I originally read the story published in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2008: 21st Annual Collection, almost the very last of the chilling tales in this volume, and in my opinion, by far the best. It won the Aurealis award for novella.

There is apparently a sequel novella titled Beyond the Sea Gate of the Scholar-Pirates of Sarskoe in Fast Ships, Black Sails which I’m dying to read, but it’s not available in Kindle format.

Stross turns in another bravura performance with a fanciful glimpse at life in the twenty-seventh century. In an era of virtual immortality, where computer backups of human consciousness have become as routine as unlimited body modification, Robin is a patient in a rehab clinic for convalescents of voluntary memory erasure.

Reviews of the novel vary wildly, which may suggest as much about the tastes of particular SF readers as it does about the specific case. The combination of sex and violence clashes a bit with some deep philosophizing on identity and purpose, though Stross?s sense of humor and Freya?s rollicking adventure transcend what SF Reviews deems “some bizarre cross-genre hybrid.”

Lovecraft’s Cthulhu meets Len Deighton’s spies in Stross’s latest, as the Scottish author explains in his afterword to this offbeat book offering two related long novellas, “The Atrocity Archive” and “The Concrete Jungle” (the latter previously unpublished). With often hilarious results, the author mixes the occult and the mundane, the truly weird and the petty.

Most of his books have Kindle editions, which is great!! However, the last two novels in The Merchant Family series are missing. I wrote Charlie about it, and he says to bug Amazon. I’ve already hit the “request this edition on the kindle” button they have. So, cross your fingers. You can check out Charles Stross’ blog for the latest updates.

“… the very popularity of the books has often undone even the best intentions of the best critical writers. In their hurry to churn out column inches, and thus remain members of good standing in the Church of What’s Happening Now, very few of the Potter reviewers have said anything worth remembering. [...] Most reviewers … bolted everything down, then obligingly puked it back up half-digested on the book pages of their respective newspapers.”

When a Harry Potter book comes up there’s too much pressure to race to the press with a review that all that can come out is a brief plot summary and a bit of gush about the next Harry installment! Second, King points out that Rowling is a talented novelist:

“While some of the blogs and the mainstream media have mentioned that Rowling’s ambition kept pace with the skyrocketing popularity of her books, they have largely overlooked the fact that her talent also grew.”

Coming from Stephen King, “one of the finer stylists in her native country” is high praise indeed. He’s particularly taken with “a sweet but uncompromising view of human nature…and hard reality: NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!” that made it into the finale, a mother protecting her daughter from something evil.

Of course, he ends with a cute little jab at the commercialization of the series–not that King is actually jealous–that almost slipped by without notice:

Mostly Rowling is just having fun, knocking herself out, and when a good writer is having fun, the audience is almost always having fun too. You can take that one to the bank (and, Reader, she did).

The slant is definitely hard sci-fi. This book won’t be easily understood by someone not technically minded, for it deals with computers, physics, and mathematics generally and casually.

Still, if you’ve never read Asimov and are ready to jump right in, this might be a good place to start. The stories are interesting, fresh, and with unexpected endings!

A fourth reason to scrutinize the 9/11 Commission’s final report, therefore, is to see whether it puts [...] the suspicion that the Bush administration planned the 9/11 attacks as well as the more widespread suspicion that the Bush administration was at least complicit in the sense of deliberately not preventing them. I will primarily address this fourth question. (4)

In presenting this particular conspiracy theory as a valid contender to the theory of events and rationale put forth by the official 9/11 Commission Report, Griffin has to cast them both as sketchy conspiracy theories. In this way, the official account becomes tainted with the connotations that come with the term “conspiracy theory”–crackpot, irrational, paranoid—and the actual conspiracy theory becomes legitimized. In actuality, the Commission Report presents a well-reasoned and highly factual account which would be extremely difficult to criticize without the use of sophistry to break down its authority.

