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book reviews, C.S. Lewis

Book Review – The Oxford Inklings

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I’ve known about the existence of the Inklings, the writers group to which C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien belonged, for some time, and have wanted to read a good book about them. I had bought one for my Nook, but it turned out to be mostly a picture book—some words to support it, but not an in-depth analysis like I was wanting. For years I’ve been aware of Humphry Carpenter’s book The Inklings (1978), and have intended to read it, but have never been able to find it.

I finally found that analysis by searching, and came up with The Oxford Inklings: Lewis, Tolkien and Their Circle, by Colin Duriez. Ordered it at Barnes & Noble; it came in in March, and I read it in April.

I give this book 5 stars, and highly recommend it to others who want to know more about this group.  The book is scholarly, yet at the same time very accessible, easy to understand. Duriez has obviously done research, and knows what he writes. I learned much from this book, such as:

  • How large the Inklings were, much larger than I realized. While Lewis and Tolkien were the core, almost two dozen other writers took part in the group at various times.
  • How long they lasted, from the mid-1930s till Lewis’ death in 1963. The main years were from 1940 till 1960.
  • Exactly what kind of group it was, for improving as writers and for the fellowship only fellow writers can enjoy.
  • How important C.S. Lewis was to the group. Duriez presents him as the glue that held the group together, or perhaps better described as the rock around which the group revolved. Tolkien was as well known, and as active in the group, but Lewis more central to the group’s history.
  • The other things C.S. Lewis had going on in his life, such as the Socratic Club, his tutoring, and his lecturing. It’s been a while since I read a Lewis biography. Perhaps I read some of this before, but if so I’d long forgotten many of the details.

Suffice to say that I enjoyed this read. As a writer myself, who has been a member of several writers groups, mostly short-lived, it was of great interest to see how this group did it. I’m going to keep this on the shelf, in my growing Lewis collection. My only caution to other readers is that, if you have a good background on the biographies of Lewis and Tolkien, you might find this a little too elementary in places.

book reviews

Book Review – Pollution and the Death of Man

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I’ve read a couple of books by Francis A. Schaeffer, and heard/read much about him, so when I saw his book Pollution and the Death of Man at a thrift store, I bought it and put it at the top of my reading pile. I finished it about a month ago. Today I’ve finally gotten around to writing a review. My verdict: 3 stars only; not recommended to others.

The book dates from 1970, at the height of the early environmental movement. Shaeffer was living in Switzerland at that time, and looked from afar on that movement in the USA. He attempted to write a Christian response to these issues. As always Schaeffer’s writing is clear and easy to read. My problems with the book, which keeps me from rating it higher and recommending it to others, are:

1) poorly stated premises and intent.

2) no clear conclusions drawn, i.e. what then should Christians do.

3) over-reliance on two magazine articles, to refute them.

The book I have is a paperback, published in 1992 by Crossway Books. It includes an added chapter to what Schaeffer originally published, written by “Udo Middleman”, as well as reprints of the two articles. The book itself, that is the material provided by Schaeffer, is less than 100 pages.

As I read that material, I had a hard time telling the difference between what Schaeffer declares is the way things are, as opposed to how he suggests it ought to be. This led to some confusion. The book appears to have been written to refute claims in the two articles from the late 1960s which said that, at least in part, Christianity was to blame for the environmental crisis, what with their “have dominion over the earth” mentality. Not so, says Schaeffer. A Christian is a steward of the earth, a protector, and should act accordingly. That is the gist of what I took away from the book.

Some excepts and comments:

So pantheism is not going to solve our international ecological problem. Lynn White’s position [one of the articles] is not going to solve it because it is obvious in practice that man really does have a special role in nature that nothing else has. And, third, a Platonic view of Christianity is not going to solve it.

He came close to losing me with his discussions of pantheism and Platonic views. I had to plow through this part, the only part of the book that was difficult to understand.

