Michael Kohlhaas by Heinrich von Kleist

Intense legal drama and revenge thriller
Michael Kohlhaas, a novel by Heinrich von Kleist, is a remarkable book that most American readers have likely never heard of, but it is highly regarded as a classic by German-language readers. One of the favorite books of author Franz Kafka, this epic of one man’s struggle with the law obviously influenced the later writer’s legally themed fiction. After reading Michael Kohlhaas, I was shocked to find out that it was originally published in 1810. I would have guessed around 1920. The book has the feel of proto-modernism, like something Kafka, Knut Hamsun, or Hermann Hesse might have written.

Von Kleist based his novel on the real-life story of a 16th-century merchant named Hans Kohlhase. From the book’s opening chapters, it is difficult to determine when the story takes place, but then Martin Luther shows up as a supporting character, establishing that the narrative is set in the Renaissance. At the time, Germany was part of the Holy Roman Empire and was divided into smaller nation-states, governed by Electors, including Saxony and Brandenburg, which figure prominently in the story. Beyond that, it is not necessary to know a great deal about Central European history, even though the plot deals heavily with law and politics. Regardless of its time or place, the way von Kleist explores the universal themes of justice, vengeance, pride, and redemption will still prove profoundly moving to 21st-century readers.

Michael Kohlhaas is the story of how one man’s admirable and unswerving commitment to seeking justice intensifies into a crusade for bloody revenge. Kohlhaas is a horse dealer who owns an estate in Brandenburg but frequently crosses over into Saxony to conduct trade in Dresden. On one such business trip, he is halted at the border by a nobleman of Saxony, Squire Wenzel Tronka, who deceptively informs Kohlhaas that if he wants to cross into Saxony, a new law requires him to produce a passport. Kohlhaas protests that he has never been asked for such a document before, and he does not have one in his possession. The Squire insists that Kohlhaas can cross only if he leaves behind collateral in the form of two prized black horses, and Kohlhaas reluctantly agrees. After doing his business in Dresden, Kohlhaas returns to find his horses in terrible condition. Without his permission, the Squire has used them to pull plows in the fields, work to which they were totally unsuited. In addition, the groom that Kohlhaas left behind to tend the horses has been beaten and run off the Tronka castle grounds. Kohlhaas files a legal suit in Dresden demanding that Squire Tronka restore the horses to their original fine condition before returning them to Kohlhaas’s possession. His suit is rejected because Squire Tronka has relatives who are high-ranking figures in the government of Saxony. Deprived of fair and just compensation for his wrongs, Kohlhaas decides to take the law into his own hands.

From there matters snowball, and the conflict escalates. Though there is a great amount of legal and ethical complexity to the story, it is by no means a mere courtroom drama. Swords are drawn, and blood is shed in a truly gripping tale that is surprisingly morally ambiguous for its time. For the most part, the narrative is quite realistic, though towards the end von Kleist introduces a supernatural element that calls to mind the witches, soothsayers, and prophecies that frequently show up in Shakespeare’s plays. In fact, though written in prose, this almost has the dramatic intensity of one of Shakespeare’s tragedies or history plays. Though it was published over two centuries ago, Michael Kohlhaas turned out to be a truly pleasant surprise and an excellent read.
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The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

Murder mystery with Church history
The Name of the Rose, first published in 1980, is the highly acclaimed first novel by Italian author and professor of philosophy Umberto Eco. The book is a mystery novel set in a 14th century Benedictine monastery in Italy. The “detective” in this mystery is William of Baskerville, an English Franciscan friar, who has come to the monastery to participate in a diplomatic summit between representatives of Pope John XXII and a group of monks accused of heresy. William is accompanied by a young Austrian monk, Adso of Melk, who, like a good Doctor Watson surrogate, serves as narrator. Upon arrival, the two discover that a monk has recently been found murdered, and the abbot asks William, renowned for his reasoning powers, to look into the matter.

In his initial descriptions of William’s physical appearance, personality, and deductive techniques, it seems as if Eco has intentionally patterned his detective after Sherlock Holmes. Early on, Eco also riffs on a scene from Voltaire’s Zadig (regarded by some to be the first piece of modern detective fiction) when William provides a detailed description of a horse that he has never seen, simply by exercising his prodigious faculty of reason. Like any good classic mystery thriller, The Name of the Rose includes a few great scenes of intense suspense, including late-night forays into a spooky labyrinthine library that any lover of old books would be happy to get lost in.

