A day late and at least a dollar short - I bring to you a Freestyle Friday. Based on a comment last week from Tom of The Trout Underground today’s edition will be Sci-Fi Friday – Special Robot Edition.
Well I’ve loved science fiction for as long as I can remember. I love reading it, watching it, talking about it. And as far as I’m concerned the best science fiction should have two things: Space Ships and Robots. To be sure there are plenty of excellent science fiction stories that have neither of these elements, and I’ve enjoyed many of these. But my very favorite will include Space Ships or Robots or both. In a nutshell, robots are cool. But if I were asked to examine my love of robots more deeply I might be inclined to think that it has to do with the fact that most robot-centric stories are really about what it means to be human – or maybe more specifically what it means to be sentient. These types of stories examine the human condition, and what it means to be human amid the rush and push of dehumanizing technological advancement, or maybe they examine inequality and prejudice, any way you slice it robots are cool.
Some Science Fiction Books With Robots:
Here’s just a few books with robots that I’ve read and enjoyed.
The Caves of Steel (1954), The Naked Sun (1957): These books are both part of Isaac Asimov’s Robot Novels. Essentially these are detective novels set in the future. The protagonists are detective Elijah Baley and his humaniform robot partner R. Daneel Olivaw. Indeed these books are a bit dated and not for everyone; some modern readers might find them too naive and quaint. But I find these old sci-fi stories to be a lot of fun, they are old fashioned for sure, but I feel it only adds to their appeal.
Rendezvous with Rama (1972): This book is an Arthur C. Clarke classic, which won both the Hugo and Nebula awards. It is the 22nd century and a mysterious and huge (50 km long) cylindrical spaceship shows up in the solar system – first contact. A team is sent to investigate. The interior of the ship is a vast cylindrical plain divided in the middle by a cylindrical sea. Shortly after arrival the team encounters the robots. The robots of Rama are animal like and seemingly biological – they are deemed “biots” by the team. So these robots are not the machine type or the humaniform type but something cool and different. It is a good read, if a little long, and I recommend it. I cannot really recommend the sequels though.
Perdido Street Station (2003): This book by China Mieville is a force to be reckoned with. It is a science fiction, steampunk, fantasy with dimension hopping spiders, demons, garuda (head and wings of a falcon, body of a man), khepri (body of a woman but with a scarab beetle for a head), cactus people, remade people, and on and on…oh yeah and robots. The setting is a sort of broken down, industrial revolution- era city with steam-punk type technology. So the robots in this story are – you guessed it – steam powered. Pretty cool. The robots play a pretty important part in the story, which I won’t attempt to summarize, it’s just too complicated. Mr. Mieville likes to write – that much is apparent. This is a literary book. I won’t lie – it is a little challenging, but well worth the effort.
Well – for the purposes of getting this post done before next Friday I’ll keep it short. If you haven’t seen them already, the first Transformers movie was ok, the second was so horrible I had to scrub my eyes with bleach after watching it, I haven’t subjected myself to the third… On the flip side for anyone that hadn’t seen it yet – you should watch Blade Runner – a classic with bio-engineered robots. Very loosely based on Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. I didn’t include this book above because I haven’t read it yet, I’m pacing myself, there’s only so many Philip K. Dick novels out there and I don’t want then to end too soon.
So what about the latest robot movie Real Steel? Well in brief I really enjoyed it. Will It change your life? No. Make you ponder the meaning of the universe? No. Is it like an onion with many layers of meaning to unravel? No. It may not be any of these things but it is a good movie. Sure it is really just a shaggy dog story, sure it is a lot like Rocky, sure it is pretty predictable, and sentimental. But in spite of it all I had a blast. It is really hard to find a sci-fi, or super hero movie that is really appropriate for kids (don’t get me started on Transformers 2). Real Steel keeps the subject material appropriate for the kids. Well, there is the robot violence which could be a bit much for some of the really sensitive tots. If you’re a dad with kids in the 8 to 11 year old range or so, then this is a really fun movie to see with them. Fighting robots – it’s fun.
