This is a fas­ci­nat­ing doc­u­ment. Dean Mahomet came from a mod­estly suc­cess­ful Mus­lim fam­ily in India in the 18th Cen­tury, just at the peri­od when the East India Com­pany was absorb­ing and tak­ing over the crum­bling Mughal Empire. At the age of eleven, he became the friend and con­fi­dant of a teenage British offi­cer, and for the next six­teen years they advanced togeth­er in that curi­ous enti­ty, the Indi­an Army. Togeth­er, they saw action at the siege of Gwalior, the Great Mutiny, and oth­er key events. When a sud­den (though appar­ently unde­served) dis­grace end­ed his friend’s career, D.M. chose to accom­pany him to his native Ire­land. He seems to have been per­son­ally charm­ing, and was thor­oughly self-edu­cat­ed in the lit­er­ary cul­ture of England.

In Cork, Ire­land, he mar­ried into the local Anglo-Irish gen­try. He wrote and pub­lished his book, which is an account of his mil­i­tary career, with an empha­sis on describ­ing the sights and cus­toms of the regions in North­ern India that he tra­versed. It must be remem­bered that, for him, most places in India were just as “for­eign” as Bel­gium or Den­mark would be to an Eng­lish­man. The descrip­tion of a famine is par­tic­u­larly engross­ing. Read more »

Kim Stan­ley Robin­son is always read­able, though the nar­ra­tive often stops dead so that the read­er can be sup­plied with large quan­ti­ties of sci­en­tific, his­tor­i­cal, or polit­i­cal infor­ma­tion. It’s to Robinson’s cred­it that he can pull off these dis­qui­si­tions with­out los­ing the read­er. But it makes his nov­els a bit emo­tion­ally cool. This is Robinson’s Glob­al Warm­ing nov­el. It begins, inter­est­ingly, with the city of Wash­ing­ton rav­aged by a dev­as­tat­ing flood. The descrip­tion of the clum­sy and inad­e­quate response is won­der­fully pre­scient — the book was released only months before the New Orleans flood, and must have been writ­ten in 2004. The book didn’t strike ter­ror into my heart, as was intend­ed, since the sci­ence fic­tional premise is that the Unit­ed States is sud­denly forced to have Canada’s cli­mate. I’ve been out­doors in fifty-below zero weath­er numer­ous times, and, while a brac­ing expe­ri­ence, the phrase “fifty below” doesn’t have quite the same scare val­ue for me that it does for a Californian.

This nov­el pleased me. It’s well-writ­ten, the char­ac­ters come alive, and the author doesn’t pussy-foot. Cun­ning­ham takes three char­ac­ters from child­hood, bring­ing them up to youth­ful adult­hood. They end up form­ing a pre­car­i­ous fam­ily and raise a shild. Noth­ing very extra­or­di­nary hap­pens. But it is all done with great skill. The book is grown-up. As I turned the pages, I was remind­ed of my pro­tracted strug­gle with the cur­rent situ­ation in Sci­ence Fic­tion pub­lish­ing. I grew up with Sci­ence Fic­tion, and I would rather write in that genre than write the sort of thing that Michael Cun­ning­ham does. Read more »

14594. (Gavin Men­zies) 1421, the Year Chi­na Dis­cov­ered the World
14595. (Louise Levathes) When Chi­na Ruled the Seas
14596. (Bir­git & Peter Sawyer) Medieval Scan­di­navia From Con­ver­son to Reformation,
. . . . . cir­ca 800‑1500
14597. (Ellis Peters) The Sum­mer of the Danes Read more »

Far­ley Mowat engaged in some unre­strained spec­u­la­tion with his “Alban” pre­his­toric explor­ers. Now, Gavin Men­zies goes absolute­ly wild with spec­u­la­tion in his “recon­struc­tion” of a gigan­tic glob­al explo­ration by the Chi­nese admi­ral Zheng He in the year 1421.

