Choose Your Path to…History?

I would bet that the majority of Americans my age have read at least one of the Choose Your Own Adventure novels, of which Edward Packard's Cave of Time was (more or less)* the first. I read this pathbreaking book when I was about nine years old and living in Albuquerque, a place I did not like. I found the sky too big, the desert ugly and bleak, the ubiquitous Mexican food too spicy and mushy for my amateur palate, the local people laconic and bony. I wanted to be back in the Northeast, and books, particularly fantasy books - I discovered the Chronicles of Narnia at about the same time - offered escape to a richer, more colorful, more refined environment.

 

Edward Packard, probably.

Cave of Time offered paths to a new set of realities: the worlds of the past. It was not a comforting book: the possibly endings included being eaten by a dinosaur, enslaved by Han-dynasty warriors, or choking to death on a Precambrian Earth where "oxygen had not yet been introduced into the atmosphere." Yet the various adventure paths were all exciting, and they introduced me and others to the concept of interactive literature. They became a gateway to the obsessions of my teenage years, namely role-playing and computer games. The Cave of Time probably also introduced me to the notion that reading history could, like reading fantasy or science fiction, offer an alternative to living in an unpalatable present. Though the past could prove pretty unpleasant as well.

 

* Packard had written a previous second-person, dividing-paths novel called Sugarcane Island (1976), which he published with a small press. His publisher, RA Montgomery, then took the CYOA concept to Bantam; Cave of Time was the first offering in their new series.  

Some Light Reading for Our Second Gilded Age

 

Coming soon to C-suite office bookshelves and rich dads’ Father’s Day lists: Jet Dreams (Baseturn, $120 US), an illustrated tribute to owner-flown jets and their illustrious owners. Author Jessica Ambats features forty “plucky” CEOs who have acquired Embraers, decommissioned fighter planes, and other luxury aircraft and learned how to pilot them. In some cases, when they or the author wanted to take dramatic multi-aircraft photos, the owners graciously allowed ex-fighter jocks to fly their dream vehicles, confining themselves to riding shotgun.

This one's for you, Junior Birdman.

Ambats adduces several reasons why chief executive officers might want to buy and fly jets, including childhood wish-fulfillment, bonding with millionaire dads, undertaking charitable works for cougars, and getting away from it all. Thorsten Veblen, I dare say, could have identified several more, but then he couldn’t even have afforded a piddling Cirrus Vision SF50, the cheapest private jet on the market.

 

Incidentally, for the cost of that Cirrus (about $2,500,000 US), one could buy a pretty nice house in these here parts - 5 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms, lakeside view, perhaps a private boat slip. Or one could pick up nine or ten gently-used Cessna 172 Skyhawks and fly forty friends and relatives to their favorite sportsball game. Or one could take 50-60,000 people out to dinner at Olive Garden (reservations recommended). The more pragmatic millionaire could simply buy something more personally useful, like a Congressman.

What I've Been Reading

Herewith, some of the more memorable books Your Humble Narrator read this year:

 

The Ballad of Black Tom: Say what you will about Cthulhu, at least he isn’t a damn racist.

 

Between Two Fires: Demonic hordes invade western Europe during the Black Death. Piling on, one might say. This is - no lie - the best fantasy novel I’ve read since N.K. Jemisin’s Fifth Season.

 

Danubia: Essentially, the Habsburgs were all magic-users.

 

The Dawn of Everything: Very long, and not entirely convincing. But Graeber and Wengrow have persuaded me that inequality is not a prerequisite for complex societies.

 

Echogenesis: A crashed-spaceship story infused with eau d’Edge of Tomorrow. All of the parts are derivative, but the execution is original.

 

Invisible Sun: Stross didn’t want to write this novel, but he did so anyway, and did so competently. Yay?

 

Lost Tribes Found: The “Indians are the Ten Lost Tribes” trope was invented by whites but employed by some Native Americans for political reasons.

 

Midwest Futures: The Midwest has always been a Gernsbackian sci-fi story disguised as a self-satisfied just-so story.

 

Ogres: Another “is it sci-fi or fantasy?” mystery. Well plotted and a quick read.

 

The Power Broker: “Baby Screamed; Rat in Crib” should have been Robert Moses’ epitaph.

 

Saga, volume 10: Superbly written; worth the three-year wait.

 

Superman: Red Son: This is the only Superman movie I’d willingly watch.

 

Tobacco Road: Reading this was like spending all night in a cheap brothel, then taking a bath in a pig wallow.

 

Walking to Aldebaran: A science-fictional First Contact story meets Dungeons and Dragons, with lots of bloody body-horror mixed in. Whoever is re-making Alien should film this instead.

 

William Howard Taft: Several American presidents didn’t really want the office. Taft was one. What he really wanted was a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. And so it came to pass.

An End-of-Year Scrapbook

As the year draws to a close, I offer here a few anecdotes and observations that caught my attention from 2019's reading. Some may form the basis of future blog posts. I hope the rest prove as interesting (or startling) to my readers as to me.

Ashoka at Ramagrama, courtesy of Photo Dharma, Thailand

On the transmission of knowledge between Hellenistic Greece and India: Ashoka, the founder of the Mauryan dynasty, knew a fair amount about the “Yona” (Ionians, i.e., Greeks) living to his west and sent Buddhist missionaries to convert the subjects of “Antiyoho…and Turumaye” (Antiochus and Ptolomy). Apparently, they met with little success. Perhaps a fan of Harry Turtledove's could turn this episode into an alt-history tale. (Peter Thonemann, The Hellenistic Age: A Very Short Introduction (2018), p. 74.)

On live-action Dungeons and Dragons in the Middle Ages: To defend their subjects in southern Anatolia from Arab raiders, the Byzantines in the ninth and tenth centuries built “vast subterranean citadels” in which fleeing peasants could take refuge. These they carved into the soft rock in the vicinity of modern Cappadocia. (Peter Sarris, The Byzantines: A Very Short Introduction (2015), pp. 69-70.)

On bling: Like the modern Hmong, the medieval Norse literally wore their money. When purchasing goods, they would cut pieces off of the silver collars and arm bands they wore, and merchants would then weigh the “cash” they had received to determine its value. Archaeologists have found these merchants’ weights in sites from tenth-century Ireland, among other places. (Fintan O’Toole, A History of Ireland in 100 Objects (2013). ch. 37.)
 

Drogheda Massacre (1651), courtesy of Wikimedia.

On making Ireland less attractive to tourists: After Oliver Cromwell’s scorched-earth campaign of 1651-52, a traveler in Ireland observed that “You may ride twenty miles and scarce discern any thing…but dead men hanging on trees and gibbets.” (ibid, ch, 63.) Unpleasant fellow, that Cromwell.

On Tsar’s Alexander’s misunderstanding of the relationship between autocracy and popular ignorance: During an 1814 visit to England, Alexander I of Russia saw a display of the new “Lancastrian” method of education, whereby older students helped train newer and younger students. He was sufficiently impressed that he opened a Lancastrian school for Russian soldiers billeted in France. It proved very effective. So began a slow but dangerous climb in Russian literacy rates. (Christine Haynes, Our Friends the Enemies: The Occupation of France after Napoleon (2018), ch. 6.)

Roughly, "Shut up and win the war."

On Spanish antecedents to famous English novels: During the Civil War in Spain, George Orwell likely saw a Spanish communist poster “emblazoned with the image of a boot stamping ‘on all who resist forever.’” (D.J. Taylor, On Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Biography (2019), p. 38.)

**

Happy holidays to all.