history and mystery

 One thing the internet is very good for is the fact you can look things up. There's no waiting, no trekking to the library and no wondering where you packed away your most recent compendium of the encyclopedia. In recent years having the ability to make random investigations has proved to be very beneficial when it comes to enhancing my enjoyment of novels. In fact sometimes I'll put a particular book aside while I follow electronic trails through the ether. While these rambles won't lead to a degree, never mind augment my future earning potential, the things I learn enlarge my understanding of many subjects I'd otherwise miss entirely.

For instance, although The Fifth Heart by Dan Simmons provided more than enough entertainment by seamlessly combining melodrama and metaphysical speculation with a brilliantly detailed portrait of Gilded Age America, it also made me curious about an event that occurred in Chicago at the end of the 19th century - the Columbian Exposition World's Fair of 1893. This exhibition, also known as the White City, was built in honour of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's discovery of America and was itself a major character in the latter part of the book. Other than having vague knowledge of the event I was unfamiliar with its extent and its importance. When I looked it up I was quite amazed by the pictures of the extravaganza that can be found on the web of a marvel that came and went six months after it opened to the public.

Pictured above is a close-up view of George Washington Ferris's wheel of steel, 250 feet in diameter. It carried 36 cars, each about the size of a Pullman train car, equipped with a lunch counter and with an overall capacity of 2,160. It propelled riders 300 feet in the sky over Jackson Park - a bit higher than the crown of the Statue of Liberty.

Considering the fact that most cities in those days were dark and dingy places the White City was a marvel to all the millions who visited the Fair that summer. The wikipedia link will tell you far more than I can - and besides, research is fun.

But I began this by mentioning The Fifth Heart, didn't I? Dan Simmons has written several very good historical novels * and this one begins in Paris early in 1893 when Henry James, the distinguished American author, is about to kill himself by plunging into the Seine, overcome by crippling depression. Just before stepping off le pont Neuf, he notices a man with an aquiline profile standing nearby; he quickly ascertains that the man is actually Sherlock Holmes, believed to have perished with Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls two years earlier. James is shocked to learn that Holmes was himself on the verge of taking his own life - because the detective has discovered that he’s merely a “literary construct.” His evidence? The same inconsistencies in the original Conan Doyle stories that have entertained readers for a century.        

Much against his will but unable to thwart Holmes's assumption they are now partners, James joins Holmes on a mission in America, where the Baker Street sleuth hopes to prove that historian Henry Adams’s emotionally fragile wife, Clover, was not a suicide but a murder victim in 1885 - and to thwart an international conspiracy involving an attempt to assassinate President Grover Cleveland at the opening of Chicago’s Columbian Exhibition.

For both Holmes and his unlikely partner, the path to personal redemption leads through these two very different mysteries.

♡

note: At one point in the book James and Mark Twain discuss whether they’re characters in a novel and, if so, who might be the author. Twain says to James: “It’s almost certainly some lesser mind, lesser talent, than you, than me, even lesser than Arthur Conan Doyle, which is saying a lot. And it might be written thirty years hence, or fifty, or a hundred.” It was a wonderfully self-deprecating statement by Simmons.



* This one is good but even better is Drood and, according to a good friend, is The Terror. Since the latter is about the fate of the crews of two wooden sailing ships attempting to navigate the NW Passage in winter I shall wait for better weather before reading.

not forgotten

Just in case you wondered work is progressing, albeit slowly, on the most recent painting. Nor is it typical of the way I usually do these things since this is more of a combination of the pen and ink style of the 'adventure's ink' things with color added.

So far I've been having fun and may even have finished it but for the fact of getting involved in a 2000 page over the top, hilarious, heart stopping sci-fi space opera novel by my favorite intelligent adolescent, Peter Hamilton. I needed a little vacation from normality because normality nowadays is scaring the hell out of me. I have to admit having read them as they were originally released but just for the hell of it decided to read them consecutively now that nearly five years have gone by.

'Pandora's Star' and 'Judas Unchained' describe Hamilton's vision of the late 24th century, hundreds of worlds within hundreds of light years from the Earth have been peopled (collectively known as the 'Commonwealth'), not by way of space ships, but through man-made stable wormholes connected by giant trains. People have continued to do what we do best and that's repopulate and consume. Virtually all of the one hundred billion human beings are connected by instantaneous communication - the Cybersphere, which is built into the brain along with other electronic enhancements.

