Missing Review Catch-Up II

It's not been long since I put together my first missing review catch-up blog, but already a few more books have slipped through the cracks. As before, these are things that I skipped for various individual reasons, generally because I didn't feel I could write a half-decent full post about each one. Plus, I am a bit lazy.

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The Pratchett Portfolio (1996)
Terry Pratchett with Art by Paul Kidby

When I was a teenager I was already obsessive-compulsive with books, frequently scouring the bibliography page of my favourite authors' books. Even back then Terry Pratchett's was one of the largest, including not only his regular novels but various off-shoot works, and of all of these The Pratchett Portfolio was always the most intriguing- I really had no idea what it was, and I don't think I ever spotted it on ny bookshop shelves. Fast-forward to the present, and I found a copy in the usual charity bookshop place. Alas to my thirteen-year old self, it'd be very disappointing.

Though Pratchett's name dominates the cover, this is mostly the work of artist Paul Kidby. Released a year after he took over from the late Josh Kirby as Discworld cover artist, it features his detailed pencil sketches of the universe's chief characters, each given short biographies written by Pratchett, with the occasional brief bit of interesting design information. The art itself is very good, though I'm no art critic, as Kidby really does put definitive faces to the cast. The problem is that the book is extremely short, as in maybe forty pages long altogether, with Pratchett's writing filling perhaps a quarter of each page. I read the entire thing in about ten minutes, including gazing at the art. It's so short that I can only really describe it as exploitative of fans, who get very little back from their £7. I only bought it for 4, pretty much just so I could review it for this blog, and I still feel ripped-off.

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The Ancestor's Tale (2004)
Richard Dawkins

My occasional quest to semi-educated myself through the means of popular science books took on its most intimidating quest yet, with Richard Dawkins' absolutely epic The Ancestor's Tale. This mammoth tome weighs in at a whopping 670-pages of evolutionary information, as Dawkins takes a systematic approach at again trying to hammer some of the important details about evolution into my thick head. The often-controversial author, currently offending about a million people each week on Twitter, attempts to work backwards through the history of life on Earth itself; starting with species of flora and fauna from the present day and moving through stages of evolutionary convergences until receding into the proverbial primordial soup. It would be practically impossible to write a truly comprehensive catalogue of this type, but Dawkins Puts in a herculean effort.

The problem that I have, and thus the cause of this petty excuse for a mini-review here rather than a lovely full-page spread, is that I'm too stupid to keep up with such constant factual information. After a while, with every science book I read, my brain starts to actively rebel against the horror of genuinely educational non-fiction and my reading slows to a crawl. It took me a long while to read the second half of this book, retaining less and less information as I went, so I'm in no position to give this a proper review. I can, however, safely say that The Ancestor's Tale is a superb achievement for Dawkins in putting such an ambitious project to paper. As I do with all of his books, I still finished it feeling I understood more about the nature of life itself, even if I'm not brilliant at articulating it.

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 The Castle of Otranto (1764)
Horace Walpole

Curiously just a day after finishing this, an article turned up on BBC News about the importance of this book, so if you want to read about it from people who actually know what they're talking about, go here. Anyway, The Castle of Otranto, like Marlowe's Faustus from last review catch-up, is a book I was first introduced to at university as an important piece of genre fiction. Also like Faustus, I found this particular edition of Otranto included with another related book, 'reviewed' below. The key reason that I'm not giving Otranto a full review is that I don't think it would be fair, since from a normal critical viewpoint it's actually a fairly awful book; meandering, overwritten, with one dimensional characters and a plot that doesn't make any sense. It remains a memorable classic in English literature though for the influence it had by essentially being the first ever proper Gothic horror novel.

Set in a vaguely-defined classically gothic Germanic castle, The Castle of Otranto follows the trials and tribulations of Manfred and his family. Manfred is sent panicking by some ghostly manifestations when his son is crushed by a giant helmet that apparates for no reason, and so tries to reinforce his power by remarrying at any cost. The rest of the plot reads like a series of random events, punctuated by unconvincing, overwrought narration, and as such is both fun and stupid. It's interesting to read this so far in the future and remind yourself of how Otranto and books like it have eventually inundated popular culture completely, but other than that there's not much to take from it.

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The Mysterious Mother (1791)
Horace Walpole

As was the case with Marlowe's Faustus and Goethe's Faust last catch-up, Otranto and The Mysterious Mother came together in one volume- though this edition I bought seems to be a study guide-, collecting Horace Walpole's only pieces of fiction. Like Otranto, Mysterious Mother is a gothic horror, but this time in the form of a play. The subject matter is actually rather murky, far more so than Otranto (written almost thirty years earlier), involving the classical crime of incest, leading to murder, drama, and possibly the first ever example in fiction of an evil gothic monk. It also happens to be mostly terrible.