The value of a thing is not in itself autonomously, but because God made it. It deserves this respect as something which was created by God, as man himself has been created by God.

I agree with this completely. The creation of all things by God is what gives them value. Nature has value because it was created by God and forms a vital part of what man is.

He made me as I am, with the hungers of my spirit and my body. And he has made all things, just as he has made me. He has made the stone, the star, the farthest reaches of the cosmos. He has done all this!

Again, I agree. Well stated, Mr. Schaeffer.

It is the same when we have dominion over nature: it is not ours. It belongs to God, and we are to exercise our dominion over these things not as though entitled to exploit them, but as things borrowed or held in trust. We are to use them realizing that they are not ours intrinsically. Man’s dominion is under God’s dominion.

Again, well stated. This is the closest Schaeffer comes to stating a solution to environmental problems.

…a truly Biblical Christianity has a real answer to the ecological crisis. It offers a balanced and healthy attitude to nature, arising from the truth of its creation by God. It offers the hope here and now of substantial healing in the nature of some of the results of the Fall, arising from the truth of redemption in Christ.

This is a good summary, although it really offers no specifics for how a Christian should deal with the environmental crisis, if indeed in 2015 it is still as dire—or if it is worse—than it was in 1970. Schaeffer may have been trying to make his book timeless, but in so doing he lessened the value of it by presenting no practical solutions.

For here is our calling. We must exhibit that on the basis of the work of Christ the church can achieve partially, but substantially, what the secular world wants and cannot get.

A valid statement, I think, though I’m not sure he has really made his point in the book.

When we have learned this—the Christian view of nature—then there can be a real ecology; beauty will flow, psychological freedom will come, and the world will cease to be turned into a desert.

This is perhaps a stretch. So i agree with his somewhat soft conclusion, that the Christian should be a steward of all that God has given us. This includes nature and the natural environment. Schaeffer spends too much time on visual pollution and the spoiling of the picturesque beauty of nature’s appearance, rather than on the structural aspects of environmental degradation.

The bottom line is: The book isn’t bad, but I suggest you not waste your time on it. Find a better book dealing with environmental protection. I don’t plan on reading this a second time, and so it will go in my giveaway pile.

book reviews, Writing

Book Review of “The Art and Craft of Storytelling”

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I don’t remember where I picked up The Art and Craft of Storytelling by Nancy Lamb. It’s not a used book, so I bought it at a bookstore somewhere, possibly the nearby Barnes & Noble or at a writing conference.

I started this book sometime in early 2012, I think, and read as far as page 118. I found it to be a great resource in exactly what the title says: the art and craft of storytelling. I also found the author to have a good attitude toward new writers. So many how-to-write books, blogs, and conference presentations seem to be far removed from the newbie. Typically the author or presenter is decades into their career and don’t really relate to the new writer. Nancy Lamb does.

I even took time to track down an e-mail address for her and wrote her an e-mail, thanking her for her book and her attitude. That started a brief e-mail exchange between us, and she was just as helpful in those as she is in the book.

At that point in time I put the book aside, other matters pressing me. In late July I was looking for a writing book to read and picked it up. I had forgotten about it in the more than a year since I put it back on the shelf. It looked like a new book, but I found a little marginalia in the early chapters. So I went to the last chapter and read it to see if it sounded familiar. It sort of did, but the book had none of the usual signs of being read through.

I vaguely remembered Lamb’s name and thought Maybe I exchanged e-mails with her. Sure enough I found them, learned where I was in the book at that time, and decided I would read the rest. Feeling kind of crazy, and having just read the last chapter, I read the chapters one by one from the back to where I had left off before. This worked because the chapters somewhat stand alone. On occasion something was referenced to an earlier chapter, but those were easy to work through.

Lamb has a logical approach to her work. She covers many things that relate to how a story comes together, what its elements are. Her writing is clear and helpful. The best part is she hasn’t forgotten what it’s like to be a new author. I like that.