Make no mistake about it, The Name of the Rose is a brilliant mystery, even for those who don’t habitually read mystery novels. There is no getting around the fact, however, that in order to enjoy this mystery you are going to have to spend hours reading about the history of the Catholic Church. The depiction of life inside a medieval monastery is really quite fascinating, but the historical context gets quite tedious. It often seems as if Eco is just using the mystery story to showcase his erudition. Thankfully, he is not pushing any religious agenda; he just comes across as a guy who is obsessed with the minutiae of European history. He loves to go off on any digression, flashback, or dream sequence that will allow him to inject as much arcane knowledge into the proceedings as possible, necessary or not. His prose (at least the English translations I’ve read) is usually a pleasure to read, but often in mid-narrative he will break off into a list that goes on for pages—of decorations in a chapel, for example, or books on a shelf—just to indulge in obscure vocabulary. It is difficult to keep track of all the monks in the supporting cast and the distinguishing differences in their theological views.

The Name of the Rose inspires mixed emotions. On the one hand, one wishes all historical novels could be written this intelligently (as opposed to, for example, the works of Dan Brown, who writes Eco-esque books that seem aimed at a junior high audience). On the other hand, if you’re not avidly interested in the history of the Papacy, the Franciscan and Benedictine orders, or debates on the poverty of Christ, at times this book can be a total bore. Though The Name of the Rose is plotted better than Eco’s second novel, Foucault’s Pendulum, I prefer the latter simply because the historical content is less narrowly focused and more interesting to me personally. The Name of the Rose is certainly a work of great literary merit, but many readers, even fans of mysteries or historical novels, will likely find it tiresome.
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Rebel Raider by H. Beam Piper

Entertaining nonfiction Civil War biography
I’m a fan of H. Beam Piper’s writings in science fiction, and I read this work as the final piece in The H. Beam Piper Megapack, a collection of nearly his complete works published by Wildside Press. Rebel Raider was originally published in the December 1950 issue of True: The Men’s Magazine. It tells the story of real-life Confederate guerrilla John Singleton Mosby who commanded a party of irregular partisans, known as Mosby’s Raiders, that made incursions into Union-held territory to antagonize and terrorize the Union Army.

Although I was fully aware that this was not a work of science fiction before I began reading it, I expected it to be a work of historical fiction. Instead, it appears to be an almost entirely factual nonfiction account of Mosby’s life and career, as researched and rewritten by Piper. Only the slightest amount of fictionalization is injected into battles or conversations to make the reader feel as if he or she were a spectator at these historical events. The characters, including Mosby himself, don’t amount to much more than names augmented by biographical facts, with little or no hint of their personalities, just essentially a resume of deeds done and missions accomplished.

Although I do enjoy reading history I am by no means a Civil War buff, but even a layman like myself can find much to appreciate in Rebel Raider. Piper was an arms collector and self-professed ballistics expert, and his gun nuttery is often apparent in his science fiction works. Here, however, although he does mention the arms used in various situations, he doesn’t get overly carried away with technical details of the weapons like he does in his mystery novel Murder in the Gunroom. You don’t have to be a hardcore military buff to enjoy Piper’s narrative and learn an interesting fact or two in the process. This chronicle of Mosby’s war record provides an interesting perspective on the Civil War, and his post-war career, briefly touched upon here, is also fascinating.

Obviously, Rebel Raider is an anomaly in Piper’s body of work, and fans of his impressive career in science fiction need not feel compelled to read it, but it is a good, brisk, and entertaining read for those interested in American history.
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The Mad Planet by Murray Leinster

Post-apocalyptic nature writing
Science fiction writer Murray Leinster’s novella The Mad Planet was first published in the June 12, 1920 issue of The Argosy magazine. The mad world referred to in the rather lazy, generic title is actually the planet Earth, 30,000 years in the future. Climate change has drastically altered the planet’s flora and fauna, and mankind has adapted into a new species in order to survive in the harsh environment. While Leinster acknowledges that human industry has raised the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, that is not the reason for the apocalypse in this story. Instead, fissures suddenly burst open in the Earth’s surface, and greenhouse gases spew forth from deep beneath the planet’s crust. The result, in the long run, is a world nearly devoid of plants, carpeted instead with various forms of fungi. The animal life of the 320th century consists almost entirely of giant insects and arachnids. The hero of the story, a humanoid named Burl, traverses through toadstool forests fighting off gargantuan spiders and waves of foot-long army ants.

