A Binge

After figuring out last time that I had read book 5 of the "Gods and Monsters" series, I decided to binge the other 4.

The underlying plot of all the books is that Jehovah aka Yahweh staged a coup and drove all the other pantheons out of, what, metaphysical space and into meat space, which understandably created a power struggle here on earth. There also new gods a la Gaimann's "American Gods", and fictional gods (aren't they all?) a la Cthulhu. Meanwhile, all the father gods seem to have disappeared - and nobody has seen Jebus. Hmmm, I'm glad not to have to read about Jebus, but, maybe a little bit chickenshit on the part of the authors?

All these books are written with the snark dial set to 11.

The whole series is:

1. "Unclean Spirits", by Chuck Wendig, 2013, 417 pages. We meet Cason Cole, who is a grandson of Lucifer and a son of the stag god of nature. Most of the characters in this one are Greek gods.

   This ebook also contains a 2nd novella "Drag Hunt", by Pat Kelleher, which features the great trickster god Coyote, who appears again later on in the series.

2. "Mythbreaker", by Stephen Blackmoore, 2014, 295 pages. The protagonist is Louie "Fitz" Fitzsimmons, who is the only sane prophet alive. Prophets can channel gods and write their stories. Several pantheons are vying to obtain his services.

3. "Snake Eyes", by Hillary Monahan, 2016, 307 pages. The protagonist here is Tanis Barlas, a snakish woman who is a daughter of Lamia. The snake people are pursued by their ancient enemies the Gorgons.

4. "Food of the Gods", by Cassandra Khaw, 2017, 307 pages. Note, I also purchased "Rupert Wong, Cannibal Chef", 2015, 99 pages, which wound up being part 1 of 2 in this book. And I notice that part 2 is available as a separate ebook, "Rupert Wong and the Ends of the Earth", 2017, 204 pages. I find this kind of double publication confusing and annoying, and it led me to purchase the same content twice - a ripoff to my reckoning. Ghouls, Chinese gods, Greek gods, new gods, and Lovecraftian gods are now in play.

5. "The Last Supper Before Ragnarok", by Cassandra Khaw, 2019, 222 pages, blogged here. This makes more sense and is more enjoyable after having read the others and getting the backstories on all the main characters.

All in all, lots of fun with mythology, old and new, which I always find enjoyable.

Time for some science fiction, I think.

Old Favorites Revisited

I kept seeing "Circe" touted. My oldest daughter (@ericaheinz) recommended it as well, but also recommended I read the new Emily Wilson translation of "The Odyssey" 1st. So I did, followed by "Circe", followed by "The Song of Achilles", by the author of "Circe". Note, it's hard to imagine anyone not knowing, at least in broad strokes, these stories, so I'm going to go on discuss them including possible spoilers. So,

******************* SPOILER ALERT *******************

1st up, "The Odyssey" by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson, 2017, 592 pages.

This book got great reviews, and it is the 1st translation of "The Odyssey" by a woman. It is indeed well done, the iambic pentameter reads very nicely. Reading this book, I believe that I have never actually read "The Odyssey" - I have definitely watched the Kirk Douglas 1954 film Ulysses ~10x, and I probably read the Classics Illustrated comic book when I was a kid.

Some interesting stuff on life 3000 years ago. They liked to eat fat - indeed a great source of calories.

[A well known family story from my childhood. I was maybe 6-7 YO eating dinner with my maternal grandparents, George and Fidelia Boemker. We were having pork chops. I had trimmed the fat off and was eating the meat. My grandpa reached over, speared the fat, and popped it in his mouth. "You didn't want that, did you?" "Pop! I was saving that for last!" Like the ancients, people who lived through the Great Depression valued the caloric value of fat.]

At one point they are roasting "goat stomachs stuffed with fat and blood" - yum!

Two things I found interesting re TOOCITBOTBM

1. In TOOCITBOTBM, Jaynes characterized The Iliad as having humans running the old bicameral software, where stress caused gods to wake up in our brains and tell us what to do. In contrast, The Odyssey had humans running our current software, capable of lying and not subject to gods waking up. But there are several instances in The Odyssey where the gods pretty much plant ideas in human minds. For example, in Book 18, "Athena, with her gray eyes glinting, gave thoughtful Penelope a new idea:"
2. In TOOCITBOTBM, the wily Odysseus was Jaynes' archetype of the more modern brain software, which included the ability to lie. But Book 19 talks about Odysseus' "grandfather, noble Autolycus, who was the best of all mankind at telling lies and stealing." Ha ha, so apparently Odysseus wasn't the 1st liar - nor the greatest one, which seems to have been his grandfather.

1 thing totally new to me was that, after killing the suitors, Odysseus and his supporters had to fight the parents of all the eligible young bachelors that were slaughtered. Odysseus killed 1, then Athena broke the fight up.

Of course, I had to watch the Kirk Douglas "Ulysses" again. It is fairly true to the book. The main liberty it takes is in deciding to give Odysseus amnesia when he is in Phaecia - his last stop before finally making to Ithaca. I guess the screenwriters liked that better than Odysseus just lying, which was, of course, his speciality.

Next up, "Circe", by Madeline Miller, 2018, 353 pages.

