Book Description
A harrowing, subterranean Into Thin Air, BEYOND THE DEEP is the perilous odyssey of the cavers who explored the Mt. Everest of the undergroundthe Huautla.The Huautla in Mexico is the deepest cave in the Western Hemisphere, possibly the world. Shafts reach skyscraper-depths, caverns are stadium-sized, and sudden floods can drown divers in an instant. With a two-decade obsession, William Stone and his 44-member team entered the sinkhole at Sotano de San Augustin. The first camp settled 2,328 feet below ground in a cavern where headlamps couldnt even illuminate the walls and ceiling. The second camp teeter-ed precariously above an underground canyon where two subterranean rivers collided. But beyond that lay the unknown territorya flooded corridor that had blocked all previous comers, claimed a divers life, and drove the rest of the team back. Except for William Stone and Barbara am Ende, who forged on for 18 more days, with no hope of rescue, to set the record for the deepest cave dive in the Western Hemisphere.
Customer Reviews:
Awesome story...flawed presentation.......2005-12-23
I still recommend this book highly. The story of these explorers is simply amazing. As someone who is very very claustrophobic (my worst fear is being stuck in some confined space), I have to be an "armchair" explorer, and this book makes you confront these fears. In the end it's very rewarding.
The book's only flaw is the "reconstructed" dialogue. I don't know who recommended the author(s) adopt this format, because it is really awkward in places. The narrative of, say, a Jon Krakauer book or a Simon Winchester book is much, much more effective than a lot of the bogus, even boring dialogue that comes across here. There are a lot of characters the author(s) and the readers have to deal with, so perhaps giving most of them "voices" was thought of as the best way to do it, but after a while it gets a little tiring and actually disrupts the build-up of the action.
Still, it's an awesome story of exploration and what drives us to keep pushing the limits.
The willys!.......2004-11-01
I'm a scuba diver. I have also done a lot of spelunking in my late teens and early 20's. I never really considered combining the 2. It just didn't cross my mind.
Now I never will.
There were so many times in this book that I simply got the willies. (Did I spell that right?) It became more frightening that some of the horror I've read.
It also (in my humble opinion) addresses one of the greatest downfalls of some explorers; Not taking into consideration one's mortality.
While I doubt I'll ever willingly mix traditional scuba diving with spelunking I may consider it if I had access to the re-breathers this team used.
This book is NOT for the claustrophobic.
I Really Wanted to Like This Book..........2003-10-15
I really wanted to like this book but I found myself struggling to finish it. No doubt, the experience itself was immeasurably exciting / interesting, but the book was, well, kind of boring.
It could have easily been half the length and not lost much, and as another reviewer indicated, I never really got a feel for what is so great about crawling though caves. I'm sure it IS great, at least to those who are as into it as these people are, but I didn't get why or how from the book. I also found the third-person writing style a bit contrived, somehow.
If you DID like this book, I would highly recommend 'The Last Dive' which is in a similar vein but I found very exciting and extremely well written.
DIVING INTO DISASTER.......2003-07-20
Fascinating book about the ultimate 'adventure' junkies-- who explore the world's most treacherous cave in Mexico. An amazing crew of people. What's so unusual is that these are divers-- deep see divers, not just guys and gals who go down into the cave on ropes or climb rocks. They call themselves CAVERS -- details make the true-life adventure come alive. What's disturbing though is that lives were lost on this expedition and the authors tend to gloss over those lost in their quest for the ultimate experiences. Cinematic and even outrageous tale of diving into disaster.
What Drives Divers To Descend To Unbelievable Depths?.......2003-04-21
What is it that drives cave explorers to descend to unbelievable depths, as if they were involved in an international game of subterranean chess?
Perhaps the clues are to be found within the pages of a book entitled Beyond The Deep that chronicles the breathtaking 1994 San Agustin Expedition as told from the perspective of Bill Stone and Barbara am Ende.
Much of the information was gleaned from their logbooks, diaries, and recollections, as well as from dozens of interviews conducted by their co-author Monte Paulsen.
In 1977, 1979 and 1981 cave divers were unsuccessful in exploring the San Agustin sump or the underground tunnel that was flooded entirely with water. This sump is the deepest point in a cave known as Sistema Huautla, Oaxaca, Mexico.
Many of the difficulties were the result of using traditional equipment as well as the inability to effectively transport the supplies and gear necessary to accomplish this incredible feat.
In 1994 international exploring expert Bill Stone completed the constructing of an closed cycle life support system or as he termed it a "rebreather." This piece of apparatus was called the Mk-ll.
This would permit the cavers and divers to explore the San Agustin Sump far longer than anyone was able to accomplish in the past.
It was Stone's contention that the problem was primarily a technological challenge. Once this was overcome, the rest would fall into place.
The next step entailed the meticulous organization of the various components of the team.
