"Who is most wretched in this dolorous place?
I think myself; yet I would rather be
My miserable self than He, than He
Who formed such creatures to His own disgrace.
"The vilest thing must be less vile than Thou
From whom it had its being, God and Lord!
Creator of all woe and sin! abhorred
Malignant and implacable! I vow
"That not for all Thy power furled and unfurled,
For all the temples to Thy glory built,
Would I assume the ignominious guilt
Of having made such men in such a world."
I am currently reading “The Brief Wondrous life of Oscar Wao” which, aside from being very good, contains lot’s of footnotes and asides about the Dominican Republic and it’s history. Not a subject I know much about.
The most recent footnote regarded a native chief called “Hatuey” who tried to throw off the Spaniards in 1511. He was captured in the end and before being burned at the stake a priest asked him if he would accept Jesus and go to heaven.
Hatuey asked "Are there white men in heaven?" When the priest assured him that there were many, Hatuey replied "Then I’d rather go to Hell."*;
A quote I really liked and it could easily be paraphrased for use by today’s unbelievers, “Men of Faith”, perhaps?
I got an extra kick out of this as it really puts the Popenfuhres opinion of the conquest of the Americas into context;
Pope Benedict XVI told Latin American bishops in Brazil that American Indians had been "silently longing" to become Christians 500 years ago.
* There seems to be several differing versions of this statement on the web, I’ve used the one from the book
I really enjoyed this book, it painted Caesar in a particularly good light (don't mention the Gauls!) and provided a different view of the so-called "Roman Mob"."Conformity of bias is taken as objectivity"From what I can gather (browsing the web) this book isn't particularly popular with many historian's but Parenti's view of Cicero and the Optimates is far closer to more recent depictions that the traditional view.
A Different Kind of Singularity.
The eve of the 22nd century. A world where the dearly-departed send postcards back from Heaven, and Jainist evangelicals make scientific breakthroughs by speaking in tongues; where genetically-engineered vampires solve problems intractable to baseline Humans, and soldiers come with zombie switches that shut off their own self-awareness during combat. A world under blatant surveillance by an alien presence that refuses to show itself.
Daniel Brooks is a living fossil: an old man in a world of immortals, a field biologist in a world where all biology has long since turned computational, an unwitting catspaw used by terrorists to kill thousands. Taking refuge in the Oregon desert, he turns his back on a humanity that shatters into strange new subspecies with every heartbeat. But he isn't hiding from anything; he awakens one night to find himself at the center of a storm that's about to turn all of history inside-out.
Now he's trapped in a ship bound for the center of the solar system. To his left is a grief-stricken soldier with a zombie switch in his head, obsessed by whispered messages from a dead son half a lightyear away. To his right is an autistic hacker who hasn't quite discovered that Dan Brooks is the man she's sworn to kill on sight. A vampire and its entourage of zombie bodyguards lurk in the shadows behind. And dead ahead, a handful of rapture-stricken monks takes them all to a meeting with something they will only call "The Angels of the Asteroids".
But whatever they encounter, there in the blinding maelstrom above the sun's north pole, is the furthest thing from anyone's vision of divinity. By the end of their pilgrimage the whole world is coming apart at the seams— and Dan Brooks, the fossil man, is face-to-face with the biggest evolutionary breakpoint since the origin of thought itself.
The Singularity's here. It's too late to go back. And all those starry-eyed optimists, the extropians, the transhumanists, the rapture-nerds and technophiles who sang the praises of technology=magic — somehow, none of them realized there'd be no room for humanity in a post-human age …
Steven Saylor's historical mysteries set in ancient Rome and featuring investigator Gordianus the Finder.
Two honourable mentions are "Venus Throw" which delivered a cracking surprise and "A Mist of Prophesis" which delved into the character of Gordianius him much more than any of the preceeding novels.
Many of the final novels deal with events surround Julius Caesar but I got the distinct impression that both the Character and Author where getting a little tired of late Roman Republic shenanigans. That's not to say I didn't enjoy them (I really did) but it might be time to start wrapping it up.
Why Europe and Asia raced ahead of everywhere else. Required reading for everyone.
Fantastic history of the Indian Mutiny and the battle of Delhi, full of first hand accounts of a savage conflict.
A very fine historical novel, compeletly hooked on the series right now, see also - Catalina's Riddle and Murder on the Appian Way
More Romans, this time the invasion of Britian, very enjoyable.
The "Age of Bronze: A Thousand Ships" is part 1 of a projected 7 part series detailing the entire Trojan war, from the causes and background of the war through to its conclusion.
I read Soldier of Sidon over the Easter break which is a sequel to the Soldier of the Mist books I read last year and reviewed here.
