This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

This Is How You Lose the Time War

by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Gray Planet Commentary

• A unique take on a time travel love story

Gray Planet Indices

• Good Book Index: 95/100
• Literature Index: 93/100
• Magic Factor: 97/100

It has been years since I read a science fiction novella (or novel) that was as good in as many ways as This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.

This is an immersive book–we are taken directly into a complex and unknown world with little expository explanation. I didn’t know who Red and Blue were, nor why they were fighting a war in time. The descriptions of action were fuzzy at best. I almost gave up, and would have if the book was longer.

Then, subtly, slowly, I was drawn in to this curious epistolary relationship between Red and Blue, two major players on opposite sides of a generations long, galaxy spanning war in time.

This Is How You Lose the Time War is all about love and erudition and language and poetry and the obsession that drives two people in love under impossible circumstances. El-Mohtar and Gladstone make the book complex and poetic, literary and romantic. Their collaboration is perfect, their words matched to the tone and setting. Red and Blue riff off each other with perfectly constructed styles using metaphors and imagery with cultural and literary references. This epistolary novel is as complex in structure as the time strands that Red and Blue traverse and manipulate in their generations long war over interstellar distances. Although the time war has little detail or explanation, it provides the connection between lovers, a challenge for them to overcome, and crucially, the structure for their redemption.

We feel deeply for Red and Blue and we feel their precarious situations amid the uncertainty they live in where time and worlds are mutable. They question their own motives and actions, and those of others, while regaling each other with romantic letters transmitted through subtle and abstruse steganography.

In alternating narrative strands and in the letters of Red and Blue, El-Mohtar and Gladstone build a world, they build lives, they build romance and they create magic. Read it.

Luster by Raven Leilani--A Review

Luster

by Raven Leilani

Gray Planet Commentary

• Edie, the first person narrator, is infuriating, angry, hopeless, apathetic and needy.
• Edie, the first person narrator, is honest, resilient, creative and sexual.
• The ending is transformative.

Gray Planet Indices:

• Good Book Index: 82/100
• Literature Index: 88/100
• Magic Factor: 40/100

I hated this book. In our time of coronavirus and hyper-partisan politics it came at me viciously using long sentences steeped in the cultural vernacular of a person fifty years younger than I, filled with references I didn’t understand, and the righteous anger of a young black woman struggling to find her place personally and professionally in a society that judges her based on her blackness and her gender and little else.

I loved this book. The driving force of Edie’s narration, her unique personality, viewpoint and language, slowly won me over, although it took time. By the last quarter of the book I was mesmerized by her inability to overcome her own choices while persevering as if she could. I was overcome with a sense of pre-ordained doom. I hoped for an epiphany. I savored every word, researched every confusing cultural reference. Because of the way Leilani builds this story and Edie’s character, the ending was satisfying for me, although I can’t tell you why.

Edie, the mid-twenties protagonist narrates in the first person, sometimes with a nearly stream-of-consciousness style that is immediate but difficult for me because it is steeped in the culture of her age group–forty-five years distant from mine. The challenges of Edie’s life, the way she lives it, and the cultural milieu she lives it in are not mine–she is an artist, I was an engineer; she is a passionate, young black woman, I am an older white man; I am privileged in many subtle ways, she is not. She is automatically suspect–by the police, by her employers, by the people she meets–I am automatically trusted.

Those differences are the theme, for me. Leilani had to bludgeon me with it and she almost knocked me out, but I withstood her blows and was given a small window into this life I will never know. I felt viscerally what it was like to be Edie, living with and acknowledging her faults and reveling in her fortitude and her insight.

I read a lot science fiction partly to feel the presence of the other and experience worlds I will never know. Raven Leilani, in Luster has given me the best of that in the familiar setting of my own world, but with a perspective alien to me–that of a young, black woman.

Friends and Strangers by J. Courtney Sullivan Review

Friends and Strangers

by J. Courtney Sullivan

Gray Planet Commentary

• I loved the people in this book. I worried about them.

Gray Planet Indices

Good Book Index: 86/100

Literature Index: 85/100

Magic Factor: 90/100

I have rarely been as involved in a book as I was in Friends and Strangers by J. Courtney Sullivan. This book immersed me in the lives of Elisabeth, a late-thirties new mother, married and now living in a small town, and Sam, a college senior who becomes Elisabeth’s babysitter. The book is told in alternating sections from Elisabeth’s point of view and then from Sam’s point of view.

Sullivan weaves a mesmerizing tale of the lives of these two women and how they become intertwined in a complex relationship where Elisabeth is employer, mentor and friend, and Sam is employee, friend and confidant. The boundaries of the relationship are blurred from both sides and become more complex as the story moves forward. Sullivan presents us with such detail of Elisabeth’s and Sam’s lives and thoughts that we feel we know them as well as we know ourselves—perhaps even better.

