War With The Newts by Karel Čapek

War With the Newts (originally Válka s Mloky)

Dark, funny satire. I haven't read any other Czech fiction, so I don't know if those are typical traits of their sf and fantasy, but I'm certainly looking forward to picking up Čapek's best known work, R.U.R..

In many ways, the newts might as well be robots (a word that Čapek himself invented). For most of the novel they are perfectly content to work, without much fuss or complaint, at any job presented to them. They take all abuse and violence against them in stride, as calmly as a little green anole will drop his tail when escaping a cat. It's man's inhumanity that is brought into sharp focus in the passages describing the various brutal experiments practiced upon the salamanders, not the creatures' worth as sentient beings.

I don't know about other countries or regions, but here in the American south we are carefully taught in school about the evils of the slave trade, of the way African people were crammed into ships and allowed to rot and die all the way across the ocean, as long as the bottom line was not too affected by the loss of profit. So when Čapek tells of the newts transported in dirty, sickening water tanks (or even worse, sealed into tin barrels) after being kidnapped from their homes, the comparison is obvious. But for all that, he writes well enough that the symbolism never feels forced - if it is slightly heavy handed, I can overlook that because it still gave me a punch in the gut. When the slave traders pull off a salamander's leg or arm and just shrug and assure the narrator that it will grow back anyway, so who cares?, it got to me enough that I sat the book down for a minute.

So, there's the question that is wrestled with for most of the book - are they animals? automatons? fellow thinking beings? Do they have souls, or are they simply a resource to be sold in carefully grouped batches to the highest bidder? Is education and a decent life the best thing for them, as new members of a human society? Or is that what later leads to their victory in a war that sort of doesn't even happen?

In the end, of course, we bring our downfall on ourselves. We breed them and seed them on every coastline in the world, we arm them and train them despite agreements and warnings to the contrary, we base an entire system of worldwide advancement upon them. And then they take over our airwaves and offer to buy the very land from us, with the comment that they're going to take it either way. Čapek, speaking directly to us in the final chapter, offers some little hope, but I'm pretty sure they won out in the end.

final thought: I didn't even touch on all the references to nazis (the Master Newt Race), fascism, unchecked capitalism, environmental damage, and imperialism. In less deft hands, this would have been unreadable. I'm glad to have "discovered" Čapek.

Out of the Silent Planet by C.S Lewis

Out of the Silent Planet

This is the only Lewis I've read aside from the Narnia series. Being as I was raised dirty heathen, I didn't pick up on the Christian aspects of his writing until later, and that still isn't the first thing that springs into view when I read him. Just so you know.

I think my favorite parts of this one are the descriptions of Ransom lying in the spaceship, watching space go by. For someone who'd not only obviously never been to space, but didn't even have any descriptions from others who had, Lewis paints a detailed and engrossing picture of the teeming heavens. The whole book is obviously influenced by HG Wells' First Men in the Moon, but not enough to keep it from being very much its own novel.

Now, don't get me wrong - there's a fairly simplistic "man is often evil due to the presence of Satan/bent Oyarsa on Earth, but the peoples of Mars are good, kind, and wise because they have true angels/true contact with God" theme running through the novel. Being as it's Lewis, I guess that's par for the course, and it didn't keep me from enjoying the story itself. I was intrigued by the idea of the various Martian races seeing each other as both human and animal (and thereby not needing pets in the way that Earthlings seem to, as a connection to the animal world within our own culture). I suspect that some folks right here see other races/nationalities the same way, and not in the respectful way Lewis lays on his creations.

You know, I think this book (or the whole series - I haven't got far enough into it to know) helped inspired L'Engle when she wrote A Wrinkle in Time. Ransom's discussions with the different races is echoed in some of the childrens' encounters as they travel outward from Earth. Plus, there's the image of our planet being shrouded or silent - set apart from the rest of creation.

final thought: It really all comes down to whether your believe that "Our right to supersede you is the right of the higher over the lower." I don't, and I enjoy the case made by Lewis on the matter as much as I enjoy his descriptions of the petrified Martian forests and the bright, warm stretches of space.

some would applaud

"What this country needs is Discipline! Peace is a great dream, but maybe sometimes it's only a pipe dream! I'm not so sure--now this will shock you, but I want you to listen to one woman who will tell you the unadulterated hard truth instead of a lot of sentimental taffy, and I'm not sure but that we need to be in a real war again, in order to learn Discipline! We don't want all this highbrow intellectuality, all this book-learning. That's good enough in its way, but isn't it, after all, just a nice toy for grownups? No, what we all of us must have, if this great land is going to go on maintaining its high position among the Congress of Nations, is Discipline--Will Power--Character!"

(It Can't Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis)

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Brave New World

Back to straight up, state control dystopia.

People USED to imagine that knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value. ...People still went on talking about truth and beauty as though they were sovereign goods. Right up to the time of the Nine Years' War. That made them change their tune all right. What's the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are popping all around you? That was when science first began to be controlled -- after the Nine Years' War. People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. We've gone on controlling ever since. It hasn't been very good for truth, of course. But it's been very good for happiness.

Anthrax bombs as an excuse for state control. You know, what makes classic dystopian fiction powerful is the ability to apply it to any generation's reality and still come up worried.

I'd honestly never read Brave New World before now. It's one of those classics I just never got around to. I read it right after First Men in the Moon by, more or less, accident, but it worked out well. Both concern societies in which the citizens are made, body and mind, for their alloted tasks in life. This prevents the longing and hustling that creates societal tension and individual angst. Of course, it also robs us of free will, creates a slave class, and prevents the striving and work that can carry us to the loftier heights.

You know, I'm going to look around for written defenses of the World State as outlined in BNW. It's no good for me simply to say, "This is obviously a horrible and frightening vision of the future," with no one offering any of the other side's arguments. I suspect such defense will just make me either disgusted or angry, but at least it would help solidify why it's such a disturbing image of society to me.

final thoughts: Beats the hell out of Rand any day.

Anthem, by Ayn Rand

Anthem

There's a reason I didn't read this one before now - it's a yawn. Blah blah blah, the individual above all, blah blah blah. In another time (either in my life, as in middle school, or in the world, as in when it came out) Anthem might have made a bigger impact on me. As it is, I'm old enough to be fairly sure that there's a world of ground to cover between nazi/commie state-owned marching in lockstep pure collectivism and I-as-God navel gazing ego worship.

I couldn't help but note that, in nearly the same thought, the main character goes from basically "I am alone myself, I will not be ruled, no one shall make laws for me" to "your name is Gaea, my beautiful woman, and you will bear my sons." Again, product of its times, but jarring as hell today.

final thought: Meh.