Applying a scalpel to a city

kw: book reviews, historical fiction, mysteries, plagues, folklore

New author K. Avard is a family friend. His sort-of-fiction-sort-of-nonfiction novel First, Do No Harm was released earlier this month. By his own account, he reads a great deal, possibly more than I did at his age. He spent more than a year in Austria and nearby countries, which clearly provided fodder for this book.

Background facts: 

• Vienna suffered a Great Plague in 1679, which was almost certainly bubonic plague. There is a monument to the event near city center.
• Vampires were considered very real around that time, and some historical events seemed to confirm their reality. This led to the impaling and burning of disinterred corpses that apparently had not "rotted enough".
• Alpen (plural of Alp, not related to the word for "mountain" but to "elf") were folkloric creatures similar to incubi, thought to sit on a sleeping person and suck either their breath or their blood. There is a sexual element to incubus stories that is absent in stories of the Alpen.
• Plague doctors who went to afflicted places and claimed to be able to cure the plague have been accused of spreading it as asymptomatic carriers.

I have not asked Mr. Avard of these things. They are matters of my own knowledge and research I did while reading the book. There may be another thread as well. In Bram Stoker's Dracula, a side narrative concerns an insane man in a mental hospital who worships the vampire at a distance. This man does things such as breed flies, feed them to spiders, and then eat the spiders, under the delusion that consuming so many lives, at first and second hand, will increase his own stock of "life stuff". This narrative was ignored in the various vampire movies and follow-on vampire books and films and TV dramas. But it may underlie a character in the book named Thomas, self-named Belial.

The protagonist Dietrich is a medical doctor who finds himself in the middle of a sudden onslaught of plague. He becomes the central player as he and several companions, including his formidable sister and a very compassionate bishop, must become detectives to determine whether the epidemic is an entirely natural phenomenon, or is there a supernatural element? Are Belial and the plague doctors partly angelic, as they claim, and thus doing God's work? Are they Alpen? If they are angels, are they angels loyal to Jehovah, or are they fallen angels loyal to God's enemy? The denouement provides only a partial answer to all these queries, which testifies to the author's skill and understanding of the ambiguities of real life.

If I go into more details of the plot, it could spoil the enjoyment of other readers. Some may be like me and enjoy comparing the narrative to the facts of history. Others may prefer to read it undistracted by such things. The book offers delights for both.

The absence of a colophon and some other indications show that the book was self-published. The author did speak to me of a distributor, so he apparently did nearly all the work himself but found it best to farm out the advertising and distribution. One result of self-publishing is the lack of a copy editor. I am a compulsive proof-reader, so I found a few items that I'll pass on to Mr. Avard, so he can brush up the text if he decides on a second printing. Most will escape notice by most readers. 

I would advise him and other self-publishers: Locate a friend who can read with care and clear up typos and solecisms, or hire a professional copy editor to give the text a run-through. The rather small number of items I found testify to the author's care, but also show that nobody's perfect. I read and copy-edit everything I write, and I sometimes find things I missed when I read again at a later date.

I hope author K. Avard continues writing, and offers lovers of mystery and historical fiction further delights in the future.

Still the Man nobody knows

kw: book reviews, historical fiction, christianity, gospel story

Just ninety years ago Bruce Barton wrote The Man Nobody Knows, an effort to make Jesus Christ known as a historical figure, relevant to the Roaring Twenties. The book was still popular 35 years later when I first read it. Barton overdid the historical aspect, making Jesus "too human", to the point of downplaying his divinity nearly to extinction. A new book repeats the error: Killing Jesus by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard. This book follows their somewhat fictionalized historical accounts Killing Lincoln and Killing Kennedy. I haven't read them, but I expect they are very well done, based on solid scholarship and research.

Their research and scholarship are quite evident in this new book. They not only trace the outlines of the Gospel story, filling in historical context, they trace the history of principal players and their ancestors, such as the Herods and of course the Jews as pertains to the ancestry of the priests and the family of Jesus. There is, however, too great a tendency to overuse Latin and Hebrew terms, to a distracting point. For example, I don't care what a Roman legionnaire called his lunch in his own language.