This book is definitely going in my library, and I’ll read it again. I’m sure I”ll get something out of it each time I read it.

book reviews, Writing

Book Review: “The Art and Craft of Storytelling”

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Normally I post book reviews to An Arrow Through the Air. However, since this book is about writing for writers, I’m posting it here. This is what I just wrote on Goodreads. Note: I’ve edited and edited, and I can’t figure out what’s wrong with this text, cant get it to be the right size. Well, maybe that last thing worked, though the overall formatting of this is messed up.

5 of 5 stars false

The Art and Craft of Storytelling by Nancy Lamb

Nancy Lamb’s book on writing is one of the best I’ve read. She has avoided many of the mistakes experienced writers tend to make in their advice books: forgetting what it’s like to be a new writer, and a writer who has not yet been published by a trade publisher. She also avoided slanting her book toward trade publishing as opposed to self-publishing. I’m not a new writer (been at it for 12 years), but after years of frustration I elected to self-publish. Everything in Nancy’s book was very applicable to crafting a story for self-publishing.

If I had one criticism, it’s that the last couple of chapters were general writing advice, the type that applies as much to non-fiction and magazine article publishing as it does not fictional storytelling. Maybe you have to include that in a writing book; certainly the specific language usage relates to the excellence of a story. But it seemed to be the same things I’ve read in two dozen writing books, whereas the early chapters were new and fresh and incredibly useful.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about how to craft compelling stories. This one will now find a place on my reference bookshelf.

Read from August 26 to September 10, 2012

book reviews, Writing

Creating Unforgettable Characters

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At some point in time, I think at a writers conference in Kansas City in 2007, I picked up a used copy of Creating Unforgettable Characters by Linda Seger [Henry Holt, 1990]. I figured it would be an easy read at 221 pages. But it just bubbled up to the top of my reading pile in early December.

Actually, it wasn’t on my reading pile. That is a mixture of fiction and non-fiction for pleasure reading or self-improvement/education about things other than writing. I have a separate stash of writing books, not really in a pile, not really sorted as to which to read next.

I had just finished several reading pile books in a row, decided it was time to read a writing craft book, and this one looked good. The age of the book didn’t seems to be a problem to me as I started.

Seger consults with script writers and film makers, and so many of her examples of character development were from those areas. She made frequent use of television programs I never watched (such as Murphy Brown) and movies I never saw. It was kind of hard to understand her description of a character when I had no clue about that character.

Segar’s book is divided into the following chapters.

  • Research
  • Character Consistencies and Paradoxes
  • Creating Back Story
  • Character Psychology
  • Character Relationships
  • Supporting and Minor Characters
  • Dialogue
  • Nonrealistic Characters
  • Beyond Stereotyping
  • Solving Character Problems

I have not previously read a book about characters, but I’ve read a lot about it in magazines and on-line forums, and sat through several classes at writers conferences about character development. The advice in this book pretty much matched what I’ve heard/read elsewhere. Characters need to be multi-dimensional. Heroes need to have flaws; villains need to have virtues. Characters need to act consistently, but not so consistently that they seem to be made out of cardboard.

Paradoxes are good. The woman who loves football. The man who makes floral arrangements. The woman psychologist who follows boxing. The thug kid who’s an A student. These all make characters seem more real.

I liked what Seger wrote about researching a character, and about creating back story. These are probably two things that writers (me included) probably fall short in most easily. She gave me some things to consider in these two areas.

I had in mind to write more, but must end now as I have much else to do tonight. I’m glad I read this book at this point in time. While perhaps a newer book would be more advisable, if a writer should have a chance to pick this up, you might as well and glean from it what you can.

book reviews, Christianity

Book Review: The Templar Revelation

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It was at my nearest thrift store, I think, that I paid 50 cents for The Templar Revelation: Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ, by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince [1997, Touchstone, ISBN 0-684-84891-0]. On the cover of this paperback it says “As featured in The DaVinci Code“. I figured it was worth the modest investment to see how The DaVinci Code was related to it.

