Dead Souls

Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, translated by D. J. Hogarth

This seems to be an exploration of wealth and money in mid 19th century Russia. People talk about control of others and buying land and peasants. There are other aspects of Russian life in place. The novel ends somewhat abruptly in mid-sentence, but does seem to ahve things fairly wrapped up. It did seem to go on a bit too long for the length of content.

A Canticle for Leibowitz

There has been a great nuclear war and the world is left in ruins. People have determined that technology was the problem, so they have worked on destroying all remnants of technology. Leibowitz helped retain manuscripts describing technology in a remote abbey. The monks copied important records, storing some, while also committing much to memory. 

The many centuries of history. The world stayed away from technology for hundred of years. The monks had to go through great struggles to save some records. Eventually the world had created new technology.

This is an interesting take on religion and technology. Could past societies have advanced to an advance state, only to have all knowledge destroyed? The passed-down remnants of religion would be the one source of the ancient knowledge that still remains. However, this knowledge would be interleaved with much other details with many bits expected to be known. (there is a bit where they try to recreate some technology and acknowledge that some things were not explained because they were just expected to be known.)

The novel also covers a long period of time. There are some records that are only preserved by luck. However, much is lost. After many centuries of time, the world world starts to create technology again in a slightly different way, only to encounter similar problems. How can we learn from our mistakes and not throw out the baby with the bathwater?

The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

The Cat Who Walks Through Walls is subtitled "A comedy of manners." A lot of really bizarre things happen to the main characters. They react to them in a matter-of-fact way. (The opening starts with a guy sitting down next to the main character and asking him to kill a guy. Then the guy is suddenly killed himself. The restaurant staff quickly cleans things up, and nobody in the restaurant even seems to notice.) Later the guy and his soon-to-be-wife find themselves locked out of their apartments and just go with the flow as they have to move.

Things gradually get weirder and weirder. There is some time travel group that goes on alternate histories. They save people from all sorts of bizarre things so that they can influence future events. Some alternate paths turn out worse than the one they were trying to avoid. (For example, preventing a tyrant may actually lead to global destruction in a nuclear war.) Different key events may happen in different ways in different alternate histories. We also get computers that become self-aware and a number of Heinlein's political beliefs (free-love military conservatism.)

This contains a number of similar characters of other books such as Moon is a Harsh Mistress. While it starts out with some interesting story, that gets lost in the final 3/4s of the book as more space gets spent on the random beliefs and just plain randomness.