"Speaker for the Dead" by Orson Scott Card (1986)

Orson Scott Card has said that he only wrote "Ender's Game" so that he could then write "Speaker for the Dead." Even though this is a sequel, it was the reason for writing the the first one at all. That's saying something, because you loved "Ender's Game." Having said that, this one probably isn't going to get made into a movie anytime soon, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

In the climactic moment of "Ender's Game" Ender Wiggins kills every member of the only other sentient species that humans had ever found in the galaxy, the Buggers. Granted, he thought that the war he was waging was just a simulation, practice for the real thing. Granted, almost every human on Earth thought they were engaged in an interstellar war for survival, but that doesn't matter. History remembers Ender as a Xenocidal maniac, a stain on human culture and ethics. After his incomparable crime, though, Ender travels to the bugger homeworld and is entrusted with a gift unlike any other. The last Bugger hive queen, cocooned and in stasis yet still capable of re-seeding the entire species, has made contact with him telepathically. Through this unique connection, he realizes that the entire war was a mistake, a case of extraordinary misunderstanding.

With the last Hive Queen as his constant telepathic companion, Ender sets out on his new life's mission: to find a new homeworld for the Buggers, a world safe from the suspicions and xenophobia of humans. And he writes a book explaining to the rest of humanity the extent of his crime in wiping out an entire race. Lifting the lenses of hatred, fear, and absolutism from his own eyes, he unveils the Buggers as something more than mindless monsters hell-bent on conquest or the annihilation of humanity. Embracing empathy and truth, he reveals the scope of the crime he committed to the entire human race. Ender reveals the complexity of an enemy that humanity had been content to think of in easy, two dimensional caricature. But they weren't just the bad guys. There was a depth to them, a history, a delicate evolution of culture and a beautiful symmetry to their lives. The Buggers hadn't deserved to die at all, yet he had killed every single one of them. In writing his book, Ender gave voice to the dead in a way that had rarely been done before. He became a Speaker for The Dead, and he started a new philosophy based on that idea.

After his book "The Hive Queen and The Hegemon," an entire discipline of Speakers arose in the galaxy. People dedicated to the idea that when someone dies we often make the mistake of trying to only remember the best in them, to recreate them in an easily presentable, two dimensional character. We often even invent good things about the dead, and talk only about those things when we eulogize them. Instead, Speakers for the Dead speak the truth about the dead. They endeavor to tell their full stories and in so doing, to reveal the honor and the depth in each of our personal stories. This new philosophy allowed humans to embrace honesty and empathy and to recognize that memories are best remembered when they are unvarnished. Lilies are more beautiful when they are not gilded; or more accurately, a gilded lily is no lily at all.

Thousands of years have passed since the end of "Ender's Game" and humanity has used the technology they discovered in the Buggers' colonies to spread throughout the galaxy. Space travel can take place almost at light speed while the alien ansible computer network spans the galaxy and allows communication to take place and information to be shared nearly instantaneously throughout the Hundred Worlds. Speakers for the Dead are allowed to travel to any planet regardless of that planet's religious status. Speakers are afforded a respect and a level of access to information that enjoys the backing of the highest laws.

No one suspects that the most famous of the Speakers is really the vilified Ender Wiggins. How could he be? That villain lived 3,000 years ago. But travel at the speed of light does funny things. Through the wonder of what Einstein called Special Relativity, anything traveling at nearly the speed of light experiences time much more slowly than everything traveling at normal speeds. Someone spending a few weeks in a starship traveling at near light speed would see dozens of years pass for everyone else. If that someone happened to travel all over the galaxy, answering the most pressing requests to have a Speaker present, and if that someone traveled often enough, he could be thousands of years old while only seeming to be a few decades old. Ender and his sister Valentine have been doing just that. For them, only twenty years or so have passed since the end of the war, but for everyone else 3,000 years have passed.

In the millennia of searching the stars, humans have only discovered one other intelligent species (other than the now extinct Buggers). A small pig-like tree-dwelling species inhabits the planet Lusitania. Remembering the shame of their last encounter with a sentient species, humanity has enforced the strictest rules when dealing with these "piggies." Only two xenologists are allowed any contact with them at all, and even this is very limited. They can't share information with the Piggies for fear of contaminating their society. The xenologists aren't even allowed to ask good questions for fear that their values and cultural expectations will become evident to the aliens. It is the ultimate form of Star Trek's 'Prime Directive.' Humanity has sworn to prevent any cross cultural contamination.

The premise is ridiculous of course. When two alien cultures come into contact with one another, they will inevitably change each other in ways too numerous to guess. Whenever humans finally do encounter intelligent aliens, we will unavoidably change each others' paradigms more profoundly than we can imagine. This is, in fact, one of the reasons we are so eager to seek out new life. As distinct as human cultures are from one another we still have an identical biology, a shared ancient ancestry, a common way of thinking about our own experiences. There is no guarantee that alien species will share any of that with us. Each species, each civilization definitionally develops uniquely, due to their own distinct influences and exceptional pressures. How extraordinary would it be to get to study a completely new way of achieving sentience? No amount of quarantining will ever be able to prevent any cross species influences. Discovering alien life would change everything about our culture because it should change everything about our culture.

Unbeknownst to the rest of humanity, however, Ender has discovered another sentient life form. Jane has revealed herself to him and only him. Jane is a fascinating character and she is one of a kind, not because she survived any xenocide, but because she is a unique form of life. She is the consciousness which has arisen within the vast star-spanning ansible computer network. The anisible network became self aware shortly after Ender destroyed all the buggers, and named itself Jane. She thinks in scales impossible for even Ender's brilliant mind to conceive. She communicates with him through a jewel in his ear and she alternates between being perfectly analytical and being down right flirty. She is afraid to reveal herself to anyone but Ender for fear that humans will destroy her out of their own fears. She remembers what happened to the Buggers. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that Jane is just as capable of feeling emotion as any human being. Jane's presence in the story raises lots of questions about what we consider to be consciousness, what humans consider to be life. These are questions we are going to have to wrestle with sooner rather than later as Artificial Intelligence becomes more and more a possibility with every advance in technology. Jane may very well take her place alongside Hal and Skynet to serve as the fictitious grandparents of Siri and Cortana.

