SF Loses Octavia Butler

I already blogged about this over at TWM, but it belongs here too. Here's a reprint:

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Via Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution, I discovered that Octavia Butler-one of science fiction's great modern writers-died a few days ago after a fall outside of her home. This really good article in the LA Times offers a portrait of her life and influence:

Before anybody told her that black girls do not grow up to write about futuristic worlds, Butler, the daughter of a shoeshine man and a maid, was already fashioning a place for herself in a white-dominated universe. By remaining dedicated to her craft, sweeping floors and working as a telemarketer to pay the bills; by suffering the indignities that come with being among the first; and eventually winning a MacArthur Foundation grant, Butler carved a place for herself — and helped write a new world into existence.

As a black female writer, she brought a much needed alternative to a field that was for too long dominated by white males pre-occupied with visions of the future in which race was a non-issue. But of course she didn't become famous by simply being a black woman writing sci-fi; she also wrote damn good stories. Check out the Wikipedia entry about her, and get to know her if you don't already. She'll be badly missed.

The Disappearance of God by Richard E. Friedman

Now this is an interesting book. I'm not sure any summary could do it justice, so I'll just try to give you reasons to read it. In short, you could say that the book is about the literal disappearance of God over time in the Bible. I mean, who hasn't noticed that at the beginning of the book, you have Adam walking with God, and by the end he doesn't even talk to prophets any more. Despite the Christian viewpoint that Jesus Christ and the Father are both parts of the same whole, that doesnt' change the fact that viewed as his discrete part The Father, God gradually fades from view.

One element of the book is simply Friedman examining this narrative development in the Bible and simply pointing it out so that you can follow along. Another element is the examination of the reason behind this development. The third element is along the lines of what this disappearance means to people in the modern world.

Surely, if you have any aspirations to studying the Bible, Friedman's examination of the subject with regards to the story of the Bible is enough reason by itself. The man knows what he's talking about and you are guaranteed to learn a great deal that you did not know about the development of the Bible as a historical document. Friedman usally examines the Biblical subjects from the point of view of both the religious believer studying their sacred scripture and the non-religious student who wants to learn more about the development of the Judaic tradition.

As I said before, Friedman not only spends time examining the historical developments, but illustrating the reasons behind the developments, again, from two points of view. The gradual distancing of God from his people could be seen to have religious significance for the believer. It's a message about the state of humanity over time. For the non-religious reader, there's a story about priests and priest-kings doing what they had to do to keep a religion alive that supported the current power structure.

Both of these themes are intertwined in the beginning sections of the book. What kind of throws it off is when he starts talking about Nietzche and his book "Thus Spake Zarathustra". Nietzsche is generally famous for the few quotes people can remember of him, such as:

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146

What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist, section 2

God is dead.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 108

What does not kill me, makes me stronger.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 1888

Of course most people think Nietzsche was some anti-God, anti-morality, anti-love advocate. That's not the truth, and Friedman recognizes it. If anything, Nietzsche was one who would have rejoiced if he could have believed in a God. His writings often dealt with how to live in a world without a God in a way that didn't have us behaving like complete brutes.

Naturally, Nietzsche's thoughts are completely relevant to Friedman's theme of living without God in a modern world.

I can't say any more without getting into the problem of not saying enough to make it worth talking about, so I'm just going to have to leave it here. In my final opinion, this is a very good book, either in the field of religious studies or philosophy. It doesn't hurt that it's well-written and keeps your attention. Read it!

Neil Gaiman's Sandman

I don't know what I could say about Sandman that hasn't been said before. Neil Gaiman is a fantastic writer and Dave Mckean is a fantastic illustrator. It's amazing that Gaiman managed to produce so many books without a single one feeling like a wasted effort. All I can say is, if you haven't read this because you don't read comics, you've missed one of the greatest additions to literature that the modern era has produced. I've read a lot of books, and I tell you there are few authors who can craft a story like Neil Gaiman.

