DIVERGENT

Hunky-dory, Veronica Roth, your book is a bestseller and soon to be a major motion picture (March-2014)... not bad. However I’m getting a little tired of YA dystopian novels. For this reviewer, the novel was adequate but unremarkable. After reading the 487 pages and all the extras, I don’t have the urge to read the rest of the trilogy. I’m sure that the remaining novels will answer some questions that I have about the story, such as: Why did this society start in the first place and are there similar communities beyond Chicago?  But you know what? I don’t have the hankering to read another 1,000 pages to find out. How many books like The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins), Wool (Hugh Howey), or Delirium (Lauren Oliver) can someone read before they look for a utopian novel instead. I think Veronica did the right thing by keeping the main characters (Tris, Four, Al, Will, Christina, Eric, Caleb and Peter) to an acceptable Cormac McCarthy character level, but why didn't I feel empathy for any of them? That responsibility rest squarely on the shoulders of the author. I like to root for the main characters, but I didn't get that warm and fuzzy feeling for any one of them.

The premise for the book is that Chicago is fenced in from the outer world and the citizens are divided into five social groups: Abnegation (the selfless), Candor (the honest), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). The year this story takes place is unknown. The community is governed by the Abnegation, since they reject individual goals. However, there seems to be opposition from the Dauntless and Erudite factions brewing. Once a person reaches sixteen years old, they must be tested to find out what group they will join. Our heroine, Beatrice, is a member of the Abnegation faction but chooses the Dauntless at the ceremony, even though she tested positive for Abnegation, Erudite, and Dauntless. She is a Divergent. This is a problem, since divergents are considered rebels. This must be kept a secret. Her brother, Caleb, chooses the Erudite. Beatrice, now known as Tris, finds the initiations at Dauntless arduous. There are fist fights, knife throwing, and frightening mental simulations (they make a person face their fears). Her trainer is Four (Tobias), and her leader is Eric, who is in cahoots with Jeanine, the leader of the Erudite. What are the two leaders scheming? Since Tris and Four are divergents, (none of the leaders know this) they can manipulate the mind blowing simulations to their benefit. What happens during and after the initiations are the crux of the novel. This is where I thought the novel would get exciting, but in my opinion it became somewhat predictable and humdrum. But knowing Hollywood, I’m sure the opposite will occur. This might be one of those rare instances when the movie is better than the book.

The dystopian YA novels are on a good run, and I don’t see that pattern changing in the near future. I prefer the classic human misery novels, such as, H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine (1895), or George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945). In all fairness to what I said about Veronica Roth’s lack of conveying empathy and caring to the characters, she did a good job with hate. This reviewer did work up a good hate for Tris’s adversaries, Peter, Molly and Drew. All in all, I do recommend that you read this novel in order to keep in touch with the young adult (YA) market.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Comment: As I hinted previously, dystopian novels have been written for a long time. Believe it, or not, the first novel of this ilk was Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver's Travels (1726). Lets talk about three of my favorites:

Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley - The novel takes place in the year 632AF(After Ford, yes Henry Ford). Most of society is unified under the World State. Children are created and reared in hatcheries in a five caste system. The following is a excerpt of the novel, courtesy of Sparknotes, “The novel opens in the Central London Hatching and Conditioning Centre, where the Director of the Hatchery and one of his assistants, Henry Foster, are giving a tour to a group of boys. The boys learn about the Bokanovsky and Podsnap Processes that allow the Hatchery to produce thousands of nearly identical human embryos. During the gestation period the embryos travel in bottles along a conveyor belt through a factory like building, and are conditioned to belong to one of five castes: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, or Epsilon. The Alpha embryos are destined to become the leaders and thinkers of the World State. Each of the succeeding castes is conditioned to be slightly less physically and intellectually impressive. The Epsilons, stunted and stupefied by oxygen deprivation and chemical treatments, are destined to perform menial labor. Lenina Crowne, an employee at the factory, describes to the boys how she vaccinates embryos destined for tropical climates.”

Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell - Great Britain is now the Oceanian Province of Airstrip One controlled by Big Brother. Welcome to the world of constant war, mind control, and continual government surveillance. The following is a excerpt of the novel, courtesy of Sparknotes, “Winston Smith is a low-ranking member of the ruling Party in London, in the nation of Oceania. Everywhere Winston goes, even his own home, the Party watches him through telescreens; everywhere he looks he sees the face of the Party’s seemingly omniscient leader, a figure known only as Big Brother. The Party controls everything in Oceania, even the people’s history and language. Currently, the Party is forcing the implementation of an invented language called Newspeak, which attempts to prevent political rebellion by eliminating all words related to it. Even thinking rebellious thoughts is illegal. Such thoughtcrime is, in fact, the worst of all crimes.”