There was expedition leader Stone, six dive team members, 35 support team participants and 5 members of the photo team.
These individuals wanted to "place their own boot where no one hand before." According to Stone, "every member had made enormous personal sacrifices in the pursuit of this elusive grail. They'd left family behind for a third of a year; had trained relentlessly for two years just to get there; had gone deeply into debt; and were subjecting themselves daily to physical hardships."
Why do it? Perhaps Stone sums it up when he asserts, "after so many years of struggle, he'd found the route, the secret doorway to the gaping, unexplored beyond."
One of the shortcomings of the book is the extensive use of technical jargon. The authors did indicate in the introduction that they have substituted common words for technical jargon wherever possible.
However, unfortunately, far too often I had to refer to the glossary at the back of the book to understand a paragraph or sentence. No doubt this deflated some of the suspense of the saga.
Amazon.com
For centuries, biological scientists have been using the Linnean system of classification, organizing hierarchies of life forms by their perceived similarities and differences. In the late 20th century, some scientists have taken to using an alternative system called cladistics, which bases taxonomic classifications on ecological relationships. Under the first system, all algae fall into a single large category, which is then subdivided into various genera and species; under the second, green algae are grouped with plants, chromophyte algae with waterborne fungi, and so forth to account for the environments in which they live. Under the first system, dogs and wolves and coyotes are separated; under the second, they are united, for, the thinking goes, similarities of behavior and provenance are more important than mere lines of evolutionary descent, which can only be guessed at.
The debate over cladistics has largely been confined to seminar rooms and laboratories. Henry Gee brings it to the general public in this spirited look at how the science of paleontology, that grand tour of what Gee calls Deep Time, is conducted. Replacing old family trees with "cladograms," Gee challenges long-accepted notions about the past (for example, the classification of Archaeopteryx, which walks like a duck and quacks like a duck but is accounted for as a dinosaur) and argues for a return to rigor in testing hypotheses. His book, although about difficult issues, is immediately accessible, and readers seeking to learn something about cladistics--which Gee believes is "a revolution in thought as profound as that of Darwinian evolution by natural selection"--are off to a fine start in these pages. --Gregory McNamee
Book Description
In this exciting work on the cutting edge of scientific knowledge, Henry Gee, Chief Science Writer at Nature, tells the story of a recent revolution in palaeontology. For the first time, all of us can share in the wonder of a deceptively simple idea known as cladistics, the science of comparison. The cladistics revolution is transforming almost everything we know about the science of life in Deep Time -- the billions of years in which life has evolved on this planet. It provides insights and solutions to questions about ourselves ordinarily considered beyond the realm of science.
What can we truly know of the awesome dark chasm of Deep Time that separates us from the beginning of life on earth? In Search of Deep Time strips away conventional assumptions about the evolution of life to reveal a bizarre world that is truer to the facts -- and far stranger -- than many Darwinians and certainly any Creationists ever imagined. Scientists used to categorize life forms according to how similar they looked. If an animal had a wing, it was a bird; if it had a fin, it was a fish. But then, is a penguin a bird? Is a whale a mammal? While the answer to these questions is yes, it doesn't mean much scientifically. The real answers to how life evolved and how life forms are related come from cladistic analysis, from measuring the tremendous variety of genetic and anatomic variations between species and juggling them with computer technology. Because of cladistics, scientists have come to believe that hippos are more closely related to whales than pigs. We have learned that the old way of understanding nature, in which we squashed the teeming variety of life on earth into our own haphazard and arbitrary categories, must be replaced by understanding precisely how similar, and how different, each species measurably is. Rather than a hierarchical tree of life with ourselves at the apex, we now see a bush with evolutionary branches intertwining in strange and surprising ways -- mushrooms really are closer cousins to us than plants are.
Gee journeys among the scientists who are making the breakthrough discoveries about the evolution of life. He travels to a fossil dig in Kenya with Meave Leakey of the pioneering palaeoanthropology family that made the Rift Valley in East Africa famous as the origin of modern humans. There he finds a small fossilized skull, and considers whether anyone could ever know if that fossil was the remains of Gee's great-great-great-great-great-, etc., grandfather. The answer is clearly no. There are no knowable ancestors in Deep Time. Beyond the last few dozen generations, all individuals in the entire animal kingdom, indeed all individuals throughout the epochs of Deep Time in all the kingdoms of life on earth, are cousins. Whether in Eastern Africa or in his native London with palaeontology's "Gang of Four," Gee offers lively explorations of the idea that there is no knowable descent of man. Throughout, he displays the crackling wit and exceptional command of his field that readers of his articles in Nature have admired for years. He takes you to the places where science is happening and becomes the perfect guide to a scientific adventure of the mind.
