The Miracle of Right Thought

Time fascinates me. To be able to hold in my hand a book that was published exactly a century ago is sheer magic to me. {I wish I could hold in my hand a book that would be published exactly a hundred years from now, but I guess that one is a bit far fetched.} It is as though a teacher from the past has traveled to the present and is gently and lovingly guiding me. The Miracle of Right Thought by Orison Swett Marden was published in December of 1910—when the New Thought movement was in full swing--and is still very relevant:

What you allow to live in your heart, harbor in your mind, dwell in your thoughts, are seeds which will develop in your life and produce things like themselves.

Most people do not face life in the right way. They neutralize a large part of their effort because their mental attitude does not correspond with their endeavor, so that while working for one thing they are really expecting something else. They discourage, drive away, the very thing they are pursuing by holding the wrong attitude towards it.

Think life, live it; think youth, live it; feel it, express it from every pore of your being!

Instead of trying to root out a defect or a vicious quality directly, cultivate the opposite quality.

Keep constantly in your mind the ideal of the man or woman you would like to become.

After taking pages and pages of notes on the book and renewing it once, I reluctantly am going to return it to the library this week.

Dreamsnake

The enjoyable 1979 Hugo and 1978 Nebula award winning novel Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre is post-apocalyptic science fiction written in a style I associate with fantasy. It has a strong, benevolent, somewhat mysterious heroine who goes on a quest to find something that has been lost.

Snake is a healer who has decided to go out among the desert people in her proving year—a time near the end of a student’s regular training. The primary tools of the healing profession are live snakes, whose venom provides the basis for vaccines, helps with infection, shrinks tumors, and performs various other functions. The most vital and rare snake is the dreamsnake, which provides a type of narcotic. Early in the story Snake’s dreamsnake is killed. The rest of the plot centers on her attempt to deal with the loss and possibly find a replacement. Of course, she meets interesting people along the way. The novel is not for those squeamish about snakes!!!

Near the last hundred pages, the story took a stronger science fiction turn, but until that point I thought it could well have been a storyline that would go on for several novels. Snake is likable. While she describes herself as arrogant, she seems to be only slightly more risk taking than her fellow healers and has a touch of naiveté to her. I forgot that I was on my mission to read Hugo award winning novels and felt more like I was reading a current novel. I was sad to see the story end.

Gateway

Human Psychology. Risk. Gambling. Half of the chapters in the 1978 Hugo Award and 1977 Nebula Award winning novel Gateway by Frederick Pohl take place in the office of a computerized psychologist named Sigfrid. What happened to Robinette that compels him to continue to return for therapy? At the hub of the question is Gateway.

Briefly, Gateway is an asteroid where an unknown alien culture left hundreds of spacecrafts. The humans know almost nothing about the how the spacecrafts work. They do know that they can board them and go to some destination that had earlier—perhaps centuries ago--been programmed by the aliens.

We’re going into a ship that we don’t know if it’s going to go where it’s supposed to go, and we don’t even know where it’s supposed to go. We go faster than light, nobody knows how. We don’t know how long we’ll be gone, even if we knew where we were going. So we could be traveling the rest of our lives and die before we got there, even if we didn’t run into something that would kill us in two seconds…And not only that. We don’t anything about who built these things.

This causes a type of Russian roulette/gambling situation. The destination may bring the “prospectors” to a place where the aliens have left some wonderful technology or that has some great scientific value. In which case, the prospectors could earn millions of dollars. On the other hand, they could come back empty handed, injured, or not come back at all. In general the novel explores what type of person would sign up for such an assignment. In particular, it explores Robinette, who is caught between his fears and his desire for the big payoff.

This would have been an interesting book to read as part of a book club. At the end, I would have liked to know how other readers felt about Robinette. Could they relate to his fears? Did they find him a good, bad, or an in between type of person? This is the first novel a series, and at some point I would like to read the other books.

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

Haunting. Not your typical post-apocalyptic novel. I stayed up way, way too late last night/this morning reading the 1977 Hugo award winning novel Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm. In some ways it is reminiscent of A Choice of Gods and Way Station by Clifford D. Simak; it takes place in the future in an isolated rural setting and a family homestead plays a significant role in the plot. In Wilhelm’s novel, some events, which aren’t elaborated on, cause a global catastrophe. Before the disasters, the patriarch of a large group realizes what is going on and builds genetic facilities and a huge shelter for his extended family into the caves of a mountain. While the family survives the immediate disaster, they, like all other mammals, have been rendered infertile. The geneticists believe that by using a specific cloning technique the offspring will eventually become fertile again after a few generations.