One disappointing aspect of The Mad Planet is that the plot consists entirely of just one guy walking through this landscape. Through flashbacks, there is mention made of a human society existing in this world, but the reader sees almost no interaction between Burl and other members of the human race. This is the first book of a Burl series, so perhaps Leinster delves deeper into these future hominids in a later volume. Here the plot is only the barest of threads, as if the stage setting were far more important to Leinster than the narrative that takes place within it. That said, it is still a very good piece of science fiction writing. The way that Leinster directs the reader’s experience of this future Earth is more effective than, for example, Edgar Rice Burroughs’s descriptions of the lost world in his Land That Time Forgot series. Perhaps the lack of human contact succeeds in one respect, in that Leinster need not be stingy with the monster bugs. The prose is never boring, and Leinster adds a lot of creative touches that bolster the authenticity of this speculative world, such as when Burl crafts himself an outfit from a giant moth’s wing.

For the most part, the book feels like a naturalist’s essay on the ecosystem of a fictional universe, like some bizarre journal of an acid trip by John Muir or Henry David Thoreau. Beyond that, Leinster also includes some supplemental commentary on human development. Though existing 30 millennia in the future, Burl and his people are about as idiotic as mankind was 30 millennia ago, yet he still has the capacity to learn and grow, create new tools, and exercise rudimentary reasoning. Leinster delivers a positive message by using Burl to illustrate the unstoppable ingenuity of mankind, even in the face of deadly adversity. Really though, even that seems like just another excuse to show off this freaky fungi world and its giant insects.

Still, despite its faults, this is an entertaining adventure and an admirable work of sci-fi for 1920. For those who enjoy vintage pulp fiction, The Mad Planet is certainly worth a download and a couple hours of light reading.
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Lives of Eminent Zoologists, from Aristotle to Linnaeus by William MacGillivray

The king of classification and his predecessors

Carl Linnaeus

William MacGillivray (1796-1852) was a Scottish naturalist. His name may ring a bell with birders because his colleague John James Audubon named a bird species after him, the MacGillivray’s Warbler. MacGillivray’s book, Lives of Eminent Zoologists, from Aristotle to Linnaeus, was published in 1834. I came across this book while searching for a biography of Carl Linnaeus, the 18th-century Swedish biologist known as the father of taxonomy. For those seeking an education into this distinguished scientist’s accomplishments, this volume will serve you well. The entire second half of the book—13 chapters—is devoted to Linnaeus.

MacGillivray starts his book with two chapters on Aristotle, which are also quite interesting. Everything in between, however, is painfully boring. Even Pliny the Elder’s death at Pompeii from the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius can’t liven things up, and the extremely long chapter on British naturalist John Ray, who must have been a personal hero of MacGillivray’s, is excruciating. MacGillivray doesn’t so much offer biographies of these figures as bibliographical histories. From his summarizing of what had been published in the field of zoology, it is remarkable how few books on animals actually existed prior to the 18th century. For many of the personages profiled here, zoology was merely a sidelight. Most were botanists first, perhaps because plants are much easier to examine than animals. Many were also physicians by profession, and several also studied for positions in the clergy. MacGillivray’s book was published before the theory of evolution was proposed, so it is taken for granted that species were created as is by God, and the author comments on his subjects’ piety almost as much as their scientific discoveries. The profiles in the book are not entirely adulatory. MacGillivray is quick to point out the mistakes made by his illustrious predecessors and the fact that many of them merely summarized prior research rather than engaging in first-hand research of natural phenomena.