One of the tools Griffin uses to install a sense of preemptive doubt into the minds of the reader is the word “theory,” which to a layperson implies a strong sense of uncertainty and fallacy. No word could be farther from the truth in describing the 9/11 Commission Report when taken in that sense. Formally, the Commission Report does present a theory, but scientifically that theory has been validated and reconstructed from evidence by a scientifically motivated party of intelligent fact-finders. Thus, the official theory and the conspiracy theory cannot be compared. The official theory is a theory in the scientific sense, while Griffin’s conspiracy theory is a theory in the lay sense–i.e. a set of unfounded ideas. To use the same word with two different meanings is just another technique to confuse the reader into equating the legitimacy of the Commission Report and Omissions and Distortions.

Another way Griffin creates confusion rather than clarity is when he assumes conclusions he has not yet proved, such as the legitimacy of his alternate theory:

[An impartial investigation] would have tried to investigate equally the two basic theories about the attacks: that the attacks were planned and carried out solely by followers of Osama bin Laden, and that the attacks were able to succeed only because of the complicity of the Bush administration itself. (10)

Here he repeats the conclusions about his alternate conspiracy theory without having given any reasoning as to why it should be considered equal with the official 9/11 account. For example, I could construct Elliott’s 9/11 Theory here:

A band of desperate Canadian computer hackers reprogrammed the flight computers of 4 commercial airlines to crash into the banking centers of America in order to erase tracks of a hacking operation gone wrong….

Pointing my finger at a particular group (say, the Bush administration) does not lend immediate credence to my theory. Without proper development, I cannot draw conclusions about from a premise which has not yet been accepted as a realistic alternative. So, claiming that the Commission Report should have immediately considered the two theories that Griffin proposes assumes that there are two reasonable theories without proof thereof.

Griffin’s apology to the Commission Report starts with the most sensational and un-provable topics first, and the most factual and analytical last. Common sense suggests that the order of topics in a book, if not chronological, would be in order of importance. To place material which is clearly an implausible imaginative stretch at the front of the book implies that material is the most relevant to a discussion of the problems with the 9/11 report. This is then a paradox. Take, for example, the section labeled “Six Alleged Hijackers Still Alive,” which reads:

One problem is that at least six of the nineteen men officially identified as the suicide hijackers reportedly showed up alive after 9/11. (19)

The problem with this is that either stolen identities or mistaken identities provide a simpler, more convincing explanation to a question with no physical evidence than the theory that the 9/11 hijackers are actually alive. A Saudi embassy official was quoted in the Chicago Tribune saying, “You cannot throw a stone in Saudi Arabia without hitting an Al Ghandi,” implying that the hijackers may have been simply using the Arabic equivalents of the English surname “Smith” to disguise themselves. Simply turning up six men with the same names as the 9/11 hijackers used does not mean that they are the hijackers, or that the Commission Report got their names wrong.

Griffin also unfairly assumes that a lack of shown proof is the same as a lie. When discussing the passenger manifests of the four planes, he writes:

Do we have any publicly available proof that any of the 19 men named by the FBI and the 9/11 Commission were on any of the four planes that day? The shocking answer is: No. We have been told that their names were on the flight manifests. [...] Presumably the 9/11 Commission, with its subpoena power, could have obtained copies. (23)

But, it does not seem shocking to me that the 9/11 Commission has access to documents outside of the reach of an everyday citizen. It is likely that much primary material has been classified to prevent public meddling. So, merely because Griffin cannot find a way to get his hands on the manifests of the four 9/11 flights does not mean either that they do not exist, or that they do not contain the alleged 19 suicide hijackers’ names. Here is where we trust that the 9/11 Commission Report with its extensive staff and fact-checking is correct. We have no way of telling either way, but it is unreasonable to assume a deliberate government cover-up when a simpler explanation serves. Griffin’s unwillingness to trust even the most basic facts presented in the 9/11 Omissions Report taints his investigation and leads his readers down a path of paranoia.