Robot Music?
No Mr. Roboto for me please. Instead I bring you The Body Electric, (from the albumGrace Under Pressure) by my biggest guilty pleasure, Canadian power trio Rush. The opening line is “One humanoid escapee, an android in the run…” Then it has a binary code chorus, what’s not to love?
The Wind Knot ( A Fly Fishing Mystery #4)
by John Galligan Tyrus Books, March 2011
“Dog Quit fishing that night.” This is how the new John Galligan fly fishing mystery, The Wind Knot, begins. If you’ve been following Ned “Dog” Olglivie’s odyssey over the previous three books, then you know that this is a big deal. Driven by personal tragedy, Ned has embarked on a project. That project is to fly fish himself into oblivion. He has no real plan for this – just to fish, to keep to himself, to forget and maybe somehow to move on. So far this plan has been only marginally successful. It turns out that isolation and avoidance may not be the best things for what ails you.
At the beginning of The Wind Knot, we meet up with the Dog as he is ending a pilgrimage to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, to the land of Hemingway’s story, “The Big Two-Hearted River.” It is a sort of culmination of his six-year fly fishing bender. In the Hemingway story the protagonist, Nick Adams, has returned from war and he seeks healing in the activities of camping, hiking and fishing. Although it is not necessary, I would strongly recommend reading “The Big Two-Hearted River”, prior to reading The Wind Knot. It will definitely enhance your reading experience to be familiar with the Hemingway story.
However, Ned’s trip to Hemingway’s stomping grounds so far hasn’t had quite the effect that he had been hoping for:
Dog found himself re-contemplating the Hemingway story that had sent him on this six-year fishing trip in the first place. “Big Two-Hearted River” had stoked in him a hope that was just intense enough to keep him looking ahead. At last he had come to the story’s sacred source – only to discover that there was no Big Two Hearted River.
There was a North Branch of the Two Hearted, a West Branch of the Two Hearted, a South Branch of the Two Hearted, and a Little Two Hearted – all of them willow-clogged, sand-bottomed, peat-stained affairs, with low densities of small trout – but no majesty, no gravity, no Big Two Hearted River, the place where Nick Adams figured things out and got better.
Hemingway’s story has not held up its end of the bargain. So, Dog is changing tack and heading home to face his demons. He is divesting of his fly fishing life, sending it up in flames. To this reader, it feels like a good decision – like Dog is making the first good decision that he’s made in a long time. Six years of running and hiding going up in flames and expelling the bitterness, self-hatred, and fear in black evil-smelling smoke.
…Dog built up a waist-high bonfire and first burned his waders. The campsite now stank of inhuman proceedings. He drizzled a hundred trout flies over tall orange flames, watched the flies sizzle and vanish, then dropped in his battered plastic boxes and stepped back from more foul smoke.
He forged on. He emptied vest pockets one by one: strike putty, leader wallet, tippet spools, each creating its own quality of flame…He tossed his fishing hat into the fire. It crackled like bacon…Dog stripped the line of his reel. That line had held about ten thousand trout…He balled the line into a handful and lobbed it into the fire. It melted fast, squealing like a live thing. Dog’s heart hurt. But if he fished again, nothing would be the same. He would start over: gear, purpose and all.
This seems to be of a sort of symbolic trepanation – Dog is drilling a hole in his fly fishing skull to let out the evil spirits. Reading this passage, I might be more hopeful for Dog if it wasn’t within the first few pages of the book. But there is a whole story waiting for Dog. And he’s got perhaps his worst decision of all ahead of him. Dog does leave, he does head for home – but he doesn’t make it. Somewhere outside of Chicago he discovers that somebody has planted a body in the bunk of his Cruise Master RV. And this is where the bad decision making comes in. Ned decides to head back to the U.P. and dump the body. He is observed in the act and apprehended by a Book Mobile driving librarian, Esofea Smithback. And so Dog is reluctantly drawn into another twisted murder mystery – but this time as the prime suspect.