In Search of Deep Time shines a light on age-old controversies about fish with fingers and dinosaurs with wings, but also reveals the scientific facts of problems we have only begun thinking about. For instance, how will we recognize life inside a rock on another planet if we should ever find it? Cladistics ultimately leads Gee to a surprisingly profound question: What if there were another hominid species to compare ourselves with? Perhaps the science of comparison, cladistics, is the only way we will ever really come to terms with who we are, because real knowledge can only be based on comparison. Gee illuminates a shift in the history of science that is happening now and is changing our understanding of what scientific knowledge is. More deeply, it is changing our understanding of who we are.
Customer Reviews:
Does Cladistics Throw the Evolutionary Baby Out with the Evolutionary Bathwater?.......2006-06-12
I agree with James McCall's review. I don't regret reading the book, though it didn't teach me much about cladistics that I didn't already know. However, I found the first several chapters tedious, repeating the same criticisms of "evolutionary story-telling" over and over. I think it would have been much more effective if Gee had given more examples of how cladistics better illuminates interesting evolutionary questions than the traditional approach.
Regardless of the limitations of story-telling in "deep time," it exists because people want to know, for example, why and how some group of fishes gave rise to tetrapods, or how some group of ancient proto-hippos (hypothetically) evolved into whales. Gee's extreme methodological purism (as I understand it) would have us ignore these interesting questions as unanswerable. It seems to me that a more constructive approach would be to have cladistic reconstructions set limits on and help decide between conflicting evolutionary stories, while acknowledging their highly provisional nature. The process may not be as rigorous as a cladistic analysis, but if enough hippopotamid fossils from around the time of divergence between whales and hippos were discovered, one or more evolutionary/geological/ecological hypotheses could be constructed to describe how it occurred. The hypotheses would have to be consistent with the geological and geographical context of the fossils, and would be subject to revision or winnowing as new fossils are found. This is still science.
Not as clear & definitive as I would like.......2006-05-22
I did not find a clear and definitive statement of what the author means by the term "cladistics", as opposed to the old "scenario-based" evolutionary plots: He mostly spends time defining what it is not, because it is not "unscientific", like the older approach. He seems to be aware of that as well, because he re-uses the same arguments in almost every chapter, as if not convinced that he has conveyed his point (and he's probably right). The book seems to fall between two chairs: It's not really aimed at someone professional, who needs a definitive and clear-cut statement; and it's not truly accessible to someone not of the field, who needs more of a build-up in terms of content, and who will not appreciate all the "inside baseball" stories. Possibly Gee has been working for Nature so long that he thinks of its readership as a "general audience", but it's not: I suspect most of the readers of Nature read with interest the papers in their own fields, and skip or skim the rest.
It's too bad, because the topic is of interest, and there is lots of good material in this book. But it really ought to be structured as a whole book, with clear build-up to the arguments and facts; and not as loosely as it is (almost a sequence of passes at the same set of concepts).
What we can learn from fossils.......2005-02-11
The title of "Deep Time" refers to the immense gulfs of time that separate the major events in evolution. The best known of these is the gap of 65 million years between the disappearance of the dinosaurs and the present, but this only one of many, and by no means the largest. More important than the size of these gaps for Henry Gee's arguments, however, is their emptiness: there are extremely few fossils to provide landmarks, and many of these are damaged, incomplete, and in general unsatisfactory. "Incomplete" is, indeed, a weak word to convey the idea that one worn fragment of a jawbone may be all there is for trying to reconstruct a whole animal. Fossils thus offer nothing that resembles a historical record. Gee considers that trying to reconstruct evolution on the basis of so little information requires far more rigorous methods than those that were in general use before the development of cladistics.
Most of his book, therefore, is an attempt to convince readers of the rightness of the cladistic approach, in which the only consideration is the branching of lineages into separate lines of descent. In this scheme it makes sense to classify organisms into clades, where a clade contains only those individuals that are derived from a single ancestral branchpoint. This sounds rather abstract, and in many accounts it is, but Gee does a good job of explaining what he means in a comprehensible way. He is particularly interested in fish, and they illustrate well how the cladistic approach has transformed ideas of how organisms should be classified. According to him, a fish is something you buy in a fish shop, and has no deeper meaning than that. This is because some "fish" are more closely related to mammals than they are to other "fish". As a more familiar example, there is now scarcely any doubt that chimpanzees and gorillas are much more closely related to humans than they are to other apes, orang utans and gibbons. There can be no clade, therefore, than includes all these apes but does not include humans.
