Puck

review by Brian Charles Clark

Earth is dead, reduced to rocks and dust by a horde of marauding alien machine intelligences. A few thousand Earthlings have been saved by the Benefactors, themselves machine intelligences who have helped the survivors re-establish themselves on Mars. That story was told in Greg Bear’s 1987 novel, The Forge of God.

Now, in Anvil of Stars, the sequel to Forge, three hundred years have gone by, and the Benefactors have outfitted 80 or so Earth children with a Ship of the Law capable of exacting revenge on the killer machines that destroyed their home. Three hundred years have gone by in a literal blink of the eye, as the children have been asleep, traveling at 99 percent of the speed of light. They begin training for what lies ahead of them: the willful destruction of an entire solar system full of intelligent beings.

This tightly plotted novel stands alone as a highly imaginative consideration of genocide. Enacting the Law of revenge is one thing; making sure you’ve got the true perpetrators of Earth’s destruction is another. Hundreds of years have passed—what if the killer machines and their makers have changed their ways? Continue Reading »

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review by Brian Charles Clark

Greg Bear’s novel Quantico was a long time coming to the U.S. market, his publisher evidently thinking that it was too real for tender American sensibilities in the wake of events in late 2001.

Finally released in the U.S., the novel is more startling now than when it was first published in the U.K. in 2006, especially in the wake of the recent suicide of Bruce Ivins, the federal biodefense scientist who was being investigated for the 2001 anthrax mailings in the FBI case known as Amerithrax. The mailings resulted in the death of five people and the infection of 17 others.

Using Amerithrax as a jumping-off point, Bear has constructed a gripping thriller in which the anthrax mailer (based on Ivins, perhaps, but more likely on Steven Hatfill, the scientist originally indicted in the case but who was recently exonerated and given a nearly $6 million settlement) is himself a pawn in an even more nefarious plot. Continue Reading »

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review by Brian Charles Clark

Climate change is inevitable, says Wallace Broecker, and it’s already happening, so he teamed up with journalist Robert Kunzig to tell us what we can do about it.

Fixing Climate comes in three parts. There’s a highly skimmable prelude by way of memoir explaining how Broecker came to be a scientist. The bulk of the book is a fast-moving glacier of evidence arguing for the possibility of sudden change in global climate patterns. Extreme desertification, rising sea levels, and shifting agricultural regions are in our future; we need to accept the facts and learn to deal with them, Broecker argues. The last part of the book is a survey of technological fixes or, rather, of extreme engineering ideas that might stabilize the planetary carbon load.

The evidence is largely familiar, as Broecker is a climate-change godfather, and much of his research and speculation have entered the collective mythos as a set of inconvenient truths. Decades ago, Broecker was one of the first scientists to point out that dumping billions of extra tons of carbon into the environment was bound to turn on a climatic burner. He was able to come to that conclusion in the early ’80s because he’d been studying millions of years of carbon deposition since the 1950s. Broecker ran one of the first carbon-14-dating labs; some people follow the money, others follow the carbon. Continue Reading »

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review by Brian Charles Clark

Call Nisi Shawl’s marvelous first collection of stories slipstream, call it speculative, call it curvy fiction for the straight-ahead twists that bend her fiction — they’re all grounded in experience. In Shawl’s stories, calling upon an African goddess is no more speculative than hailing a taxi, and following a bird to enlightenment is as normal as talking to your mother on Sunday. In Shawl’s realities, imagination is a force to be reckoned with, and the universe teems with life and spirit and desire.

Filter House is aptly named. A filter house is the structure secreted by a minuscule sea creature (an appendicularian, for the curious) that filters the sea for the wee beastie’s food. Food, dwelling, the implied hearth and heart that is fed - all these describe Shawl’s stories. Her characters are closely observed and gain quick traction in the friction of the real. Continue Reading »

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Film review by Brian Charles Clark

“Of course, there were a lot of baboons in my stomach… to become a king!” King Mswati says at the beginning of this beautiful and fascinating film about the world’s last absolute monarchy. His country is at “a boiling point” as he becomes king. That was in 1986; it’s still just shy of boiling when Without the King picks up some 20 years later.

At the beginning of Without the King, King Mswati III of Swaziland has 12 wives and 22 children (his father had 110 wives and 250 children). By the end of the film, King Mswati has 13 wives and his daughter, Princess Sikhanyiso Dlamini, is bemoaning her fate. A new member of the family to adjust to! A new favorite to reckon with (“and she’s younger than me,” says the 18-year-old princess) while her own mother, the first wife, is on the outs.

Although Without the King is an indictment of the monarchy, Princess Sikhanyiso is the star of the film. She carries the film’s narrative: her changes are constructed to at least hint at hope for change in Swaziland. Princess Sikhanyiso is amusing and compelling and repulsively naïve of the situation of her father’s people. Her speech is a fascinating blend of Valley Girl (“My dad, he’s the king, right?”), Black English (she flows at rap early on but drops the beat in a pile of giggles), posh London, and something very close to South African. The latter is straight forward, as Swaziland is nestled up to South Africa; the rest come from MP3s, no doubt, as well as being educated in England and the U.S. Continue Reading »

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Science Daily reports that there has been a “major discovery” is converting solar energy to energy usable by humans. “In one hour, enough sunlight strikes the Earth to provide the entire planet’s energy needs for one year,” the Daily writes. The problem has always been A) efficiency of collection and B) storing the energy once it is collected. Two MIT scientists claim to have made a breakthrough in the storage department by finding a cheap and easy way to split water into oxygen and hydrogen, just as plants do using the energy of photosynthesis.

Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, [Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT] and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera’s lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun’s energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night.

“Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon,” Nocera said.

James Barber, a leader in the study of photosynthesis who was not involved in this research, called the discovery by Nocera and Kanan a “giant leap” toward generating clean, carbon-free energy on a massive scale.

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Un-spun by DJ Skrotekkki

[Note: In “The Harrowing Highway,” part one of the DJ’s odyssey, he tries to ride the bus from Pullman to Spokane without being molested.]

I stumbled around the city of screams, determined to spend the two-hour layover somewhere other than the bus station. Riverfront Park looked inviting enough, so I explored it for a while and was solicited yet again - alas, only for spare change this time. Thank goodness. I called a friend who lived nearby, and worked even nearer. He agreed to meet up before going to work.

“Excellent,” I said, “I have a crazy story to tell you.”

That all went according to plan. He agreed that the tale I related was indeed unusual. We caught up until it was time to go our separate ways.

By this time, I figured, someone with a four-and-a-half-hour layover would have gotten the hell out of the bus station. And with only about twenty minutes left before my bus was supposed to arrive, I was sure I could return for the short wait without much chance of running into my new “friend.” I was partially right.

But what luck! We just so happened to cross paths again. Fortunately, she was just leaving the station. “I got hungry” she explained. Then she expressed her surprise at seeing me again. “I thought this was your stop and you’d be long gone.” I could only wish. Continue Reading »

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review by Brian Charles Clark

Death of a Dutchman
Magdalen Nabb
220 pages
Soho Crime, Dec. 2007

When Magdalen Nabb died in August 2007, she left us with a dozen pieces of delightful brain candy: the Marshal Guarnaccia crime novels.

The Marshal is a low-level law enforcement officer in Florence. He doesn’t consider himself very bright—indeed, he thinks of himself as a consummate bumbler—but that’s precisely his strength, his lack of ego. Because he doesn’t jump to conclusions, as do his superiors who warrant their own intelligence, the Marshal is able to ask the questions that crack the case.

In Death of a Dutchman, the second Guarnaccia novel, a Dutch jewel dealer turns up dead in a flat in Florence. The Marshal’s superiors write the death off as an obvious suicide, but there’s nothing obvious about the case to the Marshal. To the contrary, he wonders at all the loose ends and partial clues that point not to suicide but to murder.

And who is the mysterious woman last seen with the Dutchman? As the Marshal follows this woman around the city of Florence, we are wrapped in what Nabb does best: drawing characters out of everything, people, buildings, parks. With a few deft strokes, she brings the city and its throng of people alive.

It’s a hot and muggy summer in Florence, and the twists of the case build as the Marshal pursues the woman through the twisting allies and crowded plazas. As a thunderstorm gathers on the surrounding hillside, illumination dawns on the Marshal, and the psychological depravity of the murder case cracks open.

Nabb’s lean and elegant prose doesn’t rely on flash and bling for excitement. She told stories the old fashioned way, by constructing an intricate plot and then letting it tighten its noose around the reader’s neck as the pages turn. Originally published in 1982, Death of a Dutchman has long been out of print. Kudos to Soho Crime for bringing back the series. Anyone who enjoys a sophisticated, literary crime story will love Nabb’s Marshal Guarnaccia series.

Originally published on Curled Up With A Good Book.

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Last post we wrote about candidates for representative to the U.S. Congress from Washington’s 7th District. I want to give a tip of the hat to Nisi Shawl here, as it was her interpretative reading of candidate profiles that inspired us to speak out.

Indeed, I want to instigate a write-in campaign: Nisi in the 7th on the Punctuation Party ticket. Anyone who can’t write a candidate statement with proper punctuation and without excessive use of capitals gets a vote of NO CONFIDENCE. As Nisi says, “Punctuation is sexy. People who can punctuate are sexier.”

Although he immediately gets a NO CONFIDENCE vote for numerous and glaring errors in punctuation, Washington gubernatorial candidate Javier O. Lopez makes an interesting claim:

“I have invented an air engine that has the power to operate an automobile while relying on air as its fuel source. Adoption of this technology would mean an end to reliance on fossil fuels, stopping carbon-monoxide emissions, pollution and global warming.” Sweet. How’s that work again?

Nisi thinks cynically that Mr. J-Lo’s air engine will prove to be nothing more newfangled than a sail affixed to the roof of your favorite hoopty. But she is aching to be proven wrong. Continue Reading »

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commentary by Brian Charles Clark and Nisi Shawl

As devout readers of just about everything that dares pass before our eyeballs, Nisi Shawl and I were talking about the recently arrived Washington Voters’ Guide. Surely a favorite of Puckleberry Houndsters nationwide for its audacious irrepressibility, this political season’s Voters’ Guide is blessed by candidates who write a finely deliquescent prose that, as perennially, includes ALL CAPS, abundant exclamation points, and a complete; disregard for the niceties of punctuation!

Indeed, as regards the latter, Nisi and I have established a bar over which any candidate must pass in order to win our support, to whit: an individual running for office sure as fuck better be able to punctuate a sentence. Or at least have the sense to consult a friend who does. And if the candidate doesn’t have such a friend, then we don’t want any part of him or her.

This season there are several candidates willing to serve as representative from Washington’s 7th District in the U.S. Congress. For sheer Nick Bottomish naiveté and go-forthness, it’s hard to beat Goodspaceguy Nelson. Continue Reading »

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