Stranger than SF

Science Fiction Book Review

 The Dark Millennium

Poignant and harrowing
The book starts out with a series of poignant and harrowing scenes depicting the outbreak of nuclear armageddon. Ilse Walchern and her friend Carl Seeborg on holiday at resort town of Ustka on the Baltic Sea; pilot Simon Marks having a beer in Brooklyn restaurant; Vladimir Omolov running away into the Ural wilderness because he saw the rocket launch and knows the retaliatory strike is inevitable; Paul Mayhew and Patricia Corday in love on a trip to Italy, looking out at the Mediterranean Sea and the Faraglioni rising out of the dark waters; blind Stephen Norcross bravely emerging from an underground bomb shelter in London to face the end of all humanity. Author A. J. Merka is supremely talented; the scenes are poetic and heartbreaking, they remind us of the best of humanity when the world is experiencing the nuclear war caused by the worst of humanity.

It's a shame the book is so rotten.

Mr. Merak can turn a phrase with the best of them, but the storytelling and the plot of The Dark Millennium is complete trash.

Abducted by Vorzans
All seven of the characters introduced in the vignettes survive the nuclear armageddon. They are the only survivors. An alien race called the Vorzan abduct them and put them into suspected animation. The Vorzan wish to colonize Earth, but to do so they must be sure that the effects of planet-wide nuclear war have dissipated and the planet is safe to live on. To that end, they'll drop a couple of their human test subjects onto the planet every two hundred years or so and see how they fare.

That makes no sense, and Simon Marks even calls them out on it: "Wouldn't it be far simpler to send [instruments] down at regular intervals? Surely you can measure the radiation, the composition of the atmosphere and anything else you might need." But no, for plot reasons the Vorzan must send our heroes down as guinea pigs.

First awakening
Marks and Norcross are sent down first, after 250 years in suspended animation. They land right in a radioactive hot zone: the pulverized remains of a bombed city. After a day of walking they get to safer land, but it's too late. They've both received lethal doses of gamma radiation and die in horrific pain.

Second awakening
At the 700-year mark the Vorzans send down Ilse Walchern, Carl Seeborg, and Vladimir Omolov. They don't perish from radiation poisoning. Instead, they find a city built by mutants, which presumably are the descendants of humanity who survived the nuclear war. Never mind that we were reliably informed earlier in the book that these seven people rescued by the Vorzans were the only humans left alive. Now there is an entire civilization of mutants. (Mutants who, after 700 years, still speak recognizable English, but never mind.) They never meet the mutants, mind you: the mutants attack them, there's a shootout with laser guns, and Walchern, Seeborg, and Omolov die in horrific pain as energy weapons "[lick] through [their] lungs like an inferno wind."

Third awakening
After nearly a thousand years, the Vorzans revive Paul Mayhew and Patricia Corday. This time the Vorzans give them a pinnace and allow them to fly it around and explore the whole planet. Mayhew figures if any humans are still alive, it would be in Antarctica because it's the only continent that wouldn't be bombed into radioactive oblivion. That makes no sense at all. Nobody can live in Antarctica because it's a frozen desert.

But what do you know, he's right! Paul and Patricia find a thriving city of regular non-mutant humans living under the ice in Antarctica. Paul warns them about the Vorzan fleet that's in orbit, poised to begin colonization, and explains how to defeat them. They gather up a few nuclear warheads and fly to a remote island in the Pacific to turn those warheads into weapons capable of defeating the Vorzans.

Fortuitously, on this Pacific island they find a huge tower constructed centuries ago by mutants. There are no mutants anymore, though. It appears mutants have died out. Conveniently. Also conveniently, the mutant tower is filled with "row upon row of sleek-bodied missiles." Very nice. They rig the missiles up with their nuclear warheads and launch them into orbit, where the missiles destroy all the Vorzan spaceships.

All but one, that is. The Vorzan flagship. The big one. The invincible one. The one that can detect and avoid any nuclear-tipped missiles that are on the prowl for it. But—ooops!—it can't detect non-nuclear threats. An old satellite, Explorer VII, launched back in 1969 and swinging around in Earth orbit ever since, coincidentally and conveniently smacks into the Vorzan flagship and blows it all to pieces.

The end
I hate this book so much.

Science Fiction Book Review

 Space Lash

I very much enjoyed "Trojan Fall". Stories that rely on hard scientific knowledge are fun. The best story in the collection is Raindrop.

Dust Rag
Two astronauts on the moon take an exploratory walk in a crater, and due to particular magnetic effects triggered by a solar storm they find themselves in a fine cloud of suspended moon dust. It's amusing until the charged dust particles adhere to their visors and block their vision, at which point finding a way to reverse the static charge and clear their vision is a matter of life and death.

Sun Spot
A crew of scientists burrowed into the inside of a comet make a brave transit around the sun to get a close-up look at the sun. When unforeseen trouble with their equipment threatens to render their main camera system useless, "Grumpy" Ries takes a crew to the comet's surface and makes repairs, risking his life for science.

Uncommon Sense
Laird Cunningham has deliberately crashed his ship and run off into the hostile, airless landscape to escape from the mutinous crew who would kill him to steal the ship for themselves. It's only a matter of time--a day or two--before they fix the ship, and Cunningham can't survive on an airless planet, so he must figure out a way to distract the others so he can retake the ship. Meanwhile, he sits in a cave and watches the bizarre local life forms: crab-like creatures with liquid metal blood that feed on what serves for local "plant" growth, and large, aggressive centipede-like predators that feed upon the crabs. If only there were a way to use these creatures to his advantage…

"Trojan Fall"
La Roque has made his big score, now he must get away with it. He is no pilot or spaceman, but he buys a spaceship and heads for the stars, deducing that if he can evade immediate capture then he can make a clean break. With the law hot on his tail, La Roque finds a pair of red dwarf stars, sets his spaceship into the Trojan point between them, turns off all power, and waits for his pursuers to give up and leave. Too late he realizes that his ship has not stayed in the stable Trojan point, but has been drawn into one of the stars. The view shifts to the watching crew on the enforcement cruiser, one of whom remarks that if La Roque had known his science, he would have known that stable Trojan points only exist between objects of vastly differing masses; there is no stable Trojan point between two stars of roughly equal mass.

Fireproof
A saboteur breaks into a space station to destroy it and its nuclear deterrent. He releases fuel into the zero-G confines of the space station and attempts to light it with an incendiary bomb, but in zero-G the floating globs of fuel will not sustainably burn because the globe of flame smothers itself out.

