Since I was having Marvin L. Zimmerman, the author of The Ovum Factor, on my radio show (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/liberalpro you can hear the podcast of the interview there), it meant that I was obliged to peruse the novel that was sent to me by his publicist. The Ovum Factor arrived at my home, and before I got a chance to look through it, my wife picked it up first and wouldn’t let go of it for three days. During that time my dinner was late, I had to do the vacuuming (the dogs are shedding), and I had no real conversation with her as her head was behind the novel. When she finished it, she just looked at me and said “Wow”. That meant only one thing… I had to read it.

One long hot summer when I was 10 or so, I went with a friend to an afternoon of Bible camp. Having not grown up a believer in any religion, the experience was fascinating and a bit terrifying. The organizers were ultra-conservative Evangelicals with a very literal, fire and brimstone sort of interpretation of scripture. Everything was "heaven" this, "hell" that. I was one of the younger kids, and I remember that, despite all the talk of being a good and righteous person, the older boys were little tyrants. Rather, I played the Canaanite to their Israelites.

We also sat for prolonged periods (at least to a 10 year-old) in silent prayer, silently communing with God. I remember that the rest of the kids closed their eyes, so I did too. I couldn't stop thinking about snack time, and opened my eyes a few times to see if anyone else was distracted. Sure enough, goodies were more popular than God; kids were shifting in their seats and looking around impatiently as the adult leaders looked on, gently chastising the hungry kids for being kids and not saints.

Our good Agonist friend, editor and contributor has a new book out.

And it is very timely.

I encourage you to go buy a copy.

This will support progressives and do what we can, whilst our candidates are bashing each other's brains out, to take a chunk out of John McCain.

Also, check out the story at Raw Story while you are at it.

By the way, while we're still not finished with the housekeeping and all, Cliff's old site and community has joined us The Agonist Family. Please give them a warm welcome!

It has always been a minority position among scholars interested in the history of science and technology, but the development of the understanding and the application of the laws of nature for the benefit of mankind has been sought in the history of the magical arts.

Lynn Thorndike devoted eight volumes to the study of the roots of experimental science in medieval manuscript sources.

The works of Lawrence M. Principe and William R. Newman on the seventeenth-century alchemical circles of Robert Boyle and George Starkey make available the most recent results of this line of research.

In recent years, no author of fiction has captured my imagination as thoroughly as Alastair Reynolds. He writes what is best described as “space opera noir” and could potentially be associated with the “New Weird” genre in horror that has very recently been making a name for itself. However, his writings are entirely science fiction—usually on the side of hard SF too, with light speed being an absolute barrier and most technologies/science being conceivably possible given current knowledge.

Most of his novels and many of his short stories take place in a single future universe (Revelation Space) that is a rough extrapolation from our own present one. Humans have left the Earth on large, slower-than-light ships and have spread throughout several dozen lightyears of space in all directions. Our expansion has been fractured and uneven, with no central coordination. The home system, Sol, seems to be a backwater that has little if any role to play in the larger stories of the human race.

The rest of this essay is an exploration of some of the common themes that run throughout his writings—both the Revelation Space universe and others. While perhaps not unique, many of them deviate from mainstream science fiction in delightful ways:

March 22


London Free Press(Canada) - Baby Boomers may recall it through a swirl of tear gas, scrawled on walls, on signs in marches and silent sit-ins, or on the helmet covers of weary Vietnam soldiers.

The peace sign, which turns 50 in April, was introduced in a calmer Britain in 1958 to promote nuclear disarmament, and spread fast as times got tense.

Since its inception, it has been revered as a sign of our better angels and cursed as the "footprint of the American chicken."

That there has long been a heavy anti-intellectual strain in the American psyche is, I believe, something many won't deny. But what are its roots? Where did it come from? And why?

Susan Jacoby's new book is a look at the dark side of American intellectual evolution (to use a hot-button term). And what a dark side it is.

One aspect of the media coverage I have found of her book that is sadly reinforcing of the general intellectual clime and the tropes of anti-intellectualism in this country is that so many of those reviewing her book seem not to have read past the first chapter.

Take this review for instance:

Such, uh, lack of global awareness is the kind of thing that drives Susan Jacoby, author of “The Age of American Unreason,” up a wall. Ms. Jacoby is one of a number of writers with new books that bemoan the state of American culture. . . The surprise at her own dependency on electronic and visual media made her realize just how pervasive the culture of distraction is and how susceptible everyone is — even curmudgeons.

American culture? Please, did Ms. Cohen actually read the whole book? If she had she'd realize it was about intellectual history and it's influence on or culture--not a book about our culture. All the reviewer does is take a couple of examples from the first chapter and lumps them in with Lee Seigel, of all people. What codswallop, as Jacoby would say.

