Tag: science

Review: Sleeping Giants

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tl;dr: fresh and new science-fiction tale that’ll have you on the edge of your seat

The Story:

Dr. Rose Franklin stumbles on a giant hand in her youth, an amazing discovery that she’s delighted to study later on, in her career as a physicist. The story that embarks from there covers a lot of ground.

The story is framed by an unnamed narrator, whose identity is a mystery, and that mystery is brought up again and again by the people that he interviews. There are so many characters, I don’t know if I can name them all. There are a few key figures here, though, and they all have their own individual arcs within the larger story.

(Minor spoilers ahead.)

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Review: Spook

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Spook-cover2I read a lot of these layman’s academic non-fiction type books, and usually by the time I get to the end I feel somewhat disappointed. In this case, it might be because the author never really shores up enough evidence to persuade the reader either way. However, I think that feeling in this case is more because I so enjoyed the book that I wish there were more of it!

Mary Roach takes us on a journey about finding more about what science (and pseudo-science) says about the soul and life after death. We start with reincarnation and end with near death experiences, and along the way we talk to a variety of scientists, researchers, and people who are using “science” (applied loosely) to communicate with the dead. I found Roach’s writing style to be witty and inclusive, and just like a friend telling you interesting stories over coffee. (By inclusive, I mean that when the book gets jargon-y, she realizes this and tells you how it goes over her head too. There is lots of care to guide the reader along when things start to get complex, and I really appreciate this as a non-scientist.)

One omission in the book is about the amount of Biblical scholars that write and teach about the existence of heaven. They may not be scientists, but are academics in their own right. Several years ago, I read a really really long book by Randy Alcorn titled Heaven, and I know he interviews a bunch of researchers. While he has a vested interest in biasing his book towards the probability of Heaven existing, there was a lot of good stuff in there that I found convincing when I read it. This book only has a brief side bar about Catholic priests and the papacy. The Hindu religion actually has more prominence in this book.

Otherwise, I found this book very engaging and enjoyable, and I much enjoyed her writing style. I will probably be checking out more of her books in the future.

4 stars.

 

Review: Frankenstein

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The story of Frankenstein that is in the public consciousness is so far removed from the actual novel that Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote, that I can hardly equate the two. I could see glimpses of things that are considered part of the Frankenstein lore, but it seems that the popular idea of it couldn’t be more off the mark of Shelley’s intention if it tried. So, if you haven’t read the novel (or at least a synopsis, although I’m not sure how you could really get an idea of the novel from just that), this is going to sound completely opposite to the idea of Frankenstein that you may have.

It’s popular these days to reiterate over and over that Frankenstein wasn’t the monster, he was the man who created it. But, is that really true? Sure, the creature that Victor Frankenstein assembled and brought to life never had a proper name (the wretch or fiend is the most common way it is addressed), but Victor himself is a very dangerous man. He sort of admits this in the narrative, but in many ways the horrors that he experiences are compounded by how little ownership he takes in the whole thing. Honestly, this male ego that he displays is still kind of around, most recently depicted in that terrible Gamergate nonsense. Instead of going after the monster immediately upon realizing that he should not have imbued a creature with life, he just pretends it didn’t even happen. Victor (I’m going to keep referring to him by his first name so as to not cause confusion) is able to delude himself completely until he receives word that his younger brother has been murdered.

He returns to the scene of the crime in order to grieve and make sense of everything, when he sees the monster in a flash of lightning, at a distance. He suddenly realizes that the monster murdered his brother. Then, when a servant (sort of, hard to explain) of the family is accused of the crime, he doesn’t even speak in her defense, despite knowing that she is innocent. He is too afraid to be seen as a nutjob to talk to the court himself and insist that he saw the murderer. So poor Justine receives the death penalty. Sure, he feels bad about it, but not bad enough to do anything. What a sociopath.

He goes on some sort of spiritual quest or something to be alone in the mountains, and comes across the creature. He insists that Victor listen to his story of what has happened to him since his creation. The story is pretty sad, because essentially he spies on some poor people that live in a French cottage, learn their language and customs, helps them out by supplying firewood every day, and then when he introduces himself those people get out of town as fast as possible. He realizes that he will never be able to have companions, and that he will be forever alone. He asks Victor to create a female mate for him so that he will have companionship. Victor suddenly grows a conscience and refuses (albeit partway through the creation of Mrs. Monster). The monster is enraged, and murders his best friend (although I seriously felt some homo-erotic vibes going on between Victor and Henry Clerval. Just me?), and tries to pin it on Victor. Victor is so distraught that he goes into some kind of catatonic episode for several months, waking to find himself in a jail cell or dungeon.

