The War of Art

Author: Steven Pressfield
Recommended for: Anyone working on a creative or entrepreneurial endeavor
Read: November 2014, October 2019

Quick Summary:

The War of Art is an essential book for anyone working on a creative or entrepreneurial endeavor. In The War of Art, Steven Pressfield identifies the force that opposes our creative efforts as Resistance. Pressfield points out the different forms that Resistance takes and methods that it uses to undermine us every step of the way. Pressfield also provides strategies for overcoming Resistance, primarily by focusing on mastering our craft and showing up every single day.

If you enjoyed The War of Art, you can follow the book with Do the Work, a short follow-up read that focuses on overcoming and defeating Resistance.

There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.

What does it tell us about the architecture of our psyches that, without our exerting effort or even thinking about it, some voice in our head pipes up to counsel us (and counsel us wisely) on how to do our work and live our lives? Whose voice is it? What software is grinding away, scanning gigabytes, while we, our mainstream selves, are otherwise occupied?

Key Lessons:

That feeling that I feel inside – the one that attempts to block me at every turn – that is real, and not something I made up. All creative individuals must wrestle with it.
We can defeat Resistance by simply dedicating ourselves to our work at the same time every day. Treat your work professionally. Show up, no matter what.

My Highlights

Italicized sub-bullet comments are mine.

