The Prisoner by Alex Berenson

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on January 31, 2017

I read the first couple of books in this series when they came out and wasn’t impressed. The Prisoner makes me think I should go back and read the ones I missed. Compared to the early novels, Alex Berenson has sharpened his prose, honed his storytelling ability, and strengthened his characters.

John Wells is no longer running around the mountains of Afghanistan. Now he’s wandering around the woods in Montana, at least until he learns he has a baby. That motivates him to wander around the woods in New Hampshire. Wells’ former boss, a power-mad CIA director, has just won the presidency by declaring war on the press. Wells plans to ignore it all and stay retired until he gets a phone call from Bulgaria. Then he’s back in the game.

In the grand tradition of spy novels, Wells is told that a mole is leaking information to Islamic State. The evidence is convincing but the president doesn’t want to believe it could be one of his top guys. The intel comes from overheard comments made by a terrorist in a Bulgarian prison that the US uses to hold high-value prisoners. To root out the mole, Wells decides to infiltrate the prison, posing as a captured terrorist trying to get the source to give up the mole’s name. Nobody expects that to happen, but the hope is that the mole will expose himself while trying to shut down Wells.

The novel has three plot threads. The first focuses on Wells, as he infiltrates the Bulgarian prison. The second follows a terrorist who is producing sarin gas for the Islamic State. The third is the mole, whose identity the reader learns long before the good guys discover it. The three threads come together as terrorists prepare to release the sarin gas at a location that will serve the Islamic State’s goal of spreading terror that is both real and symbolic.

I admire the vivid and painful truths that Alex Berenson illustrates about recent history, primarily through a character who misuses those truths to justify his betrayal. I appreciate the fact that Wells, unlike too many thriller heroes, has a conscience and doesn’t shrug off killing bad guys with “he had it coming” and innocents with “collateral damage.”

At the same time, quite a bit of the traitor’s character development comes in a lengthy expository narrative that slows the novel’s pace. Most of the novel, however, particularly when it focuses on Wells and in scenes that follow the terrorists, moves briskly. This is an action novel rather than a novel of intrigue, but the action is credible. Wells solves most problems with his brain, not with the superhuman fighting ability that most thriller heroes seem to possess. The “race against the clock to thwart a terrorist attack” plot nevertheless generates a fair amount of action, and Wells is certainly capable of defending himself. All of that makes The Prisoner an engaging thriller.

RECOMMENDED

Forever Free by Joe Haldeman

First published in 1999; published digitally by Open Road Media on September 27, 2016

Forever Free, unlike Forever Peace, is a direct sequel to The Forever War. It isn’t as poignant as The Forever War, but few books are. While it has a smattering of powerful moments, it is nothing like its predecessor.

After the Forever War ended, veterans and others went to Middle Finger where they were allowed to live as insurance against the possible failure of cloned perfection, an experiment called Man that has produced billions of humans, all communing with a group mind. William Mandella, a natural human who starred in The Forever War, is now 1,168 in Earth years, but still in his 30s physically thanks to relativity and all the interstellar traveling he did as a soldier.

Mandella and his wife Marygay think of themselves as prisoners, preserved as part of a natural genepool but given no authority on an arctic planet that is effectively ruled by Man. They decide their best option is to gather a bunch of humans and take a five-year trip to the stars, then turn around and (thanks to relativity) return 40,000 years later. They are surprised to learn that Man is only too happy to get rid of them. The trip will keep the genepool intact while assuring that the troublesome humans don’t bother them for 40,000 years.

Before the trip can begin, Charlie receives an ominous warning from an unidentified Tauran (the alien enemy humans fought in the Forever War). From that point on, strange things happen, disappearances of matter (and then people) that seem to defy the laws of physics. Not all of the events strike me as being logically consistent, but logic turns out to have little to do with the story.

Forever Free isn’t military science fiction. It isn’t space opera. It’s sort of a first contact story, but not really. For a while, it is sort of a survivalist story, although it isn’t the kind of modern survivalist story in which paranoid whackos lovingly describe their guns and bugout bags while eagerly waiting to shoot their neighbors after a mass disaster. This could have been a decent story about survivors working cooperatively to rebuild a society (cooperation being a concept that never occurs to the whackos who sleep next to their bugout bags), but that plot thread, like all the other interesting subplots in the novel, dies out before it develops.

At its heart, Forever Peace is a science fiction mystery, the mystery being, what’s going on with all the disappearances? The answer to the mystery … well, I was disappointed. Readers of a different philosophical persuasion might find it satisfying but, judging from Amazon reviews, readers who are hostile to religious belief systems consider Forever Peace one of the worst sf books ever written. That’s consistent with many Amazon reviews I’ve read by sf readers who are viciously intolerant of any belief system to which they do not adhere. Intolerance, to me, seems antithetical to the idea of science fiction, which should teach readers to be open minded. I have no religious beliefs and therefore do not share the belief system that drives the novel’s ending, but the book isn’t as bad as many one-star Amazon reviews make it out to be. Other sf authors, however, have covered the same territory more creatively, including Philip K. Dick and Arthur C. Clarke and even Isaac Asimov.