Halo
A superintendent checks on a student's progress. The student has made a real hash of things at the farm, leading to the complete destruction of one plot, and a runaway growth of strange chemicals at the third plot. It's the solar system. The "plots" are planets, the runaway growth on the third plot is all the life on Earth, and these aliens seem to be living comets that farm and eat hydrocarbons.

The Foundling Stars
Elven Toner and Dick Ledermann arrange a fantastic experiment to test their two competing hypotheses regarding star formation, which Toner in particular thinks cannot statistically happen by natural processes without some external impetus. The experiment fails in an unexpected way, and the viewpoint shifts to two "soldiers" (each being mostly incorporeal and several hundred astronomical units large) who are sweeping up interstellar detritus to form stars as part of a galactic war effort. It's them who are providing the needed impetus for star formation.

Raindrop
The Raindrop is an experiment in orbit around Earth. It's a huge volume of water, melted from several comets, encased in a tough plastic skin, and seeded with life forms. The hard radiation of space causes a rapid mutation rate, and the eventual hope is to develop edible life forms that can be farmed and help feed Earth's rapidly growing population.

Silbert is the caretaker of Raindrop, and he's visited by Aino and Brenda Weisanen, a couple who represent major new shareholders of the recently-privatized corporation that owns Raindrop. The Weisanens intend to turn Raindrop into a private home for people like themselves: genetically modified humans who (among other things) can only successfully carry their babies to term in zero-G. Silbert and Bresnahan realize that Raindrop is the hope for billions of people on Earth, and if the Weisanens snatch that hope away by ending the farm experiment, it will cause chaos. But how to convince them to cooperate and come to an agreement that will benefit all of humanity, not just the few hundred genetically modified people who will live in space?

The Mechanic
On a high-speed hydrofoil, our heroes hunt down sick wildlife and treat it. Or rather, not wildlife, but pseudo-life. It's never explained, but the seas are populated by self-reproducing robotic versions of aquatic life, which suffer from various diseases that threaten the new cyborg ecosystem. One of those pathogens attacks the ship, damaging one of the hydrofoils and causing a crash at sea, which injures everyone on board. The rest of the story is about medical technology: they have the ability to use gene sequences and big fancy machines to fix injuries and regrow missing body parts, one cell at a time. One character gets a new face and has a severed hand re-attached and fixed up. It's all bizarre and none of the story hangs together well. This one is disappointing.

Biography Book Review

 The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon

Moira Greyland tells her life story: how she was abused by parents who were part of the counter-cultural, sexually liberated lifestyle in the 1960, 70s, and 80s. Her father in particular was of the opinion that everybody should have sex with everybody, all the time, and that would make everyone happy. The abuse that grew out of that worldview is unspeakable and unforgivable. (The Christian sexual ethic is really so much better. It just is.)

What makes Moira's story notable rather than just tragic is who her parents were: Walter Breen, renowned writer and expert on the subject of coin collecting; and Marion Zimmer Bradley, best-selling author of fantasy and science fiction and the co-founder of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA). Breen and Bradley were well-known and involved in fandom, and Breen's sexual interest in little children was well-known in the 1960s, to the point that he was banned from attending the 1964 Worldcon in Oakland. Breen had been caught literally with his pants down with a child, there were multiple known victims, and Breen talked to people about having sex with children, but all that fandom could muster themselves to do was to ban him from attending one convention—and even then there was a lot of grumbling about it. Nobody called the police.

It was not until his daughter Moira turned him in to the police years later that Walter Breen was finally caught. He was arrested in 1990, was eventually sentenced to 13 years, and died in prison in 1993. He had dozens of victims, including but not limited to his own children. Marion Zimmer Bradley was never brought to justice for her crimes of a similar nature.

Science Fiction Book Review

 Contact

I think I'd read the Leinster story before, but it's a good one. Chemical Plant is good, as were The Fire Balloons, The Gentle Vultures, and Knock. My favorite story was Specialist.

Introduction
Noel Keyes

First Contact
by Murray Leinster
A spaceship from Earth makes accidental first contact with an alien spaceship near the Crab Nebula. Both sides are cautious: revealing the location of their home world could lead to disaster if the other race is hostile. The only truly safe thing to do is to destroy the other vessel. But, not being hostile and hoping for the best, each side looks for a way out. Eventually they find it: each side strips their ship clean of any information, navigation aid, etc. that might point the way home. Then the crews don spacesuits, switch spacesuits, and head home in an alien spaceship.

Intelligence Test
by Harry Walton
First contact with an alien race comes at a truck stop diner where an alien cube has turned the diner into a trap: people can enter but not exit. It's worse than that: the borders are closing in. Those trapped inside must figure a way out--which is the point, after all. The alien is testing human intelligence.

The Large Ant
by Howard Fast
Mr. Morgan sees something out of the corner of his eye and instinctively he lashed out and smashed it. It's an ant. A large ant. An ant over a foot long. He takes it to a museum, where the curator and a United States Senator reveal the truth: this large ant is an alien species, and it's not the first that's been found. All have been killed; it seems humans are predisposed to instinctively destroy any large bug. What the point of this story is, I cannot possibly say.

What's He Doing in There?
by Fritz Leiber
A Martian visits the Professor, and asks to use the bathroom. He locks himself in and stays there all night while the Professor and family wonder what he's doing. He's sleeping in the bathtub. Martians love to sleep in water and the visitor just assumed, from watching Earth television, that bathtubs were for sleeping in.

Chemical Plant
by Ian Williamson
The disabled cruiser Persephone sets down on an alien planet next to a conspicuous landmark (a red lake), beams away a distress message, rolls into the lake and disappears. When the would-be rescuers come, they find the red lake but can't find Persephone. Commander Japp of the Interplanetary ship Berenice wants to wait for the whole fleet to show up, but it's Captain Britthouse of the Planetary ship Hannibal who analyzes the situation, correlates the facts, and locates Persephone. The strange vegetation that grows everywhere across the entire planet is part of a single living organism. The bright red lake is part of the creature's chemical life process: it's been "mining" the chromium that it needs from an exposed vein of ore, and processing it (via the brightly colored lakes) into the form it needs for its chlorophyll analog. Persephone's hull is made of chrome steel, so naturally the plant tipped the ship over into the lake to harvest the chromium. Britthouse empties the lakes, finds the now-paper-thin hull of Persephone on the lakebed, and rescues the men trapped inside.

Limiting Factor
by Clifford D. Simak
Griffith and Lawrence find two planets: one, strip-mined of everything useful. The second, a globe-spanning edifice of machinery. Both are abandoned. The machine planet is apparently some sort of giant calculating device, abandoned when its creators realized that its limitations --despite it being literally the size of an entire planet--meant it could never answer the questions they asked of it.

