious council, the goddess who possesses Chenille. Religion comes into play as Silk gains popularity with the populace (due to his visions and the appearance of the goddess) and this becomes a threat to the government. The reference to the story of Christ becomes apparent to me when Silk has a vision that includes seeing a man nailed to . Though Silk is a religious man who only wants the best for his people and doesn't care about the government, his popularity makes him dangerous and a target for the those who fear him. The end is a cliffhanger, to be completed in the next book, as Silk is captured by one faction vying for power. B+

The Engineer Reconditioned

The Engineer Reconditioned is a collection of short fiction by Neal Asher, the author of The Skinner. Most of the stories are set in his Polity universe, with several set on the world of the Owner. One story takes place in the universe of his book Cowl. The collection is a fun visit to these other stories.

The centerpiece is the novella called "The Engineer". In it, the crew of the science vessel Schrödinger's Box comes across a mysterious metal sphere drifting through space. They thaw out the contents to find a small creature that immediately starts building things out of its environment. The creations become so complex that they can emulate a small human. Meanwhile, the outlaws of the galaxy learn of this discovery and seek to destroy it lest it become a powerful weapon in the Polity's hands. There is a bit of politics and social commentary, but the action is the substance of the story. My only complaint is that compared to The Skinner, the AI characters are dull and flat. Otherwise, it is a fun story.

Two characters from The Skinner make appearances. In "Snairls", Janer takes his hive-mind companions on a large air snail. In "Spatterjay", we see Erlin the first time she comes to the planet and meets Ambel and his crew. The action is a little fast here and there's not much time for character development. However you can see it's a good seed for the full story.

The Owner world is a place where there is a dispassionate and invisible ruler of a planet with few rules: stay inside the marked areas and no population over two billion. In "Proctors", the action follows a scientist and law enforcement as they seek to find a visitor from another planet who has been abducted by men who don't believe that the Owner exists and want to make their own rules. In "The Owner", a family is on the run for disobeying a religious stricture but find the Owner themselves. Both these stories show societies developing differently under the same basic rules.

Asher takes on religion in two very different stories. In "The Thrake", a missionary comes to a planet to determine if a new humanoid species is sentient, only to get a nasty surprise about the nature of sentience. In the final story, "Gurnard", the religion is based on the life cycle of a parasite. The story got more interesting as I understood the circumstances. The parasite has a complex life cycle involving compelling animals to take actions that further the parasite's needs. Part of the life cycle concerns the rites of a religious order. The story follows a man named Beck as he is compelled to return to a church in order to carry a dying fish to its birth waters.

All of the stories here have a good mix of science and action. Asher never fails to provide a good story based on interesting scientific ideas. A-

The Subtle Knife

The Subtle Knife is the sequel to The Golden Compass, part of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. In this book, Lyra finds a boy named Will Parry in a world that exists between the worlds they are from. Will shows her how he found a window from his world to the world of Ci'gazze, where Specters attack adults and leave them catatonic while leaving the children to fend for themselves. Will shows Lyra to his own world (more like ours) and she visits the Oxford there in an effort to learn more about Dust, which she learns is called dark matter. She is pleased to find a female scholar studying the subject and she helps her with the research. But Lyra is dismayed when a strange upper class man steal the compass.

But the primary story belongs to Will. Will is a prototypical hero in that he is (something like Lyra in the first book) searching for his missing father. However he lacks the appeal of Lyra to be a driving character. Whereas Lyra is brave, headstrong, and somewhat impulsive, Will is more reserved and careful. This does make them a good team. Part of the conflict is that Lyra can't accept that her mission is to help Will find his father instead of searching for her own. The golden compass tells her as much, but her unwillingness to follow through and instead continue her own search does not prove successful.

Lyra and Will approach the thief of the compass to get it back, and he promises to return it to them if they will retrieve a knife from the world of Ci'gazze that he desires. The knife turns out to be a valuable artifact. Acquiring it provides Will with great power but it also comes at a cost. The children of Ci'gazze become their enemies. The knife is a burden that Will must bear, and using it becomes painful. He uses the knife to cut a window between worlds and retrieve the compass for Lyra. Yet they learn that Lyra's mother is allied with the thief, bringing the evils of the first book into this one.

