Deepak Chopra's Enlightenment series

Deepak Chopra's Enlightenment series tells semi-historical fictional tales of several key religious figures: Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad.

Let me say right up front that I have no interest in Chopra except as a storyteller. He's got some really strange ideas about "quantum healing" that can be dangerous when people abandon real medical treatments to pursue them. He puts way too much stock in the ability of the mind to influence the body and the world around you. His views on spirituality and religion are centered on the human mind, not the divine (although he might argue they're the same). I have zero interest in any of that.

So why read these books? I like to think that I'm open-minded enough to consider a story (or any other work of art) on its own merits, not pre-judge based on the person on the dust jacket. Historical fiction based on key religious figures is an interesting concept, and I'd been looking for books that fit into the time periods of the lives of those figures. In a way, this is another form of my love of alternate history...just slightly different subject matter than the usual wars and political intrigue.

Buddha is a story in three parts: the birth and early life of prince Siddhartha, his abandonment of wealth and status to live as the ascetic monk Gautama, and finally his enlightenment as Buddha. The book ends just as his teaching years were beginning, which made sense to me - as I understand it, he taught for nearly 45 more years and that could be an entire other book. It's a personal story, following Siddhartha/Gautama/Buddha on his journey to enlightenment, with little focus on Buddhism as a religion (other than an explanatory epilogue). Chopra kept the story moving throughout, and the Indian cultural and religious references were fascinating.

Jesus is set during his early life, before the ministry set forth in the gospels. Jesus falls in with zealots plotting rebellion against the Romans, Gentiles searching for God, even a holy ascetic. Rather than the perfect faith of Jesus in the Bible, this Jesus is unsure much of the time, but finds his way by learning acceptance of God in all things. I thought the story really captured the feel of the times; the average Jew just trying to stay alive and fed, the Romans trying to keep the lid on a rebellious province, the zealots pushing so hard for freedom that they'd pay any price.

Muhammad uses the perspective of many different people who were close to Muhammad at various points in his life to tell his story, from close relatives to family servants to business partners. The picture that emerges is a serious and kind man, but certainly not a great leader or orator. Until an angel comes to Muhammad, and changes his life by giving him the command to recite. It's not easy to go against his nature, first as a speaker, then a leader, and in the end becoming a warrior and ruler. This portrayal was a more difficult one to accept than that of Buddha or Jesus, in my opinion; Muhammad's direct involvement in holy wars makes the picture of an enlightened leader much less believable.

I think that a reader's reaction to these books is going to depend entirely on mindset. I approached them as stories that happened to feature some familiar characters and settings, and in that I was not disappointed. Chopra is a fine storyteller, whatever you may think about his beliefs. But if you expect adherence to the orthodox portrayal of these religious figures, or deep spiritual insights into their stories, you're looking in the wrong place.

Through Darkest Europe by Harry Turtledove

Through Darkest Europe by Harry Turtledove
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Harry Turtledove always writes a good story. Sometimes, there's an interesting message underneath as well. Through Darkest Europe is definitely one of those times.

Through Darkest Europe is an imagining of what might have happened if the tenets of modern Western civilization took root in the Middle East rather than Europe. The rise of science over superstition, industrialization, the Enlightenment...move all that to places like Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Turkey. Meanwhile Europe becomes a backwater that breeds unrest and discontent.

The book has plenty of references to different history and culture in this alternate world. North America is known as "The Sunset Lands" and makes "Pontiak" vehicles from "Arkansistan." Hitler had no place on the world stage, but there was an equivalently horrific Indian leader who slaughtered the Tamil people. Rather than feet or meters, measurements are made in cubits. Turtledove always spins an intriguing world, and this is no exception. However, the most notable thing about this alternate world is not the differences from reality, but the similarities.

Turtledove could have created a very different world with those assumptions, but instead he chose to make it very nearly a mirror image of our own. Islam and Christianity switch places, with terrorist followers of Thomas Aquinas taking the place of Muslim extremists. Italy is largely a mirror of our Afghanistan, with a weak central government holding onto Rome but little else. Christian extremists from all over Europe pour into Italy, bringing rebellion and assassination with them.

I like the switching of religious and cultural affiliation between the forces of order and terror. It makes the reader think more about the underlying causes of unrest. Turtledove makes it clear that the religion itself isn't to blame, in either case. You can use words from the holy books to support peace or war, order or chaos, love for your fellow man or hatred. It's the character of the people using those words, and the societal influences that shape those people, that makes the difference.

Through Darkest Europe isn't as epic as some of Turtledove's work (see Worldwar), but it doesn't need to be to accomplish its purpose: give the reader an opportunity to consider how unrest and extremism can rise from any culture or religion, given the wrong conditions. An important message, and I encourage others to read it for themselves.

A Handmaid's Tale (season one)

There's a great movie or 3-4 hour mini-series in the first season of A Handmaid's Tale. Unfortunately it's spread out over about 10 hours of excruciating repetition.

The series takes place in an alternate timeline where world-wide fertility rates have been falling for many years, and finally reached crisis levels in the present day. A group calling itself the Sons of Jacob takes over the continental United States and turns it into a military state called Gilead, where women have no rights except through their male relatives. Fertile women are singled out and made into "handmaids" who are assigned to Gilead leaders to bear their children.

