Two Books

As far back as I can remember I have always been a fan of science fiction. As a kid I liked to watch those “weirdo shows”, as my mother used to call them: the Twilight Zone, Star Trek, The Outer Limits etc. Naturally when I grew up enough to start reading real novels, I gravitated toward science fiction.

A few years ago I posted to Facebook the list of my top 100 science fiction novels of all time. This was of course just my opinion as all art is entirely subjective. If you asked for the list from 1000 science fiction fans, you would get 1000 different lists. This is as it should be. We all have different tastes. I did not make any claim that these were the absolute best 100 sci-fi novels, just that they were my top 100 favorites. Nonetheless, it was somewhat controversial. People disagreed with me (it seems odd that people could disagree with what my favorite books were). Some people were objecting to some of the authors who had some personal failing. This is an interesting point. Are we allowed to like the art, if the artist is a despicable person? This is something that the “me too” movement has brought to the fore. A lot of people are wrestling with that question as more revelations keep coming out. I guess I lean in favor of the camp that says it is okay to appreciate the art, even though I reject the artist, as long as the artist is not profiting from my appreciation. Does that make sense? Troubling times we live in, in more ways than one.

That being said, I thought I would talk about two of the books from my list. I may be doing this again from time to time, so you should not assume that these two are the best or my most favorite, but they do stand out in my mind. They are both very different kinds of science fiction.

 The first is “Time Enough for Love” by Robert A. Heinlein. Yes, Heinlein was politically conservative and some of his passages (usually involving women) can be downright cringeworthy. But that does not mean he was unwilling to take on taboos, or to speak some common sense wisdom. For grand space opera there was no one like Heinlein. He wrote great characters in captivating situations. Where Hollywood usually gets Heinlein wrong is in the characters. Heinlein plants the reader firmly into the mind of his main characters and they are easy to identify with. In Time Enough for Love he paints with a vivid pallet of characters. The greatest character of all is Lazarus Long who we follow through bits and pieces of his incredibly long life. Lazaruz gives us episodic stories of his life. We get tales of what seems like many different lifetimes, but they are all his, all filtered through the lens of his life. We share his joys and his heartbreaks and get some indication of where he got his wisdom. For example these are basic skills that Lazarus Long thinks all humans should be able to do:

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

In 1973/74 Time Enough for Love was nominated for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the Locus Award for best science fiction novel.

The other book(s) I want to talk about is Connie Willis’s “Blackout” and “All Clear”. This was really one book that got so big that it had to be split into two. This is part of Willis’s time travel series. The premise for the series is that scientist have discovered time travel, but the laws of physics seem to have encumbered it with strict rules that won’t allow you to change the timeline. After people found out that you couldn’t go back and kill Hitler or get your grandfather to put money in IBM stock, everybody lost interest in time travel and the only ones who use it are historians, in particular, historians from Oxford University, so this is often called the Oxford or the Oxfordian time travel series.  This particular book follows several historians who have gone back to research various aspects of World War II in England at different points of time. I can’t imagine the amount of time Willis had to spend to research this story but everything feels so right. We are the ones who get to experience what it felt like during the blitz, or being an ambulance driver, or watching the boats leave for Dunkirk, or taking care of children who have been sent off to the country for safety, or even the mundane realities of trying to hunker down in an Anderson shelter. I learned so much about what it was like to live in England during the war. It gave me an inkling of what it was like to be there, of what it felt like.

Of course things go terribly wrong, and not just because of the war. I was once given writing advice to put your characters in peril and then triple it. Willis is a devotee of this philosophy (as many fiction writers are). She left me on the edge of my seat for so long I needed to buy a new chair. Again, the characters are relatable. She also knows how and where to add comic relief.

In 2010/11 Blackout and All Clear together won the Hugo award, Nebula Award, and Locus Award for best science fiction novel.  

I recommend these books. Obviously they will not be to everybody’s taste. If you ever find something that is to everybody’s taste, I will then show you my perpetual motion machine. But these provide insight into the human condition in an entertaining and thoughtful way.  

(Next week I will give some insight into my upcoming novel Starliner)