A community reads "Life of Pi"

The story centers on a boy named Pi (a shortening of his real name which he doesn't like). The very short version is he's on a ship carrying zoo animals (his father's) that sinks somewhere in the Pacific. He ends up on a lifeboat with a female orangutan, a fatally wounded zebra, a hyena and a tiger (named Richard Parker). In the end, as you might guess, only Pi and Richard Parker are left. From that point it's just those two on a rowboat in boat in the middle of the ocean. You wouldn't think that could make for much of a read, but it does. A lot of the story is just how Pi survives and how difficult it is. The other part is his spiritual ruminations (I suppose you could call his thoughts that). After all, this is a story that "makes you believe in God". Pi does, after all, he's a devout Christian, Muslim and Hindu. Whether you like the spiritual element or not, it is an interesting book. I mean, you wonder how a boy and a tiger could possibly survive together on a boat with little to no supplies and no hope. It's portrayed very realistically. The boy has no illusions about his chances, nor does the author pull any punches. There's some very graphic scenes when the animals fight and die. I guess I can't say if the tiger's behavior is portrayed absolutely correctly, but I can say that there's no shades of Lassie here. The tiger never becomes the boy's pet or friend.

Anyway, it is an interesting read and definitely one I recommend. As a matter of fact, it was my second favorite for the "One Book, One Irving" program that the Irving Public Library is beginning tomorrow. Although the program itself is not new, this will be Irving's first time. I know plenty of other cities that have held it, including Richardson, Dallas, and Houston (and libraries do share information through associations like the Texas or American Library Associations). Evidently it's been highly successful in getting communities involved in reading and a lot of people have enjoyed it. We hope they do here.

During the month of March there will be a community discussion on the official blog (and yes, that's a retarded choice for an interactive forum supposed to be used by hundreds of people). Questions will be posted to the blog regularly for readers to comment on. There will also be reading groups organized by the library. The program is open to all adults. If this is even a moderate success, we'll definitely be doing this again.

Jared Diamond's "Collapse"

With apologies for the staleness of the review, here's my book review from over at Three Wise Men of "Collapse" from a few months back. I think it's a decent review, so I figured it was worth reprinting here....

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I just finished reading Jared Diamond's latest book, "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed." I found it to be, like his last book "Guns, Germs and Steel", a work of remarkable scholarly synthesis and a thoroughly enjoyable read. To share my joy in the hopes of persuading you to read it, I'll offer some of my thoughts on the book.

Diamond begins the book with his first case study, modern Montana. He goes into great detail about Montana's current environmental and economic troubles, and is careful to explain how each effects the other, and how Montanans are dealing with-or not dealing with-their issues. This actually sets the tone for the remainder of the book, as his purpose is to examine the environmental conditions of both past and present failed and successful societies and come to some conclusion as to what degree their success or failure was influenced by both their environmental conditions-and more importantly-their reaction to them. And by beginning in a modern "society" familiar to all Americans he immediately frees you of the assumption that this book will merely be about long-dead societies and dry archaeological research.

The reason for this is because Diamond isn't interested in examining these other societies simply for the sake of knowledge. Rather, his book is to serve as a guide into how modern societies can learn from these examples from the past and present, in order to utilize environmental resources in a way that is ultimately beneficial to the society.

The thing I found most note-worthy about the book is how Diamond helps you to see the relationship between these past societies and modern societies. For most of us it's very easy to view ancient societies in the abstract, as merely a collection of information we've received from archaeological excavation and whatever written records they may have left behind. It's harder to view them as those living in those societies must have viewed them, and to understand how what was happening to them may have appeared to the people living on those times. Why is that important? If we can understand how the members of those societies viewed what was happening to them, then we might be able to recognize signs of the same issues in our modern societies.

The most compelling example of this in the book is the genocide in modern Rwanda. Most of us, even those of us well-read on the topic, have come to view the genocide purely as a political, historical and cultural issue. But Diamond points us to the example of the Kanama Commune in Northwest Rwanda, which at the time of the genocide was populated almost entirely by Hutu. Despite this and the fact that most of the genocidal violence was committed by Hutu towards the Tutsi, there were still mass killings in the province. Why? As two researchers discovered, it was mostly the result of extreme competition over land resources, much of which had grown scarce as a result of over-population. So what at first appears to us to be but a minor element in the overall genocide, in fact reveals itself more to be opportunistic violence aimed at securing land.

