I finished A Canticle for Leibowitz on the bus this morning. Repton Infinity lent it to me. I had that familair sadness that comes from finishing a good book, and this is a good book.

I am not normally a fan of post apocalyptic settings as I tend to find them a bit trite. This book is anything but trite.

It is a grim tale of mans propensity for self destruction set against the powerful urge to survive. I found it well written, filled with compelling characters, and raising interestign themes about faith, humanity, sin, salvation, science, philosophy, and so much more. As a work it asks more questions than it answers. And if the cataclysm envisioned by Miller is less likely to occur now than it was in 1960 I think it just means that we have changed the method of our madness rather than the madness itself.

Well worth a read.

Alien vs Predator - Requiem
Your enjoyment of this will depend on the standards you set it. It is wholly predicatble, averagely acted and directed with okay cinematography. It's a pretty lame attempt at an aliens or a predator moving. But then I expected all of that going in to it. So actually, I rather enjoyed it. Could it have been better, definately. But for what it was I don't feel like I wasted an hour and a half of my life watching it.

Gabriel
This moving about Arc Angels and Arc Fallen was interesting and enjoyable, though I think I actually enjoyed it less than AVPR, largely because I had higher hope for it.

It is an interesting concept, somewhat variably implemented. The acting is weak, the story not very well put together and the special effects/cinematography average.

Having gotten that out of the way there is lots to like. The twist at the end is nicely done and I only guessed not long before the main character. It explores interesting themes about destiny, faith, isolation and the like. There are some moments in it that are particularly cool, especially some of the fight scenes.

Overall I'd recommend, thought it felt like it could have done with a bigger budget to accomadate some of what it was trying to achieve better (more effort into scripting, more take to get scenes right etc).

I bought this book basically because I liked the name. I bought it on the way to Bali and needed something to read. As a recommendation, each day I had to make a conscious, effortful decision to go out to the conference or the beach rather than stay in my hotel room reading it.

This is a remarkably good book. Very well crafted and well written. Apparently the first for this author. It’s a pretty good first effort.

It’s the first in a series documenting the life of Kvothe (pronounced a little like “Quothe”) a brilliant magician and adventurer. Despite the cheesiness of having a child prodigy who is pretty much brilliant at just about everything the character is very compelling. My greatest disappointment, and joy, with this book was to discover then it’s the first of a series.

I don’t want to say too much about Kvothe’s story, he relates it much better himself. It’s an excellent book, and enjoyable page turning read and I thoroughly recommend it.

When I opened the book I was cautious. The author had previously characterised himself as a rabid evangelist. Someone who gave no consideration to reasoned argument and analysis, no thought to the careful development of logical arguments based on evidence, no effort to scholarly research, no effort to attempting to engage with the opposition on common ground (instead preferring straw men to real opposition). Indeed, at his worst he has been prone to name calling.

I had decided that the benefit of doubt was required. That I should engage with the work as unbiased and openly as possible. It was, is, hard, as I am working against preconceptions built from the authors previous works.

Now I am vaguely regretting the 10 cents royalty the author will get from my purchase.

I bought The God Delusion last week while on holiday. I am part way through Chapter 2. I had a pretty good idea of Dawkins’ position and attitudes were likely to be before I started. I have been exposed to plenty of his acidic rhetoric before. Indeed, I initially decided not to get it because I figured it be much the same. But, I then thought it was unfair of me to dismiss the book and his views out of hand without at least engaging with them. So I got it.

And I can say that Dawkins’ hasn’t just met my expectations he has exceeded them. I want to engage the work philosophically, to analyse his arguments, point out their weaknesses (if any), debate the facts etc however I am 40 pages in and have yet to mean anything I would consider a philosophical argument.

Generally the flow of the book has been characterised primarily by the following:

Baseless assertions of fact; my personal favourite being: “…for atheism nearly always indicates a healthy independence of mind and, indeed, a healthy mind.”

Where to begin? This is said without any philosophical argument or psychological evidence. Lest I be accussed of quoting out of context: “Being an atheist is nothing to be apologetic about. On the contrary, it is something to be proud of, standing tall to face the far horizon, for atheism nearly always indicates a healthy independence of mind and, indeed, a healthy mind.”