In the end, Forever Peace tosses out too many ideas and tries to be too many things, preventing it from developing any one theme successfully. The ending is a little too easy, almost lazy in its execution. Other aspects of the story are interesting, but it doesn’t work well enough as a whole to merit my recommendation, making this the only Joe Haldeman novel I can’t recommend.

NOT RECOMMENDED

The Signal Flame by Andrew Krivák

Published by Scribner on January 24, 2017

The Signal Flame begins in 1972 with the death of Bohumír Konar’s grandfather, an event that comes a few months after Bo’s brother Sam was reported missing in action in Vietnam. Sam has left behind a pregnant fiancé, Ruth Younger, whose father killed Sam’s father in a hunting accident. Sam and Bo are living with a legacy of shame, their father having been labeled a deserter in World War II.

The story backtracks to 1941, the year of Bo’s birth, when his father, Bexhet Konar, goes off to war, and quickly jumps to 1948, when Bo and his father are reunited, and jumps forward again to his father’s death. The story then follows Bo during his young life in Pennsylvania and Maryland as he makes choices about his life, choices that are shaped by love and tragedy. Eventually the narrative returns to 1972.

The harshness of life and the difficulty of forgiveness are dominant themes in The Signal Flame. The classic literary conflicts — man against man, against nature, and against himself — all contribute to the novel’s dramatic moments.

When it returns to 1972, the drama concerns Sam’s mother, who won’t forgive Ruth’s father and won’t accept Sam’s baby into her life, Bo’s entreaties to forgive notwithstanding. Ruth and Sam’s mother and brother are all coping with Sam’s MIA status, each trying to find a way to process their new lives.

Andrew Krivák evokes a strong sense of time and place to tell a small, intensely personal story of two neighboring families making their lives on a wooded mountain. Parts of The Signal Flame are remarkably sad — not in ways the reader might expect — and it is a tribute to Krivák’s prose style and sense of pace that the reader can take time with those moments without having them overwhelm the story as a whole.

The Signal Flame is a story about sadness, but it is also a story about how people endure sadness and find new ways to give their lives meaning. Different readers will find different lessons in this book. In addition to forgiveness, the story’s themes include loss as a force of bonding, the absence of closure as a source of both hope and pain, the difficulty of determining when to leave the past in the past and move into the future, the power of family memories, and the role that nature and animals play in a fulfilling life. The quiet intensity of this novel is sometimes unsettling, and those unsettling moments reflect the difficult emotional experiences that are common to every life.

RECOMMENDED

Coco Butternut by Joe R. Lansdale

Published by Subterranean Press on January 31, 2017

Coco Butternut is a novella-length story. It isn’t the funniest Hap & Leonard story I’ve read but it has its moments. More than enough moments, in fact, to earn a recommendation, at least for readers who are familiar with the characters.

Hap and Leonard are called upon to deliver money to a blackmailer in exchange for the disinterred body of a mummified dachshund named Coco Butternut. The job seems simple, but nothing is ever simple for Hap and Leonard.

As usual when Hap and Leonard get involved in a case, dead bodies appear. Human bodies, not just the mummified dog. And as usual, getting paid doesn’t work out quite as they planned.

Hap’s daughter Chance plays a supporting role in the story, as well as his partner/lover Brett. Adding to the banter is their primary role, but it’s hard to top the banter that Hap and (especially) Leonard provide as they point out each other’s faults.

Coco Butternut doesn’t advance the characters, but it tells an amusing story that fans will appreciate. I suspect that newcomers will benefit from reading earlier installments in the series before turning their attention to this one.

Joe Lansdale has written excellent novels and stories across a variety of genres. I enjoy Hap and Leonard and I’m glad Lansdale is achieving financial success with those characters, but I hope he finds time to diversify his current output. Not that it matters much, because I enjoy everything he writes. He’s a fine storyteller and his irreverent sense of humor matches my own, but I'm an even bigger fan of his not so funny but exceptionally chilling horror novels.

RECOMMENDED

Grave Predictions by Drew Ford (ed.)

Published by Dover Publications on September 21, 2016

Grave Predictions is a collection of stories about the world’s end. The first several stories are classics. If you haven’t read them, you’ll find it worthwhile to have them collected in one place. I have a mixed reaction to the entries from the current century. I suppose it’s hard to find current writers who match up to Bradbury and Ellison and Vonnegut and the others who penned the majority of the volume’s stories.

The collection begins with an introduction by Harlan Ellison. It rambles a bit, but it makes a good point. Humans are tenacious survivors, but can the human race survive its own capacity for self-destruction?