The Fire Balloons
by Ray Bradbury
The Very Reverend Father Joseph Daniel Peregine leads a group of Episcopal Fathers to Mars to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ. The others wish to preach to the sinful men and wanton women of First Town; Father Peregrine wishes to bring the gospel to the Martians. With help from the other Fathers, he makes contact with the old Martians, who look like floating blue globes of fire. He constructs an outdoor "church" in the hills where the Martians dwell and begins to preach to the Martians.

The Martians do finally make contact: they explain that they were once like Earth men, with bodies, living material lives. But long ago someone came to them, explaining a way to free their souls; they gave up their bodies, their need for material things, and now live in a sinless state of happiness.

I love that Bradbury isn't afraid to write about religion, about Christianity in particular, and to write in a way that acknowledges the sincerity, gentleness, and overall goodness of those who truly follow in the ways of Jesus. I'm not sure about the Martians--this giving up of one's bodies to live in a sinless state of pure energy sounds a little bit like early Christian heresies that viewed the body as sinful and the spirit as good. That's certainly not Christianity and I would have expected Father Peregrine to recognize and reject that heresy immediately. Then again, I think the big idea here is that God works differently on different planets. That was Mars's Truth, which is as true on Mars as Earth's truth (aka Christianity) is on Earth. I think. Anyway I like good religion stories.

Invasion from Mars
by Howard Koch
The screenplay for the Orson Welles radio adaptation of H. G. Wells's War of the Worlds.

The Gentle Vultures
by Isaac Asimov
The peaceful Hurrians secretly observe Earth, waiting for the inevitable nuclear war to break out, after which they will help pick up the pieces, carefully guiding humanity into a more docile species who can join galactic civilization. But the war never comes, so the Hurrians abduct a man and question him about why this might be. The kidnapped man is horrified that the Hurrians would refuse to help prevent a nuclear war and that they will only help humans afterwards. He calls them vultures. The imagery is so disconcerting to the gentle Hurrians that they pack up and leave.

Knock
by Fredric Brown
Fredric Brown builds a great story around this sentence: "The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door . . ." The man is Walter Phelan, a professor. He is indeed the last man: the Zans wiped out all life on Earth except for a few hundred specimens (matched pairs, male and female, of course) for their zoo. The Zans are gravely concerned when some of their zoo animals start dying. The Zan are immortal and die only in accidents. Walter explains that Earth creatures are mortal and die after only a few years, and furthermore, require special care and handling. Soon the Zan start dying: so in terror they abandon Earth and their specimens, fleeing the planet that brings death. (It turns out Walter tricked them into giving special care hands-on care to a rattlesnake, which of course bit them and the venom caused death.) Oh, and the knock on the door? It's the last woman on Earth, coming to see the last Walter.

Specialist
by Robert Sheckley
The crew of a spaceship are rocked by a photon storm. They survive, but their Pusher is dead. They need a new Pusher. (The species is so fragile.) The crew is a collection of various species that work together to operate the FTL spaceship—who work together to be the FTL spaceship, and the Pusher is the one whose mind pushes them into FTL speeds.

They search nearby planets and eventually find a Pusher planet. It's Earth. They set down in a remote location and grab a Pusher (that is, a man.) They are surprised to find he has no idea about Pushing. These wild Pushers have grown up alone in the galaxy, and have had to generalize and fill all roles: they never had the chance to specialize and become what all Pushers are designed for. It's a tragedy.

Fortunately the man they pick up is game to try his hand at Pushing, and after a few tries he gets the hang of it. He Pushes. The ship jumps into FTL. It's a happy ending.

Lost Memory
by Howard Browne (as by Peter Phillips)
A lost spaceship lands on a planet of robots who have forgotten their makers. The robots, not understanding about biological life, presume the spaceship is a damaged robot, so they treat it accordingly. The man trapped inside frantically tries to explain that he is a Maker, that he is a human, that they should not open the skin of the spaceship and expose it to a vacuum that will kill him. But he's too late. The robots never do realize that the bit of strange protoplasm they find inside the spaceship was a living human being; they are more focused on the computer circuits of the strange lost robot whose life they were unable to save.

Science Fiction Book Review

 The Space Egg

In a remote part of Kansas, test pilot Jack Fayburn tests the experimental XDW-49 for Darling Aircraft Corporation. Somewhere at the edge of space he encounters--something. When he returns he is not the same man. He's withdrawn, aggressive, he possesses super-strength and a super-human healing ability. Bullets don't stop him. Jack's condition spreads: Ruby Cascade, C.F. Darling's secretary, starts exhibiting the same behavior.

In no time at all, Jack and Ruby seize control of the facility (the Darling test site is remote and isolated) and cut the communication lines. Jack and Ruby make it clear they are a new sort of creature, and soon everyone on Earth will become like them—or die. Photographer Bob Reeve, Dr. Felix Maynard, C. F. Darling, the sheriff, and the rest of the staff try to stop them. It's hard though: they have superhuman healing powers and can absorb bullets like so many Nerf darts.

In the end, Bob appeals to Jack's humanity. He calls out to the shred of the original human Jack who is still in there, and Jack responds. He grabs Ruby and they self-immolate in black flame. Earth is saved, the end.

It's not a great book, but I always enjoy a story set in Kansas.

Science Fiction Book Review

 Thirteen O'Clock and Other Zero Hours

I'm a fan of Kornbluth, usually, but these are not strong stories. They are competently written—Kornbluth is good at his craft—but not top-notch. Thirteen O'Clock and The Golden Road are pure fantasy so that was a strike against them in my book, but that's down to my personal preference. I prefer science fiction.

Thirteen O'Clock
Peter Packer finds his grandfather's old clock and winds it. The clock strikes thirteen—and transports Peter to the magical land of Ellil where he meets a beautiful girl (a sorceress named Melicent), gets in trouble with the local gang (the Peace and Progress Reform Party), collects an army of trolls, and goes toe-to-toe with the big boss himself: Mayor Almarish, who turns out to be grandpa Packer himself.

The Rocket of 1955
The narrator and others conspire to collect money to build a rocket to send a man to Mars, but pocket the money and send up a ramshackle rocket designed to explode on launch.

What Sorghum Says
Loner mountain man Sorghum Hackett meets a scientific man who convinces Sorghum to help him build a science-y machine. The science man dies before he can use the machine. In surprise, Sorghum accidentally activates the machine and gets transported back to ancient Rome. He makes his mark distilling "white mule" (that is, moonshine) and gets noticed by Lady Livia who sentences him to the gladiatorial games (the charge is sorcery). Sorghum gets himself and the rest of the doomed men drunk on moonshine, and they bravely defeat leopards and the emperor's prized lion. Sorghum then finds himself back on his mountain, never quite understanding what happened. It’s a well-told story but I’m quite sure that the Romans knew how to get drunk before an American time traveler showed up.