Or even the oversimplified interview by the godfather of mainstream nuance and criticism Bill Moyers.

That's all for the worse, as this is a very fascinating, if grim look into the history of intellectualism in America. If ever we are to embrace the reality-based world this book is a good first step. I don't have much more to say about the book right now, as I am not finished with it, except this: it would be a remarkable read beside this biography of Walter Lippmann, which is, in essence, a history of the positive trends in American intellectualism during the 20^th century. More soon.

Daniel Taylor | February 7

oldthinkernews.com - H.G. Wells is perhaps best known for his status as the father of science fiction and his "War of the Worlds", which was recently transformed into a modern Hollywood production. Unknown to many, Wells penned several other books and essays which were not of the science fiction genre. The "New World Order", and the "Open Conspiracy" are two notable pieces that Wells produced.

Wells wrote the first edition of "The Open Conspiracy" in 1928. This book details what Wells called the "Open Conspiracy" among intellectual elites who despise the old order of things and desire to work towards a grand world directorate, a global society in which individuals no longer hold fast to tradition, but yield themselves willingly to the world state for the good of all. The Open Conspiracy utilizes propaganda, educational and governmental reform, and other forms of influence to achieve its goals. The scientific management of the world is at the heart of the open conspirators agenda. Of course, this tight management is sold as being for the benefit of all.

A fantastic new book by my good friend Sarah Posner, that explains the "Prosperity Gospel," or right-wing preachers ditching the traditional concern for the poor among religious folk for talk of getting rich by being in good with the G-Man.

It is fascinating stuff, and will illuminate a lot of what you're probably already thinking about these hucksters.

Alternet has an excerpt up if you want to check it out.

Margalit Fox | January 3

NYT - George MacDonald Fraser, a British writer whose popular novels about the arch-rogue Harry Flashman followed their hero as he galloped, swashbuckled, drank and womanized his way through many of the signal events of the 19th century, died yesterday on the Isle of Man. He was 82 and had made his home there in recent years.

As a huge Flashman fan this comes as a disappointment, if understandable. I had hoped, however, for at least one last installment in the Flashman Papers.

My mother memorized this poem as a girl, and she can recite it. My sister and I, however, can't find it on the web. Can any clever internet sleuth or poetry buff identify it and link to it?

Tremendous things had happened overnight,
The maple trees were new trees made of light,
Leaves no more but clustered tongues of flame,
Outrageous fire that made the sun look tame.

A light came out of the maples
This was blood
Redder than a man's was
Or a flood of golden fire
No one guessed could be hidden under the coolness of a tree.

Here were trees no more
But bonfires standing up along the earth

I haven't finished reading Robert Charles Wilson's new book, Axis, just yet. But I have to say that I am very much enjoying it. It's a kind of sequel to Spin.

If you recall, Spin is a book I mentioned here and here earlier this year.

When I say "kind of sequel" what I mean is that the book picks up several years later than Spin left off.

The book is also populated by all new characters, who are facing a host of different issues.

I'm not far enough into the book to really review it.

I just wanted to note that it had been published, that I was enjoying it and that if you were one of the folks who purchased Spin you might be interested in picking up a copy of its sequel.

It's good and I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Bookchat is closed. But I want to take a moment to thank Hannes, LJ and BuddhaSixFour for their time and effort. If you are an author and want to do the same thing as Hannes has done, please shoot my or Ian an email and we'll see what we can do. ~spk

While many are now breathing at least a small sigh of relief that the Iran war party has been put in a box by the recent release of the National Intelligence Estimate, Hannes Artens in his novel "The Writing On The Wall." suggests the opposite. A looming war with Iran might well be like the Doomsday Machine from the movie Dr. Strangelove—waiting to be triggered by an unexpected incident and unstoppable.

The novel begins on November 11, 2011 in the waning minutes of the life of the 44th President of the United States, Jim Whitman, a moderate Republican. He and his advisors sit in horror waiting for word of the results of the launching of five nuclear tipped missiles targeting Indian cities launched by radical jihadists who have overrun Pakistan. The strain of two years of a botched war with Iran, political and economic chaos at home, and a world beset with a worsening economic depression and a clash of civilizations world war proves to be too much for the failed president who succumbs to an apparent heart attack. So much for the Prologue.