Not so with Linnaeus, the book’s guest of honor. MacGillivray makes it clear that Linnaeus had a monumental impact on biological science. Linnaeus invented the system of classification and nomenclature that biologists still use today to assign plants and animals to kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. In one of his comprehensive texts, Linnaeus classified 7,000 species of plants and animals, nearly all those known to the Western world at the time. His accomplishments in botany were even more prodigious than his work in zoology. Linnaeus even applied his classification system to the mineral kingdom. While today species are arranged in an evolutionary family tree, Linnaeus, working prior to an awareness of evolution, classified plants and animals according to morphological characteristics, primarily for the purpose of identification. While much has changed since then, the overall systematic structure he established still remains in use. As MacGillivray points out, Linnaeus made his share of errors, some of which brought him ridicule even during his lifetime, but there is no denying his important and enduring contributions to scientific knowledge. MacGillivray details Linnaeus’s expeditions, his teaching career, his catalog of publications, and his family life (with nothing good to say about Mrs. Linnaeus). MacGillivray’s treatment may be too thorough for some readers, but those with an interest in natural taxonomy will find much food for fascination amid the copious detail.

The content on Linnaeus is worth a solid four stars; the rest of the book brings the overall rating down. If you just want to learn about Linnaeus, I would recommend skipping the first half entirely.
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Rock Crystal by Adalbert Stifter

The quietest of thrillers
Rock Crystal, a novella by Austrian writer Adalbert Stifter, was originally published in 1845 under the German title Bergkristall. The story takes place amid the mountains of Stifter’s homeland. He begins by describing a rural village nestled high in an alpine valley, where the inhabitants lead rather simple, insular lives amid a setting of great natural beauty. In this village, named Gschaid, lives a shoemaker and his family. As was often the case in rural communities of centuries past, the shoemaker’s two children, Conrad and Sanna, enjoy a great deal of independence. They are allowed to journey unaccompanied to a neighboring village to visit their grandparents, a trip of at least a few miles that includes traveling through a mountain pass. After one such visit to the town of Millsdorf on a winter’s morn, the kids set out in the afternoon to return to Gschaid. On their way home, they are hit by heavy snowfall, which hinders their visibility and obscures their path home. Disoriented, the children become lost in the mountains.

The best thing about Rock Crystal is the way Stifter gradually progresses the story towards this predicament. The narrative follows the children, who learn the danger of their situation long after the reader and still approach their journey with gaiety until well after the point of losing their way. Though this would be a parents’ nightmare, the reader doesn’t experience what the parents are going through. The children never seem to realize the danger they’re in, and unfortunately that ambivalence rubs off on the reader. The narrative is told in a very straightforward, deadpan style that nullifies any suspense, if Stifter in fact intended any suspense in the first place. The plot of the novella seems only to serve as a showpiece for the stage setting, as Stifter lovingly describes the mountains and glaciers of the Austrian wild. Stifter was often praised for his depictions of nature, but I didn’t find anything particularly remarkable about his natural description, at least in the hands of English translator Lee M. Hollander, when compared with other writers of winter landscapes such as Jack London, Knut Hamsun, or any number of naturalist novelists.

The story of Rock Crystal takes place on Christmas Eve. Though not specifically a Christmas story in the traditional sense of the phrase, it does have some Christmas spirit to impart in its appreciation of the winter landscape and its picturesque depiction of rural village life. Any story of children separated from their parents also can’t help but convey a reinforcing of the importance of family and the comfort of being with loved ones. I don’t think Stifter intended Rock Crystal to be children’s literature, but since the protagonists are children there is an unavoidable feeling of kid lit about it. One can see how young readers might enjoy the story of these independent children and their thrilling adventure, while adult readers will be more drawn to Stifter’s depiction of nature through poetic realism.

Stifter is highly regarded in the German-language literary world, hailed by fans such as Thomas Mann and Hannah Arendt, and the New York Review of Books thought enough of Rock Crystal to pluck it from the public domain and rerelease it as a paperback. After reading the book, however, it is not easy to discern why this unassuming work has received such acclaim. The free public domain version of the 1914 English translation by Hollander can be found in the book The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII. For those who are attracted to the setting of an Austrian mountain village, it is worth a free download and a couple hours of your time.
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Montezuma’s Daughter by H. Rider Haggard

An Englishman’s adventures among the Aztecs and conquistadors
English author H. Rider Haggard is primarily known for his adventure novels set in Africa, most notably King Solomon’s Mines, She, and their various sequels. In 1893, however, Haggard published Montezuma’s Daughter, an adventure novel set in Mexico at the time of the Spanish conquest. As a lover of classic literature and an enthusiast of Mexican and ancient American history, I’m always on the lookout for a good, vintage novel dealing with the Aztecs, the Maya, or the Inca. Such books are rare, however, so I consider myself lucky to have stumbled upon this one. That said, after having read King Solomon’s Mines, I didn’t approach Montezuma’s Daughter with overly high expectations. To my pleasant surprise, however, this really is a very enjoyable adventure novel, and in my opinion far better than Haggard’s better-known works.