Crisis
Code Clerk Weems and Dr. Helen Carewe at the Bureau of Protocol in Alaska must manage an interplanetary diplomatic incident when the Serene Karfiness of Mars insults the Venus Plenipotentiary, which, due to various diplomatic vagaries, results in Venus cutting off diplomatic relations with Earth and start making war rumblings. They send a flurry of messages to the various embassies, messages that sound like code but are actually nonsense. This so flummoxes both sides that a well-timed message from Jupiter causes both sides to step back from the brink. War is averted once more.

The Reversible Revolutions
Lieutenant J. C. Battle, soldier of fortune and member of the exclusive Saber Club, finds himself caught between two revolutionaries who each wish to hire him: "Malachi Breen, manufacturer of Pot-o-Klutch and temporal director of Sweetness and Light, the new world revolution" on one side, Lenninger Underbottam, of Double-Action Kettlesnatcher Manufacturing Corp. and Chief of Devil Take the Hindmost on the other. Both want to take over the world.

Miss Spike McSweeney first tries to hire him to assassinate Breen; later she switches sides and helps him go after Underbottam. She finally reveals to Battle that she's a robot, a special model built by Breen, but she has a mind of her own.

Battle is stuck between the two rival revolutions, but clarity comes when Breen and Underbottam pool their efforts: they'll take over the world first, then flip a coin to see who gets to be in charge. Battle realizes that if either Breen or Underbottam succeed in conquering the entire world, he will be out of a job: a soldier of fortune in a world without war? So he and the rest of the Saber Club, and the robot Miss Spike McSweeney, go after Breen and Underbottam.

The City in the Sofa
J. C. Battle, soldier of fortune, is back. This time he's hired by Cromleigh to investigate a mysterious mohair couch at the Billionaire's Club. The couch is home to a miniaturized city of alien invaders, who use mind control to ensure nobody notices the couch. Cromleigh has a miniaturizer and sends Battle into the sofa for reconnaissance. Battle figures it out though: the "alien" invaders in the couch are just people hired by Cromleigh and painted green. It's Cromleigh who is the actual alien invader, and he--being the suspicious type--hired Battle to keep tabs on his newly hired staff of "alien invaders" who were actually just tapping phones and gathering information so they could manipulate the financial markets. It's not a terribly cohesive story.

The Golden Road
Colt dies of exposure in the high Himalayas and now must choose between joining one of two caravans of the dead: the Good or the Bad?

MS. Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie
Narrator Cecil Corwin (pen name of author C. M. Kornbluth) describes how he found The Answer, a phrase that can solve any problem: from petty marital disagreements to the missile crisis. He's about to reveal it to the world when he's approached by members of the science fiction writers association: he's not the first to discover The Diagonal Relationship (their name for The Answer), and is in fact only the latest in several thousand writers who have deduced it. (Writers, science fiction writers in particular, are the only people whose breadth of knowledge is wide enough to have all the pieces to the puzzle.) When Corwin is slow to agree to keep the knowledge secret, they drug him and stash him in an insane asylum where he's kept drugged up. He bribes the attendant to delay his drug dose long enough to scribble down his story on cigarette paper and stuff it into fortune cookies (the making of which is one form of Occupational Therapy at the asylum) which is how Kornbluth found the story. Unfortunately the fortune cookies with the text of The Answer are missing.

Science Fiction Book Review

 Beyond Time and Space

The Long Watch is competent but not great. I enjoyed Minority Report but I had been tipped off to the secret so the thrill was gone. Fessenden's Worlds was good too.

I did not care the others: Colossus and A Voyage to Sfanomoë were particularly bad, as was The Seesaw. The excerpt from Last and First Men didn't hold up on its own. Humpty Dumpty Had a Great Fall was a mildly interesting concept but poorly executed.

The Long Watch
by Robert A. Heinlein
Colonel Towers, commander of the moon base, has decided to bring peace to mankind by seizing control of the nuclear bombs on the moon and threatening to blow up cities on Earth unless and until the nations disarm. And of course to make his commitment clear, he will demonstrate on a few unimportant cities. Towers tries to enlist Lieutenant Johnny Dalquist, but Dalquist instead disarms and sabotages the bombs--exposing himself to deadly radiation and sacrificing himself to save humankind from Towers's megalomania.

Minority Report
by Theodore Sturgeon
Brave explorers leave Earth and discover the horrifying reality: Earth and its solar system are a rare "matter" solar system in a galaxy almost entirely made of antimatter. The solar system is quarantined for it--and everyone else's--safety.

Colossus
by Donald Wandrei
A scientist develops a FTL spaceship and uses it to explore the boundary of the universe. He pops through the universe and finds himself in another, larger universe--where he is now on a slide under a microscope in a lab peopled by large alien Titans. The Titans threaten to dissect him (for science!) but he convinced them to let him go explore a neighboring planet in their solar system and bring them back data (and a dead alien for them to dissect (for science!!)) The Titans agree, so the scientist travels to the planet, lands, and meets a local girl. The end.

A Voyage to Sfanomoë
by Clark Ashton Smith
Brother Hotar and Evidon build a spaceship and leave doomed Atlantis to explore Sfanomoë (Venus) which they hope will be a suitable world for colonization. They find a world of jungle and flowers, and then they turn into flowers. The end.

The Seesaw
by A. E. van Vogt
A Weapon Shops of Isher store. McAllister steps into an Isher weapon shop in 1947. The shopkeepers realize he's from the past, so they hustle him into a special non-conduction insulating suit, and throw him back into the past. He's the counter-weight of a time-fulcrum, something incomprehensibly to do with Isher and the war or whatever. McAllister seesaws back and forth between the past and the future, eventually ending up floating in space before the Earth was form--at which point he decides to unzip the suit, release the tremendous temporal energy stored in himself, and blow up in an explosion so large that it triggers the formation of the planets. Uh, yeah, OK. This one is not a winner.

The Flying Men
an except from Last and First Men
by Olaf Stapledon
A history of the seventh race of man, a race that has bred itself to fly and lives most of its life in the skies of Venus (mankind having long since abandoned Earth.) The flying men exist for a hundred million years, but eventually succumb when they are unable to sustain their population. An increasing number of babies are born as mutants unable to fly, and eventually the flightless race assets authority. The remaining flying men opt for a dignified end: mass racial suicide by flying into an active volcano—an act of artistry and beauty—rather than drag out their remaining time serving as slaves to the flightless men.

I enjoyed Last and First Men, but this except doesn't stand well on its own.

