Bill Chaisson (Author of Of a Feather)

Bill Chaisson rated a book liked it Mickey7 (Mickey7, #1) by Edward Ashton (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
The book was better than the movie (Mickey17), but about halfway through the book I grew tired of Edward Ashton's sense of humor. His schtick is to have Mickey talk about big, weighty issues in this "whatevs-no biggee" language that is funny at first ...more
Sep 10, 2026 11:49AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Mickey7 by Edward Ashton. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Mickey7 by Edward Ashton <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Bill Chaisson rated a book liked it A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam by Karen Armstrong	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I plucked this book out of a tiny library in part because I have been plowing through the King James Bible slowly for the last three years without any instruction and partly because I remember when this book came out in 1993 and made Karen Armstrong ...more
Sep 08, 2026 09:01AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of A History of God by Karen Armstrong. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — A History of God by Karen Armstrong <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Bill Chaisson rated a book really liked it LOST and FOUND: Beacon’s Black Community 1850 - 1930 by Dan W. Pruitt	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This is a very personal history; the author is writing about his own hometown of Fishkill, New York. I spent seven years of my own life there, so this book was personal to me too. In fact, Dan W. Pruitt grew up partly in the “village” of Brockway and ...more
Sep 04, 2026 03:25AM · like · see review
Bill Chaisson rated a book liked it A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam by Karen Armstrong	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I plucked this book out of a tiny library in part because I have been plowing through the King James Bible slowly for the last three years without any instruction and partly because I remember when this book came out in 1993 and made Karen Armstrong ...more
Sep 02, 2026 06:06PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of A History of God by Karen Armstrong. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — A History of God by Karen Armstrong <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
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Bill Chaisson started reading Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different by Gordon S. Wood	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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Bill Chaisson rated a book it was ok The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I expected to like this book but for a number of reasons could not. The title The Genius of Birds would seem to want to be a play on "genius of place," that certain something that makes a place special. Unfortunately, no. Jennifer Ackerman means "gen ...more
Aug 28, 2026 07:32AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Bill Chaisson rated a book liked it Mickey7 (Mickey7, #1) by Edward Ashton (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
The book was better than the movie (Mickey17), but about halfway through the book I grew tired of Edward Ashton's sense of humor. His schtick is to have Mickey talk about big, weighty issues in this "whatevs-no biggee" language that is funny at first ...more
Aug 27, 2026 04:02AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Mickey7 by Edward Ashton. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Mickey7 by Edward Ashton <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
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Bill Chaisson rated a book liked it Mickey7 (Mickey7, #1) by Edward Ashton (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
The book was better than the movie (Mickey17), but about halfway through the book I grew tired of Edward Ashton's sense of humor. His schtick is to have Mickey talk about big, weighty issues in this "whatevs-no biggee" language that is funny at first ...more
Aug 26, 2026 10:22AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Mickey7 by Edward Ashton. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Mickey7 by Edward Ashton <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">

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Mickey7 (Mickey7, #1)
by Edward Ashton (Goodreads Author)

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The book was better than the movie (Mickey17), but about halfway through the book I grew tired of Edward Ashton's sense of humor. His schtick is to have Mickey talk about big, weighty issues in this "whatevs-no biggee" language that is funny at first The book was better than the movie (Mickey17), but about halfway through the book I grew tired of Edward Ashton's sense of humor. His schtick is to have Mickey talk about big, weighty issues in this "whatevs-no biggee" language that is funny at first and then palls. Along the lines of "He's asking me to commit genocide and suicide with an anti-matter bomb. I'm not sure I'm entirely down with that." This kind of apparently casual off-handedness and lack of perspective because perspective-is-hard-under-these-conditions feels a little lazy after a while.

What are "these conditions?" Mickey Barnes is an "expendable" on a spaceship and then in a colony that is establishing a beachhead for humanity on a new planet. This means he is given dangerous jobs, is killed while doing them, and then is simply regenerated from his own DNA. Ashton explains, through Mickey, that the human body can handle more radiation than a robot before it shuts down and is therefore better at getting the really dirty jobs done.

In a lot of science fiction, this kind of colonizing effort seems to go off without a hitch, but in Ashton's world it is very dicey proposition and about half of the expeditions end disastrously. This attitude toward the future is one of the refreshing and interesting aspects of Ashton's storytelling. Almost every attempt at progress in this book is accomplished with a great deal of effort and with incomplete success. And, although the mission in this book was supposedly very competitive to join, you never have the feeling that anyone involved is particularly bright or talented at what they do. Again, this is a refreshingly democratic imagining of future space travel.