Though it was the Spaniards who conquered Mexico, Haggard was writing for an English audience, so he must have felt compelled to give the novel an English protagonist. The hero of Montezuma’s Daughter, Thomas Wingfield, is a young Englishman with a Spanish mother. He travels to the Americas in pursuit of a Spanish relative named de Garcia who has grievously wronged him and his family. In his quest for revenge, Wingfield ends up in Mexico where he is reunited with his nemesis, who has signed on as a member of Hernán Cortés’s expedition to conquer the Aztecs and capture their gold. At first the idea of an English witness to the Spanish conquest seems farfetched, but in the long run Wingfield’s Englishness actually works in the novel’s favor because it allows the Spaniards to be the villains. Wingfield takes the side of the Aztecs and lives among them, first as a prisoner and then as an honored guest. He even falls in love with the daughter of the Aztec emperor Montezuma, the beautiful and stately princess Otomie.

Though Haggard’s African novels often felt a bit too fanciful in their depiction of the Dark Continent, here he has actually done his research quite well. Those interested in Mexican history will enjoy the way he works Wingfield in as a witness to important events in the fall of the Aztecs, or at least the legends that have been built around the history. Not surprisingly, the narrative is heavy on human sacrifice, the one aspect of ancient Mexican culture that every adventure writer fixates on. Nevertheless, Haggard portrays the Mexicans more sympathetically than the Spaniards and treats the Aztec civilization with admiration, dignity, and respect. His depiction of an interracial relationship is surprisingly enlightened for the 19th century, particularly given that the woman is no damsel in distress but rather an equal partner in the union. On those occasions when Haggard does disparage the Native Americans, it is not on any racial or ethnic grounds, but rather—predictably for the Victorian era—on religious grounds, because they are not Christians.

The novel does have its flaws. Most glaring is the unbelievable way in which Wingfield and de Garcia keep conveniently and coincidentally running into each other all over the world. The novel also tends to drag in its second half, and the long-awaited climax is less satisfying than one would hope. Overall, however, the story is quite entertaining. What’s more, when Haggard deals with issues of the heart—separation from a loved one, the joy of family, the death of a child—the novel is actually quite touching. Frankly, I didn’t know Haggard had it in him. Anyone who enjoys Victorian adventure novels of the “lost world” vein or historical novels set in ancient times will enjoy reading Montezuma’s Daughter, especially those who have an interest in Mexico and its Native civilizations.
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Celebrating Polish Literature

. . . and a century of independence!

November 11, 2018 is the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. Celebrated in many nations as Armistice Day or Remembrance Day, and in the United States as Veteran’s Day, November 11 is known as National Independence Day in Poland, where the end of the Great War meant the end of foreign occupation and the birth of Poland as a modern nation. At the time of the war, Poland had literally been wiped off the map for more than a century, its territory divided among Russia, Prussia, and Austria. When those conquering nations were defeated in the First World War, the Second Polish Republic was formed, and Poland was once again an independent nation. 

In honor of the occasion, Old Books by Dead Guys takes this opportunity to recognize the underrated literature of Poland. Though by no means an expert on the subject, OBDG does have an interest in Polish literature and has reviewed 28 books by Polish authors, with hopefully more to come in the future. Below is an annotated list of these prior Polish posts. Click on the titles below to read the full reviews. I believe with the exception of the last title on this list, all of these books are in the public domain and therefore available for free download from sources like Amazon, Project Gutenberg, and HathiTrust.

   

Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855)
Widely regarded as Poland’s all-time greatest poet, Mickiewicz wrote the Polish national epic Pan Tadeusz, the last great epic poem in European literature (though in English translation you are more likely to find it in prose form).