Fessenden's Worlds
by Edmond Hamilton
This is the second story in this collection that's about tiny universes. Bradley visits his old colleague Fessenden and discovers that Fessenden has created a tiny universe in his laboratory so he can study the nature of the universe up close. Bradley is horrified to discover that Fessenden spends his time causing disasters to observe how various intelligent species in his universe respond: he throws a comet at one planet, causes a sun to overheat and cook another planet. He brings two peaceful species into close proximity to watch them go to war and annihilate each other.

Bradley confronts Fessenden, and in the ensuing struggle Fessenden trips and falls into his tiny universe, causing his own death, the destruction of his universe, and starting a fire that engulfs his lab. Bradley escapes, but is unable to continue his work as an astronomer: every time he looks at the stars he wonders if he is living in a constructed universe that is the plaything for some other mad scientist in a higher universe.

Humpty Dumpty Had a Great Fall
by Frank Belknap Long
A portal opens to an alternate dimension where strange beings act out what appears to be the inspiration for the rhymes and stories of Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes. But this is a dangerous and deadly world.

Science Fiction Book Review

 I - - Alien

Urban superhero
The book is set in 1970s urban Los Angeles, with everything that brings. It's also illustrated, which is to say almost 20% of the pages are full-page line drawings by artist Terry Austin. Apparently he was known for his work in comics. I can't say I appreciated his contribution to the story. He's got talent, sure, but this isn't a comic book and so the story stands or falls on the strength of the writing. Mr. Austin's artwork has an urban superhero vibe, and I'm not a fan of superheroes, so, you know, take my opinion for what it's worth.

And you know, it only occurred to me just now as I'm writing this review, that I - - Alien is not science fiction, it's a superhero origin story. It isn't technically a comic book, but it is absolutely in the comic book superhero genre, not the science fiction genre.

Maybe that explains why I didn't like it.

Meet Caliban and Chelsea
Our hero finds himself suddenly transported from his home planet of Tauran to a back alley in Los Angeles where he is attacked by a gang of teenagers. He fights them off but drops his energy quirt in the process. A girl in a van rescues him.

Our hero is Calibantraneq, Caliban for short. The rescuer is Chelsea Chandler, a student at LAU who's saving money by living in her converted van. Chelsea reads science fiction, so she's modern and enlightened: instead of turning him over to the government to be poked and prodded and studied, she treats him like a person. She takes him in and teaches him English.

Jerilyn, distortion, tessaracts, Tauran and Balthar
We learn more about Caliban's background. He's from the planet Tauran, which destroyed itself through conflict. Now the only habitable zone is in the domed city of Balthar. Caliban and his partner Jerilyn had been sent to explore the Outland zone, and Caliban ended up on Earth by accidentally crossing through a tessaract.

Caliban is indistinguishable from a human except for one little adjustment: his eyes have been removed and swapped for mechanical implants which allow him to project a Distortion. The Distortion affects people's perception of the world. Crudely put, it turns the world into an MC Escher drawing, and that's offputting enough to disorient and disable most foes. Importantly for the plot, Distortion doesn't work on animals, only on people. When he gets to Earth, Caliban wears sunglasses to disguise his eyes, allowing him to pass for human.

Caliban wants to do two things: 1) get back to Tauran, and 2) find Jerilyn. He's sorta, maybe, developed feelings for Jerilyn. The author is leaving that open because this is a superhero origin story and we want to leave room for all sorts of romantic interests in later stories. (There are no later stories.)

Kim Zelmer, Crossing, Jack Gamer, Zachariah Day, and the Rainbow Riders (with Fred Simon)
When Chelsea shows Caliban some artwork made by her friend Kim, Caliban recognizes the cityscape of Balthar: the domed city on his home planet Tauran. Kim is the key to Caliban getting back home. Chelsea explains that Kim has been having visions of another world, and that she's been talking about this world as if it were real, and that soon she will make the Crossing into her new world. Apparently Kim is able to naturally open a tessaract with her mind.

Chelsea and Caliban try to visit Kim, but are accosted by her friend/stalker/neighbor Jack Gamer and his motorcycle gang, the Rainbow Riders. Caliban uses Distortion to disorient the Rainbow Riders and escape.

That's unfortunate, because the boss of the Rainbow Riders is one Fred Simon. He's a conman who started the Rainbow Riders as a motorcycle gang / religious cult, and if there's one thing a gang boss and cult leader can't abide, it's a challenge to his authority. The Rainbow Riders are coming for Caliban.

Mr. Patrick Brade, Roger Bantain, and Internal Security Agency (ISA)
The Rainbow Riders are not the only people after Caliban. The energy quirt that Caliban dropped in the alleyway has come to the attention of Mr. Patrick Brade at the Internal Security Agency (ISA). Brade takes his colleague Roger Bantain and flies to Los Angeles to find and apprehend the alien invader.

There is the mandatory capture-escape-recapture plot line. Eventually it all comes down to one final showdown.

Showdown at Marathon Studios: borgan, slashan, and dand (and David Kincaid)
Kim's visions are getting stronger, and she knows the time for Crossover is near. She heads to Marathon Studios where she opens a tessaract. Everybody else shows up too--Caliban, Chelsea, Jack, Brade, etc. Monsters from Tauran come through the tessaract: first, a borgan--a large tiger-like creature with horns. Then a slashan--"a snake-like creature with bat-wings and a hammer-shaped head full of teeth." Finally a dand: monstrous ape-like creature with a wolfish face. Caliban and allies defeat them all. Caliban talks Kim out of crossing over--Tauran is too dangerous. The tesseract closes. Roger Bantain (who has now switched allegiances) helps Caliban and friend escape.

I - - Alien in New York
Bantain mentions that there was another tesseract incident in Manhattan two months before Caliban's tesseract dropped him in LA. Could Jerilyn be in Manhattan? Chelsea and Caliban head to New York City to find out.

The end.

Christian Book Review

 The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God: Why New Atheism Grew Old and Secular Thinkers Are Considering Christianity Again

Chapter 1: The Rise and Fall of New Atheism
Brierley charts the rise of new atheism, its heyday, and then its downfall in the face of progressive woke ideology. Those are my words, not his. The non-religious became more interested in policing and enforcing a progressive ideology than in an intellectual rejection of religion, and when the icons of New Atheism failed to live up to, or even to agree with, this ideology, they were cast aside. The crowds dwindled, the conferences ceased, and their influence waned.

Chapter 2: The New Conversation on God
Something something something, Jordan Peterson, something something something, people seem interested in spirituality and God now. Not the traditional Christian God necessarily, but there's an appreciation for the cultural effects of Christianity. Not for the literal truth of the thing, but for the psychological truth, or for the byproducts of Christianity--like human rights, women's rights, and the sense of meaning, purpose, and identity that it provides. Brierley says that you can't get these effects of Christianity without it actually being true--that just having the stories isn't enough. He'll tackle that in later chapters.

