Xenogenesis Trilogy - Octavia E. Butler

Octavia Butler passed away earlier this year. I had previously read both Parable novels and Kindred. Those novels carry elements of SF, but are largely works of social literature, rather than genre fiction. After hearing of Butler's untimely death, I decided to try her Xenogenesis trilogy: Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago – which are essentially science fiction in ways that many of her other books are not. I found the series to be less of a trilogy, and more of a set of variations on a theme. The first book, Dawn, is the most fully developed novel of the three, and is the only book in the series that is essential genre reading.

The story of Xenogenesis concerns the fate of humanity after a cataclysmic war which has killed most of humanity and rendered the Earth uninhabitable in the long-term. At this point, an alien race, the Oankali, descend to Earth, harvest the surviving humans, and create a research program to study the social and biological makeup of the species. Over the course of the series, the Oankali are revealed to have a biological imperative to accumulate genetic diversity throughout the universe, incorporating the best ideas of any evolutionary path and discarding the flawed or diseased. In this way, the Oankali become a kind of meta-species representing universal life in all its variations.

By destroying themselves, humanity has forfeited its right to independent existence – although that right is portrayed in the series as a mere illusion. The Oankali will breed with the remaining humans and become something new, effectively ending humanity as we know it. The first book, Dawn, focuses on Lilith, a human woman chosen by the Oankali to act as liaison to humanity in the early stages of the alien program and to lead the new human-Oankali hybrids to their new homes on Earth. The later books deal with the experiences of her mixed-species children as they attempt to reconcile their feelings of identity with normal humans and their own mixed-species societies.

Dawn works largely because of the central identity of Lilith, as she shares our emotional base. She makes decisions we may disagree with, but we understand her reasons for them. She initially feels revulsion and anger toward these alien invaders, and as she begins to develop tolerance and a grudging admiration for them, we can experience it as well. The narrators of the later books are too fully un-human to sympathize with (and maybe that's the point,) and their adventures are merely elaborations of Lilith's own from the first book. She plays a minor role in these later books, and the loss of a human character as an emotional anchor constantly threatens to separate the reader from the narrative. Butler might have been better suited telling at least one story from the perspective of a human resister.

The biological and reproductive descriptions in the books are fascinating, but as Butler explores them in the sequels, she creates more questions than she can answer. The Oankali are tri-sexual, with each mating requiring a male, a female, and an ooloi, whose job it is to selectively construct the offspring from the male's and female's genetic contributions. Unfortunately, the Oankali are biochemically monogamous – although that word is not exactly accurate – and all matings are essentially heterosexual. The books never address issues of homosexuality or promiscuity, though her system could allow both and interesting variations. (Perhaps this was an editorial decision to keep the books from being too weird.) Moreover, mixed-species children are more essentially Oankali than human, lacking many characteristics that might have benefited the new species: humor, art, imagination.

Dawn creates a compelling picture of a human future, and while it may be uncomfortable or unpleasant in places, it is a profound and poignant read. The later books are neither as engaging or as informative, but they are readable and have their own small, moments of genius. Instead of Adulthood Rites or Imago, I would recommend other books of humanity's future, such as Arthur C. Clarke's classic, Childhood's End, or Patricia Anthony's Brother Termite. For similar themes about genetic manipulation and human-alien relations, Karen Traviss's Wess'har series is worthwhile, if long-winded. And of course, Butler's Parable novels explore many of the same social themes of human identity, manifest destiny, and religion, and both of them are highly recommended.

Ship Fever - Andrea Barrett

Ship Fever collects seven short stories and one novella thematically linked by science and the observation of the natural world. Within this context, Barrett explores many secondary themes, involving the relationships between men and women, parents and children (literal and metaphorical), and the living and the dead. Barrett also seems determined to examine her characters lives in retrospective, as the themes of unfulfilled lives or unrealized dreams recurs in most of the stories – as if a whole life could be seen as an extended scientific experiment.

