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More audiobook time.  Now that the first part of The Hobbit movie is out – I wanted to re-read the book before seeing it to see how true it is to the book.  As usual, I went the audiobook route.

I first read The Hobbit when I was in 5th grade.  I remembered it as a HUUUGGEEEE book.  When I picked it up – I remember running my hands over the book cover and being awestruck at it’s size.  All those pages with so few pictures!  As an adult, I picked up the book and marveled at how small it is compared to other things I read now.  I guess that as with most childhood memories, fears, school teachers, and bullies – things just seemed so much more big when you’re physically little.

Summary:
I won’t re-tell the story as it’s been done hundreds of times elsewhere, and much better than I could do.  So, how about a recap?

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who lives in a quiet, rural hobbit village that largely symbolizes the English idealism of calm, country living.  He’s comfortable, and likes it that way.  No adventures, no tom-foolery; 5 square meals a day and lots of relaxed pipe smoking while looking over the countryside.  Gandalf the wizard appears and invites himself, and a number of Dwarves to supper.  Bilbo’s calm, sedate home is quickly overrun with Dwarves on a mission to recover their cave home that was taken by Smaug the dragon years before.  They enlist, or rather, abscond with Bilbo as their ‘burglar’ at Gandalf’s suggestion.  They set off and have numerous adventures along the way.  They are captured by goblins and Bilbo encounters Gollum.  He finds the one ring, and escapes using it’s powers.  The party travels through a deep haunted forest and are imprisoned by the elves that live there.  They escape in barrels floating down the river and arrive at the human town of Laketown.  After getting the help of the citizens for provisions and ponies, they arrive at Smaug’s mountain to find a hidden magical dwarven door which allowed secret entrance to the mountain.  Bilbo enters and engages the dragon in verbal swordplay.  Smaug attacks the mountainside to kill the visiting party and then attacks the nearby Laketown for helping the Dwarves.  Smaug is ultimately killed by one of the city’s men after receiving a tip from a bird.  In the final scenes, the Dwarves barricade themselves into the mountain to defend their treasure while armies of men/elves and Dwarves from the north arrive outside to get their share.  Instead of fighting each other, Bilbo sneaks away a prized gem to break the stalemate and they all end up fighting the goblins that were stirred up after the Dwarves killed the goblin king during their escape.  Bilbo returns home to find he was declared dead and has to rescue his property from auction.

Review:
What can one say?  It is one of the original great fantasy novels of all time.  It introduced a number of the great themes that carry through the genre even today.  Yet, you can tell this is one of Tolkien’s early works of fantasy.  Tolkien uses a number of ‘cheats’/easy outs of coincidence to solve some of his plot problems; but all of these are forgivable.  Yet all the great writing, imagery, and important themes that will get fuller treatment in the Lord of the Rings trilogy are there.  It’s great to see his first foray.

As a side, it’s always good to note that Tolkien was a devote Catholic – and many themes of Christianity are present in his novels.  As a Catholic, one picks up on myriads of themes such as self-sacrifice, flawed heroes with realistic failings, confronting fears, the journey that takes you places you do not expect nor desire at times and changes you forever, bravery in the face of overwhelming odds, and his military roots show in his concepts of nobility, duty, and honor.  For example, in this reading, I particularly was struck by the line of Bilbo as he first crept down to Smaug’s layer (ch 12):

It was at this point that Bilbo stopped. Going on from there was the
bravest thing he ever did. The tremendous things that happened afterward
were as nothing compared to it. He fought the real battle in the tunnel
alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait.

It’s ideas like this that speak so well to the life of faith; and why even those who are not believers find these same themes speak to experiences in their own lives.  Whole books have been written examining the themes of Tolkien – and I think any that miss this key to many of his themes have really missed a lot.

I give this book a B+ taken on it’s own outside the hype.  It’s certainly not the best writing in the world at times (certainly not as good as Lord of the Rings or things today) – but it’s always good.  As a keystone of the genre, however, it’s definite an essential read.