Through events that I couldn’t entirely follow, Victor is released into the care of his father, who asks him to put all this tragedy behind him and marry his adopted sister. (Ah, the 1800s when this wasn’t weird at all.) He agrees, mostly because the monster had threatened him, saying he would reappear on his wedding night, which, Victor assumes – since the world begins and ends with himself – that the monster is threatening to kill him. I don’t know if the readers of this book in the early 19th century saw this coming, but I know anyone reading this blog right now totally knows that Elizabeth is gonna get it. Afterward, Victor has one plan in mind, and that is revenge. Especially since his father dies days later, in apparent grief over Elizabeth’s murder.

He isn’t successful. He chases the monster pretty far north, and in exhaustion and from exposure, dies after conveniently telling the whole story to a ship’s captain. So not only was he not successful in killing the monster, he waited way too long to do it. He avoids responsibility the entire time. In some of his less lucid catatonia, he apparently wails about how he has murdered his family members and friends, but he doesn’t ever really own up to his part in this entire thing. His end goal after he is alone is to seek revenge. He never reflects on what damage he has inflicted on the creature he created.

Victor and his monster aren’t so different. When Victor has everyone taken away from him, he also turns to violence. The monster has nothing, so Victor’s object is to kill him. The monster wants revenge too, but mostly he wants Victor to really feel how miserable his existence is. I’m sure books could be and have been written about all of the themes in this book. It was seriously amazing.

The only slight detraction was the writing itself. Modern book publishing is an entirely different animal, and editing really helps get ideas across clearly and concisely. This book could have benefited from some editing, although it is way more readable than many other novels written hundreds of year ago. There are a lot of lengthy poetic descriptions of things and feelings that don’t really add much to the story. It’s not a fast-paced thriller like a modern day version would be. But the horror element is definitely not the core to the story. Science run amuck, personal responsibility, and what makes a true monster are much more interesting themes in this story.

4 stars.

This book completes the book more than 100 years old, and a book you were supposed to read in school but didn’t requirement for the challenge.

Review: Still Alice

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Still Alice cover

I knew that this book was about a woman who slowly descends into Alzheimer’s disease, but I wasn’t expecting it to be so profound about the meaning of life. Alice Howland discovers she has early on-set Alzheimer’s disease shortly after her 50th birthday, when she is in the prime of her career. Her children have recently moved on into adulthood and she and her husband John are empty-nesters, with prestigious careers at Harvard University. The diagnosis shakes her to her core, and John is firmly in denial throughout most of the book.

While I really enjoyed a lot of the story that centered around an understanding of what it may feel like to have Alzheimer’s (because we really won’t ever know), I think part of the story that really captivated me was the reaction from her family. Her relationships at the beginning of the book are so different from the end. Her two eldest children, Anna and Tom, are closer to Alice than Lydia, the “wayward” youngest, who has defied her mother’s expectations for her and moved to Los Angeles in order to begin a career as an actress. Alice has spent most of her life deep into higher education, and she places high importance on it. It seemed to be a personal slight to her that Lydia dismisses it out of hand. But, as Alice loses more and more of her memory and “self”, Lydia is the one that seems to deeply understand her, or at least is interested in meeting her where she is.

Alice’s relationship with John is probably the saddest part of the entire novel. At first, he rejects the diagnosis outright. He wants to meet with the doctor himself, and argues over and over. When Alice has a DNA test done and it reveals that she has a genetic mutation found in many Alzheimer’s patients, John is on a new mission to find some kind of cure or treatment. He begins researching it with as much fervor as he does with his Harvard laboratory experiments. But as Alice descends farther and farther into her disease, John retreats from her more and more. He clearly feels like her handicap is slowing him down. He can’t stand to be around her. He won’t watch her take her medications. And near the end, when she can’t remember the names of her family, or even that she is related to these people, he moves to New York City for a new job and leaves Alice behind.

One of the plot threads that runs throughout is Alice’s plan to take her own life once her symptoms become out of hand. She sets an alarm on her Blackberry to ask her every morning to answer 5 basic questions: What month is it, Where is my office, Where do I live, How many children do I have, and When is Anna’s birthday. The document instructs her to find a bottle of sleeping pills and take them all when she can no longer answer the questions. The Blackberry unfortunately meets an untimely demise in the freezer, but while poking around on her computer some time later, she happens upon the document, entitled Butterfly (an allusion to her mother’s prized necklace that she has taken to wearing). She tries to carry out the instructions in the document, but her forgetfulness (and possibly John’s removal of the pills) prevents her from completing the task.

This book is important, I think, for families that have a member who is suffering from Alzheimer’s, or even someone in the early stages of diagnosis. There is an empathy that comes from reading about this experience, even if it can never be verified that this is actually how it feels.

I checked off the box for something that scares me, because the idea of one day having Alzheimer’s, or caring for someone that does, is really frightening. It does run in my family, although I don’t think I’ll be having my DNA tested. (Like Lydia, I’d rather not know.) But somehow, this book has tempered the fear. It would still be not the most awesome outcome, but maybe it wouldn’t be that terrible.

5 stars

This book completes the a book that scares you and a book that made you cry.