As far as is possible, I feel I wasted my 50 cents. The book is awful. It is divided into two part: 1) The Threads of Heresy, and 2) The Web of Truth. I read about half of part 1 and spot read 20 to 30 pages of part 2 (150 out of 373 total pages). The most common phrase used in the book is “as will be short later,” or various derivatives of that. John the Baptist was more prominent than Jesus, as will be shown later. Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ wife or concubine, as will be shown later. The Knights Templar were adherents to the cult of Mary Magdalene, as will be shown later. The Cathars understood the true importance of the Baptist and the Magdalene, as will be shown later. How tiring, with never a forward reference included, such as “as will be discussed in Chapter 17.” How much later? What chapter should I go to? Why don’t you just explain it now.

The second most common phrase is “according to modern scholarship.” The authors seemed enamored with any study/publication in the last hundred years that in any way contradicts the traditional Christian message and belief. Nineteen hundred years of scholarship is tossed aside simply because it isn’t the latest. This, too, was tiring.

The book does indeed follow The DaVince Code. Or, rather, based on publication dates, The DaVinci Code follows The Templar Revelation, and is its fictional counterpart. DaVinci’s Last Supper, the true purpose of the Knights Templar, the mysterious old or new Priory of Sion with its train of grand masters—all are here. Even some names of Dan Brown’s fictional characters came from historical figures mentioned by Picknett and Prince. Dan Brown must have read this 1997 book before writing his and publishing it in 2003. Although, that blurb on the cover references TDC whereas the latest date on the title page if TTR is 1998. What gives? I thought publishers put the date of the latest printing on the copyright page. Apparently not any more.

The Templar Revelation is poorly written, not from the standpoint of writing craft, but from its lousy scholarship. Despite many footnotes it is poorly referenced, I came away with a sense of the authors wanting to believe anything that would poke holes in Christian orthodoxy. Every hack professor is believed; hundreds of theologians are not. Clearly the authors were trying to strike a balance between a popular book and a scholarly work, and achieved neither. At one point it reads, “As we have seen, most modern Christians are surprisingly badly informed about developments in biblical scholarship.” [page 362]

Hey, Picknett and Prince, that’s because we have settled the question. We have no need to delve into the questionable works you cite to see what Satan has inspired. We believe the gospel message about Jesus’ life and teaching as told by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. We believe Christian doctrine as first outlined by Paul and later confirmed by thousand of works by a hundred early Christian authors. We believe that other gospels you seem enthralled with disappeared not because the church tried to destroy them but because they carried no authority, being obviously contradictory and bogus, thus rejected by scholars of a formative age. We don’t need to revisit the question. We are not badly informed; we know whom we have believed in, and why.

If you see The Templar Revelation in a used book sale, leave it there and use your pocket change to buy a sno cone or some other nutritionally void stomach killer. The stomach will recover faster than the mind, should it be infected with this garbage. I’m not going to finish this. I’ll put it in the garage sale pile, and hope to recover half my investment.

book reviews, Christianity

Book Review: The Good Life by Charles Colson

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I bought The Good Life [2005, Tyndale, ISBN 0-8423-7749-2] by Charles Colson at full price at Borders about six months ago. I bought it because the small group study our Life Group was about to start, Wide Angle: Framing Your World View, said that the two were companion books. I didn’t like the Wide Angle book, so I bought The Good Life, thinking the two together might work. The $25 price tag on it, though, I knew was excessive for our Life Group.

However, having the book in hand, and it being a companion to our study we were about to do with the video series only (no book), I decided to keep and read it. I’m glad I did, even though I didn’t think it went with Wide Angle as well as the latter book suggested. Colson, with his collaborator Harold Fickett, did his usual excellent job. The subtitle of the book is Seeking purpose, meaning, and truth in your life. It is a follow-up book to Colson’s How Now Shall We Life, a worldview book I blogged about previously (and again here). That was a great book, so I entered this one with high expectations.