"Whenever I find my will to live becoming too strong, I read Peter Watts."—James NicollIt was the above quote that first drew me to Peter Watts and by extension, Blindsight. The novel was out in hardback at the time so I decided to wait for the paperback to become available before buying it but then my birthday rolled around in January and I received it as a present, I finally got around to reading it this week.
It's been two months since a myriad of alien objects clenched about the Earth, screaming as they burned. The heavens have been silent since - until a derelict space probe hears whispers from a distant comet. Something talks out there: but not to us. Who to send to meet the alien, when the alien doesn't want to meet? Send a linguist with multiple-personality disorder, and a biologist so spliced to machinery he can't feel his own flesh. Send a pacifist warrior, and a vampire recalled from the grave by the voodoo of paleogenetics. Send a man with half his mind gone since childhood. Send them to the edge of the solar system, praying you can trust such freaks and monsters with the fate of a world. You fear they may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find - but you'd give anything for that to be true, if you knew what was waiting for them.Blindsight is about first contact, but there are no green skinned beauties here for the dashing captain to have sex with. In fact there isn't any dashing captain, the captains a vampire and the crew are rightly terrified of him. The aliens are utterly alien, Watts outdoes Lem's Solaris in the otherness of his aliens. This alone is worth the price of admission and yet the book offers so much more.
Science Fiction God Arthur C. Clarke died yesterday. Every mention of his death includes a reference to the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey which to my mind is more Kubrick's achievement. What Clarke did do was write some terrific and influential novels, Childhoods End being so influential in fact that most people have never heard of it, but everyone knows the image of gigantic spaceships hovering over the worlds cities.
With his wife dead and buried, and life nearly over at 75, John Perry takes the only logical course of action left him: he joins the army.
He who knows not God, is missing something!
I got the book yesterday and read it. So... is it evil atheistic garbage? I don't think so. As a matter of fact, I was positively surprised at the content. There is snark about religion, but it's not a lot of it. My favorite part is the last page where about a dozen people of all sizes, shapes and ethnicities are drawn naked, with only the Christian bishop, the rabbi and the mufti being ashamed of their nudity.As to the rest of the book, here's a rundown of the criticism: The piglet is astonished that it's mother should have been Jewish for it to be Jewish, as well. It's sad about God killing all the people and animals in the Great Flood, and it asks the rabbi how, if humans can invent gods (as he claims), he knows that the God he prays to is not an invention.
With the Christian priest, the piglet is turned off by the idea of God sending his own son to be crucified in order to wash our sins away with blood ("icky blood"), as well as the Catholic idea of eating a part of Jesus's body during mass (it calls the Catholics »cannibals« then, leading to the authors being sued by a Catholic ministry).
Finally the piglet and its friend get to the mosque, where they're surprised by the idea of praying five times a day and having to wash beforehand every time. They inquire how the people know that Mohammed didn't make those rules up and are being chased out of the mosque for it.
Outside, on the temple hill (where all three "temples" stand), the three priests meet, try to catch the piglet and its friend, but get into a physical argument about which faith sports the worst kind of hell. In the meantime, the piglet goes home and enjoys life again, all the while having a laugh about those funny humans: »If there is a God, he's surely not living in those haunted castles«.
All in all, the book is open about criticism of the biblical faiths, but I wouldn't say it's overly dismissive, offensive or even hateful. It *is* literature designed to get children off their faith, or better even, literature designed for humanists, atheists or whatever to give to their kids. And in that, it's not only a book about the value of free minds, critical thinking or the like, but a book about strange or silly ideas in faith (with the above-mentioned examples).
The perfidious and dangerous thing is that the very attractive graphical presentation is aimed at young children, which are defenceless against such anti-religious agitationOf course there is no sense of irony in the above statement, but it does show religious leaders are aware of the malleability of young minds and how crucial it is to wrap them at an early stage.
Stephan Kramer, General Secretary of the "Central Council of Jews in Germany"
The road is the story of a man and his son traveling on foot through a post apocalyptic America. They must survive freezing temperatures, starvation, bandits and cannibals in a world that has turned to ash as they search for ... safety, "the good guys", salvation?
Spin was another spur-of-the-moment purchase. I had heard a lot about it and knew it won the Hugo in 2006 but the synopsis of the book put me off.
I enjoyed Cordellia's Honor so much I had to go out and get the next one entitled "The Warriors Apprentice". This book follows the adventures of Cordellia's son Miles, who was born at the end of Cordellia's Honor. This is the first book in a series known as The Vorkosigan Saga and are based around teh advertures of Miles Vorkosigan. This book begins when Miles is 17 and trying to enter the Barrayan Military academy, he fails, is sent off-world and in a series of escalating bluffs winds up in the middle of a war.
Did you know that Lois Mcmaster Bujold has one 4 Hugo Award's more than every other author except Heinlein? I didn't, but when I first heard about this I decided I'd better find out what all the fuss was about and so I picked up Cordellia's Honor.