Although in general Gee's argument is clear and convincing, he oversimplifies when he tries to justify the cladistic method in terms of parsimony -- the guiding principle that the preferred reconstruction of a history is the one that involves the fewest hypothetical events. The problem here is that he says far too little about the rooting of phylogenetic trees. The example that he uses is the set of three individuals that consist of himself and his two cats, and he claims that parsimony requires a classification in which the two cats are more closely related to one another than either of them is to him. This conclusion, however, owes everything to common sense and nothing to parsimony, because in an unrooted tree with only three branches exactly the same number of events are needed to connect the tree individuals regardless of which of the three one thinks is the least closely related. Because cladistics is concerned only with the branchpoints and not with the lengths of the branches, classifying Gee with one of his cats, but with a very long branch linking him to the branchpoint, is just as parsimonious as a tree that classifies the two cats together.
The book stands somewhat apart from many popular books on evolution in that it is much more about anatomy than about behaviour or molecular genetics. Both of these last two get mentioned, of course, but really what interests Gee the most is what we can learn from fossils. Nonetheless, he does not expect readers to be able to interpret fossils themselves, only to believe that the experts who do this know what they are talking about. As a result, the emphasis on anatomy does not prevent the account from being thoroughly readable. As I have mentioned, Gee is interested in fish, and this illustrates another feature that is unusual in popular books, that it has far less about humans and hominids than many books: the beginning and end are mainly concerned with human origins and evolution, but much of the middle part is not. Likewise he is much less obsessed with dinosaurs that many popular writers on evolution appear to be.
Clarifying with cladistics?.......2004-09-07
Henry Gee is like a hustling salesman. You can picture him on late-night TV flogging veggie choppers. While firmly disparaging his competition, he regales you with the wonders of his product. In this book, the competition is "adaptation" and "convergence" in evolution. The product is "cladistics". It's a new way of looking at the physical traits of Nature's plants and creatures and their evolutionary relationships. Gee is an expressive and persuasive writer. His foundation in palaeontology gives him an intimate knowledge of the science. His salesmanship, however, tends to the excessive. Like the TV promoter's pitch, when you buy the product and examine it closely, you find you've paid for more than you receive.
Gee's title, and the premise of cladistics, is that we can't see very far into the past. Historical continuity, with documents, paintings, letters and memories perhaps reinforced by family ties, doesn't grant us much depth of vision. How much, he asks, do you know about your great-grandparents? With fossils, he stresses, drawing "family" lineages is a process imbued with imprecision. He scorns anthropologists claiming to see a traceable picture of Homo sapiens' ancestry from to some hillside tooth fragment from the Rift Valley. He deems all that remote past with its scattered fossils so wonderfully explained by palaeontologists "deep time". Which, of course, covers all evolution's history.
The author's arguments as he builds his case are multilevel. He doesn't trust stratigraphy to pinpoint relationships in time - a species "A" may have survived to live parallel to a new branch "B". Yet our fossil sequence may show the "A" living later than "B". That alone, he claims, renders any assessment of adaptations suspect. Physical traits we see in fossils are often labelled "pre-adaptations" since it appears "primitive" traits may have gained in complexity over time to become more useful. Gee dismisses these sequences as unsubstantiated. "Testable" theories of evolution's process become meaningless. This is hardly news - little in the fossil record is "testable". In any case, cladistics wholly ignores evolution as a "process". It is a series of snapshots of "events".
Instead of "relating narratives" as he accuses his fellow palaeontologists of doing, Gee wants them to more closely study physical relationships. What characteristics can be identified, and how do these relate among species? Dogs, cats, and cows are clearly four-legged animals with vertebrae. So are fish, birds and crocodiles. Cladistics allows you to portray life in new arrangements of "cousinship". Gee declares these new relationships allow us to see life "as it is", not how we "want it to be". The relationships are graphically presented in what are known as "cladograms". For Gee, these diagrams portraying characteristic similarities are more meaningful than speculative diagrams about descent lineages. They also, it turns out, support Stephen Gould's notion of "punctuated equilibrium" over the "adaptationist programme" of neo-Darwinism.
Gee wants to abandon "traditional" fossil hunting and interpretation with a "revolution" [his term] - a turnover to cladistics. His proposal to banish "inference" from accumulated fossils and their context and replace it with a strict methodology is not sound. Traits, no matter how ancient or enigmatic, represent the lifestyle of their possessor. Sciencists may make proposals about how a species lived that are later overturned by new evidence. Cladistics acts as a tool to assess those evaluations, not overturn them. The book is valuable for explaining how cladistics can be used. Gee's strident tone and overassertive style dulls its cutting edge, however. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
A little bit honest...At least that's a start.......2004-01-21
Dr. Gee is honest enough to admit that the fossil record will never be able to shed light on ancestry and descent of various species. He is not honest enough to admit that the concept of macroevolion is nothing more than fanciful, atheistic superstition.