Mickey is a curious sort of anti-hero. He is scholarly in the sense that he reads history constantly and actually seems to understand history better than most people. But he is also terrible at math and really crap at both decision-making and staying out of trouble. He is forced into the necessity of leaving his home planet of Midgard by his incredibly poor evaluation of his best friend's skills in a competition where he gambles on the outcome. Continuing to call this guy Berto "his friend" also represents questionable judgment, as is pointed out to him by a couple of women he gets involved with. However, unlike almost everyone else around him, Mickey has compassion for his fellow humans and for non-humans as well.

The relationship that Mickey7 establishes with the "creepers" is not fully explained. You are left wondering why "this Mickey" is treated differently than the others. One of the ongoing quasi-philosophical questions Ashton lobs out there is whether each successive Mickey is actually the same person. He trots out the parable of the "ship of Theseus," which was replaced one board at a time during its long journey. Question being, did he return in the same ship he set out in? While normal human beings age this way, Mickey is entirely remade every time he dies. When, through Berto's cowardice, he ends up having to deal with a Mickey8, it becomes obvious that Seven and Eight are quite different people. Ashton implies that Mickey7 is simply a better person than his other incarnations. Perhaps because of the experiences he has during a six-week period prior to his “death,” which he fails to upload and pass on? It is all sort of murky, but intriguing.

Ashton's narrative alternates between exposition and a mixture of dialog and description. It is always from Mickey's point of view, but sometimes Mickey waxes elegiac about historical or scientific or technical topics that are germane to understanding what happens next in the plot. E.g., why do people hate expendables? Ashton gives two separate and unrelated explanations (or has Mickey give them): (1) the "Natalist" movement believes that clones have no souls and are abominations, and (2) some sociopath named Antimova made multiples of himself to take over a planet. This duplication of effort is a little shaggy as plot economics go.

Still and all, Ashton's grimy future is likely a bit more accurate than, say, Star Trek. The grungy setting and the less-than-heroic characters that inhabit it represent a less romantic and more realistic take on where we are going and how we'll get there. That is a point of view that is remarkably down the middle between dystopia and utopia, and I'll take it. ...more

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A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam
by Karen Armstrong

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I plucked this book out of a tiny library in part because I have been plowing through the King James Bible slowly for the last three years without any instruction and partly because I remember when this book came out in 1993 and made Karen Armstrong I plucked this book out of a tiny library in part because I have been plowing through the King James Bible slowly for the last three years without any instruction and partly because I remember when this book came out in 1993 and made Karen Armstrong a ubiquitous public intellectual for a while.

A History of God is a mighty undertaking and my impression is that Armstrong is more at home with Judaism and Christianity than she is with Islam. The chapters and sections on Islam seemed less assured and were more repetitive. They also were written more impersonally, which is in marked contrast to the keenly felt way she writes about Judaism and Christianity. A former nun who fell away from her faith, Armstrong is occasionally strident in denouncing certain aspects of Christianity in particular.

Armstrong introduces the idea of monotheism as distinct from polytheism first and then moves on to three chapters that summarize the origins of the three Abrahamic religions. For a reader like me with no formal religious education, there was a lot of very helpful dot-connecting in these chapters. Armstrong is brisk and even funny as she glides through topics in a few paragraphs that whole books have been devoted to elsewhere.

The rest of the book follows each faith’s journey through three phases of theology. The “god of the philosophers” represents Judaism and Islam’s blending of classical conceptions of God (particularly Aristotle’s) with their own. Many scholars became convinced that they could truly understand God through logic and reason. The “god of the mystics” represented the early Modern reaction to the medieval philosophical approach. The Jews developed the Kabbalah, for example, but all three religions turned away from a personal god and strove to experience God as an all-encompassing void that was either woven through everything (and more) or had an entirely separate existence. Finally, the “god of the reformers” represented a retrenching, a re-embrace of a personal God.

In her final three chapters Armstrong describes Gods confrontation with the modern technological world. Western Christianity changes everything during the Enlightenment by making it possible to be a proud atheist, to dispense with God, which had previously been literally unthinkable. The rise of Western science and the secular culture that was made possible by it gave rise to all sorts of ways to diminish the importance of God, culminating in his announced death in the late 19th century.