Lots of travel for work lately, which means one thing:  audio books.  One more Bond novel knocked out. This time it was The Man with the Golden Gun

This was Ian Fleming’s final Bond book.  Published a year after Fleming’s death, some have even posited that it wasn’t even finished by him, but other hands.  At very least it’s often criticized for not having the polish and depth of his other novels.  Still, it’s not a terrible little book.

The Story:
This book starts with a bang.  Bond arrives at headquarters brainwashed from his last mission.  He’s on a mission to kill M.  His attempt is thwarted and he is slowly deprogrammed and put back in service.  His first mission is designed to get him back in 00 shape, and M decides the best way is to give him a nearly impossible task: go to the Caribbean to find and take out the brutal killer Scaramanga.  Scaramanga uses a gold-plated colt .45 which shoots silver lined gold bullets.  He is thought to be the man behind several secret service agents deaths.

Bond locates Scaramanga in Jamaican and manages to con himself into being Scaramanga’s temporary assistant under the name “Mark Hazard”.  Scaramanga is involved in a hotel development deal on the island with a group of investors that consists of American gangsters and a KGB agent. The group is hatching a scheme to destabilize the sugar industry, running drugs into America, and other nefarious deeds.

Bond discovers that Felix Leiter is working undercover as an electrical engineer at Scaramanga’s hotel setting up bugs in the meeting rooms.  As the meetings progress, Bond’s true identity is discovered and confirmed by the KGB agent.  Scaramanga makes new plans to entertain the gangsters and the KGB agent by killing Bond while they are riding a sight-seeing train. Bond, with the help of Leiter, thwarts the ambush and kills most of the conspirators. Wounded, Scaramanga escapes into the swamps, where Bond pursues him where a final shoot-out takes place.

My take:
Not a bad little book, but felt drawn out at times.  In fact, in one scene, Bond has Scaramanga completely in his power and knows he should kill him.  Yet he does not because he’s curious what Scaramanga is up to.  If he’d carried out his orders as instructed, this book would have been about 25 pages.  So right off the bat you feel this is a bit of a cheat.
The next low point is that Scaramanga is a bit of a gangster caricature.  I found myself getting tired of every other line of his being “Get the picture?” or “See here…”  The movie version of him as a classy, million dollar killer of amazing skill is not to be found here.  This guy likes to wave his gun around and shoot at people’s heads (missing intentionally) to get their attention.  In many ways, he comes off more as a childish punk that never learned gun safety than a calculating killer.
Still, it’s not a bad little novel, and worth the read if you’re not going out of your way.  C+

Completed another of Fleming’s James Bond novels: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

The story:
This has to be one of the more interesting of Fleming’s Bond novels.  Bond is fed up.  He’s been chasing down the escaped SPECTRE leader Blofeld for over a year with nothing to show for it, nor any proof Blofeld is even still alive.  In the midst of a hiatus gambling at the same casino as found in Casino Royale, he encounters Tracy.  At the end of her rope, he rescues her from her own self-destructive behavior and finds he’s just rescued the daughter of a noted organized crime boss.  Her father makes him a proposition of marrying his daughter to end her downward spiral.  Bond is somewhat captivated by this girl and agrees to see her again after she gets psychological help.

Bond then gets a lead on Blofeld via an unlikely source – the bureau of heraldry and lineage.  Seems Blofeld is attempting to prove his lineage and unwittingly gives up his position.  He’s apparently running a private ski resort high in the Alps with a ‘treatment center’.  Bond pretends to be from the heraldry society and there he discovers the treatment center is really a brainwashing center for his nefarious plans. Bond attempts to shut down Blofeld’s operation in typical gunfire and explosion fashion; and is re-united with Tracy.  A final battle ensues and we get a wrenching ending.