Average customer rating:
- Growing Up Among Aliens
- On being an Alien
- Reissue of two great C.J. Cherryh Stories
- A long over due re-issue of 2 books
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The Deep Beyond: Cuckoo's Egg / Serpent's Reach
C. J. Cherryh
Manufacturer: DAW
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ASIN: 0756403111 |
Customer Reviews:
Growing Up Among Aliens.......2006-09-18
The Deep Beyond (2005) is an omnibus edition including Serpent's Reach and Cuckoo's Egg. These early SF novels take place on alien planets rather than human space. Both are about young people who are raised among aliens.
Serpent's Reach (1980) is an SF novel in the Alliance-Union Universe. In 2223, the interstellar probe Celia discovered the majat, a sapient alien species, on Alpha Hydri III -- Cerdin -- in the Serpent's Reach. The majat body structure and organization was much like social insects such as ants. At the time of discovery, there were four different hives, each ruled by a collective intelligence with memories spanning millions of years.
There were no survivors from the Celia, but the hives did decide that each human was an individual intelligence. In 2229, the crew of the Delia probe was kept alive and, in 2235, under terms of the Hydri Treaty, one shipload of colonists was allowed to settle on the planet. These became the Kontrin Company. The colonists, however, brought a shipload of embryos, from which were grown the Betas. These Betas, in turn, grew clones of themselves, the azi, with biological timers that limited lifespan to forty years.
In this novel, Raen a Sul hant Meth-maren is Kontrin. She is the direct lineal descendent of The Meth-maren, destined to lead the family some day. For the past fifteen years, she has been learning the things that she should know to govern. Since all Kontrin have been made potentially immortal by the majat, she has many years of learning before she is old enough to have fun.
One day, the family estate at Kethiuy is visited by the Houses of Thon and Yalt, but these welcome guests bring others from the House of Hald and, worse yet, members of the Ruil-sept of the Meth-marens. Neither Hald or Ruil would have dared to set foot on the estate without Thon and Yalt. The Ruil cadet-sept has come to suggest a change in the relationships with the majat, but the talks are only a cover for an attack on the Sul-sept.
Only Raen survived the vicious attack by the Ruil-sept, Red and Gold majats and majat-azi. She manages to escape to the nearby Hive of the Blue majats and to convince the Hive Mother to help her wrest Kethiuy from the Ruil-sept and others who have assisted in the attack. She succeeds in destroying the Ruil-sept, but the Blue Hive is also destroyed and she is captured.
She is brought before the Council and Eron Thel, the head of the conspiracy, is almost allowed to relinquish Raen to her enemies. Yet Moth, second oldest of all Kontrin, protests that there has been no vote and Lian, the Eldest, agrees with Moth. Lian makes a speech, at the conclusion of which Moth kills all the known conspirators. Raen is banished from Cerdin.
Cuckoo's Egg (1985) is the third SF novel of the Age of Exploration Series, but is essentially a standalone work. Dana Duun Shtoni no Loghn is a Hatani, a judge without appeal. He has been called Sey -- general -- and Mingi -- lord -- but now he is just Dunn. He is unique, for none have been asked to judge so important a question.
Duun accepts the bundled infant from the meds and starts to care for him. He soon stinks of urine and excrement, but he does not clean himself off, for the infant is more comfortable with the stench. Duun does ask his friend Ellud to prepare Sheon, the estate where he grew up, to provide a simpler environment for the infant's development.
When Sheon has been cleared of the people who had claimed the property, Duun takes the infant there and raises him to be hatani. Since the infant differs from ordinary shonunin, Dunn has to adjust his lessons. Most things, like the five fingers instead of four, are insignificant, but the child grows up to be scent-blind and lacking much fur.
Duun calls the infant Haras, with Thorn as his use name. He teaches Thorn to never say "can't" unless he is physically, mentally or emotionally unable to do something and Thorn finds that Duun never asks him to do anything that he cannot do. Duun also teaches Thorn to deny many of his needs, for these are really only desires.
Duun also teaches Thorn hand-to-hand combat, escape and evasion, and other martial skills. Duun is better than Thorn at close combat, despite the severe injuries that had scarred his face and torso, but the damage to his knee made him less agile than Thorn while climbing. Besides, Thorn's feet gave him a better grip on rocks than Dunn's claws.
One day Thorn is running from Duun as usual, but heads down the mountain instead of up, for he knows that Dunn would expect him to use his greater climbing ability. He runs all the way down to the nearby settlement where he can expect food and water. As he nears the first house, he sees and hears two children playing in the yard. Thorn notices that they are not like him, but look much like Duun.
These stories are unrelated to any other works by the author. Serpent's Reach ends at a suitable point and fits neatly into the Alliance-Union universe. Yet Cuckoo's Egg ends with many dangling plot threads. Indeed, it is difficult to place this work in any of the author's known universes, although it is arbitrarily placed in the Age of Exploration Series. There is some question about whether Thorn is truly human.
Highly recommended to Cherryh fans or to anyone else who enjoys tales of alien cultures and cross-cultural relationships.