In these last chapters Armstrong more clearly departs from straight history writing and injects her own progressive perspective into her reading of history. She has no patience whatsoever with any sort of fundamentalism in any of the three faiths, calling it idolatry, among other things. This might be an interesting book for a person with conventional, unquestioning faith to read, because her scholarly approach is never polemical. But these chapters are also repetitive, as she must revisit the philosophers, mystics and reformers again to explain how their varying approaches to God are echoed in the Modern era.

As a non-religious person I found myself wondering what all the fuss was about and I put down the book several times to read other books. But I always came back and did finish it. I think it is just so much information and so weighty that I need time to digest it before plowing onward. ...more

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LOST and FOUND: Beacon’s Black Community 1850 - 1930
by Dan W. Pruitt

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This is a very personal history; the author is writing about his own hometown of Fishkill, New York. I spent seven years of my own life there, so this book was personal to me too. In fact, Dan W. Pruitt grew up partly in the “village” of Brockway and This is a very personal history; the author is writing about his own hometown of Fishkill, New York. I spent seven years of my own life there, so this book was personal to me too. In fact, Dan W. Pruitt grew up partly in the “village” of Brockway and I grew up with H. Mortimer Brockway as a next door neighbor and grandfather figure. The Brockways were brickmakers who lost their brickyard to bankruptcy early in the Depression. Pruitts family moved to Brockway from South Carolina in the 1940s when the brickyard was owned by the Dennings Point Brickworks and then into the city of Beacon in the early 1950s when his father decided to open a store.

This narrative is part memoir and part history of African-Americans of Fishkill. The period treated here, 1850-1930, from 15 years before the end of the Civil War to 14 years before the passage of the Civil Rights Act, is a bleak one for Black Americans. Pruitt was motivated to write by a series of articles in the Highlands Current, a local newspaper, that painted what sounds like a rather rosy picture of Black life in the region before 1850. While he is careful to praise author Chip Rowe for what he did cover, Pruitt was moved to fill in what he saw as a gap.

He uses census data, the “U.S. Federal Census for the Products of Industry,” and several local and regional histories to reconstruct the last half of the 19th and first third of the 20th centuries in Fishkill. Between 1850 and 1920 the numbers and the fortunes of the Black community in town slowly, inexorably declined. Progressively fewer families owned their own homes (which made the men eligible to vote) or worked in professions other than “laborer” and many moved away as part of a trend in “subsistence migration,” going where you could make ends meet.

In other words, racism and segregation increased steadily in Fishkill through this period. Black brickyard workers were replaced by Irish, Hungarian, and Italian immigrants. Not that brickyard work was very attractive, but it was better than nothing. Pruitt describes it as seasonal, physically demanding, poorly paid, and bad for your health (brick dust, long hours). It was seasonal because the bricks were moved by barge and the Hudson River froze over each winter. It was not until the 1920s that bricks began to be moved by train.

Pruitt is quietly outraged by all this, but perhaps weary as well. Although we live with the consequences, it is water under the bridge. But he has now exposed a river to the sky; it is no longer flowing out of sight underground. He singles out several individuals whom he is able to follow through history via a combination of government data, other published accounts and his own memory. None of these individuals are allowed to live up to their potential in Fishkill. People trained as schoolteachers end up as laborers. War heroes end up in jail in Florida. It is the story of Black people in the United States told at a local level.

In the 1930s the Black population in what is now Beacon (the city was incorporated out of the town of Fishkill in 1913) begins to grow through migration out of the South, mostly Virginia and North Carolina. The veterans hospital at Castle Point opened in 1924, a significant employer willing to hire local Black residents. The brickmaking era came to a close through the middle of the 20th century and Black workers and their families moved into the city of Beacon, where the employers there very grudgingly and gradually agreeing to hire them.

But shortly after they arrived and settled in the river-facing part of the city, “urban renewal” began to tear it down. When my family arrived in there in 1971 a lot had already been torn down with only a few rows of old houses along lower Wolcott and South avenues still standing. And then they were soon gone. They were replaced by housing projects of varying quality (Forrestal Heights, OK; Davis Terrace, falling apart before it was completed), and the old neighborhoods were left to grow weeds in vacant lots for decades.