By the middle of the book, plenty of context has been laid for the last few months of Jesus' life. Here it becomes more evident that the authors, though professed Roman Catholics, are taking a strictly historical approach, and obscuring or denying "supernatural" elements. They go to some length at one point to show off the three Hebrew words for powers, signs, and wonders, and their Greek equivalents, then mention in a note that the word "miracle" was applied to all of these sometime after the 1100s. So what? This totally misses the point. The Gospel authors were careful with their words, and meant something different when they used a different word. They make it clear that these happenings were not legends but that each had a place in the ministry of Jesus.

One item in particular is stated thus in Killing Jesus:

…a most amazing thing happens: the Roman military officer in charge of Capernaum declares himself to be a follower of Jesus.

Jesus is astonished. (p. 143)

Here is the Bible record, from Matthew 8:5-10 (NIV)

When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. “Lord,” he said, “my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly.”

Jesus said to him, “Shall I come and heal him?”

The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”

When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.”

I have emphasized the key words in bold. The centurion recognized that Jesus is under authority, even as he was (a better translation has it "I also am a man under authority"). As such, he will be satisfied if Jesus simply issues an order for the servant's healing, and trusts that it will be carried out. Jesus does issue the command, and the man returns to find his servant healthy. His faith was great because it saw Jesus not just as a wonder-worker, but as one under God's authority to carry out God's work.

As long as I am on a tear, let us continue. On page 167 we find, regarding the Feast of Tabernacles, "The Jews commemorate forty years of wandering in the desert…", but this in a footnote: "Sukkot, as the festival is known in Hebrew, commemorates the years of nomadic dwelling while Moses searched for the Promised Land." The Torah, from late in Exodus until Deuteronomy, makes it clear that the people were kept in the wilderness from year 3 through year 40 because of unfaithfulness after they had already been on the border of Canaan, but were afraid to enter. They knew where it was the whole time, but would not be allowed to enter until all that generation had died with the exception of Joshua and Caleb, who were the only ones not afraid to enter.

On page 176 a section begins, "Whether knowingly or unknowingly, Jesus has led a life that is a continual fulfillment of Jewish prophecy." Is there no end to special pleading? Jesus knew what he was doing, beginning at or before he was 12 years old. One might ask, "If he knew it then, why wait another 18 years?" Because of a strict principle in Leviticus that service to God is not welcome prior to the age of 30.

On page 198, relating the scene in Bethany prior to Passion Week, there is the puzzling sentence about Mary of Bethany: "She sits at his feet and sometimes shows her respect by anointing them with perfumed oil." She anointed him once, from the head down, on that occasion only, and Jesus declared to the disciples that it was to anoint him for his burial. She, and she alone, understood his statements that the Christ was destined to die as part of God's plan. She anointed him with a pound of costly oil. After his death, Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea had to use 100 pounds of oils and spices to prepare his body for the tomb. It is better to be early!

That is quite enough. There is a lot that the authors did get right, when it comes to downright history. The book's chapters are all dated as accurately as they can ascertain, beginning with the Slaughter of the Innocents, as Catholics call it, in Bethlehem in 5 B.C. This was indeed a few months to a year prior to the death of Herod the Great in 4 B.C. Jesus was two years of age when the Magi came and informed Herod they had seen his star; when they found him it was "in the house". So the ubiquitous Nativity scenes, with the Magi and shepherds together in the stable with Jesus and his parents, cannot have happened.

They appear to have used a Catholic chronology of the Passion Week, placing it in the spring of 30 A.D. Sir John Robertson showed definitively in The Coming Prince that it was two years later, based on accurate use of the way new moon was determined by the Jews.

It cannot be emphasized enough that Jesus lived in an occupied country, where suspicion of treason was rampant and punished by incredibly brutal death. The authors bring this out admirably, that the title "Son of God" had been appropriated by the Caesars, and to so identify yourself was a terrible risk. Also, the religious leaders of Israel are quick to accuse "Blasphemy!" to anyone claiming divinity. Curiously, it is never mentioned that whenever Jesus confronted a demoniac, the demon would say something like, "I know who you are, Son of God!", a move calculated to get Jesus into trouble.

I'd call the last couple of chapters a verbal parallel to Mel Gibson's film "The Passion of the Christ" in its incessant drumbeat of brutality. Glad I didn't try to read them at mealtime.