The purpose of this example is to help us realize that what appears to us as political or social disorder may in fact be caused ultimately by environmental factors. Much evidence of the collapse of past societies tells us that as societies began to run out of resources, rather then sit around and passively starve, the societies were frequently split by conflict, turning either on themselves (Easter island) or on their neighbors (Mayan kingdoms.) To me this is the most important lesson of the book, that the negative effects of environmental degradation can come to us disguised as "mere" political conflict.

He also points out the efforts the elites went to in these societies to insulate themselves from the effects of environmental degradation, citing the examples of the Norse chiefs in Greenland, the chiefs of Easter Island, and the elites of Anasazi society, who lived in relative affluence compared to their subjects. Yet when faced with the ultimate exhaustion of their resources and the destruction of their societies, Diamond points out the these people frequently had the privilege of merely being the "last to starve." He compares this to the circumstances of the elite today who in America live in gated communities, or who in third world nations live in high-rise apartments in the city while the majority of other citizens live in shanty towns. Diamond doesn't point this similarity out because he's secretly a Marxist who wishes to deprive the elites of their property. Rather, he highlights this because the ability of the elites to shelter themselves from the consequences of their decisions, as the leaders of their nations, skews those very decisions that they make. Elites who are shielded from the most immediate effects of environmental degradation may only become aware of the consequences of their own decisions when it is too late not only for the other citizens of their nation, but for themselves. To emphasize this he gives us the example of residents of New Guinea, who have maintained sustainable levels of agriculture on their island for nearly 3,000 years. In contrast to the elite of Easter Island, who competed with each other to build larger and larger statues and shielded themselves from the effects deforestation as long as they could, the leaders in New Guinea society lived in huts like other citizens, and were expected to grow their own food for their own households in the same manner as other farmers.

In fact, since Diamond's overall purpose is to examine how societies made the decisions they did so as to learn how to emulate their successes and avoid their mistakes, he takes a careful look at how we arrive at the decisions we make today. He's point in the manner in which market forces can hurt environmental interests, but he counters that with examples of how the market can actually work to regulate the use of natural resources. He points the fallacies by which earlier societies made decisions in error as to how long their resources would last, how they could sustain their resources, or how they failed to be aware that they were even facing environmental problems, and points out how those same fallacies operate today. He examines ways in which change can occur from the top-down, in the form of regulation or even dictatorial decree, and from the bottom-up, in the forms of market pressure, grass-roots campaigns, and local initiatives, and gives us examples of each and how effective and ineffective they are. In other words, he does his best to adapt the lessons of failed societies to our societies today in a manner that we can use.

In his conclusion, Diamond is cautiously optimistic. While most of the book is about societies that failed to address their environmental problems, he mentions several that succeeded in a variety of ways. He highlights late medieval Japan, which successfully curtailed deforestation to become one of the most densely forested first word nations on Earth. He discusses the example of New Guinea, which has been successfully cultivated for human habitation for three millennia. And he highlights the isolated Pacific island of Tikopia, which succeeded in the same conditions under which several other Pacific islands failed. All of these are examples not only of how past societies succeeded, but of how we can overcome our environmental issues today, to succeed and thrive as well.

Of course there is considerably more than this to his book, and no review as short as mine could hope to do it justice. If you want to have some idea of the environmental problems we face both on a local and on a global level in the coming decades, as well as ideas for how we can deal with those problems, pick up "Collapse" and give it a thorough read. It's well worth the time and effort.

William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land: A Love Story

A note: If you're going to read this, watch out that you don't get the abridged version. Although the latter half of the whole book is filled with a lot of crap, you'll still want to read the whole book.

There are few moments in your life where you're overawed by something you're seeing. In examples from my own life, standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon and looking out is one such moment. Another would be watching the fight between Obi-Wan and Anakin at the end of Star Wars: Episode III. Moments like that, you sit (or stand) there, and are at a complete loss for words to describe what you're seeing. It's not only overwhelming in scope, but in beauty, or madness, or any other attribute in such depth and intensity that it's impossible to grasp immediately. Rarely, very rarely, does such a moment occur when you're reading a book. Not that books don't have intense moments where you just can't quit reading. It's just that rarely are you overwhelmed by the imagery a book makes you see in your head. William Hope Hodgson's book The Night Land does that to you.