Atlas Shrugged (1957) by Ayn Rand - This is one of my all time favorite novels. John Galt leads the U.S.A.’s wealthiest citizens in a revolt against the government’s high taxes, regulations, and interference of big business by withdrawing the important business men to an unknown location. The title of the novel asks, what would happen if Atlas decided not to hold up the world on his shoulders, but in Greek Mythology, Atlas is holding up the sky. The following is a excerpt of the novel, courtesy of Sparknotes, “In an environment of worsening economic conditions, Dagny Taggart, vice president in charge of operations, works to repair Taggart Transcontinental’s crumbling Rio Norte Line to service Colorado, the last booming industrial area in the country. Her efforts are hampered by the fact that many of the country’s most talented entrepreneurs are retiring and disappearing. The railroad’s crisis worsens when the Mexican government nationalizes Taggart’s San Sebastian Line. The line had been built to service Francisco d’Anconia’s copper mills, but the mills turn out to be worthless. Francisco had been a successful industrialist, and Dagny’s lover, but has become a worthless playboy. To solve the railroad’s financial problems, Dagny’s brother Jim uses political influence to pass legislation that destroys Taggart’s only competition in Colorado. Dagny must fix the Rio Norte Line immediately and plans to use Rearden Metal, a new alloy created by Hank Rearden. When confronted about the San Sebastian mines, Francisco tells Dagny he is deliberately destroying d’Anconia Copper. Later he appears at Rearden’s anniversary party and, meeting him for the first time, urges Rearden to reject the freeloaders who live off of him."

One of Ayn’s famous one liners is : “The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.”
           

THE CROSSING

The gloom master is darker than normal in this second book of the Border Trilogy. Published in 1994, Cormac McCarthy once again takes the reader across the border into Mexico through the eyes of a young man. Has anybody ever seen Cormac smile? In a rare interview with The New York Times, Cormac stated that he is not an aficionado of authors who don’t “deal with issues of life and death.” This novel deals with those issues. He is also the master of simple declarative sentences without quotation marks. He told Oprah Winfrey, on her show in 2007, that he believes there is no reason to “blot the page up with weird little marks.” Yet, this rebel of proper grammar is consider one of the great writers of our times. Since I seem to be drawn to his novels, I can’t argue that point but many literary critics do. And what does William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White, writers of The Elements of Style, think about his prose? Not too much, I'm sure.

The story starts innocently enough with sixteen year old Billy Parham trying to trap a wolf that traveled from Mexico on to Parham’s ranch in New Mexico. The she-wolf has been destroying the livestock. Billy and his father are unsuccessful trapping the wolf until Billy gets the idea to bury the trap under a old campfire. Bingo! The wolf gets caught; but since Billy can’t pull the trigger, he decides to take the wolf back to Mexico. Billy almost completes the mission up till the time a group of Mexicans take the wolf away from Billy. The Mexicans put the wolf in a pit at a town fair. While chained to a post, the wolf is forced to fight one dog after another. Billy tries fruitlessly to save the wolf with whom he has bonded. With no options available to him, Billy shoots the wolf dead. After burying the wolf, Billy heads back to New Mexico. Cheery story so far, right? During his trek home, he runs into a man at a run-down church that tells Billy the first of three stories told by strangers in this novel. This part of the novel is unique, just as is the alternate Spanish and English lines throughout the tale. Although I don’t know Spanish, it was written so brilliantly that I knew what they were saying.

When Billy arrives at his parents ranch in New Mexico, he finds that his home is deserted. He rides into town to see the Sheriff. He is told that his parents were shot to death by two men and the six horses stolen. His brother, Boyd, got away and is staying a neighbor’s house. Billy finds Boyd, steals money, a shotgun, ammo, and food from the family. The game plan is to head back to Mexico and find the horses. All this happens early in this 426 page novel, so I’m not giving away the story. The novel explodes once the boys cross into Mexico. They will encounter many difficulties, meet a mysterious young girl, meet a strange character named Quijada on two occasions. Oh, the troubles are many. You will read the second and third story told by strangers. The second story is about a rebel who gets his eyes sucked out after being captured by the federals, and the third story is about a gypsy and two airplanes. This novel is quite a trip.

