Quozl by Alan Dean Foster

First published in 1989; published digitally by Open Road Media on November 4, 2014

If you are tired of stories in which aliens look like lizards and are intent on killing as many humans as possible, Quozl is for you. The Open Road edition of Alan Dean Foster's 1989 novel contains a brief biography of Foster and several pictures of the talented author.

Quozlene has become overpopulated due to the ravenous sexual appetites of the Quozl. Population was once controlled by war but, in more civilized times, peaceful but desperate Quozl have joined settlement ships that voyage to the stars in the hope of finding a habitable planet. It is a one-way trip; failure means death.

Looks-at-Charts is a scout on a ship that is reaching its destination, the planet they have named Shiraz, after a six generation journey. Shiraz turns out to be inhabited by a population at war and so, of course, you can guess what planet that is. The Quozl burrow into the hills of Idaho, confident that they will remain undiscovered. First contact does not go well for the Quozl, who are unprepared for the wholly uncivilized greeting they receive. Second contact is a vast improvement, although only one human and one Quozl know about it. Contacts continue and are eventually expanded, although the existence of the Quozl is concealed from the world at large for most of the novel. About two-thirds of the way into the novel, the story takes an amusing turn.

Creating aliens and alien environments is Alan Dean Foster's strength. He gives the Quozl a richly imagined culture. For example, ritual challenges combine a form of martial arts dance (draw blood, you lose) with verbal jousting; eloquent insults contribute to a winning performance. Social encounters demand extravagant forms of politeness and self-effacement at risk of losing status. The Quozl happily indulge in uninhibited sex several times a day with varying partners. In fact, as the Quozl study humans from their hidden colony, they quickly realize the cause of all human strife: humans just don't have enough sex!

In other respects, as well, Foster uses the Quozl observation of humans to illuminate human absurdity. Just as one culture on Earth often views another culture as bizarre, the Quozl regard human behavior on the whole as puzzling, if not insane. Foster has great fun with those observations while making some telling points.

The manner in which the Quozl are eventually revealed to humans is clever, original, and very funny. While the final chapters might be a little too expository, they are satisfying. The ending contains a final twist that is true to Quozl nature.

Quozl is a gentle, charming novel that is nevertheless meaningful. Trust is its central theme. Trust between civilizations begins with one person trusting another -- or, in the case of First Contact, with one human and one alien trusting each other. That's a refreshing change from lizard aliens and humans trying to kill each other. Perhaps another moral is the novel's reminder that appearance is important to perception. Cute and cuddly Quozl are easier to befriend than lizard aliens would be, but their nonthreatening appearance also makes it easy for Quozl to get what they want from humans. Alien lizards, no matter how friendly, would never have that same advantage.

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Mort(e) by Robert Rupino

Published by Soho Press on January 30, 2014

Mort(e) is sort of an animal apocalypse story, a refreshing change from the omnipresent zombie apocalypse genre. While zombie apocalypse stories are told from the point of view of surviving humans, Mort(e) is told from the perspective of a talking cat. The best novels about animals, like Animal Farm or Watership Down, teach lessons about human society. Mort(e) tries to do that ("human resistance is a testament to the power of belief") but its primary lesson is: Don't step on ants. They are a formidable enemy, best left unprovoked.

Sebastian is a contented housecat until the female half of his human household has an affair with a dog owner. Sebastian befriends the dog -- a first in his life --but greater changes come when Sebastian, like other animals, develops human intelligence and physiology, along with the ability to speak and use weapons. All of this has been instigated by ants. Thanks to ant scientists, giant ants have swarmed the cities, leaving human dust in their wake. The intelligent Sebastian takes the name Mort(e).

So far this sounds like a really bad movie with subtitles that you wouldn't bother reading. Mort(e) is nevertheless a good (albeit flawed) novel. The story's internal logic and vivid imagery makes it easy to suspend disbelief, at least until the second half when religious imagery takes the story in unconvincing directions. Robert Repino manages the neat trick of creating sympathy for ants, who justly (from their singular perspective) regard humans as "an unfortunate anomaly staining the elegance of the animal kingdom." Other animals eventually join the revolution, having been convinced by the ants that humans have always treated animals as slaves and food. Given that ants eat each other and live in a society that is based on subjugation, the ants' complaints about human behavior seems a bit hypocritical, but the ants never seem to notice. They're just tired of being stepped on, which is understandable.

The plot runs off the track when the war between humans and animals introduces a weapon that is initially understood to be a virus. Without revealing too much about it, I can say that the plot thread and much of the story that follows is unnecessarily convoluted. The eventual revelation of the truth behind the weapon struck me as silly in a way that talking cats did not. The second half of the novel is not nearly as engaging as the first.