Here are the stories:

Eugene Mouton, “The End of the World” (1872). More an essay than a story, Mouton predicts that the world will spontaneously combust, making it an early prediction of global warming. He attributes the combustion to man’s obsessive consumption of resources (relentlessly pumping oil from the ground, deforestation, expanding cities to house excess population, etc.). All quite prophetic, even if current science might call some of the details into question.

W.E.B. DuBois, “Grave Predictions” (1920). Gasses from a comet’s tail wipe out the residents of New York and perhaps the entire world. A black messenger who was trapped in a vault and a white woman from a prosperous family are the city’s last survivors. Their disparities of wealth and race become foolish distinctions as they realize they have only each other — at least until reality intrudes. This is probably the kind of classic story that’s taught in high school, although I haven’t read it before.

Ray Bradbury, “The Pedestrian” (1951). In this classic Bradbury story, a man who wanders empty streets at night, choosing to view the world with his own eyes rather than watching television, is picked up by the one remaining police car and taken to the Psychiatric Center. The repressive state against the open-minded individual: an eternal theme of science fiction, and of Bradbury in particular.

Arthur C. Clarke, “No Morning After” (1954). Aliens make telepathic contact with a human to warn him of an impending danger to the planet, but the drunken scientist thinks he’s hallucinating. Bad luck for the human race, but whether humans are worth saving is a question that soon occurs to the benevolent aliens.

Philip K. Dick, “Upon the Grave Earth” (1954). A girl who believes she is a saint attracts blood-drinking creatures (Valkyries, perhaps) from another place. But when she goes to the other side, she realizes it isn’t where she belongs. Eventually it isn’t clear where anyone belongs, as the nature of reality -- a favorite PKD theme -- becomes difficult to separate from illusion.

Kurt Vonnegut, “2 B R 0 2 B” (1962) - The title is the phone number people call when they’re tired of living. After aging was cured, people began to live too damn long. But no new child can be allowed to live unless the parents find someone who is willing to die. A man whose wife gives birth to triplets finds an ironic solution to the problem. Classic Vonnegut.

Harlan Ellison, “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” (1967) - One of the most celebrated stories in science fiction. A raw, powerful tale about the last five humans and the machine that tortures them.

Ursula LeGuin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (1973) - A utopian society is made possible only by the misery and suffering of a child who lives beneath the city. The ones who walk away are those who have a conscience, who will not condition their own pleasure upon the suffering of others. This is apparently another story that is popular with teachers for the lessons it imparts, but I suspect it only resonates with bright and selfless students who would be willing to walk away from pleasures they didn’t earn. Those have become a rare breed.

Brian M. Stableford, “The Engineer and the Executioner” (1976) - An engineer who created a self-contained evolutionary ecosystem within an asteroid confronts the robot who was sent to destroy it. The theme here, one that tracks the history of science, is that anything new and different must be feared and destroyed. The ending is a dark lesson in irony.

Stephen King, “The End of the Whole Mess” (1986) - The narrator’s brother finds a cure for war (it’s in the water), but the cure is worse than the disease. This is an interesting story although not as chilling some of King’s bleak views of the future.

Joe R. Lansdale, “Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man’s Back” (1992) - The people who designed the weapons that ended the world come up from their shelters 20 years later, only to find man-eating roses waiting for them. This is an unsettling story about the consequences of self-inflicted madness, but the worst consequence is the way we punish ourselves for our sins.

Greg Bear, “Judgment Engine” (1995). At the end of the universe, a hive mind restores the consciousness of a human from our time to provide an “objective judgment engine” that will help them decide upon the future at the end of the present. A mathematical proof has established that more complex civilizations will always wipe out those that are less complex, so is it ethical for the various hive minds to avoid death by moving to a different universe? An interesting idea, but as a story it’s a little too contrived.

Erica L. Satifka, “Automatic” (2007). Ganymedeans saved the few surviving humans from the plague … although their generosity comes at a price. I’d rate this story: mildly interesting.

Mark Samuels, “The Black Mould” (2011). Sentient black mold takes over the universe. The story is amateurish. In his introduction, Ellison says he thought one of the stories was silly. I’m betting it was this one.

Ramsey Campbell, “The Pretense” (2013). Predictions of the world’s end are coming true, as the protagonist discovers when he leads his family on a (presumably) fruitless journey away from the disintegration of reality. This is a novella that probably should have been a short story, but it’s worth reading for the unsettling mood that it creates.

Carmen Maria Machado, “Inventory” (2013). A bisexual woman makes an inventory of her sexual experiences before and after the virus that works its way across the country. She finally hunkers down in Maine, but sex partners keep coming. As, eventually, does the virus. The story is touching and surprisingly powerful, sort of like On the Beach with a lot more sex.

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