An example of Cormac’s prose are the following lines pertaining to Billy Parham: “It had ceased raining in the night and he walked out on the road and called for the dog. He called and called. Standing in that inexplicable darkness. Where there was no sound anywhere save only the wind. After a while he sat in the road. He took off his hat and placed it on the tarmac before him and he bowed his head and held his face in his hands and wept. He sat there for a long time and after a while the east did gray and after a while the right and god made sun did rise, once again, for all and without distinction.” Notice all the “ands”? This man of ‘no rules’ prose can get his point across to the reader in his own remarkable way. I highly recommend this novel.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: Three of Cormac McCarthy’s novels have been made into movies: No Country for Old Men , The Road , and All the Pretty Horses . I’m sure there will be many more.

The first novel that I read by Cormac was The Road, which I hated. Somehow, I’ve read three of his novels since, and have become a fan. Another example of Cormac’s prose that displays his writing skill is the following paragraph about evil in The Crossing: “The wicked know that if the ill they do be of sufficient horror that men will not speak against it. That men have just enough stomach for small evils and only these will they oppose. He said that true evil has power to sober the small doer against his own deeds and in the contemplation of that evil he may even find the path of righteousness which has been foreign to his feet and may have no power but to go upon it. Even this man may be appalled at what is revealed to him and seek some order to stand against it. Yet in all of this there are two things which perhaps he will not know. He will not know that while the order which the righteous seek is never righteousness itself but is only order, the disorder of evil is in fact the thing itself. Nor will he know that while the righteous are hampered at every turn by their ignorance of evil to the evil all is plain, light and dark alike. This man of which we speak will seek to impose order and lineage upon things which rightly have none. He will call upon the world itself to testify as to the truth of what are in fact but his desires. In his final incarnation he may seek to indemnify his words with blood for by now he will have discovered that words pale and lose their savor while pain is always new.” 
  
Another great line is when the she-wolf’s mate gets caught in a trap in Mexico: “She carried a scabbed over wound on her hip where her mate had bitten her two weeks before somewhere in the mountains of Sonora. He’d bitten her because she would not leave him. Standing with one forefoot in the jaws of a steel trap and snarling at her to drive her off where she lay just beyond the reach of the chain. She’d flattened her ears and whined and she would not leave. In the morning they came on horses. She watched from a slope a hundred yards away as he stood up to meet them.” Wow, this man can write.   

I, The Jury

Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer transcends toughness in his 1947 debut novel that sets the tone for this vigilante Private Investigator. Hammer’s attitude towards criminals is defined on page sixteen when he says, “They crack down on society and I crack down on them. I shoot them like the mad dogs they are and society drags me to court to explain the whys and wherefores of the extermination.” Is he tough are what? Clint Eastwood’s movie character, Dirty Harry , is close, but no cigar. Sam Spade in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon (1930) is strong, but fair. Philip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (1939) is resilient, but not a wrongdoer. Basically, Hammer displays a vicious rage against any violent crime. This 190 pound P.I. loves a brutal, vomit inducing stomach punch as much as he loves his sexy secretary, Velda. Although Hammer chooses to take the law into his own hands, he does respect the police, especially his best friend, Captain Pat Chambers of the NYPD Homicide Department. Hammer is very patriotic and an anti-communist. Okay, now you know what makes Mike Hammer tick.

In the opening chapter, Hammer finds out that his World War II Army buddy, Jack Williams, has been killed with a shot to the gut in his apartment. Williams saved Hammer’s life in the war by sacrificing his arm in a fight against a Japanese soldier in the Pacific Ocean Theatre. Hammer swears that the killer will die the same way Jack Williams did. The suspects were all at Jack’s apartment for a party on the night of the murder. Someone came back after the party and shot Jack to death. Why? The murder suspects include Hal Kines (supposedly a medical student), George Kalecki (a ex-bootlegger), the twins, Mary and Esther Bellemy (Mary being a nymphomaniac), Charlotte Manning (a beautiful psychiatrist), and Myrna Devlin (Jack’s fiance). In the ensuing chapters, some of these people will be killed and one is the killer. Now I was fortuitous, because I figured out who the killer was, but I chalk it up to beginners luck. The text and terms was very reflective of the times; such as, the automat (the coin operated eatery), a divan (a couch), a wench (a girl), a fin ( a five dollar bill), dames (ladies), and of course everybody is smoking cigars and cigarettes. This was special reminiscing of the times, but not the racism of the period. The terms “darky” and “colored” are not endearing words. On page 62, Big Sam, a bartender says to Hammer, “Howday, Mistah Hammah. Glad to see yuh. Long time since yuh done been in dis part of town.” Did Spillane have to use that lingo? Unfortunately, it was common for those times. 