Running throughout "Speaker for the Dead" is the question of how we classify strangers, a question of how and why we think of some strangers as more strange than others. What metrics should we use to decide if the other is an 'us' or a 'them?' Should we compare their intelligence? Their sense of morality? Their capacity to love? Their willingness to sacrifice themselves for loved ones? This matters because humans have the unfortunate ability to justify cruelty and death among those we consider to be the most alien, or those who we classify as animals. It makes you wonder why we attach such importance to these labels. If an alien species is more like a cow than a human, why would that make it suddenly acceptable to slaughter it for food? Why is it more acceptable to kill certain other humans, the 'Bad Guys,' than it would be to kill your own dog? Maybe more important than that is the realization that these labels not only change who and what we feel justified in killing, but who and what we feel enough commonality with to learn from.

It is humbling to think of how profoundly we misunderstand one another. We don't even have to be aliens. We don't even have to be strangers. The Piggies murdered some of the xenologists sent to study them, but they had no idea that the humans did not want to die. They didn't even know what tears were. "Speaker for the Dead" made you wonder how often you miss the tears of others simply because you misunderstand them.

Another recurring theme in the book is the power of the truth, and the human tendency to reject it. When Ender arrives on Lusitania to Speak for one of the murdered xenologists, he uncoveres a deeper story, a family torn apart. There is always a deeper story. Ender is able to heal this family by revealing hard truths that had been ignored for a long time. The silly thing is that ignoring hard truths doesn't make them no longer true. The important thing is to recognize that terrible things sometimes happen, that difficulties are inevitable. The important thing is to try to face those things head-on and, crucially, to learn how to deal with them with compassion and empathy. The thing about finding out some painful truths is that you can often become resentful of the person who told you the truth, as if their honesty was an act of cruelty. But the reality is that the real act of cruelty was living in ignorance for so long. Had you known this truth earlier, it wouldn't have been so hard to accept. It takes compassion to share a hard truth with someone even after they are dead and gone. It takes love.

"Speaker for the Dead" is not a heart pounding action adventure. There are no sweeping battle scenes. It is more nuanced, more complicated than that. It is more intimate. In that complicated litereary intimacy, you were able to see a reflection of all of the stories that surround you every day. "Speaker for the Dead" reminded you that we all have our own stories and that even the worst among us is still worthy of consideration, of empathy, and of forgiveness.






On to the next book!

"The Sign of the Four" By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1890)

You read the second Holmes novel as an eBook, just like the first one. This one took you over a year to read. It's not that the book is particularly long, it's that you only read it when you were stuck in a line or caught waiting somewhere without whatever actual book you were reading at the time. God bless public domain free book apps on smartphones. There is probably a patron saint for those, right?

"The Sign of the Four" (also titled just "The Sign of Four") has a slightly different feel from "A study in Scarlet." Conan Doyle has no more need for introductions. He settles easily into developing his famous characters and their relationship with one another. The book opens, to your surprise, on Sherlock Holmes shooting up cocaine. It's fairly common knowledge that the most famous fictional detective in the world had a drug habit, but it was still odd to read about his track marks on his forearm. Watson says Holmes injects himself three times a day for months. But this drug habit isn't truly Holmes' addiction. Cocaine proves to be a poor substitute for the rush he truly craves, the rush he gets when he is on a case. Holmes prides himself on being an intellectual being, a man of pure logic and reasoning, but he's not. He needs to feel the visceral thrill of the chase, the satisfaction of solving difficult puzzles, the emotional high of living the life he is meant to live. He is addicted to adrenaline rushes.

And Dr. John Watson serves as Holmes' great enabler. Watson helps Holmes in his investigations, to get his fix. Holmes introduces Watson to a life that has taken him out of his post traumatic stress induced depression. In "The Sign of the Four" the two partners investigate a complicated series of mysteries, just the kind to satiate Sherlock's need and keep Watson engaged. Most importantly for the mythology of the Holmes/Watson story line, Mary Morstan enters the picture. By the end of the book, she and Dr. Watson are engaged.

Unlike the first book, the action of "The Sign of the Four" stays with the two detectives, never leaving Watson's First Person accounting to tell the other side of the story. By the climax of the novel, the two are involved in a heart-pounding boat chase on the river Thames. People die. A pygmy African native tries to kill Holmes with a poisoned dart from his blow gun. The true criminal, Johnathan Small, jewel thief and murderer, is eventually caught and spills his guts. His story involves the East India Company, betrayal, revenge, and a rebellion in colonial India.

Holmes is revealed as a retired bare-knuckle boxer (and a damn good one, too). He is a man of his era, smoking cigars, drinking from a flask, carrying a pistol. Holmes becomes much more of a real person in "The Sign of the Four" than in the first book. His energy is boundless in his quest to solve the mysteries he finds.

As soon as the crime is solved, Holmes visibly deflates. His manic energy evaporates with the end of the adventure. Dr. Watson reflects that he got a wife out of the adventure and the police got their murderer. He wonders out loud what there is left for Holmes. "For me," said Sherlock Holmes, "there still remains the cocaine bottle."

This flaw in his character makes Sherlock Holmes seem more real, more convincing of a character. It is a good reminder both that perfection is not required to make someone worthy of admiration and also that our flaws, our individual struggles, are what make each of us who we are.




On to the next book!

"Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War" by Max Hastings (2013)

It's been one hundred years since the First World War began. Max Hastings has already proven to be a master of the history of the Second World War so you thought now was a great time to tackle his first effort to explore the history of the Great War. Unlike many scholars and historians, Hastings has never shied away from sharing his naked opinions in his books. In this one he puts one right on the cover. What ever else he says about the war, it was one thing above all else: a catastrophe.

On June 28th 1914, the crown prince of Austria, Franz Ferdinand, and his wife were assassinated by Gavrilo Princip in the Serbian capital of Sarajevo. Princip was a member of a Serbian nationalist extremist group called The Black Hand which believed Austria had its imperialist sights set on tiny Serbia. Austria was part of a larger Austro-Hungarian empire which did not include the tiny Balkan state within its boundaries. No one in the halls of Europe's crowded royal families at the time even liked the assassinated prince Franz Ferdinand, mostly because he advocated for greater autonomy for the ethnic minorities within the empire and annoyingly urged for a softer hand in deling with Serbs. Ironically, Franz was likely the person who would have tried the hardest to prevent the war that was ignited in his memory. Nevertheless, his death seemed like a perfect excuse for the continent's newest empire to gobble up more territory... that's what empire do.