This is a crucial point. Jordan Peterson (and many others) think the meaning is in the stories. But this simply isn't enough. If the stories of the Bible are not true--if Jesus did not, in fact, die for our sins and rise again on the third day--the stories are useless. They may give us the illusion of meaning, but if they are not true, they do not give us any actual meaning. It's not enough for the Bible to be psychologically true or metaphorically true. It must be actually true. Jesus must have actually risen from the dead. He must actually be alive now.

Chapter 3: Shaped by the Christian Story
The New Atheists’ view of history traces back to a lie that started with Edward Gibbons’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: that closed-minded Christians burned books, destroyed art, and held back progress at every turn. But to the contrary, today even secular scholars are admitting that there is no evidence to suggest this. The evidence we do have points to Christianity being the font from which springs all our modern ideas of human rights and freedoms. It was the Church that fostered learning, science, literature, and all good things.

This chapter is mostly about Tom Holland, who noticed the wide chasm between the callous worldview of the Greeks, Romans, and Islamic empire, compared to his culturally Christian worldview that values every human life. Modern humanist values come from Christianity.

“humanism is a kind of godless Protestantism.”

Christian sexual ethics—chastity, monogamy—and respect for every human being as being equal and being made in the image of god—contrasted with Roman slavery and normalized sexual exploitation. And indeed any and every society’s normalization of slavery.

Slavery in Christendom was largely eliminated by the medieval times. But only in Christendom, not in the rest of the world, even to this day. Slavery in the Americas is/was an aberration from that norm.

Christians treated the vulnerable better. No infanticide. No abortion. Women were respected. Slaves freed. Deformed and disabled not left to die. Radical generosity and provision for the sick, poor, widows and orphans. Caring for the sick during plagues.

Chapter 4: Rediscovering the Bible
Far from being irrelevant as many atheists have claimed, the Bible is still a best-selling book, and is still being recognized as relevant today. Atheists who criticize the Bible often do so without truly reading the Bible on its own terms. "Part of the problem is that the Bible's fiercest contemporary critics have tried to dismiss its credibility by reading it in the same way as fundamentalist Christians they often find themselves at loggerheads with." Put another way, they misunderstand and misinterpret the Bible in the most unfavorable light, then knock down that misrepresentation. When people actually read the Bible they recognize that it's not the caricature that the New Atheists have declared it to be. The words of God have real power to transform lives.

For example, take Jordan Peterson. He's no Christian, and he doesn't believe the Bible is actually true, but he's deeply interested in the psychological truths that it contains. He gave hours upon hours of lectures about Genesis, which surprisingly resonated with a great many people. "Questions of the actual historicity of the accounts seem almost irrelevant to him." But he sees the value in the Bible, and this is quite different from the New Atheists' dismissal of the Bible as outdated bronze-age fables.

Then Brierley goes through some of the evidence for the reliability of the Bible.

• The volume and early dates of the manuscript evidence
• The names used in the Gospels correspond statistically to the names used during that time period in that geographical region, indicating with a high degree of likelihood that this is a historical account, not a later fabrication.
• Geographical and cultural customs mentioned in the gospels are appropriate to the period and location, again indicating these are genuine accounts and not later fabrications
• Un-designed coincidences--like where a detail in one gospel explains a strange detail in another gospel.
• Archaeological evidence is increasingly confirming the gospel accounts (as well as the OT books too.)

"Shallow critiques of the New Athests are not being replaced by a renewed appreciation of the Bible from secular quarters, through thinkers such as Peterson, Murrary, and Haidt." Brierley gently suggests these thinkers take the next step and consider what it would mean if the central claims of the Bible are not just meaningful and psychologically true, but are actually true.

Chapter 5: The Alternative Story of Science
The New Atheists' attacks on religion are largely based on science, setting up the idea that science and the Bible are somehow at odds. In reality, most scientists are religious and see no conflict. The history of science and the church don't show them to be at odds. Brierley explains that the trial of Galileo was mostly not about science, and that the youth-earth view that the New Atheists often go after is not one that has historically been a major Christian view.

Further, our modern scientific principles were developed by Christians, and it was Christian thought that allowed science to develop. Science is rooted in a Christian worldview. The idea of a conflict between science and Christianity is not based in fact.

Next Brierley spends some time exploring what I can only describe as a lite version of intelligent design, and the fine-tuning of the universe argument. I find both of those arguments unconvincing, so I was not impressed with this part of chapter 5.

After that, he moves on to point out that the Big Bang cosmology suggests the universe had a definite beginning, which is evidence for (or at least suspiciously consistent with) a Creator. And not just that: increasingly, those who study science come up against the reality that science cannot explain why the universe is explainable. There is something fundamental about reality that suggests an explanation beyond the material world.

It comes down to this: the New Atheists have a priori rejected anything supernatural. They've rejected God before they even begin. And of course then they don't see him in science. But those who have not a priori rejected the idea of God, when those people look into science and the fundamental nature of the universe, they start to see God's handiwork.

Chapter 6: Mind, Meaning, and the Materialists
People are turning to Christianity for the meaning it provides, which materialism does not. Then Brierley takes a long excursus to talk about determinism and how it undermines humanism. I found this completely unconvincing. That's not surprising. I've never found arguments about determinism to be convincing, and I'm puzzled why so many people do. I see no problem with determinism in either a materialist or a Christian worldview.

Then there is the mystery of consciousness, which science is inadequate to explain. Apparently this brings a lot of people to explore Christianity. It is far too abstract and philosophical for me, but it takes all kinds I guess.

Chapter 7: The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God
Organized religious affiliation is declining in the West, but atheism is not growing. An increasing number of people are identifying as spiritual but not connected to organized religion.

It turns out we're all believers deep down.

If it's not Jesus we believe in, it's LGBT rights or feminism or antiracism or anticapitalism.

Brierley says the church should do three things to embrace this resurgence in interest in Christianity:

1. Embrace both reason and imagination: make reasoned and logical intellectual arguments, but don't neglect the poetic, artistic, and emotional side of things. Remember the heart.
2. Keep Christianity weird: don't try to adopt the culture's values and customs.
3. Create a Community that Counters Cancel Culture: cancel culture is destructive and punitive. Christian spaces should be forgiving and welcoming even to those who sin or make mistakes. Extend grace and hospitality.

Christian Book Review

 Judea under Greek and Roman Rule

Introduction
The book will cover the history of Judea from 334 BCE to 135 CE; that is, from the time Alexander conquered Judea until the time Emperor Hadrian expelled the Jews from Jerusalem.