When inspiration touches talent, she gives birth to truth and beauty.
How many pages have I produced? I don’t care. Are they any good? I don’t even think about it. All that matters is I’ve put in my time and hit it with all I’ve got.
- Eventually, once you’ve put in enough time, you’ll come up with something good!
There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.
Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.
One night I was layin’ down, I heard Papa talkin’ to Mama. I heard Papa say, to let that boy boogie-woogie. ‘Cause it’s in him and it’s got to come out. — John Lee Hooker, “Boogie Chillen”
How many of us have become drunks and drug addicts, developed tumors and neuroses, succumbed to painkillers, gossip, and compulsive cell-phone use, simply because we don’t do that thing that our hearts, our inner genius, is calling us to? Resistance defeats us.
The enemy is a very good teacher. — the Dalai Lama
Resistance is not a peripheral opponent. Resistance arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuated. Resistance is the enemy within.
Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.
We’re wrong if we think we’re the only ones struggling with Resistance. Everyone who has a body experiences Resistance.
The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day.
Resistance has no strength of its own. Every ounce of juice it possesses comes from us. We feed it with power by our fear of it. Master that fear and we conquer Resistance.
RESISTANCE IS MOST POWERFUL AT THE FINISH LINE
Odysseus almost got home years before his actual homecoming. Ithaca was in sight, close enough that the sailors could see the smoke of their families’ fires on shore. Odysseus was so certain he was safe, he actually lay down for a snooze. It was then that his men, believing there was gold in an ox-hide sack among their commander’s possessions, snatched this prize and cut it open. The bag contained the adverse Winds, which King Aeolus had bottled up for Odysseus when the wanderer had touched earlier at his blessed isle. The winds burst forth now in one mad blow, driving Odysseus’ ships back across every league of ocean they had with such difficulty traversed, making him endure further trials and sufferings before, at last and alone, he reached home for good.
The danger is greatest when the finish line is in sight. At this point, Resistance knows we’re about to beat it. It hits the panic button. It marshals one last assault and slams us with everything it’s got.
The professional must be alert for this counterattack. Be wary at the end. Don’t open that bag of wind.
The reason is that they are struggling, consciously or unconsciously, against their own Resistance. The awakening writer’s success becomes a reproach to them. If she can beat these demons, why can’t they?
Often couples or close friends, even entire families, will enter into tacit compacts whereby each individual pledges (unconsciously) to remain mired in the same slough in which she and all her cronies have become so comfortable.
The highest treason a crab can commit is to make a leap for the rim of the bucket.
The awakening artist must be ruthless, not only with herself but with others. Once you make your break, you can’t turn around for your buddy who catches his trouser leg on the barbed wire. The best thing you can do for that friend (and he’d tell you this himself, if he really is your friend) is to get over the wall and keep motating.
The best and only thing that one artist can do for another is to serve as an example and an inspiration.
The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don’t just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed.
Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. This second, we can turn the tables on Resistance.
We get ourselves in trouble because it’s a cheap way to get attention. Trouble is a faux form of fame. It’s easier to get busted in the bedroom with the faculty chairman’s wife than it is to finish that dissertation on the metaphysics of motley in the novellas of Joseph Conrad.
Ill health is a form of trouble, as are alcoholism and drug addiction, proneness to accidents, all neurosis including compulsive screwing-up, and such seemingly benign foibles as jealousy, chronic lateness, and the blasting of rap music at 110 dB from your smoked-glass ’95 Supra. Anything that draws attention to ourselves through pain-free or artificial means is a manifestation of Resistance.
- I have certainly been guilty here. For years at a time.
The working artist will not tolerate trouble in her life because she knows trouble prevents her from doing her work. The working artist banishes from her world all sources of trouble. She harnesses the urge for trouble and transforms it in her work.
- And this is my cure
When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul’s call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers. We’re doing exactly what TV commercials and pop materialist culture have been brainwashing us to do from birth. Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification and hard work, we simply consume a product.
What finally convinced me to go ahead was simply that I was so unhappy not going ahead. I was developing symptoms. As soon as I sat down and began, I was okay.
John Lennon once wrote: Well, you think you’re so clever and classless and free / But you’re all fucking peasants / As far as I can see
We unplug ourselves from the grid by recognizing that we will never cure our restlessness by contributing our disposable income to the bottom line of Bullshit, Inc., but only by doing our work.
We’re wired tribally, to act as part of a group. Our psyches are programmed by millions of years of hunter-gatherer evolution. We know what the clan is; we know how to fit into the band and the tribe. What we don’t know is how to be alone. We don’t know how to be free individuals.
The artist and the fundamentalist arise from societies at differing stages of development. The artist is the advanced model. His culture possesses affluence, stability, enough excess of resource to permit the luxury of self-examination. The artist is grounded in freedom. He is not afraid of it. He is lucky. He was born in the right place. He has a core of self- confidence, of hope for the future. He believes in progress and evolution. His faith is that humankind is advancing, however haltingly and imperfectly, toward a better world.
Fundamentalism is the philosophy of the powerless, the conquered, the displaced and the dispossessed. Its spawning ground is the wreckage of political and military defeat, as Hebrew fundamentalism arose during the Babylonian captivity, as white Christian fundamentalism appeared in the American South during Reconstruction, as the notion of the Master Race evolved in Germany following World War I. In such desperate times, the vanquished race would perish without a doctrine that restored hope and pride.
The humanist believes that humankind, as individuals, is called upon to co-create the world with God. This is why he values human life so highly. In his view, things do progress, life does evolve; each individual has value, at least potentially, in advancing this cause.
The paradox seems to be, as Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.
If you find yourself criticizing other people, you’re probably doing it out of Resistance. When we see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own.
Individuals who are realized in their own lives almost never criticize others. If they speak at all, it is to offer encouragement.
Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.
The professional tackles the project that will make him stretch. He takes on the assignment that will bear him into uncharted waters, compel him to explore unconscious parts of himself.
(Conversely, the professional turns down roles that he’s done before. He’s not afraid of them anymore. Why waste his time?)
If you didn’t love the project that is terrifying you, you wouldn’t feel anything.
Grandiose fantasies are a symptom of Resistance. They’re the sign of an amateur. The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work.
The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, whatever they like.
What are we trying to heal, anyway? The athlete knows the day will never come when he wakes up pain-free. He has to play hurt.
Have you ever been to a workshop? These boondoggles are colleges of Resistance. They ought to give out Ph.D.’s in Resistance. What better way of avoiding work than going to a workshop? But what I hate even worse is the word support.
- Pressfield’s view certainly makes me feel less guilty about holding this view as well!
It is one thing to study war and another to live the warrior’s life. — Telamon of Arcadia, mercenary of the fifth century B.C.
Someone once asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. “I write only when inspiration strikes,” he replied. “Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.” That’s a pro.
I’m keenly aware of the Principle of Priority, which states (a) you must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important, and (b) you must do what’s important first.
The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.
Remember, the Muse favors working stiffs. She hates prima donnas. To the gods the supreme sin is not rape or murder, but pride. To think of yourself as a mercenary, a gun for hire, implants the proper humility. It purges pride and preciousness.
Resistance loves pride and preciousness. Resistance says, “Show me a writer who’s too good to take Job X or Assignment Y and I’ll show you a guy I can crack like a walnut.”
The professional arms himself with patience, not only to give the stars time to align in his career, but to keep himself from flaming out in each individual work. He knows that any job, whether it’s a novel or a kitchen remodel, takes twice as long as he thinks and costs twice as much. He accepts that. He recognizes it as reality.
A pro views her work as craft, not art. Not because she believes art is devoid of a mystical dimension. On the contrary. She understands that all creative endeavor is holy, but she doesn’t dwell on it. She knows if she thinks about that too much, it will paralyze her. So she concentrates on technique. The professional masters how, and leaves what and why to the gods. Like Somerset Maugham she doesn’t wait for inspiration, she acts in anticipation of its apparition. The professional is acutely aware of the intangibles that go into inspiration. Out of respect for them, she lets them work. She grants them their sphere while she concentrates on hers.
The professional shuts up. She doesn’t talk about it. She does her work.
The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear; then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome. He knows there is no such thing as a fearless warrior or a dread-free artist.
The professional conducts his business in the real world. Adversity, injustice, bad hops and rotten calls, even good breaks and lucky bounces all comprise the ground over which the campaign must be waged. The field is level, the professional understands, only in heaven.
A PROFESSIONAL DEDICATES HIMSELF TO MASTERING TECHNIQUE
The professional respects his craft. He does not consider himself superior to it. He recognizes the contributions of those who have gone before him. He apprentices himself to them.
The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique not because he believes technique is a substitute for inspiration but because he wants to be in possession of the full arsenal of skills when inspiration does come. The professional is sly. He knows that by toiling beside the front door of technique, he leaves room for genius to enter by the back.
A PROFESSIONAL DOES NOT HESITATE TO ASK FOR HELP
Tiger Woods is the consummate professional. It would never occur to him, as it would to an amateur, that he knows everything, or can figure everything out on his own. On the contrary, he seeks out the most knowledgeable teacher and listens with both ears. The student of the game knows that the levels of revelation that can unfold in golf, as in any art, are inexhaustible.
The professional cannot take rejection personally because to do so reinforces Resistance. Editors are not the enemy; critics are not the enemy. Resistance is the enemy. The battle is inside our own heads. We cannot let external criticism, even if it’s true, fortify our internal foe. That foe is strong enough already.
A professional schools herself to stand apart from her performance, even as she gives herself to it heart and soul. The Bhagavad-Gita tells us we have a right only to our labor, not to the fruits of our labor. All the warrior can give is his life; all the athlete can do is leave everything on the field.
The professional loves her work. She is invested in it wholeheartedly. But she does not forget that the work is not her. Her artistic self contains many works and many performances. Already the next is percolating inside her. The next will be better, and the one after that better still.
The professional cannot let himself take humiliation personally. Humiliation, like rejection and criticism, is the external reflection of internal Resistance.
First, he didn’t react reflexively. He didn’t allow an act that by all rights should have provoked an automatic response of rage to actually produce that rage. He controlled his reaction. He governed his emotion.
What he did do was maintain his sovereignty over the moment. He understood that, no matter what blow had befallen him from an outside agency, he himself still had his job to do, the shot he needed to hit right here, right now. And he knew that it remained within his power to produce that shot. Nothing stood in his way except whatever emotional upset he himself chose to hold on to. Tiger’s mother, Kultida, is a Buddhist. Perhaps from her he had learned compassion, to let go of fury at the heedlessness of an overzealous shutter- clicker. In any event Tiger Woods, the ultimate professional, vented his anger quickly with a look, then recomposed himself and returned to the task at hand.
The professional cannot allow the actions of others to define his reality.
Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page. Nothing matters but that he keep working.
Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page. Nothing matters but that he keep working. Short of a family crisis or the outbreak of World War III, the professional shows up, ready to serve the gods.
Remember, Resistance wants us to cede sovereignty to others. It wants us to stake our self-worth, our identity, our reason-for-being, on the response of others to our work. Resistance knows we can’t take this. No one can.
The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment. The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts.
A PROFESSIONAL RECOGNIZES HER LIMITATIONS She gets an agent, she gets a lawyer, she gets an accountant. She knows she can only be a professional at one thing. She brings in other pros and treats them with respect.
A PROFESSIONAL REINVENTS HIMSELF
The professional does not permit himself to become hidebound within one incarnation, however comfortable or successful. Like a transmigrating soul, he shucks his outworn body and dons a new one. He continues his journey.
Making yourself a corporation (or just thinking of yourself in that way) reinforces the idea of professionalism because it separates the artist-doing-the-work from the will-and- consciousness-running-the-show. No matter how much abuse is heaped on the head of the former, the latter takes it in stride and keeps on trucking. Conversely with success: You-the-writer may get a swelled head, but you-the-boss remember how to take yourself down a peg.
Have you ever worked in an office? Then you know about Monday morning status meetings. The group assembles in the conference room and the boss goes over what assignments each team member is responsible for in the coming week. When the meeting breaks up, an assistant prepares a work sheet and distributes it. When this hits your desk an hour later, you know exactly what you have to do that week. I have one of those meetings with myself every Monday. I sit down and go over my assignments. Then I type it up and distribute it to myself. I have corporate stationery and corporate business cards and a corporate checkbook. I write off corporate expenses and pay corporate taxes. I have different credit cards for myself and my corporation.
If we think of ourselves as a corporation, it gives us a healthy distance on ourselves. We’re less subjective. We don’t take blows as personally. We’re more cold-blooded; we can price our wares more realistically. Sometimes, as Joe Blow himself, I’m too mild-mannered to go out and sell. But as Joe Blow, Inc., I can pimp the hell out of myself. I’m not me anymore. I’m Me, Inc.
The first duty is to sacrifice to the gods and pray them to grant you the thoughts, words, and deeds likely to render your command most pleasing to the gods and to bring yourself, your friends, and your city the fullest measure of affection and glory and advantage. –Xenophon, The Cavalry Commander
If it does, you have my permission to think of angels in the abstract. Consider these forces as being impersonal as gravity. Maybe they are. It’s not hard to believe, is it, that a force exists in every grain and seed to make it grow? Or that in every kitten or colt is an instinct that impels it to run and play and learn.
Here’s Socrates, in Plato’s Phaedrus, on the “noble effect of heaven-sent madness”: The third type of possession and madness is possession by the Muses. When this seizes upon a gentle and virgin soul it rouses it to inspired expression in lyric and other sorts of poetry, and glorifies countless deeds of the heroes of old for the instruction of posterity. But if a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman.
Our ancestors were keenly cognizant of forces and energies whose seat was not in this material sphere but in a loftier, more mysterious one. What did they believe about this higher reality? First, they believed that death did not exist there. The gods are immortal. The gods, though not unlike humans, are infinitely more powerful. To defy their will is futile. To act toward heaven with pride is to call down calamity. Time and space display an altered existence in this higher dimension. The gods travel “swift as thought.” They can tell the future, some of them, and though the playwright Agathon tells us, This alone is denied to God: the power to undo the past yet the immortals can play tricks with time, as we ourselves may sometimes, in dreams or visions. The universe, the Greeks believed, was not indifferent. The gods take an interest in human affairs, and intercede for good or ill in our designs. The contemporary view is that all this is charming but preposterous. Is it? Then answer this. Where did Hamlet come from? Where did the Parthenon come from? Where did Nude Descending a Staircase come from?
I’ll take Xenophon at his word; before I sit down to work, I’ll take a minute and show respect to this unseen Power who can make or break me.
Artists have invoked the Muse since time immemorial. There is great wisdom to this. There is magic to effacing our human arrogance and humbly entreating help from a source we cannot see, hear, touch, or smell.
- A good habit to build
Sustain for me. Homer doesn’t ask for brilliance or success. He just wants to keep this thing going. This song. That about covers it. From The Brothers Karamazov to your new venture in the plumbing-supply business.
I admire particularly the warning against the second crime, to destroy for meat the oxen of the most exalted Sun. That’s the felony that calls down soul-destruction: the employment of the sacred for profane means. Prostitution. Selling out.
Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would not otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man would have dreamed would come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now.” — W. H. Murray, The Scottish Himalayan Expedition
When I finish a day’s work, I head up into the hills for a hike. I take a pocket tape recorder because I know that as my surface mind empties with the walk, another part of me will chime in and start talking.
What does it tell us about the architecture of our psyches that, without our exerting effort or even thinking about it, some voice in our head pipes up to counsel us (and counsel us wisely) on how to do our work and live our lives? Whose voice is it? What software is grinding away, scanning gigabytes, while we, our mainstream selves, are otherwise occupied?
The principle of organization is built into nature. Chaos itself is self-organizing. Out of primordial disorder, stars find their orbits; rivers make their way to the sea.
How do we experience this? By having ideas. Insights pop into our heads while we’re shaving or taking a shower or even, amazingly, while we’re actually working. The elves behind this are smart. If we forget something, they remind us. If we veer off-course, they trim the tabs and steer us back.
What can we conclude from this? Clearly some intelligence is at work, independent of our conscious mind and yet in alliance with it, processing our material for us and alongside us.
The power to take charge was in my hands; all I had to do was believe it.
You’re supposed to learn that things that you think are nothing, as weightless as air, are actually powerful substantial forces, as real and as solid as earth.
The moment a person learns he’s got terminal cancer, a profound shift takes place in his psyche. At one stroke in the doctor’s office he becomes aware of what really matters to him. Things that sixty seconds earlier had seemed all- important suddenly appear meaningless, while people and concerns that he had till then dismissed at once take on supreme importance.
Other thoughts occur to the patient diagnosed as terminal. What about that gift he had for music? What became of the passion he once felt to work with the sick and the homeless? Why do these unlived lives return now with such power and poignancy?
Faced with our imminent extinction, Tom Laughlin believes, all assumptions are called into question. What does our life mean? Have we lived it right? Are there vital acts we’ve left unperformed, crucial words unspoken? Is it too late?
The Ego, Jung tells us, is that part of the psyche that we think of as “I.” Our conscious intelligence. Our everyday brain that thinks, plans and runs the show of our day-to-day life. The Self, as Jung defined it, is a greater entity, which includes the Ego but also incorporates the Personal and Collective Unconscious. Dreams and intuitions come from the Self. The archetypes of the unconscious dwell there. It is, Jung believed, the sphere of the soul.
Have you ever wondered why the slang terms for intoxication are so demolition-oriented? Stoned, smashed, hammered. It’s because they’re talking about the Ego. It’s the Ego that gets blasted, waxed, plastered. We demolish the Ego to get to the Self.
The instinct that pulls us toward art is the impulse to evolve, to learn, to heighten and elevate our consciousness. The Ego hates this. Because the more awake we become, the less we need the Ego.
These are serious fears. But they’re not the real fear. Not the Master Fear, the Mother of all Fears that’s so close to us that even when we verbalize it we don’t believe it. Fear That We Will Succeed.
We know that if we embrace our ideals, we must prove worthy of them. And that scares the hell out of us. What will become of us? We will lose our friends and family, who will no longer recognize us. We will wind up alone, in the cold void of starry space, with nothing and no one to hold on to.
Personally I’m with Wordsworth: Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life’s star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come, From God who is our home.
Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.
In the animal kingdom, individuals define themselves in one of two ways — by their rank within a hierarchy (a hen in a pecking order, a wolf in a pack) or by their connection to a territory (a home base, a hunting ground, a turf).
We thrash around, flashing our badges of status (Hey, how do you like my Lincoln Navigator?) and wondering why nobody gives a shit.
We have entered Mass Society. The hierarchy is too big. It doesn’t work anymore.
But the artist cannot look to others to validate his efforts or his calling. If you don’t believe me, ask Van Gogh, who produced masterpiece after masterpiece and never found a buyer in his whole life.
In other words, the hack writes hierarchically. He writes what he imagines will play well in the eyes of others. He does not ask himself, What do I myself want to write? What do I think is important? Instead he asks, What’s hot, what can I make a deal for?
The artist and the mother are vehicles, not originators. They don’t create the new life, they only bear it. This is why birth is such a humbling experience. The new mom weeps in awe at the little miracle in her arms. She knows it came out of her but not from her, through her but not of her.
Instead let’s ask ourselves like that new mother: What do I feel growing inside me? Let me bring that forth, if I can, for its own sake and not for what it can do for me or how it can advance my standing.
Here’s another test. Of any activity you do, ask yourself: If I were the last person on earth, would I still do it?
Someone once asked the Spartan king Leonidas to identify the supreme warrior virtue from which all others flowed. He replied: “Contempt for death.” For us as artists, read “failure.” Contempt for failure is our cardinal virtue. By confining our attention territorially to our own thoughts and actions — in other words, to the work and its demands — we cut the earth from beneath the blue-painted, shield-banging, spear-brandishing foe.
When Krishna instructed Arjuna that we have a right to our labor but not to the fruits of our labor, he was counseling the warrior to act territorially, not hierarchically. We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause.
Then there’s the third way proffered by the Lord of Discipline, which is beyond both hierarchy and territory. That is to do the work and give it to Him. Do it as an offering to God. Give the act to me. Purged of hope and ego, Fix your attention on the soul. Act and do for me. The work comes from heaven anyway. Why not give it back?
Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.
- Put this somewhere that you can see it.

March 7, 2019

Gary Snyder’s Cold Mountain Poems

Author: Gary Snyder
Rating: 4/5
Read: 4/18, 2/19
Who Should Read: People interested in Zen, poetry, Chinese thought

Hanshan, or “Cold Mountain”, is one of my favorite Chinese poets (alongside Stonehouse). Hahshan was (supposedly) a Chinese Buddhist monk who lived in isolation in the wilderness. The poems attributed to him sparkle with a disdain for civilized life and carry a Zen and Taoist bent.

Cold Mountain Poems is a small collection poems translated by Gary Snyder, who does a wonderful job translating Hanshan’s words and feelings. Included are some of my favorite poems from this collection.

My Highlights

Gary Snyder on why he was qualified to translate Cold Mountain’s poems:

I had been a mountaineer and forestry laborer as well as a bookish scholar for several years already, and simply could draw on a wide experience of events and words and observations in finding ways to represent the Han-shan imagery. I also regularly made a practice of internalizing and visualizing the taste of the whole scene – cold, wet, rocky, lonely, or whatever was called for – to the point that I could write it out with some sense of presence. This doesn’t always work by any means, but it is exciting when it does. It reaches across time and space.

