Whoa. I’m about to do something I’ve never done before–and yes, I have drunk both whisky and black coffee–that makes me a hair uncomfortable: I’m about to recommend a book I haven’t even finished yet. And therby hangs a tale.<\/p>\n
Back in 1991 or 1992, I noticed that a new Niven\/Pournelle book had come out. In casual conversation, a friend of mine (now deceased) told me it was a waste of time and money and not to bother. The book? Fallen Angels<\/a><\/em>, by Niven, Pournelle, and Mike Flynn. Even though I trusted his judgment, I was curious. I was close to a Niven completist at that point, and he remains up in my top three favorite SF authors of all time. Alas, in 1991, I was doing long, long days trying to establish a profitable publishing company, and in truth I wasn’t reading a lot of anything that didn’t directly relate to PC Techniques Magazine<\/em>. So I passed on Fallen Angels<\/em>. I’ve since passed on some of the later Ringworld books, and most of the Man-Kzin War saga. Not a completist anymore, I guess. The older I get, the more I ration my time and attention to things that will prove worthwhile.<\/p>\n Then I remembered a couple of weeks ago that Glenn Reynolds always cites Fallen Angels<\/em> when he aggregates an article suggesting that the world has begun to chill. The core problem in Fallen Angels<\/em> is that the Earth has begun a new ice age in the near future. An ice age!<\/p>\n Cool!<\/p>\n I’ve always been interested in ice ages. Growing up in Chicago sometimes does that to people. I still lived in Chicago during the three blistering winters of 1977, 1978, and 1979. (And when I left, I went right to Rochester, NY, heh. No relief.) When I was a kid I had a plastic model skeleton of a mastodon. And I knew what a moraine was, having camped in Kettle Moraine State Park as a boy scout.<\/p>\n Six bucks on Kindle? Click. Sold! (The cover image, by the way, is gorgeous.) I didn’t start reading it right away, and the hideous conversion to ebook format made me nuts enough to order a paper copy before continuing. Typos, OCR errors, ugly layout, uggh. Nonetheless, I finished it.<\/p>\n No, that’s not the book I’m recommending. I didn’t hate Fallen Angels<\/em>, but I didn’t love it. Much of the book consists of one SF fan in-joke after another. That was the intent, but self-referential art has always turned me off. The only one missing was lime jello, and it’s entirely possible that by then I had tuned out the fangab enough that it slipped passed me. It’s readable enough to finish, and if you were a fan in the ’70s and ’80s, you’ll recognize some of the people, or maybe even yourself.<\/p>\n No, what happened while reading Fallen Angels<\/em> is that the book references another book, this time one that I’d never heard of before: The Sixth Winter,<\/em> by Douglas Orgill and John Gribbin<\/a>. Orgill was new to me. Gribbin is a British astrophysicist who has written a number of very good popular science books, my favorite of which being In Search of Shroedinger’s Cat<\/em><\/a>. The Sixth Winter<\/em> was published in 1979, and was about the emergence of a new ice age. (Gosh! Where did they ever get that<\/em> idea?!!?!?) Four bucks on Kindle? Click. Sold! And just in case, I ordered a hardcover, because used hardcovers could be had for as little as $3.66.<\/p>\n As I write this, the hardcover is still on order. That was certainly a good bet, because the conversion to ebook format was every bit as bad as that of Fallen Angels<\/em>. I started reading the crappy ebook edition…and couldn’t put it down. Wow. In Fallen Angels<\/em>, the new Ice Age was backdrop at best. In The Sixth Winter<\/em>, it’s the main attraction.<\/p>\n I don’t want to reveal too much about the book, since it’s full of clever little twists and turns, but I will say that it has something in common with the Carl & Jerry books<\/a>: It tries to explain the science that it presents, more than you’d generally get away with in a typical SF adventure novel. I’ll present a hunch: Orgill wrote the fiction, and Gribbon wrote the science. I found it remarkable how such a book grabbed my attention. With the caution (again) that I have a keen interest in ice ages, I recommend it. It is not great fiction. But it is extremely vivid in its descriptions, and there are (fictional) ideas and (granted, dated) science that I’m much enjoying. So there! I did it! I recommended a book that I’m not quite halfway through. Make of it what you will. Sneaky tip: Buy a paper copy. You’ll grind your teeth less over OCR errors, which are legion. “Seat” becomes “scat.” Ouch.<\/p>\n Now hold on. The story isn’t over yet. Partway into The Sixth Winter<\/em>, the book cites yet another book: Times of Feast, Times of Famine: A History of Climate Since the Year 1000,<\/em> by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie<\/a>. (1971.) This is a nonfiction book. There is no ebook edition. (I was slightly relieved to learn that.) Paperbacks from $8.93. Why not? Click. Sold! I don’t have it yet, but it includes some contemporary accounts of the Little Ice Age, which I consider to be part of the Ice Age concept and am much looking forward to reading.<\/p>\n Why this sudden interest in ice ages? It’s not sudden; it’s always been there. But I’ll tip my hand just a little bit: I’m heading into the downwind leg of my current work-in-progress, Dreamhealer<\/em>. Next up (this time fersure, Amy!) is The Molten Flesh<\/em>. I’ve struggled with the sequel to The Cunning Blood<\/em><\/a><\/em> for a long time. I’ve got a nanotech intelligence, an interesting heavy, and plenty of ideas to toss in the pot. The backdrop is still what it was in The Cunning Blood<\/em>: Canada rules a half-depopulated Earth with an iron hand. The US is still a province under direct Canadian control. The question that arises is this: After being in complete control of the planet for well over a hundred years, what could possibly<\/em> get Canada’s attention?<\/p>\n Heh. Captain Obvious signing off for now…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Whoa. I’m about to do something I’ve never done before–and yes, I have drunk both whisky and black coffee–that makes me a hair uncomfortable: I’m about to recommend a book I haven’t even finished yet. And therby hangs a tale. Back in 1991 or 1992, I noticed that a new Niven\/Pournelle book had come out. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[193,194,98,54,18],"class_list":["post-4167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-ice-age","tag-reading","tag-reviews-2","tag-science","tag-sf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4167"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4168,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4167\/revisions\/4168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}