Agonist:
Check out Mark Bowen's new book "Censoring Science" on the Administration's muzzling of Jim Hanson's climate change reports from NASA.
Good review by Darksyde on Sunday's Daily KOS.
And: Google the book title for another review by Barns & Noble.
Official book publishing date: Dec. 27th.
Atkinsopht

. . . on more quote from the review mentioned below:

SF writers are free to speculate in a way that scientists aren’t (not to mention traditional 'literary' writers as well ~spk), and this can suggest the path ahead. Perhaps the best example of this process is the way the idea of the alien has moved from fiction to reality. The Nasa historian Steven Dick has pointed out that the billions spent by the agency on investigating the possibility or likelihood of alien life is a direct result of the invention of the extraterrestrial in fiction. Furthermore, there is now an entire scientific discipline – astro- or exobiology – that exists to study a so far entirely fictional entity, life beyond the earth. In effect, science has accepted a terrifying, uniquely SF insight that has been with us ever since the fantasies of Kepler and Godwin: simply, that we are nothing special, and that the universe is unimaginably large.

"We are nothing special," has got to be the most upsetting, chilling, haunting, challenging but ultimately liberating idea in all of science fiction, if not in our existence.

Sit with that for a moment.

Moreoever, if there is one idea I've always been obsessed with and tried to pursue here at The Agonist it is this: what is 'the path ahead.' Obviously we're limited to the short-to-mid term here, but still. What's the point if we don't at least try?

Nota bene: I'd also bet good money the Existential tenet of 'aloneness in our experience' was probably in large part influenced by the same early sci-fi writers above.

. . . to writing that post about Conrad. Pity. But wow, this is a great essay about science fiction and it's red-headed step-child relegation to the back shelves of book stores (although it sells damn well).

The quote that really hit home with me was this:

“The truth is,” Aldiss has written, “that we are at last living in an SF scenario.” A collapsing environment, a hyperconnected world, suicide bombers, perpetual surveillance, the discovery of other solar systems, novel pathogens, tourists in space, children drugged with behaviour controllers – it’s all coming true at last. Aldiss thinks this makes SF redundant. I disagree. In such a climate, it is the conventionally literary that is threatened, and SF comes into its own as the most hardcore realism.

Wham! That's why I love hard science fiction. Speculative, yes, but based in reality and utterly hardcore.

Moreover, I've always believed sci-fi is an excellent vehicle for social criticism. Why? Because you can make comparisons in metaphorical ways that are much, much more daring on the one hand, but safer on the other: people's preconceptions can be challenged in ways that don't ruffle their multi-cultural, overly religious sensitivities.

As I once wrote here on The Agonist, "I watched a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode do in one hour what the movie Contact tried to do in two and a half. And it did it better." The characters in Contact, because Sagan's book was essentially social criticism and not science fiction, come across as too scripted and too cliche. But Star Trek, because it's a part of the red-headed step-child establishment was freer to indulge and freer to risk. Something literary fiction lacks. I haven't read a novel by an up and coming writer in years that has challenged me like a Steinbeck or a Dostoevsky would. But the science-fiction of Robert Sawyer (Calculating God is his best work by far), Stephen Baxter (Evolution is his best work), Robert Charles Wilson (Spin a wonderful book about the folly of religion and the utter necessity for faith and Darwinia), Greg Bear (Darwin's Radio and Darwin's Children are essential reading on evolution, speciation and religion), and Margaret Atwood? You bet. Especially Ms. Atwood. She is quite possibly the best English-language writer alive; excellent prose stylist, tight, spartan with consistent flashes of beauty and brilliance. Want hardcore? Read The Handmaid's Tale. Want cutting edge speculation about human folly and hubris? Read Oryx and Crake. (Food for debate: why are Canadian writers so much better and daring than those in America?)

Read the whole article here. You can thank me later.

There's probably some rule against writers reviewing their own books. Guess I’ve always had a problem with rules. Anyhow, I am not the author of Repossessin' Texas. A young man bearing my name and vaguely resembling me wrote it from a cell in a federal prison some eighteen years ago. That man was quite a bit more pissed off at the world than I am, less cynical, yet more hopeful and not quite the writer I have become, (it’ll be up to you to decide if that’s a good thing).

Anyone that has read my memoir, Contrabando: Confessions of a Drug-smuggling Texas Cowboy, will note similarities to persons described in that book. I did in fact model characters after real people, and some of the events described in Repossessin’ Texas resemble true occurrences. Nevertheless, this is a work of fiction.

Ihsan Yilmaz | Nov 18

JTW - Reading Ed Husain's best-selling book "The Islamist" is a must in the UK, especially among Blairite circles. Husain does two things simultaneously. First he shows how politicization of Islam has led to radicalization among some young Muslims in the UK and secondly, he reports how foreign policy decisions of the UK and its close ally, the US, have been used by Islamists to mobilize youth. He also underlines how dangerous it is to divide to world into two by utilizing outdated concepts of dar al-harb (land of war) and dar al-Islam (land of Islam), the Islamist version of Bush's "you are either with us or against us." Husain tells us how this rhetoric paves the way for animosity and hatred among some youth.