The book is full of stories. Colson/Frickett tell stories to illustrate points. It begins with the Normandy graveyard scene from Saving Private Ryan, where the older Ryan says to his wife, “Tell me I’m a good man.” Most of the stories are from real life, however. Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco is the poster child for corruption. Jamie Gavigan, a Washington DC celebrity hair stylist, is the poster girl for excess consumerism. Nien Cheng, an educated Chinese woman who ran afoul of the Cultural Revolution, shows steadfastness and honesty under duress. John Ehrlichman, a colleague of Colson’s on President Nixon’s staff, shows how a life without repentance and acknowledgement of wrongful deeds can be anything but the good life.

With each story, Colson/Frickett give many annotations of the points being illustrated. Frequent mention is made to How Now Shall We Live?, indicating how the worldview of the person in the story is illustrative of a right or wrong worldview—or perhaps I should say of a beneficial or destructive worldview. While some of the same themes span both books, The Good Life is not a re-hash of How Now Shall We Live. It is a different book. The authors are encouraging us to adopt a Christian worldview and make it a real part of our lives. In this way we will live the good life, make our lives count for something. Thus, the book is evangelical in intent and content.

I will probably read some or all of this book again. Certainly, when we return to the Wide Angle study in our Life Group after the fourteen week interruption for an all-church study, I will be seeking to pull illustrations from this to go along with the video lessons. But one of the reasons I’ll read it again is that, by the end of the book, I had forgotten the beginning. No joke. In many of the latter chapters the authors would say “Remember the story about ___________”, referring to an earlier chapter, and I would have no idea what that story was. Rather than go back and find and re-read it, I just plowed ahead, knowing I’d be going back in support of our Life Group study.

That forgetting so completely the early parts of the book concerned me. The reading is easy. Did I read in a distracted manner, thus not retaining? I had some time gap between the first part of the book and the latter parts, but not that long. I shouldn’t have forgotten it so easily.

Were there too many stories? I wonder if that’s true. The book contains a lot of stories. Perhaps retention of so many is difficult. Or was the book written in such a way that the words and organization did not facilitate retention of the stories? I know as a writer I shouldn’t blame the reader. If the reader doesn’t get it, blame the writer. That’s one of the mantras of the poetry critique forums I’ve been in.

But sometimes the reader doesn’t get it, despite clear and excellent writing. I suspect that’s the case here. For whatever the reason, my retention was lacking. I won’t lay that on the authors, though I do mention it for consideration of my readers.

By all means pick up a copy of The Good Life and read it. I don’t think you will be disappointed. Then, if you haven’t already, find How Now Shall We Live? and read that. The two are related and supplemental, and worthy to have in the Christian’s library.

book reviews, Wesley

Book Review: Winchester’s "The Life of John Wesley"

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It might not make much sense to review a book that’s over 100 years old. It’s not as if my words will send people flocking to Barnes & Noble to buy it. Nor is anyone likely to be clamoring for it. But if it’s a book I’ve read, I feel as if I should review it.

The book is The Life of John Wesley by C.T. Winchester. My copy was published by The MacMillan Company in New York in 1906. I believe, from the copyright page, that it is a first edition, second printing book. I’m not sure where I got this book. Possibly at a thrift store or garage sale. Or maybe it was in some books given me for my son-in-law by a retired preacher. I let Richard take what he wanted the culled through the others, keeping some, adding some others to the garage sale pile. Either way, I love books, especially old books, and especially books by or about people like John Wesley.