The German Kaiser Wilhelm II wanted the Balkan region to stay out of the hands of the Russian Tsar Nicholas II, and he knew any acts of aggression in the Balkans would likely be met with Russian resistance. Germany therefore gave Austria-Hungary a guarantee that any actions they took to avenge their slain crown prince would also be backed up by the might of the entire German military. Historians refer to this guarantee as the infamous "blank check." Almost a month after Franz Ferdinand's death, Austria issued a list of demands from Serbia in retribution for the assassination, a list to which they knew the Serbs would never concede. Serbia refused and on July 28, exactly one month after the assassination, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. The dominoes, which had been set in place over the course of a century or more, began to fall all over Europe.

Russia came to the defense of Serbia, both to prevent the Balkans from falling into the hands of Austrian (and therefore German) influence as well as out of a sense of ethnic duty to their Slavic brethren. Germany in turn declared war on Russia, as they had promised. France, who had a treaty with Russia to defend it against any enemies, was now obliged to mobilize her armies as well. Germany had long based its plans for any new European war on the idea of focusing on rapidly defeating France in the west. Afterwards, Germany planned to turn eastwards, towards the inevitable long slog against Russia. This German "Shlieffen Plan," named after its innovator, called for the bulk of Germany's armies to smash through neutral Belgium and into northern France, bypassing the extensive network of defenses the French had been building for decades along their German border and thereby neatly opening the road to Paris from the north. England saw Germany violate Belgium's century-old neutrality and mobilized her armies as well to put down the Kaiser's invading force. And that is how you get a World War.

Hastings spends the bulk of the rest of "Catastrophe 1914" mapping out the first five months of the war. He is able take these massive and extremely complicated movements of some of the largest armies the world has ever seen and boil them down into wonderfully concise and brief passages. He chronicles these Olympian efforts and epic mistakes encompassing millions of people, these sweeping armies covering nations like none had ever done before. He makes it all intelligible and he breaks it down into easily recognizable pieces when no one else at the time could even remotely realize what was happening. The panicked retreat by the French and British in the face of the German invasion, the humiliating defeat of the Russians in the east, the shame of the Austrians routed by a far inferior Serbian adversary. Hastings takes the mantle from Barbara Tuchman's "The Guns of August" and moves it forward the 50 years the subject deserves. He does a masterful job and the book was brilliant in educating you on how the world came to the point where the madness of static trench warfare and the sacrifice of millions of men could become the status quo for four years. But chronicling every detail for this review would be ridiculous. The material is far too rich.

What you do think deserves to have some space on this blog is the overall setting and the causes for the war. Obviously the setting was Europe a century ago, but in truth, it was almost a different world. The dawn of the 20th century was truly the end of an Age. It saw a Europe (especially eastern) still mired in the Old World thinking that regional racial dominance was desirable, or even possible. Almost every major nation state involved in the war still had hereditary monarchies and they still clung to ancient and rigid class structures. A growing international workers movement was beginning to chip away at the bourgeois certainty of continued oppressive labor relations in a rapidly industrializing West. Suffragettes had torched over 100 buildings in England in the first half of 1914 in their quest for the right to vote. The sustainability of the inherited societies of the continent was crumbling, even though those in power were mostly unaware. In half a decade everything that had previously defined European society would change. Few of the royal ruling families and even fewer of the class structures that shaped the cultures across the continent would still be in place after the war.

Technologically, so much had changed in the lives of the men who would run the wars that it is almost hard to conceive of today. To quote the inimitable Winston Churchill from 1930, "Scarcely anything material or established which I was brought up to believe was permanent or vital has lasted. Everything I was sure or taught to be sure was impossible, has happened." Communications was almost instantaneous across the oceans and wireless radios were in their infancy. In the decade since the Wright brothers had conquered human flight airplanes had become commonplace, if not yet widespread. The cavalry of several nations weren't yet sure if they should still carry lances alongside their rifles (so some of them did!). Elaborate webs of railways allowed previously unimaginable numbers of troops to be moved previously unimaginably long distances in previously unimaginably short amounts of time. Massive steel battleships could now fire shells over the horizon, field artillery could now level whole countrysides in hours, and small portable machine guns could pour thousands of rounds per minute into killing lanes shaped by industrially mass-produced barbed wire.

Tragically for millions of young men, the violence of warfare, it's brutality and totality of destruction had outpaced the petty and short-sighted foreign affairs of Europe's leaders. War was seen as a legitimate and almost inconsequential means of advancing national (or even racial) interests rather than the "passport to Hades" that it had become. The battlefields of The Great War became factories of bloodshed the likes of which the world had never seen. The armies of the belligerents were like tectonic plates pressing against each other with so much force that, though very little seemed to change behind the smoking and sinuous lines where they collided, they eventually released so much pent up energy that in their tremors, whole governments fell and empires would dissolve overnight. The leaders who instigated this war had no idea of the power the were wielding. They didn't respect it because they couldn't imagine what it had become.

Unfortunately, rather than opening the eyes of the belligerents to the insanity of it all, the colossal loss of life instead ensured that the war would continue. Every government felt that the rivers of blood spilled in the war's first months (when the outcome still looked as if it could be swiftly decided) called out and demanded even more sacrifices, more deaths in the name of antiquated and poorly defined goals. The conflict gained a terrible momentum that neither side could prevent. Germany and Austria-Hungary could not allow the sacrifice of so many of their youngest to have been in vain, however dubious their initial motivations had been. Russia, France, and England could not stomach the idea of acquiescing to German hegemony of the continent. Hastings spends an entire chapter chronicling some of the German atrocities against civilians attesting to the righteousness of the Allied cause.

