Sunspots 689

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Christianity: Christianity Today reports that a lot of Christians believe in the Prosperity Gospel.

Christianity Today also tells us four lies that keep people from attending church.

Relevant tells us why we should question our views on important subjects.

Relevant also reports on the most common searches on Bible Gateway, over the last 25 years.

Health: Scientific American reports that women are more likely to die from a heart attack if the emergency physician is a male.

Politics: Gizmodo is pleased with President Trump's nomination (finally) of a science adviser, but fears that there are too many voices in the Administration that don't pay attention to scientific findings.

Science: A CBS 60 Minutes discussion of a story "Are Zookeepers Playing God?" Note -- this links to three videos, which are each a few minutes long. I thank one of my daughters for pointing to this material.

Gizmodo says that July, 2018, will be the hottest month ever recorded in one place, in Death Valley.

A Scientific American writer says that stories about time travel never talk about a fundamental hindrance to such travel.

Sports: (and Politics) A USA Today columnist compares the contributions to education of LeBron James and President Donald Trump, after Trump recently attacked James. James had attacked Trump, but, as the columnist points out, so have two prominent white NBA coaches, and the President hasn't hit back at them.

Thanks for looking!

Image source (public domain)

Once Beyond a Time, by Ann Tatlock

It was my privilege to recently read Ann Tatlock's Once Beyond a Time, which won the Christy Award (for books with a Christian worldview) for "visionary fiction." 

The book is unpretentious. It tells about a house, outside Black Mountain, North Carolina, and a family who moved there, mostly against their will -- the husband/father was a pastor who had an affair with his wife's cousin, and resigned the ministry, so the family, in some desperation, moved to this house. What about the house? People from different times can meet each other, and see and talk to each other, in the house. (They can't touch each other, or pass items between each other, or give away some kinds of information, between them,it turns out.) This is an unusual way of using fictional time travel.

I won't give away the plot -- there is one, believe me, and it will surprise you a few times.

The book is arranged as chapters, each one being the thoughts of one of the four people in the family. The chapters are dated, as events play out. All of the dates are in the 1960s, but sometimes a family member meets someone from 1916, or 2005, enough so that all of them come to believe that such cross-time conversations are possible.

The book portrays a gradual redemption, subtly shown, of the entire family. No one has a sudden conversion experience, or suddenly repents. It's more powerful for the subtlety. I believe that a non-believer might well enjoy the book without being turned off.

The setting is Black Mountain, a real place, and, I believe, one that the author is familiar with, but it could have been most any small town in 1960s America.

Thanks for reading. Read Tatlock.

Sunspots 437

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

The Arts: Connie Willis, winner of Nebula and Hugo awards, on why she is fascinated by stories about time travel.

Health: NPR reports on how people eat more food that isn't all good for them when their sports team loses, and less when it wins.

NPR also reports on "Mountain Dew Mouth," and, in particular, how some health professionals want to restrict the intake of soft drinks with sugar and acid.

The BBC reports on a 'dramatic' drop in the number of HIV infections, world-wide.

Science: A golden eagle has been photographed in the act of attacking (and bringing down) a deer, with a report by Nature World News.



Image source (public domain)

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs

I recently read Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs. (Here's his blog.)

It's published by Quirk Press, and that's appropriate. It's a quirky book. The book began as a few old photos, but was expanded into a novel. It includes photos, from the collection of Riggs, and collected by others. They are interesting in themselves. According to the Wikipedia article on the book, an editor suggested that Riggs not publish a book of old photos, which was his original intention, but write a novel using the photos. The photos are reproduced in the book, and there are credits at the end.

The plot is summarized in the Wikipedia article, and I'll muse briefly about a couple of things. First, the book was on best-seller lists for some time -- it was certainly popular. Second, it was marketed to children, and, except for being spooky (let's put it this way -- Tim Burton plans to make a movie about it) is OK for them to read, in my opinion. It may teach them something about World War II. Third, a sequel is clearly intended. The book ends at a place that tells us that. Fourth, there is a definite conflict between good and evil in the book.

Last, the peculiarities. The book supposes that there are children with unusual powers. In fact, there have always been such children. In some societies, they have been welcomed. In many others, persecuted. The protagonist, Jacob, comes to know a number of these children, at Miss Peregrine's Home, and they are able to do many things, usually one per child, such as create light, pick up heavy objects, defy gravity, foretell the future, see monsters, and the like. Miss Peregrine, herself, is able to create a time loop, so that it's always the same calendar date. But she and the children do recognize this, and do age, in a sense. Well, you'll have to read the book to see what I mean.

A good book. It wasn't written to any certain formula. I enjoyed it.

I read this book through a 21st century (OK, I could have done it in the 20th, I guess) technological advance -- I borrowed the electronic edition from a public library. Thank God for libraries!

Thanks for reading. Read Riggs, if this sort of thing interests you.