-Arthur W. Jordin
On being an Alien.......2006-04-05
Voyager in Night takes you inside the personality, inside the world view, inside the feelings of an utterly alien computer program.
These stories develop the same combination of shock, revulsion and empthy as the protagonist journeys from something like human to something very different. Cuckoo's Egg resonates with Pyanfar Chanur, in that the protagonist starts as an Alien. Who we come to admire and respect.
Serpent's reach, the protagonist starts out fairly human. As in Voyager, the destination is immortality and a hive mind. Essential Cherryh!
Reissue of two great C.J. Cherryh Stories.......2005-10-04
The Deep Beyond contains two of C. J. Cherryh's great early works.
Serpents reach is a masterpiece of world building as it gives a totally plausible, totally believable world where Ants are the intelligent and evolved race. It explores how virtual immortality could affect wealth power and family relations. This is a great story about betrayal and revenge and acceptance.
The Cuccoo' s Egg is another great story that might be compared to the part (the part that you don't get to read., about when Valentine Smith is still on Mars.) of "Stranger in a Strange Land" As it is the story of a human boy raised on an alien planet by aliens, in an attempt to understand humans and to make up for killing humans. Hard to explain but a great read.
If you don't already have these two great stories... This is a great book to buy.
A long over due re-issue of 2 books.......2005-08-21
The Deep Beyond title reflects that old adage of map makers of yore: Here there be Dragons. And the implied warning that Dragons rule their worlds.
Serpent's Reach was printed in August 1980 by DAW and Cuckoo's Egg was printed in October 1985 by DAW. Both, according to C.J. Cherryh's website, take place in The Alliance-Union Universe, but much further down the time line from her classic Cyteen. (Cyteen is a MUST read for any person interested in Science Fiction.) While I rate both books at 4 stars, I am suprised that Cuckoo's Egg from the Era of Exploration was paired with Serpent's Reach from the Era of Rapprochement. A more natural pairing would have been Forty Thousand in Gehenna with Serpent's Reach as both are from the Era of Rapprochment with a focus of humans merging into the Alien's societies. (I suspect as those two novels together would have about 700 pages, this may have forced the publisher's choice.) Cuckoo's Egg has a tricker focus hinted so strongly by the title Cuckoo's Egg.
All of Cherryh's work should be required reading in Science Fiction and The Deep Beyond brings out-of-print works back for fans old enough to have read the first printings and for new Science Fiction fans born since 1985. Oh, the cover of The Deep Beyond is the same as the 1985 1st Edition of Cuckoo's Egg.
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- Extremely Modern Woman of 19th Century [50]
- A person searching for meaning is NOT feminism
- A 190 page book that felt like 400
- A cutting edge novel for its time
- Ahead of her time
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The Awakening: And Beyond the Bayou
Kate Chopin
Manufacturer: Tantor Media
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD
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Book Description
In the company of a smalt circle of new friends Edna Pontellier begins to free herself from the structures and moires of the 1890s bourgeoisie by casting the ties of marriage and children.
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A minor masterpiece, The Awakening was a scandalous book when it arrived from the turn-of-the-century presses. With a heroine who found her husband dull, married life dreary and confining, and motherhood to be bondage, this revolutionary book is still relevant to many.
Customer Reviews:
Extremely Modern Woman of 19th Century [50].......2007-09-24
Some marriages do not work - sometimes they commence well enough but people drift apart. In this book, the protagonist, Edna Pontellier, watches here marriage dissipate for nontraditional reasons - ultimately ending with traditional tragedy.
None of the classic reasons for failed marriage exist. Husband was not violent toward her. He was not demanding upon her. In fact, he granted her as much slack as any man of that time period would ever have allowed. He was a good man. "As the devoted wife of a man who worshiped her, she felt she would take her place with a certain dignity in the world of realty, closing the portals forever behind her upon the realm of romance or dreams."
Like "Wide Sargasso Sea" this entails the life off continental United States and customs of those identified as Creole. Unlike Sargasso's emotionally abused wife, Antoinette, Edna is 28, turning 29, and is just . . . just . . . very confused. Her 40-year old husband seeks to aid her in this time of maturation, but is really helpless. Beautiful and unsure of her previous decision to marry, she is wooed by others - all knowing that societal customs will not allow her to engage in illicit passion unless she makes a rash decision to leave her anointed responsibilities to her children and husband. What will she do when her lover, Robert, returns? "Do? Nothing, except feel glad and happy to be alive." But is this enough for Robert? Is it enough for her?
Of course not. "[S]he felt the old ennui overtaking her: the hopelessness which so often assailed her, which came upon her like an obsession, like something extraneous, independent of volition." Her life became a lingering heart-breaking bore.