1. Living with Giants: From Alexander to Antiochus III
Alexander
Alexander took Judea from the Persians. He established Greek cities within all his conquered territory, to administer it and effectively extract resources. The influx of Greeks had a Hellenizing cultural influence. After Alexander died and his empire split up, Judea was passed back and forth between his successors, primarily the Ptolemaic Empire (based out of Egypt) and the Seleucid Empire (based out of west Asia—that is, Babylonia and Assyria).

Ptolemies
Under Ptolemaic rule (3rd century BCE), Judea, Samaritis, and Galilee were agricultural backwaters. The Ptolemies built a number of Greek cities, including those which would become the Decapolis. The Jews began to realize that to get ahead in the world—to gain the wealth and influence that other nearby regions were experiencing—it was necessary to adopt Greek ideas and a Greek worldview. This Hellenizing sometimes clashed with adherence to the Mosaic Law.

Seleucid
Around 200 BCE, Antiochus III captured Galilee and Samaritis. Jerusalem surrendered without a fight. Now under Seleucid rule, Judea was given a chance to rebuild (a functioning economy being easier to extract taxes from, of course) and Antiochus III allowed the Jews latitude in their religious observances. The Hellenization continued. Antiochus III overreached in his other military campaigns and was pushed back by Rome.

Daniel
I'm not impressed with deSilva's description of Daniel as being a second century BCE "prophecy after the fact." (p. 6)

2. Abomination of Desolation: The Hellenizing Crisis and the Maccabean Revolution
I'd always heard that the Maccabean period was when a bunch of Jews got riled up because Antiochus Epiphanes desecrated the temple, so they rebelled, threw off the shackles of oppression, and were an independent nation for a hundred years or so (until Rome showed up.) This chapter paints a more complex picture. Continual warfare between various claimants to the throne of the Seleucid empire created an opening for the Jews to gain some measure of autonomy in return for supporting one or another faction. There was considerable back-and-forth, continual shifting alliances, and yes, some rolling back of the religious persecutions. The Jews were able to practice their religion, and some of the Hellenizing influences were diminished or rolled back. But this was far from a quick, sudden throwing off of oppression as I'd naively assumed. I should have known; history is always more complex than the stories we tell.

I gather the period of (relative) independence came a little later, when the Seleucid empire collapsed. So, not exactly due to the Maccabean revolt, exactly, but because the Maccabean revolt preceded the collapse of Seleucid power, and because the Maccabean revolt did manage to earn some level of autonomy during the waning days of the Seleucid empire, it sort of seems like the one (Maccabean revolt) caused the other (Seleucid empire's demise.) But, no.

3. Heirs of Phinehas: The Rise and Demise of the Hasmonean Dynasty
Now this is the independent Judea. And what's more, they began to expand their territory, taking Samaria, Idumea (Edom), and solidifying their grasp on some port cities. Still, there was considerable warfare.

The Hasmonean dynasty set themselves up as both kings and high priests, which is not right under the Mosaic law. Also, there was plenty of infighting, attempted coups, and civil wars. So this independent Israel was no different than any of the other Hellenistic kingdoms of the region. Eventually the Romans exerted control over the whole region.

This was also the period where the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes became distinct partisan groups.

4. The King of the Jews: Herod and His Heirs
Herod's rise to power came as part of the political machinations of the Roman empire. His father Antipater supported Pompey, but quickly expressed support for Caesar when Caesar defeated Pompey. Later Antipater appointed his son Herod over Galilee. Herod got Marc Antony to sponsor him in the Roman Senate, and to appoint him king of Judea. When Octavian defeated Marc Antony, Herod switched allegiances. Octavian even enlarged Herod's territory.

Herod built up Judea, building harbors, cities, palaces, and temples. He ushered in a significant Hellenizing of the area. Herod was also generous to surrounding cities and territories, making gifts and investments, but always careful never to outshine the emperor. Herod also expanded the Jewish temple in Jerusalem.

When Herod died, his kingdom was split into three parts: his son Archelaus ruled Judea and Samaria and Idumea, Philip ruled some Gentile areas, and Antipas was given Galilee and Paraea. Achelaus's rule was poor, and the emperor removed him after ten years. Philip ruled his Gentile area successfully until his death. Antipas's region, Galilee, was agrarian and had been largely ignored in Herod the Great's building projects; Antipas began building projects to transform Galilee.

By the time of Herod and his heirs, Jewish synagogues were a fully developed part of Jewish religious life.

5. Under the Eagle's Wings: Judea under Roman Rule
This is the part of history where Jesus shows up, and a little later the historian Josephus. Judea is now under direct Roman rule, but Herod Antipas rules in Galilee. Herod Agrippa, grandson of Herod the Great, persuaded the Roman authorities to give him Philip's territory and to grant him the title of king. Herod Antipas tried to get the same title, but ended up being deposed; the emperor then gave Antipas's territory--Galilee--to Agrippa. Apparently Agrippa spent a lot of time in Rome, advocating for his people. With the unstable Gaius Caligula as emperor, I'm sure a lot of advocating was needed. When Caligula was assassinated, Agrippa helped broker Claudius's ascent to power, and as a result, Agrippa was given the entirety of Herod the Great's territory.

Agrippa left behind no capable heir (his son was only 17) so the area came under direct Roman rule. The Roman rulers were heavy-handed and tended to do a lot of killing. Anything that looked like a possible revolution was treated as such. At some point Agrippa II was given some power. The Jewish people were always agitating, and eventually this boiled over into a real revolt. Vespasian's campaign against the Jews was interrupted in 68 by Nero's death. Vespasian ended up as Emperor, and he dispatched Titus to put an end to the Jewish revolt, which he did in 70. This is when the Temple was destroyed. There's some talk about Titus trying to avoid destroying the Temple out of respect, but in the end it was completely destroyed.

It's also during this period--the First Jewish Revolt--where we see the Zealots.

6. A Failed Messiah and a New Beginning: The Second Jewish Revolt and the Rise of Rabbinic Judaism
Judea had been knocked back to an agrarian level by the destruction involved in putting down the revolt. Galilee fared better: there was little destruction. Many Jews lost their land, and Emperor Vespasian expanded the Temple tax to all Jews, and (as there was no longer any temple) redirected the money to pagan temples and the worship of pagan gods.

Without the Temple, rabbinic Judaism began to develop. It's too simplistic to say that the Pharisee sect became rabbinic Judaism because a lot of those sectarian distinctions faded away, but the Pharisee tradition did dominate. The Sadducees and Essenes disappear from history, leaving just the Pharisee tradition and the Christians as the two surviving strands of Jewish tradition. (The Zealots exit our historical records as well.) Outside of Israel, the distinction between Jews and the Christians (who were mostly Gentile) was clear by the second century. In Israel, the distinction between Jews and Jewish Christians was more muddy, with (apparently) most Jesus-followers continuing to operate as a sect of Judaism.