The setting of the book is some millions of years in the future. The Sun has gone dark, and emits little, if any heat (this book was written a while ago, and the science was current at the time). The only people known to be living on the planet are concentrated in the Last Redoubt, home to many millions, or perhaps billions. It is a great pyramid, built deep in a cavity of the Earth, perhaps in a rift on the bottom of what was formerly the Ocean. Yet even so deep the Earth provides little warmth, for it too is slowly dying. The people must live in the Last Redoubt because of the unnatural horrors that besiege it and which will kill any living thing that roams abroad. The inhabitants have found a solution for this, although only temporarily:

And, later, through hundreds and thousands of years, there grew up in the Outer Lands, beyond those which lay under the guard of the Redoubt, mighty and lost races of terrible creatures, half men and half beast, and evil and dreadful; and these made war upon the Redoubt; but were beaten off from that grim, metal mountain, with a vast slaughter. Yet, must there have been many such attacks, until the electric circle was put about the Pyramid, and lit from the Earth-Current. And the lowest half-mile of the Pyramid was sealed; and so at last there was a peace, and the beginnings of that Eternity of quiet watching for the day when the Earth-Current shall become exhausted.

So these are people living, but only waiting to die. They know that for them there is no future, no hope, only borrowed time until they finally succumb to the evils that wait outside and perish.

The main character is a man who is recalling this story in the present (the author's present, our past) as if it was a dream, yet a memory from his own future self. He is both men, and somehow gained awareness of the life of himself in the far future. The reason this is called a love story is that in the present, he finds his love, yet she is soon taken from him by death. In the future, he may find her again after a long, long separation. As his future self (who we never learn the name of) he one day hears a call (via telepathy of some sort) from far away, outside the redoubt. He somehow knows that it is the woman that he loved, and thus decides that he must undertake to find her and rescue her.

And I came at last unto the Great Gate; and behold the dear Master Monstruwacan did stand in full armour, and with the Diskos, to do me honour, with the Full Watch, as I went forth. And I looked at him, quietly, and he looked unto me, and I bent my head to show respect; and he made silent salute with the Diskos; and afterwards I went onwards towards the Great Gateway.

And they made dim the lights in the Great Causeway, that there should no glare go forth into the Land, when the Gate was opened; and behold, they opened not the lesser gate within the greater, for me; but did honour my journey, in that they swung wide the Great Gate itself, through which a monstrous army might pass. And there was an utter silence all about the Gate; and in the hushed light the two thousand that made the Full Watch, held up each the Diskos, silently, to make salute; and humbly, I held up the Diskos reversed, and went forward into the Dark.

For some readers, the language and its pseudo-archaicness is a real turn-off. But I think that it is more appropriate than trying to describe the visions he sees in a modern voice. The way he's telling the story, it's more like you're reading some old translation of an ancient classic. It lends it the air of a legend or myth, something you both believe and don't believe. You see, the author wasn't trying to write some kind of modern horror story, he was trying to write an epic. The choice is between Stephen King and Homer. If this story was written from the point of view of being contemporary, it would be King. The problem with that is that it would be unbelievable without the redeeming quality of being a myth. Surely no-one believs in Scylla and Charybdis or Circe or Polyphemus any more than they believe in Cujo or Carrie or the Crimson King. The reason to write them as different kinds of stories though is that King is writing stories relevant to us using thematic elements that modern Americans can relate to. Prom, for example, or the gunslinger who's no more than a Clint Eastwood character, whereas myths use elements that are archetypal and more general. Myths apply to all times and all peoples by using common factors. Witches and gods play more prominent roles in myths, both of which archetypes are shared by all the peoples of the Earth. Hodgson chose to write his story as epic because there was nothing in it that would be relevant in current times. For this reason, his book is just as readable now as it was 80 years ago. Of course I'll be reading King until I die, but in 50 (it's already 30) years Carrie is going to be completely anachronistic.