She is neither free nor in servitude. She is neither chattel of; nor an equal to her husband. She is a prisoner of her emotions, not of societal constraints. She lives in a relatively free society, and is permitted to roam about relatively freely. But, she is not happy with this. Little can engage her sensibilities in this period of malaise which is constantly questioned by hormonal and philosophical desires. She wants a divorce although her husband did nothing wrong. But, in her days - the 19h century - divorce was not an alternative. Moreover, her husband and her society are Catholic.
So she had to lead the remainder of her life with self-hatred - about how she got where she is and where she is going with what she has. She reasons, "I am no longer one of Mr. Pontellier's possessions to dispose of or not. I give myself where I choose." And, so she shows the most demanding act of volition: suicide.
My Bantam edition came with a forward by Pulitizer-winning author Marilynne Robinson ("Housekeeping" and "Gilead") who wrote, "`The Awakening' should be read as a meditation on the experimental basis of romantic consciousness, the sense that the world has a numinous life that is addressed to human perceptions and that it has a meaning humankind is competent to interpret. . ." Robinson is correct, and this book is truly generations ahead of its time in addressing this extremely undiscussed topic of female self-recognition against the male's world of control.
A person searching for meaning is NOT feminism.......2007-08-13
I purchased this book for my son's AP lit class. He read it and described Edna as an angry woman not happy with her life. I wondered how that made it a book about feminism and decided to read it. Now that I am done, I feel very sad for Edna. Given the description of Edna she could have depression. She loves her children, but not always...possibly postpartum depression that is continually getting worse. I believe the things Edna questions are not limited to women. I imagine many men of that time and now get married because it is the thing to do. Pursue jobs they do not like, but must take. Have children because that is what is expected. I believe Chopin is questioning societal expections of her time for both men and women. Clearly Leonce is floundering. The rug has been pulled out from under him. He was following the plan and now it has changed. No, this is NOT a book about feminism. This is about an individuals struggle to find him or herself. About accepting responsibility or being selfish. I can't wait to read the book that is paired with this for his AP class: Memoirs of a Geisha.
A 190 page book that felt like 400.......2007-07-10
Among so many lengthy reviews, allow me to make this pithy with no apology: It is clear to me that this is considered an American classic not for any particular merit in Chopin's writing but solely in the controversy that surrounded its publication. If you're looking for a rich and stirring piece of American literature, keep looking.
A cutting edge novel for its time.......2007-06-27
If you enjoy novels that address the social norms and conventions of a given time period, this is one you won't want to miss. I was first introduced to this book as a sophomore in college in my "Women Writers of the 20th Century" English class. Kate Chopin masterfully paints a picture of a woman desperately seeking more in her life; a woman who doesn't "fit the mold" of societal conventions at the turn of the 20th century. Chopin slowly builds Edna Pontellier bit by bit, painstakingly peeling away at the layers and the facades this woman has been taught to put on--and which her character throws off with fancy free and terrible heartache almost simultaneously. Edna is a flawed heroine, but perhaps that is why the reader becomes entranced with her. There is a little of Edna Pontellier in all of us--seeking the essence of life; seeking love and freedom.
Ahead of her time.......2007-06-13
Kate Chopin's The Awakening gives an insightful look into the life of a woman trapped in a marriage and a life that doesn't befit her. The characters are very well done -- not all of them are deep, but for good reason. Chopin's writing style never ceases to amaze. I've read this book three or four times, and it never loses its power, its impact. There are themes throughout that give the story a deeper meaning. When you read it, think about the elderly widow and what she represents, and the young lovers. Everything means something, and it is all tied together very well. It's the best book I've ever read. I simply love it.
Book Description
Packed with a vast array of telescopic projects involving different kind of stars, star clusters, nebulae and galaxies which lie beyond our solar system. Takes a look at stars of diverse chemical or atomic ``brew'', old and new, tiny or vast, dense or tenuous; the ways in which they behave and much more.
Book Description
Without warning, Benjamin Sisko is living another life. No longer a Starfleet captain, commander of space station Deep Space Nine, he is Benny Russell, a struggling science fiction writer living in 1950s Harlem. Benny has a dream, of a place called Deep Space Nine and a man named Ben Sisko, and a story he has to tell. But is the Earth of that era ready for a black science fiction hero?
Everyone tells him no, but Benny cannot abandon his dream. One way or another, he will tell the world about Captain Benjamin Sisko and Deep Space Nine.
Download Description
Without warning, Benjamin Sisko is living another life. No longer a Starfleet captain, commander of space station Deep Space Nine, he is Benny Sadler, a struggling SF writer living in 1950s Harlem. Benny has a dream, of a place called Deep Space Nine and a man named Ben Sisko, and a story he has to tell. But is the Earth of that era ready for a SF hero? Everyone tells him no, but Benny cannot abandon his dream. One way or another, he will tell the world about Captain Benjamin Sisko and Deep Space Nine.
