Walter Donway
Retaking College Hill: The Adults Are Back
Paperback or e-book, Amazon.com
Retaking College Hill is a novel of both action and ideas. It deals with a topic which is an excellent source of dramatic conflict but hasn’t been used in literature as much as it should. That topic is the battle for academic freedom, for making universities a place for teaching and controversy without fear of retaliation.
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Robert Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is one of his most enduringly popular novels, especially among libertarians. Doing these book posts gave me an excuse to read it for the first time in many years.
I could write a dozen essays on different aspects of the novel. Can a computer “wake up”? What are the implications of Professor de la Paz’s philosophy of “rational anarchism”? Why did Mike go away at the end? For this piece, I’ll look at Lunar society, how it’s organized, and how tenable the idea is.
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The early 1930s were a bad time for people who loved freedom. The Communists had taken over in Russia, as had the Fascists in Italy, and the Nazis were fast gaining power in Germany. The world economy had just crashed. In 1932, Aldous Huxley published Brave New World, his novel of what the totalitarian future might be like.
It hasn’t held its popularity as well as Orwell’s 1984, but it may be a better prediction of the future. In Huxley’s dystopia, there are no secret police or torture chambers. The police use tranquilizers rather than lethal bullets. People are punished by reassignment rather than death or prison. It works because everyone is brainwashed from birth and controlled by drugs. Organized rebellions don’t happen. The models for 1984 were Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. Brave New World is closer to modern China.
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Thomas gave Frieda the world’s first magic-powered flying toy for Christmas. I can’t match that, but here’s a 50% code for buying The Magic Battery or Files that Last, now through December 25, 2020. The discount code on Smashwords is NQ44E.
Please share if you’d like to make my Solstice a little brighter.
“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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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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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.
A 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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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 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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“To Gain the Whole World,” a new story in the world of The Magic Battery, is now up and available to read free of charge.
Nikolas Fest was the character who gave me the most trouble in the story. I had to throw out a whole chapter about him after getting beta reader feedback. Most of the characters are well-grounded. They know what they’re after and what they live by. Nikolas is constantly striking out in different directions and has trouble putting his life together. It’s harder for me to understand that type of character, but they’re often the interesting ones. In this story, Nikolas meets with the Meistersinger Hans Sachs, and he faces a dilemma about how to treat his own past. Meanwhile, pushbutton magic is starting to become a part of everyday life.
It has some spoilers for The Magic Battery. If you haven’t read the novel and hate spoilers, I recommend buying and reading the novel first. :) If you can deal with a few spoilers, it could help you decide whether the hovel will interest you.
If you spot the allusion to an early TV show, let me know in the comments.
Getting out a self-published novel is a team effort. If you’ve read it and liked it, or if you’d just like to help me out, we can be on the same team. The goal is to reach out to the people who’d enjoy the book if they knew about it. They’re people who like thoughtful fantasy, alternate history, and the exploration of ideas. People who are very likely like you, if you’re reading this. (Rule #1 of publicity: Flattery gets you everywhere. :)
What can you do? You can mention the book in your blog or social media, linking to the Magic Battery page. You can follow and share the book’s Facebook page. Feel free to mention coupon codes unless I’ve asked you to keep them private. The sharable code RW83R gives a dollar off on Smashwords through the end of June 2020.
Add the book to your library list on LibraryThing, Goodreads, or similar sites.
Best of all, you can review the book. I like favorable reviews, but say what you like. Tell your readers why they may like the book.
If you have ideas for promoting the book, let me know. I’m looking for someone to read a sample aloud to put up on YouTube. (My own reading voice is terrible.) If you could do it or know someone who can, let me know.
And a huge THANK YOU for whatever help you can provide.