This is a really enjoyable read. Circe and her 3 full siblings, children of the titan Helios and a naiad Perse, are the 1st sorcerers - they invent witchcraft and/or pharmacy, referred to as pharmaka. The book pulls in lots of figures of Greek mythology: Circe succors her uncle Prometheus; she creates the Scylla from a nymph she is jealous of; Hermes is her 1st lover; Medea of Jason and the Golden Fleece is her niece, as is Ariadne of the story of Theseus; the Minotaur is her nephew.

It is kind of a bummer, though, when the author recounts the tale of Odysseus after his return to Ithaca. He is a complete adrenaline junky, paranoid and bitter, and winds up killing himself while wresting a poison spear from his son by Circe. It was saddening to see the wily Odysseus come to such an end.

3rd up, "The Song of Achilles", also by Madeline Miller, 2012, 389 pages.

I enjoyed "Circe" enough that I decided to go for a trifecta and read Miller's tale of the godlike Achilles. I'm sure I had the Classics Illustrated comic book of "The Iliad". And I'm probably up to 6 or so watches of the recent Brad Pitt movie "Troy" - the 10 year Trojan War in only 3 weeks! I read parts of "The Iliad" (the Lattimore translation) trying to see if I agreed with Jaynes' characterization of mentation in TOOCITBOTBM.

The story is narrated by Patroclus, Achilles' lifelong lover. It is an easy read, but I didn't enjoy it near as much as the other two. The centaur Chiron, who tutors the 2 young men, is a high point. Ms. Miller definitely found her stride in "Circe".

Old Acquaintances

After reading the Walter Jon Williams stories, I decided to read the rest of the books I had in my iPad that were by old, familiar authors.

1st up, "Beautiful Blood", by Lucius Shepard, 2014, 296 pages. Shepard's novel "Green Eyes", 1984, a tale of recombinant DNA zombies who become avatars of voodoo gods, was one of novels of the Ace Specials Series 3 which included "Neuromancer" by William Gibson and early novels by Kim Stanley Robinson, Michael Swanwick, Howard Waldrop, and Jack McDevitt, and was a great, over-the-top story. His mid-to-late-80s short stories set in near-future US wars in Central America were haunting, and his short story "A Spanish Lesson", which I read in an early Year's Best, was like a moral sledgehammer to the forehead.

This novel is set in world of the Dragon Griaule, which also goes back to 1984 for Shepard. A multi-mile long sleeping dragon forms the infrastructure for several cities and kingdoms. It's kind of an odd story - scientist becomes drug dealer and criminal entrepreneur - somewhat reminiscent of Walter White and "Breaking Bad". It is an interesting read, not sure what the point was. It may have been Shepard's last publication before he died in 2014 at age 70.

Next up, "Coming Home", by Jack McDevitt, 2014, 386 pages. I think it's been years since I have read McDevitt. His stories commonly contain astroarcheology. The idea that as we explore other solar systems we are probably more likely to encounter ruins of dead civilizations rather than living civilizations is not at all unreasonable.

I think this is my last McDevitt though. It is set 9000 years in the future - but the characters have iced tea and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. They get most of their information from TV talk shows. And at one point "He reached for a pad, wrote on it, and handed the sheet to me.". It kept reminding me of the old TV show "Cannon" - a detective who is actually more interested in being a low level gourmand.

The characters are mostly obsessed with finding a trove of artifacts from the Golden Age - 1960&70s NASA. Really? 9000 years in the future, and that's their obsession? Apparently this is a universe that never developed any exponential technologies. In 9000 years mankind has spread to only ~200 worlds - pretty disappointing. And most of the worlds seem like the 1980s, but with spaceships and flying cars. At least there are female characters in leading roles, so it's not too misogynistic.

Plus, early on, I was annoyed that the alliance of planets was The Confederacy, and its president's last name was Davis. I have read too many of David Brin's rants about the ongoing US Civil War to not pick up on this. The Google and I check McDevitt out: he lives in Georgia, and is now 81 YO. So, I think I will leave him to his peanut butter sammiches and "Fox and Friends" and spend my reading time elsewhere.

Finally, I read "The Medusa Chronicles", by Stephen Baxter and Alistair Reynolds, 2016, 416 pages. This is a sequel to Arthur C. Clarke's 1971 novella "A Meeting With Medusa", which features the discovery of large lifeforms in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter. This is definitely some decent hard science fiction. We have uplifted chimps, which I liked so much in David Brin's Uplift series, and I am surprised we do not see more of. We have the rise of intelligent machines. We have a descent to the center of Jupiter, where things get really weird. We have great events happening over an 800 year timespan. After the goofiness of the McDevitt, it was a relief to get a future that seemed ... futuristic, at least a little.

While I was reading that, a delivery showed up: "Norse Mythology", by Neil Gaiman, 2017, 295 pages, hardcover, that my son ordered for me. Thanks son! I think that is great that Gaiman did this. I have always loved these stories, and this new book will expose them to many millions of new readers.

I was prepared to be underwhelmed by the book itself, but Gaiman added some details and dialogue and in general created a good narrative flow through the stories. The very end seemed to be a little off, but perhaps Gaiman's version is more in keeping with the eddas. Note, I would also recommend the book "Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths", about the 12th century guy who 1st captured these tales, which I blogged about here.

This also reminded me, when my granddaughter, now 6, had just turned 3, I bought her a copy of my favorite picture book of Norse mythology: "D'Aulaires' Book of Norse Myths".

My grandson will turn 3 this summer, I know what he's getting for his birthday!