Passwords

In the past few weeks I have had a couple of people ask me or make comments about my blog. I would rather not give these people a window into my life, as a result I will soon switch this blog to a password protected site. If you'd like to continue to have access to the blog then leave a comment saying as much and include your email address. This will really help improve my readership!

34. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Children of Hurin

Tolkien wrote the manuscript for this book in 1910 and never finished it. His son, who calls himself the literary executor of his father's estate, completed the manuscript and made it fit for publication. To me it really didn't feel like it deserved to be a book which, in turn, made it feel like a rather distasteful cash grab. After subtracting the 29 page introduction, the dozen or so page glossary and the random full color pictures (I am not even counting the double spaced type) you get to a book that is no more than about 100 pages long. In my view that's just too short for a self standing novel.

Setting that aside, this is the story of Turin, his mother Morwen and her newly born daughter. Hurin, Morwen's husband, is alive but captured very early in the book. The story is set in the first age of Middle Earth. At the beginning of the book Hurin joins an alliance of other men and elves to fight against the evil Morgoth in the Battle of Unnumbered Tears. Hurin and his allies are slaughtered and Morgoth captures Hurin alive and takes him back to his castle. When Hurin does not give Morgoth the information that he is seeking he chains Hurin to a giant stone chair and curses him with the ability to see and hear what Morgoth hears.

Morgoth's henchmen take over different parts of the earth including Hurin's home which forces Turin, Hurin's son, to flee. His mother cannot join them as she is pregnant with her third child. Turin, who is about nine years old, flees to a hidden town of elves where he grows up never forgetting his mother and father. The balance of the story relates Turin's deeds as head of a lawless band, his attacks on Morgoth and his search for his mother.

The book was reasonably good but it is more like a short story than a novel. I felt a little ripped off by the Tolkien family which left a bad taste in my mouth.

33. Philip K. Dick, The Unteleported Man

This book was first published by Ace as a novella. PKD submitted a 32,000 word book, based on a serialized novel in a magazine, to Ace for review, the editors liked it but felt that it was too short so they asked PKD to expand it into a novel. PKD agreed to do so and a few months later came back with a manuscript that was some 25,000 words longer. On reading it, however, Ace concluded that PKD's additions were not good and they went ahead and published the original novella instead. Much later, Berkely published the book in its full and added an introduction that was highly critical of Ace for not publishing the full novel in the first place.

The book fits, I think, into the alternative history science fiction genre. Unlike The Man in the High Castle where the Germans actually win World War II, in this story the Germans lose the war but regain worldwide political power and eventually end up controlling both the United Nations and the one of the world's largest and most powerful corporations (there are only a few corporations left). This company, called THL, develops a telportation system which, they claim, is only capable of teleporting people to the destination but not back. Because the world is severely over populated and because someone has discovered a far off planet that is much like the earth, THL gets a concession to develop and colonize that planet which they call Whale's Mouth. In addition, the Germans running the UN don't really question THL since they are both run by Germans. THL sets up its teleportation machines in hundreds of outlets throughout the world and runs a captivating advertising campaign which shows off the wide open spaces and pastoral beauty fo Whale's Mouth. By the start of the book some forty million people have moved to Whale's Mouth.

The teleportation machine puts an inter-planetary shipping and travel company out of business. The stress of the bankruptcy ends up killing the founder of that company. His son, Rachmael ben Applebaum, takes over and begins the dissolution of the company. He is suspicious of THL and what they are doing in Whale's Mouth though and he holds on to his last inter-planetary ferry and plans on making the 18 year long journey over to Whale's Mouth to see what is actually going on there. He enlists the head of another large corporation, called LIES, Inc., to help him in this effort. LIES is a private spying and security firm which has grown to be so powerful that it is accepted by the authorities. Instead of joining ben Applebaum on his ship the head of LIES decides to send 2,000 of his agents across to Whale's Mouth through the THL telportation machines to start a coup instead. Days into his journey, after hearing about LIES' plans Appelbaum also abandons his plan and follows the agents across.

When they get there they are confronted by the horror of THL's actions. Instead of a beautiful spacious pastoral land Whale's Mouth is a barracks fenced in by high barbed wire trimmed fences. The forty million colonists are being trained as an army which will eventually invade earth. When the LIES agents arrive the THL army is one million strong. The story briefly covers the ass kicking that the LIES agents are receiving but then quickly focuses on ben Applebaum who, on arrival, is almost immediately engaged in combat by one of the members of the THL army. He loses that fight when he is hit by an LSD tipped dart. The next part of the book is the part that Ace found too stupid to publish.

For the next 50 plus pages PKD describes ben Applebaum's acid trip like only someone who has taken a lot of acid could do. The narrative is brilliantly written in such a twisting logic that someone who isn't high has a difficult time following along. I differ with Ace, while the added material is certainly a little incongruous it is also an imaginative description of an acid trip. Once the acid trip narrative ends the book returns to its original plot and the story unfolds much as it should.

I would highly recommend this book to my few readers as I know that they would find it just as interesting as I did.