The time frame of their relationship is constrained by the fact that Sam will soon graduate and move on to a new, exciting and unknown future, while Elisabeth is established in her marriage and as a parent. Because of this, we know that the relationship will end soon, but at first we are convinced this will be a happy story of two women who are our friends.

Elisabeth is a lovable, but complex and infuriating woman. Sam sees her as having everything Sam dreams of. As their relationship deepens into one of friendship and shared confidence however, the secrets they share become burdens for Sam. Sam’s uncertainties about her future with her sort-of fiancee, Clive, and worries about her career after she graduates with a fine arts degree, put her on edge and open her to Elisabeth’s manipulations.

Elisabeth can’t face the reality of her own desires and ambitions and as a result cannot be honest with her husband, Andrew. Her guilt about her lies leads her to confide in Sam and then, in an attempt to control something in her life, a compulsion to try to save Sam from her youthful immaturity, but this leads her to more deception.

Sam’s life is expansive, the world is opening to her. She has her remote relationships, with the older Clive, with her roommate, Izzie, with her Latino friends she works with in the college dormitory kitchen, and a budding friendship with Elisabeth’s father-in-law that results in political activism. Elisabeth, by contrast has only her close focus on her family. Sam is Elisabeth’s only distraction, and so is one she cannot let go. All of this builds through the novel, with Elisabeth’s lies and deceits becoming more fraught and Sam becoming more uncertain about all aspects of her life.

We love them both and worry about them. How could this possibly end well? How can we not anticipate a devastating and emotionally difficult ending?

But then the book just stops and we are left with a few pages of description of Sam and Elisabeth ten years in the future. We have no idea how Elisabeth’s lies and deceptions were resolved with her husband, or if they even were. For Sam, we know more about how she ended up where she did and why. But the book was all about the relationship of Elisabeth and Sam, and the ending basically ignores that and gives us little resolution, particularly for Elisabeth.

This was a great novel, but it is diminished by the ending.

Blacktop Wasteland by S. A. Cosby Review

Blacktop Wasteland

by S. A. Cosby

Gray Planet Commentary

• Compelling, but ultimately a violent downer.

Gray Planet Indices

Good Book Index: 85/100

Literature Index: 75/100

Magic Factor: 60/100

Blacktop Wasteland by S. A. Cosby is a compelling book written with verve and immediacy. Cosby uses a realistic vernacular at times that immerses the reader in his characters and their culture. Over and over he provides imagery and similes like I have never read before–creative and perfect for his purpose. There is a lot to like here and I found myself forced to continue reading even after I realized that this was not a book for me.

There are no heroes in this book, despite what you may think in the first few chapters. There is revenge and anger and violent justice outside of the rule of law. If that’s your thing, you will love this book. But if you want something more, something that is revelatory about the human condition, and our ability to redeem ourselves despite our circumstances, look elsewhere.

Perhaps the meaning in Blacktop Wasteland is that redemption is not available to some, and I get that. But that view is so hopeless it makes me reluctant to recommend the book, particularly in today’s circumstances. In my old age and in this age of pandemic, I want at least a hint of the positive, a touch of hope that the world can be made better rather than the despair Cosby has given me.

Astounding by Alec Nevada-Lee Review

Title: Astounding
Author: Terrence L. Brown

Astounding—John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction

by Alec Nevada-Lee

Gray Planet Commentary

• Biography of John W. Campbell
• Exhaustive detail of Campbell’s relationships with Robert Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard and Isaac Asimov
• Documents Campbell’s racism and his fascination with pseudo science concepts particularly with respect to psychiatry

Gray Planet Indices

• Good Book Index: 95/100
• Literature Index: 75/100
• Magic Factor: 75/100
• Sense of Wonder: 60/100

In Astounding, Alec Nevada-Lee has compiled an exhaustive history of the golden age of science fiction, the time during which John W. Campbell was the editor of Astounding Stories (renamed Analog Science Fact/Science Fiction in 1960). The book focuses on Campbell’s relationships with three writers he developed and with whom he worked closely over a period of 30 years: Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and L. Ron Hubbard.

The audience for this book is probably limited to serious science fiction readers and fans. Even then, it is mostly for those of us who remember the period. It is an important book of history, but few readers under 50 will be interested, except for academics and purists. But Astounding is an important book that provides an historical perspective on how science fiction came to be dominated by white heterosexual males and why it was so difficult to move it toward a genre more inclusive of women, people of color and those of the LGBTQ community.