The other great human advancement concerns mortality: specifically, every 20-30 years or so, those humans who can afford it get 'rejuvenated' and restored to physical adolescence with full memories of the previous 'life'. People work to pay their rejuve insurance. Dying in an accident is no problem since most have available a dormant clone. With this technological 'advancement', Hamilton asks some very complicated ethical questions about aging, and what it really means to be an individual person.

Everything is seemingly blooming and nice, but a secret brotherhood, The Guardians of Selfhood, keeps insisting that humankind is being manipulated by an invisible alien, whose ship was found on one now inhabited planet - Far Away. The brotherhood is making preparations, smuggling weapons and weird pieces of equipment in order to face the alien. Of course, no sane people would listen to their blabber.

But things change when an ageing astronomy professor discovers the disappearance of two distant stars. The story gains steam as an FTL starship (obsolete tech in this age of wormholes) is built in order to learn why the double star system known as the 'Dyson Pair' has been shielded by some sort of force field. Is it meant to keep the natives of that system within, or to protect them from something outside? As if that weren't enough, the brotherhood decides to prevent this excursion.

Even as this is going on, the author continues his journey through genres - a murder mystery is solved (yes, I know I explained that people can be rejuvenated here, but wait for it); a low-tech fantasy theme is introduced (a funky inn on a planet where high-tech doesn't work, a native boy who wants to join the explorer etc.) that at one point presents readers with a trek across a frozen planet, and there's even a priggish dad with an ickily cute family (complete with dog) on one of those impossibly utopian planets. There's a helpful AI (or is it?) and aliens too.

About 700 pages in, we finally meet the creepiest villain(s) alien of all (eek! hive mind!), after which the tale cascades on swiftly on to the end of part I. If you want to know about part II you may just have to read it for yourself because I'm tired now.

I had implants * done on Thursday with the result I'm still not feeling my best.. but I'll get there and I'll get back to the painting too.

(* dental, not flotation...)

one bookstore incl gods

Powell's - a big reason for living in Portland. A clerk once mentioned she's noticed us there every Sunday for years and my husband quipped 'It's cheaper than church'. He was right.


Reading is certainly one of my favorite activities and a book I'm reading at present which I'll recommend even before I've finished it is by Alan Weisman and called World Without Us. Without a doubt we've become a force of nature on this planet, not so much with our numbers, since it's been said we wouldn't fill the Grand Canyon, but with our lifestyle. Where animals take what they need where they can get it and move on, human beings eventually discovered we could manipulate our environment and stay in the same place year round. I won't attempt to reiterate Mr. Weisman's well developed descriptions of the course we've taken to get us to the point where not only our survival as a species but the survival of sentient life on the planet hangs by a thread - and unfortunately not even necessarily a biodegradable one. But please don't think of it as a depressing book since it isn't and that's not his intention; instead it's something to help us envision our options. It's also enjoyable taking the long view and imagining just how fast strip malls and office buildings would deteriorate and disappear. He also tells some extraordinary stories about what the world looked like before we became so numerous and industrious.

Strangely enough yesterday this article about the 3 Gorges Dam in China made me feel just a little bit better in that we as a race may be coming to understand some important points about how we treat the earth. It's remarkable the officials were allowed to say that. Of course, we're a LONG way from getting done what needs to be done but at least we smartass westerners with our opinions about how everybody else should conduct their lives may not be the only ones who have the beginning of an inkling of a clue about what's going wrong. Thanks to the internet we can see people everywhere learning to cope with change.

The one thing that will never make the world a better and happier place for all species is the continuation of war and mayhem. Yes, lots of people die in wars but every single time that happens more people are born afterwards and with that comes more poverty, disease and stress on the environment. Although I haven't finished reading the book yet I'm fairly certain that one conclusion he'll draw is that education, healthcare, and birth control will help us realize the necessity of stabilizing our population. Groups like Heifer may be our best bet for helping the world to become a better place. Or maybe we'll all get spirited away by a Rapture or aliens (as a zoo exhibit) and the planet will recover enough in a few millenia for another curious adventuresome species.