• Pan Tadeusz (1834) - 3.5 stars

Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846-1916)
Winner of the 1905 Nobel Prize in Literature. Sienkiewicz, one of the most Romantic of Romanticists, is best known for grand historical epics of Polish History (the With Fire and Sword trilogy) and ancient Rome (Quo Vadis), though he also wrote novels about modern Poland (In Vain).

• In Vain (1876) - 2.5 stars
• “The Light-House Keeper of Aspinwall” (1881) in Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish, Greek, Belgian, Hungarian (1898) - 4.5 stars
• Without Dogma (1891) - 4 stars
• “Bartek the Conqueror” (1882) in Tales by Polish Authors (1915) - 5 stars
• With Fire and Sword (1884) - 4 stars
• The Deluge (1886) - 5 stars
• Pan Michael (1888) - 5 stars
• Lillian Morris and Other Stories (1894) - 4 stars
• Quo Vadis (1895) - 4.5 stars
• Hania (1897) - 2.5 stars
• Sielanka: An Idyll (1898) - 4 stars
• So Runs the World (1898) - 2.5 stars
• Life and Death and Other Legends and Stories (1904) - 3.5 stars
• On the Field of Glory (1906) - 3 stars
• In Desert and Wilderness (1911) - 2.5 stars

Boleslaw Prus (1847-1912)
Probably the least-known name on this list to English-language audiences, though highly respected in his home country. In contrast to Sienkiewicz, Prus was a realist who mostly wrote about contemporary Poland, except for The Pharaoh and the Priest, which is set in ancient Egypt.

• The Returning Wave (1880) - 5 stars
• The Pharoah and the Priest (1897) - 2.5 stars

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)

Born Józef Theodor Konrad Korzeniowski in the Polish Ukraine. Emigrated to Britain and wrote in English. Considered to be one of the greatest writers in English literature (though to be honest, I’m not a big fan.)

• Almayer’s Folly (1895) - 2.5 stars
• Lord Jim (1900) - 2.5 stars
• Victory (1915) - 3 stars

Wladyslaw Reymont (1867-1925)
Winner of the 1924 Nobel Prize in Literature. A naturalist in the vein of Emile Zola, Reymont’s four-volume novel The Peasants (Polish title: Chlopi) is one of the greatest works in Polish literature.

• The Comedienne (1896) - 3 stars
• The Peasants (1909) - 5 stars

Fiction Collections

• Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish, Greek, Belgian, Hungarian (1898) - 4 stars
  Includes “The Lighthouse Keeper of Aspinwall” by Sienkiewicz, plus four more stories by authors of other nations.
• Tales by Polish Authors, edited by Else C. M. Benecke (1915) - 4 stars
  Includes selections by Sienkiewicz, Adam Szymanski, Stefan Zeromski, and Waclaw Sieroszewski.
• More Tales by Polish Authors, edited by Else C. M. Benecke and Marie Busch (1916) - 4 stars
  Includes selections by Prus, Reymont, Adam Szymanski, Stefan Zeromski, and Waclaw Sieroszewski.
• Selected Polish Tales, edited by Else C.M. Benecke (1921) - 2.5 stars
  Includes selections by Prus, Reymont, Adam Szymanski, Stefan Zeromski, Juliusz Kaden-Bandrowski, and Madame Rygier-Nalkowska.

Nonfiction

• Poland: A Study of the Land, Literature, and People by Georg Brandes (1903) - 4.5 stars
  In this book—part travelogue, part investigative journalism, part political commentary, part literary critique—Danish literary critic Brandes chronicles four trips he made to Poland and provides an insightful portrait of life under Russian occupation.
• The Essential Guide to Being Polish: 50 Facts & Facets of Nationhood by Anna Spysz and Marta Turek - 4 stars
  Two Polish-American journalists created this guide to all things Polish, covering both the history of the country and the state of the nation in the present day. This guide presents a wealth of information on a variety of subjects, including politics, religion, art, customs, famous Poles, and the Polish diaspora throughout the world.