David Ray Griffin is a 67 year old professor of theology at the Claremont School of Theology. Why, then, is he writing an entire chapter about structural problems with the 9/11 towers’ collapse? I would feel better if the chapter were left off to a structural engineer or any kind of scientist, rather than a theologian with an undisclosed agenda. When he writes that:

Fire had never before caused steel-frame high-rise buildings to collapse, even when the fire was a very energetic, all-consuming one. (25)

And Popular Mechanics writes:

“Steel loses about 50 percent of its strength at 1100°F,” notes senior engineer Farid Alfawak-hiri of the American Institute of Steel Construction. “And at 1800 degrees it is probably at less than 10 percent.”

I am more likely to believe Popular Mechanics, who enlist certified experts in the field of inquisition rather than listen to a theologian talk about structural engineering, thermodynamics, or explosives. While Griffin may or may not have debatable points regarding the collapse of the 9/11 towers, he does not adequately certify himself. If Griffin will not present himself as worth listening to in this field, why even write the chapter?

What is an omission? When we read that “the commission adds, ‘further investigation has revealed that the trading had no connection with 9/11′” (54) and Griffin quotes the San Francisco Chronicle saying, “This volume of purchases raises suspicions that the investors had advance knowledge of the strikes” (53), can we count this as an omission of the 9/11 report, or simply a figment of Griffin’s imagination. Clearly, it is not an omission according to the 9/11 Commission Report, which discusses in some detail their considerations of the so-called insider trading that may have occurred around 9/11. After looking at the facts, they rejected this hypothesis. Griffin may or may not believe them, but he cannot call it an omission and blame its logic, which is not given in the report itself, as faulty.

However, Griffin shines when he is able to write about political reasons for the absence of factual information. For example, when discussing possible funding from Pakistan’s ISI, he writes:

Surely Dr. Philip Zelikow, who has produced several scholarly books, would have given the directive for a [search on books with 9/11 in the title]. In this light, can we really believe the Commission’s statement that it had seen “no evidence that any foreign government—or a foreign government official—supplied any funding?” (107)

Here, Griffin is using his wide survey knowledge of the 9/11 attacks to find omissions from the 9/11 Commission Report which have both objective and political importance. If Pakistan were involved in funding the 9/11 terrorists, the public and history itself should know, for pure truth’s sake. However, releasing information connecting Pakistan and the 9/11 attacks into the news media would politically damage relations with Pakistan for a long time. Pakistan, as a new nuclear power, is critical US-India relations as well as its own. So, as Griffin postulates, because we could not afford to offend them, the 9/11 Commission Report conveniently ignores facts which put Pakistan in a publicly unfavourable light. To me, this is more reasonable than his earlier material about material structure and unfounded claims of conspiracy: start reading at chapter 9.

The time it took to get the emergency staff on scene was excellent–perhaps only ten minutes had passed before hundreds of police and firefighters arrived. However, the text used to describe it is unusually melodramatic:

The FDNY response began within five seconds of the crash (289)

Whether or not this statement is actually true–it may be hard to verify–it’s clear that the use of such a sharp time-specifier is intended not convey a fact, but an emotional impression of urgent immediacy. When the commission describes how the second 9/11 plane hit, they create another exaggeration to further their agenda of heroism:

What had been the largest and most complicated rescue operation in city history instantly doubled in magnitude (293)

Actually, striking a second tower does not double the size of the rescue operation, but only the scope of the damage to WTC assets. The rescue operation itself, already mobilized in response to the first plane, does not need to substantially redeploy to respond to a second instance of the same threat. An analogy should be made to a fire breaking out in a residential neighborhood. An excessive number of firefighters respond and begin to put out the fire when the house next door catches aflame, as well. Obviously the “rescue operation” does not “instantly double in magnitude,” as the firefighters who were not fully utilized at the first site will simply divide their efforts and work more efficiently.

