Stranger than SF

Nonfiction Book Review

 Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In

A lot of it is common sense, but it's surprisingly helpful to have the common sense explained in concrete terms.

Adventure Fiction Book Review

 Kioga of the Unknown Land

This is a fantastic story. Kioga winds up in a hidden kingdom of mammoth people. He and his friends must survive in a kingdom built on mass slavery. Kioga ends up a slave while the rest of the party gets caught up in the political machinations of the ruling class. Kioga escapes and falls in with a band of professional thieves and pickpockets. There is a princess, Loalla, and there are various love interests.

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Characters
Kioga
Beth La Salle
Dan La Salle
John Ford La Salle
James Munro
Stanley Kirk
Captain Scott
Tim Sullivan
Pete Silver
Tom Codd
Sven Svenson
Macgregors
Otto Stumpf
Washington Madison Grant

Places
Nato'wa
Hopeka
Fort Teskatuna

Things
Narwhal
Bearcat
Pirate
Shoni, a native tribe of Nato'wa
Hiwasi, a major river
Acopi, a tributary of Hiwasi
Bearcat II
Amazon
People of the Tusk
Mammoths

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Chapter I
Our narrator, Stanley Kirk, recounts how James Munro, Beth La Salle, and Dan La Salle sailed on the Narwhal to the arctic continent of Nato'wa. The three were marooned there when the crew of Narwhal abandoned them. From Narwhal Kirk recovered Munro's photographs, journal, and papers—including a "map of Nato'wa's eastern forest-land" and a "chart of perilous reef-filled waters on its coast." Armed with this map and chart, Kirk engages Captain Scott and his whaling ship Bearcat to sail to Nato'wa to find and rescue Munro. Before the expedition can depart, a thief steals the map and chart.

Chapter II
Despite missing the precious chart that would guide them safely to Nato'wa, the crew of Bearcat agrees to undertake the expedition. The party consists of Stanley Kirk (our narrator), John Ford La Salle (father of Dan and Beth), Captain Scott, and his crew: Tim Sullivan, engineer Pete Silver, cook Tom Codd, Sven Svenson, Mcgregors, Otto Stumpf, and Washington Madison Grant. Bearcat departs Seattle and sails into the Arctic Sea.

Chapter III
As Bearcat navigates the ice floes, they spot another ship, a schooner larger than Bearcat, crewed with ruffians, and well-armed. Kirk recognizes one of the men on the ship as the thief who stole the map and chart. The ruffians are after gold in Nato'wa.

A storm dashes Bearcat upon a reef. Tim Sullivan and Pete Silver die. The rest take to the ship's boat and reach the shore of Nato'wa. The schooner weathers the storm far better, and as it sails into shore Kirk reads the name off the bow: Pirate. Kirk and the others take to the woods to escape the pirates. They find their way to the banks of the River Hiwasi and make their camp there.

Kirk leaves the camp to search downriver for Munro, Beth, and Dan. He finds the remains of Fort Teskatuna, where Munro and the others made their last stand. It is deserted. Kirk explores the fort, encounters a talking crow, and is attacked by a tiger. Kioga shows up and kills the tiger, rescuing Kirk.

Kioga is disappointed to hear that Kirk's party lost all their weapons when Bearcat sank. The Shoni tribes are "at each other's throats." As Kioga and Kirk leave the fort, Shoni warriors attack them, wounding Kirk. Kioga carries him to safety. Kirk asks about Munro and the La Salles. Kioga says Munro and Beth are safe, but Dan has recently gone missing after a hunting trip.

Chapter IV
Kioga steals a dugout canoe from the Shoni, and he and Kirk make their way back to Kirk's camp. On the way, Kioga stops at a cave to retrieve a cache of rifles, pistols, and gunpowder, as well as bags of clothing and equipment. At camp, Kioga distributes weapons, buckskin clothing, and mocassins to everyone. Kioga leaves, and returns the next day with four canoes of loyal Shoni warriors. With them are Beth La Salle, Flashpan (Narwhal's former cook), Flashpan's monkey, Tokala (the Indian boy that Kioga brought to Nato'wa in a previous book), and James Munro.

Kioga leaves them once again to search for Dan La Salle, who has still not returned from his hunting trip. The rest stay at camp, where the Shoni warriors complete construction of a river-boat, which they name Amazon.

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And this is where I got tired of writing a detailed, chapter-by-chapter summary. My apologies. It's a decent book, and the sequence in the land of the mammoth people is the best of the entire Kioga series. I recommend it.

Christian Book Review

 From Genesis to Junia: An Honest Search for What the Bible Really Says About Women in Leadership

The subtitle
The subtitle is a bit much. What has everyone else been doing all this time? Dishonest searching?