Mort(e) nevertheless explores interesting questions: If humans were created to have dominion over animals, why do animals bite us? If animals acquire human intelligence and abilities, will they use them for better ends than humans? Is freedom necessarily better than being a pet? Can anyone, human or animal, get along with ants?

Repino exhibits some creative thought in Mort(e). I like the notion of the Queen ant as a kind of supercomputer, assimilating all the data (scents, sounds, and sights) collected by other ants. I like the idea that people who are desperate for salvation will fashion saviors from unlikely sources and will attach religious significance to facts they misunderstand. On the other hand, some ideas (like a "catpedo," a torpedo holding a cat that ejects molten metal to drill into rock but doesn't cook the cat) are just preposterous.

Mort(e) is, in the end, an offbeat love story. It doesn't quite work but the underlying sweetness and the clever ideas offset the many scenes that seem to have little point. My sense is that Repino had a great idea but didn't know how to develop it. Much of the novel works, some of it doesn't, but the end result is entertaining.

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There Must Be Some Mistake by Frederick Barthelme

Published by Little, Brown and Company on October 7, 2014

Wallace Webster has been sacked from the design firm he helped found. Divorced from his second wife who now has their house in Houston, Wallace is living in their former vacation condo in Kemah near Galveston Bay. He sleeps most of the day and is usually in a state of malaise, occasionally lapsing into severe depression. Wallace is often visited by Jilly Rudolph, his platonic friend and former employee. Jilly's ex-husband has been arrested for having sex with a minor, but he's also having sex with Wallace's ex-wife. It's a small world.

The condo development seems to be an unlucky place to live. Wallace's neighbor dies in a car crash; another condo owner is attacked and painted blue; another commits suicide. All of this Wallace describes in an amusingly laconic style, including his uncomfortable interaction with a cop who happens to live in the development.

The woman who was painted blue, Chantal White, has a dark past that frightens Wallace. Her daughter is even creepier. Wallace hangs out with Chantal but prefers the company of Jilly, who is less age-appropriate but better at kindling his dwindling interest in life. Wallace engages affably but superficially with other odd characters as the novel charts its meandering course.

The novel's strength is Wallace's first-person narration. Wallace muses about art, relationships, culture, fireworks, lawns, and pretty much everything else that pops into his mind. He's feeling old, watching life go by, a wry observer more than a participant, the kind of guy who wonders "what's next" but is in no hurry to find out. The reader, on the other hand, will spend much of the novel wondering where the story is going, if anywhere. That didn't bother me because I enjoyed the sharply defined characters and their witty dialog while taking a voyeuristic interest in the everyday drama of their lives. Much of the novel amounts to listening to gossipy people gossip. Fortunately, they are gossiping about the kind of people and events that whet the reader's imagination.

The reader also wonders (and eventually discovers) whether Wallace will take a more active role in the management of his life. Through Wallace, Frederick Barthelme explores the rush of time, how easily we let it slip by while we neglect to say or do the things we know are important. He also has some insightful things to say about relationships and aging. Not all of the unusual events that occur are explained, not all plot threads are knotted off, but that's an accurate reflection of life.

Barthelme's characters are wonderful, sharper than real people would have any right to be. Readers who are looking for plot-heavy fiction might be put off by There Must Be Some Mistake -- none of the novel's mysteries evolve as they would in a mystery novel. The ending is startling and not really an ending at all, just as we never know how or when our own lives will end. Readers who agree that "the unexpected course of a life" can be all the plot that a novel needs, at least when the story is combined with amusing characters, enriching insight, and solid prose, should find There Must Be Some Mistake to be worthy of their time.

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The Case Against the Supreme Court by Erwin Chemerinsky

Published by Viking on September 25, 2014

Erwin Chemerinksy says that his goal in writing The Case Against the Supreme Court was to determine whether the Supreme Court has made society better or worse. I would argue that legislatures have the primary job of making society better or worse since "better" and "worse" usually involve policy judgments that elected officials should make. The Supreme Court's job is not to make policy but to enforce the values that underlie the Constitution by assuring that the other branches of government do not exceed their constitutional authority or violate rights that the Constitution protects. I understand Chemerinsky's point -- when the Court does those things, it makes society better; when it fails, it makes society worse -- but I'm not sure I agree with his larger point that the institution should be faulted because the Justices who serve on it have so often been gutless and short-sighted.