Our Children’s Children by Clifford D. Simak

Unexpected guests from the future

Clifford D. Simak gets down to business very quickly in his science fiction novel Our Children’s Children. On page one, an interdimensional doorway opens up on a suburban lawn, and out walks a stream of people who claim to be refugees from the future. In their time, five centuries ahead of our own, a highly intelligent and incredibly lethal alien species has attacked Earth. Unable to defeat the extraterrestrial invaders, the human race opts to prevent the extinction of humanity by fleeing into the past. The constant stream of refugees pouring forth from “time tunnels” around the world may eventually add up to as many as two billion people, placing a heavy burden on the present-day population. Though these uninvited visitors are our distant descendants, do we have the means or the wherewithal to help them? And given the threat they faced in the future, perhaps human beings won’t be the only unexpected guests traveling through those time tunnels.

Simak usually sets his science fiction stories in rural Wisconsin or Minnesota, but in this novel the main plot line takes place in Virginia, so that the author can have easy access to Washington, DC. The phenomenon is not localized, however, as the time tunnels have opened in various nations, and international relations plays a part in the overall story. One solution that’s suggested for the refugee problem is to start a new civilization in the prehistoric past, an idea that Simak would further develop to better effect in his 1978 novel Mastodonia. As ingenious a premise as that may be for a science fiction novel (or two), Simak never really addresses the fact that every animal that’s killed, tree that’s burned, or rock that’s overturned might have a butterfly effect that alters the course of human history. Still, it makes for some fun speculation if you don’t take it too seriously.

Though this was published in 1974, relatively late in Simak’s career, it feels rather simplistic, like the plot of an early ‘60s monster movie. I kept expecting some startling revelations that would turn conventions on their ear, but such twists never came, just a few small surprises at the end. Simak doesn’t really even delve too deeply into the theory of time travel, but instead just uses it to set up the refugee crisis, which he explores from various political, social, and economic dimensions. The character development is weaker here than in most of Simak’s stories. Only one person, a White House press secretary, is really fleshed out in more than two dimensions. Simak opts for quantity instead, introducing new characters in almost every chapter. Since almost everyone is a white, Anglo-Saxon male (except for two female characters), after a while it becomes very difficult to tell the difference between a Steve Wilson, Tom Manning, or Sam Henderson, especially when their occupations are the only factor that distinguishes one from another.

The ending of Our Children’s Children is rather inconclusive. Instead of a problem being solved, only a plan has been formed that may solve the problem. If this were a longer book, such a lack of closure might be truly annoying, but since this book is only about 200 pages, and a rather brisk and engaging read, the reader doesn’t much regret the fact that all the loose ends aren’t tied up in a neat little bow. Our Children’s Children reads like Simak lite. This novel is not a science fiction masterpiece by any means, and I wouldn’t want anyone to judge Simak on the basis of this work. To those who have never read Simak’s writing before, I would recommend better novels like Way Station or City. For Simak fans, however, this is an entertaining read, even if it’s not as intellectually deep as his typical fare.
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Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

House Atreides, the next generation
Children of Dune, the third book in Frank Herbert’s epic Dune series, was published in 1976, seven years after the preceding volume, Dune Messiah. At the end of that last book, Paul Atreides, the emperor/messiah known as Muad’Dib, walked off into the desert to die, thus leaving his twin children Leto II and Ghanima to reign as co-emperors over the known universe. Until the children reach an appropriate age to rule, however, the empire is governed by Paul’s sister Alia, who acts as regent. Alia and the twins share an unusual congenital anomaly. Through a combination of eugenics and the effects of the planet Arrakis’s most valuable export, the spice that alters human consciousness, all three were born with ancestral memories going back hundreds of generations, and thus attained full awareness and adult intelligence within the womb. The drawback to such a gift, however, is the danger that one might become what’s called an “abomination,” possessed by the very ancestors whose consciousness they carry within their minds. It is also possible that when the twins grow up they may share their father’s ability to foresee the future. Their own future, however, is in jeopardy, as the ruling members of House Corrino, the former imperial dynasty that was overthrown in the original Dune novel, have developed a plot to assassinate the twins.

Even for a confessed Dune nut like myself, this is a tough book to get into. This is my second or third time reading this, but it’s been a while, and though I had a pretty good idea how this one ended, the getting there was sometimes a challenge. Much of the “action” takes place within the characters’ heads, in the form of visions and ancestral conversations. Characters who can see millions of years into the past and future don’t always explain their motives or actions to those of us who can’t, and Herbert seems to delight in disorienting the reader as much as possible. As the Dune series moves forward, Herbert seems to opt more and more for psychological over physical action, although there’s still plenty of the latter to be found in Children of Dune. At times it can be as frustrating as watching a multi-player chess game undertaken by people who are exponentially smarter than you are, but a big part of what makes the Dune books so admirable is the intelligence with which they are written and the multiple levels of depth in the narrative, which can be enjoyed merely as a space opera or explored further for its philosophical and theoretical riches.

