Thursday 20 September 2001

Pic of the day: The case for e-books.

E-book reviews

I have already told you, and illustrated, how crowded this apartment has grown with material possessions. Most of these are books or magazines. I hate parting with books, not to mention burning them. Even though they lie untouched for years, or decades, I still have this feeling that I'll miss them a week after I've rid myself of them. So they have just piled up. But e-books are different. I am reluctant to let my only copy be the one on the bookseller's server: They may go belly-up, as Internet companies often do. But even a zip disk with dozens of books take less space than one physical book. And Cassie, my pocket PC, can easily hold a number of books for my commuting enjoyment.

Yet it was only after I started to frequent Fictionwise.com that I discovered another pleasant surprise: E-book is an ideal format to publish short stories. Where before you had to buy an entire collection just to get at one (and usually didn't), now you can buy one short story for a few cents. It also opens for stories that are really too long to be short stories, but too short to be full novels. Here are some of my most recent reads ... all from Fictionwise except the last one.

***

The 43 Antarean dynasties is a short story. It is by Mike Resnick, so naturally the story flows like the rapids of a river. There is no pause, no slowing down to let you consider putting it away. His command of storytelling is as always superb. But also as usual his story is not really science fiction: It is today in the clothes of tomorrow. This is a story that happens every day in our own world, only retold as a fable of a distant future and a distant world. You may even recognize it. You may even recognize yourself. And you may be ashamed, or proud, or insulted.

***

Oceanic by Greg Egan. I must admit that I downloaded this one only because it was free, and even then under doubt. It turned out to be thought-provoking. In length, it is too short for a novel but longer than a short story. It is written in a matter-of-fact tone that adds to its atmosphere, for the main character is a scientist telling about his life.

This story would be best recommended to an intellectual atheist who wants to stay that way. (Skye, you reading this?) The author constructs a world with a tech level similar to ours, populated by people similar to us. (Except for one peculiar design change, namely in their reproduction. This may appeal to the science fiction fans out there, and would have been interesting if explored in some other book. Perhaps it is. In this, it does nothing except create a slight distance to this race who is otherwise completely like us.) On this earth-like world with human-like people there is a religion strikingly similar to Christianity, only gender-reversed. The members practice baptism by staying under the water for as long as they can hold their breath; this is called Drowning, and to the main character it is a life-changing experience. From here on, he not just believes: He actually experiences the presence of Beatrice, Daughter of God, in his daily life. There are numerous examples of this, well written and in such a way that a believer can almost recognize himself.

The author then goes on to explain it all biochemically. The religion is an unfortunate misunderstanding, there is no Beatrice, it's all down to neurochemistry. The main characters slowly comes to realize this, and eventually overcomes his religious experiences.

The scientific explanation for this religion is made dependent on the special condition of that planet, and so would not be valid on Earth. There is therefore no reason to see this as an attack on religion in general or christianity in particular. But there is no denying that this is exactly what it feels like. It is very hard to see any other raison d'etre for this book than to strenghten the faith of atheists in the face of actual religious experiences. As such, the book is well written. Just not recommended for the religious reader, who is likely to be frustrated by the conclusion. Or lack thereof.

***

Language for time travelers by L. Sprague de Camp: Those familiar with the author will realize that this rare non-fiction work is decades old. It is indeed from 1938, though you would not know unless it was referenced in the text. This work is almost as relevant today as it was then. It ponders the evolution of the English language, giving many examples from the past few centuries and extrapolating these trends into the next 500 years. The conclusion is that even a time travel of a few hundred years would give horrible problems of communication, all too easily overlooked by the common sci-fi writer.

Intriguingly, the book proposes that written language will change much less than spoken. And this is probably demonstrated by the book itself: 2/3 of a century has left it nearly untouched.

***

In contrast, there are subtle differences in language when you read the classic work Utopia by Thomas More. The book was, ironically, written in Latin and translated to English at a later date. This is still so long ago that the book has a distinct old-fashioned flavor, both in vocabulary and sentence building. The old ones were more given to long, flowing sentences: They had not yet learned the power of the headline.

The book is available free of charge, I got mine from Amazon.com. For some reason I had never read it before, probably because I am not a native English speaker. Surely this must be compulsory reading for any educated person in English-speaking countries?

As is often the case with books from before the Flynn effect gained ground, this book is less than blinding in its intellectual power by today's standards. There is subtlety in it, though. The foreword is essential to understanding the book: It does not really propose a Utopia, but rather serves to shed light of the excesses of its own time. A time we have luckily left behind. Yet we are still searching for Utopia ... Only now we look for it not beyond the sea of water, but beyond the sea of time.