My take:
One of Fleming’s more interesting novels.  Not particularly for the nefariousness of the villian (though they are pretty good and the ski chase scene over the top), but for Bond’s personal relationship with Tracy.  Rarely do we see this much of Bond’s inner workings.
<spoiler bits >
James Bond ‘in love’?  Going to get married?  The nonchalance that Bond considers the union is pretty interesting.  Is that how marriage was decided back in the day?  Despite some glaring differences, he chugs right on along.  It seems he only gives a solid page’s thought to the matter and decides, “Aw heck – why not?’.
</spoilers>

At any rate, if you’d like some decent (but not spectacular) adventure with one of the few times we see Bond in a relationship – then this is a great book.  Rating: B

Finished reading Arthur C Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama.  What a surprising treat!

Rendezvous with Rama is considered one of Clarke’s best novels – winning a slew of sci-fi literary awards.  While I’m not a huge Clarke fan myself, this came highly recommended as a ‘must read’, so I dove into the audiobook on my drives to/from work.

The story (no spoilers):
A gigantic, mysterious, cylindrical object appears in space, swooping in toward the sun. A ship is quickly redirected to investigate before the enigmatic object, called Rama, sweeps through the solar system and disappears, or crashes into the sun, or parks and starts an invasion(!?).  The astronauts land and soon discover they can enter the kilometers long, hollow cylindrical object to decipher it’s puzzles. What becomes apparent is this object is clearly extra-terrestrial technology of high order; but apparently lying completely dormant without any signs of activity or life.  After entering the object itself, they begin and fantastic exploration that leads the reader on an amazing ride as Rama starts to wake…

My take:
If you want to read a gripping, fantastic story about what a first human encounter with an alien space probe/vehicle/whatever – and if you want to watch the exploration process unfold and experience awesome and wonderful sights – then this is a book for you. I found myself riveted by the descriptions and picturing the fantastic scenes in my own mind.  This alone is worth the price of entry!
While Clarke posits what he think alien technology might look like, I found some of the suggestions too implausible, or in some cases, overly simplistic or even a little silly.  Still, the parts he really nails are so good that these minor points do not overshadow the amazing sights and experiences he does create.

I highly recommend this book to someone who loves good old fashioned sci-fi exploration and adventure into strange new areas.  It’s quite a treat that is worth a read.  A-

Just finished Conan the Conqueror audio book from the Conan series.

History:
As with most of Robert Howard’s works, this one has been edited and came through many different sources before reaching the form it has today. Though titled Conan the Conqueror now, it was originally published as a 5-part serial in Weird Tales magazines in 1935-6 under the name The Hour of the Dragon.  A British publisher (Dennis Archer) originally turned down some of Howard’s collected short stories, but suggest the idea of a novel to him.  This is the result of that effort, but the publisher when bankrupt before the novel could be printed.  It wasn’t until it was bought by Gnome Press in 1950 that it earned the title Conan the Conqueror and was finally published in book format.

Story: (spoilers)
The story takes place later in Conan’s life, during his reign as King of Aquilonia.  As with many Howard tales, he doesn’t follow a chronology of Conan’s life, but tells tales about the whole spectrum of his life as tales might be told around a campfire of a great warrior.  This story follows a plot by a group of conspirators to depose Conan in favor of Valerius, heir to Conan’s predecessor Numedides, whom Conan had slain to gain the throne. To accomplish this they resort to necromancy, resurrecting Xaltotun, an ancient sorcerer from the pre-Hyborian empire of Acheron. With his aid the Aquilonian army is defeated by that of the rival kingdom of Nemedia and occupied. Conan, captured, is slated for execution until the sympathetic slave girl Zenobia risks her life to free him.

Meanwhile, the conspirators are also learning that the ancient Xaltotun wishes to throw off the shackles of his co-conspirators and physically reform the world into the one he knew centuries before and conquer them as he once did.  The conspirators steal a gem that constantly burns with flame, the Heart of Ahriman, which they mistakenly think to be the source of Xaltotun’s terrible and unmatched power.  In reality, the gem is the only thing that can defeat Xaltotun.  Conan learns of this from temple priests persecuted by the conspirators armies, and Conan quests to retrieve the Heart of Ahriman from the thief sent to throw it in the sea.  He retrieves the stone after an epic voyage that takes him to the very heart of the corrupted Stygian temples, and sets to raising an army with neighboring countries to defeat Xaltotun, the conspirators, and reclaim his kingdom.