Anyone who has read the long version must fully acknowledge the weakness of many chapters after the main character rescues his love, where he says idiot things like "And the Maid walkt by my side, and wondrous silent; but yet very nigh to me, so that I knew she did be very full of love to me, and of that quaint and sweet humbleness that love doth breed odd whiles in a woman when she doth be with her man, if but that man be also her master."

There's more that's completely inane, but in truth, too much happens in the latter half of the book to just completely excise. I saw what they'd cut from the abridged version and it just ruined the book, so really, just read the full version. It's worth it. This book is really a forgotten classic, although it's not as forgotten as you might think. There is a continuing fan base that produces short fiction in the world of the Night Land, such as John C. Wright's Awake in the Night. You may remember John C. Wright from my last post about his series the Golden Age. This is definitely a must-read.

Night Land resources online.

John C. Wright's The Golden Age

The Golden Age by John C. Wright

The Golden Age trilogy is a must-read for any reader of sci-fi. John C. Wright isn't a brand-new voice in the field, but he's newer than most and much more interesting. He has the ability to infuse his stories with a real sense of humanity like Gregory Benford does. These are people that you understand and can sympathize with no matter how strange their world or ways of life are, and that's saying a great deal about an author's ability to write characters. His story is also a stunning portrayal of a realistic future in which people have mastered the ability to alter their consciousnesses to match their physical reality and vice versa, not to mention the incredible power they wield over the physical universe. He asks a great many questions about how people would deal with such power, and answers them convincingly.

On the one hand, this series could be seen as a sci-fi adventure romance, like Indiana Jones in space or Star Wars. On the other hand, the science doesn't invoke the "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" kind of suspension of disbelief that such science fantasy does. His technology is merely a reasonable extrapolation of things we can already do into things that we will be able to do. There's no telepathy, no ESP, no ghosts in the machine. These books could also be read as allegory for the consequences of extreme insularity and an attempt to hold on to a mythical "golden age" as the eternal standard for a society.

John C. Wright's writing style is both fun and trying, as he uses a lot of technical jargon (lawyer jargon, not engineering). He writes magnificently at times, but also as if he's viewing the world through the eyes of someone trained in the legal profession. I mean, whereas many authors would simply gloss over aspects of law, he delves into them in detail and causes great confusion to his reader as we attempt to keep up with what the parties involved are saying. It helps to have a dictionary beside you at all times as you read these books.

The story, in short, is of one Phaethon Prime Rhadamanth, a visionary who has been so thoroughly censured for his vision of the future that he was forced to undertake a memory wipe to make him forget what it his he did. From the beginning though, he becomes involved in either a paranoid delusion or a real threat to human existence and the entire Oikumene (the Greek word meaning inhabited world). At the same time, he's embroiled in a legal dispute with his "father", who either is a perfect copy of the original and thus the legal "inheritor" of his own property, or a flawed copy which gives all rights to his "son". It's pretty weird. The meat of the story is the lengths Phaethon has to go to in order to reclaim what is rightfully his: the Phoenix Exultant (an absolutely beautiful name, and that kind of language mastery is one reason to read this series), a spaceship meant to take Phaethon on interstellar voyages. Phaethon is opposed by the Oikumene itself, as well as hidden enemies (or delusions).

I can't even get into all the amazing ideas Wright has in this series. It's like every other page has something that will have you going, "Wow, that's mind-blowing", in terms of originality. In short, I can't recommend these books enough, and I seriously hope Wright is going to write more science fiction soon.

The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman

This is a repost of an entry I wrote on my friend's blog.

I want to get right down to business and talk about a series I've been reading and that I am just in love with right now: The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman. Robert Kirkman is well known for writing "Invincible" which is basically about what the everyday lives of superheroes must be like. Walking Dead is kind of on the same theme, except in this case the ordinary folk are ordinary folk who just happen to be survivors of some kind of zombie holocaust which left the world overrun by the dead. The thing that makes this different from any other kind of zombie book or movie is for one, you get to see a lot more. For example, in a movie they only have a span of two hours to cover a period of possibly days or weeks. In a book, it's better, but of course without the graphics. Walking Dead bridges that gap. Also, he takes the subject seriously. There are no moments that make you think, "nah, that would never happen" solely for the sake of a dramatic moment. He writes characters really well, which is not something that happens all that often in any medium.