On the interest in such poetry:

At least for non–East Asians, they touch us not because of the invocation of a hermetic ideal or solitary asceticism, but because of the almost joyful rejection of materialism and the absolute pleasure in being in the great world “with a sky for a blanket,” aware of living a life apart from the value-assumptions of mainstream people.

There is a deep strain of non-ideological dubiousness about the large materialistic goals that are the official “dream” of developed-world people and certain others worldwide.

Selected Poems

Here are some of my favorite poems from this collection.

2

In a tangle of cliffs I chose a place –
Bird-paths, but no trails for men.
What’s beyond the yard?
White clouds clinging to vague rocks.
Now I’ve lived here – how many years –
Again and again, spring and winter pass.
Go tell families with silverware and cars
“What’s the use of all that noise and money?”

6

Men ask the way to Cold Mountain
Cold Mountain: There’s no through trail.
In summer, ice doesn’t melt
The rising sun blurs in swirling fog
How did I make it?
My heart’s not the same as yours.
If your heart was like mine
You’d get it and be right here.

8

Clambering up the Cold Mountain Path,
The Cold Mountain Trail goes on and on:
The long gorge choked with scree and boulders,
The wide cree, the mist-blurred grass.
The moss is slippery, though there’s been no rain.
The pine sings, but there’s no wind.
Who can leap the world’s ties
and sit with me among the white clouds?

11

Spring-water in the green creek is clear
Moonlight on Cold Mountain is white
Silent knowledge – the spirit is enlightened of itself
Contemplate the void: this world exceeds stillness

16

Cold Mountain is a house
Without beams or walls.
The six doors left and right are open
The hall is blue sky.
The rooms all vacant and vague
The east wall beats on the west wall
At the center nothing.
Borrowers don’t bother me
In the cold I build a little fire
When I’m hungry I boil up some greens.
I’ve got no use for the Kulak
With his big barn and pasture –
He just sets up a prison for himself.
Once in he can’t get out.
Think it over –
You know it might happen to you.

17

If I hide out at Cold Mountain
Living off mountain plants and berries –
All my lifetime, why worry?
One follows his karma through.
Days and months slip by like water,
Time is like sparks knocked off flint.
Go ahead and let the world change –
I’m happy to sit among these cliffs.

20

Some critic tried to put me down –
“Your poems lack the basic truth of Tao”
And I recall the old-timers
Who were poor and didn’t care.
I have to laugh at him,
He misses the point entirely,
Men like that
Ought to stick to making money.

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Cold Mountain Poems

By Gary Snyder

January 8, 2019

The Philip K Dick Anthology

Author: Philip K. Dick
Rating: 4/5
Last Read: December 2014
Who Should Read: Sci-fi fans, short story fans

The Philip K. Dick Anthology is a collection of thirteen short stories by the famed sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick. Many of his stories have been turned into movies such as Total Recall, Minority Report, and Blade Runner.

This collection contains a different list of stories than those in the Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick. The thirteen included stories are:

“The Eyes Have It”
“Beyond the Door”
“Beyond Lies the Wub”
“Mr. Spaceship”
“The Skull”
“The Crystal Crypt”
“The Defenders”
“The Hanging Stranger”
“The Gun”
“Tony and the Beetles”
“The Variable Man”
“Piper in the Woods”
“Second Variety”

My Highlights

Apparently in my first pass through I was only struck by a single passage, but it is a beautiful one:

find in your Odysseus a figure common to the mythology of most self-conscious races. As I interpret it, Odysseus wanders as an individual, aware of himself as such. This is the idea of separation, of separation from family and country. The process of individuation.”
“But Odysseus returns to his home.” Peterson looked out the port window, at the stars, endless stars, burning intently in the empty universe. “Finally he goes home.”
“As must all creatures. The moment of separation is a temporary period, a brief journey of the soul. It begins, it ends. The wanderer returns to land and race….”

January 3, 2019

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Author: Philip K. Dick
Rating: 4/5
Last Read: November 2014
Who Should Read: Sci-fi fans, people who liked the movie Blade Runner

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, like many other Philip K. Dick stories, inspired the movie Blade Runner. Unlike the other movies-inspired-by-stories, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a full novel, though you might find yourself finishing it in a single sitting as if it were a short story.

The novel and the movie are markedly different, but do share similarities. The main plot still follows a bounty hunter, Rick Deckard, who is tasked with retiring escaped androids. As with most Philip K. Dick stories, there is an exploration of an underlying theme about what it means to be human.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is an excellent entry point into the work of Philip K. Dick. You won’t be disappointed.

It is no good. I can’t do it. I can play the Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Trash Compactor Repairman Game, but I cannot turn it into a story at once puzzling, poignant, grotesque, philosophical, satirical, and fun. There is a very special way of doing this and the first step in its mastery involves being Philip K. Dick.

My Highlights

Empathy, evidently, existed only within the human community, whereas intelligence to some degree could be found throughout every phylum and order including the arachnida.

Because, ultimately, the empathic gift blurred the boundaries between hunter and victim, between the successful and the defeated. As in the fusion with Mercer, everyone ascended together

The tyranny of an object, he thought. It doesn’t know I exist. Like the androids, it had no ability to appreciate the existence of another.

But maybe she doesn’t know how to cook, he thought suddenly. Okay, I can do it; I’ll fix dinner for both of us. And I’ll show her how so she can do it in the future if she wants. She’ll probably want to, once I show her how; as near as I can make out, most women, even young ones like her, like to cook: it’s an instinct.

“I am your friend,” the old man said. “But you must go on as if I did not exist. Can you understand that?” He spread empty hands.
“No,” Rick said. “I can’t understand that. I need help.”
“How can I save you,” the old man said, “if I can’t save myself?” He smiled. “Don’t you see? There is no salvation.”

“You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.”

Do androids dream? Rick asked himself. Evidently; that’s why they occasionally kill their employers and flee here. A better life, without servitude.

Time and tide, he thought. The cycle of life. Ending in this, the last twilight. Before the silence of death. He perceived in this a micro-universe, complete.

She seemed more externally composed now. But still fundamentally frantic and tense. Yet, the dark fire waned; the life force oozed out of her, as he had so often witnessed before with other androids. The classic resignation. Mechanical, intellectual acceptance of that which a genuine organism—with two billion years of the pressure to live and evolve hagriding it—could never have reconciled itself to.

You have to be with other people, he thought. In order to live at all.

You can’t go back, he thought. You can’t go from people to nonpeople. In panic he thought, I’m dependent on them. Thank god they stayed.

“That’s because you’re a highly moral person. I’m not. I don’t judge, not even myself.”

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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Vol. 1 (of 6)

By Philip Dick

December 31, 2018

Total Recall

Author: Philip K. Dick
Rating: 5/5 (A most excellent short story)
Last Read: December 2014
Who Should Read: Sci-fi fans, short story fans, Total Recall movie fans

Fans of the movie Total Recall may not realize that it is based on a short story by the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. This book is actually just a single short-story publication of “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale,” the work that inspired the movie.

This story is included in the collection Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick. That collection contains some of the best stories written throughout his career.

My Highlights

Was this the answer? After all, an illusion, no matter how convincing, remained nothing more than an illusion. At least objectively. But subjectively—quite the opposite entirely.

“You’re not accepting second best. The actual memory, with all its vagueness, omissions, and ellipses, not to say distortions—that’s second best.”

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Total Recall (Kindle Single)

By Philip K. Dick

December 27, 2018

Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick

Author: Philip K. Dick
Rating: 4/5
Last Read: December 2018
Who Should Read: Sci-fi fans, short story fans

My favorite form of science fiction is the short story. The short story format enables science fiction writers to paint a picture and separate us from our day-to-day reality, while simultaneously holding up a mirror and highlighting aspects of our human experience that we may not consciously consider.

Philip K. Dick is one of sci-fi’s short story masters. Somehow I avoided his writing for most of my sci-fi reading career, and I’ve been rectifying that by working through various collections.

Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick is an excellent entry point into his work. Contained within are twenty-one of his best short stories, showcasing work spanning his entire career. Many of these stories are sci-fi classics and inspired films, such as Minority Report and Total Recall.

My favorite stories in this collection are:

“The Minority Report”
“We Can Remember It For You Wholesale”
“The Exit Door Leads In”
“Rautavaara’s Case”

My Highlights

Kabir, the sixteenth-century Sufi poet, wrote, “If you have not lived through something, it is not true.” So live through it; I mean, go all the way to the end. Only then can it be understood, not along the way.

The existence of a majority logically implies a corresponding minority.

“But there can be no valid knowledge about the future. As soon as precognitive information is obtained, it cancels itself out. The assertion that this man will commit a future crime is paradoxical. The very act of possessing this data renders it spurious. In every case, without exception, the report of the three police precogs has invalidated their own data. If no arrests had been made, there would still have been no crimes committed.”

“There were three minority reports,” he told Witwer, enjoying the young man’s confusion. Someday, Witwer would learn not to wade into situations he didn’t fully understand. Satisfaction was Anderton’s final emotion. Old and worn out as he was, he had been the only one to grasp the real nature of the problem.

“Where would you like to go first? New York City? Broadway? To the night clubs and theaters and restaurants . . .”
“No, to Central Park. To sit on a bench.”
“But there is no more Central Park, Mr. Biskle. It was turned into a parking lot for government employees while you were on Mars.”
“I see,” Milt Biskle said. “Well, then Portsmouth Square in San Francisco will do.” He opened the door of the ’copter.
“That, too, has become a parking lot,” Miss Ableseth said, with a sad shake of her long, luminous red hair. “We’re so darn overpopulated. Try again, Mr. Biskle; there are a few parks left, one in Kansas, I believe, and two in Utah in the south part near St. George.”
“This is bad news,” Milt said. “May I stop at that amphetamine dispenser and put in my dime? I need a stimulant to cheer me up.”

Ironically, he had gotten exactly what he had asked Rekal, Incorporated for. Adventure, peril, Interplan police at work, a secret and dangerous trip to Mars in which his life was at stake—everything he had wanted as a false memory. The advantages of it being a memory—and nothing more—could now be appreciated.

DOCTRINES OF THE ABSOLUTE BENEFACTOR ANTICIPATED IN THE POETRY OF BAHA AD-DIN ZUHAYR OF THIRTEENTH-CENTURY ARABIA
Glancing down the initial pages of the essay, Chien saw a quatrain familiar to him; it was called “Death,” and he had known it most of his adult, educated life.
Once he will miss, twice he will miss,
He only chooses one of many hours;
For him nor deep nor hill there is,
But all’s one level plain he hunts for flowers.

“Don’t you see, Mr. Chien? You’ve learned something. The Leader is not the Leader; he is something else, but we can’t tell what. Not yet. Mr. Chien, with all due respect, have you ever had your drinking water analyzed? I know it sounds paranoiac, but have you?”
“No,” he said. “Of course not.”
Knowing what she was going to say. Miss Lee said briskly, “Our tests show that it’s saturated with hallucinogens. It is, has been, will continue to be. Not the ones used during the war; not the disorientating ones, but a synthetic quasi-ergot derivative called Datrox-3. You drink it here in the building from the time you get up; you drink it in restaurants and other apartments that you visit. You drink it at the Ministry; it’s all piped from a central, common source.” Her tone was bleak and ferocious. “We solved that problem; we knew, as soon as we discovered it, that any good phenothiazine would counter it. What we did not know, of course, was this—a variety of authentic experiences; that makes no sense, rationally. It’s the hallucination which should differ from person to person, and the reality experience which should be ubiquitous—it’s all turned around. We can’t even construct an ad hoc theory which accounts for that, and God knows we’ve tried. Twelve mutually exclusive hallucinations—that would be easily understood. But not one hallucination and twelve realities.”