I have read numerous biographies and memoirs of the science fiction writers who created the field and defined the tropes of science fiction during the time period of this book, 1938-1971, so I am familiar with many of the events related here about Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov. Hubbard, however, I knew only through my readings about the history of Scientology. This view of Hubbard, first as a science fiction writer, and then, secondarily almost, as the founder of Scientology is new to me. But Nevala-Lee brings it all together and provides a new perspective and new material as well.

Hubbard does not come off well. He is a journeyman writer with a talent for pure pulp writing. He is narcissistic and borderline crazy in his personal and professional lives. He eventually adapts his science fiction writing into the presumed revelations which become Scientology, a religion which exists to this day. The basis of Scientology is really a retelling of Hubbard’s science fiction—it is his attempt to monetize his talent to make shit up.

Campbell, particularly during the period from 1938 through 1950, was a fountainhead of ideas, ideas which, when placed in the hands of Asimov and Heinlein and others like L. Sprague de Camp and Lewis Padgett (the pseudonym used by C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner), resulted in many classics of science fiction. Nevada-Lee tells how these stories came to be, and, along the way, how Heinlein and Asimov, particularly, became the dominant writers of their generation within science fiction.

But we also see the development of Hubbard and his crazy ideas—dianetics and scientology, in all their pseudo-scientific, crazy glory. Campbell is intimately involved in this development as well, and in the end, it is Campbell’s fascination with these kinds of unprovable and fallacious concepts presented as science, that are part of the reason his dominance in the field of science fiction comes to a necessary end.

Campbell was racist, misogynistic, and unscientific, but also creative and able to generate compelling arguments for his viewpoints, arguments which, when combined with his forceful personality, were difficult for most people to refute. In many ways, Campbell was egotistical enough to think that he knew more than experts in many fields, and was not shy about promoting pseudo-scientific ideas far beyond the mainstream. Campbell routinely blurred the boundaries between science fact and science fiction—he even renamed Astounding with that title. The result was compelling fiction you could almost believe, and which eventually motivated a generation of scientists and engineers (almost exclusively white and male) to try to make the concepts they read about a reality. But it is difficult to get past Campbell’s silliness and pseudoscience.

So Campbell leaves a very mixed legacy. Nevada-Lee does not limit himself to taking Campbell to task over these issues. Asimov continually harassed women with obscene comments and by touching them inappropriately and also was a philanderer. The extent of some of this was new to me as Asimov (unsurprisingly) did not go into this in his own autobiographies. Heinlein had various sexual proclivities of interest and was jingoistic personally and in his writing.

This time period was a different world, in some ways more simple than ours, easier to understand, and to navigate. But it also limited the opportunity of anyone not white, male and heterosexual. We should listen, learn, and understand, but not emulate.

John Campbell created, guided and controlled science fiction during the Golden Years, forming the basis of what is now a field he would not recognize, a genre more diverse and more creative that he could ever be. The spirit of John Campbell would have loved SF today with its unbridled ability to conceive of and examine science and its effect on our culture from myriad perspectives. The man would probably wonder where all the weirdos came from and why anyone is paying attention to them.

I’ll leave you with the fitting words of Jeannette Ng, the 2019 winner of the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer in science fiction:

John W. Campbell, for whom this award was named, was a fascist. Through his editorial control of Astounding Science Fiction, he is responsible for setting a tone of science fiction that still haunts the genre to this day. Sterile. Male. White. Exalting in the ambitions of imperialists and colonizers, settlers and industrialists. Yes, I am aware there are exceptions.

But these bones, we have grown wonderful, ramshackle genre, wilder and stranger than his mind could imagine or allow.

And I am so proud to be part of this. To share with you my weird little story, an amalgam of all my weird interests, so much of which has little to do with my superficial identities and labels.

The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder

Title: The Soul of a New Machine Review
Author: Terrence L. Brown

The Soul of a New Machine

by Tracy Kidder

Gray Planet Commentary

• Technology is dated, the process and the writing are not.

Gray Planet Indices

• Good Book Index: 93/100
• Literature Index: 91/100
• Magic Factor: 80/100

In his Pulitzer Prize winning book The Soul of a New Machine, Tracy Kidder gave most people who read it their first and only introduction to the technical complexity and addictive nature of designing modern computers. First published in 1981, The Soul of a New Machine tells the story of a group of engineers at Data General who form a “Skunk Works” and design an advanced (for the late 1970s) 32-bit minicomputer—the Eagle. The group is led by experienced design engineers, but the majority of the detailed work of designing logic and writing software is taken on by very young and inexperienced engineers hired for the project. In the parlance of computer engineering, they are well suited to the task since they “don’t know what they can’t do.”