I don't care for minimalist art, so the black and white color of the book doesn't do anything for me, but the drawing is clean and clear and your eye can easily understand what's happening, something that you don't always get with full-color illustration. Also, characters are well-drawn and realistic. If these were based on pictures of real people, you'd probably be able to recognize them if you saw them. Plus which, the artist (Tony Moore) really knows how to make a scene that's supposed to be visually exciting really exciting.

I want to return to the writing though, because although the art is good, the writing is better. I can't believe that the comic industry has a guy like Robert Kirkman in it. I mean, he knows how to write characters, he can write a tense, driving story and he can hold it all together without gimmicks. What else is there to say?

Ok, that's it. Grab a copy of the Walking Dead and read it! You won't be disappointed.

Who Wrote the New Testament? by Burton Mack

This is one of those books that you don't find too often. It's not a history of the creation of the Christian "New Testament", it's a scholarly analysis with a critical angle from a non-religious viewpoint. Burton Mack takes Christian "truths" with a grain of salt. I would say that's a strength instead of a weakness, but some people of the modern evangelical sort have the idea that to understand the Bible, you must approach it as being a true historical document and can only understand its formation in that light.

Let me give you an example. In the Bible, the four gospels are credited to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Most lay-people do not know what all Biblical scholars know, which is that the names these books are credited with did not surface until 50 or 100 years after the gospels were completed. Also, if you believe in the merits of textual analysis, these books are compilations of writings by people in movements associated with different "apostles". These may or may not have been the named apostles of the Bible (and remember, there are two almost entirely different lists of apostles given in the Bible), but in any case, these were groups (not churches yet) with different philosophies, not the individual men whose names are on these books. Still, even if you don't believe in textual criticism, it's undeniable that the first time names are mentioned with these gospels is well after the gospels were written and distributed. That alone wouldn't be a sufficient argument, except for the fact that these books (or parts of them) were known in times preceding the attribution of the name, without their names. So if you were thinking that the names just weren't mentioned until later, think again.

Mack examines why and how this could happen. His answer is that based on the Hellenistic model, writings would be produced in a school founder's name by his "disciples" or students. This is not conjecture, it was standard practice by Greek schools at the time. Given that in large part the foundation of the Christian church is Greek, that should come as no surprise. Of course, the Greek model was standard throughout the "world" at that point, from North Africa (Carthage) to Asia Minor (a number of cities there were Greek) and to Greece proper. So it should come as no surprise to find early Christians continuing a practice they were already familiar with. If it surprises you that they would do this, given that none of us today would write something as if it was going to be included in the Bible as holy scripture (and would almost regard that as blasphemy), keep in mind that until 1500 years ago, there was no Bible, and no canon of sacred scripture. As a matter of fact, in the first century AD, there was nothing regarded as holy scripture.

Mack goes on to talk about the reasons for the writing of each gospel. Because the "proto-orthodox" church won out eventually, they got to decide what the Christian past was going to look like (the winners always write the history). Therefore, we have the four gospels that seem to be all in accordance with each other about the divinity of Christ, virgin birth, death and resurrection, and the need (or not, rather) of adhering to Jewish law now that Jesus had come. However, in reality, each gospel was crafted as a position statement from each of the original movements in Christianity. As a matter of fact, it wasn't even Christianity originally. It may surprise some that most of the early followers of Jesus had no conception of Jesus as divine. Many Jews followed him as a sort of reformer to bring them back to the right path of Judaism. Many Gentiles followed him because of his social message. You may notice that the earliest Christian writings, those of Paul, nowhere mention Christ, the son of God. Heck, he doesn't really even talk about Jesus. When later the Christ myth began to coalesce, there were still different sects. The original ones that didn't believe in his divinity, then splinters of those that did. But then they couldn't even agree on how he was divine or how best to follow him.