But His Greatness, Chien thought, jolted. He did not appear, on the TV screen, to be Occidental. “On TV—” he began. “The image,” Tso-pin interrupted, “is subjected to a variegated assortment of skillful refinements. For ideological purposes. Most persons holding higher offices are aware of this.” He eyed Chien with hard criticism. So everyone agrees, Chien thought. What we see every night is not real. The question is, How unreal? Partially? Or—completely?

All this time, he thought. Hallucinogens in our water supply. Year after year. Decades. And not in wartime but in peacetime. And not to the enemy camp but here in our own. The evil bastards, he said to himself.

And—he was curious. A bad emotion, he knew. Curiosity was, especially in Party activities, often a terminal state careerwise.

“Did it ever occur to you,” Chien said, “that good and evil are names for the same thing? That God could be both good and evil at the same time?”

the computer found no programming circuit. Do I want to interfere with the reality tape? And if so, why? Because, he thought, if I control that, I control reality. At least so far as I’m concerned. My subjective reality . . . but that’s all there is. Objective reality is a synthetic construct, dealing with a hypothetical universalization of a multitude of subjective realities.

Maybe what I want to do, Poole thought, is die.

What I want, he realized, is ultimate and absolute reality, for one micro-second. After that it doesn’t matter, because all will be known; nothing will be left to understand or see.

“Addi has got more to live for than we do.” “Every man has more to live for than any other man. I don’t have a cute chick to sleep with, but I’d like to see the semis rolling along Riverside Freeway at sunset a few more times. It’s not what you have to live for; it’s that you want to live to see it, to be there—that’s what is so damn sad.”

Explanations—that’s what we need. Explanations for problems that don’t exist yet; we can develop the problems later.”

It was hell living in the twenty-first century. Information transfer had reached the velocity of light. Bibleman’s older brother had once fed a ten-word plot outline into a robot fiction machine, changed his mind as to the outcome, and found that the novel was already in print. He had had to program a sequel in order to make his correction.

To himself he thought, I was born in the wrong century. A hundred years ago this wouldn’t have happened and a hundred years from now it will be illegal. What I need is a lawyer.

The first pamphlet pointed out that it was a great honor to be admitted to the College. That was its name—the one word. How strange, he thought, puzzled. It’s like naming your cat Cat and your dog Dog. This is my mother, Mrs. Mother, and my father, Mr. Father. Are these people working right? he wondered. It had been a phobia of his for years that someday he would fall into the hands of madmen—in particular, madmen who seemed sane up until the last moment. To Bibleman this was the essence of horror.

“My point,” Major Casals said, “is simply that certain information such as architectural principles of long-standing—”
“Most architectural principles are long-standing,” Mary said. Major Casals paused. “Otherwise they’d serve no purpose,” Mary said.

Do you know yourself? But you’ll be getting into that when the College bombards you with early Greek thought. ‘Know thyself.’ Apollo’s motto at Delphi. It sums up half of Greek philosophy.”

“It is generally considered that Thales was the first rational man in history,” the terminal said.
“What about Ikhnaton?” Bibleman said.
“He was strange.”
“Moses?”
“Likewise strange.”
“Hammurabi?”
“How do you spell that?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve just heard the name.”
“Then we will discuss Anaximander,” the College terminal said. “And, in a cursory initial survey, Anaximenes, Xenophanes, Paramenides, Melissus—wait a minute; I forgot Heraclitus and Cratylus. And we will study Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Zeno—”
“Christ,” Bibleman said.
“That’s another program,” the College terminal said.

“Since you are so full of conflict, you should find Empedocles interesting. He was the first dialectical philosopher. Empedocles believed that the basis of reality was an antithetical conflict between the forces of Love and Strife. Under Love the whole cosmos is a duly proportioned mixture, called a krasis. This krasis is a spherical deity, a single perfect mind which spends all its time—”
“Is there any practical application to any of this?” Bibleman interrupted.
“The two antithetical forces of Love and Strife resemble the Taoist elements of Yang and Yin with their perpetual interaction from which all change takes place.”
“Practical application.”
“Twin mutually opposed constituents.” On the holoscreen a schematic diagram, very complex, formed. “The two-rotor Panther Engine.”

Blame is a mere cultural matter; it does not travel across species boundaries.

No wonder he loved Martine so; she herself loved back, loved the beauties of the world, and treasured and cherished them as she treasured and cherished him; it was a protective love that nourished but did not stifle.

“Hi,” Martine said, off the VF now. “What are you thinking?”
“Just that you keep alive what you love,” he said.
“I think that’s what you’re supposed to do,” Martine said.

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Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick

By Philip K. Dick

December 18, 2018

The Forever War

Author: Joe Haldeman
Rating: 5/5
Last Read: November 2018
Who Should Read: Sci-fi fans, fans of military fiction, fans of Old Man’s War

I’ve been told that I should read The Forever War at least three times a year for the past ten years. I finally got around to reading it, like John Scalzi in the book’s introduction, and all I really have to say is: everyone was absolutely right. The Forever War is a wonderful book.

The novel is set in a future (circa 1996) where Earth is engaged in a war in the far-out reaches of space with another sentient race. Earth conscripts the best of humanity for soldiering and trains them to fight in laser-equipped battle suits. The novel follows the soldiering career of William Mandella, starting with his “boot camp” experiences and moving through various interstellar battles. Each battle involves a large relative time shift for Mandella, so on each return trip to our solar system he experiences “future” shock due to societal changes that happened in the hundreds of years he was away.

This book is an award-winning sci-fi classic for a good reason. There’s plenty of action, interesting future scenarios, and commentary on society and humanity.

To my mind, there are two things that make a novel a “classic”—a genuine classic, as opposed to merely “old and continuing to sell.” The first is that it speaks to the time in which the novel first appeared. There is no doubt The Forever War did this; its awards and acclaim are signifiers of that fact. The second thing is tougher, and that is that it keeps speaking to readers outside its time, because what’s in the book touches on something that never goes away, or at the very least keeps coming around.

I stopped at the first book (I tend to avoid series), but if you are interested in continuing there is another book in the series.

If you enjoy The Forever War, you will also enjoy John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. (The same applies if you loved Old Man’s War – read this book!)

My Highlights

‘Man was born into barbarism, when killing his fellow man was a normal condition of existence. He became endowed with a conscience. And he has now reached the day when violence toward another human being must become as abhorrent as eating another’s flesh.’ — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Relativity propped it up, at least gave it the illusion of being there … the way all reality becomes illusory and observer-oriented when you study general relativity. Or Buddhism. Or get drafted.

Since the planet rotated rather slowly — once every ten and one-half days — a ‘stationary’ orbit for the ship had to be 150,000 klicks out. This made the people in the ship feel quite secure, with 6,000 miles of rock and 90,000 miles of space between them and the enemy. But it meant a whole second’s time lag in communication between us on the ground and the ship’s battle computer. A person could get awful dead while that neutrino pulse crawled up and back.

‘Sarge, tell that computer to do something! We’re gonna get—’
‘Oh, shut up, Mandella. Trust in th’ lord.’
‘Lord’ was definitely lower-case when Cortez said it.

… I felt my gorge rising and knew that all the lurid training tapes, all the horrible deaths in training accidents, hadn’t prepared me for this sudden reality … that I had a magic wand that I could point at a life and make it a smoking piece of half-raw meat; I wasn’t a soldier nor ever wanted to be one nor ever would want—

‘Night.’ It’s almost impossible to get sexually excited inside a suit, with the relief tube and all the silver chloride sensors poking you, but somehow this was my body’s response to the emotional impotence, maybe remembering more pleasant sleeps with Marygay, maybe feeling that in the midst of all this death, personal death could be very soon, cranking up the procreative derrick for one last try … lovely thoughts like this.

I fell asleep and dreamed that I was a machine, mimicking the functions of life, creaking and clanking my clumsy way through a world, people too polite to say anything but giggling behind my back, and the little man who sat inside my head pulling the levers and clutches and watching the dials, he was hopelessly mad and was storing up hurts for the day—

I hardly heard him for trying to keep track of what was going on in my skull. I knew it was just post-hypnotic suggestion, even remembered the session in Missouri when they’d implanted it, but that didn’t make it any less compelling. My mind reeled under the strong pseudo-memories: shaggy hulks that were Taurans (not at all what we now knew they looked like) boarding a colonists’ vessel, eating babies while mothers watched in screaming terror (the colonists never took babies; they wouldn’t stand the acceleration), then raping the women to death with huge veined purple members (ridiculous that they would feel desire for humans), holding the men down while they plucked flesh from their living bodies and gobbled it (as if they could assimilate the alien protein) … a hundred grisly details as sharply remembered as the events of a minute ago, ridiculously overdone and logically absurd. But while my conscious mind was rejecting the silliness, somewhere much deeper, down in that sleeping animal where we keep our real motives and morals, something was thirsting for alien blood, secure in the conviction that the noblest thing a man could do would be to die killing one of those horrible monsters

I spent a long time after that telling myself over and over that it hadn’t been me who so gleefully carved up those frightened, stampeding creatures. Back in the twentieth century, they had established to everybody’s satisfaction that ‘I was just following orders’ was an inadequate excuse for inhuman contact … but what can you do when the orders come from deep down in that puppet master of the unconscious?

While I was lying there being squeezed, a silly thought took hold of my brain and went round and round like a charge in a superconductor: according to military formalism, the conduct of war divides neatly into two categories, tactics and logistics. Logistics has to do with moving troops and feeding them and just about everything except the actual fighting, which is tactics. And now we’re fighting, but we don’t have a tactical computer to guide us through attack and defense, just a huge, super-efficient pacifistic cybernetic grocery clerk of a logistic, mark that word, logistic computer. The other side of my brain, perhaps not quite as pinched, would argue that it doesn’t matter what name you give to a computer, it’s a pile of memory crystals, logic banks, nuts and bolts … If you program it to be Genghis Khan, it is a tactical computer, even if its usual function is to monitor the stock market or control sewage conversion. But the other voice was obdurate and said by that kind of reasoning, a man is only a hank of hair and a piece of bone and some stringy meat; and no matter what kind of a man he is, if you teach him well, you can take a Zen monk and turn him into a slavering bloodthirsty warrior.

‘She’s very pretty.’ A remarkable observation, her body torn and caked with crusting blood, her face smeared where I had tried to wipe away the tears. I suppose a doctor or a woman or a lover can look beneath that and see beauty.

‘One cannot make command decisions simply by assessing the tactical situation and going ahead with whatever course of action will do the most harm to the enemy with a minimum of death and damage to your own men and material. Modern warfare has become very complex, especially during the last century. Wars are won not by a simple series of battles won, but by a complex interrelationship among military victory, economic pressures, logistic maneuvering, access to the enemy’s information, political postures — dozens, literally dozens of factors.’