At the time of the writing Wesley had been dead 114 years. His influence in the world had waned quite a bit. Methodism was still growing, but they weren’t exactly practicing it the way Wesley recommended. Already a number of biographies had been written, maybe five or six. Why another one? Well, aside from Emerson’s theory that each generation has to write for the next, adding to and somewhat replacing those of prior generations, Winchester said in his preference that early biographies were almost all done by Methodists, and so could be seen as biased. So Winchester wrote his.
It’s not a long book; 293 pages, decent size font and not large pages. In fact, it’s fairly short as a biography of a major religious reformer. I have not read the prior Wesley biographies, by the likes of Clarke, Watson, Moore, Southey, Stevens, Lelievre, Overton, and Telford (I guess that’s eight, not five or six). I’ve read one or two written much later, in the 1960s or 70s. So I don’t really know how Winchester’s treatment differs from those who went before or came behind him.
I just know this was a good read. It’s late enough in world history that the language is modern, the scholarship seems good, and Wesley’s place in history was well established. Winchester spends time discussing Wesley’s time, to demonstrate the impact he had: how awful social conditions were in Great Britain and Ireland when Wesley began his work, and how they changed as a result of it. I have heard it said that the impact Wesley had on English society—not just among the people called Methodists but on the Established Church and elsewhere—may well have saved England from a French style bloody revolution. I don’t know if that’s true, but it is true that Wesley changed England.

He wasn’t the preacher-evangelist Whitefiled was. He wasn’t the philosopher Johnson was. He wasn’t as deep a theologian as Calvin was. But he had a combination of abilities (I believe “skill set” is the new buzz word) that embraced all of these and more, that allowed him to build a religious movement. Winchester clearly demonstrates this.
I anticipate that, as I write my small group study on the life and works of John Wesley, that I’ll read more of those biographies. Anything before 1923 should be available on Google books, and I’ve got another one in hand I can read (or maybe re-read). Winchester’s will stand out, however, as the first one I read as research for my book.
book reviews, Writing

Book Review – One Writer’s Beginning by Eudora Welty

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Eudora Welty is one writer I don’t remember reading. Possibly in an English class somewhere we were assigned one of her stories and I read it. I know I haven’t read any of her novels. Yet, when I saw the small paperback One Writer’s Beginning at a thrift store for 50 cents, I bought it. I was pretty sure I would gain something from it.

The book was assembled from lectures Welty gave at Harvard University in 1983. She was from Jackson, Mississippi, to parents who moved there from Ohio and West Virginia when they were married in 1904. Welty was born the next year, to be joined by two brothers over the next five years. In the first part of the book, titled “Listening”, Welty tells how her earliest childhood years, and how they fed her imagination. She doesn’t talk about writing at all.

In the next section, “Learning To See”, she tells of family vacations back to Ohio and West Virginia, and spending time with the extended family. Train trips and road trips are part of this section. A road trip in 1917 was quite an adventure. Each set of grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins had an impact on Eudora. From abundant story telling on her mom’s side to an absolute ignoring of the past for sake of looking toward the future on her dad’s, she learned to look to the past and the future.

The third section, “Finding A Voice,” is where Welty tells how the events of her life became scenes in stories, and neighbors and teachers became characters. Welty even says how she put some of herself into one character.

All in all, the book didn’t give a lot of information for writing help. It was not inspirational, or motivational. It didn’t really provide hints on the writing craft. it’s a straight memoir. If it had anything to help a writer it was: Use the events and people in your life to populate your stories. That’s not exactly an earth-shattering revelation. Despite the lack of immediate benefit, I’m going to keep the book, and possibly re-read it in a few years.

The previous owner of this book made a note here and there. Inside the back was written, “Purchased at University of Arkansas Fayetteville, Ark June 1987”. Most of the marginalia was a single word, such as “genealogy,” “scenes,” “library,” “Latin”. Many words or phrases are underlined. But, what caught my eye was the single word written on the introductory page: “Interesting”. Ah ha, Dr. Farina, former high school English classmate. I’m not the only one who find that an acceptable word to characterize reaction to a composition.

book reviews, Dune

More Thoughts on Children of Dune and the Dune Trilogy

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I haven’t read much science fiction. Twenty years ago I read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series of five books, the original trilogy and the next two. From time to time I would pick up a sci fi book and get through it, but never with enough interest to cause me to seek more by the author. Of course, a number of sci fi movies have caught my fancy.