It is well known that a large Chi­nese Impe­r­ial fleet, under the direc­tion of Zheng He (or Heng Ho), the eunuch aide-de-camp of the ear­ly Ming emper­or Zhu Di, under­took sev­en long voy­ages that com­bined trade, diplo­matic and explorato­ry motives. Chi­nese trade and explo­ration of the East African coast is well accept­ed by his­to­ri­ans. Zheng He’s voy­ages are well doc­u­mented by his sec­re­tary, Ma Huan, whose chron­i­cling of some of the voy­ages was wide­ly print­ed and dis­trib­uted, and there are col­lat­eral accounts by Fei Xin and Gong Zhen, both offi­cers on some of the voy­ages. There is also plen­ty of cor­rob­o­ra­tion in Ming dynasty pub­lic records. Zheng He’s celebri­ty was such that plays were being per­formed about him while the voy­ages were still going, and a cen­tury and a half lat­er, an immense­ly pop­u­lar his­tor­i­cal nov­el, Jour­ney of the Three-Jew­eled Eunuch to the West­ern Oceans by Luo Mao­deng, retold the sto­ry with embell­ish­ments. Read more »

(Stephen Lea­cock) Behind the Beyond 
. . . . 14545. (Don­ald Cameron) Intro­duc­tion [pref­ace]
. . . . 14546. (Stephen Lea­cock) Behind the Beyond, A Mod­ern Prob­lem Play [arti­cle]
. . . . 14547. (Stephen Lea­cock) With the Pho­tog­ra­ph­er [arti­cle]
. . . . 14548. (Stephen Lea­cock) The Den­tist and the Gas [arti­cle]
. . . . 14549. (Stephen Lea­cock) My Lost Oppor­tu­ni­ties [arti­cle] Read more »

This is Far­ley Mowat’s odd book about a pos­si­ble pre-viking Euro­pean pres­ence in the Cana­di­an Arctic.

Mowat is very care­ful to warn the read­er that he is engag­ing in a kind of spec­u­la­tive archae­ol­o­gy. He even inter­spers­es the text with lit­tle pas­sages of adven­ture fic­tion. But it is also clear that he has con­vinced him­self pret­ty thor­ough­ly that his spec­u­la­tions cor­re­spond to what actu­al­ly hap­pened. And the result is, of course, one of those books where a chap­ter begins with the asser­tion that some­thing might have hap­pened , which by the end of the chap­ter has been grad­u­al­ly trans­formed into what cer­tain­ly did hap­pen , and then becomes the premise for the next chap­ter, which begins with if that hap­pened, then this might have hap­pened , and so on. Grad­u­al­ly, a huge sequence of sup­po­si­tions begins to have the appear­ance of a frame­work of sol­id evi­dence, when it is most clear­ly not.

What he begins with is some­thing which is ver­i­fi­ably true. The east­ern Arc­tic of Cana­da is lit­tered with odd ruins and mega­lith­ic struc­tures that can not be eas­i­ly attrib­uted to the Inu­it, or to the ear­li­er Dorset or Thule cul­tures. Nor do they appear to be built by the Norse. They are def­i­nite­ly very old. The most inter­est­ing con­cen­tra­tions are on the west­ern shore of Unga­va bay, and in a bay imme­di­ate­ly south of the spec­tac­u­lar Torn­gat range, in Labrador. Read more »

This is a rea­son­ably inter­est­ing nov­el, though not eco­nom­i­cally writ­ten. It’s a sprawl­ing omnibus of digres­sions, com­bin­ing fan­tasy, mys­ti­cism, pol­i­tics and a kind of Jules et Jim tri­an­gle romance. Mulisch is intel­li­gent, learned, and absolute­ly sat­u­rated with con­ven­tional sys­tems and intel­lec­tual ortho­doxy. There is a lot of thought in this book, but not a par­ti­cle of orig­i­nal thought. This is, unfor­tu­nately, sup­posed to be the great mas­ter­piece of mod­ern Dutch lit­er­a­ture. Well, the Dutch have blessed the world with won­der­ful paint­ing and archi­tec­ture, and their trance djs are superb, but lit­er­a­ture just doesn’t seem to be their strong point. Nev­er­the­less, I might rec­om­mend it for a lazy afternoon’s read­ing. The inter­ac­tion of the char­ac­ters is some­times interesting.

An inter­est­ing his­tor­i­cal nov­el set in the peri­od of Romu­lus Augus­tus, the last Roman Emper­or in the West­ern Empire. The book is trans­lated from Ital­ian. It is fast-paced adven­ture fic­tion, writ­ten in the spir­it of Alexan­dre Dumas. There is a “sur­prise” end­ing, which the read­er will prob­a­bly see com­ing fair­ly ear­ly in the game. Though most of the action takes place in Italy, it is suf­fused with the “Mat­ter of Britain”. Doesn’t any­one ever write about late Roman Spain, or Nor­ica, or Africa?