‘I hope none of you ever has to face such a decision. When we get back to Stargate, I will in all probability be court-martialed for cowardice under fire. But I honestly believe that the information that may be gained from analysis of the damage to the Anniversary is more important than the destruction of this one Tauran base.’ He sat up straight. ‘More important than one soldier’s career.’

‘William, face it. It’s a miracle she survived to get into surgery. So there’s a big chance she won’t make it back to Earth. It’s sad; she’s a special person, the special person to you, maybe. But we’ve had so much death … you ought to be getting used to it, come to terms with it.’
I took a long pull at my drink, identical to hers except for the citric acid. ‘You’re getting pretty hard-boiled.’
‘Maybe … no. Just realistic. I have a feeling we’re headed for a lot more death and sorrow.’

‘I don’t know. If they could condition us to kill on cue, they can condition us to do almost anything. Re-enlist.’

‘I’m twenty-three, so I was still in diapers when you people left for Aleph … to begin with, how many of you are homosexual?’
Nobody.
‘That doesn’t really surprise me. I am, of course. I guess about a third of everybody in Europe and America is. ‘Most governments encourage homosexuality — the United Nations is neutral, leaves it up to the individual countries — they encourage homolife mainly because it’s the one sure method of birth control.’
That seemed specious to me. Our method of birth control in the army is pretty foolproof: all men making a deposit in the sperm bank, and then vasectomy.

‘Of course, an illegal market developed, and soon there was great inequality in the amount of food people in various strata of society consumed. A vengeance group in Ecuador, the Imparciales, systematically began to assassinate people who appeared to be well-fed. The idea caught on pretty quickly, and in a few months there was a full-scale, undeclared class war going on all over the world. The United Nations managed to get things back under control in a year or so, by which time the population was down to four billion, crops were more or less recovered, and the food crisis was over.

‘Incidentally, the General translated the money coming to you into dollars just for your own convenience. The world has only one currency now, calories. Your thirty-two thousand dollars comes to about three thousand million calories. Or three million k’s, kilocalories.

‘Also, we no longer have the abundance of electrical power I remember from boyhood … probably a good deal less than you remember. There are only a few places in the world where you can have power all day and night. They keep saying it’s a temporary situation, but it’s been going on for over a decade.’

Wars in the past often accelerated social reform, provided technological benefits, even sparked artistic activity. This one, however, seemed tailor-made to provide none of these positive by-products.

And in the past, people whose country was at war were constantly in contact with the war. The newspapers would be full of reports, veterans would return from the front; sometimes the front would move right into town, invaders marching down Main Street or bombs whistling through the night air — but always the sense of either working toward victory or at least delaying defeat. The enemy was a tangible thing, a propagandist’s monster whom you could understand, whom you could hate. But this war … the enemy was a curious organism only vaguely understood, more often the subject of cartoons than nightmares. The main effect of the war on the home front was economic, unemotional — more taxes but more jobs as well. After twenty-two years, only twenty-seven returned veterans; not enough to make a decent parade. The most important fact about the war to most people was that if it ended suddenly, Earth’s economy would collapse.

We got into a discussion about the war, with a bunch of people who knew Marygay and I were veterans. It’s hard to describe their attitude, which was pretty uniform. They were angry in an abstract way that it took so much tax money to support; they were convinced that the Taurans would never be any danger to Earth; but they all knew that nearly half the jobs in the world were associated with the war, and if it stopped, everything would fall apart.

Every time I’ve come down to Earth the past ten years, I’ve wondered whether she’d still be there. Neither of us had enough money to keep in very close touch.’ He had told us in Geneva that a letter from Luna to Earth cost $100 postage — plus $5,000 tax. It discouraged communication with what the UN considered to be a bunch of regrettably necessary anarchists.

Desperate fun, as I said. Unless the war changed radically, our chances of surviving the next three years were microscopic. We were remarkably healthy victims of a terminal disease, trying to cram a lifetime of sensation into a half of a year.

‘It doesn’t add up, though. Why would they haul me all the way from Heaven to take a chance on my “shaping up,” when probably a third of the people here on Stargate are better officer material? God, the military mind!’ ‘I suspect the bureaucratic mind, at least, had something to do with it. You have an embarrassing amount of seniority to be a footsoldier.’

Perhaps this statement is true of any hierarchical structure, but certainly of businesses:

A good sign that an army has been around too long is that it starts getting top-heavy with officers.

One thing we didn’t have to worry about in this war was enemy agents. With a good coat of paint, a Tauran might be able to disguise himself as an ambulatory mushroom. Bound to raise suspicions.

Hilleboe had called them to attention and was dutifully telling them what a good commander I was going to be; that I’d been in the war from the beginning, and if they intended to survive through their enlistment they had better follow my example. She didn’t mention that I was a mediocre soldier with a talent for getting missed.

‘Part of UNEF. Only has authority on Earth.’ She took a deep sniff at the empty capsule. ‘The idea was to keep people from making babies the biological way. Because, A, people showed a regrettable lack of sense in choosing their genetic partner. And B, the Council saw that racial differences had an unnecessarily divisive effect on humanity; with total control over births, they could make everybody the same race in a few generations.’

The art of chastising subordinates is a delicate art. I could see that I’d have to keep reminding Hilleboe that she wasn’t in charge.

‘As you will read in this book, the war ended 221 years ago. Accordingly, this is the year 220. Old style, of course, it is 3138 ad ‘You are the last group of soldiers to return. When you leave here, I will leave as well. And destroy Stargate. It exists only as a rendezvous point for returnees and as a monument to human stupidity. And shame. As you will read. Destroying it will be a cleansing.’ He stopped speaking and the woman started without a pause. ‘I am sorry for what you’ve been through and wish I could say that it was for good cause, but as you will read, it was not.

The 1143-year-long war had been begun on false pretenses and only because the two races were unable to communicate. Once they could talk, the first question was ‘Why did you start this thing?’ and the answer was ‘Me?’

‘Say, bartender.’
‘Yes, Major?’ ‘Do you know of a place called Middle Finger? Is it still there?’
‘Of course it is. Where else would it be?’ Reasonable question. ‘A very nice place. Garden planet. Some people don’t think it’s exciting enough.’

Summary

Major Characters

William Mandella
Marygay Potter
Sgt Cortes

Most other characters appear and die quickly.

Outline

When I read fiction, I make an outline as a memory aide. If you don’t want to see any spoilers, skip this section.

Boot camp – elite conscripts w/ IQ over 150
Sent to Charon – dark + cold – for training in battle suits
Training + Deaths + Graduation
Sent to Starbase for construction
Sent to first battle against the Taurans – massive slaughter – one escapes
Second battle – advanced weapons used, kill 1/3 of crew, abort attacks
Leave army, return to Earth – Potter + Mandella experience future shock
Mandella stays with Marygay’s family; family gets attacked and killed
Return to Mandella’s mom – she does of illness
Rejoin army as instructors on Luna. They immediately get transferred to a strick force
Attack goes poorly; Potter + Mandella are amputees and sent to Heaven to regrow limbs and recover
Marygay + Mandella are separated on separate strike forces
Travel to the farthest known gate
Set up base + wait for Taurans to attack
Outlast Tauren attack, return to Starbase
Meets “Man”, learns the war is over and was a big mistake
Reunited with Marygay on Middle Finger

My Highlights

‘Man was born into barbarism, when killing his fellow man was a normal condition of existence. He became endowed with a conscience. And he has now reached the day when violence toward another human being must become as abhorrent as eating another’s flesh.’ — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Relativity propped it up, at least gave it the illusion of being there … the way all reality becomes illusory and observer-oriented when you study general relativity. Or Buddhism. Or get drafted.

Since the planet rotated rather slowly — once every ten and one-half days — a ‘stationary’ orbit for the ship had to be 150,000 klicks out. This made the people in the ship feel quite secure, with 6,000 miles of rock and 90,000 miles of space between them and the enemy. But it meant a whole second’s time lag in communication between us on the ground and the ship’s battle computer. A person could get awful dead while that neutrino pulse crawled up and back.

‘Sarge, tell that computer to do something! We’re gonna get—’
‘Oh, shut up, Mandella. Trust in th’ lord.’
‘Lord’ was definitely lower-case when Cortez said it.

… I felt my gorge rising and knew that all the lurid training tapes, all the horrible deaths in training accidents, hadn’t prepared me for this sudden reality … that I had a magic wand that I could point at a life and make it a smoking piece of half-raw meat; I wasn’t a soldier nor ever wanted to be one nor ever would want—

‘Night.’ It’s almost impossible to get sexually excited inside a suit, with the relief tube and all the silver chloride sensors poking you, but somehow this was my body’s response to the emotional impotence, maybe remembering more pleasant sleeps with Marygay, maybe feeling that in the midst of all this death, personal death could be very soon, cranking up the procreative derrick for one last try … lovely thoughts like this.

I fell asleep and dreamed that I was a machine, mimicking the functions of life, creaking and clanking my clumsy way through a world, people too polite to say anything but giggling behind my back, and the little man who sat inside my head pulling the levers and clutches and watching the dials, he was hopelessly mad and was storing up hurts for the day—

I hardly heard him for trying to keep track of what was going on in my skull. I knew it was just post-hypnotic suggestion, even remembered the session in Missouri when they’d implanted it, but that didn’t make it any less compelling. My mind reeled under the strong pseudo-memories: shaggy hulks that were Taurans (not at all what we now knew they looked like) boarding a colonists’ vessel, eating babies while mothers watched in screaming terror (the colonists never took babies; they wouldn’t stand the acceleration), then raping the women to death with huge veined purple members (ridiculous that they would feel desire for humans), holding the men down while they plucked flesh from their living bodies and gobbled it (as if they could assimilate the alien protein) … a hundred grisly details as sharply remembered as the events of a minute ago, ridiculously overdone and logically absurd. But while my conscious mind was rejecting the silliness, somewhere much deeper, down in that sleeping animal where we keep our real motives and morals, something was thirsting for alien blood, secure in the conviction that the noblest thing a man could do would be to die killing one of those horrible monsters

I spent a long time after that telling myself over and over that it hadn’t been me who so gleefully carved up those frightened, stampeding creatures. Back in the twentieth century, they had established to everybody’s satisfaction that ‘I was just following orders’ was an inadequate excuse for inhuman contact … but what can you do when the orders come from deep down in that puppet master of the unconscious?

While I was lying there being squeezed, a silly thought took hold of my brain and went round and round like a charge in a superconductor: according to military formalism, the conduct of war divides neatly into two categories, tactics and logistics. Logistics has to do with moving troops and feeding them and just about everything except the actual fighting, which is tactics. And now we’re fighting, but we don’t have a tactical computer to guide us through attack and defense, just a huge, super-efficient pacifistic cybernetic grocery clerk of a logistic, mark that word, logistic computer. The other side of my brain, perhaps not quite as pinched, would argue that it doesn’t matter what name you give to a computer, it’s a pile of memory crystals, logic banks, nuts and bolts … If you program it to be Genghis Khan, it is a tactical computer, even if its usual function is to monitor the stock market or control sewage conversion. But the other voice was obdurate and said by that kind of reasoning, a man is only a hank of hair and a piece of bone and some stringy meat; and no matter what kind of a man he is, if you teach him well, you can take a Zen monk and turn him into a slavering bloodthirsty warrior.