John Galligan changes things up a bit in this latest fly fishing mystery. The previous three books were all written in the first person from the point of view of the Dog himself. However, this story is written in the third person. It is a nice change of pace and it allows Galligan’s characters to range geographically more than previously, and so present a wider frame for the story. I also enjoyed the fact that Dog is a suspect in this story. He’s had some brushes with the law in the past – but he has never really been a suspect in one of the murder cases, as he is in this story. A problem with any book series is that it can become formulaic. These simple changes help to avoid that rut.
The characters in this story are well fleshed out, quirky and interesting. We get to meet Esofea Smithback, the slightly un-hinged librarian and Pippi Longstocking disciple, as well as her boyfriend Danny Tervo, a sort of hippie philospher and would-be water baron; the strikingly beautiful Deputy Sheriff Margarite DuCharme and her questionable choice of love interest, party-girl Julia Inkster; along with many other great characters. Watching these characters navigate the tricky boulder-strewn waterways of their personal relationships really helps to ground the story, and make it much more than just a murder mystery.
At the end of Hemingway’s story, “Big Two-Hearted River”, we find a Nick Adams that is on the way to being whole again – but he’s not all the way there. Nick tells us that he is happy. He’s happy to be fishing, happy to be camping – but I think maybe he’s not ready for the real world. He fishes his way up the river until he gets to a swamp. The swamp is deep, a little frightening and it would be difficult to fish. Nick does not go into the swamp on that day. The Hemingway story ends with the line; “There were plenty of days coming when he could fish the swamp.”
That is the feeling that I get upon finishing The Wind Knot. I could be wrong but it feels like a page has been turned and Dog is eyeballing the swamp. Maybe he’s not ready to fish it yet, but maybe soon. The Wind Knot is another good read from John Galligan. It’s funny, moving and layered. It has interesting well-drawn characters, a good mystery and fly fishing. The Wind Knot could be read as a stand-alone novel, it gives the reader a complete, self-contained story. However, to fully appreciate the character arc of Ned “Dog” Oglivie and to get the most of the story it would be best to read it after the other three fly fishing mystery books; The Nail Knot, The Blood Knot and The Clinch Knot.
“Dog, This is not a fishing trip.” That is the message that Harvey Digman (the Dog’s tax man) has written on the back of a postcard that he included with Dog’s latest installment of cash. On the front of the postcard is Rene Magritte’s famous painting La trahison des images or The Treachery of Images. The painting is the simple image of a pipe with the phrase “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (“This is not a pipe”) written below it.
This is a fitting image to begin The Blood Knot, John Galligan’s second book in his Fly Fishing Mystery Series. In the first book of the series, The Nail Knot, (see my review here), we were introduced to fly fisher Ned “Dog” Oglivie and his never-ending fishing trip. Ironically, Ned’s years-long fishing odyssey is not the fulfillment of a life-long dream, but is rather a head-long flight into oblivion born of personal tragedy, this is not a fishing trip…
At the beginning of the book, Dog is awakened by the sound of gunshots. He assumes that these are coming from the gun of a helpful local who is hunting down a potentially rabid beaver that bit him. However, he soon finds out that he is mistaken.
I could see the Barn lady. Her plump little body rolled and tossed at the tail of the bridge pool. Her thin gray hair trailed away in the current, and the push of the creek ballooned her overalls. Her left arm bent grotesquely above her head, wobbling like a trout. A final shot slammed past me – Bang! – and jolted the lady.
“There,” said the Avalanche Kid.
He coughed words down at me.
“I shot her”
It appears simple at first – the kid, Deuce Kussmaul, had shot and killed the lady that painted barns, the Barn lady. But of course, things are not that simple and things are not as they seem. Ceci n’est pas une pipe (this is not a pipe)…and it is definitely not just a fishing trip. Eve Kussmaul, a shunned Amish woman, and Deuce’s mother, is convinced that her son is innocent. With the help of a felled oak across the campground exit (blocking the Dog in), she convinces Dog to stay and help unravel the mystery. And just like that Ned Oglivie is again drawn into a murder mystery.