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

I try to read all of the Newbery Award winners. The most recent of these enjoyable trips into reading was When  You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead. (There is a Wikipedia article on the book. You can read that article for more on the plot of the book.)

One aspect of the book is time travel plays a central role. The main characters don't engage in it, and the book does not attempt to give much of a description of how time travel works, or what a time traveler might experience, but without one character, who does do time travel, the plot would have fallen apart.

Is time travel possible? We don't know, according to the Wikipedia article on the subject. Even if it is possible, would a human being be able to experience it? If so, would a human be able to return? Obviously, we don't know the answers to those questions, either.

Why the fascination with Time Travel? (Not everyone is fascinated by it, of course, but clearly some writers of fiction, and their readers, are. The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells, The Narnia books by C. S. Lewis, a series of award-winning books by Connie Willis, and The Time Traveler's Wife come to mind.) I suppose that one reason is that we would like to know what really happened in the past. For example, does Exodus describe the travels of the Israelites realistically? When did humans enter North America, and what were they like? Was Franklin Roosevelt surprised by Pearl Harbor? What were dinosaurs really like? What happened during the last hours of Julius Caesar? Most people probably have questions about their family, or their own early life, that aren't considered in history books, or covered by contemporary news media. Another reason is that most of us have experienced occasions where, it would seem, we might have acted differently than we did, and, we guess, we and others might now be better off if we had.

Lastly, there is a moral question, and Stead brings it up, although she doesn't make a big deal out of it. Should we go back in time to make things right, or perhaps to unselfishly protect someone else, even at the cost of our own lives?

Interesting questions. I don't have much in the way of answers. However, one way of looking at the life of Christ is that He came into time, from some sort of existence outside of time, to unselfishly make all of our protection possible. And it cost Him something to do that.

Finally, I note that Stead was influenced by Madeleine L'Engle's work, and especially by A Wrinkle in Time. Wrinkle is referred to in the book.

Thanks for reading!

Alphabet of Thorn, by Patricia A. McKillip

I previously posted briefly on two fantasy works by Patricia A. McKillip, one being Alphabet of Thorn. Having re-read that book (twice consecutively), I wish to return to it. The Wikipedia article on the book is here. I'm going to say some things that aren't in the article. Almost all of them relate to McKillip's writing in general, not just to this book.

First, McKillip is a stylist. Her writing is careful, doesn't mimic anyone else's, and weaves its own spells.

Second, McKillip shifts between reality and whatever is outside of that. In this book, the construction of the library, and the politics after the death of fourteen-year-old Tessera's father, resonate with real things. The things Tessera explores could not exist in the real world of the room in our house, where I am writing this, or in any nearby part of this earth as we know it.

Third, a recurring theme is that young people do not have parents, or do not know who they are. I've already referred to the death of Tessera's father. Nepenthe, the other important character who is a young woman, is a foundling. Someone left her for the librarians to raise. She is not the first baby raised by the librarians. Axis, a male character, loses his father before he reaches adulthood.

Fourth, there is a school. In this case, it's the school for wizards, a floating school. It is not anchored to the earth, or at least it is not found in a fixed place.

Fifth, important characters in McKillip's tales often turn away from exacting vengeance, even for grievous wrongs. That is not a feature of this book, but Kane, an important character, does withdraw herself from a powerful army that has been conquering diverse kingdoms without being defeated. She turns away from the spectacular to the ordinary.

A feature that is not, to my recollection, found in any other of McKillip's other stories is time travel. Some of the characters in Alphabet of Thorn can travel through time.

Thanks for reading. By all means, read McKillip.

To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis

I recently posted on Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis. That book, which won both the Nebula and Hugo awards, was a serious work, in tone, and in subject matter.

The second of Willis's time travel books is much less serious. In fact, it may well be the funniest book I have ever read. The title of that book is To Say Nothing of the Dog: or How we Found the Bishop's Bird Stump at Last. You can get a good summary of the plot by following the link in the previous sentence, which is to the Wikipedia article on the book. Although this book and the previous one are related, they are independent, and enjoyment and understanding don't require that both be read, or that they be read in sequence. The main characters in the two books appear only in one of them. The idea of historical time travel, and the Oxford University time travel team, based in a history department, and headed by James Dunworthy, are common. The novel gets its title from the subtitle of a hilarious novel, Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), by Jerome K. Jerome, which was published in the Victorian era, and is still in print, and available in its entirety on-line. Willis refers to this book in the novel.

I wish to muse on a few aspects of To Say Nothing.

First, Willis can detail you almost to death, so if you aren't up to reading details of, for example, what the time travelers were thinking, you probably won't like Willis. But the details are a way of establishing character, setting, and plot. What do I mean, detail? Well, for one thing, the details of Victorian life, or at least Willis's view of Victorian life. We read about how rooms were furnished, what they wore, what luggage they took on short journeys, whether by boat or coach, and what they had for breakfast. We also read about jumble sales (known to some of us as yard or garage sales). There is an ongoing dialogue between two Victorian professors about the importance -- or not -- of the individual in history. That dialogue is related to the science fiction aspect of the book, which is on time travel.