I can't fault Chemerinksy's observation that the Supreme Court has often failed in its critical tasks. The Court too often sides with the government in conflicts with individuals, even when the government abuses it power, and with corporations in conflicts with consumers. The Justices often give too little weight to the Constitution's core values and too much to popular political opinion. But a different outcome in a couple of close presidential elections (including the election that the Court shamefully decided in Bush v. Gore) would have resulted in majorities on the Court that would probably have produced fewer disappointing decisions. Chemerinsky recognizes that, of course, but I think his disappointment with the Court as an institution is really a disappointment with the majorities that have often controlled it.

To illustrate his argument, Chemerinsky claims to set aside ideology and to concentrate on decisions the Court rendered that are contrary to American values as understood by liberals and conservatives alike. He is only partially successful in that endeavor. Yes, nearly everyone agrees that Dred Scott (requiring the return of a slave who reached a "free" state) and Korematsu (upholding Japanese internment camps) and Plessy (upholding racial segregation) and Buck (permitting the involuntary sterilization of the "feeble minded") were not only incorrect but horrible decisions. There is less consensus about the Lochner era decisions (invalidating government regulation of wages and hours and child labor) but most people now agree that the power to regulate interstate commerce includes the power to police employment practices and workplace safety. Nearly half the book, however, is devoted to more recent cases that sharply divide the right and the left. I can't say that Chemerinsky is able to set ideology aside when he discusses the Roberts court, but that discussion takes up a good bit of the book.

Although I largely agree with Chemerinsky on questions of social policy, I have trouble with his reasoning. Chererinsky rarely asks whether the Court's decisions followed the law, but asks instead whether the Court made society better or worse by upholding or striking down particular laws. I found it easy to agree with many of his conclusions but not so easy to agree that it the Court's job to decide a case based on whether its decision will make society better or worse. The real question is whether a law or act is consistent with the Constitution and with the values the Framers embodied within it. Keeping guns out of schools is good social policy but using the Commerce Clause to regulate conduct that has nothing to do with interstate commerce is not.

It also strikes me that the Court has, in the recent past, made some important yet controversial decisions that Chemerinsky would probably agree make society better (such as protecting the right to confront witnesses and striking down mandatory sentencing laws that deprive defendants of jury trials). Chemerinsky ignores many of those cases, although he does acknowledge the decision to uphold Obamacare and to strike down laws that discriminate against same-sex couples -- cases that undermine his argument that "the Court" (rather than specific majorities) has failed the country as an institution.

Part 3 looks into the future and asks what we can do about the Supreme Court, a question that seems largely rhetorical. He comes down against the notion of doing away with the Supreme Court, a disastrous view that is advocated by some respected law professors and a whole lot of yahoos. Even a bad Supreme Court is better than no Supreme Court, given the frequency with which legislatures try to circumvent the Constitution. His primary arguments for reform (merit selection for Justices, stop pretending that ideology plays no role in the confirmation process, and term limits), if implemented, would provide no guarantee that the Court's decisions would be any better.

Despite my reservations about the conclusions it draws, I enjoyed reading The Case Against the Supreme Court. It is particularly useful as a cathartic howl of pain regarding court decisions that elevate corporate interests above human interests. The book is lively and free of legal jargon. Anyone with at least a moderate interest in politics, history, or law should find the book to be useful and engaging, even if (like me) they do not necessarily agree with its premise.

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Duke City Hit by Max Austin

Published by Alibi on December 16, 2014

Max Austin returns to the world of Albuquerque crime in this second novel set in "Duke City." Vic Walters is an old school hit man, or maybe he's just an old hit man. He thinks men should wear suits and keep their shoes shined. He doesn't like cell phones and doesn't understand why people are obsessed with reporting the trivia of their day to the recipients of their mobile phone calls. He regards "low overhead and few demands" as the secret to happiness. Work a few days a month, kill a few people, enjoy your life. Murder is more thrilling than playing golf.

Life seems be getting easier for Vic when a mysterious helper begins to show up during the course of his assassinations. The helper's identity is a shocking and potentially life-changing revelation to Vic. At the same time, Vic finds himself in caught in the middle of an apparent mob war. That's exactly the kind of thing he tries to avoid but when you live the life of a hit man, these things happen.

Duke City Hit is written with a light touch. The novel that isn't meant to be taken too seriously. In that sense it is comparable to Lawrence Block's novels about J.P. Keller, another assassin who is just sort of a normal guy dealing with life's normal problems, some of which are compounded by his line of work. Vic is a sympathetic character despite his unsavory profession.

Austin (a pen name of Steve Brewer) writes snappy prose and knows how to tell a good story that moves quickly. A shootout near the end defies belief but it contributes to the fun. The novel's resolution brings a surprising plot twist that is more credible than most thriller surprises. On the whole, Duke City Hit would be a good choice for crime fiction fans looking for a summer beach read that substitutes pace, action and an engaging protagonist for a weighty plot.

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