‘She’s very pretty.’ A remarkable observation, her body torn and caked with crusting blood, her face smeared where I had tried to wipe away the tears. I suppose a doctor or a woman or a lover can look beneath that and see beauty.

‘One cannot make command decisions simply by assessing the tactical situation and going ahead with whatever course of action will do the most harm to the enemy with a minimum of death and damage to your own men and material. Modern warfare has become very complex, especially during the last century. Wars are won not by a simple series of battles won, but by a complex interrelationship among military victory, economic pressures, logistic maneuvering, access to the enemy’s information, political postures — dozens, literally dozens of factors.’

‘I hope none of you ever has to face such a decision. When we get back to Stargate, I will in all probability be court-martialed for cowardice under fire. But I honestly believe that the information that may be gained from analysis of the damage to the Anniversary is more important than the destruction of this one Tauran base.’ He sat up straight. ‘More important than one soldier’s career.’

‘William, face it. It’s a miracle she survived to get into surgery. So there’s a big chance she won’t make it back to Earth. It’s sad; she’s a special person, the special person to you, maybe. But we’ve had so much death … you ought to be getting used to it, come to terms with it.’
I took a long pull at my drink, identical to hers except for the citric acid. ‘You’re getting pretty hard-boiled.’
‘Maybe … no. Just realistic. I have a feeling we’re headed for a lot more death and sorrow.’

‘I don’t know. If they could condition us to kill on cue, they can condition us to do almost anything. Re-enlist.’

‘I’m twenty-three, so I was still in diapers when you people left for Aleph … to begin with, how many of you are homosexual?’
Nobody.
‘That doesn’t really surprise me. I am, of course. I guess about a third of everybody in Europe and America is. ‘Most governments encourage homosexuality — the United Nations is neutral, leaves it up to the individual countries — they encourage homolife mainly because it’s the one sure method of birth control.’
That seemed specious to me. Our method of birth control in the army is pretty foolproof: all men making a deposit in the sperm bank, and then vasectomy.

‘Of course, an illegal market developed, and soon there was great inequality in the amount of food people in various strata of society consumed. A vengeance group in Ecuador, the Imparciales, systematically began to assassinate people who appeared to be well-fed. The idea caught on pretty quickly, and in a few months there was a full-scale, undeclared class war going on all over the world. The United Nations managed to get things back under control in a year or so, by which time the population was down to four billion, crops were more or less recovered, and the food crisis was over.

‘Incidentally, the General translated the money coming to you into dollars just for your own convenience. The world has only one currency now, calories. Your thirty-two thousand dollars comes to about three thousand million calories. Or three million k’s, kilocalories.

‘Also, we no longer have the abundance of electrical power I remember from boyhood … probably a good deal less than you remember. There are only a few places in the world where you can have power all day and night. They keep saying it’s a temporary situation, but it’s been going on for over a decade.’

> Wars in the past often accelerated social reform, provided technological benefits, even sparked artistic activity. This one, however, seemed tailor-made to provide none of these positive by-products.

And in the past, people whose country was at war were constantly in contact with the war. The newspapers would be full of reports, veterans would return from the front; sometimes the front would move right into town, invaders marching down Main Street or bombs whistling through the night air — but always the sense of either working toward victory or at least delaying defeat. The enemy was a tangible thing, a propagandist’s monster whom you could understand, whom you could hate. But this war … the enemy was a curious organism only vaguely understood, more often the subject of cartoons than nightmares. The main effect of the war on the home front was economic, unemotional — more taxes but more jobs as well. After twenty-two years, only twenty-seven returned veterans; not enough to make a decent parade. The most important fact about the war to most people was that if it ended suddenly, Earth’s economy would collapse.

We got into a discussion about the war, with a bunch of people who knew Marygay and I were veterans. It’s hard to describe their attitude, which was pretty uniform. They were angry in an abstract way that it took so much tax money to support; they were convinced that the Taurans would never be any danger to Earth; but they all knew that nearly half the jobs in the world were associated with the war, and if it stopped, everything would fall apart.

Every time I’ve come down to Earth the past ten years, I’ve wondered whether she’d still be there. Neither of us had enough money to keep in very close touch.’ He had told us in Geneva that a letter from Luna to Earth cost $100 postage — plus $5,000 tax. It discouraged communication with what the UN considered to be a bunch of regrettably necessary anarchists.

Desperate fun, as I said. Unless the war changed radically, our chances of surviving the next three years were microscopic. We were remarkably healthy victims of a terminal disease, trying to cram a lifetime of sensation into a half of a year.

‘It doesn’t add up, though. Why would they haul me all the way from Heaven to take a chance on my “shaping up,” when probably a third of the people here on Stargate are better officer material? God, the military mind!’ ‘I suspect the bureaucratic mind, at least, had something to do with it. You have an embarrassing amount of seniority to be a footsoldier.’

Perhaps this statement is true of any hierarchical structure, but certainly of businesses:

> A good sign that an army has been around too long is that it starts getting top-heavy with officers.

One thing we didn’t have to worry about in this war was enemy agents. With a good coat of paint, a Tauran might be able to disguise himself as an ambulatory mushroom. Bound to raise suspicions.

Hilleboe had called them to attention and was dutifully telling them what a good commander I was going to be; that I’d been in the war from the beginning, and if they intended to survive through their enlistment they had better follow my example. She didn’t mention that I was a mediocre soldier with a talent for getting missed.

‘Part of UNEF. Only has authority on Earth.’ She took a deep sniff at the empty capsule. ‘The idea was to keep people from making babies the biological way. Because, A, people showed a regrettable lack of sense in choosing their genetic partner. And B, the Council saw that racial differences had an unnecessarily divisive effect on humanity; with total control over births, they could make everybody the same race in a few generations.’

The art of chastising subordinates is a delicate art. I could see that I’d have to keep reminding Hilleboe that she wasn’t in charge.

‘As you will read in this book, the war ended 221 years ago. Accordingly, this is the year 220. Old style, of course, it is 3138 ad ‘You are the last group of soldiers to return. When you leave here, I will leave as well. And destroy Stargate. It exists only as a rendezvous point for returnees and as a monument to human stupidity. And shame. As you will read. Destroying it will be a cleansing.’ He stopped speaking and the woman started without a pause. ‘I am sorry for what you’ve been through and wish I could say that it was for good cause, but as you will read, it was not.

The 1143-year-long war had been begun on false pretenses and only because the two races were unable to communicate. Once they could talk, the first question was ‘Why did you start this thing?’ and the answer was ‘Me?’

‘Say, bartender.’
‘Yes, Major?’ ‘Do you know of a place called Middle Finger? Is it still there?’
‘Of course it is. Where else would it be?’ Reasonable question. ‘A very nice place. Garden planet. Some people don’t think it’s exciting enough.’

Summary

Major Characters

William Mandella
Marygay Potter
Sgt Cortes

Most other characters appear and die quickly.

Outline

When I read fiction, I make an outline as a memory aide. If you don’t want to see any spoilers, skip this section.

Boot camp – elite conscripts w/ IQ over 150
Sent to Charon – dark + cold – for training in battle suits
Training + Deaths + Graduation
Sent to Starbase for construction
Sent to first battle against the Taurans – massive slaughter – one escapes
Second battle – advanced weapons used, kill 1/3 of crew, abort attacks
Leave army, return to Earth – Potter + Mandella experience future shock
Mandella stays with Marygay’s family; family gets attacked and killed
Return to Mandella’s mom – she does of illness
Rejoin army as instructors on Luna. They immediately get transferred to a strick force
Attack goes poorly; Potter + Mandella are amputees and sent to Heaven to regrow limbs and recover
Marygay + Mandella are separated on separate strike forces
Travel to the farthest known gate
Set up base + wait for Taurans to attack
Outlast Tauren attack, return to Starbase
Meets “Man”, learns the war is over and was a big mistake
Reunited with Marygay on Middle Finger

Buy the Book

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The Forever War

By Joe Haldeman

December 11, 2018

Flashman

Author: George MacDonald Fraser
Rating: 4/5
Last Read: November 2018
Who Should Read: People who like to laugh, those interested in military fiction or historical fiction

Flashman is the first book in a long series of novels about the life and exploits of Harry Flashman, an entirely unlikeable anti-hero.

Flashman describes himself openly as a coward, cheat, and a bully, and yet somehow he makes his way to the top of every situation and encounter he’s in. Flashman’s star rises throughout the novel, and everyone who recognizes him for who he is somehow ends up dead or pushed by the wayside.

It details his life from 1839 to 1842 and his travels to Scotland, India, and Afghanistan. It also contains a number of notes by the author, in the guise of a fictional editor, providing additional historical glosses on the events described. The history in these books is largely accurate; most of the prominent figures Flashman meets were real people.

I highly recommend Flashman to anyone who enjoys fiction. The book is fast-paced and full of amusing antics. I found myself laughing and cursing Flashman on every page. Those interested in military fiction or historical fiction will also enjoy the novel, as it covers the terrible defeat of the British in Afghanistan under General Elphinstone.

I stopped at the first book (I tend to avoid series), but if you are interested in continuing there are eleven more books in the series.

My Highlights

Anyway, he gave me a fine holy harangue, about how through repentance I might be saved—which I’ve never believed, by the way. I’ve repented a good deal in my time, and had good cause, but I was never ass enough to suppose it mended anything. But I’ve learned to swim with the tide when I have to, so I let him pray over me, and when he had finished I left his study a good deal happier than when I went in.

Anyway, I was content to let the matter rest just now; I have always believed in one thing at a time, and the thing that was occupying my mind was Miss Judy Parsons.

A lot has been said about the purchase of commissions—how the rich and incompetent can buy ahead of better men, how the poor and efficient are passed over—and most of it, in my experience, is rubbish. Even with purchase abolished, the rich rise faster in the Service than the poor, and they’re both inefficient anyway, as a rule. I’ve seen ten men’s share of service, through no fault of my own, and can say that most officers are bad, and the higher you go, the worse they get, myself included.

Some human faults are military virtues, like stupidity, and arrogance, and narrow-mindedness.

Of course if he had thought at all he would have sniffed something fishy about a ten thousand bribe in the first place. But he was greedy, and I’ve lived long enough to discover that there isn’t any folly a man won’t contemplate if there’s money or a woman at stake.

In her, ignorance and stupidity formed a perfect shield against the world: this, I suppose, is innocence.

“Not fair! Well, well, this is one lesson you’re learning. Nothing’s fair, you young fool.”

if the day comes, don’t wait to die on the field of honour.” He said it without a sneer. “Heroes draw no higher wages than the others, boy. Sleep well.”

But looking back I can say that, all unwittingly, Kabul and the army were right to regard Elphy’s arrival as an incident of the greatest significance. It opened a new chapter: it was a prelude to events that rang round the world. Elphy, ably assisted by McNaghten, was about to reach the peak of his career; he was going to produce the most shameful, ridiculous disaster in British military history.

Think of all the conceivable misfortunes that can arise from combinations of folly, cowardice, and sheer bad luck, and I’ll give you chapter and verse. But I still state unhesitatingly, that for pure, vacillating stupidity, for superb incompetence to command, for ignorance combined with bad judgement—in short, for the true talent for catastrophe—Elphy Bey stood alone.