Ultimately, the reader’s patience is rewarded as all the unexpected twists and tangled threads come together into a satisfyingly colossal conclusion. While the story of Dune Messiah feels narrower in scope, Children of Dune equals the epic bombast of the original Dune. Nothing less than the future of humanity is at stake!

At the time it was published, Children of Dune was seen as the climax of a trilogy, but by page 100 one can already see Herbert laying the foundation for a fourth book. The first three books do constitute a trilogy of sorts in that this is the last book to feature many of the characters introduced in the first volume. From here, Herbert takes a leap forward centuries into the future for the fourth book, God Emperor of Dune. To be honest, Children of Dune is probably my least favorite of the first three volumes, but still it is so much better than the vast majority of science fiction that’s out there, and it is an invaluable piece of the monumental masterpiece that is the Dune saga. The six books that Herbert set in this world (I haven’t read any of the posthumous prequels or sequels) make up one of the most ambitious novel cycles in all literature, science fiction or otherwise.
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Lives in Ruins: Archaeologists and the Seductive Lure of Human Rubble by Marilyn Johnson

Layman’s perspective for a novice reader

In her 2014 book Lives in Ruins, author Marilyn Johnson applies her “irrepressible wit and curiosity” (quoted from the jacket copy) to the field of archaeology. I approached this book with some trepidation because I had previously read Johnson’s book on the profession of librarianship, This Book Is Overdue!, and found it disappointing. In the end, however, having long had an avid armchair interest in archaeology, I couldn’t resist the promise of an inside look into the lives of archaeologists. The good news is that Lives in Ruins is better than Johnson’s previous book. She doesn’t gush over the personality quirks of her subjects as much as she did with the librarians, and she concentrates more on the actual profession itself. The bad news is in many ways it’s more of the same, a little too frivolous and elementary to amount to a worthwhile read.

Indiana Jones has unrealistically colored everyone’s conception of what an archaeologist is or does, not only because he’s a death-defying tomb raider but also because he’s a tenured professor. As Johnson points out, most archaeologists aren’t so lucky, and many struggle to get by on contract work for low pay and no benefits, hopping from job to job like nomads. The most valuable take-away from this book is the realistic view of how difficult it is to achieve security and success in the profession, and the degree to which the important work that archaeologists do is so underappreciated. I was also surprised to learn the extent to which the U.S. Department of Defense acts as a patron of archaeological research.

For the most part, however, the problem with Lives in Ruins is that if you are interested enough in archaeology to want to read this book, then you probably already know most of what’s in it. I’m not an archaeologist, but I do read a little on the subject. I subscribe to Archaeology magazine and National Geographic, both of which are intended for a general readership, but Johnson writes in a style of journalism that is even more casual in tone and elementary in content. The effect is similar to getting a guided tour of a museum by a docent who doesn’t know much more about the collections than you do. I certainly wasn’t expecting a textbook on the subject, but the marketing copy promised behind-the-scenes, inside knowledge of archaeologists’ lives, and the book doesn’t deliver enough of that. Instead, Johnson mostly just summarizes the research of the archaeologists she’s interviewed from a layman’s perspective for a novice reader.

Johnson attends field school and works at some dig sites. In her reporting on what goes on there she emphasizes her amateur status and indulges in fish-out-of-water humor that undermines the relevance of her narrative. In a few chapters she sits in on meetings at the American Institute of Archaeology conference and reports on what she heard there. She has access to many distinguished professionals in the field and reports on everything they say with the amazement of a novice: Archaeologists are doing this! Who knew?! Well, I knew, and I’m far from an expert.

I’m not saying this is a bad book by any means. It just depends on your level of knowledge on the subject. This would be a great book to give to a high school student who is considering studying archaeology as a profession. On the other hand, most people who have ever dreamed of being an archaeologist would probably get a better grasp of what archaeologists actually do and what’s going on in the field by picking up a typical issue of Archaeology magazine.

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