Barrett's style is one of alternating detail and generalization, giving most of the stories a dreamlike or memory-like quality most commonly found in the magical realists. One would expect that stories of science and scientists would be more clinical, and yet Barrett's prose is almost lyrical. Most of the stories here lack a traditional story structure in a narrative sense, but far from meandering, Barrett is tracing the course of her characters' developing sense of self-awareness. It is perhaps ironic, and yet not at all ironic, that many of her scientist characters fail to observe their own lives with the attention they afford the natural world.

Barrett's greatest weakness in this collection is in her depiction of gender relations and the motivations of her male characters. Barrett's female protagonists are well-drawn and sympathetic, but most of her central male characters are disillusioned or disappointed with their careers, feckless in their relationships with their wives or daughters, or simply non-existent for important parts of the narrative.

There is a subtext here about how men judge themselves by their professional advancement and the respect of their peers and women judge themselves by their relationships with their families. Unfortunately, Barrett misses the point that these are different only by degrees, and as more and more opportunities arise for women to advance professionally, many women are choosing to prioritize their careers over families. In one story, Barrett creates a career-minded female scientist, but then softens her by giving her an ineffectual father and showing her communing with the spirit of her deceased mother.

Despite these shortcomings, Barrett's stories are never less than fascinating, especially "Ship Fever", the sprawling novella that makes up most of the book's second half. Set against the backdrop of the typhus epidemic on Grosse Isle, Canada, during the summer of 1847 – which killed over 5,000 Irish emigrants – all of Barrett's considerable talents and forgivable shortcomings are on vivid display. Barrett creates her most sympathetic male character in Lauchlin Grant, a second-rate doctor with an unrequited love for his childhood sweetheart (whose husband is, incidentally, abroad for most of the story, reporting on the potato famine.) Grant decides to work at the Grosse Isle quarantine facility. "Ship Fever" also features the most vivid, muscular prose of the book, as the stink and despair of the sick is practically palpable. Most of the stories in the book tend toward the precious or refined, but "Ship Fever" is exciting and gritty.

It may sound like I found a lot to dislike in this book, but quite to the contrary, I found all of the stories here to be worthwhile, even if flawed in some way. I am reminded of the scene in Contact, when the female astronomer, confronted by the splendor of the universe, laments "They should have sent a poet." Contact's heroine is a more plausible and curious scientist than any of the characters depicted in Ship Fever, but the stories here practically sing and dance and weep about the scientific discovery of the natural world and the inner lives of Mendel, Linnaeus, Darwin, and the countless men and women who followed them.

Cook's Country Magazine

Even though I have not been cooking as much lately, I still maintain my subscription to Cook's Illustrated, a charming if anachronistic bi-monthly dedicated to bringing gourmet cooking to the everyman's kitchen. All illustrations and photos in that magazine are in black-and-white, but the magazine is completely free of advertisements and has a high standard of quality control with respect to recipe content, instruction, and product evaluation (both food and equipment.)

Cook's Country is a new magazine from the same publisher. Ostensibly the magazine is dedicated to "country-style" cooking, and the trial issue I received certainly bears that out. The July 2006 issue (not the one in the picture) features recipes for burgers, ribs, potato salad, pies, and fried fish, just to name a few. Actually, in terms of content, I found little difference between Cook's Country and it's sister magazine. The basic format is for the test cooks at the magazine to take some recipe, familiar or exotic, and try several approaches to duplicating it. They select their favorite on the basis of the ease of production and quality of the results. Often it's a compromise and they say as much. In addition to the recipe, they provide details about how the recipe can go wrong, why, and how to fix it, making their articles more useful than some of the other cooking magazines you could choose. There are also short product reviews and cooking tips (some from professional chefs and others from readers.)

The first difference you notice about Cook's Country is that, unlike Cook's Illustrated, the whole thing is in color. It's a much glossier publication, but is still ad-free. I had learned not to miss the color in CI, but everything here is so vibrant I just want to rush over and start cooking immediately. The magazine also features a punch out, quick cooking "centerfold" where key recipes are printed on cards that can be stored separately in a recipe file. These recipes are not written with the same level of detail as the feature articles, but they represent simple, fast dishes that should be fairly foolproof. (This fool hasn't tried any of them yet, though.) Also, the magazine seems to rely more on reader input than CI. One very nice feature is a letters column, where readers can write in with descriptions of dishes and ask for recipes.