As with The Nail Knot, this story is set in the trout-rich, Driftless region of Wisconsin – but this time in the Kickapoo River valley. The characters of the story include some of the Amish residents of the valley as well as the treacherous and menacing men of the Kussmaul family. The Kussmaul men are known by their barns; Half-Tim, Beechnut, King-Midas, Roundy, Lighting-Rod. Their nick-names come from some notable feature of their barns. When she was alive, the Kussmauls did not get on well with the Barn Lady, the late Annie Adams. She made a living form painting their historic barns. As the Kussmaul men saw it she was stealing from them, and trespassing (she used the riparian access rights of the waterways to gain access to paint their barns). They believed that Annie owed them a cut of her profits and she did not agree. Any of the Kussmauls might have killed Annie and set-up the young boy, Deuce, to take the blame.
That is the backdrop for the mystery in The Blood Knot. I’ll say that I enjoyed this book. But maybe not quite as much as the first one in the series. The previous book, The Nail Knot, was a bit more lighthearted, a bit more comic sort of murder mystery. The Blood Knot has funny moments, but I always felt a little ill-at-ease. To be fair, the main problem is that I was expecting more of the same. Not that there is a drastic departure – but there is a shift. In a way though, this shift in tone and color may be necessary for a satisfying story-arc of the protagonist. Ned is indeed fleeing from demons in his past, of which we learn a little more in this book. And if his story is going to turn a corner and head toward some conclusion, then he is going to have to face these demons – and that could hardly be a lighthearted affair.
Not to get too analytical but…It seems to me that in this book John Galligan is reaching a little more deeply than in the previous one, and exploring some themes a little more richly. I don’t want to give too much of the story away so I can’t say too much here – but one theme that jumps out at me is the idea that a man can not exist in isolation. And also that it is very difficult to break down those barriers that keep us isolated; social, political, religious, gender-related, etc. The image of Magritte’s painting springs to mind again – this is not a pipe. This image itself seems to speak to the idea that even when presented with a simple fact, we will view it differently and communicate our ideas about it ineffectively. So even at a most basic level barriers are bound to spring up.
Along the way Galligan, gives us a good mystery to unravel, along with some fly-fishing (the blood knot and the Trico mayfly figure into the mystery). We also get a glimpse into the friction that occurs when the Amish world bumps up against ours. Environmental and stewardship themes such as riparian access and the question of “who owns the view?” pop up too. The Blood Knot is an engaging mystery with enough fly-fishing to keep the angler’s attention, but also with enough meat on the bones to keep it from being trivial. All in all, a very satisfying read and though it could be read as stand-alone book, the reader will definitely take more away when it is read in sequence with The Nail Knot.
The Nail Knot is the first book in author John Galligan’s Fly Fishing Mystery Series. It was originally published in 2003, but I just recently found out about it. The series currently has three books with a fourth, The Wind Knot, due out in March 2011. Some of you may have some trepidation, based on the premise; a Fly Fishing Mystery. I know that I was a little concerned, “Would this be cheesy?”, I wondered. Let me start off by saying that no – it is definitely not cheesy. In fact, quite the opposite, it is well executed and enjoyable.
The Nail Knot is set in the trout stream rich driftless region of Wisconsin, in and around the village of Black Earth and on the banks of Black Earth Creek. Black Earth is a real stream and a real village, but based on a comment in the Acknowledgments, I assume that it has been fictionalized quite a bit; “…thanks to the Village of Black Earth, for its beautiful name, and for the beautiful creek that runs through it, about which I have lied like a fisherman, giving away no true secrets.”
The protagonist and reluctant sleuth of the story is Ned “Dog” Oglivie. When we meet him, the Dog has gone feral and is on the run from his past, traveling around in his ailing Cruise Master RV. We don’t know the details but he has cut ties with his past and he’s on a fly fishing bender, trying to drown his sorrows in vodka-tang cocktails and trout streams. The fly fisherman in me can’t help but be a little jealous. It seems like a dream come true, doing nothing but traveling from trout stream to trout stream, camping and fly fishing, with no strings and no responsibilities. But Dog doesn’t seem exactly happy, and as the story unfolds we find out about his past and we come to understand his pain. In the beginning I didn’t like Ned Oglivie all that much but he grew on me. That’s important to me – as a reader I want to like the protagonist of the book I’m reading. I know that a likeable protagonist is not necessary for a good book – but it’s important to me.