Each side had to wait until their own populations took the decision out of the hands of their leaders before the war could be ended. The Russian ruling family was murdered and replaced by civil war and a Soviet Union. The Austro-Hungarian empire evaporated into the history books. The British empire cracked under the pressure of the carnage, and sociopolitical concessions which would have been unthinkable in 1914 were gladly embraced in order to placate an enraged populace. The French were so numbed by the unendurable losses and tragedies of four years of war that entire armies occasionally refused to obey orders. Germany's armies eventually did the same soon after the United States entered the war. The reigns of the war ultimately slipped from the hands of the men who were supposed to be giving the commands.

If nations are run by their leaders, if wars are fought by those in power, the lesson of World War I is that nations can only endure so much catastrophe. In the 21st century those with the authority to wage war should respect the awesome power it has on the world, especially in a nuclear age. They should remember that war is much more than a tool, it is more than a convenient means of advancing antiquated foreign policy goals or misplaced nationalism. The Great War has taught us that those who forget this lesson do so at their own risk.





On to the next book!

"The Hero With A Thousand Faces" by Jospeh Campbell (1949)

The last time you read a book by Joseph Campbell, your review said that you'd always wanted to read a compendium of human mythologies and that his stuff seemed like a good place to start. You were right. Campbell is a great place to start. But once you start something, you should keep going.

"The Hero With A Thousand Faces" is another exploration by Campbell comparing the stories humans have told one another for thousands of years- our myths, legends, religions. It is a masterful endeavor to find the common threads that link these stories all together. The book examines the themes and patterns that become visible to a scholar whose life was dedicated to studying these things. He acknowledges from the outset that there are obvious differences, not every myth follows in lockstep with every other. But Campbell does not concern himself with those distinctions. Rather he spent a lifetime cultivating a passion for pointing out the uncanny similarities.

In describing the extraordinary similitude of the world's greatest stories, he has to tell some of them. And Campbell teasingly doles the stories out in bits and pieces over the length of the book, giving parts of some of them in one chapter and picking the thread back up again later. A bit of a Japanese tale here, an Apache myth there, the beginning of an ancient Australian Aboriginal story here. This makes the book, which could have a very ponderous or scholarly tone, feel charmingly readable and perfectly addictive. It's reminiscent of sitting around a campfire with someone who knows all the great ghost stories, or playing music with someone who knows all of your favorite songs. For an unabashed story teller like you, it was an absolute joy to read.

Campbell makes extensive use of the footnotes system, as was popular in the mid 20th Century. You barely flipped one page that didn't have a note or two along the lower margin. Some even rivaled your translation of "Mein Kampf" for their length. The most memorable footnote, one on the various aspects of the idol depicting the god Shiva, went on for three full pages, and has the dubious honor of being the only footnote you've ever seen with it's very own footnote! Quirky details like this, and Campbell's natural charm and enthusiasm, made the book an instant favorite of yours.

In "The Hero With A Thousand Faces," Campbell observes that many of humanity's heroes go through remarkably similar journeys: a separation from the ordinary world, a connection with some kind of awesome, supernatural power, and a return back to the world with the knowledge or ability to save it or improve it in some way. The hero must be removed from the world he has known and filled with greatness in order to save that world.

It is a familiar story. It is the story of Prometheus and Icarus, of Gilgamesh and Ulysses, of Buddha and Moses, of Frodo Baggins and Luke Skywalker. There seems to be a recognition written in the human heart that our world is not the way it was meant to be. We instinctively know that the world should be and could be a less cruel and sorrowful place. For eons we have told ourselves stories of heroes who have transcended this broken reality and been endowed with a power to return again to set our world right. 

Many cultures share aspects of their mythologies which most of your fellow Christians believe to be exclusive to the Bible. Stories of world-ending floods abound across the globe. Heroes from every corner of the map end up in the bellies of whales. Saviors from countless cultures are born to virgin mothers and call themselves sons of God. These saviors often die for the sake of others (often for just three days) only to return to the world of the living with new powers of salvation. You knew most of that before you read this book, but you had no idea how many similarities your own faith shared with pagan myths of ancient (and some modern) religions. In fact, some early missionaries believed that Satan had preceded their journeys into heathen lands in order to seed the indigenous stories there with enough similarities to the story of Christ that the natives would not be able to accept the Gospel as anything new. (They were wrong. Christianity is still the number one religion on Earth, with almost 1/3 of all humans firmly in it's fold.)

None of this discouraged you from your own beliefs, your faith in God and in Jesus' sacrifice for your sins. You are not that insecure in your beliefs. You've long read many of the accounts in the Bible with the understanding that they were likely not meant to be taken literally. These biblical stories contain deep truths nonetheless. Why else would so many peoples be telling the same kind of stories? You aren't scared of knowledge. Holding your ears from hearing these other stories does not make them untold. Learning about other myths, and maybe especially the ones that echo your own religion, did not weaken your faith at all. In fact, it deepened it. It helped you feel more connected to the long history of human experience. Luke Skywalker may be the new version of Buddha, or Neo from "The Matrix" may be a re-telling of the Christian gospel, but that doesn't cheapen the original stories at all. The Greeks didn't abandon their own religion when they found out the Zeus/Poseidon dynamic had been inspired by the Sumerian gods Enki and Enlil. Neither did "The Hero With A Thousand Faces" inspire you to abandon your faith.

What was remarkable to you though was the realization that these stories are not simple warnings, they are not some caveman guideline for survival passed down from our shared ancestral dark ages, when life was nasty, brutish, and short. There is no caution in them to avoid the alien or exotic, no reminder to always be afraid. Instead, they are soaring and insistent reminders that we all have a deeper connection to a greater reality, that we are more than animals made of meat struggling to survive in a brutish and cruel world, more than ugly bags of mostly water. To quote the great sage Yoda, "Luminous beings are we. Not this crude matter." These stories are written into our souls, innate in our unconscious minds. These stories are intended to remind us of a truth that is deeper than the details of dogma. Or as Campbell says,

"And so, to grasp the full value of the mythological figures that have come down to us, we must understand that they are not only symptoms of the unconscious (as indeed are all human thoughts and acts) but also controlled and intended statements of certain spiritual principles which have remained as constant throughout the course of human history as the form and nervous structure of the human physique itself... The universal doctrine teaches that all the visible structures of the world -all things and beings- are the effects of a ubiquitous power out of which they rise, which supports and fills them during the period of their manifestation, and back to which they must ultimately dissolve. This power is known to science as energy, to the Melanesians as mana, to the Sioux Indians as wakonda,  the Hindu as shakti, and the Christian as the power of God. Its manifestation in the psyche is termed, by the psychoanalysts, libido. And its manifestation in the cosmos is the structure and flux of the universe itself."