Lost and Found, Beacon’s Black Community is self-published and self-edited. There are typos and some irregular punctuation, but it is a heck of a lot more readable than most local histories. If I have any complaint about this book it is that I would have liked to hear more about Pruitt’s childhood in the 1950s and ‘60s. I am a generation younger, and although I grew up surrounded by the descendants of the people he writes about, he and I actually had the same American history teacher. He was one of the best teachers I ever had, but no, he didn’t tell us anything about Black history. ...more

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A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam
by Karen Armstrong

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I plucked this book out of a tiny library in part because I have been plowing through the King James Bible slowly for the last three years without any instruction and partly because I remember when this book came out in 1993 and made Karen Armstrong I plucked this book out of a tiny library in part because I have been plowing through the King James Bible slowly for the last three years without any instruction and partly because I remember when this book came out in 1993 and made Karen Armstrong a ubiquitous public intellectual for a while.

A History of God is a mighty undertaking and my impression is that Armstrong is more at home with Judaism and Christianity than she is with Islam. The chapters and sections on Islam seemed less assured and were more repetitive. They also were written more impersonally, which is in marked contrast to the keenly felt way she writes about Judaism and Christianity. A former nun who fell away from her faith, Armstrong is occasionally strident in denouncing certain aspects of Christianity in particular.

Armstrong introduces the idea of monotheism as distinct from polytheism first and then moves on to three chapters that summarize the origins of the three Abrahamic religions. For a reader like me with no formal religious education, there was a lot of very helpful dot-connecting in these chapters. Armstrong is brisk and even funny as she glides through topics in a few paragraphs that whole books have been devoted to elsewhere.

The rest of the book follows each faith’s journey through three phases of theology. The “god of the philosophers” represents Judaism and Islam’s blending of classical conceptions of God (particularly Aristotle’s) with their own. Many scholars became convinced that they could truly understand God through logic and reason. The “god of the mystics” represented the early Modern reaction to the medieval philosophical approach. The Jews developed the Kabbalah, for example, but all three religions turned away from a personal god and strove to experience God as an all-encompassing void that was either woven through everything (and more) or had an entirely separate existence. Finally, the “god of the reformers” represented a retrenching, a re-embrace of a personal God.

In her final three chapters Armstrong describes Gods confrontation with the modern technological world. Western Christianity changes everything during the Enlightenment by making it possible to be a proud atheist, to dispense with God, which had previously been literally unthinkable. The rise of Western science and the secular culture that was made possible by it gave rise to all sorts of ways to diminish the importance of God, culminating in his announced death in the late 19th century.

In these last chapters Armstrong more clearly departs from straight history writing and injects her own progressive perspective into her reading of history. She has no patience whatsoever with any sort of fundamentalism in any of the three faiths, calling it idolatry, among other things. This might be an interesting book for a person with conventional, unquestioning faith to read, because her scholarly approach is never polemical. But these chapters are also repetitive, as she must revisit the philosophers, mystics and reformers again to explain how their varying approaches to God are echoed in the Modern era.

As a non-religious person I found myself wondering what all the fuss was about and I put down the book several times to read other books. But I always came back and did finish it. I think it is just so much information and so weighty that I need time to digest it before plowing onward. ...more

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The Go-Between
by L.P. Hartley

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Bill Chaisson started reading

Revolutionary Characters by Gordon S. Wood

Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different
by Gordon S. Wood

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Bill Chaisson rated a book it was ok

The Genius of Birds
by Jennifer Ackerman

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I expected to like this book but for a number of reasons could not. The title The Genius of Birds would seem to want to be a play on "genius of place," that certain something that makes a place special. Unfortunately, no. Jennifer Ackerman means "gen I expected to like this book but for a number of reasons could not. The title The Genius of Birds would seem to want to be a play on "genius of place," that certain something that makes a place special. Unfortunately, no. Jennifer Ackerman means "genius" in the pedestrian sense of "high intelligence." She makes half-hearted efforts to avoid anthropomorphism by talking a bit about cognition versus intelligence, but this isn't really borne out in the body of the text. In practice, she constantly compares birds to people and even digresses into vignettes about human intelligence.

Ackerman doesn't seem to like birds in a way that I recognize. I've been a birdwatcher for 55 years and I accept birds as birds, and I don't much care if they are "smart" or "dumb." I find them fascinating precisely because they are entirely different from humans. Ackerman gives you the feeling that she is straight-up more impressed by and interested in smart birds because they are smart. This seems eerily reminiscent of the upper-middle class tendency to value people in white-collar professions over those in blue-collar professions, as if a middle management guy at a widget factory is automatically smarter than the foreman out on the floor.