Stylistically, Walpole does what 99% of all other play-writes have consistently done since, and rips off Shakespeare and Marlowe. As a result the dialogue and stage directions are bombastic, epic-sounding declarations meant to capture the audience's attention and emphasise the importance of the drama. Unfortunately trying to live up to the dramatic standards of William Shakespeare is never really going to work, especially for a man who Otranto proved clearly has a limited handle on prose fiction, and as a result the entire play reads as hokey and self-important. I finished it, but may have lost many details in the read through thanks to how dull and unworthy Walpole's writing was. Lacks the charm and importance of Otranto too.

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Judge Dredd- The Complete Case Files 12 (2009)
2000AD

After a good six-month break from this marathon trek through the complete history of Judge Dredd, I was surprised to find upon my return that we'd already reached the late; probably due to the surprising amount of time it took for 2000AD to add colour to the proceedings. Volume 12 catches Dredd in the wake of the Oz saga (collected, of course in vol 11) where his adventures down under have left him with questions about his ability to continue patrolling the super metropolis that is Mega City One. Meanwhile, in the real world, creative differences regarding that saga resulted in the end of the writing partnership of Alan Davis and John Wagner, and as a result authorship of the strips collected here bounces back and forth. It's probably because of that that Volume 12 avoids throwing itself into any similarly-sized epics to instead build for the future.

Most of the stories included are quick two-parters, some of which receive sequels later on to wrap things up. Wagner and Davis stick to the tried and tested Dredd formula of utilizing the dystopian sci-fi as satire (and sometimes almost pantomime), each time exploring a new corner of the city and finding a new unlucky criminal to face Dredd's wrath. As a result there's nothing I'd call essential contained in this volume, at least as it relates to Dredd storyline lore- although it does contain the first appearance of a character set to play a prominent role in the future, in the clone Judge Kraken, and continues the development of quirky 12-year-old serial killer PJ Maybe, resisting the urge to have a Dredd-related payoff in these stories for the sake of building the character up. Other stories involve Dredd visiting Japan, battling a proto-Batman, and performing in a rather twisted Wizard of Oz parody in Twister (a personal favourite Dredd story of mine). So, nothing ground-breaking here, just another year of strange adventures notched on Dredd's belt, in classic Wagner style.

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Alex Boese- Elephants on Acid and other Bizarre Experiments

Elephants on Acid and other Bizarre Experiments

Pan Books

Alex Boese

2007

'Tusko the elephant led a peaceful life at the Oklahoma City zoo. There were his daily baths, playtime with his mate, Judy, and the constant crowds of people peering at him from the other side of the fence. Nothing out of the ordinary. So when he awoke in his barn on the morning of Friday, August 3, 1962, he could hardly have foreseen what that day held in store. He was about to become the first elephant ever given LSD'  

Huzzah, finally I have the Internet available twenty-four seven once more, allowing me to spend my days sat in one spot refreshing the same pages over and over again in the hope of something new and interesting turning up. To celebrate, have the dazzling combination of a hastily-made selection of links, a Goodreads update widget (hidden down the page because it's somewhat ugly), and a fairly short (he says before writing it) review of the latest book I finished; a non-fiction collection of bizarre scientific anecdotes from author Alex Boese, Elephants on Acid and other Bizarre Experiments.

I say fairly short because, despite its factual contents, this book isn't to be confused with more detailed and teacherly tomes that have confused me in the past (such as Dawkin's The Blind Watchmaker, for example), but instead intentionally settles for a more laid-back, journalistic style. Alex Boese is a science major educated at the University of California, but his bread and butter since then has been tales from the fringes of the discipline, most notably his website The Museum of Hoaxes (which is well worth a look). This book, as the title suggests, is a guide to some of the most infamous and often disturbing recorded scientific experiments of all time, varying in both sanity and motive. Boese splits the experiments by general categories (animals, dreams, death etc.), and keeps each of the accounts short, often three pages or less.

Therein lies both the appeal and the problem with this book, and why, while I enjoyed it to a certain extent, I can't recommend it on many levels. The brevity of almost every one of these short stories limits the appeal and quality of the book in general, which is particularly disappointing considering the potential it shows. Boese has done a superb job in researching and selecting a wide range of genuinely interesting, compelling cases of varying natures; some involving patently mad scientists (both classical and modern), others investigating human psychology in unpredictable and even slightly disturbing ways (Stanley Milgram's infamous obedience experiment comes to mind most prominently, so here's the Wiki article on it). The problem is that some of these are so interesting that I wanted to read more about them; and yes, obviously I could do my own research, but damn it I've got a stupidly large pile of books to read.