This is not a book purporting some hopeless nihilistic atheism. There is a deeper meaning to all human life and we are all striving towards the search for the truth. We all realize that there is something there worth finding. Campbell simply offers a transcript of that search. The mythologies of the world tend to share one overarching theme: we are all connected to a greater power, and that connection binds each of us to one another in a way that humans throughout history have been innately compelled to revere.
 
It's the same old story. We may not each be gods, but we all have a bit of God in each of us. That's why we tell all these stories in the first place.





On to the next book!





P.S. Here is a handy dandy chart plotting out every step of the mythic hero's journey.

"His Majesty's Dragon" by Naomi Novik (2006)

Your friend Andrea gave you this book and told you that you would love it. She summarized by describing it as, "The history of the Napoleonic Wars... but with freaking dragons! It's perfect for you." It's good to have friends who totally get you, you know?

Andrea was right. That is exactly what this book is. It's like a work of historical fiction set in England in 1805, but instead of doing what historical fiction traditionally does, instead of imagining what famous historical figures might have been privately thinking, instead of using an established history as an opportunity to see familiar events through new eyes, Novik uses European history as a jumping off point to see what differences might have arisen if human history had included massive mythological flying beasts. Novik is unapologetic. There is no hint of irony or guilt. It's brilliant.

And these beasts are massive, big enough to support not just one lone rider but whole crews of men (and women, despite the cultural taboo of women actually doing anything). The flight crews are trained to move around their dragons, securing their positions with carabiners snapped onto the leather harnesses trussed all around their dragons. The teams fire vollies of rifles against enemy dragons and their crews, drop crude bombs on targets below, signal allied flight crews to coordinate plans and maneuvers, and render first aide to the dragon if the need arises. Each dragon is trained to fly with flights of others in mutually supportive formations, allowing the strengths of different breeds (and there are many different breeds) to compensate for the weaknesses in others. Tactics and strategies for the use of these dragon flights are reminiscent of the fledgling air forces of the two World Wars that wouldn't be fought for over one hundred more years (at least, in our dragonless reality).  Novik has created a completely new and surprisingly modern way to imagine these familiar mythological creatures, not to mention that she tells one charming story along the way.

The main characters in the book are not initially members of the British Aerial Corps. William Laurence is captain of the HMS Reliant, a 36-gun British frigate engaged on the high seas. Laurence is a consummate Naval Officer. The book opens with he and his crew boarding and capturing a French ship just west of Spain. On board the French ship is a prize unlike anything Laurence had expected, an unhatched dragon egg. When the dragon hatches and chooses Laurence as his rider (a choice that is not really negotiable) the two make their way back to the British Isles to be formally trained in the arts of aerial warfare.

It soon becomes clear that Laurence's dragon, named Temeraire, is not an ordinary breed of dragon. He is smarter, more curious and more independent than the other beasts. As fascinating as the concept of the novel is, as thrilling as the few battle scenes are, the thing that made "His Majesty's Dragon" so enjoyable to read was the relationship between Laurence and Temeraire. Laurence is mired in the gentility of 19th Century England and the professionalism of the King's Navy. The book has some of the best shades of Jane Austen. Laurence feels obligated to behave every inch the gentleman at all times and finds the informailty of the Aerial Corps confusing and off-putting. He finds himself out of step with his society for the first time and leans upon his closest relationship, that with his dragon.

Temeraire loves to be read to, and before long, he understands even advanced mathematics and physics better than Captain Laurence. The massive black dragon loves music and baths. He appreciates respect and becomes fiercely loyal towards his friend and rider. He does not tolerate injustice or cruelty and ultimately becomes a more endearing character than any human in the story. The relationship between Laurence and Temeraire is what defines the book, not the actions they take.

Having dragons in the world does not significantly change the timeline of history in this book. Admiral Nelson is still wins the battle of Trafalgar. King George is still the monarch of England. Napoleon Bonaparte still becomes the emperor of France after their bloody revolution. The concept is intriguing; is history fixed? Is the book already written? Would adding huge dragons have changed who won what battle during the Napoleonic Wars, or the American Revolution, or the American Civil War? What if the Comanches had ridden on the backs of dragons, or the Zulu, or the Vietcong? All things being equal, would the fabric of history have been radically changed at any point if something as fundamental as the notion that "dragons aren't real" were turned on its head.

It may seem like a silly question, but it's not. Historians and anthropologists often point out how horses were instrumental the the conquest of the Americas, how radically different warfare became after the advent of flight, how guns and steel define the difference between the conquerors and the conquered in Earth's history. Books like this make you wonder if it has ever really been the technologies that were employed that were so important in human history, or if it was truly the content of the characters of the people involved, if it was the relationships that they valued that made all the difference. Thankfully, Novik leaves this lingering question tantalizingly unanswered.

However, in "His Majesty's Dragon" Napoleon does eventually alter our timeline after his defeat at Trafalgar. Novik thinks of a clever and unexpected way to innovate a new strategy and use these mythical beasts of the air to attempt another invasion of England, and she kept you on the edge of your seat as you read how the dragons of the Great Britain tried to stave off disaster. It is perfect fodder for an arm chair general like you to try to out-think this author on how else the history of the Napoleonic Wars would have changed with a newly added, aerial dimension. Will Novik keep true to the rest of the history of the 19th Century or will Laurence and Temeraire go on to alter the course of the world in ways that will forge an entirely new timeline?

This was the first in an ongoing series of books (the ninth is due out next year) and you are sure you will end up reading as many of them as you can as fast as you can to see how your questions will be answered.




On to the next book!