Unlike many science fiction stories, this one centers on the people, in this case the clones, and how they evolve as a society. In the beginning, like normal teenagers, they take on an identity separate from their elders and create a society different from what the elders intended. While in some ways they are greater than the people they were cloned from, in other ways they are less. They all have a telepathic/empathetic connection and can’t bear to be alone. Slowly they lose their ability to see abstractions, to create new ideas, to adjust to unexpected events. Of course, even a cloned society has its rebels.

I need a few more days for the book to work its way into my psyche. I keep thinking about a conversation with a friend last week. We were talking about how teenagers were constantly texting one another. “They can’t bear to be alone!” she exclaimed, irritated. Each generation gains some things and loses others—and has its rebels who don’t go along with the wave.

The Gods Themselves

Parallel Universes. Academic Politics. Alternative Energy. Interesting Science. Fascinating Aliens. The 1973 Hugo award winning novel The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov is a story about an energy technology created by the interaction of a parallel universe—one with different physical laws— and our own. I liked the novel, despite the slow moving plots and emphasis on politics in scientific circles.

The book is divided into three main sections. The middle section contains a story about life forms in a parallel universe. This section made the book memorable and worthwhile. The life forms were interesting and unique. I even found myself getting emotionally attached to the little fellows. The ending of the section was satisfying and surprising.

Some of the discussion in the book is timeless. A major part of the plot deals with the safety of the energy technology. If I hadn’t known that the book was written in the early 70’s, I would have thought it was inspired by the politics of Climate Change and Global Warming:

"It is a mistake,” he said, “to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort."

Asimov also offers wisdom on how to counteract some of those arguments. I think the Hugo voters got this one right.

To Your Scattered Bodies Go

The opening episode in a series. An interesting premise. The day after I finished reading the 1972 Hugo Award Winning Novel To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer I am still not sure what I think about it. I know that it is part of a longer series, Riverworld. I feel very much the way I did when I watched the opening episodes of Lost and The Event on TV. The opening is spectacular, but am I emotionally and intellectually committed to it? Is it compelling enough for me to continue on? Maybe. Maybe not.

The opening few chapters are amazing. After dying, Sir Richard Francis Burton wakes up suspended in a void as he rotates around a pole and surrounded by naked bodies also rotating around poles. The next time he wakes up, he is on the ground. Naked, hairless bodies of men and women are all around him. Slowly, they wake up. Where are they? Is this heaven, hell, purgatory, or some place else? Slowly, they learn that all the people who have ever lived and died on earth are on this planet, which consists of one long river and its banks. There are people from all parts of the earth and from all time periods. To help with their daily needs, they each have a grail that they can use at set times of the day to give them food and some basic supplies.

The main plot seems to be focusing on why they are all there in the first place and who has brought them there. Burton, the main character, makes it his mission to figure this out. But there are also other layers of plot. What is human nature? How do people from different periods of time and different cultures interact with one another to create a society? What role does a person’s past play in their radically different present? Are they the same people as those who died on earth? Do they have souls? Burton keeps on encountering Hermann Goring, the Nazi war criminal. Is this a coincidence or does it have a deeper meaning?

The beginning was spectacular enough that I was glad I read the book. On the other hand I didn’t feel emotionally attached enough to the rest of the story to want to continue reading the series right now. Maybe later. This is more a matter of my tastes and not a reflection on the writing. I am not convinced that the series is going to explore the ideas that am most interested in.

Troubled Waters

Blessings. Elements. Uncovering the Truth. The recently released fantasy novel Troubled Waters by Sharon Shinn is beautifully woven together with the concept of blessings. “Blessing” is used both in the traditional sense and in the second sense of being elements—air, wood, fire, water, and earth—similar to the elements used in Eastern medicine.

Temples contain barrels filled with small metal tokens with a blessing on them, such as courage (a wood blessing) or patience (an earth blessing). These might be drawn for guidance or inspiration. The father of a newborn child goes out and asks three strangers to bestow a blessing on his child, usually drawn from the temple barrel, but sometimes given from a token already in the stranger’s possession. These three blessings become a sort of identity and inspiration throughout the child’s life.

In the story, individuals and families are also defined by particular blessings/elements. The blessings influence their occupations and shape their temperaments. They have an affinity for that blessing/element in nature. Rare individuals called “primes” can even control their element.

This world of blessings is the setting for the story of Zoe, a young woman who slowly uncovers the truth about who she is. In the beginning she is a lost young woman who is dealing with the death of her father, a man who has lived with her in exile the past ten years. As the story progresses, Zoe also uncovers the truth about intrigues in the royal palace. Zoe has the blessing of water, and the plot moves like water, sometimes slow and gentle, sometimes fast and racing.

This is the first book I have read by Shinn, and I had an enjoyable experience. I was fascinated by the blessings. Even though Zoe is a strong female character, the book has a gentle, feminine feel to it, which is a nice change of pace for me. I am hoping that Troubled Waters is the first in a series.