Only he could have permitted the First Afghan War and let it develop to such a ruinous defeat. It was not easy: he started with a good army, a secure position, some excellent officers, a disorganised enemy, and repeated opportunities to save the situation. But Elphy, with the touch of true genius, swept aside these obstacles with unerring precision, and out of order wrought complete chaos. We shall not, with luck, look upon his like again.

So it always goes with dissension at the top:

And neither of them got on with Shelton, a rude boor of a man who was Elphy’s second-in-command, and this dissension at the top made for uneasiness and mistrust farther down.

I don’t pretend that I became an expert in a few weeks, or that I ever “knew” Afghanistan, but I picked up a little here and there, and began to realise that those who studied the country only from the cantonment at Kabul knew no more about it than you would learn about a strange house if you stayed in one room of it all the time.

It was unfortunate that he happened, about this time, to be awaiting his promotion and transfer to the Governorship of Bombay; I think the knowledge that he was leaving may have made him careless.

Ask him,” I shouted, “how I came here! Ask the lying, treacherous bastard!”
“Never try to flatter Gul Shah,” said the stout man cheerfully. “He’ll believe every word of it. No, there has been a mistake, regrettably, but it has not been irreparable. For which God be thanked—and my timely arrival, to be sure.” And he smiled at me again. “But you must not blame Gul Shah, or his people: they did not know you for what you were.”
Now, as he said those words, he ceased to be a waggish madman; his voice was as gentle as ever, but there was no mistaking the steel underneath. Suddenly things became real again, and I understood that the kindly smiling man before me was strong in a way that folk like Gul Shah could never be: strong and dangerous.

You have to manage morale:

“First, my dear friend Flashman,” says he, all charm, “I must tell you that you have been kept here not only for your own good but for your people’s. Their situation is now bad. Why, I do not know, but Elfistan Sahib has behaved like a weak old woman. He has allowed the mobs to rage where they will, he has left the deaths of his servants unavenged, he has exposed his soldiers to the worst fate of all—humiliation—by keeping them shut up in cantonments while the Afghan rabble mock at them. Now his own troops are sick at heart; they have no fight in them.”

“The British cannot stay here now,” he went on. “They have lost their power, and we Afghans wish to be rid of them. There are those who say we should slaughter them all—needless to say, I do not agree.” And he smiled. “For one thing, it might not be so easy—”
“It is never easy,” said old Muhammed Din. “These same feringhees took Ghuznee Fort; I saw them, by God.”
“—and for another, what would the harvest be?” went on Akbar. “The White Queen avenges her children. No, there must be a peaceful withdrawal to India; this is what I would prefer myself. I am no enemy of the British, but they have been guests in my country too long.”

I have observed, in the course of a dishonest life, that when a rogue is outlining a treacherous plan, he works harder to convince himself than to move his hearers. Akbar wanted to cook his Afghan enemies’ goose, that was all, and perfectly understandable, but he wanted to look like a gentleman still—to himself.

“Now,” went on Akbar, “you must deliver my proposals to McLoten Sahib personally, and in the presence of Muhammed Din and Khan Hamet here, who will accompany you. If it seems”—he flashed his smile—“that I don’t trust you, my friend, let me say that I trust no one. The reflection is not personal.”

“You don’t know one of the first rules of politics: that a man can be trusted to follow his own interest. I see perfectly well that Akbar is after undisputed power among his own people; well, who’s to blame him? And I tell you, I believe you wrong Akbar Khan; in our meetings he has impressed me more than any other Afghan I have met. I judge him to be a man of his word.”

“To my most beloved Hector,” and I thought, by God, she’s cheating on me, and has sent me the wrong letter by mistake. But in the second line was a reference to Achilles, and another to Ajax, so I understood she was just addressing me in terms which she accounted fitting for a martial paladin; she knew no better. It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark.

But chance helped me, as she always does if you keep your wits about you

“Why should you want to preserve my life?” says I. “What do you owe me?”
“We have been friends,” says he, grinning that sudden grin of his. “Also I admired the compliments you paid me as you rode away from Mohammed Khan’s fort the other day.”
“They weren’t meant to flatter you,” says I.
“The insults of an enemy are a tribute to the brave,” laughs he.

When I woke it was broad day, and Sergeant Hudson had a little fire going and was brewing coffee. It was the first hot drink I had tasted in days; he even had a little sugar for it.
“Where the devil did you come by this, Hudson?” says I, for there had been nothing but dried mutton and a few scraps of biscuit on the last few days of the march.
“Foraged, sir,” says he, cool as you please, so I asked no more questions, but sipped contentedly as I lay in my blankets.

He’s a pretty a terrible leader:

So I agreed, and found myself considering this Sergeant Hudson for the first time, for beyond noting that he was a steady man I had given him not much notice before. After all, why should one notice one’s men very much?

There is a painting of the scene at Gandamack, which I saw a few years ago, and it is like enough the real thing as I remember it. No doubt it is very fine and stirs martial thoughts in the gloryblown asses who look at it; my only thought when I saw it was, “You poor bloody fools!” and I said so, to the disgust of other viewers. But I was there, you see, shivering with horror as I watched, unlike the good Londoners, who let the roughnecks and jailbirds keep their empire for them; they are good enough for getting cut up at the Gandamacks which fools like Elphy and McNaghten bring ’em to, and no great loss to anybody.

So we were safe, and to come safe out of a disaster is more gratifying than to come safe out of none at all.

There is great pleasure in catastrophe that doesn’t touch you, and anyone who says there isn’t is a liar. Haven’t you seen it in the face of a bearer of bad news, and heard it in the unctuous phrases at the church gate after a funeral?

Hudson, of course, didn’t understand why I should be so horrified at this, until I told him the whole story—about Narreeman, and how Akbar had rescued me from Gul’s snakes in Kabul. Heavens, how I must have talked, but when I tell you that we were in the cellar a week together, without ever so much as seeing beyond the door, and myself in a sweat of anxiety about what our fate might be, you will understand that I needed an audience. Your real coward always does, and the worse his fear the more he blabs.

God, how I called; I roared like a bull calf, and got nothing back, not even echoes. I would do it again, too, in the same position, for all that I don’t believe in God and never have. But I blubbered like an infant, calling on Christ to save me, swearing to reform and crying gentle Jesus meek and mild over and over again. It’s a great thing, prayer. Nobody answers, but at least it stops you from thinking.

God alone knew what I was supposed to have done that was so brave, but doubtless I should learn in time. All I could see was that somehow appearances were heavily on my side—and who needs more than that? Give me the shadow every time, and you can keep the substance—it’s a principle I’ve followed all my life, and it works, if you know how to act on it.

It calls for nice judgement, this art of bragging; you must be plain, but not too plain, and you must smile only rarely. Letting them guess more than you say is the kernel of it, and looking uncomfortable when they compliment you.

But you will have noticed, no doubt, that when a man has a reputation good or bad, folk will always delight in adding to it; there wasn’t a man in Afghanistan who knew me but who wanted to recall having seen me doing something desperate, and Broadfoot, quite sincerely, was like all the rest.

I forgot the incident at once. I remember it now, for it was that same day that everything happened all at once. There are days like that; a chapter in your life ends and another one begins, and nothing is the same afterwards.

This myth called bravery, which is half-panic, half-lunacy (in my case, all panic), pays for all; in England you can’t be a hero and bad. There’s practically a law against it.

We shook hands, and he drove off. I never spoke to him again. Years later, though, I told the American general, Robert Lee, of the incident, and he said Wellington was right—I had received the highest honour any soldier could hope for. But it wasn’t the medal; for Lee’s money it was Wellington’s hand. Neither, I may point out, had any intrinsic value.

Pride is a hellish thing; without it there isn’t any jealousy or ambition. And I was proud of the figure I cut—in bed and in barracks. And here was I, the lion of the hour, medal and all, the Duke’s handshake and the Queen’s regard still fresh—and I was gnawing my innards out about a gold-headed filly without a brain to her name.

Flashman shows his true character when finding out he’s been cheated on:

I looked, and seeing myself so damned dashing, and her radiant and fair beside me, I fought down the wretchedness and rage. No, it couldn’t be true….
“Susan, you have not put away my coat, silly girl. Take it at once, before it creases.”
By God, though, I knew it was. Or I thought I knew. To the devil with the consequences, no little ninny in petticoats was going to do this to me.
“Elspeth,” says I, turning.
“Hang it carefully, now, when you’ve brushed it. There. Yes, my love?”
“Elspeth….”
“Oh, Harry, you look so strong and fierce, on my word. I don’t think I shall feel easy in my mind when I see all these fancy London ladies making eyes at you.” And she pouted very pretty and touched her finger on my lips.
“Elspeth, I—”
“Oh, I had nearly forgot—you had better take some money with you. Susan, bring me my purse. In case of any need that may arise, you know. Twenty guineas, my love.”
“Much obliged,” says I. What the devil, you have to make do as best you can; if the tide’s there, swim with it and catch on to whatever offers. You only go by once.
“Will twenty be sufficient, do you think?”
“Better make it forty.”

Summary

Major Characters

Flashman
Earl of Cardigan
Bernier
Elspeth
Gul Shah
Burnes
Elby Bey (Elphinstone)
Akbar Khan
Sgt Hudson

Outline

When I read fiction, I make an outline as a memory aide. If you don’t want to see any spoilers, skip this section.

Flashman is expelled from school
Flashman joins the 11th Light Dragoons as an officer
Flashman “wins” duel with Bernier after rigging it
Flashman gets reassigned to Glasgow, marries Elspeth (Forced)
Flashman gets transferred to India for marrying down
Flashman learns Hindi, goes to a party with the governor, gets sent to Afghanistan
Flashman learns Pashtu, gets sent as an emissary to the Gulzai
Flashman rapes the dancer, makes an enemy of Gul Shah – ambushed while hunting
The complacent garrison is attacked. Burnes dies.
Flashman is captured by Gul Shah, then saved by Akbar Khan
Flashman is sent to make a deal: British help double-cross a tribe, get safe retreat out of Afghanistan.
British get double-crossed; still retreat out of Afghanistan
Backstabbing by Akbar Khan – most of the force is wiped out in the Kabul pass (terrible decisions by Elphinstone)
Flashman separates from the army with Sgt Hudson
They see the massacre @ Gandamack, and are captured by Afghans
Flashman is tortured by Gul Shah, he escapes with Sgt Hudson after they kill Gul Shah
They make it to a fort outside of Jalalabad
The fort is overrun, the only survivor is Flashman
Flashman is sent to England as a hero – meets the Queen, Duke of Wellington, gets a medal
Finds out his wife is cheating on him – fine with it because he wants money.

Buy the Book

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Flashman: A Novel

By George MacDonald Fraser

November 27, 2018

Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone

Author: Martin Dugard
Rating: 3/5 (Good and enjoyable book, but not life changing)
Last Read: November 2014
Who Should Read: Those who enjoy lightweight historical books; those interested in the 1800s age of exploration and the exploration of Africa by Europeans

I picked up Into Africa during an Amazon Kindle book sale. I didn’t really have any reason to read about Stanley and Livingstone, other than the fact that they were two famous names that I knew very little about.

This book primarily covers the exploration for the source fo the Nile river. Great Britain asked Dr. Livingstone to explore and find the source. Only a few weeks after embarking, his expedition vanished without a trace. Stanley, a journalist, was sent into Africa in search of Livingstone as part of a plan to capitalize on the world’s obsession over Livingstone’s disappearance. The book’s chapters alternate between Stanley and Livingstone, and we see how the story unfolded for both.

Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone is an engrossing lightweight nonfiction read about two historic men. The author also does a great job at painting the scene and us a glimpse into the time period. I learned quite a bit while reading this book, especially about the Arab slave trade (something I had never heard about before).

My Highlights

“The effect of travel on a man whose heart is in the right place is that the mind is made more self-reliant: It becomes more confident of its own resources—there is greater presence of mind.

“No one,” he once wrote, “can truly appreciate the charm of repose unless he has undergone severe exertion.”

“We also rejoice in our sufferings,” Paul had written in his letter to the Romans in the middle of the first century, “because suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character hope. And hope does not disappoint us.”

Not only did Livingstone achieve more through kindness than Stanley had through rage, but by the time Livingstone had negotiated their way out of one problem or another, a hostile tribe or recalcitrant porter was often a new ally.

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Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone

By Martin Dugard

November 20, 2018

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

Author: Neil de Grasse Tyson
Rating: 4/5
Last Read: November 2018
Who Should Read: Amateur physicists and people who are interested in the wonders of our universe

Last Updated: 2018-11-24

I’ve always been interested in physics, but I wasn’t able to keep up with the mathematics and crazy problems during college. Over the past two years I’ve started picking up friendlier physics books to try to catch up on modern developments (“modern” as in “after the 1920s”). Astrophysics for People in a Hurry falls into this category – something I can ready to learn more about our world without having to break my brain by learning crazy mathematics.

NDT starts the book off by exploring the formation of the universe after the big bang. He reaches far and wide in his astrophysics summary, teaching us about dark matter, Einstein’s “biggest blunder”, and how post-apocalyptic scientists won’t even be able to tell that there are other galaxies. His tour of astrophysics is fast-paced and dizzying, and he keeps the reader engaged throughout the book.

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry is excellent for a brief taste of cosmic perspective. The universe is a grand spectacle, and it is such a blessing to be a part of it. We are the universe figuring itself out in a distant corner of the universe. While highly educational, the book is worth reading just for that brief feeling of wonder and joy in being alive.

We are stardust brought to life, then empowered by the universe to figure itself out—and we have only just begun.

My Highlights

The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you. —NDT

The world has persisted many a long year, having once been set going in the appropriate motions. From these everything else follows. LUCRETIUS, C. 50 BC

One thing quarks do have going for them: all their names are simple—something chemists, biologists, and especially geologists seem incapable of achieving when naming their own stuff.

As the universe continued to cool, the amount of energy available for the spontaneous creation of basic particles dropped. During the hadron era, ambient photons could no longer invoke E = mc2 to manufacture quark–antiquark pairs. Not only that, the photons that emerged from all the remaining annihilations lost energy to the ever-expanding universe, dropping below the threshold required to create hadron–antihadron pairs. For every billion annihilations—leaving a billion photons in their wake—a single hadron survived. Those loners would ultimately get to have all the fun: serving as the ultimate source of matter to create galaxies, stars, planets, and petunias. Without the billion-and-one to a billion imbalance between matter and antimatter, all mass in the universe would have self-annihilated, leaving a cosmos made of photons and nothing else—the ultimate let-there-be-light scenario.

People who believe they are ignorant of nothing have neither looked for, nor stumbled upon, the boundary between what is known and unknown in the universe.

We are stardust brought to life, then empowered by the universe to figure itself out—and we have only just begun.

For household lamps that still use glowing metal filaments, the bulbs all peak in the infrared, which is the single greatest contributor to their inefficiency as a source of visible light. Our senses detect infrared only in the form of warmth on our skin. The LED revolution in advanced lighting technology creates pure visible light without wasting wattage on invisible parts of the spectrum. That’s how you can get crazy-sounding sentences like: “7 Watts LED replaces 60 Watts Incandescent” on the packaging.

Albert Einstein hardly ever set foot in the laboratory; he didn’t test phenomena or use elaborate equipment. He was a theorist who perfected the “thought experiment,” in which you engage nature through your imagination, by inventing a situation or model and then working out the consequences of some physical principle. In Germany before World War II, laboratory-based physics far outranked theoretical physics in the minds of most Aryan scientists. Jewish physicists were all relegated to the lowly theorists’ sandbox and left to fend for themselves. And what a sandbox that would become.

Copernicus’s basic idea was correct, and that’s what mattered most. It simply required some tweaking to make it more accurate. Yet, in the case of Einstein’s relativity, the founding principles of the entire theory require that everything must happen exactly as predicted. Einstein had, in effect, built what looks on the outside like a house of cards, with only two or three simple postulates holding up the entire structure. Indeed, upon learning of a 1931 book entitled One Hundred Authors Against Einstein, he responded that if he were wrong, then only one would have been enough.

GR regards gravity as the response of a mass to the local curvature of space and time caused by some other mass or field of energy. In other words, concentrations of mass cause distortions—dimples, really—in the fabric of space and time. These distortions guide the moving masses along straight-line geodesics, though they look to us like the curved trajectories we call orbits. The twentieth-century American theoretical physicist John Archibald Wheeler said it best, summing up Einstein’s concept as, “Matter tells space how to curve; space tells matter how to move.”

Lambda preserved what Einstein and every other physicist of his day had strongly presumed to be true: the status quo of a static universe—an unstable static universe. To invoke an unstable condition as the natural state of a physical system violates scientific credo. You cannot assert that the entire universe is a special case that happens to be balanced forever and ever. Nothing ever seen, measured, or imagined has behaved this way in the history of science, which makes for powerful precedent.

The most accurate measurements to date reveal dark energy as the most prominent thing in town, currently responsible for 68 percent of all the mass-energy in the universe; dark matter comprises 27 percent, with regular matter comprising a mere 5 percent.

Without a doubt, Einstein’s greatest blunder was having declared that lambda was his greatest blunder.

A remarkable feature of lambda and the accelerating universe is that the repulsive force arises from within the vacuum, not from anything material. As the vacuum grows, the density of matter and (familiar) energy within the universe diminishes, and the greater becomes lambda’s relative influence on the cosmic state of affairs. With greater repulsive pressure comes more vacuum, and with more vacuum comes greater repulsive pressure, forcing an endless and exponential acceleration of the cosmic expansion. As a consequence, anything not gravitationally bound to the neighborhood of the Milky Way galaxy will recede at ever-increasing speed, as part of the accelerating expansion of the fabric of space-time. Distant galaxies now visible in the night sky will ultimately disappear beyond an unreachable horizon, receding from us faster than the speed of light. A feat allowed, not because they’re moving through space at such speeds, but because the fabric of the universe itself carries them at such speeds. No law of physics prevents this. In a trillion or so years, anyone alive in our own galaxy may know nothing of other galaxies. Our observable universe will merely comprise a system of nearby, long-lived stars within the Milky Way. And beyond this starry night will lie an endless void—darkness in the face of the deep. Dark energy, a fundamental property of the cosmos, will, in the end, undermine the ability of future generations to comprehend the universe they’ve been dealt. Unless contemporary astrophysicists across the galaxy keep remarkable records and bury an awesome, trillion-year time capsule, postapocaplyptic scientists will know nothing of galaxies—the principal form of organization for matter in our cosmos—and will thus be denied access to key pages from the cosmic drama that is our universe. Behold my recurring nightmare: Are we, too, missing some basic pieces of the universe that once were? What part of the cosmic history book has been marked “access denied”? What remains absent from our theories and equations that ought to be there, leaving us groping for answers we may never find?

While many objects have peculiar shapes, the list of round things is practically endless and ranges from simple soap bubbles to the entire observable universe. Of all shapes, spheres are favored by the action of simple physical laws. So prevalent is this tendency that often we assume something is spherical in a mental experiment just to glean basic insight even when we know that the object is decidedly non-spherical. In short, if you do not understand the spherical case, then you cannot claim to understand the basic physics of the object.

Using freshman-level calculus you can show that the one and only shape that has the smallest surface area for an enclosed volume is a perfect sphere. In fact, billions of dollars could be saved annually on packaging materials if all shipping boxes and all packages of food in the supermarket were spheres.

the weaker the gravity on the surface of an object, the higher its mountains can reach. Mount Everest is about as tall as a mountain on Earth can grow before the lower rock layers succumb to their own plasticity under the mountain’s weight.

In space, surface tension always forces a small blob of liquid to form a sphere. Whenever you see a small solid object that is suspiciously spherical, you can assume it formed in a molten state. If the blob has very high mass, then it could be composed of almost anything and gravity will ensure that it forms a sphere.

The stars of the Milky Way galaxy trace a big, flat circle. With a diameter-to-thickness ratio of one hundred to one, our galaxy is flatter than the flattest flapjacks ever made. In fact, its proportions are better represented by a crépe or a tortilla. No, the Milky Way’s disk is not a sphere, but it probably began as one.

If we had eyes that could see magnetic fields, Jupiter would look five times larger than the full Moon in the sky.

Whether you prefer to sprint, swim, walk, or crawl from one place to another on Earth, you can enjoy close-up views of our planet’s unlimited supply of things to notice. You might see a vein of pink limestone on the wall of a canyon, a ladybug eating an aphid on the stem of a rose, a clamshell poking out from the sand. All you have to do is look.

Of all the sciences cultivated by mankind, Astronomy is acknowledged to be, and undoubtedly is, the most sublime, the most interesting, and the most useful. For, by knowledge derived from this science, not only the bulk of the Earth is discovered . . . ; but our very faculties are enlarged with the grandeur of the ideas it conveys, our minds exalted above [their] low contracted prejudices. JAMES FERGUSON, 1757

Yet the cosmic view comes with a hidden cost. When I travel thousands of miles to spend a few moments in the fast-moving shadow of the Moon during a total solar eclipse, sometimes I lose sight of Earth. When I pause and reflect on our expanding universe, with its galaxies hurtling away from one another, embedded within the ever-stretching, four-dimensional fabric of space and time, sometimes I forget that uncounted people walk this Earth without food or shelter, and that children are disproportionately represented among them.

If small genetic differences between us and our fellow apes account for what appears to be a vast difference in intelligence, then maybe that difference in intelligence is not so vast after all. Imagine a life-form whose brainpower is to ours as ours is to a chimpanzee’s. To such a species, our highest mental achievements would be trivial. Their toddlers, instead of learning their ABCs on Sesame Street, would learn multivariable calculus on Boolean Boulevard.††† Our most complex theorems, our deepest philosophies, the cherished works of our most creative artists, would be projects their schoolkids bring home for Mom and Dad to display on the refrigerator door with a magnet.

If a huge genetic gap separated us from our closest relative in the animal kingdom, we could justifiably celebrate our brilliance. We might be entitled to walk around thinking we’re distant and distinct from our fellow creatures. But no such gap exists. Instead, we are one with the rest of nature, fitting neither above nor below, but within.

We do not simply live in this universe. The universe lives within us.

The cosmic perspective enables us to grasp, in the same thought, the large and the small. The cosmic perspective opens our minds to extraordinary ideas but does not leave them so open that our brains spill out, making us susceptible to believing anything we’re told. The cosmic perspective opens our eyes to the universe, not as a benevolent cradle designed to nurture life but as a cold, lonely, hazardous place, forcing us to reassess the value of all humans to one another. The cosmic perspective shows Earth to be a mote. But it’s a precious mote and, for the moment, it’s the only home we have.

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Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

By Neil deGrasse Tyson