At first, the Gnostics were one of the larger sects of Christianity because they had a better-sounding message and made more sense. However, the proto-orthodox began unifying their position in order to be able combat them. This battle went on into the second century before they finally quelled most Gnostic sects. The proto-orthodox needed texts to support their positions. Originally, there were many more writings and the few we have now survive mainly because the proto-orthodox only wanted those that agreed with their point of view. The strength behind this argument comes from the find at Nag Hammadi. It's chock full of non-orthodox writings that were common at the time.

The point is, the church needed gospels like Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and also the letters of Paul. Of course, in later Christian tradition, it isn't mentioned that anyone made these up to fit a certain viewpoint. Well, that's not entirely accurate anyway. They already existed, the church just kind of "tweaked" them to come more into line. Mack does a good deal of explaining why and how that might have happened. This book does more of that kind of explaining than any other book I've read yet.

In the end he comes up with a pretty good summary, but I wanted to quote some of the last chapter. He's asking some questions about Christianity. In this passage he's talking about the problems with Christianity.

The reason the Bible is not an innocent bundle of figures for doing personal divination is that each of the factors in the biblical equation has already been given its Christian valence. The 'old' is the sign under which those who are not Christian are viewed. These 'others' always appear tarnished and fundamentally in need of repair or redemption. The 'new' is the sign under which the possibility of transformation to Christianity is viewed. The Christian potential is seen as bright and shiny because it points toward perfection and is grounded in the miraculous. The people of the old are under judgement; the people of the new are under grace.

[...]But the radical ranking of Christians above their significant others has never been limited to Jewish-Christian relations. As a lens through which to view the world, the old-new formula in the composition of the Bible has resulted in a distinctively Christian mentality that views all non-Christians as pre-Christian.

That's pretty good stuff right there. Now I have to admit, when Mack uses words like "ridiculous" to describe miracle stories, you might think he's being a little pushy. But then, I think he's just trying to illustrate what Christianity looks like to anybody who looks at it as just another religion or mythology. After all, most people don't take the story of Corn-woman as literal either.

Of course, if you don't think studying the history of Christianity is important, either because you don't believe it and don't care who does or because it's your sacred truth, I still think that has a piece of non-fiction work this is a good book. Mack is a decent writer who does a fairly good job of explaining things in plain English (although the odd Hebrew or Greek word does show up). Sometimes he can get a little pompous sounding, but I don't think it's really ever overwhelming.

So there you go: I recommend this book to any and all readers. I hope you can enjoy it like I did.

Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis

The new book by Bret Easton Ellis. Is it good or is it crap? Most people either love him or hate him. I wouldn't say that everyone does, because I don't feel either of those for his writing. I mean, American Psycho was a great book and damn anyone who says otherwise, but Glamorama or the Rules of Attraction were incoherent messes. Not that they didn't have their good points, but stream of consciousness is one thing and diarrhea of the mouth another. It's like Ellis doesn't know that sometimes less is more. For him, more is more. That's not an incredible deficiency, but it can certainly detract from an otherwise interesting story.

In case you're not familiar with the story, basically there's a character loosely based on Bret Easton Ellis himself, named (surprise) Bret Easton Ellis. He's an author who's trying to get into something like a normal life by marrying the mother of his son and moving in with her and her two kids. From there, things get weird. The little girl's doll starts acting alive, the house's interior changes mysteriously and the paint starts peeling on the outside of the house. It's not random, as Brett comes to realize that the house is turning into his father's house that he remembers from California. And there's where the key elements of the story arises: his relationship with his father, and his relationship with his son. It's one story that's two parallel themes, and I think quite clever. It does have some things thrown in that you later find are irrelevant and, if you're like me, get quite disgusted with for having wasted time on. However, the father/son themes are actually moving. Bret was never able to connect with his father, and discovers that he might have one last chance. Bret is at a loss for how to relate to his son who appears to have nothing but contempt for him, but the strange occurences might just show him a way to do it. In short, for only the second time, Bret Easton Ellis has written a book that actually has characters and a story, and both are actually worth reading.

That's not to say that there aren't problems with the book, but compared to his previous efforts which made Hunter S. Thompson look sober in comparison, it's quite a surprise to find something so coherent and so good. I always knew Ellis had the potential to write something good again (besides American Psycho).

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