Second Breakfast

This is the sequel to Grimsley’s “The Ordinary” which I thoroughly enjoyed, and I was excited to find this on the shelf at Shaman Drum a few weeks ago.  The first book had the same sense of “rightness” about it that I described in the review of the Jack Vance book — some people talk about it as that “flow” feeling you get when you’re reading a book and it is engrossing and the ideas work and the characters come alive, and you forget that you’re actually reading words on a page in a room somewhere.  I love that feeling, and I savored every minute of the first book.

The second one, not so much.  This book is much more heavily plotted and direct in terms of action, and thinner on ideas and character and internal development.  Its not a bad book, and it cleanly ties together many of the ideas and issues raised by the The Ordinary.  But I just didn’t find it as satisfying, as it felt like a very different kind of story.

Maybe that was Grimsley’s intention (I haven’t read Kirith Kirin, which is in theory the first book of this semi-trilogy, as it is out of print and hard to find), but I felt disappointed.  Maybe a re-read of all three together as a single work might make them fit better in my head.

Still, The Ordinary is such a good book.  I wish this were a little more like it.

I’ve gotten behind in my “book reports” as of late.

This is a good and very provocative companion to Brian Greene’s Elegant Universe and Fabric of the Cosmos books.

Smolin, who is a practicing physicist, takes some very effective pot-shots at the whole string theory craze, both in terms of its actual useful results (very little), and the “everyone must get on the bandwagon” mentality that has, in his view, taken over the theoretical physics community. I can’t give the arguments justice, but I thought this a very readable, practical account of what string theory means today, what it has shown and not shown, and what some alternate approaches are that could actually bear fruit. The problem, as Smolin sees it, with string theory is that many of its ideas and predictions are so untestable and abstract as to be more philosophy than science. And if you can’t test it or try to disprove it, is it science at all?

What I found particularly compelling about this book is the last third, which focuses on the “sociology” of the physics community. Being married to a scientist, I’ve long given up any illusions about science as some “search for ultimate truth”, and Smolin confirms that view with a detailed and pragmatic view into what science is, what it does well (and badly), and what it means.

My astronomer friend Steve is less impressed with Smolin’s critique than I, as he feel that Smolin is expecting a level of proof or certainty out of a theory than one would demand out of any other theory. But as I understand it, string theory isn’t even a coherent theory, but more a set of ideas or descriptions about what a theory might look like, and at last count there might be 10⁵⁰ of them to choose from. There are something like 10⁸⁰ atoms in the universe.

An interesting read, particularly if you’ve read or seen Brian Greene’s stuff and want a well-reasoned alternative.

When wandering around Dawn Treader Books a while back, I found a copy of “Lyonesse”, which I vividly recall reading when I was about 12 or so. Actually I don’t think I finished it because it was so complex, but I distinctly remember the flavor of Vance’s prose and the vividness of his description. Lyonesse is the first of a a three-book series which tells the story of the history of the Elder Isles, a fictional set of islands off the coast of France and Britian, whose alternate history informs and is the subject of this trilogy. I went hunting, and was pleasantly surprised to find the other two books elsewhere in the store, and happily brought them home.

In reading this first book, I find the same sense of satisfaction I found the first time, and have found with a few pieces of fiction I’ve enjoyed over the past several years. There’s a sense of “rightness” about Vance’s writing that is very compelling. The book take the standard tropes of fairy tales and fantasy and fleshes them out into a very mature and adult way (this is really a “Fairy tale for adults” in the best traditions of the Inkings and their followers).

The story follows the history of the fractured kingdoms of the Elder Isles, as one king plots to reunite the Isles under a single rule. He bears a daughter, Suldrun, who refuses to be a marriage pawn to his political machinations. She is exiled to her garden as punishment, and a young man, Aillas, washes up on her beach who turns out to be a prince whose cousin has just attempted to murder him. Suldrun falls in love with Aillas, bears a son, Dhrun, and the consequences of this will have important consequences for all of the kingdoms. The action of the story follows Aillas and Dhrun as they are separated from their families, imprisoned, captured, and otherwise set upon by various trials.

Because my reading tends to be intermittent, it was easy to lose the thread of the plot a bit, but in retrospect the overall arc of the story is quite strong, and the conclusion is quite compelling as all of the pieces come together at the end. And Vance is setting the stage for a much large story which ultimately must explain what happened to the Elder Isles, who do not appear on any of our maps today.

There’s a bit of humour here as well, and Vance’s ironic wit makes this a particularly fun read. I’m looking forward to Green Pearl and Madouc.

One nit - although the edition I have is not the “Fantasy Masterworks” edition published out of the UK as shown above, both apparently share some rather terrible editorial lapses.

So the Husband and I have been nursing something of an obsession with mixed martial arts, the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship), and SpikeTV’s The Ultimate Fighter reality TV show.

There is a great deal of athleticism involved, and the actual fights are interesting given the variety of combat styles used. Over the past few months we’re actually able to intelligently recognize and comment on techniques and styles, good moves and bad. The reality show has its ups and downs — the guys that live in “the house” together often act like idiotic children (one wonders how much of this is “reality” and how much is fabricated).

But the real reason we watch is that some of the guys are incredibly, amazingly hot.

This is our current shared obsession: Tommy Speer. God Bless America.