That's really my only complaint about this book, and I suppose it does come in to conflict with the very nature of it. Boese, while clearly an intelligent man of science, doesn't seem interesting in delving into any more complex scientific detail than he has to. His prose is decent, conversational and pleasant, though somewhat generic in comparison to the more renowned popular science authors, and his sense of humour is hit or miss, and formulaic in its use (unlike, say, Douglas Adam's venture into the natural world with Last Chance To See- yes, I do like linking to my own stuff). As I read further and reached the chapter entitled 'Toilet Reading' it became very apparent that Elephants on Acid was likely designed to be toilet reading; brief stories that are easy to read in one sitting and give the reader the impression of something valuable being imparted, when really the lack of detail in each case means there's little to be gained but a reference point.

Altogether then, before this review spirals out of control, I can't recommend Elephants on Acid unless you're like me and buy it second hand and really enjoy a nice looking cover. I don't want to criticise it too badly because, for what it is, it's well-produced and never boring, and (despite the darkened wardrobe of books to be read) really did have me searching on the Internet for more information on a few occasions, which I suppose is something. If, like me, you're looking to educate your non-scientific mind via the wisdom of a master of popular science, then you'd be better off sticking to Richard Dawkins and friends.

Richard Dawkins- The Blind Watchmaker

The Blind Watchmaker

Penguin

Richard Dawkins
1986

“There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point… The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it.”

I am not a science person, though I'd like to be. I smoothly passed my various science GCSE exams at the base level C without much trouble, but any real exposure to actual scientific things since then typically led to me frantically waving my arms around to make myself look big and scare the science away. I like to think of myself of one of those people who displays the right amount of restrained amazement and sense of awe when beholden to science. I guess I'm pretty awe-some.

Recent brushes with the harsh finger of mortality prompted me to try to understand the world around me a little bit more, at least enough to convince me of the absence of evil magicks. My first, rather fatherly tour guide was the reassuringly British gentlemen scholar who made quite the name for himself a few years back with a little book you may of heard of named The God Delusion. I first read that book about four years ago, approaching it with a great deal of enthusiasm in the knowledge that it was preaching to the converted, so to speak. Years spent in the dying remnants of the Church of England sponsored educational system quickly sent me down the atheist route, and so The God Delusion amused me in such a way as a book full of pictures of dead cats might appeal to someone who really hates cats.

After that I read The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, which was essentially the follow up to God Delusion excepted routed in more scientific fact rather than theological debate. Unfortunately I was not ready for such heady scientific analysis and terminology, and I ran from the genre of popular science for some time, until one day I came across a second hand copy of The Blind Watchmaker. Like all of Richard Dawkins' books, Watchmaker is about evolution and/or Darwinism (that's not a criticism on repetition by the way, Dawkins himself confidently assures that, as a topic, it encompasses every living thing on this planet and potential others), though it was first published back in 1986, a while before Dawkins' fame became mainstream.

Author's photo.

Though the topic is too complex to be easily narrowed down and rigidly adhered to by the author, the prime focus of this book surrounds the theory of evolution verses that of intelligent design (and its variations). The title of the book is a particular reference to an argument presented by anti-evolutionist and overall god bothering theologian William Paley, roughly stating that if you found a gold watch in the middle of the desert you would know that, because of its complexity, someone had built this watch, therefore life must have been created by God. To be fair, Paley wrote this before Darwin in the 17th century, where English life was somewhat entrenched in religious dogma. Nowadays, for a modern scientist like Dawkins to take this on is rather like shooting at fish in a barrel. In fact, my enjoyment of this book is in direct opposition to any attempt to analyse this as a scientific argument. I am the converted, I believe in evolution already.

Dawkins was able to stifle those possible complaints for me by going into far greater detail about things than I could've possibly hoped to imagine with my limited knowledge. Though admittedly certain aspects discussed went completely over my head, that's not the book's fault, and for the majority of it Dawkins does a splendid job of talking down to the average reader not possessing a education costing tens and tens of thousands (this is a total guess, it's probably more) of pounds. As a result this book is a resounding success in its goal of educating the ignorant in an entertaining way, and though this might be understating his actual credentials, pushes Dawkins into the public figure stratosphere of only Sir David Attenborough as teachers to an entire nation, or even globe.

My criticisms are limited to the occasional dryness of the source material. I don't mean to insult the majesty and complexity of science, but much of it is inevitably boring, and this does sometimes seep through. Really though, I took more valuable information from this book than I have from any in a good while, making any tedium clearly worth it. Hopefully reading this book has cracked the glass of ignorance blocking my understanding of science (strained analogy alert) and the next science book I eventually read will be that much clearer through the magical touch of context. Big opposable thumbs-up.