Lost in Translation

Lost in Translation

Edward Willett

DAW, 2005. 297 pages. ISBN 0756403405.

Library of Congress: 2004063679

Library Thing: 192528

My rating:

The S’sinn are an alien race whose home planet is S’sinndikk. Despite being bat-like creatures, they behave like humans in many ways; in fact, from all seven races, the S’sinn seem to be the most similar to humans. Some time after humans settle in Kikks’sarr, a planet already inhabited by the S’sinn, they kill a group of S’sinn and war breaks out. The Commonwealth, which previously united six races, now accepts humans as members and forces both parties to cease war. Most of the S’sinn, and powerful flight leader Catlike in particular, want to eliminate humans and the Commonwealth.

The translators play an important role in this universe, since they allow communication between different races. The Guild of Translators is thus very respected among all races. In order to become a translator, an individual—from whatever race—must have a natural empathic ability and must also undergo the implantation of a symbiote, which is essential for the so-called linking process to succeed. The linking merges the minds of two individuals, allowing them not only to translate from the foreign language into their own but also to deeply inspect the other creature’s soul.

Jarrikk and Kathryn are translators. He is a S’sinn who lost friends in war and became flightless because of humans; she is a human whose parents were killed in war. Even after swearing an oath stating they should abandon all species ties, they are still somewhat uncomfortable with each other’s race. This radically changes, however, when they first link; they instantly become friends and begin their fight to avoid the impending war between S’sinn and humans.

This book is a good read. The author’s idea of translators is an interesting one, although I do not know whether it is original. If translating between human languages is not easy, what can be said about translating between languages from different species?

The focus of the book is not so much on the humans as on the S’sinn and the relationship between the two species; this I especially appreciate. Little is said about the earth, and almost nothing takes place there; many events, on the other hand, occur in Kikks’sarr and S’sinndikk. The author hints at many of the characteristics of the S’sinn, those two-hearted creatures whose life means nothing if they cannot fly.

Some type of panspermia seems to be assumed, for humans are not the only DNA-based species among the seven races. I think this and related topics could be explored further. How do the different species relate to each other? How do they all communicate (not all of them use sounds, for example)? For how long have they become sentient? How old is the Commonwealth?

The idea that sometimes heroes are forced by circumstances to rise above established law is commonplace and, in my opinion, uncalled for. Either this should have been obvious to Jarrikk and Kathryn or should not have been used at all.

When reading this book, more than once Asimov’s Foundation series came to mind. Asimov created the Mule, a man who had thought-projecting abilities, in order to insert an unpredictable element to stand in the way of the Foundation’s plans, and also described the people from the Second Foundation, who only communicate telepathically among themselves. I do not like the way telepathy has been used, both in Asimov’s Foundation series and in Willett’s book, because it seems to me that, if telepathy exists, then it is more interesting to explore it deeply than to have the story only scratch its surface. By the end of Willett’s book, telepathy and thought projection are already taken for granted phenomena. But what would happen after telepathy has been discovered? Even if Jarrikk and Kathryn managed to hide the full extent of their abilities from the Guild, they already knew something of the type was going on and they could research into it to find a way to reproduce the phenomenon themselves. What then? How would that change the Commonwealth? What would happen to people in general, if some of them could also develop this ability? I think telepathy and thought projection are under-explored in this book.

The other similarity to Asimov’s work is that an impending war is suppressed because of religious authority here, too. In both cases, the evil plans of a military leader are frustrated because of a last-minute communication by a priest. In any case, I marvel at the their description of peoples/species who are both technologically advanced and religious. That almost convinces me that humans have always been and will always be religious.

Assassin’s Apprentice

Assassin’s Apprentice

Robin Hobb

Bantam Books, 1995. 435 pages. ISBN 055357339X.

Library of Congress: 94028942

Library Thing: 44474

My rating:

Hobb tells the story of Fitz, the bastard son of a prince who is trained to become a professional assassin. The story takes place in an imaginary world that endures its own version of the Middle Ages and revolves mainly about Buckkeep town, where Fitz lives since he was six, when he was abandoned by his family. Nothing much happens in the story; Fitz is not a hero, he is just a boy that seldom does anything surprising.

