Book discussion

Book discussion: Flim-Flam!

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James Randi, stage magician (“the Amazing Randi”), skeptic, and writer, died on October 20, 2020. He was someone I really admired. He took on nonsense and demolished it. He gave Penn and Teller their start. This post is about one of his books mostly so I can talk about him. The book is Flim-Flam!, published in 1982. I don’t think it’s currently in print, but used copies are easy to find.

He took apart many claims of paranormal phenomena such as astrology, fairy photography, and faith healing, using facts and logic. Sometimes this made him unpopular, but he had fun doing it.

He pointed out that even smart people (like you and me, right?) can be fooled. Scientists can be especially gullible because they aren’t used to dealing with nonsense and fakery.

Randi was famous for offering a monetary reward to anyone who could demonstrate paranormal abilities. Originally it was for $10,000, and later he increased it to a million dollars. In Flim-Flam, he wrote:

I have carried around with me ever since a check in that amount [$10,000], immediately awardable to a successful applicant. … The offer is still open, and will be during my lifetime. It is stipulated in my will that if the amount is still unclaimed and available upon my death, the same offer will be made by my estate in perpetuity.

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Book discussion: Fahrenheit 451 1

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“It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed.”

Those are the opening words of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. They could also have been the words of whoever torched Uncle Hugo’s Bookstore in Minneapolis. (The crowdfunding campaign to restore it is still active.)

The arsonist might have gone on, as the protagonist’s thoughts do: “You weren’t burning anyone, you were burning things! And since things really couldn’t be hurt, since things felt nothing, and things don’t scream or whimper … there was nothing to tease your conscience later. You were simply cleaning up.” The goons who write in defense of looting and burning regularly say there’s nothing wrong with destroying mere property.
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Book discussion: Small Gods and Hogfather 1

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Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels combine humor with commentary on serious issues. My favorite in the series is Small Gods. It doesn’t have a close connection with any other Discworld book. Its time period is earlier than most of them, except for Pyramids.

If you haven’t read any Discworld books, you should! In brief, Discworld is a flat planet whose sun orbits around it. It lies on the backs of four gigantic elephants. They, in turn, stand on the back of Great A’Tuin, a turtle who swims through space, making even the elephants look small. However, if you live where the priests of the great god Om hold power, saying this could get you into trouble. They insist, in spite of all the evidence, that their world is a globe.

Discworld has many gods. They live on belief. If no one believes in them, they dwindle into helplessness and become the small gods. Om used to be a great god, but at the start of the story, he’s well on his way to becoming a small one. He has powerful priests, and Omnia’s terrified populace obeys the commandments of his prophets — but no one actually believes in him. They believe in the Quisition and its power to torture and kill heretics.
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Book discussion: The Neverending Story

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The first book I ever read in German that wasn’t a translation was Michael Ende’s Die unendliche Geschichte, known in English as The Neverending Story. Although it’s considered a children’s book, it has enough interesting ideas and scenarios to hold the interest of an adult fantasy fan. Its main characters are children, and the language is less difficult than the average adult novel, but that doesn’t keep it from being a fascinating read.

I’m aiming this article largely at our German discussion group sponsored by the Portsmouth Library, und ich sage bedingungslos: Die unendliche Geschichte ist ein sehr spannender Roman. Viel spannender als SchnarchenSchäfchenwolkenhimmel und nicht zu schwer. Oh, sorry, back to English.

Cover for Die unendliche GeschichteA movie was made of it in 1984. Ende didn’t like it. It has some scenes that live up to the book, which is saying a lot. As a whole, though, it fails. It stops about halfway through the novel and tacks on a nonsensical ending. The most gripping or frightening scenes from the book are omitted or toned down.
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Book discussion: Piranesi

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Did you ever play those old adventure games, like Zork, where you wander through a maze, mapping it out while discovering strange and wonderful things? Piranesi feels like being in that kind of game. At first it’s just the strangeness and magnitude of the place that grabs your interest. Then there’s another character in the maze, and slowly you discover there’s a story and a mystery to solve.

Susanna Clarke’s first novel, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, was a huge hit. In 2005 it got a Hugo Award, a World Fantasy Award, and a Locus Award. It was an inspiration for my The Magic Battery. Unfortunately, health issues put a dent in a promising career, and her second novel, Piranesi, didn’t come out until 2020. The earlier book was realistic historical fantasy. This one is completely different.

It’s hard to say anything about Piranesi coverPiranesi without saying too much. As in an adventure game, the world-building comes to the foreground. The narrator lives in a huge house which is his entire world. It has hundreds of halls and thousands of statues. The staircases seem scaled for giants. The House is so large that it has tides, seasonal snowfall, and a wildlife ecosystem. Yet as far as the narrator knows, it has only two inhabitants. The narrator is as much of a mystery as the house is, even to himself.
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