I found the structure of the book to be choppy and repetitive. The chapters ostensibly address different aspects of "genius," but Ackerman can't seem to help throwing in off-topic stories. Furthermore, the chapters themselves seem comprised of half-told stories strung together without any development of the theme. She cites an army of bird researchers, but you are never given the opportunity to know any of them as people. John McPhee set a very high bar in this regard, but Elizabeth Kolbert is better at than Ackerman.

I see that other books she has written seem to include a larger personal component. This may be her forte and she either didn't let herself enlarge on that aspect of the narrative in The Genius of Birds or she was told not to by an editor. Either way it seems like a mistake. In the little snippets of personal information that she shares, Ackerman comes across as an interesting person, but there is so little inserted here that it seems more of a bug than a feature.

The book deserves two stars because there is a lot of interesting information in here. It is just a little lost in a welter of repeated exposition and fragmentary personal injections. Given the number of researchers she cites and the number of different places she visits, this book took a lot of time and effort. Ackerman exerted so much effort that she wanted to include everything. It doesn't work. ...more

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Mickey7 (Mickey7, #1)
by Edward Ashton (Goodreads Author)

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The book was better than the movie (Mickey17), but about halfway through the book I grew tired of Edward Ashton's sense of humor. His schtick is to have Mickey talk about big, weighty issues in this "whatevs-no biggee" language that is funny at first The book was better than the movie (Mickey17), but about halfway through the book I grew tired of Edward Ashton's sense of humor. His schtick is to have Mickey talk about big, weighty issues in this "whatevs-no biggee" language that is funny at first and then palls. Along the lines of "He's asking me to commit genocide and suicide with an anti-matter bomb. I'm not sure I'm entirely down with that." This kind of apparently casual off-handedness and lack of perspective because perspective-is-hard-under-these-conditions feels a little lazy after a while.

What are "these conditions?" Mickey Barnes is an "expendable" on a spaceship and then in a colony that is establishing a beachhead for humanity on a new planet. This means he is given dangerous jobs, is killed while doing them, and then is simply regenerated from his own DNA. Ashton explains, through Mickey, that the human body can handle more radiation than a robot before it shuts down and is therefore better at getting the really dirty jobs done.

In a lot of science fiction, this kind of colonizing effort seems to go off without a hitch, but in Ashton's world it is very dicey proposition and about half of the expeditions end disastrously. This attitude toward the future is one of the refreshing and interesting aspects of Ashton's storytelling. Almost every attempt at progress in this book is accomplished with a great deal of effort and with incomplete success. And, although the mission in this book was supposedly very competitive to join, you never have the feeling that anyone involved is particularly bright or talented at what they do. Again, this is a refreshingly democratic imagining of future space travel.

Mickey is a curious sort of anti-hero. He is scholarly in the sense that he reads history constantly and actually seems to understand history better than most people. But he is also terrible at math and really crap at both decision-making and staying out of trouble. He is forced into the necessity of leaving his home planet of Midgard by his incredibly poor evaluation of his best friend's skills in a competition where he gambles on the outcome. Continuing to call this guy Berto "his friend" also represents questionable judgment, as is pointed out to him by a couple of women he gets involved with. However, unlike almost everyone else around him, Mickey has compassion for his fellow humans and for non-humans as well.

The relationship that Mickey7 establishes with the "creepers" is not fully explained. You are left wondering why "this Mickey" is treated differently than the others. One of the ongoing quasi-philosophical questions Ashton lobs out there is whether each successive Mickey is actually the same person. He trots out the parable of the "ship of Theseus," which was replaced one board at a time during its long journey. Question being, did he return in the same ship he set out in? While normal human beings age this way, Mickey is entirely remade every time he dies. When, through Berto's cowardice, he ends up having to deal with a Mickey8, it becomes obvious that Seven and Eight are quite different people. Ashton implies that Mickey7 is simply a better person than his other incarnations. Perhaps because of the experiences he has during a six-week period prior to his “death,” which he fails to upload and pass on? It is all sort of murky, but intriguing.

Ashton's narrative alternates between exposition and a mixture of dialog and description. It is always from Mickey's point of view, but sometimes Mickey waxes elegiac about historical or scientific or technical topics that are germane to understanding what happens next in the plot. E.g., why do people hate expendables? Ashton gives two separate and unrelated explanations (or has Mickey give them): (1) the "Natalist" movement believes that clones have no souls and are abominations, and (2) some sociopath named Antimova made multiples of himself to take over a planet. This duplication of effort is a little shaggy as plot economics go.