The 1920s-1950s produced many detective novels, featuring (other than the above mentioned), Lew Archer in Ross Macdonald’s The Moving Target (1949), Hercule Poirot in Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), and Nero Wolfe in Rex Stout’s Fer-de-Lance (1934). But none of these P.I’s had Mike Hammer’s unforgiving attitude. It’s best displayed on page 73, when talking to Charlotte Manning, he says, “I got an obsession though.” She says, “You have? I can’t imagine what it is.” Hammer says, “I want a killer. I want to shoot a killer.” There you go, that’s Mike Hammer. This novel was recollective of the times, even though some of the text was chauvinistic. I enjoyed this novel and recommend it to any reader who wants to be a student of the different genres and times in American literature.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: Mickey Spillane sold over 225 million copies of his novels, and although his novels were a world away from Ayn Rand’s thoughts (Atlas Shrugged ), they were great fans of each other. Go figure!

Mickey Spillane, as Mike Hammer, courtesy of www.tumblr.com.

Critics were not always nice to Mickey Spillane. According to wikipedia: “ When literary critics had a negative reaction to Spillane's writing, citing the high content of sex and violence, Spillane answered with a few terse comments: "Those big-shot writers could never dig the fact that there are more salted peanuts consumed than caviar... If the public likes you, you're good." Russian-American author Ayn Rand publicly praised Spillane's work at a time when critics were almost uniformly hostile. She considered him an underrated if uneven stylist and found congenial the black-and-white morality of the Hammer stories. She later publicly repudiated what she regarded as the amorality of Spillane's Tiger Mann stories. German painter Markus Lupertz claimed that Spillane's writing influenced his own work, saying that Spillane ranks as one of the major poets of the 20th century. American comic book writer Frank Miller has mentioned Spillane as an influence for his own hard boiled style.” Avant-Garde musician John Zorn composed an album influenced by Spillane’s writing titled 'Spillane’ consisting of three file-card pieces, as well as a work for voice, string quartet and turntables.”

The Winter of our Discontent

The Nobel Prize winning novel (1962) examines this question: Can one take a respite from good morals, do things totally out of character, and then switch back to good? That is the dilemma our protagonist, Ethan Allen Hawley, faces as he struggles to regain past family wealth and prominence. Published in 1961, this was the last novel that John Steinbeck finished. As with most of his novels, he was initially criticized for ‘making a mountain out of a molehill.' Steinbeck stated that he wanted to expose “the moral degeneration of American culture." He was later exonerated when the details of Watergate and Richard Nixon proved his point. This is the writer that also wrote The Grapes of Wrath (1939), displaying capitalism in a negative way and Of Mice and Men (1937), emphasizing man’s inhumanity to one another. If you haven’t read a Steinbeck novel...start with this one.

The novel’s time period is from Easter to the Fourth of July (1960) in the fictional town of Baytown, NY. Steinbeck fashioned this town out of his own hometown of Sag Harbor, NY. We find ex-GI, Ethan Allen Hawley, working as a clerk in Marullo’s Fruit and Fancy Groceries. While Ethan was fighting overseas in World War II, his father lost all the family’s wealth via wild wartime investments. The language of the times is sometimes offensive, such as, Ethan referring to his boss as the guinea, wop, or dago. Two other families of prominence in the novel are heading in different directions. Mr. Baker is the town’s banker and future political power, while Danny Taylor (from a good family) is now the town drunk. Ethan’s wife, Mary (of many cutesy names), has been putting pressure on Ethan to improve the family’s position.

His children, Allen and Mary Ellen, have entered a ‘I love America’ essay contest and also champion for a better life. Mary’s friend, Margie Young- Hunt, has read her fortune cards and states that Ethan is going to be rich. Mr. Baker wants Ethan to start investing in the town, and Ethan’s friend Joey Morphy (a bank teller) informs Ethan how the perfect bank robbery could be done. Ethan learns that Marullo might have come to the USA without papers (thus the term WOP). Can he get the store for himself, if he ‘rats out’ Marullo? Should he follow Mr. Baker’s seemingly wrong and nefarious advice? Are the kids writing their essays on the up and up? Why is Mr. Baker bribing Danny Taylor with booze and what is that paper he wants Danny to sign? Does Margie have a crush on Ethan? Is Ethan contemplating a bank robbery?