Thoughts
Preston Sprinkle takes us through the Bible and looks at various passages that talk about women's roles. When he goes through the New Testament passages about women in the church, he ends up concluding that the egalitarian interpretations are more likely. I agree with him for the most part, except that he falls back on the Artemis cult interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:11-15. I don't buy it. I'm not impressed with the other interpretations either, which is why I'm reluctant to draw any conclusions from 1 Timothy 2:11-15. The textual evidence for complementarianism or egalitarianism must come from other places--and I agree with Sprinkle that the other passages make more sense in an egalitarian interpretation than in a complementarian interpretation.

Adventure Fiction Book Review

 One Against a Wilderness

One Against a Wilderness is the third entry in the Kioga series, and it's a collection of short stories about Kioga's childhood. These are boring stories.

I - The Eyes of Mialoka Will Burn Tonight

In far Nato'wa — that new-found land within the Arctic Circle — deep in the still, primeval forest called by the red-skinned natives Indegara, there stands a great rock called Chieftain's Head, supposed to be the image of Mialoka, legendary First-Chief of all the Shoni tribes. When the eyes of Chieftain's Head light up, Two-Star, the little son of Mialoka, will return to take his place among mortal men, so goes the legend, implicitly believed among the Shoni.

Kioga observes shamans Inkato and Kansa sacrifice a young Shoni boy to the Yei river spirits. Kioga and his bear companion Aki rescue the boy from the water, and Kioga recognizes him as Ohali, a boy from Hopeka. Kioga is unwilling to let this injustice stand, so he concocts a plan to return Ohali to Hopeka and take revenge on the wicked shamans.

First Kioga lights fires in the rock of the Chieftain's Head to make Mialoka's eyes appear to glow. Then Kioga disguises himself as a river spirit, takes a canoe and returns Ohali to Hopeka—not just as the boy he used to be, but returned from the dead as the spiritual reincarnation of Two-Star, son of the legendary First Chief Mialoka.

II - The Dire Wolves' Prey
On bazaar-day Kioga curls up in a wicker basket under some feather robes and overhears members of the Long-Knife Society plotting against chief Sawamic. Unfortunately, the plotters buy the basket of robes and carry it off with Kioga inside. Kioga escapes and warns Hopeka-town just in time for the warriors to rise up and defend chief Sawamic against the sneak attack.

III - Unharmed, He Dwelt Among the Forest People
Kioga finds a baby abandoned in the wilderness, and rescues him from hungry dire wolves. He recognizes the baby as the son of a chief, and attempts to return him to his village of Magua. Unfortunately, Kioga is accused of stealing the child, and barely escapes with his life.

IV - Flight of the Forest People
Kioga races against time to warn the Shoni about a flash flood that is barreling down the river towards Hopeka.

V - White Heritage
Members of the Long Knife society have murdered Kioga's adoptive Shoni parents, and as Kioga flees through the jungle he contemplates revenge. The proper Shoni response to a murder is to avenge the death by killing the man responsible and his entire family. Kioga burns with anger against those who have murdered his family and driven him from his home in Hopeka, but something inside him resists the traditional Shoni revenge.

Kioga stumbles across the wreck of the ship Cherokee, which carried his white parents to Nato'wa. In the wreck he finds various useful tools and weapons. He also finds a letter from his great grandfather Lincoln Rand, charging his son (Kioga's grandfather) to "hold life sacred," to "protect the weak," to "never strike except in self-defense," and to "never harbor hatred in your heart." This is Kioga's white heritage. He rejects the Shoni concept of revenge.

VI - The Turn of the Tide
Kioga is once again an outcast from the Shoni. He teams up with K'yopit, also an outcast, and tries to win over the men of Hopeka-town by showing them how to woodworking tools that Kioga recovered from the shipwrecked Cherokee. It doesn't work. Kioga and K'yopit barely escape with their lives. Kioga determines to quit the entire continent of Nato'wa, so he builds a boat. That doesn't work either, and he and K'yopit almost lose their lives--but they're rescued by the men of Hopeka who have used Kioga's tools and had a change of heart.

Science Fiction Book Review

 The Shores of Kansas

Time travel
Grant Ryals has a natural ability to travel back in time to the age of dinosaurs. He uses this ability to film and produce a dinosaur documentary called The Shores of Kansas which makes him famous and wealthy besides. It's a fantastic story conceit: Grant can only travel by himself, and he can only take along whatever he can carry. To the past he takes only camera equipment, a bow and arrows, and an axe. From the past he brings back photos and videos, specimens, and occasionally dinosaur eggs or even a few living dinosaurs. Small ones, of course.

Author Robert Chilson gives us some fantastic sequences of Grant tracking a herd of sauropods, filming an attack by carnosaurs, and then watching the sauropods lay eggs on a sandbar, and, later, Grant digging up some eggs to take back with him. We also get a fantastic battle with a Tyrannosaurus Rex. The T. Rex is large and stupid, and Grant uses the creature's bulk against it, tiring it out over the course of several days until it expires from exhaustion. But the best sequence is when Grant gets in too close with a gorgosaur and barely escapes with his life.