The story of The Nail Knot, kicks off when the Dog finds a body of a drowned fly fisherman, Jake Jacobs. Jake is a newcomer to Black Earth. He’s an fly fisherman activist interested in protecting the creek and therefore a meddler and a trouble maker in the eyes of most long-time residents. The list of murder suspects is long and filled with many colorful characters. I know most authors probably hate comparisons, but I can’t help comparing Galligan’s Black Earth and its denizens to Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon and its residents; the characters share a sort of quirkiness. The comparison is meant as a complement. Like Keillor, Galligan has a knack for creating interesting characters with believable backgrounds and motivations. The characters are sort of absurd and real all at once. I know that the fictitious Lake Wobegon is in Minnesota and Black Earth is in Wisconsin, and that the differences are probably striking and innumerable to the folks that live there, but to an easterner like myself, the regions in that part of the country are all filed in the same part of my brain – so please forgive me.
What about the fly fishing? There is plenty of fly fishing woven into the mystery – and though it is a sort of conceit – it is done well. The arcana of fly fishing is slipped into the story in a natural way, I think, though being a fly fisher, it’s hard to say for sure. Also, the the fly fishing references are not simply unnecessary accoutrements but are central to the plot; the timing of the Yellow Sally hatch and the tying of various fishing knots are both important to the murder mystery. On a side-note, being from Pennsylvania I loved a shout-out to the LeTort (and to Iron City beer).
In The Nail Knot, Mr. Galligan crafts a well written, humorous, and engaging mystery. And like any story worth the paper it’s written on, The Nail Knot provides insights and glimpses of truths underneath the surface action. In a smart, subtle and natural way John Galligan brings together a murder mystery, fly fishing, personal relationships, brokenness, environmental issues and great characters. In short, I enjoyed this book and I’m already digging into the others.
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A day late and at least a dollar short - I bring to you a Freestyle Friday. Based on a comment last week from Tom of The Trout Underground today’s edition will be Sci-Fi Friday – Special Robot Edition., The Naked Sun (1957)
: These books are both part of Isaac Asimov’s Robot Novels. Essentially these are detective novels set in the future. The protagonists are detective Elijah Baley and his humaniform robot partner R. Daneel Olivaw. Indeed these books are a bit dated and not for everyone; some modern readers might find them too naive and quaint. But I find these old sci-fi stories to be a lot of fun, they are old fashioned for sure, but I feel it only adds to their appeal.
: This book is an Arthur C. Clarke classic, which won both the Hugo and Nebula awards. It is the 22nd century and a mysterious and huge (50 km long) cylindrical spaceship shows up in the solar system – first contact. A team is sent to investigate. The interior of the ship is a vast cylindrical plain divided in the middle by a cylindrical sea. Shortly after arrival the team encounters the robots. The robots of Rama are animal like and seemingly biological – they are deemed “biots” by the team. So these robots are not the machine type or the humaniform type but something cool and different. It is a good read, if a little long, and I recommend it. I cannot really recommend the sequels though.
: This book by China Mieville is a force to be reckoned with. It is a science fiction, steampunk, fantasy with dimension hopping spiders, demons, garuda (head and wings of a falcon, body of a man), khepri (body of a woman but with a scarab beetle for a head), cactus people, remade people, and on and on…oh yeah and robots. The setting is a sort of broken down, industrial revolution- era city with steam-punk type technology. So the robots in this story are – you guessed it – steam powered. Pretty cool. The robots play a pretty important part in the story, which I won’t attempt to summarize, it’s just too complicated. Mr. Mieville likes to write – that much is apparent. This is a literary book. I won’t lie – it is a little challenging, but well worth the effort.