This book lacks something I really appreciate in books: verisimilitude. Very interesting things could have happened in our universe, in our world; there is no need to add unnatural features. This book not only describes an unreal universe, but also does so unnecessarily. There exists what they call the Skill (always written with capital S), which is a mental ability that allows an individual to interfere with other people’s minds. Fitz possesses the Skill, but he is also able to use it with animals—which seems to trouble Burrich, the stableman who raised Fitz in Buckkeep town. Maybe the Skill plays a more important role in the sequels, but in this particular book it is superfluous. The “forging” that the Outislanders inflict on the poor villagers may also turn out to be another unrealistic element in the other books of the series, but not many details about it were given in this one.

This book may have been a worthwhile reading, but I am not willing to read other such “fantasy” books any time soon.

Counting the Eons

Counting the Eons

Isaac Asimov

Doubleday, 1983. 179 pages. ISBN 0385179766.

Library of Congress: 82045068

Library Thing: 501390

My rating:

In this book, Asimov brought together a bunch of essays he had previously published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. They were categorized under four parts: The Earth, The Stars, The Universe and Literature. The last part contains only one essay, in which Asimov argues that Milton would have been a great science fiction writer, had he been only born at the right time. The other three parts are more related to each other, as all of them discuss aspects of the physical world.

The essays are written in a way that entices the reader to partake in the joy of discovery. Scientific discoveries are not presented as mere facts; much on the contrary, hypotheses are put to the test and subsequently validated or rejected, just in the way science works in the real world. What great classes must have been those of Asimov!

I personally enjoyed the description of Scaliger’s work on calendars, who meticulously investigated ancient and modern calendar systems and also set up his own; the first day on his calendar is January 1, 4713 BC, because that was a Sunday with a new moon (which happens every 532 years) and also because in that year a census would have been taken if the Roman empire had already been born (since the Romans, after AD 300, took a census every 15 years).

In his essays concerning the Universe, he describes many, many elementary particles and at what point in time they were allowed to exist, as the Universe cooled down after the big bang. He puts forth an interesting idea: that initially there was one really tiny and hot particle, which he named holon, with all the mass of the Universe, and that the breaking down of this particle into smaller ones later resulted in the Universe as we know it. The beauty of this idea is that this breaking down of the holon is the same breaking down which still happens today in particle decay.

In the Introduction, Asimov claimed he had a mission: to fight the creationists, who are “not content to believe and not content to persuade”. They want to “enforce their views on the public and to erase all freedom of thought”. I was surprised (although, really, I should not) to see that this battle is not a new one.

Each of the essays begins with a short personal story which more or less serves as a starting point for the real thing. Not only these stories are amusing, but they also bring us closer to Asimov, the person, as though he was beginning a lecture with a joke.

Sadly, the book is obsolete and Asimov dead. When talking about the observation of planets and stars, for instance, he mentions that “an obvious change for the better would be to place a large telescope on the moon, or in orbit”; well, that has already been done a long time ago. The whole discussion on big bang is probably seriously dated too.

Breakthroughs in Science

Breakthroughs in Science

Isaac Asimov

Houghton Mifflin, 1960. 197 pages.

Library of Congress: 60009092

Library Thing: 589623

My rating:

Asimov was, above all, a man of science. Despite being well-known for his science fiction works, he has written about actual science too—and not only for adults. This book, targeted at youngsters, gives the biographies of no less than 26 great scientists or notable inventors of the past, organized chronologically. He starts with Archimedes, skips over the Middle Ages and continues with Gutenberg. He does not forget big names like Galileo, Newton and Einstein, and also presents lesser-known people like Anton van Leeuwenhoek and Henry Bessemer.

Asimov pictures his biographees mostly as heroes, as models to be imitated. He recounts particular events in their lives and always concludes by describing the long-lasting effects of their research. The text is easy to read and flows easily.

In Newton’s biography, Asimov finds a way to belittle his work as a theologian. After a nervous breakdown in 1692 “he was never the same” and “turned toward theology and alchemy, as though science were not enough”. I do not know whether Newton had written anything previously on theology, but, if he had not, that does change my mind a little about him.

I wish someone had given me this book when I was a kid—I would have loved it.