While the book is very well written, and well researched, the authors seem to have done little to understand the Gospel authors. John, in particular, wrote that his record was to show that Jesus is the Son of God. For this reason he used the word "sign" twice as much as Matthew or Luke. You can pair up each Gospel with a one-word theme, and with one of the faces of the Cherubim:

1. Matthew - King - Lion
2. Mark - Slave - Calf or Ox
3. Luke - Man - Man
4. John - God - Eagle

These four faces are mentioned, in this order, for the "four living creatures", which are a manifestation of the Cherubim, in Revelation 4:7. I liken the four Gospels to portraits of Jesus from four angles. Matthew and Luke, the right and left profiles, Luke the face full on, and John from the back, recalling when Moses asked to see God, being told he could not, but would see his back only (Exodus 33:22).

It is useful to dig out historical context for the life and times of Jesus and his apostles. However, it does a disservice to discount the divine nature that Jesus was careful to conceal from the prying eyes of enemies, but revealed to his disciples and to the twelve apostles in particular.

The steam-powered rocking chair

kw: book reviews, science fiction, historical fiction, anthologies

A couple of dozen years back, a new term was applied to a retro-Victorian style of science fiction writing: Steampunk. I grew up at the tail end of the steam-and-clockwork era. My best summer job was working a maintenance job at an amusement park, on a narrow-gauge live-steam train ride that is still operating at Cedar Point. I've ridden a Stanley Steamer. I also once did my math homework on a gear-driven calculator the size of a large typewriter, that sat in my Dad's office. And our family hobby of collecting and repairing antique clocks remains with me, in attenuated form, today. My favorite running clock has its gears exposed under a glass bell jar. Strange to say, this quintessential symbol of the age of analog devices is one of the first truly digital artifacts.

I also grew up in a time of protest. The comfortable life once called "the American dream" gave way to Vietnam-era disillusionment and anti-establishment became the norm. It is amusing today to see what has become of those who proclaimed, "Don't trust anyone over thirty!", as they reach their sixties. But the anger of the times got a name: Punk. Put nostalgia for steam trains with the anti-tradition edge that remains in today's empowered Boomers, and you get Steampunk, a collection edited by Jan and Jeff Vandermeer. This anthology gathers some very disparate strands of a genre that is a bit too big for one word, plus three self-conscious essays.

Steampunk is not just a literary genre. It has birthed an even larger genre of "graphic novel" (thicker-than-usual comic books) and a smattering of web sites. One of the best on the web is BoingBoing, which celebrates technology in toto, with a heavy emphasis on retro-steam/gear tech. This image is from a BoingBoing article that points to The Insect Lab, an artist's online studio for sculptures, not just of insects, but made out of insects with gears and other accessories added.

Such insects would fit right into "Minutes of the Last Meeting", the penultimate story in Steampunk, a tale replete with steam trains and brass-gear-driven machinery, coupled with nanotechnology that drives both medicine and surveillance. Could that cricket in the corner be watching you? (or be the eye of a supercomputer that is watching you?)

The stories collected in the anthology cast a wide net, one that laps a little beyond what I'd call Steampunk. Though "The Giving Mouth" has a steam-n-gear setting, it is a creation myth, and "Seventy-Two Letters" is a riff on Kabbalism. But other than these quibbles, I find that the thirteen stories collected in Steampunk present a comprehensive survey of all the tropes one might associate with the genre: gear-and-string-driven writing aids, steam robots of both men and horses (which graze at coal seams), a bustle-bound ladies' society that takes gardening to new heights, the doctrine of homunculi taken to its logical extension (in another story that becomes a creation myth), and several versions of the Frankenstein watch-out-what-you-create cautionary tale (from both 'scientific' and 'golem' ends).

What makes these stories (mostly) so satisfying to me: they tend to follow Campbell's Dictum, which was "Pose a problem, then solve it." With so much of today's so-called Sci-Fi falling into the mainstream trap of agonistic maundering, I do like a good story that Gets Stuff Done.