I have two last jabs at the Heroism chapter. First, when the commission writes, “Many civilians were in awe of the firefighters” (299), are they intending to impress us with a sort of group hypnosis, intoning the virtue of the firefighters and its (so-called) universal acknowledgement? Second, the commission selectively looks at the firefighters it apologizes for:

Climbing up stairs with heavy protective clothing and equipment was hard work even for physically fit firefighters (299)

Well, this implies that all of the firefighting personnel were in excellent shape, rather than acknowledging that the men were actually a mix of elite troops and fat grunts waiting for their retirement to roll around.

If you want to read about how legalized abortion cut crime rates, on the co-dependent cheating of sumo wrestlers across win-lose lines and teams, or about why selling crack really isn’t that profitable, this is the book for you. You who ask why until a reasonable explanation is found.

There’s even a romance substory between Eragon and the elf he saved before, which amounts to nothing but frustration. Probably Paolini is saving total release until his last book in the trilogy. And while this romantic tension is irritating, everytime Arya refuses his advances when you expect her to finally give in keeps you hooked nicely along.

Read if you liked the first one, or want a quick throw-away fantasy with more plot movement than fresh ideas.

Dumbledore dies at the end of this book.

And that’s not really that big a deal. Old news, right?

Sadly, that’s just about the only thing this sixth Harry Potter novel is good for. Besides tritely developing a romance between Harry and Ginny, Ron and Hermione, eliminating most of the major sources of tension from the Slytherin house by having them simply disappear most of the book, and terrifyingly walking through the backstory of Lord Voldemort, nothing really happens. That’s right 85% or more of the book is simply … backstory and mild character development. In the other 15%, Dumbledore dies!

So, while entertaining to read, at times you’re wondering “why.” What comes next? Why is this like this? Personally, I think sit’s just a 600 page stopgap to fill in the plot, get Harry out of the confines of Hogwarts, and move along the romance and adultness of the books. The next one will allow considerably more creative freedom, which is good since it’s supposed to be the last.

Buy it if you’re a harry potter fan-otherwise, skipping it won’t hurt.

Other takes:

• www.hoopyfrood.net/2005/07/is-this-the-penultimate-harry-potter-book/trackback/
• library.palomacruz.com/2005/07/18/a-harry-potter-recap/
• www.razlan.name/2005/07/half-blood-prince.html
• haloscan.com/tb/razlan/Half_Blood_Prince
• www.achuka.co.uk/achockablog/archives/001813.html

Pop Matters, in their review of Odd Thomas, writes:

He’s a spokesman for Christian values in the New Age, giving Koontz a vehicle to constantly reiterate his plan for living the perfect life — have faith in fate and persevere, ’cause you never know when your time may be up. And, if you refrain from swearing or sex while you’re at it, the Pearly Gates will be far more welcoming.

In The Taking, a perfect, intelligent, and loving couple is surrounded by an “alien” infestation, a long silver rain that blankets the globe in inhuman seed that spawns fungus, plants that are half animal, and demon-creatures who steal souls and replace them with shells. For Molly and Neil Sloan, the couple, their goal is to survive, have faith in their own ability, and help those around them who need to be saved from the menace–namely the children, an inept metaphor for the future generation.

In the book, Molly, Neil, and the world are presented with a demonic war-chant as the taker-of-souls strips mankind:

Yimaman see noygel, see refacull, see nod a bah, see naytoss, retee fo sellos.

All this turns out to be is:

My name is legion, is Lucifer, is Abbadon, is Satan, eater of souls.

So, if you can stand a tense thriller that ultimately is just too weird, too moralistic, and too straightforward, it’s a fast decently exciting read, but well below the level we would call “masterwork.” Here are some other reviews:

• www.silverberry.org/Reviews/archives/2005/07/the_taking.php
• logtar.com/cielo/blog/?p=10
• effectivesentences.blogspot.com/2005/07/taking.html