Since this is a story of the decline in American morality, there are many flaws in the eight main characters. Ethan is not the only one with morality issues, but he is the only one with a guilty conscious. On page 201, Ethan thinks to himself, "Temporarily I traded a habit of conduct and attitude for comfort and dignity and a cushion of security.” He thinks he can change back to a good guy, since he killed people during the war and didn’t become a murderer when he was discharged. The only shortcoming I found with this novel was that too much was packed into the last 59 pages. If he could have added a hundred pages, or so, the reader would have time to savor the many twist and turns that come at you one after another. The title of this classic comes from William Shakespeare’s Richard III . On page 264, Ethan toasted his son by saying, "Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York.” He will think different in a few pages. All in all, this is a marvelous story, so typical of a John Steinbeck novel.

RATING:  5 out of 5 stars

Comment: According to Wikipedia: In 2012 (50 years later), the Nobel Prize opened its archives and it was revealed that Steinbeck was a "compromise choice" among a shortlist consisting of Steinbeck, British authors Robert Graves and Lawrence Durrell, French dramatist Jean Anouilh and Danish author Karen Blixen. The declassified documents showed that he was chosen as the best of a bad lot, "There aren't any obvious candidates for the Nobel prize and the prize committee is in an unenviable situation," wrote committee member Henry Olsson. Although the committee believed Steinbeck's best work was behind him by 1962, committee member Anders Osterling believed the release of his new novel The Winter of our Discontent in 1961 showed that "after some signs of slowing down in recent years, [Steinbeck has] regained his position as a social truth-teller [and is an] authentic realist fully equal to his predecessors Sinclair Lewis and Ernest Hemingway." I find this interesting, but I’m sure there is a unique story behind every Nobel Prize award.

Steinbeck’s first success was Tortilla Flat (1935): A story of a group of Paisanos enjoying life and wine drinking after World War I. As usual he was criticized, this time for writing a novel about bums. Critic Arthur C. Pettit said “Tortilla Flat stands as the clearest example in American literature of the Mexican as a jolly savage.” Oh well, this reviewer is still a fan of Steinbeck’s 27 books.

INFERNO

Dan Brown should be named the comeback writer of the year after his mediocre novel, The Lost Symbol, crashed and burned in 2009. Though I enjoyed this novel, it did cross my mind that this Robert Langdon character should be put out to pasture. I’m growing weary and bored with this nonaggressive Indiana Jones look alike. It’s business as usual deciphering symbols with a pretty lady as his companion du jour. It’s one art history lesson after another and descriptive writing about famous cities and their churches. Okay, I get it. Again, I liked this book, but please…will somebody make him disappear so that Dan Brown can write another novel like Deception Point. The author is very talented but needs to move on. Even Clive Cussler moved away from Dirk Pitt long enough for the reader to catch their literary breath. Inferno is the type of novel that causes the reader to guesstimate when the next twist will occur, and the surprises will be especially frequent in the last hundred plus pages.

As the novel opens, we find our Harvard professor lying in a hospital bed in Florence, Italy with a gunshot wound to the head. He has no idea how he got there or why he is there. Welcome to the world of amnesia. Whoever tried to kill him is back and opens gunfire in his room. One doctor is shot, the other doctor, Sienna Brooks, escapes with our Mr. Langdon. As they arrive at the doctor’s apartment, it seems like the whole world is chasing him. Why? He keeps having these visions of Dante Alighieri’s hell (from Inferno, the first part of The Divine Comedy). There is a silver haired veiled woman by a river of blood shouting at him, “seek and ye shall find.“ He finds a tube in his jacket with the code saligia on it. Langdon knows that it’s a Latin mnemonic for the Seven Deadly Sins. It turns out to be a Faraday pointer, and Langdon shakes the tube and projects an image of Botticelli’s painting of the Map of Hell. He discovers more clues, but before he can study the new clues, an aggregate of police and agents dressed in black arrive. Langdon and Sienna are on the run again.

Meanwhile, the reader learns that eminent scientist, Bertrand Zobrist, has hired the nefarious group known as the Consortium to hide his identity and location from Elizabeth Sinskey, head of the World Health Organization (WHO). Zobrist had sought Sinskey’s support for his depopulation plan. Zobrist feels the the world’s population must be thinned-out in order for it to avoid extinction. Obviously, the head of WHO doesn’t agree. The clues left by Zobrist indicate that he is getting ready to unleash a new plague on mankind. Zobrist has left a film in the hands of the “Provost” of the Consortium to be released to the world the next day. In the film, there is a plaque in the water that says, “In this place, on this date, the world was changed forever.” What has he done? Can Langdon decipher all the clues in time to find the hiding place of the virus? And who are all these groups chasing Langdon and Sienna? Are they friend, or foe?