Customer Reviews:
Very powerful story only tangentially about Star Trek........2004-04-15
There are a number of aspects to this story that can be rated. It seems to be a fairly accurate, true-to-the-episode novelization; five stars there. It is a marvellous pure science fiction story, which leaves unsolved whether it's actually about an alternate-universe writer who is able to tap into the world of Deep Space Nine for his stories, or about Commander Sisko having temporary insanity that produces hallucinations. Again, five stars. It is a powerful, moving story about the effects of racism on a young black science fiction writer in 1953 Harlem. Once more, five stars. About the only way in which it is NOT a five-star effort is purely as a Star trek novel; ninety percent or more of this story has absolutely nothing to do with Star Trek, and another five percent is only tangentially related to Star Trek. Only the very beginning and the very end actually deal with the station and what's happening there; the plot for this tiny fraction of the story is virtually nonexistent except as a setup for the non-Star Trek part of the story. In that regard, it's barely worth two stars.
So if what you're interested in is a wonderfully told, powerfully moving story with some minor connection to Deep Space Nine, this is EXACTLY what you're looking for. If, on the other hand, you actually want a Star Trek novel, this may not be what you want.
a very good novelization.......2003-09-16
I throughly enjoyed reading this novel which is a novelization of an episode of Star Trek Deep Space Nine. The setting for most of this novel takes place in the 1950s in Harlem. Sisko (commander of Deep Space Nine) unexpectedly falls sick and is transported to Harlem, New York in the 1950s. He keeps his body but is a different person who is struggling to become a Science Fiction writer. By reading the novel we feel the main character's (Benny's) pain and wish him well, but everyone who has seen the episode knows what the outcome will be. Seeing how Benny overcame so much adversity and kept his dream alive in spite of all of the obstacles that confronted him was an emboldening story.
One of the things that I really liked about this book was how it went back to Benny's childhood and into the bodies of men from several generations back. We see Benny as a child growing up in Harlem and also as a slave in america tending the fields.
I think this story would be enjoyable for any reader, but I think those familiar with the characters on Star Trek Deep Space Nine will appreciate it much more. The story transposes the main characters from Deep Space Nine and puts them in a different setting along with Sisko giving them different names but having mostly the same personalities.
I was surprised to discover that the original episode on television was written by a white man, because it really brings out the feelings and frustrations of a black man living in a time when any black man other than a custodian, busboy or shoe shiner was seen as a threat to the majority community.
The author's note at the end of the book discusses the role of blacks in film and TV. The author makes some interesting and insightful observations on how far we've come and how Star Trek has been at the forefront in placing blacks in good parts.
A memorable novelization!.......2002-07-22
Clearly "Far Beyond the Stars" was one of the best Deep Space Nine episodes in it's seven year run. Steven Barnes took that episode and, in a very short amount of time, turned the novelization into an amazing accoutrement to that episode. Even more so than the episode, you can feel for the characters in the book. It is at times gut wrenching and at other times totally enlightening. The author captured all of the character's with perfection. He also captured the 50's era with ease. A truly delightful book. If you've not read this, you need to whether or not you're a fan of trek fiction. It would be nice if the author would make another foray into the trek universe.
A wonderful book to accompany a wonderful episode.......2001-09-21
If you have not seen Far Beyond the Stars -- see it. It's simply one of the best Star Trek episodes ever, of all the series. You don't necessarily have to be a Deep Space Nine fan to enjoy it either -- just being a fan of great stories, or of science fiction, would be enough.
The book is a wonderful supplement to the TV episode, adding in many details and extra scenes. It perfectly captures the tone and mood of 1950s New York, as the episode did. Benny Russell is an unforgettable character.
The only reason I don't give it 5 stars is because of a jarring line or two in there comparing the situtation of women vs. blacks in the '50s. It was totally unnecessary, IMHO, not to mention rather insensitive. A woman writer features in the story - like Benny, she's told to "call in sick" on the day the magazine staff is photographed for their next issue - how dare a woman be a sci-fi- writer? But the author says she has it better because "she can live where she wants, her kids can go to the best schools..." Hmm.
Other than that however, it's a wonderful read.
"Wonder-full" and wonderful book!!.......2001-07-03
I liked the episode, but the book was so much better there's almost no comparison. Steven Barnes' story of Benny Russell's struggle to preserve his dream of "Deep Space Nine" against racism blends a Christ-figure with the same restrained, tolling tone as Langston Hughes' poetry to show a man whose passion is such that it elevates his "fiction" to the level of prophecy (inside the Trek universe, anyway). Read this story and then consider its basic premise in general terms. Your life just might change in unexpected ways.
Average customer rating:
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Beyond the Solar System/100 Best Deep Sky Objects for Amateur Astronomers (Astronomy Library, No. 2)
Manufacturer: Kalmbach Pub Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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