According to the web, Cook's Country will be getting a companion TV show on PBS, similar to the relationship between Cook's Illustrated and "America's Test Kitchen." I hope that our PBS affiliate will pick it up, because I greatly enjoyed "ATK" for the short time it was carried locally. I like the new magazine, and I think it makes a lot of improvements to the old, traditional format of Cook's Illustrated. However, I haven't decided to subscribe or not. I am worried about overlap between the two titles. If they can maintain good quality control, and keep the two magazines distinct, I would gladly look forward to adding a new quality cooking magazine on the alternating months when I don't have a new Cook's Illustrated to read.

Ultra Blue - Utada Hikaru

Utada is regressing. Her first album, First Love, was the work of an unnaturally talented ingenue. Her second, Distance, was a rousingly diverse collection of songs that improved on her debut in every way. Deep River was a melancholy masterpiece. Since then it's been rough going. Her American crossover attempt, Exodus, was a disappointment and will probably prevent her from ever catching on in the land of her birth. Ultra Blue is marketed as Utada's triumphant return to the Japanese pop scene, but that market has changed a lot since her last album in 2002, and Ultra Blue is the least ambitious album of Utada's career.

The album consists of songs from Utada's five single releases over the past 4 years, plus a collection of pleasant-sounding, but unmemorable filler tracks. The secondary tracks here are largely mid-tempo synth-pop in the style of Erasure. The arrangements are all synthesized, with a cheap, shimmery sameness. The vocal performances are too controlled and mannered to elevate the forgettable and meandering melodies. "This is Love" opens the album with a little energy, and "WINGS" would have been a beautiful song with a more organic accompaniment. The best of the new tracks is "Eclipse (Interlude)" which is a two-minute instrumental that expanded into full-length form would have been the only danceable track on the album.

As far as the older songs, "Colors" is the oldest and hews closest to the traditional Utada sound perfected on Deep River. "Be My Last" is a lovely ballad which stands out largely for its emotive performance and real instrument accompaniment. The best of the singles, and best track on the album by far, is "Passion", which builds a textured sonic landscape out of ethereal samples, backmasked vocals, and a complex cadence.

If only the whole album had taken some chances instead of playing it safe, we might be watching the maturation of a great artist. As it stands now, Utada's early potential is still largely unrealized and she is being surpassed by the artists she influenced and inspired. It took her five albums to do so, but with Ultra Blue she has finally started her sophomore slump.

Fools Errant - Matthew Hughes

Fools Errant is Matthew Hughes's first novel, and introduces the Archonate, a loose confederation of human societies on a far-future Earth. The novel is obviously an homage to Jack Vance's Dying Earth series of books in style, milleu, and plot. In fact, several of the vignettes in Fools Errant would fit seamlessly into Vance's novels The Eyes of the Overworld and Cugel's Saga.

Filidor is the leisurely nephew of the Archon, the ruler of most of the societies of civilized Earth. He is called away from his indulgences by his uncle who sends him on an ill-defined quest with only his (oft-disused) wits and his uncle's dwarfen asssistant. Along the way, Filidor is forced to interact with the diverse peoples and look beyond his provincial, if priveleged, lifestyle. The book is organized episodically with only the thinnest of connecting tissue linking one story to the next. This makes it a nice book to pick up, savor for a while, and put down for later. Unfortunately, the ending comes abruptly, and somewhat unsatisfyingly, as Hughes tries to rush Filidor's maturation and conclude the Archon's quest in one brisk passage.