I must stop before I give away the last three hundred pages. Our symbologist and art historian, Robert Langdon, faces mental puzzles comparable to the ones in Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code. This is an exciting novel, but I hope it’s the last for awhile. I want Dan Brown to write a number one bestseller without Robert Langdon. He can do it. Now, I do highly recommend this novel, but issue the following warning: This novel could be as contagious as Dr. Zobrist’s virus. By the way, I didn’t tell you what his plague is supposed to do. Oh well, another reason to buy your own copy.

 RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: I was intrigued by Botticelli’s famous painting of the Map of Hell:

Botticelli’s map of the Inferno

Botticelli’s ‘Abyss of Hell’ – a map of Dante’s inferno

                                       

One of a series of illustrations for the Divine Comedy produced by Botticelli.

Pen and brush on vellum (32 × 47 cm) — c. 1485

Dante Alighieri died 692 years ago and is still a literary legend. Sandro Botticelli painted Dante’s nine layered vision of hell about 164 years after Dante’s death. It’s hard to imagine that these two artist would be so influential after all these years. Talk about leaving your mark on earth. Also interesting is how they made a death mask of individuals - no photos in those days. Ha! Ha! On page 169, Langdon explains to Sienna at the Palazzo Vecchio (where Dante’s death mask is housed) how a death mask was made: “Shortly after death the deceased is laid out, and his face is coated with olive oil. Then a layer of wet plaster is caked onto the skin, covering everything-mouth, nose, eyelids-from the hairline down to the neck. Once hardened, the plaster is easily lifted off and used as a mold into which fresh plaster is poured. This plaster hardens into a perfectly detailed replica of the deceased’s face.”

Photo courtesy of www.mediasense.com/florence/dante.htm.

Death mask of Dante Alighieri

Death mask were normally made for the rich and famous. Some noteworthy death masks include: Ludwig Van Beethoven, Alfred Hitchcock, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Paine, Woodrow Wilson, Oliver Cromwell, Richard Wagner, and inventor, Nicola Tesla. Wow! What a cast of characters.

NEW EARTH

The premise of this novel was innovative and ingenious for the first hundred pages or so. Then it sputtered and fizzled out like a dud firecracker. Why? Ben Bova is a six-time winner of the Hugo Award. What made this promising story turn into a turkey? Umm, I think it’s a case of a highly capable author resting on his laurels. I’ve seen this happen recently with great sci-fi writers like Larry Niven ( recently flopped with Bowl of Heaven ) and I’m wondering when I’ll read another sci-fi classic like Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama . Maybe sci-fi writers have so many good ideas in their heads that they rush through a novel just to get to the next. The result is a clunker, not a total loss, but a missed opportunity to deliver a classic story. I believe this novel was one of those missed opportunities.

The story starts off strong with the reader finding out that Earth is being inundated by flood waters from the effects of global warming. The world is in chaos with the ice from Greenland and Antarctica melting, causing worldwide evacuations. Eighty years prior to this, the World Council funded a starship called Gaia on an exploratory trip to a recently discovered planet revolving around the star Sirius. From previous unmanned missions, man has learned that this New Earth seems to be a duplicate of our planet. Now the starship with a crew of twelve is in orbit around New Earth. Robots rouse the crew that have been frozen by liquid nitrogen for the past 80 years. Jordan Kell is the team leader on this important mission to study the planet’s biosphere, build housing and study the possibility of man moving here. Messages take eight and a half years to reach Earth. The crew doesn’t know that the World Council has reneged on sending backup missions.

 As the crew orbits to the darkside of the planet, they see a beam of light shining upwards. Can there be intelligent life on the planet? Mitchell Thornberry, a roboticist, sends two of his robots down to investigate the beam.The robots go dormant on the planet. Part of the crew land on the surface and find out that there are human-like sentient beings already there. Where did they come from and who are they? Other than Jordan Kell, who falls in love with a alien beauty ( Aditi ), the other eleven crew members don’t trust the seemingly helpful aliens. Or are we the aliens? The leader of New Earth, Adri, seems friendly answering any question asked of him. Or is he? This part of the novel is when I thought it would move forward with extreme gusto. Not.

