More Scavengers

I’ve added another story in the Scavenger series. Things are starting to get interesting as Humanity finally learns one of the scavenger’s secrets and a scout pilot gets a second chance to avenge the loss of his fellow crew members.

Another epic story from Dan Simmons

Although it’s been around for a while now, I just recently got around to reading the last two books in Dan Simmon’s Hyperion-Endymion series (Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, and Rise of Endymion). All I can say is “Wow!”. The first book provides a glimpse into the characters, and the travails that led them on a shared quest. We hear the heartbreaking story of Siri and her ruined world, and witness the anguish of a devoted father as he attempts to save his beloved daughter from certain death as she ages in reverse into infancy and eventual nothingness. The second book ties up some of the threads left lying loose in Hyperion, but not all of them, and we see more of the elusive Shrike. We also get a better idea of what the so-called Time Tombs are about, and who built them.

The third book, set 274 years after the collapse of human galactic civilization at the end of Fall of Hyperion, introduces us to a whole new reality, and some new characters. A new version of the Catholic church, led by a puppet pope and his scheming handlers, has humanity in a death grip. We also begin to see what is really behind the scenes, and how it managed to rise from the ashes of the earlier collapse and subvert a major religion for its own purposes.

The fourth book brings it all out on stage for the final confrontation, and it’s a doozy. While I might agree with some of the reviewers on Amazon who thought he went on a bit too long over the details of Catholic liturgy in the final book, it didn’t really bother me that much (in fact, some of it was interesting). Most importantly, it fit into the story by providing a foundation of false legitimacy upon which a whole set of civilization-shattering lies and deceptions was built. The people who thought it was too romantic and mushy simply missed the whole point, and they have my pity. A meaningful life is all about love, compassion, tragedy, joy, faith, and hope; Dan Simmons nails it in these books.

The style and tone of each book is different, with Hyperion being along the lines of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and the final book exploring the concepts of belief, immortality, and love. In between the reader is treated to scenes of epic unintentional heroism (the best kind, in my opinion), concepts from artificial life and artificial intelligence, a study in repression and enforced social conformity on an interstellar scale, and what it means to really, truly, love another person. And that’s just a small sampling of the topics and concepts that Simmon’s manages to pack into the books. Although I finished the books a while back, I still find myself thinking about various scenes. And, truth be told, I fell in love with the character of Aenea. From the reviews I’ve read, I don’t think I’m alone in that regard.

I highly recommend these books. Start at the beginning, read through to the end. It’s a journey that has something for almost everyone, and you might come away from it with a new perspective on life, love, and reality.

I have to think that anyone with a shred of compassion and faith in the future would gladly drink from Aenea’s chalice.

A New Story

I’ve posted a new short story. This one is definitely science fiction, which was one of my first literary loves. It’s also the cornerstone piece for what I hope will become a series of stories in the same fictional universe, and it’s another exercise for me in writing short stories. I think I might actually be starting to get the hang of it.

You can check it out here:

Scavenger

Some of My Favorite Books (a partial list)

I read a lot, but to be honest, most of it isn’t fiction. But when I do read fiction, I prefer the unusual and the somewhat offbeat. There’s nothing I dislike more than to pick up a book and find that I can generally guess the ending after the first few chapters.

So here are four books I particularly enjoyed. There are many others not listed here, mainly because I’m lazy, not because they aren’t worth noting. I’ll get around to trotting them out at some point, too.

Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline
For those who have never played a text-based adventure game, or shoved quarters into an arcade game console for hours on end, some of this book won’t make much sense initially. Cline makes up for that by gently introducing the reader to alien concepts like these and then taking it up a few notches into a near-future where virtual reality is commonplace (kids wear VR googles to go to school without leaving home), and big high-tech corporations use the people of the world as their playthings. Some of it is still far off on the horizon, but other ideas in the book hit close to
home.

Illium and Olympos, by Dan Simmons
Consisting of two books, Illium and Olympos, the story arc covers a period of dramatic change and upheaval in the far future. Genetically enhanced humans have abandoned Earth and created their own version of ancient Greece, complete with gods and godesses, on Mars. The last few “natural” humans live a sheltered life on an abandoned Earth, until trouble shows up and extermination looms large. Like most of Simmon’s work it is witty, well-written, dense, and packed with references to classical literature, mythology, and a whole lot of futuristic, but believable, technology. Simmons manages to keep it engaging and enjoyable at the same time, and it’s hard to put it down once started.