Still and all, Ashton's grimy future is likely a bit more accurate than, say, Star Trek. The grungy setting and the less-than-heroic characters that inhabit it represent a less romantic and more realistic take on where we are going and how we'll get there. That is a point of view that is remarkably down the middle between dystopia and utopia, and I'll take it. ...more

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LOST and FOUND: Beacon’s Black Community 1850 - 1930
by Dan W. Pruitt

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Mickey7 (Mickey7, #1)
by Edward Ashton (Goodreads Author)

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The book was better than the movie (Mickey17), but about halfway through the book I grew tired of Edward Ashton's sense of humor. His schtick is to have Mickey talk about big, weighty issues in this "whatevs-no biggee" language that is funny at first The book was better than the movie (Mickey17), but about halfway through the book I grew tired of Edward Ashton's sense of humor. His schtick is to have Mickey talk about big, weighty issues in this "whatevs-no biggee" language that is funny at first and then palls. Along the lines of "He's asking me to commit genocide and suicide with an anti-matter bomb. I'm not sure I'm entirely down with that." This kind of apparently casual off-handedness and lack of perspective because perspective-is-hard-under-these-conditions feels a little lazy after a while.

What are "these conditions?" Mickey Barnes is an "expendable" on a spaceship and then in a colony that is establishing a beachhead for humanity on a new planet. This means he is given dangerous jobs, is killed while doing them, and then is simply regenerated from his own DNA. Ashton explains, through Mickey, that the human body can handle more radiation than a robot before it shuts down and is therefore better at getting the really dirty jobs done.

In a lot of science fiction, this kind of colonizing effort seems to go off without a hitch, but in Ashton's world it is very dicey proposition and about half of the expeditions end disastrously. This attitude toward the future is one of the refreshing and interesting aspects of Ashton's storytelling. Almost every attempt at progress in this book is accomplished with a great deal of effort and with incomplete success. And, although the mission in this book was supposedly very competitive to join, you never have the feeling that anyone involved is particularly bright or talented at what they do. Again, this is a refreshingly democratic imagining of future space travel.

Mickey is a curious sort of anti-hero. He is scholarly in the sense that he reads history constantly and actually seems to understand history better than most people. But he is also terrible at math and really crap at both decision-making and staying out of trouble. He is forced into the necessity of leaving his home planet of Midgard by his incredibly poor evaluation of his best friend's skills in a competition where he gambles on the outcome. Continuing to call this guy Berto "his friend" also represents questionable judgment, as is pointed out to him by a couple of women he gets involved with. However, unlike almost everyone else around him, Mickey has compassion for his fellow humans and for non-humans as well.

The relationship that Mickey7 establishes with the "creepers" is not fully explained. You are left wondering why "this Mickey" is treated differently than the others. One of the ongoing quasi-philosophical questions Ashton lobs out there is whether each successive Mickey is actually the same person. He trots out the parable of the "ship of Theseus," which was replaced one board at a time during its long journey. Question being, did he return in the same ship he set out in? While normal human beings age this way, Mickey is entirely remade every time he dies. When, through Berto's cowardice, he ends up having to deal with a Mickey8, it becomes obvious that Seven and Eight are quite different people. Ashton implies that Mickey7 is simply a better person than his other incarnations. Perhaps because of the experiences he has during a six-week period prior to his “death,” which he fails to upload and pass on? It is all sort of murky, but intriguing.

Ashton's narrative alternates between exposition and a mixture of dialog and description. It is always from Mickey's point of view, but sometimes Mickey waxes elegiac about historical or scientific or technical topics that are germane to understanding what happens next in the plot. E.g., why do people hate expendables? Ashton gives two separate and unrelated explanations (or has Mickey give them): (1) the "Natalist" movement believes that clones have no souls and are abominations, and (2) some sociopath named Antimova made multiples of himself to take over a planet. This duplication of effort is a little shaggy as plot economics go.

Still and all, Ashton's grimy future is likely a bit more accurate than, say, Star Trek. The grungy setting and the less-than-heroic characters that inhabit it represent a less romantic and more realistic take on where we are going and how we'll get there. That is a point of view that is remarkably down the middle between dystopia and utopia, and I'll take it. ...more

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