Santa's Toy Shop

Santa's Toy Shop (Disney) (Little Golden Book) by Al Dempster, illustrated by Walt Disney Studios

Santa is very busy all year and never gets a chance to play with all the toys. Mrs. Claus gives him the idea to play with the plan to play with toys at the final house he delivers to. It ends with the hook that he may choose to play at any kids house. It is a very simple story that is drawn out a bit longer than it needs to.

Faulkner Audio Collection

This Faulkner audio collection includes a selection of short stories read by various narrators as well as some excerpts and a Nobel Acceptance speech read by Faulkner himself. The stories are told with a bit of a southern twang and are understandable. Faulkner's bits, however, might as well be in a different language. The thick, soft-spoken southern accent strains the ear to hear. The stories themselves typically spend a long time with people in a southern culture and then have a gothic twist (often at the ending.) For example, in "Rose for Emily", Emily is a recluse that has recently passed away. Only at the end of the story do we discover the dead body that was stored in a room. It is interesting to ponder that at the time of the writing of some stories that the Civil War was more recent than the Korean War is to us today.

Stories included are:
Rose for Emily
The Evening Sun
Spotted Horses
Barn Burning
Wash

Martian Chronicles

Earthlings go to Mars. They treat Martians as second-class citizens. However, the Martians have telepathic powers that are not understood by the earthlings. Eventually earth is all but destroyed by nuclear war. Mars is also evacuated, with only a few people remaining.

There seem to be a lot of allegorical interpretations of these stories. The exploration of the new world seems an obvious one. The Europeans came and destroyed the natives lives and built up a great civilization. But they also built up the ability to destroy the world - and wreck havok on the world.

You could also look at general nation building. Western powers attempt to build nations in countries, yet often get subsumed by the culture. (Look at what has happened in Iraq or Afghanistan.)

In addition to "rockets to Mars", a key science fiction element here is "virtual perception". Martians use telepathy to make earthlings believe they are living in a certain world. In one case, an entire rocket crew believes they have arrived in a midwestern town, with all their relatives present. However, it turns out to be an illusion, and it was just a means to trap and kill the earthlings. In other stories, human-like robots are used. One survivor on mars has recreated robotic versions of his family. In another story about censorship, somebody creates a life-size "house of usher" based on Poe's (banned) story. He has a big party there, in which the censorship police attend. In the party the guests see other guests die in a horrible way. However, they then see that same guest walking around perfectly fine. They are told it is just the robot version of the guess that is being hurt. However, it turns out to be the reverse, with the real one suffering the fate.

The stories prod us to think about our own values and perceptions. Do we have false perceptions in our daily activities and interactions?

I, Robot

[July 2009] It's always fun reading "old" futurist books that talk about the present day. By today, they were expecting flying cars, interplanetary travel and impressive robots. However, robots still had vacuum tubes, and newspapers were read in paper form.
These provide some interesting chuckles in this book. However, despite the title, the book is primarily a comment on man and his post World War II prejudices. The fear of the 'unknown' in robots can be replaced by many other modern technological fears, or could even be viewed as a fear of "immigrants". The main thrust of the many stories, however, involve how to 'outwit' robots that have been programmed to obey certain rules.
The many "stories" contained in the book are seen through the reflection of a robot psychologist, and while having some threads keeping them together, all could stand as short stories on their own. They each give rise to many psychological and sociological questions and help make this an interesting read.

Pebble in the Sky

Earth is a radioactive wasteland in the netherworld of the galactic empire. However, some people think it may have been the origin of the human race. An archaeologist is going out there to try to prove his theory that it was the birthplace of humans. Coincidentally, at the same time, the earthlings are plotting to take over the universe, by sending a biological agent to kill off everyone in the galaxy. (Since earth people have evolved so quickly, they are relatively unharmed by this disease that would kill most others.) The earth people are able to do this in part due to a machine that they have created that allows people to rapidly learn and think (as long as they are not killed off first.)

And, just to make sure there is some connection to today, a tailor (Schwartz) walking around mid-20th century Chicago accidentally gets zapped some 50000+ years in to the future by some strange nuclear incident. This guy would end up being the person that helps save the galaxy.

There are plenty of obvious parallels here. Substitute Africa for "earth" and the world for the galaxy, and you could easily have been writing about contemporary events. You could even through something like AIDS in there for the disease. (The book predated AIDS, but there were plenty of other "old world" diseases that have caused problems in the world.) The moderns have spread out of the "old" world, and now see the differently-evolved old-worlders as primitive. They wonder why they stick to there old ways when there is so much new that they are missing out. At the same time, they don't want them to be too closely intertwined in the world system.

The goal of the earth people could be a commentary on Napolean, Mao or many of the other large-scale empire-builders. They often come out in the name of liberation. But in the end, they simply replace one type of despot with another.

It could even be commentary on the black-white relations in the U.S. Rather than seek
"integration", some of the "opressed" would like to become the "opressors". After all, this is the system they are used to. Somebody has to be on the bottom, right?

In addition to the geo-political slant, we also have population control and eugenics. People are supposed to be euthanized when they turn 60. The only exception is for extraordinary talents that must be approved by the high minister (without recourse to appeal.) Why this is needed with such a small earth population is not clearly explained.

With all the politics, there is still room for a story. It was a page-turner, yet surprisingly flat. Schwartz seems to discover new avenues of his powers just as he needs them. Yet, he doesn't use them to his full ability. (If he can read people's minds and force them to do things, why are people still negotiating with him?) The climatic jailing and kidnapping seems to drag out for way to long. Then, after the rockets have been supposedly been launched and the galaxy is about to be destroyed, everyone behaves nobody seems to care. So much for suspense. We just have the good guy inform us that he was secretly controlling people to go bomb the base on his own.

While the writing had much to be desired, it did create an interesting world, and posed a number of contemplative questions. It was also one of his first works, so there was plenty of time in the career for the writing to improve.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

This was better than I remembered it. A girl goes exploring in an old house and discovers a wardrobe that leads to another world. The time moves at a different rate and she comes out shortly after entering (even though she was there for a while.) The other kids do not believe her. A boy stumbles in and encounters the evil "queen" who offers him magical Turkish delight. He craves it and wants more and more (along with promised kingship and glory.) When he returns, he tells the girl he was there, but then tells the others that she simply had an imagination. Eventually they all end up in Narnia, where the boy discovers that the "queen" is just trying to use him for her means. Eventually the lion dies for them, thereby reversing magic and saving everyone (including himself.)

The Christianity is obvious,(kids are daughters of eve or sons of Adam), yet subdued. (The evil queen comes from another parallel line of Adam.) The Lion is a pretty obvious Christ figure, complete with the sacrifice. However, the world is still a world of its own, unique from any biblical one.

One message seems to be to not give in to temptations to mess up your life in search of yummy food. (Hmmm, that is a tough one to follow.)