Short Reviews for April 2023

Four more books

More Short Reviews!  Once more, two novels and two history books I've read recently.  I'm debating whether to keep this two-and-two mix or alternate between one month of all fiction and another month of all nonfiction - please comment with what you think?

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Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse, by Richard R. John

This history of the early United States postal system opened my eyes to so many parts of the story of America I hadn't appreciated or known about.  The biggest point was how reliable communication itself - a regular postal service to every town - helped unify the United States.  Even for people who weren't writing letters (most people, until an 1845 postage reform made letter-sending affordable to the average person), the mail delivered newspapers at rates heavily subsidized by business letters.  Newspapers were quickly exchanged between editors, so that columns from any one newspaper would quickly be reprinted (with or without modifications) in other papers in other states.  On top of this, the postal system's mail contracts funded stagecoach lines to just about every corner of the country.  Letters themselves could almost be called an afterthought.

This eye-opening book made me remember the postal service was the most visible part of the federal government for such a long time.  Much of this was intentional on Congress's part.  In the early 1790's, there were heated debates over expanding a postal network to small towns, and admitting newspapers to the mail.  They knew something of the choices they were making, though they had no idea how significant their decisions would be.

Things have of course changed nowadays, between the telegraph (Congress wasn't interested in expanding the post office's mission to that) and private express services (Congress banned them in the 1800's and currently restricts their remit, though some illegal competitors probably pushed them to lower postage rates in 1845) and phones and email (nobody even dreamed of trying to bring them under the post office).  John doesn't get into these changes, after the initial debate over whether to commission the postal service to run telegraph lines, except to mention that many European governments made the opposite choice and did nationalize their telegraph networks.  What this book shows is the time before then, and what a great impact the post office made in that era.

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Letters on the English, by Voltaire

Having lived several years in England, Voltaire in 1733 wrote these essays describing points of English culture.  They were clearly meant for a French audience - they were originally written in French - and it doesn't take much reading between the lines to see that a lot of this is phrased to be held up as a mirror to points of French culture Voltaire didn't like.  I don't take this to be at all a balanced portrait; if I did, it'd be implying that more than half of English religious discourse was about the Quakers!  Rather, the emphasis tells about Voltaire himself and what he was urging on his French audience.

He talks at length (seven of the twenty-four letters) about religion, praising England for its religious diversity and the simplicity of its doctrines.  He especially singles out the Quakers for praise; even the ribbing he gives to their largely-silent services seems goodhearted.  Then (for two letters) he talks about England's balanced, restrained, and free government.  Of course, I read this all as implicit criticism of the French church and royal court, though Voltaire never says so in so many words.  He then continues to write about some eminent individuals (four letters), science (five letters; Voltaire admires Newton and the Royal Society), and the arts (four letters). 

At this last point, Voltaire dislikes much of English theater and literature, though he does admire some poets.  I'm not totally convinced this's sincere, and it does lose much both from the translation and my being totally unfamiliar with French literature of the time.  Even if sincere, though, I strongly suspect he included this to gratify his French readers' honor by concluding on some note where they could find pride.  Among other reasons, that'd ease the way for them to adopt his implicit recommendations elsewhere.

This's the first work of Voltaire's that I've read, and it was an interesting introduction to him and an interesting window into his era.  I do know about French history, though - enough to know that he failed.  France did not reform after the English model in any of the ways he held up to them.  Instead, things kept rolling on toward the cliff of the French Revolution.

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Summer in Orcus, by T. Kingfisher

Summer, a girl in the modern world growing up with her overprotective mother, meets a witch who gives her her heart's desire:  an adventure, in the magical land of Orcus.

Before publishing it more traditionally, T. Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon) wrote this novel as an online serial, a home for all her ideas of characters and interactions she hadn't put in other stories but thought it'd be fun to include somewhere.  And, it shows in this story's episodic travelogue feel.  After the premise and inciting incident, the plot is weak and takes a while to really get started.  But, if you're willing to wait, the journey is strong enough to stand in its own right as Summer journeys through the wondrous land of Orcus.  We meet a Wheymaker who gives Summer a cheese sword, a were-house who's a wolf who turns into a house at night, and so many more whimsical characters and incidents.

And then the plot gets into gear.  It isn't a bad plot once it's there, with some interesting twists that dig into characters' psychology.  The climax really does fit both the tone of the work and Summer's character.  We see why she, having grown up with her backstory and her overprotective mother, is the person who's able to make this difference in Orcus.

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Total Eclipse, by John Brunner

Archaeologists from near-future Earth have come to another planet to investigate the ruins of an extinct alien civilization, and to try to figure out what killed it.  Meanwhile, international tensions are rising on Earth, with poorer countries lambasting the brand-new super-expensive hyperdrive (that got them to the other planet) as a waste of money and perhaps even a way for rich countries to bring back new weapons from the alien world.

The characters are two-dimensional, but they fit the bill well enough.  The mystery is what made the book for me.  The methods of investigation and breakthroughs are fun, and I think Brunner's answer for what made the aliens go extinct is ingenious.

However, Brunner then gives us a downer ending, with depressing themes that have been in the background (ever since we learned about the troubles on Earth) now rising to prominence.  It's heavily implied there's been disaster on Earth as well.  It's a perfect thematic echo to the aliens' extinction:  each civilization has some wrongness firmly woven into it, which brings disaster, and they're unable to avoid the disaster even though any outsider would think it's obviously avoidable.  Within the novel, it even seems inevitable for any civilization.

This's not the sort of ending I'd prefer.  I would really like a possibility of hope.  Even aside from my personal preferences, I think it would improve the story to have the inevitability of disaster further explored rather than just ladled on with thematic implication.  Brunner tells us how disaster is inevitable, and he shows us some signs of it - but we barely interact with it.  All he actually shows us is some clues to what might be happening on Earth, some evidence about what happened to the aliens, and a local disaster for the scientists which might symbolically represent something.  We never actually see the inevitable civilizational disaster, whether for the aliens or for Earth, and his protagonists barely challenge it.

I liked the puzzle this story showed us, and the ways Brunner's characters explored it, and I'm glad I read it for that.  But as a story, this's shortchanged.  The characters interact with the mystery beautifully - but while they're affected by the inevitable civilizational disaster, it feels they barely interact with it let alone respond to it.