I haven’t mentioned most of the rest of Kell’s crew because half of the crew have minor speaking roles in this mediocre novel. Basically the book has four meaningful human characters: Jordan Kell and his brother Brandon, a astronomer; Harmon Meek, a astrobiologist; and Mitchell Thornberry. There are two significant alien characters: Adri and Aditi of the planet with two suns ( one is a pup sun ), no moons, bioengineered animals, and energy domes. It takes New Earth 30 years to fully orbit it’s main sun. Doesn’t this sound like a interesting plot? It could have been, but at this point the author runs out of zip and ideas. I felt no empathy for any character, not a good sign. If you want to find out what happens on New Earth after the crew’s landing, you will have to read your own copy. I must give this novel a indifferent rating since it didn’t live up to the teasers on the book's jacket cover. May I interject a mild...blech!

RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

Comment: Since Ben Bova has written over 100 novels and nonfiction books, not all were recipients of bad reviews. Lets look at some of these book:

Moonwar : Ben Bova's extraordinary Moonbase Saga continues with a breathtaking near-future adventure rich in character and incident. The action begins seven years after the indomitable Stavenger family has realized its cherished dream of establishing a colony on the inhospitable lunar surface. Moonbase is now a thriving community under the leadership of Doug Stavenger, a marvel of scientific achievement created and supported by nanotechnology: virus-size machines that can build, cure, and destroy. But nanotechnology has been declared illegal by the home planet's leaders. And a powerful despot is determined to lay claim to Stavenger's peaceful city...or obliterate it, if necessary. The people of Moonbase--a colony with no arms or military--must now defend themselves from earth-born aggression with the only weapon at their disposal: the astonishing technology that sustains their endangered home. Provided by goodreads.

Voyagers III: Star Brothers : Keith Stoner lay frozen in an alien spacecraft for fifteen long years; during that time he came to be something more than just an astronaut, just a man. Stoner became partly alien himself--merged with an alien intelligence embodied in the nanotechnology that lived inside Stoner's body. The alien whose tomb that spacecraft was, brought humanity both a blessing and a deadly peril. The technology now the control of Vanguard Industries has changed the face of the earth. The technology that lives in Stoner's bloodstream will change mankind forever. Provided by amazon.com.

Empire Builders : Dan Randolph never plays by the rules. A hell-raising maverick with no patience for fools, he is admired by his friends, feared by his enemies, and desired by the world's loveliest women. Acting as a twenty-first privateer, Randolph broke the political strangle-hold on space exploration, and became one of the world's richest men in the bargain.
Now an ecological crisis threatens Earth--and the same politicians that Randolph outwitted the first time want to impose a world dictatorship to deal with it. Dan Randolph knows that the answer lies in more human freedom, not less--and in the boundless resources of space. But can he stay free long enough to give the world that chance? Provided by google.

Voyagers II: The Alien Within : When Keith Stoner awoke, he found himself in a world changed almost beyond recognition. Eighteen years before, Stoner had been the American member of a joint U.S.-Soviet mission to capture an alien ship. The Soviets had to pull out, but Stoner persisted, and while on the strange ship, he fell into suspended animation. Jo Camerata, the ambitious young student who fell in love with Stoner, is now head of Vanguard Industries, which has recovered the alien ship. As a result, her company is now in control of its vast new technology and the fortune it reaps--and in control of Keith Stoner. What Camerata doesn't know, however, is that someone else has been awake, someone who dwells within Stoner's mind. The alien presence that has kept Stoner alive all this time is now free and intends to explore our world, letting nothing stand in its way. Provided by amazon.com.

Farside : Farside, the side of the Moon that never faces Earth, is the ideal location for an astronomical observatory. It is also the setting for a tangled web of politics, personal ambition, love, jealousy, and murder. Telescopes on Earth have detected an Earth-sized planet circling a star some thirty light-years away. Now the race is on to get pictures of that distant world, photographs and spectra that will show whether or not the planet is truly like Earth, and if it bears life. Provided by amazon.com.

This is only a sample of the many books written by Ben Bova. I might have been too harsh in my review, but when you expect a homerun and the writer strikes out...Well, you are disappointed.

Proof of Heaven

If this story is real, it’s great news for every good egg out there. If you are not a straight shooter then I suggest you grab a copy of Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy. You will not like what you read. Amen. However, Dr. Eben Alexander does say in this stunning book that God loves everybody...but why take a chance, just treat everyone the way you would want to be treated and earn your ticket to the pearly gates. Is there really a spiritual afterlife, or did the good doctor experience a brain fart? I don’t know. He did have E.coli bacterial meningitis that basically eats your brain, rendering it kaputs. It’s so rare that less than one person in ten million contract it. Usually after several days, the best you can hope for is a vegetative state. Dr. Alexander had it for seven days and fully recovered enough to write this book. Near-death experiences (NDEs) are not new, but coming from this previously disbelieving neurosurgeon, it’s certainly a significant happening. I think that is what’s important. Scientist and academicians have traditionally avoided taking on these issues, with the exception of P.M.H. Atwater’s 1988 book Coming Back To Life. Dr. Alexander certainly gave this reader a lot to think about. The reader wants to believe.