So, now, all of Dawkins’ atheist readers can feel the warm glow of sanity and healthy thinking, without having to engage in any of the healthy thinking and reasoning that I would consider* are reasonable indicators of a healthy mind.

So, apparently atheists are more healthy, mentally, than the rest of us (nearly always indicates…a healthy mind). Evidence Mr Dawkins? “Evidence, Pshaw, who needs evidence. I am right, deal with it.”

This characterises the tone of as much of the book as I have read so far.

Other favoured methods of “debate” are name calling: “Of course, dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads are immune to argument…”

Lampooning the opposition (too many times to count), because everyone knows that if you can make your opponents look silly then you have won the debate.

Creating straw men and knocking them down.

Redefining things to suit himself: “Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered down theism.” Flying in the face of the views of people who actually adhere to either position.

And so on.

The thing that really annoys me about this book is it’s abuse of power. Quite simply it trades on the authors authority (the blurb on the back states, as the first point, that Dawkins was recently voted one of the world’s top three intellectuals#). So it stands him up as a world authority and then he goes on to make unfounded, unresearched, unargued assertions on just about every page and people think it passes for intellectual reasoning.

I am reminded of a second year lecture. Psyc two hundred and something, “Information and Control in Organisms” where the lecturer stood up and, by way of introduction, proclaimed to an auditorium of impressionable second years “I am an agnostic you’d be a fool to be anything else.”

Hello! This had nothing to do with the course, and is an abuse of power. He was the authority in the room. He was using his authority in an unrelated field to speak as an authority in another field. If I, as a teacher, ever stood in front of a class and said: “I am a Christian and you’d be a fool to be anything else.” I could lose my job, because it is rightly seen as an abuse of my power and authority as a teacher.

Dawkins does much the same thing, abusing his power and authority to make proclamations (not arguments) about something he has no more qualification to discuss than your average person.

And we are supposed to swallow it hook line and sinker. We are supposed to accept his views, and in my case change my views to be in line with his, on the strength of his proclamation.

He is just as bad as the guy with the bullhorn on the corner who proclaims judgement on people walking by.

So far, on my reading, Dawkins’ has come across as the worst “faith-head” I have encountered, in my religion or anyone else’s. It’ll be interesting to see if this changes. I sincerely hope it does. There are good, and interesting arguments for atheism, and I hope he can marshal his thoughts for long enough to look at some of them.

But I am not holding my breath.
------
*Note the emphasis on personal opinion here. This is simply my opinion.

#Without saying by whom, which is surely important. I mean if he was voted this by the some Atheist society it’s a lot less meaningful than if he was voted this in a survey of prominent intellectuals for example.

I finished this late last night. These two books, Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained are probably my favourite of his works. They are more tightly written that the Night's Dawn trilogy, really telling one story through multiple characters rather than multiple stories through multiple characters.

It is very well written, he has an excellent writing style that is improving as he completes more and more works. The future he creates is engaging and interesting (as was Night's Dawn). He has a real talent for creating very well realised settings and for writing them in a way that makes you almost feel like you are in it.

All in all an excellent read.

I rate the the series as a 6 out of 10.

I don't really intend to give a full review here, rather I want to outline the issues I had that stop it's score from being higher given all the nice things I said about it. I have two issues. One I think was probably unavoidable given the story he wrote, the other is a growing realisation about the way he rights, or rather the way he formulates his characters.



1. The plot twists are predictable.
( potential spoilers ahead )
And that brings me to point 2.

2. I think Peter F Hamilton may be a mysogynist. Okay that might be putting it a little strongly, but I think he definately has a skewed view of women. This idea first came about when I read the wikipedia entry on him, which has this to say about his novel Misspent Youth:

"This was his least well received book critically, perhaps because it was Hamilton's first attempt at an in-depth character study or perhaps because much of the book was taken up with descriptions of sex which did not allow many of the characters (particularly the females) to be developed."

This made me think about how women are written in the other books of his I have read.
( more spoilers )

Those are a few thoughts anyway, issues that detracted from the book for me, more the second than the first, because it's hard to see how the predictablity could be avoided. The treatment of women in the end just seemed excessive and rather stereotyped in a bad way.

I am not sure I'll read the next planned series. I do like the way he writes and the worlds he creates, but, well, I don't really like the way he treats women in his books.

I'd be interested to hear the comments of any women who have read his books...