Defense of the giant grasshoppers

kw: book reviews, science fiction, historical fiction, medieval period, aliens, first contact

Years ago, I read a novella that placed a time-traveling scientist in a medieval village during the 14th century plague. It devolved to a psychological study of the young woman, herself immunized against Yersinia pestis and a host of other ills, becoming the last person alive in the village, finally burying the village priest.

Eifelheim by Michael Flynn reminded me of it. I know that this book is an expansion of an earlier novella by Flynn, but I haven't determined if it was the one I read or not. There is no time traveler here, though the cosmological theory developed by one character hints at a way to travel in time.

The basic story, 80% narrative of 14th-Century life and 20% vignettes of the lives of the historians studying the earlier events, is of a starcraft that barely escapes crashing in the Black Forest, but lands damaged. Its insectile inhabitants are, rather astonishingly, welcomed by first one, then two or three of the first humans to locate their landing site. Gradually they become accepted by many, but not all, of the villagers. At the end, the ship is repaired, at least enough to take off, though a successful return to home is not assured. A few aliens remain behind, preferring certain, but slow, death in the German village to the rather significant chance of an infinitely-prolonged dying if the ship gets "stuck" in a space warp. Should their fellows succeed, they plan to return for them.

The aliens cannot gain full nourishment from Earth foods, because their biochemistry requires 21 amino acids, while nearly all Earth life lives with 20. The missing ingredient is never found, and the ship does not return. Rather, everyone dies of plague, except the aliens who die of malnutrition, and the village gains the name Teufelheim (Devil's home), later elided to Eifelheim.

Back in the present, a historian is trying to determine why this location alone, now with the name Eifelheim, was never resettled after being depopulated by plague in 1349. His lover, a physicist, is trying to develop a better model of cosmology than 11-dimensioned string theory. About the time she succeeds, she happens to see a strangely-configured illuminated capital letter in a manuscript the historian is studying, and recognizes that it is a circuit diagram similar to one she had designed to detect signs of her theory's special particles. The manuscript and others were located by a librarian who is trying to seduce the historian; at the end, it seems she might have done so, but that strand is left hanging.

In fact, a number of strands are left hanging, in the rather obvious way that is becoming common—it almost harks back to the cliffhanger endings of Perils of Pauline episodes. While the historian and librarian, with the help of a narrator-colleague, do confirm that the "demons" of certain documents really were aliens, no other subplot is completed. It's no surprise that Flynn wishes to write more books. Ending a novel with no more than a hope of the solution is an unsatisfying way to prompt for a series of sequelae.

Take me for a ride on your . . . dragon?

kw: book reviews, fantasy, historical fiction

William Pitt the Younger is Prime Minister of England, Napoleon is gearing up for his assault at Austerlitz, and all the nations involved are striving to increase their respective armies, navies, and air corps. What? Redcoats aloft! Yes, and bluecoats plus a host of other liveries, including the Chinese, purportedly neutral.

In Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik and her other Temeraire novels (one published previously and one in the works) air transport need not wait on technology. Humans have domesticated native dragons, and most nations use them much as airborne horses, though some breeds are big enough to carry several horses. Dragons awake to intelligence in the egg, and hatch already knowing the rudiments of any language they have been hearing...or all of them.

The prior novel, which I plan to read soon, details the gift by the Chinese of a very special dragon egg to the French. The British capture the ship carrying the egg, and Captain Will Laurence is given custody. He soon has the onus of raising the hatchling, and they bond. Young Temeraire and his human crew have had much to do with saving the British forces during the battle of Dover, when this novel opens.

All is not well, however. A delegation from China has arrived bearing a demand from the Emperor in China for custody of Temeraire, now that the French cannot have him. However, a dragon-human bond once formed cannot be sundered, and Capt. Laurence is now in big trouble with his government for refusing to lie to Temeraire so as to coerce him to return with the Chinese. Eventually, both go to China, where the plot takes more turns than a dragon in aerial combat.

Of all the variety of dragon mythology I've encountered, Ms Novik's is the most original and entertaining by far. The story has an undercurrent of civil rights, particularly once Temeraire and Laurence see that in China dragons are citizens rather than property, and the various species dwell together in a complex dragon-human society. It raises the question, one I've had before, what if one or two—or several—other human species had survived to the present. In which society, if any, would all species capable of communication be equal citizens? That's a good question to ask someone who has conversed with Koko...