During Dr. Alexander’s seven day coma, his brain wasn’t working at all. So the dream or hallucination factor doesn’t come into play. The doctor explains, “If you don’t have a working brain, you can’t be conscious. Example-pull the plug, the TV goes dead.” So how did he travel to heaven? He awoke in a very dark place with underground roots and strange background music. He calls this “The realm of the earthworm’s eye view”. He doesn’t have a clue who he is. He sees a bright light above and drifts towards it. Suddenly he is flying with a girl (who is she?) on the wings of a butterfly. He calls this “The gateway”. He reaches a dark area with a shining orb (God, or Om for omniscient). He calls this “The core”. He communicates with God without seeing him, or talking to him, yet he understands what God is saying with utmost clarity. He does this several times. The girl on the butterfly tells him: “You are loved and cherished. You have nothing to fear. There is nothing you can do wrong.” (Who is she?). Is “The realm of the earthworm’s eye view“ a way station between heaven and hell? This part is very interesting as the doctor relates to the reader what he saw and how he interprets the phenomenon.

On the seventh day in a coma, Eben’s sister Phyllis gets a text message from a prayer group in Boston (who are they?) that says, ”Expect a miracle.” She rushes to the hospital as Dr. Ward (the main doctor and Eben’s friend) is telling the family that the plug should be pulled on Eben’s life support system. In the hospital room, Eben suddenly wakes, bothered by the breathing tube, Dr. Wade takes it out, and Eben says, “Thank you.” He looks around the room and says, “All is well.” How did he come back? It took awhile for Eben to recover, but most of the neurosurgeons didn’t believe his story. The rest of the book concerns Eben trying to analyze what happened to him. Some of his conclusions are startling. Did it actually happen to him? Why didn’t he see anybody in the afterlife that he knew? The common NDE includes the person meeting a friend or relative. And why didn’t Doctor Alexander know who he was while in the afterlife? Dr. Alexander says, “Communicating with God is the most extraordinary experience imaginable, yet at the same time it’s the most natural one of all, because God is present in us at all times.” There is no upside to disbelieving what the doctor experienced since we all would like this episode to be genuine. However I’m not completely convinced, and I sense a little hint of disbelief from the author as well, but I embrace this book for it’s honesty.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: You probably are wondering why all these NDEs are heaven bound. Well, there are plenty of documented NDEs where the poor soul went to hell. According to thedailybeast, the following is an example of a hellish NDE:

“In March 1992, Matthew Botsford walked out of a restaurant in Atlanta and found himself in the middle of a gun battle. He was struck in the back of the head with a 9mm bullet. Before he knew it, he had died and gone to hell.

“Mad Margaret” by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, c. 1561, depicts hell as fire and brimstone with nightmarish imagery. (Getty)

"I felt a hot, needlelike pierce, excruciatingly painful, for a brief moment on the top of my head," Botsford wrote in A Day in Hell , an account of what he experienced in the underworld during the 27-day coma that followed the shooting. "Utter darkness enveloped me as if thick, black ink had been poured over my eyes." He later described being "hung over an abyss" as heat blasted up from below. Pairs of demonic eyes crept toward him before a diving entity grabbed him by the waist and said, "It's not your time."

abovetopsecret.com writes: “A lot of people have near death experiences and go to hell in them. The thing is, most of them don't want to talk about it. Think about this .. who would admit that they were going to hell? People's egos always want other people to think highly of them. If you google near death experiences and hell .. you'll see a bunch.

I watched a show about a priest in Kansas who had a NDE and went to hell. He was in a car accident and broke his neck. Everyone was shocked when he said that he had been sentenced to Hell by Christ. Everyone thought he was a wonderful person. But after he came back he said that he had been a priest 'for himself' and 'not for Christ'. He had a girlfriend and never said his prayers... etc. etc. What people saw isn't what God saw.

Anyways, after his NDE he got rid of his girlfriend and now prays. He lives 'for Christ' and says that this world is a 'shadow world' and that the next world is the real one. He now lives for Christ and his fellow human beings instead of himself."

If you want to learn more about NDEs to hell read: A Near Death Experience: I Died and Came Back from Hell by Grady Mosby or A Land Unknown: Hell's Dominion by B.W. Melvin. Wait, maybe these are not good to read if you have been naughty.