Kidder delves deeply into the process of the design, implementation, and debug of the machine, and in doing so educates the reader with descriptions of how it all works. Kidder’s descriptions are generally quite good and understandable. I should know—from 1984 to 2016 I was a computer engineer and I experienced all of what Kidder describes.

This introduction to computer architecture, and particularly to debugging prototype computers, would have been enough for most, but Kidder makes the story so much more by peering as deeply into the souls of the engineers as he does into the soul of the new machine. His narrative descriptions of the lives of the managers and engineers who create the machine are as important as the machine itself. It is their stories that bring the book to life and create an unforgettable reading experience. In many ways, this is a book that could have been written by John McPhee, and I consider that the highest praise.

It is amazing to me that, 38 years later, the book is not dated, only the technology is. But if one substitutes designing custom chips for designing the circuit boards of the Eagle, most of what Kidder describes could and does happen today.

It is also interesting to see Kidder discussing computers and what they mean to society. “To some the crucial issue was privacy.” He says in Chapter 13. At another point, the manager of the Eagle project comments that a danger of using computers is “You end up making people so dumb they can’t figure out how many six-packs are in a case of beer.”

Indeed.

Three Women by Lisa Taddeo Review

Title: Three Women Review
Author: Terrence L. Brown

Three Women

by Lisa Taddeo

Gray Planet Commentary

• Compelling narrative of three women and their desires

Gray Planet Indices

• Good Book Index: 93/100
• Literature Index: 91/100
• Magic Factor: 65/100

Three Women by Lisa Taddeo is the story of the sexual desires of three women (Maggie, Lina and Sloane) told by Taddeo in narrative form based on extensive interviews with the women and their friends and relatives.

The book is an impressive piece of journalism. Taddeo handles her material with confidence and the result is an involving set of stories.

There is little commonality among the three women. Maggie is in her early twenties, but was in high school when the defining moments of her story occurred—she had a consensual affair with one of her teachers. The affair left her distraught, not because it happened, but because she was devastated by the loss of her lover. A few years later, Maggie files sexual abuse charges against the teacher. The resulting trial is, in some ways, even more devastating for Maggie than the affair. Maggie’s inability to understand the depth of what is happening to her during the affair, her immaturity and her romantic misinterpretation of the events, make the reader realize the necessity of laws and systems that try to prevent this kind of exploitation. But the trial explicates the danger women face when pursuing any remedy after they have been abused like this. It emphasizes the apparent inability of our judicial system, and of our culture, to take seriously the emotional damage done to women in these circumstances. Maggie’s story is powerful and sad.

Lina has two children by her husband but considers her marriage loveless and her husband distant and cold. Lina defines her marriage and her life through what she sees as the lack of passion, respect, and love from her husband. She just wants to be physically loved. Desperate, Lina seeks out Aidan, her boyfriend from high school. She leaves her husband and devotes her time to arranging trysts with Aidan. Lina’s needs are simple, but they are intense, and when unsatisfied they threaten to destroy her. Her story is one of desperation that she cannot avoid.

Sloane is unique—a woman born with means, a woman who controls her own destiny through the power of her personality, but who suffers from deep conflicts and uncertainties. Sloane is beautiful because she makes herself beautiful, powerful because she refuses to be otherwise, but strangely passive as a result of two past events that changed her life and left her malleable, looking for love. In the end, despite her personal power, Sloane is manipulated by her husband’s desires.

What stands out in all three of these narratives is the detail that Taddeo brings to the inner stories of her subjects. Although common in fiction, this type of narrative detail and power is not common in non-autobiographical nonfiction simply because it is nearly impossible to know such detail about another’s inner life. The three stories read like individual memoirs, the voice is different for each, and the detail is memoir-like.

Taddeo spent eight years researching this book and, as she says in her author’s note “I have spent thousands of hours with the women in this book”. Taddeo “based my selection of these three women on the relatability of their stories, their intensity, and the way that the events, if they happened in the past, still sat on the women’s chests.”

Indeed, Taddeo has created a work that lays bare the innermost desires, thoughts, and feelings of Maggie, Lina and Sloane and allows us to understand the stories of their lives with a depth and closeness most of us rarely experience with others even in our own lives.

This is a powerful and revelatory work, but it is not for the faint of heart. The sex is raw and startlingly frank at times. But it is also real, and fraught with feeling and meaning. Even though we may be shocked by it, we also realize its power to transform the participants, although not always for the better.

Taddeo’s work brings these women to life. She makes us think of each woman individually, to consider that we know them. This is a powerful narrative that gives us a unique perspective on the lives of these women.