Management woes
You'd think that the story would be a thrilling tale of survival in the savage age of dinosaurs, but no. It's a gripping tale of corporate governance woes. With the money from his first film, Grant has set up an Institute to disseminate the research data he brings back from the Mesozoic. Grant's real battles are with corporate politics in the Institute. The director, Dr. Adrian, is continually making decisions behind Grant's back: firing critical staff, hiring too many pretty secretaries, increasing the budget for public relations and book publishing while cutting science funding and restricting access to research data. Grant instructs Dr. Adrian to prioritize scientific research, but the changes Dr. Adrian promises never seem to materialize. (I think Grant should have fired Dr. Adrian.) Then there is Mrs. Cane, who is angling to get Dr. Adrian's position and may be actively sabotaging the Institute to make Adrian look bad. Things get so out of control that Grant has—*gasp*—to resort to legal threats to stop a secret Board meeting.

Thrilling stuff, this.

Woman troubles
As if that's not enough, Grant has woman problems. Specifically, his horde of adoring fans. Grant, with his trim physique and his shiny axe and his being-the-only-man-who-has-walked-with-the-dinosaurs is irresistible to women. This seems…unlikely. We're told that Grant is reclusive. His first and most famous film about dinosaurs, The Shores of Kansas, never shows him. It's his footage and he narrates the documentary, which makes him more like Ken Burns than Steve the Crocodile Hunter Irwin, but sure, we're supposed to take it on faith that Grant is the world's most famous and most desirable man.

Fortunately he turns most of these women down. Unfortunately, he only turns most of them down. There's a rich young heiress who invites Grant out on her boat and things progress as one might expect. That's distasteful but not exactly surprising. More concerning is an incident involving Grant with a farmhouse wife and her seventeen-year-old daughter that made me have to look up the age of consent laws in Kansas in the 1970s. As it turns out, that wouldn't have been illegal in 1976 when Robert Chilson published this book. As it turns out, it isn't illegal today. Kansas needs to fix its laws.

Marian Gilmore
Given his problems with women, Grant is not particularly happy that Dr. Adrian has employed another time traveler, Marian Gilmore. Marian is unable to travel as far back as Grant, but Dr. Adrian hopes that with enough training she will be able to join Grant in his trips to the Mesozoic. (This seems to be part of Dr. Adrian's attempts to bring in new revenue streams for the Institute. He has not been happy with Grant's focus on scientific research, and would like to diversify.) Marian asks for Grant's help to develop her time travel abilities, but Grant can't stand her presence, and refuses.

Emotional health
So we've established that this is not the thrilling story of survival, a man alone among the dinosaurs. But at its heart it's not the story of a man fighting corporate politics, either. It's not even really the story of a man fighting off his admirers. It's the story of a man facing his emotional trauma and coming to terms with why he has problems with women: it's the pain from a failed relationship.

Grant had been in love with a young woman named Nona Schiereck, who treated him poorly, and Grant let her go—but emotionally he was still hurt. Now, every time he sees a woman he's reminded of Nona and the painful memories. When Grant finally faces and deals with his emotional pain, he is able to move past it. The book ends with Grant realizing that he is in love with Marian Gilmore. (Fortunately Marian Gilmore loves him too, what with him being irresistible to women and all.) The two of them time-travel back to the Mesozoic together.

My verdict
Oof. No.

Science Fiction Book Review

 Time is the Simplest Thing

I've read this one before, because I vividly remember that the Pinkness made Shepherd Blaine's mind reflective and shiny. That was meant to protect him, but in reality marked him as a big shiny target for anybody with mental powers.

The book is dull and meandering. The characters' motivations rarely made sense, and the ending was not satisfactory.

Christian Book Review

 Focusing Your Church Board Using the Carver Policy Governance Model

OK.

Christian Book Review

 When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse

I skimmed this one. It seems like a pretty basic introduction to narcissism. The unique thing that it offers is that it describes how narcissistic traits manifest in each of the Enneagram personality types. Given that the Enneagram is pseudoscientific nonsense with no grounding in research, I'm not sure how valuable that is. But I guess it can help by showing different ways that narcissism can show up in different people.

Master's Thesis Review

 Social Structure and Traditional Healing: The Case of the Fidencista Movement in North Mexico

This was a lot of fun. I got to read this 1984 thesis about El Niño Fidencio, a curandero (traditional healer) in Mexico, and the movement that grew up around him. I say, if you meet someone and discover that he's written a thesis or a dissertation, you should read it. (Next up for me: a doctoral dissertation entitled Position and orientation correction for pipe profiling robots.)

Science Fiction Book Review

 Space Relations

A middling science fiction novel. I read it because I know another, unrelated, Donald Barr and I found the coincidence of names amusing.

Science Fiction Book Review

 The Arsenal Out of Time

This one was OK.