Review of Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett

Fifteenth Discworld novel and second to star the City Watch, Terry Pratchett’s 1993 Men at Arms is a funny romp on the streets of Ankh-Morpork that brings together some of his most beloved characters.  Compared to some other Discworld offerings, the novel is less focused thematically, but makes up for it with a quantity of trademark humor—slapstick, satire, wordplay, and otherwise—beyond what is standard in the series.

Men at Arms opens with Corporal Carrot Ironfoundersson writing home to his family, describing to them the current events of the City Watch in Ankh-Morpork.  A few new recruits have been landed, including a dwarf, a troll, and a woman—strange newcomers for what has been a WASP institution since the Watch took its place in the city.  Right off the bat the group’s tenor is tested by having to put down a minor dwarf-troll insurrection—the two groups’ enmity threatening to erupt violently.  Captain Vimes has also announced his retirement from the Watch.  He quickly discovers, however, his final days are to be anything but relaxing.  With a rogue member of the Assassin’s Guild chasing a fool dream to reinstate a king in mayor Vetinari’s place, Vimes must use all of his alcohol riddled wits to trace the mysterious assassin as he moves from one bizarre murder scene to another, the weapon of choice unlike anything the city has seen before.

Review of "Martian Time-slip" by Philip K. Dick

His output hit or miss, it’s easy to be skeptical cracking open a book by Philip K. Dick.  The psychotic craziness of Dick’s personal life so often leaking into his writing, on more than one occasion his works feature plots and themes derailed by a chaos seemingly external to the text. In the rare moments Dick was able to focus his drug and paranoia fueled energies into a synergistic story, the sci-fi world benefited. Martian Time-slip, just falling shy of The Man in the High Castle or A Scanner Darkly, is one of these occasions.

The setting Mars thousands of years in the future, the red planet is experiencing its second wave of civilization.  The Bleekmen (Dick’s less than subtle name for Africans) are being pushed to the wastelands while those of European descent terraform the planet in capitalist fashion.  The main character is Jack Bohlen, a recovering schizophrenic electronics repairman (sound Dickian??) whose day to day life can only be described as quotidian.  Spiritually and morally grey, his dull love affairs do not prevent him from sympathizing with the Bleekmen, the group treated poorly by Union bosses like Arnie Kott.  The moderately sized cast revealed slowly, readers are eventually introduced to Bohlen’s bored wife, his uncle Leo the land speculator, Otto the salesman, and Steiner the suicidal importer whose autistic, perhaps schizophrenic son may hold the key to Kott’s plays for power as Mars develops one parcel of land at a time.

Unlike such novels as Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said that feature plots wandering digressively, Dick maintains focus throughout Martian Time-slip.  Though seeming to tread close to no-plot land on a couple of occasions, he never crosses the border.  The conclusion fully cohesive and satisfying, 1964 must have been a good year for Dick.  Making this statement all the more complimentary is the successful manner in which he experiments with the center of the book’s narrative.  Shifting viewpoints like building blocks (imagine an asterisk), the resulting narrative structure may look like an M.C. Escher creation, but is fully supportive of the story—a profitable gamble that pays dividends at the conclusion.  

Minor themes of Martian Time-slip include the treatment of disabled children, suicide, schizophrenia, and artificial intelligence (a la Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)—all under the umbrella concept of colonial dystopia on Mars.  The main theme of the novel, however, is materialism (in the commercial sense) versus traditional ways of life, particularly Africans and their perennial philosophy.  Like our world, encounters between the development-minded colonists and the nomadic hunter-gatherer Bleekmen prove awkward and one-sided.  Though not in-depth, Dick weaves voodoo magic, time warps, and wisdom of the ancients into the novel’s satisfying conclusion, drawing in the ethnic concerns of his, and unfortunately still, our time.

In the end, Martian Time-slip is in the upper echelon of Dick novels.  The story well-conceived and presented, only typical Dickian complaints remain, e.g. poor prose, wacky anachronisms, etc.  These, however, can be overlooked given the strength of the thought provoking storytelling.  While stylistically perhaps most similar to Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, thematic content is, however, of a different mold.  Ethnic values and capitalist conceits often taking backseat roles in other Dick novels, they come to the forefront in Martian Time-slip.  The result is story featuring a dystopian Mars with many other elements Dick fans will enjoy, paranoid schizophrenia, sentient androids, and for good measure, a little voodoo… 

Review of "Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions" by Edwin Abbott

The first time a person sees a sample of pond water through a microscope is an eye-opening experience.  The life teeming there is mind-boggling—literally a whole new world suddenly making itself available to the mind’s eye.  Edwin Abbot’s 1884 Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions intends the same revelatory experience for readers.  An open mind the only tool needed to understand his import, no microscope or scientific knowledge is necessary.  Fantasy in the most abstract sense, Flatland put satirical geometric fantasy on the map.  The only entry thus far, its uniqueness is indeed special.  

Through the eyes of Square and his native Flatland, Abbot depicts life in a two-dimensional world.  Existence reduced to geometric shape, the more symmetrical angles a person has, the more intelligent they are considered, and as a result, treated.  The educated of Flatland are squares, pentagons, octagons or such, while soldiers are isosceles triangles who use their acute angle for attack.  Leaders possess enough sides to be considered circles, while women are only a line and have to shout everywhere they go so people can avoid being punctured by one of their two ends.  His job good and children’s futures bright (they are pentagons), everything is going smoothly in Square’s life.  But things suddenly take a turn when a presence appears that announces itself as coming from another dimension—a third dimension.  Square’s adventures begin.

Though the tone may seem laughable, Abbot strikes a number of serious social chords in Flatland.  All is satirical allegory.  As can be seen in his literal shaping of women, their position in society is wholly different than the men’s.  Freedoms greatly limited, they must announce their presence everywhere and are instructed to spend as much time in the home as possible due to the danger they are thought to represent. While feminism is soup du jour in today’s university journals and print media, the inclusion of such a theme was still radical in 1884.  That persons are discriminated against based on appearance was also a relatively minor discussion point amongst the intelligentsia of Abbot’s day. However, a sub-story of Flatland tells of the leadership’s quelling of a color movement because the result would have meant that no one could tell how many angles a person had, and subsequently which level of society and etiquette would be needed.  This situation remaining analogous to society today to a degree, Abbot’s novel, while seeming absurd on the surface, reveals itself as serious commentary despite the fun of the premise.

As would be natural to a story featuring visitors from other dimensions, there is also a strong religious message in Flatland.  Like Paul’s miraculous experience on the road to Damascus, another of Abbot’s aims—perhaps his greatest—was to remind, or make readers aware of, the eternal possibility of realities beyond that perceivable to mankind.  By using the scientific language of the day being used to speak against the existence of the Christian god, he hoped to prove that the door was still open: science, particularly math and physics, could be wonderful tools to present the supernatural, as well.

In the end, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions is a highly enjoyable read that forces the reader to alter their perspective on reality in a fun, interesting, and possibly even life changing fashion.  Flatland is truly a world enjoyable to envision.  Coming from a 2D land, Square’s adventures in 1D and 3D take on levels of poignancy surprising for a premise so simple.  Ignoring the commentary on feminism, religion, and civil rights and Flatland is still readily lovable for its simple twist on reality and the curiosity of how a fantasy with geometric parameters might shape up (sorry, couldn’t resist).