As the armies meet, an epic battle then erupts. Not only the clashing of armies, but the clashing of sorcery between the Heart of Ahriman and Xaltotun.  It’s an epic battle with many twists and a satisfying ending.

Summary:
Some consider this one of Howards best works.   I don’t know if I’d go that far, but it certainly is epic and certainly good.  I have to say I actually like the swashbuckling style of the free-roaming Conan more than the one that rules a kingdom.  Conan even ponders the idea of leaving ruling (which doesn’t seem to agree with his carefree style) and go back to those earlier days of pirating the seas and high adventures.  One gets to see many of the great traits that makes Conan so awesome as a character.  His desire to join into combat during the first fights is notably different than the tone you would read in many novels today.  Conan is certainly a lover of battle and adventure, and it’s fun to read.
Overall, I give this story a solid A-, and recommendation for anyone that would like to further their reading of Conan.  I wouldn’t recommend it as a first introduction to Conan since this story takes place later in his life after much of his adventuring is done; but it’s a great story for those familiar with the series.

We’ve all probably seen Stanley Kubrick’s movie 2001.  Its use of symphonic music, mesmerizingly slow expositions, fantastic futuristic sets, and what-the-heck-did-I-just watch ending are part of movie history.  I dare say, however, that most people don’t know what the ending, nor the movie itself, was trying to communicate.  I certainly didn’t the first few times I watched it in my college years.  Rampant speculation and wild claims about it’s meaning have been made for years. I personally adhere to a much more practical and straightforward interpretation given by Kubrick himself, but there is even an official website devoted to answering these questions.

So, to help me understand better, I went and read Arthur C Clarke’s book version.

Working Together
The history behind 2001 is interesting.  Kubrick wanted to make an epic space movie after pondering the idea of extra-terrestrial life; but didn’t have any source material or direction.  Kubrick was searching for the best way to make a movie about Man’s relation to the universe, and was, in Clarke’s words, “determined to create a work of art which would arouse the emotions of wonder, awe,…even, if appropriate, terror”.  Kubrick met with Clarke, and hit off a relationship.  According to the book’s opening notes, the book and the movie were written nearly side-by-side; and is based of Clarke’s short story “The Sentinel”.  Towards the end, Clarke’s writing wasn’t much ahead of Kubrick’s filming.  Kubrick would even come over to Clarke’s place for dinners to talk while Clarke was finishing the book, and Kubrick was filming right behind him.  Consequentially, the book and movie parallel each other quite well.