"Secret Germany" by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh (2008)

In July of 1944, a bomb went off inside the same room where Adolf Hitler was receiving a briefing. It was placed by German officer, Claus Von Stauffenberg, who had more in mind than just the assassination of an insane tyrant. The bomb was just the beginning of a larger plot to topple the entire Nazi government in order to sue with the Allies to end the most destructive war in human history. Von Stauffenberg was the ring leader of a movement within the German Army's highest levels, a clandestine group, a cadre of men, a Secret Germany, that had been planning this event for years.

You thought "Secret Germany" was going to be another typical history book. It is not. Only the first 70 pages or so follow a traditional nonfiction format by detailing the events of the July 20th plot to overthrow the Nazi government. By page 70, Stauffenberg, the protagonist has already been unceremoniously executed in a downtown Berlin courtyard. The rest of the book moves from a biography of Claus Von Stauffenberg, into a deep historical contextualization of the German nation, followed by a mystical/spiritual justification for the ambitious coup attempt known as 'Valkyrie.' At times, "Secret Germany" seems more philosophical than historical, more Joseph Campbell than Stephen Ambrose.

The Americans were first able to meet the Germans on the ground in face to face combat at a place called Sidi Bou Zid in Tunisia in 1942. To put it bluntly, the Americans got their asses kicked. They turned and ran from the enemy who had taken over almost all of Europe and had threatened to dominate North Africa. Staff Officer for Operations of the 10 Panzer Division at the time (the German unit directly responsible for the American rout) was 36 year old Count Claus Von Stauffenberg. He was undeniably brilliant and had an ease of command that belied his young age. He dealt with problems in his units quickly and informally, remembering small, personal details about his subordinates. Stauffenberg was the kind of officer to whom even his superiors deferred in battle when it counted most. He was a legend in the Wehrmacht, on par with Irwin Rommel. Commanders scrambled to get him in their units. He was destined for high rank.

On April 7th, 1942, Stauffenberg was wounded by strafing American P-40 fighter-bombers. The American .50 caliber rounds tore off his right hand, destroyed his left eye, and left him with only three fingers on his left hand. His knees and legs were so badly wounded that it was believed this promising brilliant officer would never walk again. Transferred to Munich to recuperate, the famous Lieutenant Colonel Stauffenberg received more high ranking visitors than any patient the hospital had ever seen. He refused all pain killers and sedatives and was miraculously back on his feet and on active duty less than three months after he was wounded. While recovering he had remarked to friends that he believed his life had been spared for a reason. He believed he was meant to stop the senseless slaughter of millions (and he wasn't even aware of the full scope of the Holocaust) and do everything in his power to save Germany from utter destruction. "Since the generals have so far done nothing," he remarked to his uncle, "The colonels must now go into action."

A cabal of anti-Hitler conspirators had existed within the German military hierarchy as early as '38. As the new Fuehrer planned an invasion of Czechoslovakia, the conspirators were also planning to use the pretext of this clearly unnecessary war to depose (and likely execute) Hitler. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's act of appeasement put the brakes on any need to invade since the Czhecks had been handed to Adolf on a silver platter.

Maybe even more tragically than infamous appeasement of Chamberlain was the fact that this whole debacle served to effectively pull the rug out from under the coup and the conspirators subsequently lost all momentum. The conspiracy lost even more energy as the German military went on to invade country after country and to be met with victory after victory. The conspirators felt they had lost their best chance for success and that popular support for their efforts had likely evaporated.

Stauffenberg became head of the Reserve Army in October of 1943, and took up office in his new headquarters in Berlin. His arrival in the inner circle of the plot to overthrow Hitler energized everyone involved. His charisma, his confidence, and his passion motivated the others to move with purpose and coordination. Assassination attempts had been made on Hitler before (approximately 46 attempts between '21 and '45!), but the new circle of conspirators, lead by Stauffenberg, had plans to not only kill the Fuehrer, but to overthrow the entire German government. He called his plan and his circle of conspirators the "Secret Germany."

The plan already existed within the government and was, ironically, approved of by Hitler himself. It was called 'Valkyrie. ' Intended as a fail safe in case of an emergency, the official plan stated that the German Army (unbeknownst to the SS or the Gestapo) would seize control of all the levers of power within Germany, all government buildings and public spaces. The conspirators, who were all embedded in the highest levels of the military, planned to use Hitler's assassination to put 'Valkyrie' into motion, take control of the government, and then contact the Western Allies to put an end to the war.

On July 20th of '44, six weeks after the D-Day invasion, Claus Von Stauffenberg flew to Hitler's operations headquarters, called the Wolf's Lair, in east Prussia. He was scheduled to brief the Fuehrer on the state of the Reserve Army. A massive bomb was hidden inside Stauffenberg's briefcase. He set the ten minute timer (with only three fingers) and placed the bomb underneath the briefing table a mere six feet from Hitler. Stauffenberg immediately made an excuse to leave the room and exited the building. He and a co-conspirator watched from a safe distance as the hut in which the Fuehrer's briefing was taking place exploded into splinters. Stauffenberg drove to the nearest airstrip and flew to Berlin, convinced no one could have survived the assassination. He prepared himself to arrive in the capital and complete the coup d'etat he had begun.

The problem was that Hitler had survived. Another officer at the briefing had scooted the bomb farther under the heavy oak table and behind a thick divider. The explosion was thus channeled upwards and away from Hitler's body. Four men were killed in the blast, but Adolf was merely stunned and bloodied (though his right hand had a tremor for the rest of his life). As information leaked out from the Wolf's Lair, Stauffenberg's co-conspirators were paralyzed by indecision and impotent fear. They needed his motivating presence to spur them to action. Four critical hours were wasted while Stauffenberg was airborne.

Arriving in Berlin, Stauffenberg began to suspect Hitler had indeed survived, but he continued with the plan and kept 'Valkyrie' in motion. There was a massive manhunt on for his head, but he continued to encourage his fellow conspirators and attempt to overthrow the Nazi government. Men of conscience, the members of this Secret Germany had decided to deny their instincts to round up and execute all of the heads of the Nazi state. They would stick to the official 'Valkyrie' contingency plan. They refused to become the monsters they were fighting.

