Timescoop by John Brunner

A lighthearted SF tale of rape, paedophilia, torture, slavery, murder and racism, with a central conceit which calls into question our very sense of self.

The conceit in question is a device which can take a 3d 'slice' out of a 4d object in the past and restore the fourth dimension to it, in effect creating a perfect copy. This 'timescoop' also works on people.

The playboy owner of the company who invented this thing, Harold Freitas III, uses it for a publicity stunt in which he brings to life his illustrious ancestors in the hopes of impressing his wife, Sarah, who he is keenly aware is smarter than he is. Unfortunately for him, they aren't all that illustrious after all. I rather like the core theme of this book that modern society is actually relatively enlightened and that, by comparison, history can be regarded as a kind of storage unit for assholes.

Edgar Freitas: The most presentable of the bunch, a pleasant young man, not much of a poet as claimed but popular with the ladies. An adventurer at heart, being snatched into the future was the perfect thing for him.
Reverend Ebenezer Freitas: Supposedly a pillar of his community, was actually responsible for burning his own wife and daughter as witches. Believes the modern world is a form of purgatory and that everyone he meets is a demon, but eventually comes to feel shame at his puritanism and ends up joining the Society for Absolute Orgasm.
Joshua Freitas: This august gentleman turned out to be an arrogant ponce and a slave trader. He picked a fight with the black scientist behind the project, Chester, and was promptly impaled by him. Chester avoided a murder conviction when the sheepish Joshua was timescooped and brought into the courtroom.
Tabitha Freitas: Supposedly a hero of the civil war, she actually just liked to fuck soldiers.
Horatio Freitas: Turned out to be a paranoid loon who wore a bulletproof vest everywhere he went.
Sir Godwin de Freitas-Molyneux: An unpleasant greasy crusader, wanted to nuke the middle east.
Sieur Bohun de Freitas: A Knight of William the Conquerer, and pretty much just an asshole.
Reginald de Freitas, Earl of Winchelsea and Poitenne: Supposedly a composer, turned out to be a fraud and child molestor to boot.
Bufallo Hank Freitas: A cowboy who wandered around the party watching porn and firing off his six guns at every climax.

With the help of Sarah, Chester and their massive computer Sparky, Harold struggles to make his party a success despite these assholes, and eventually they find a niche for each one of them within the modern world, learning a lesson about accepting people as they are rather than for what you want them to be.

They are opposed by Solomon Schatzenheim and the treacherous employee Cy Detrick, who arranges the murder at the party. Miriam, Solomon's unhappy trophy wife, helps Sarah out and in the process gets the divorce she was hoping for.

In the end Harold proves himself to Sarah by figuring out what needs to be done by himself, and Sparky confides in Chester that he planned everything from the start because he was sick of Harold relying on him for everything.

Weak keep. It was a decent story. I probably won't read it again anytime soon, but it's part of a nice hardcover series along with The Overman Culture and The Ice People. While I could do without the latter, the former is one of my favourite books.

Rebecca's World by Terry Nation

A children's book notable only for being written by Terry Nation of Dr Who and Blake's 7 fame. We're introduced to Rebecca just long enough to learn that she's bored and has broken a vase, when she's whisked off through a telescope by an unnamed and unpleasant little scientist, who then vanishes for the whole book only to pop up and return her to Earth when her adventure is over.

She quickly forms a party with Grisby (green coat, sore feet), Kovak (a crap spy) and Captain 'K' (a crap superhero). They explain that the world is beset by GHOSTS, which can only be repelled by the wood of their native trees. Unfortunately Mr Glister, the villain of the piece along with his long-suffering minions Lurk and Cringer, learned how to make glass and cut down all the forests to build a glass city. The last remaining wood has been made into shelters which Glister charges people to hide inside, and a single stick remains in the hands of Captain K, who uses it to protect people.

Visiting Mr Glister for dinner they steal the map which supposedly points the way to the last tree. There are riddles on the map which guide them past various children's story appropriate hazards - past the Scarepeople, up a stone needle and down the feather-filled middle, past a cave of spider-bats, through a labyrinth controlled by the tongue twister monster, past the National Society for the Furtherance of Bad Habits - a kindly couple who encourage children to lie, and their nail-biting pets - and the Swardlewardle creatures.

On the way they find the last two tweezerbirds, who come in handy later when everyone is captured and Lurk & Cringer cut down and burn the last tree.

An inoffensive tale, but nothing I need to read again.

Discard.

The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov

A story about a future society in which godlike beings called Eternals control time. One of them falls in love, which is Forbidden apparently. I skipped, appropriately enough, to the end: Long story short, he changes the past, eliminates his own world with the exception of him and his girlfriend, in order to create our world (by moving the first A-bomb tests from the 30th century to the 21st) and ensure that the world never has to be ruled by demigods.

Eh, I think I'll give this one a miss.

Discard.

Supernature by Lyall Watson

A book of kookery, by the looks of it.

Did you know that

A blunt razor blade left overnight inside a cardboard model of the Great Pyramid of Cheops will be sharp again in the morning?

A Chicago hotel porter can produce photographs by staring into cameras?

A potted plant registered emotion on a lie detector when an experimenter just decided to burn one of its leaves?

Doesn't sound promising, does it? These sort of factoids fascinated me when I was little, and thought that being published in a book indicated at least some degree of veracity. Let's take a look inside:

John Addey, an english philosopher, has found such rhythms in human birth times. He [found no corellation between being Pisces and dying of polio, but he] found a wave pattern running through the year. This was a regular pattern, which had 120 peaks in the year - it was vibrating in the 120th harmonic. A horoscope is built around an ecliptic circle of 360 degrees, so if the wave pattern is applied to this, it peaks every 3 degrees. Addey went back to his test data and found that a child born every third degree was 37% more likely to contract polio than a child born at other times.

He seems to be arguing that astrology has some scientific validity and is based on interference patterns in the various radiations from stellar bodies. Which sounds like typical pattern-seeking kookery to me.

I expected the book to be written by some fucking hippie, but according to wikipedia he was a respected zoologist and a disciple of Desmond Morris. He died the month before last.

Discard. This book is older than me, if I want to read about kooky theories there are fresh ones on the internet. I feel a little sad to see it go, as though a little of my inclination to seek the unknown is going with it.

Destroying the Library

I have a lot of books, gathered over a childhood of rummaging through jumble sales and second hand stores. I'm old enough now that I realise I'm never going to read all of them. Having resolved to sort through them and get rid of the ones that no longer interest me, I nonetheless don't wish this part of my memories to simply disappear.

On this blog I'm going to take at least a cursory look at each title and decide whether to keep or dispose of it. I may even read some of the books and post summaries, although I've become increasingly illiterate in my old age.

So let us begin. Oh, why Doomdark? It was an old character name, and probably the one I identified with most as a child. I wasn't a little goth, I just liked the sound of it for some inexplicable reason.