Great interview with John Dean at BuzzFlash regarding Dean's latest book: Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches

BuzzFlash: The second branch of government you deal with is the Executive Branch. It is badly broken and certainly in need of repair. The question at this point is, is it repairable? You've written so much about the Executive Branch in your fine law columns and in your books, characterizing and documenting the authoritarian nature of the Executive Branch. It doesn't seem repairable as long as Bush and Cheney are in power. They seem to be going for enhanced unitary executive authority.

John Dean: It's true. In fact, the bottom line for this affair is going to be removing Republicans from the Executive Branch. They have embedded so many people, contrary to the Civil Service laws, that it's going to take not just 2008, but 2012, 2016, and possibly 2020 and 2024 to clear this problem up. If the public ever becomes aware of this, it's going to be a long time before they ever let another Republican back in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The topic below was originally posted in my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal as well as the Independent Bloggers Alliance, The Peace Tree, Wild Wild Left and Worldwide Sawdust.

Barbara McMahon | Sydney | Nov 11

The Observer - *Ocker: an uncultivated or boorish Australian ... now the target of the feminist Ernie awards

Australian men who make sexist remarks rarely hang their heads in shame, but a book published tomorrow may cause a few red faces.

One Thousand Terrible Things Australian Men Have Said About Women includes a celebrity chef remarking after watching Nigella Lawson's TV show, 'Why doesn't she get them out; that's what they are watching for,' and a magistrate telling a defendant to 'come back when your IQ is as high as your skirt'.

By Mark Harris

Entertainment Weekly

Why J.K. Rowling's revelation is a rare positive sign at a particularly bad moment to be a gay consumer of pop culture

DUMBLEDORE J.K. Rowling's revelation about the Hogwarts headmaster is ''a challenge to look at the world — even a world of magic — as it really is,'' writes Harris
Murray Close

Now she tells us? When I first heard that J.K. Rowling had revealed the homosexuality of Professor Albus Dumbledore, esteemed headmaster of Hogwarts, before a packed congregation of children and adults at Carnegie Hall on Oct. 19, my reaction was half appreciation, half annoyance. Ten years, seven books, 4,000 pages, and it never occurred to her to mention this before? At least she didn't make the gay character a fairy (or a troll), so we'll be spared those jokes, I thought. Rowling's announcement felt almost too strategic, a gotcha! she conveniently withheld until the multibillion-dollar revenue stream had had years to flow. And why bother? The outing of Dumbledore doesn't seriously reshape any plotline in the Harry Potter novels, nor do the books ever drop the kind of hints that would inspire questions from readers. Also, the saga is over, and Dumbledore's, you know, dead, so, like that infamous moment on Law & Order when viewers suddenly learned that one of the show's main characters was a lesbian literally 10 seconds before she left the series, it all seemed a bit easy.

Muriel Kane and Dave Edwards | Oct 21

The Raw Story - CBS News has confirmed, in advance of a 60 Minutes interview with outed CIA agent Valerie Plame to be run this Sunday, that Plame "was involved in operations to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons."

"Our mission was to make sure that the bad guys, basically, did not get nuclear weapons," Plame told 60 Minutes. Plame also indicated that her outing in 2003 had caused grave damage to CIA operations, saying, "All the intelligence services in the world were running my name through their databases" to see where she had gone and who she had met with.

RAW STORY first revealed Plame's Iran mission and the damage done to CIA operations by her outing in a February 13, 2006 story by Raw investigative editor Larisa Alexandrovna, titled "Outed CIA officer was working on Iran, intelligence sources say."

What really goes on when young women pick up a glossy women's lifestyle magazine? What have psychologists, sociologists and other researchers found out about how they affect women's health and wellbeing? What messages are really being sent through these magazines? How do advertising images affect us? What do magazines have to do with eating disorders?

by Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent of The Times.

Akbar Ahmed is one of the world’s most respected Islamic scholars. He holds a chair in the US but his daughter, Dr Amineh Hoti, is the Director of the world’s first Centre for the Study of Muslim-Jewish Relations, based in Cambridge. The whole family is at the centre of modern efforts to bridge the gulf in understanding between the Islamic world and the West.

This latest book, therefore, must be taken seriously by policy makers, even if some of the truths in it seem unpalatable. In a journey of Koranic proportions, Ahmed led a team of young assistants travelling across the Muslim world with the aim of finding out what is really going on.