As the plot unfolds, we learn that there is a man plotting to wage war against the creator god, known as the Authority. Pullman brings in myths about heavenly wars and angels. Most of this is background rather than direct action, though this is fitting for a middle volume of a trilogy. However I was still left a little empty at the end, without seeing Will and Lyra accomplish an important goal. Will's search is satisfied, but only briefly. Lyra is still relegated to the background as Will's helper. Yet overall it is a satisfying story. The tension builds as we learn more about traveling between worlds, the building war against the Authority, Will's father, and the powers of the knife. The story comes together, yet there still enough conflict left for the next book. B

The God Engines

The God Engines is a science fiction novella by John Scalzi. The main character is Ean Tephe, captain of a starship with a god as its source of power. The society is ruled by a theocracy and uses the captured enemy gods of its Lord to power its technology. Tephe's counterpart is the religious leader on board his ship, Priest Andso. Tephe and Andso are occasionally at odds as they vie for power, but it is Tephe who is assigned a special task to convert the people of newly found planet.

As the story unfolds the faith of Tephe and Andso are tested. Tephe must figure out what he believes, for his faith has implications on the structure of their society and the life of everyone aboard his ship. The climax is a distillation of the conflicts of faith as it is tried by reason. At the crucial moment, he must make a decision based on conflicting lines of thought.

The story is largely driven by dialogue and the inner thoughts of the protagonist. I felt like there was room for more detail on the society, the ship, and the people; however it works well as it is. The style is sparse yet the plot is gripping. The end provides a set of intriguing twists that keep the reader pulled in. B

God's Politics

I don't usually read a book with "God" in the title unless it is along the lines of God is not Great or The God Delusion. But I had heard of Jim Wallis before so I thought that he might have something different to say about religion and politics. While reading God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It I was struck by what he says and how different his message is from the usual political discourse in America.

Wallis's central theme is that religious voters should vote with the core message of Jesus, namely peace, love, and charity. He is not pleased with the Christian fundamentalists who have taken over religious discussions in the country in the name of Jesus yet seem to have forgotten Jesus's teachings. His critique of the Christian Right is spot on, accusing them of only caring about abortion and gay marriage, and in fact supporting policies that make poverty worse. Wallis urges liberals to open up about their religious views and how they inform their politics. He is against what he calls "secular fundamentalism", the push from the left to keep religion out of politics. I think he has a decent point here, but he forgets President Obama's recent words on this subject: that any call for change in law or policy must have a legitimate secular purpose, regardless of the religious inspiration. What fears liberals and libertarians is the calls for laws based solely on flimsy religious grounds.

Wallis pushes for justice for the poor and underprivileged in the United States and around the world. He labels budgets "moral documents". Where a family or government spends its money is the clearest indication of its moral values. He rightly calls it shameful that our national policies promote wealth accumulation for the wealthy and give little help to the poor. He has been involved with promoting debt forgiveness for developing nations.

A good portion of the book, which was published in 2005, concerns the Iraq war. Wallis slams the politics of fear that followed 9/11. He contrasts the rhetoric for the war with the concepts of just war, which he believes the Iraq war was not. The leaders in England were still discussing alternatives to war while the American administration had already made the decision to invade. He promotes the idea that those who are against war must be able to suggest viable alternatives--which were certainly available for the Iraq war. He also shows that for peace to be a viable option there must be widespread justice and rule of law.

Wallis does make some claims that I find dubious or even misleading. He makes the claim that religious faith has been a driving force for progressive causes (he refers to Martin Luther King often). There may be some truth to this, but the honest assessment is that religion has been more of a hindrance to issues such as abolition of slavery, women's rights, and marriage equality for gays. He does criticize the religious right's support for the death penalty. But he criticizes both sides of the abortion debate, a move that I believe goes too easy on the right. He mentions President Clinton's move to make abortion "safe, legal, and rare", but then dismisses any progress made on the Democrat's watch. The abortion rate going down is a success that should be lauded by both sides. And he completely misses the biggest reasons for the high abortion rate, namely sex education and access to contraception, which religious people are often against. In spite of these critiques, the book is a refreshing look at the real moral issues concerning our country. A-