The similarities to Vance make some of the differences all the more striking. Hughes emulates Vance's baroque prose and dialogue, but does so with a softer touch than Vance used. The result is the sensation of grandor and mystery without the burden of a vocabulary lesson. Hughes's hero is also more appealing. Filidor is not so much a scoundrel as Vance's anti-hero Cugel, but rather a lazy and indulgent sort who needs toughening. We relish the way Cugel always gets his comeuppance, but yet we pull for Filidor to learn and grow. Hughes also uses lower forms of comedy and farce to lighten his story, compared to Vance's dry, cynical sense of irony.

The best addition to Hughes's story is a book within a book called Discourses and Edifications of Liw Osfeo, consisting of a set of parables about a scholar who always succeeds in confounding expectations. Filidor carries the book with him through his travels and frequently reads excerpts from the book, hoping to attain some great wisdom from the stories. These stories are hilarious non-sequitors which serve as both diversion and satire. They remind me greatly of some of Stanislaw Lem's short fictions, especially the stories of The Cyberiad.

Hughes's two novels about Filidor – Fools Errant and Fool Me Twice – are currently out of print, but relatively easy to find used. Hughes has continued writing stories about the Archonate which deal with other characters and can be enjoyed separately.

Le Sac des Filles - Camille

I heard a sample from French singer Camille's latest album Le Fils and was immediately intrigued. The album is getting enough attention that the CD has been released in the US with comparisons to other avant-pop performers such as Bjork.

I tracked down a copy of her French debut, Le Sac des Filles, through an online reseller, and it's a very satisfying listen. Unlike the experimentalism of her new album, Le Sac des Filles is a walking tour of French pop music that feels both traditional and modern. Lighter and less artificial than any of Pizzicato Five's attempts to recreate this kind of music, Camille's production is clever yet perfectly organic, using traditional instruments and sampling to build the sensation of moving through Paris streets in different seasons and eras. At times the effect is gimicky, such as the artifical grammaphone effect in "Ruby", the relentless wordplay of "Les ex", or the crashing dishes that punctuate the collapse of the title track.

But mostly it is Camille's versatile voice that sells the best tracks here. She is childlike and playful on the opener, "1 2 3", but regoups into full caberet mode on "Paris". "Mon petit vieux" is a pleasant song accompanied only by guitar and piano. "Un homme déserté" sounds like an excerpt from a melancholy romance film. Camille whispers and growls through "Je ne suis pas ta chose", a defiant pop masterpiece.

All the songs on this album have the wonderful characteristic of sounding new and original yet sounding immediately familiar. Whether or not the challenging sonic landcapes of Le Fil catch on in the US, Le Sac de Filles is worth tracking down. It's a rewarding listen and nicely fills the French pop niche your music collection was lacking.

Passion Play - Sean Stewart

Passion Play dates back to 1992, and is Sean Stewart's first novel. Stewart is perhaps best known for his contemporary fantasies Mockingbird and Galveston. Unlike the dreamlike lucidity of those novels, Stewart's prose here is spare and lean. Perhaps inspired by the rise of the Moral Majority during the elder Bush presidency, this is perhaps the most prescient vision of the extrapolation of the current Bush's administration since 1984.

The main character is Diane Fletcher, an empath who works as a freelance investigator for the police. In the future of Passion Play, the constitutional democracy of the United States is replaced with a fundamentalist Christian regime which treats sins as capital offences and televises executions. Fletcher is brought in to investigate the murder of the most popular actor in the state run entertainment industry, the de facto spokesman for the moral lifestyle of the patriotic citizen. Along the way, she discovers the hypocrisy of the powerful, the harsh faith of the true believer, the burden of the conflicted and compassionate, and the quiet rebellion of the rejected and outcast.

The mystery is a fairly straightforward parlor mystery with a narrow set of suspects, each reflecting an aspect of the dismal society they inhabit. However, it is Fletcher's ruminations on life and faith, enhanced by her empathy, that make the story worth reading as she struggles to find a place in an increasingly intolerant and rigid society. At fewer than 200 pages, there is scarcely a wasted word, and every scene is vivid and memorable, from the crime scene on the first page, to the final haunting execution as justice is finally served.

The book is currently in print from Tesseract Books, and it is about time that someone realized that the book perhaps even more current and essential today than it was when it was first published.