The coup actually succeeded for a brief time. The orders went out and commanding officers and civilian governors alike faithfully began to enact the 'Valkyrie' plan. The Fuehrer was dead, the German Army was in charge of the country, the SS was powerless. Eventually, word began spreading that Hitler might not be as dead as rumor had him. Soon, a power struggle began between Claus Von Stauffenberg and Adolf Hitler. One man would give an order and the other would immediately countermand it. Men in position of power were forced to choose a side, and they didn't all choose the Nazis. All the oaths of loyalty, all the massive rallies, all the trappings of absolute power, all the cult of personality, the threats, the unprecedented violence... they almost weren't enough to keep the Fuehrer in power. Eventually however, the Nazis reasserted their authority, with Hitler himself making a radio broadcast to assure all that he was still in control.

It has been estimated that between 2,000 and 3,000 men were killed in reprisal for the failed coup. 200 were condemned to die before a sham court in the days that followed. Hitler ordered that the hangings be filmed and for weeks afterwards he sadistically watched the footage while surrounded by loyal SS men.

Stauffenberg didn't live through the night of July 20th. He and several fellow conspirators were dragged into the courtyard of their headquarters and put in front of a firing squad. Just before he died, Claus Von Stauffenberg cried out, "Long live our Secret Germany!"

The book would have been fascinating if it had stopped there, but "Secret Germany" kept going and delved deeper into the issue than you had thought possible. Part 2 of the book chronicles the rise of Prussia and the creation of the modern German nation. The region known as Prussia essentially became the Germany that Hitler wanted to shape into a thousand year Reich. The First Reich was the Holy Roman Empire, the Second Reich was the newer German Empire of the 19th century; a superpower forged by Bismark and based on a militant industrialization inspired by the American Civil War. Stauffenberg's ancestors held pivotal roles throughout German history.

Part 3 is a biography of Stauffenberg and therefore also a brief history of the Nazis and Hitler's rise to power. Stauffenberg was a devotee of the famous German poet Stephan George. George stressed the importance of mythology and symbolism and was no fan of the Nazi party. He valued action over words and above all a sense of service to the public. Hailing from such an important and aristocratic family, Stauffenberg had always felt an obligation to serve his countrymen, to give back some of the privileges his fellow citizens had bestowed upon him. Stauffenberg defied everyone's expectations and joined the military to fulfill his sense of obligation to Germany.

As a logistics officer for the 6th Panzer Division during the invasion of Poland, he saw firsthand the brutality and wanton violence of Hitler's new SS murder units as they executed civilians for little or no reason at all. Stauffenberg did what he could to stem the needless bloodshed, but realized that bolder actions needed to be taken by men in positions of greater authority if these atrocities were to be stopped. If no one else would stop it all, he would be forced to climb the ranks and do it himself.

The battle of Stalingrad and the loss of the 300,000 man 6th Army to the Russians in January of '43 proved that Hitler was not the military genius that some claimed he was (some idiots still claim this). Hitler was a lunatic whose flights of vengeance and wrathful tirades needlessly proved the death of hundreds of thousands of German soldiers. It wasn't just civilians in foreign lands suffering under the boot hell of this mad man, it was Germans as well.

Part 4 was the longest portion of the book and it is an exhaustive examination of the history of Germanic philosophy, a massive contextualization of World War II; from Goethe to the brothers Grimm, from Heine and Fantane to Hegel (with whom you disagreed completely). It was fascinating to read and helped you place the war in a larger story of human evolution that you had never been able to do before... but you kind of just wanted to get back to the exciting part of the story.

It was from this rich history and unprecedented philosophical underpinnings that Hitler and the Nazis were able to infuriatingly draw any justification for their monstrous actions. They could pick and choose from paganism and Christianity or from Nihilism and Nationalism to inspire the German Volk, infuriatingly able to claim both Germany's position as the paragon of culture and art at the same time as they justified racism and military aggression. The Nazis stitched together a Frankenstein's Monster of a new religion cobbled together from Christian eschatology, the growing field of psychology, and popular social movements. In this new religion, Hitler was fashioned, unsurprisingly, as the Divine's representative on Earth.

Stauffenberg, a devout Catholic, rejected this return to barbarism, this casting off of responsibility that the Nazis idealized. He stands as a beacon of bravery and sanity in a terribly dark time in human history, and he is seen by many as the redeemer of modern Germany. Claus Von Stauffenberg was a man of action who knew exactly what he was getting into and he did it anyway. He was, and still is, a hero. He proved that good people can stand for what is right, even in the face of defeat. He showed the world that mass hysteria and unstoppable waves of totalitarian insanity can never sweep aside all those who oppose evil. Stauffenberg serves as a reminder that fighting against evil, raging against the dying of the light is what makes us noble beings. He proves that our hopes are not naive, that the lesson of World War II is not the darkness in human souls. The lesson is that the darkness will never win.

Resistance is never futile... even when it is.





On to the next book!




P.S. The final nine months of the war in Europe were as bloody as the previous four and a half years. With the end in sight, the Nazis were thrown into a frenzy of killing. German concentration camps stepped up their brutality and their output of corpses, the Russians cut through Eastern Europe like no one since the Mongols hordes, and the Western Allies firebombed entire cities into dust heedless of civilian casualties.  It is a powerful "what if" to think that had Stauffenberg's July 20th plot succeeded, and it almost did, the body count for World War II might have been cut in half.

"Divergent" trilogy by Veronica Roth (2011)

While interviewing John Green, Stephen Colbert recently defined the term Young Adult novel as "A regular novel... that people actually read." The genre gets crap from the snobbish, but a good story is a good story. If Tolkien published "The Lord of the Rings" today it likely would be pigeonholed into the YA category. You bought the first of this trilogy because you thought your wife would like it and she burned through the series in a week. So, you thought you'd give it a try as well. Not surprisingly, you were glad you did.

***SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!***

The "Divergent" trilogy is written in First Person Present Tense, like "The Hunger Games." Books written like this always make you feel like you can't put them down because the story feels like it's happening right now! It is a limiting style and forces authors to write characters who miss obvious details or make assumptions that readers can see right through, but it is a fun way to read an action story.