The Story
While the movie follows the book very closely, we get a LOT more helpful details and explanation in the book than the movie version.  We start with our early simian ‘ancestors’ not doing so well.  They’re barely scraping by and in a constantly daily struggle for basic survival.  They then encounter the monolith; which mysteriously just appears outside their camp one day. It is presented as an entity/machine actively wishing to changing them.  The simians start making huge, evolutionary leaps forward in capabilities as the monolith ‘grabs them’ with an invisible force each day.  One by one it teaches them to use their hands, perform dexterity tricks, and even bits of thinking, etc.  The monolith isn’t perfect though – one of it’s experiments accidentally kills one of he simians.  Yet, the changing takes place better with some than others and we soon see the simians start to thrive and use the first tools.  It marks the first great turning point for man.  The monolith has clearly changed the course of evolution of these primitive creatures.
Fast-forward to the near future.  We encounter a team of men flying to the moon. There is a fake quarantine in effect to keep a the discovery of a monolith (called TMA-1) a secret.  In the book, we get a clear picture that this monolith is designed to be a cosmic ‘trip-wire’.  It is described as having been deliberately buried; but emitting a huge magnetic field that made it almost impossible to miss by surveying crews.  After it’s dug up, the first sunrays of a new dawn on the moon touch the monolith’s surface and activate it.  The tripwire of digging it up has been cut.  The monolith sends a massive signal towards Saturn while deafening those around it posed for pictures.
Fast-forward a bit further to the Discovery on it’s way to Saturn (in the book).  In the movie, the special effects guys apparently couldn’t get a facsimile of Saturn done well enough for Kubrick, so he decided to use Jupiter instead.  HAL the computer then does what he does best – go crazy and kill everyone but Bowman.  Bowman shuts HAL down and is finally told by Earth that his mission is really to go to the moon of Saturn where the signal of the monolith from the moon was sent and find out what is there.  We get the first clues that HAL went crazy because it was told conflicting information about the true nature of the mission, was forced to ‘lie’, and hence killed the crew in order to protect the real mission which they were in danger of discovering.  It’s an interesting side thread of how man can easily do this sort of mental gymnastics, while computers do not.  Symbology with man’s own evolutionary pains abound.
In the movie, this is where everything goes crazy – and we get no dialog for a long time.  Bowman descends to the surface of the Saturnine/Jovian moon and discovers a gigantic monolith.  It appears exactly the same as the one of the moon – but hundreds of times bigger.  Bowman utters his famous phrase “My God, it’s full of stars” and disappears.  In the movie, this is where a psychedelic trip down the rabbit hole commences.  In the book, it’s because Bowman sees that the monolith is actually a stargate, or wormhole entrance.  He is seeing the stars of the place where the other end lets out.  He enters, and is taken on a fantastic voyage across the galaxy.  He makes a stop at a cosmic ‘switchboard’ planet which is bathed in completely inverted light – implying a hyperspace of some sort.  He pops out again to pass great fleets of dead ships all floating lifeless next to a large dying star.  He is pulled in and sees a smaller white star orbiting the larger and is pulled into some sort of energy field where he awakes.
He is now in the famous white apartment of the movie.  Everything there has the appearance of reality; but is all fabricated as if looked at through TV.  Books open but have no real words in them.  The food is packed in all kinds of familiar containers but every one contains the same blue, edible paste.  Everything is a kind of ‘set’ piece.  His TV actually works, and broadcasts shows from several years back.  In one show, however, he sees a program in which he’s in the exact same hotel room as he is now.  Clearly his ‘keepers’ modeled it on what they saw on our television.
Bowman is then stretched and twisted, just like his earlier simian ancestors.  But this time, the evolution is on a whole new scale.  He can travel across the galaxy with a though.  His corporal form becomes mutable in age/time until he finally realizes he no longer needs it and transitions from his form to a higher form.  He travels back to earth where he destroys all the orbiting nuclear missile platforms with a thought.  He knows he is now to help his earth-bound brethren reach his new state of evolution. The book ends with him pondering how, but knowing “He’ll think of something”.  In this state, he is a star child.  A new being.  Capable of traveling infinity of space and time and change things with the force of his will alone.  It is our next evolutionary step.

The summary of the symbols:
So, we see the monolith is the active ‘force’ of evolution – the thing that facilitates a dramatic shift of our being to something higher.  We see two clear evolutionary steps of man.  From animal -> man -> star child.  Clarke indicates the monoliths have come from alien intelligence and origin; but the aliens nor their motivations and purpose are ever revealed.
In a broader sense, the monoliths are a symbol.  They stand for a key moment, a key input, a flip of a chromosome, a flash of …something… that sparks transformation and evolution of a species.  Kubrick/Clarke made that symbol a black box in the dimensions of 1x4x9. It indicates intelligence, form, and perfection instead of randomness and chaos.

The monolith is a symbol of something we do not know; but caused man to become something more than the other animals around him.  In many ways, this symbol is mutable.  One could even posit that while Clarke choose to attribute the step to higher alien intervention, theists might attribute it to God.  As a symbol, both of these could work.

Recommend:
Because of all this, 2001 is a great movie – but only once you get a much better picture of what is going on.  Reading the book is a huge step in that direction.  I give this book a solid A- since it helps one understand the movie so much better.  It is near required reading, however, for those that wish to understand and read the first exposition of this often-reoccurring theme of alien intervention in human evolution that is so prevalent in modern sci-fi.