Heaven, by Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen
Bringing together ideas from social psychology, religion, biology, computational theory, cognitive science, and politics, and then making them all play nice in the same book is a feat in and of itself. Spinning all this into a surprising and entertaining  science-fiction story is even better. Come to meet the reefwives, stay for the benevolent memes, and marvel at the hybrid orgranism with goldfish for a brain.

God’s Demon, by Wayne Barlowe
I’ve been a fan of Barlowe’s artwork for years. A trained artist raised by two well-known natural history artist parents, Barlowe has the uncanny ability to make the unreal appear real. His first book of artwork, “Barlow’s Guide to Extraterrestrials” was an instant classic, and his second book, “Expedition”, became the inspiration for the Discovery Channel presentation entitled Alien Planet. “God’s Demon”, his first novel, is the literary companion to the artwork found in “Barlowe’s Inferno” and “Brushfire: Illuminations from the Inferno”. Inspired by Milton’s Paradise Lost, God’s Demon is a dark read, charged with raw emotion and awash with the sights and sounds of Hell. It may be difficult for some readers, but if you’re a fan of Milton (or even Dante, for that matter) some of it will be familiar.  In my opinion it’s worth the journey, no matter how terrifying it might be. The ending is as amazing as it is beautiful.

Rediscovered Dreams

As a young teenager living in Florida I would make my way to the highest point I could find whenever one of the Apollo missions lifted off from Cape Canaveral. Off in the distance I could see the smoke trail from the awesome Saturn 5 rocket as it arced out over the Atlantic ocean, and although I couldn’t hear it I could imagine the roar of the engines. I wanted more than anything to be on that rocket.

The years passed and I came to realize that unless some other means to get into space became available I just wasn’t going to get there. I didn’t have the right experience and education, and I was getting older by the minute. NASA wasn’t going to give me a ride into space, and so the number one item on my bucket list would probably forever remain unchecked.

Years later I managed to get about as close as I am ever going to come to going into space. On August 4, 2007, at 5:26 in the morning I stood on a pier several miles from the launch pad for the Phoenix Mars Lander’s Delta rocket with my wife and young daughter and watched as it roared into space and headed for Mars. For me it was more than just watching a rocket launch, because part of me was on that spacecraft. I had toiled for almost 4 years to create the software that would control three of the four cameras on the probe. It was, and will probably always remain, the hardest thing I’ve ever done. As the Delta arced out over the ocean and began to shed its strap-on boosters, it wasn’t elation that I felt. It was relief.

Now a small part of me, in an intellectual sense, sits on the surface of Mars, frozen in time in the slowly decaying memory of a dead probe. Before the Martian winter set in the Phoenix returned thousands of images, and made several important discoveries about the surface of Mars in the polar latitudes. But that’s all in the past now, because once the little lander succumbed to the cold and died, it stayed dead.

After the launch my part in the mission was over, so I turned my attention elsewhere and the memories of my time with Phoenix have slowly faded into the soft haze that seems to envelope all past events. I’ve watched with interest as commercial spaceflight has started to take root and grow, and marveled at the inventiveness that has gone into the various efforts. But for myself, I had stopped wondering how I might feel if I could stand on Mars, or even poke around on the moon.

Then I saw Erik Wernquist’s short film “Wanderers“, and I was profoundly moved. Somehow Wernquist has managed to gather up the images from the science fiction I once used to devour, wrap it up with some dramatic music, and top it all off with Carl Sagan’s amazing voice as he reads from his book “Pale Blue Dot”. This is what I had imagined it would be like as a young person reading science fiction by Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke, just to name a few. The video sent chills up my spine, and from what I’ve seen on various web sites I’m not the only one affected by it.

Wanderers made me realize that I still have that yearning lurking in the background of my daily experience. Carl Sagan puts it eloquently when he described it “Like a nearly-forgotten song of childhood.” Unfortunately for me, I will probably never see it in person. But I hope that someday my daughter will. Perhaps she will visit the old Phoenix lander on the surface of Mars, and know that some part of me still resides deep within its slowly decaying circuitry. Dormant and eternally sleeping.