It is the details that make the book funny. The book is entirely told from the viewpoint of Ned Henry, who has been sent into the past for reasons he doesn't really understand. One detail is that time travel may cause lack of sleep, and inability to concentrate. The results of these symptoms, which are evident in Ned, are hilarious. So are his attempts to sleep comfortably.

Second, Willis has made the book a mystery novel. There are two ongoing mysteries. One of them is the mystery of who Tossie Mering will marry. Tossie is a Victorian who is an ancestor of an important person from Ned's Oxford time frame. When I first read the book, I was taken completely by surprise when I found out the answer. My latest reading discovered clues, which I had missed. The second mystery is, as suggested by the subtitle, the question of what happened to the Bishop's bird stump. (The detailed description of that object, which is a large vase for holding flowers, but a garish, and seemingly indestructible one, is another funny aspect of the book.) There are clues, again -- Willis likes Agatha Christie, who makes a token appearance in a subsequent time travel book, and Ned's fellow time traveler, Verity Kindle, is an expert on mystery novels -- and they are used to solve the theft.

Third, as in Doomsday Book, the characters, both in 21st century Oxford, and in Victorian England, are very well drawn. Some of them are to be endured. Some are to be emulated. They are by no means constructed of cardboard. By the way, the characters include a dog and a cat, who are also not cardboard -- they are fictionally substantial.

Fourth, Willis does examine time travel. The historians of the Oxford group, and others using time travel, had previously concluded that the past cannot be substantially changed, and that significant objects cannot be brought from the past to the present. The first conclusion remains in doubt through much of the book -- the historians are afraid that they have changed the past in such a way that it affects their own time. The second is discarded, under certain circumstances -- they find that it is possible to bring objects, including live animals, from the past into the future, if that is done just prior to their destruction in past history. 

To Say Nothing of the Dog is a fine book, and I'm glad that I read it again.

Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis

Connie Willis has won more Hugo and Nebula awards (counting each award, of both types, once) for her novels than any other author. I have read and enjoyed her work for years, and I'm not the only one. Somehow, although I have posted on her seven times before now, I haven't produced a major post on any of her novels. I'm ashamed of myself. In this post, I intend to begin to make up for that lack.

Willis has written four novels about a professor, who is in charge of time travel for historical purposes, that is, to check facts about the past, and to learn something about what life then was really like. Actually, the novels are more about the students (apparently graduate students) who do most of the time traveling, than they are about Mr. Dunworthy, the director of the group. They are set in England, in both the past and the near future, where the time travel supposedly starts. The first such novel is Doomsday Book. This novel won both the Hugo and Nebula awards. It is about Kivrin Engle, who went into the 14th century.

The Wikipedia article on the book gives a good summary of the plot, and other features. I wish to muse on three areas.

First, Willis can detail you almost to death, so if you aren't up to reading details of, for example, what the time travelers were thinking, you probably won't like Willis. But the details are a way of establishing character, setting, and plot. What do I mean, detail? One example, in Doomsday Book, is that Finch, Dunworthy's administrative assistant, has great difficulty getting some supplies, when Oxford University is quarantined because of an epidemic. In particular, he can't find lavatory paper (toilet paper, to North Americans). Over and over, he tries to get some, and can't.

Another detail is that there is an American handbell choir stranded in Oxford, where Dunworthy's group works. The handbell choir keeps coming back into the story, in various ways, and for various reasons. Many authors would not have included them at all.

Another such detail is bureaucracy. Willis's characters seem to be constantly beset by bureaucratic idiocy, described in maddening detail.

Second, Willis can present some fully dimensional characters. Kivrin, Dunworthy, and some of the "contemps" (people visited in the past) are such. The two, detail and character, work together. The troubles of Dunworthy, Kivrin, and others are presented over and over again. Not all of Willis's characters are likable. Some can be downright mean and nasty. But they are well drawn.

Third, one of Willis's characters, in this book, is good. He is unselfishly good. He is the local priest, in the 14th century. He works tirelessly to help the sick and the suffering. He thinks the best of others -- he saw Kivrin come into his time, and is convinced that she is an angel, sent from God to help them fight the Black Death. He is illiterate, and doesn't have the clothes and grooming that some people want in their priest, but he is a servant of God for them. I have prepared a graphic, illustrating a quotation from the book

Father Roche is not the only really good person in the book. I would say that Dunworthy, who tirelessly fights the university bureaucracy to get Kivrin back to her own time, and Dr. Mary Ahrens, who tirelessly fights to help the sick during the epidemic, also are. So is Kivrin, herself, who comes to identify with, and love unselfishly, the people she meets in a small village in the 14th century.

Thanks for reading. Read Willis.