As a writer, a sci fi series has been occupying a few gray cells. But as a non-reader of sci fi, I can’t really hope to write effective sci fi. That’s okay, because I’ve plenty of other novels and non-fiction books and ideas consuming other gray cells. Still, if this near future series keeps coming to the surface, maybe I should pay more attention to sci fi and develop more of an eye and ear for it.

So what did I find right with Children of Dune and with the Dune Trilogy I’ve now finished? One thing was the obvious borrowing from the Arabic language and the desert culture of the Middle East and Africa. Frank Herbert uses a few words straight from the Arabic in their actual meaning, such as hajj and jihad. Otherwise much of the language is similar to Arabic.

The development of a desert ecosystem on the planet Arrakis, a.k.a. Dune, was impressive. The importance of water and how the Fremen, the desert dwellers of Dune, use and preserve it was well done. For a Fremen to spit in welcome of a guest is a sign of respect. When 14-year old Paul Atreides killed his first man in hand-to-hand combat, he cried. The Fremen were impressed that he “gave water for the dead.” When a person dies, the body is rendered for the water because “His water belongs to the tribe.” All Fremen wear a stil suit, which prevents their water from escaping into the desert atmosphere. And they always take a fremkit into the desert with them.

But the most interesting part of the desert ecosystem is the sand worm, worshiped by Fremen as Shai H’lud. Water poisons the worms, but somehow they thrive in the arid lands and grow to enormous size, some the length of a football field with a mouth 10 yards wide. They are deadly, and are attracted to any rhythmic noise. The Fremen know this, and from childhood learn to walk in the desert in a non-rhythmic way and thus do not attract the worms.

Unless they want to. The worms live mostly underground and bore through the sand, but move at good speed. The Fremen have learned that, when the worm breeches the ground, you can crawl up on the worm and insert hooks under the worm’s segmental rings. The worm cannot “submerge” in the sand when their rings are separated. So they move on the surface, and a skilled Fremen can ride the worm for hours, directing it in any direction.

The worms make a spice called melange. I don’t know if this is a type of worm excrement, or if they make it in the way bees make honey. Indigo in color, it is some kind of narcotic. The Fremen mine it and consume so much of it their eyes turn light blue on dark blue. Somehow it is essential for space navigation, but the three books never explain exactly how. Is it also a fuel? Or is the money from the spice trade what finances space travel? I would have liked to have that explained. The spice is the reason Arrakis is a desired planet, and becomes the place of legends and smuggling.

In Children of Dune, much effort has been put into transforming the desert planet into a well-watered land, filled with flora and fauna. The effort has the effect of limiting the worms’ territory. Their population is shrinking, and they will be extinct within two centuries. No worms, no spice. No spice, no space travel. No spice, no value to Arrakis. Only Leto, the seven year old son of Paul Atreides seems to understand this. His quest to reverse this is an underlying theme of the book.

All of this takes significant development and creativity by the author. As I spend time on writers sites, it seems everyone is writing sci fi and its close cousin, fantasy. I think the idea is that no research is required, whereas it is in most other genres of fiction. But this seems wrong. The author of sci fi probably has more development time than does the writer of other genres. All the back story, all the unwritten centuries or millenia, must be in the author’s mind. Knowing how much to share in a book or a series is a difficult decision for the author.

And Herbert is certainly a master of all of this. I’ve been critical of him for not giving quite enough back story for my liking. And I’ve criticized his writing style, especially in the last of the trilogy. But I cannot fault his development of the fantasy world of times in the future. Very well done.