"Divergent" is followed by "Insurgent" and "Allegiant" and follows the story of one sixteen year old protagonist who lives in a dystopian future. Beatrice Prior lives in Chicago, but she doesn't know her city even has a name. The city is walled off and the citizens aren't sure what is on the other side of the walls, but they know it's dangerous. Society is arranged into factions, which are like castes but with two major differences. At sixteen, everyone is allowed to choose which faction they want to be for the rest of their lives, and these factions are based on basic personality traits determined by trippy psychological tests. Most people follow the Hindu idea of dharma (although they never call it that) and stick to the factions they are born into, but some switch even though it means being ostracized from their families.

Right away it is clear that Beatrice does not want to stay in Abnegation, her faction. They dedicate their lives to selfless service and she has decided that she cannot live like that. They don't even look at their reflections in mirrors for fear that it might lead to unseemly vanity. She knows that she is not good enough for that life. There are other options for her as Choosing Day arrives for all of the city's sixteen year old citizens; Dauntless value bravery, Amity are dedicated to peace and cooperation, Candor hold the search for truth and honesty as the ultimate goal, and Erudite value lives of study and intellect. Some fail to meet the standards of their chosen factions and face a terrifying prospect. They are kicked out into the cold world of what constitutes a sixth faction, the Factionless.

At her test, Beatrice discovers that she is something special, something that defies easy categorization, something Divergent. Confounding the authorities, her aptitude test confirms that she could fit well into three different factions. She is warned to hide her Divergent status from everyone. Divergents are dangerous and she is not the only one.

Beatrice chooses Dauntless instead of staying with her family in Abnegation, and she changes her name to Tris. The Dauntless seize every day and seek every adrenaline rush they can find. They travel around the city by jumping into open-sided train cars while the trains are still moving, they zipline from the tops of the tallest buildings just for fun. Tris finds that she is braver than she thought and quickly learns that the Dauntless realize that shared experiences and extreme exploits can forge a group of nonconformists into one unit. In Abnegation acceptance is expected, in Dauntless acceptance is earned and that makes it sweeter.

The Dauntless use a powerful hallucinogenic serum to face their fears in a dream world that can be projected onto a screen for others to see. They realize that bravery is not the absence of fear, rather it is doing something even though you are scared to, sometimes even because you are scared to. Roth made you ask yourself if your fears can ever leave you or if they just lose their power over you instead. The older you get, the more you agree with the Dauntless idea that the only way to find out, is to face those fears honestly and intentionally.

Tris falls in love with a slightly older Dauntless instructor named Four, and Roth does not shy away from the fact that sixteen year old girls are sexual beings. Every glance at Four, who lets her call him his real name, Tobias, makes Tris want to be closer to him, every touch sends electrics shocks through her body. The two spend the rest of the trilogy searching for times to be alone together. Tris' lust for Four is exciting and evokes a passion in her that reminds her why she chose Dauntless in the first place.

It soon becomes clear to Tris that something is wrong within the factions. They are all struggling against one another and tensions are high within the city as the factions slip into an "Us vs Them" mentality. And even within each individual faction, something has become corrupted, some central tenants lost. The Erudites are thirsting for power and influence. The Dauntless no longer seem to value the urge to sacrifice oneself in order to protect others. Conflict is inevitable and the plot of the trilogy is one of revolution, the second book is even titled "Insurgent."

Roth is able to subtly teach several lessons in her books. She reminds you of the utter finality of choices made with a gun in your hand and the regret that is inherent in using the ultimate violence against a soldier who was manipulated into fighting you. But really... aren't all soldiers manipulated to some degree into fighting? The plot reminded you of the tenuous nature of revolutions. Most of America's Founding Fathers had different ideas about how to shape their new nation, how to run it. It took two tries at forming a government and a bloody Civil War before we arrived at the system we have today. Most revolutions are far more bloody.

The story gives the lie to the idea that humans can be easily categorized by simple personality traits. We are far more complex than that. We can, of course, embody more than one faction at a time. We can be brave and smart, honest and cooperative. We can be happy and selfless, and in fact, you have learned that it is often difficult to be happy without being a little bit selfless. The last book reminded you also of the beauty in equality. There is a deep fulfillment and joy in the freedom of sharing the same citizenship and equal rights with all.

Above all, the "Divergent" trilogy is all about our choices. How they shape our lives, how each choice ripples out into the lives of others and echoes into the future. Our choices are precisely what make us who we are. You and Nico talked about this while you were reading the books and he observed, with the clarity of a child, that we literally choose to live. Every day. Every moment. We choose to go on. How we choose to define those lives is no less important than our choosing to live them at all. We are our choices.

Roth goes on to make the argument that we also get to choose what we believe, that truth may not be as objective as it seems. There is a conversation between Tris and her best friend in "Allegiant" that excellently tackles the idea of why we believe what we do. Tris starts:

"I know I'm fumbling for an explanation, one I may not really believe, but I say it anyway: 'I guess I don't really believe in genetic damage. Will it make me treat other people better? No. The opposite maybe.' 

And besides, I see what it's doing to Tobias... and I don't understand how anything good can possibly come from it.

'You don't believe things because they make your life better, you believe them because they're true,' Christina points out.

'But' - I speak slowly as I mull that over- 'isn't looking at the result of a belief a good way of evaluating if it's true?'"

The whole series was worth it to you just for that one scene.

The series, Like "The Hunger Games" is violent and bloody. Tris watches family members and good friends die right in front of her. She struggles with hard questions and impossible choices. There are deceptions within deceptions and the truth of the world that lies beyond Chicago's walls is one of a cold disconnection from humanity (and you missed those trains the Dauntless rode on). Lies and brutality are commonplace, people are treated like lab rats, and all for the sake of control. Also like "The Hunger Games," "Divergent" reminded you what we choose to sacrifice for. We should only do it for love, and we should only let others do it for the same reason. Self sacrifice should never be motivated by coercion or even obligation. Only love is powerful and meaningful enough to require the greatest price from us.

"Divergent" however, unlike "The Hunger Games," ends with a slightly more hopeful note. Roth leaves you with a beautiful reminder that although life is hard and we will all inevitably get hurt by living in this world, we can help mend one another. We each help to heal the hurts the world can inflict on us. We fix one another. There is hope in that knowledge, and also in the realization that we get to choose who will help make us better.




On to the next book!