The Zealots were all (presumably) wiped out in the first revolt, but the Jewish people were still agitating. And then we have the Second Jewish Revolt, or the Bar-Kochba Rebellion. The rebels fought a guerilla war, and likely never liberated or held Jerusalem for any length of time, as was their aim. The rebels were besieged in Bethar south of Jerusalem, and defeated in 135. The revolt was centered around Judea and hit that region hard: "Judea experienced significant depopulation through death and enslavement." Meanwhile Galilee was largely spared.

After the revolt, Jews were forbidden to enter Jerusalem, which was a Roman city now. The rabbinic movement recentered in Galilee. Rabbinic Judaism created a new Greek translation of the Scriptures, and compiled the Mishnah.

Science Fiction Book Review

 Interworld

Up-front verdict
Wow this was bad.

Dunjer
Tom Dunjer owns Security Plus, which is a private security company in Happy City, one of the nicer independent city-states in a dystopian world of computers and mechs. He's following up on a lead about his brother-in-law Joe Rankin, who turns out to be dead. Also his sister has been kidnapped, and back at the office someone has broken into his impregnable safety vault and stolen a consignment of Linzeteum.

Linzeteum?
I've never heard of Linzeteum, and Dunjer doesn't know what it is either. His secretary Miss Follson tells him they've been safeguarding it temporarily until Terra-North Lab can pick it up. Dunjer pays a visit to Dr. Humperdinck Sass who explains that Linzeteum is the key to everything. Dr. Sass has developed a device called an activator that uses Linzeteum to open doors into other universes. This is very dangerous, but fortunately whoever stole the Linzeteum can't use it because he doesn't have an activator.

Gulach Grample
One of Dr. Sass's activators has been stolen. The thief is Grample, a secretive tycoon who owns and runs most of Happy City. Now Grample has the Linzeteum and an activator, and is off galavanting around in alternate universes.

Incoherent
At this point the story became completely incoherent. It was never fully coherent to begin with, but once the characters are flipping through other universes, the plot is impossible to follow. I did gather that somehow their arrival in each alternate universe was triggering disaster: in one, their arrival corresponded to the outbreak of a nuclear war. In another, an invasion of alien octopuses from outer space. I think, in the end, they all--Dunjer, Sass, and Grample--end up in a universe pretty similar to the one they started out in, with no Linzeteum and no activators.

Is it good?
No. No, it is a terrible book. Or rather, I disliked it immensely. I'm mature enough to recognize that author Isidore Haiblum is talented enough that he wrote in this style deliberately--it's just not a style or genre that I enjoy.

First, it's a hard-boiled detective story (sort-of) set in a science fiction world. It's not actually science fiction. Second, it's got no coherent plot. Third, the storytelling style got tiresome quickly. Maybe there's a way to do hardboiled stories well, but fast-talking characters who make wisecracks combined with an author who leaves out half the information and expects you to piece it together is not the way.

Also, I guess maybe it's supposed to be funny? I never could tell. The zany and wacky hijinks struck me as possibly intended to be funny, but it was always delivered so seriously that I'm not certain.

Science Fiction Book Review

 Rebels of Merka

Laser Books
Rebels of Merka is book 48 in the Laser Books series, and it's a sequel to book 39, Brandyjack. I haven't read Brandyjack. Maybe some of the events in Rebels of Merka would mean more if I'd read the previous book, but wow, it's so bad that I have no desire to go back and read Brandyjack.

Brandyjack
Our main character's name is Brandyjack. He's a bull-headed, super-smart, super-talented, super-strong hero who loves to gamble (well, cheat at gambling) and to drink himself into oblivion. When we meet him in this book, he has settled down with a girl named Lotus. He decides the quiet small-town life is too dull, so he tells Lotus he's leaving to go off adventuring. He hangs around a few more days to finish off his last keg of ale, then slips off without even saying goodbye.

Am I supposed to be rooting for Brandyjack? This guy is morally repugnant.

Star
Brandyjack falls in with some friends from the previous book, most notably Thoruso the Merchant. The Merchant is organizing a rebellion against Star, the Premier of Merka. Star is a tyrant. His Enforcers brutalize the public and quell any dissent. Brandyjack also meets a new friend named Snake, as well as old friends Dextor and Virgil.

Plot
There's a lot of basic adventure stuff. Skulking around in alleys. Getting hit on the head. Drinking ale in bars. Fighting in bars. Talking to people in bars. Scheming with colleagues in boarding rooms above the bar. Secret meetings in the dead of night. Beautiful women in bars who try to seduce our hero Brandyjack but who turn out to be traitors.

And of course, deliberately getting caught by Star and pretending to switch allegiances to serve him. Twice. Yeah, Brandyjack pulls that one over on Star twice. You see, he tries it again because he figures that after the first time, Star would never fall for it again. And Brandyjack, not being a fool, would know that Star wouldn't fall for it again. And Star, knowing that Brandyjack is not a fool, would know that Brandyjack would never try it again. So when Brandyjack does try it again, it must be genuine--because only a fool would try that stunt twice, and Brandyjack is no fool, and he knows that Star knows that he's no fool. *sigh* This is so dumb.

There's some nonsense about a vast underground transport system that links all of Merka. It's like bullet-train subways, but it links the whole country. It's the only surviving piece of technology from before the collapse, and Star keeps it secretly for his own use. His Enforcers use it to travel quickly and to send messages from one city to another, always staying a step ahead of the rebels. So Brandyjack and the rebels force their way in and disable the tunnels, neutralizing Star's advantage. Then there's a surprise attack on Enforcer Headquarters, Star is defeated, and the Enforcers and all of Merka are pretty OK with this because they really don't care who is in charge.

What I want to know is: first, who built an underground bullet train system that spanned a major portion of the continent? What would persuade someone to build such a ridiculous system? And it just kept running perfectly all these years? No way, man. No way.

Merka or Canada?
The title is Rebels of Merka but I'm 95% sure it's set in a post-apocalyptic Canada, not the United States of America. The author blurb in the book mentions that Mr. Funnell is a young Canadian writer and the action takes place in a major city called Toronew, which is relatively close to the city of Moneral. That sounds like Toronto and Montreal to me. Another town is Canav, which is several days' walk south of Toronew. I checked a map that doesn't make geographical sense (there's water south of Toronto; you can't walk through Lake Ontario), so I'm guessing the author Augustine Funnell was just making things up but using Canadian names.