The story follows a woman named June who attempts to escape to Canada with her husband and daughter, but fails and is captured. Her daughter is taken away and June is assigned to Gilead Commander Waterford as a handmaid named Offred. The series splits time following June and the other handmaids in their lives in Boston, and flashing back to how things changed from the world we know to this dystopia.

I enjoyed the first couple of episodes of A Handmaid's Tale. It takes some time to figure out the world that they've built, and for June's terrible situation to really sink in. But then it's pretty much just more of the same. Hours of filling in details about the past which were already implied by prior flashbacks, conflicts between June and Mrs. Waterford, handmaids attempting rebellion and being caught, and so on. You might get 5-10 minutes of actual new information in each episode. The rest is largely just emotional manipulation...sex, oppression, fear, and occasional glimpses of kindness...so the viewer feels like something is happening when it's really just the same stuff over and over. We got all that already, thanks, it's not necessary to beat us over the head with it.

Oh, there are twists, but they're incredibly obvious. I suppose this is technically spoiler territory, but was anyone really surprised that June ends up sleeping with the household driver? Or that one of the handmaids, after giving birth in her assigned household, goes crazy when they take her away to a different household? Or that her husband who was conveniently off-screen when June heard shots that "killed" him turns out to be alive in Canada?

I suspect a lot of the reason that A Handmaid's Tale was received so well is the social commentary. The entire premise is based on misogyny and the twisting of religion to justify it. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to draw a line from the present day to the events in the alternate timeline shown in the series. But to my mind, the fact that the series says some good things doesn't excuse the fact that it gets repetitive and boring.

There's a second season of A Handmaid's Tale being released gradually on Hulu, but I can't say I'm particularly enthusiastic about it. Maybe someday I'll consider finishing it, but I suspect I'll end up just reading the summaries and saving myself a few hours.

Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters

Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I picked up Underground Airlines on a friend's recommendation after he saw that I'd read The Color of Law. Both deal with racial issues in America, though otherwise the books couldn't be more different: fiction vs non-fiction, thriller novel vs historical research.

Underground Airlines takes place in an alternate reality where the Civil War was prevented, just barely, by a compromise that left slavery in place as an institution in the South. Over time, it shrunk to only four states, but also modernized and scaled up like any other industry. Giant plantations with thousands of "Persons Bound to Labor" feed demand for cheap cotton and other goods.

There's plenty of action and suspense in Underground Airlines, as our protagonist searches for an escaped slave and eventually makes his way into the lion's mouth of a slave plantation. But I found the development of his character and revelations about his history to be just as interesting as the action. He assumes identities as needed in the work, never showing the deeply scarred mind underneath...except to the reader, of course. We never even learn his real name, only that he barely remembers hearing it from his mother before being taken from her.

I was struck by how many of the differences in this alternate world seemed to be of degree rather than kind. For instance, in one scene a white woman and black man are checking into a small hotel, and the (white) clerk asks her if she is all right, obviously assuming that she's being forced. Or when a free black man in a free state is harassed by police. Or how neighborhoods are described as white or colored. We've made progress in racial integration and equality in our world, but we still struggle with those kinds of issues.

Underground Airlines is a great read just for the mystery and action, but it's even better due to the alternate reality setting. Every reader is likely to find something to make them consider our own world in a different light.

The Man in the High Castle (novel)

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I recently read Phillip K Dick's novel The Man in the High Castle . Re-read, technically, though the first time was more than twenty years ago, so my recollection was hazy at best.

I'm writing here about the novel, not the video series on Amazon Video. That's a good show, but it doesn't actually have a lot in common with the novel. It borrows the name of the novel and high-level world-building concept (the Axis powers won World War II), but little else. Character names, locations, and various plot elements from the book are present in the show, but almost none of them are used in the same way. The show uses much more of the world, has a much wider cast of characters, and describes a more detailed narrative than the book.

That world-building concept is the main draw of The Man in the High Castle. The author works in a good number of details about the alternate history of the world. Germany ended up with the hydrogen bomb, not the United States. Great Britain is portrayed as a major villain, the source of war criminals that committed atrocities in Africa during the conflict. Germany and Japan have divided the USA between them with a narrow buffer state in the Rocky Mountains. The inferiority of non-Aryan, non-Japanese races is accepted by the public at large, and Jews in particular live in fear. It's certainly the picture of a dystopia, but close enough to our own world's history that it's easy to picture as a possibility.

What the book doesn't do particularly well, at least in my opinion, is deliver a consistent and interesting narrative. The characters tend to sort of wander around aimlessly much of the time, with no real connection between them. There's a lot of reference to the I Ching , a Chinese divination text used as an oracle by most of the characters, which it seems to me was largely a crutch they used to deal with their lack of control over their own lives. There are a few major threads, following characters like Mr Tagomi, Juliana, and Frank, but all that really ties them together is a few chance encounters. I think that may have been part of the point, that people and events are influenced by seemingly inconsequential meetings, but in my mind it didn't make for a particularly compelling plot.

That's all right, though, since as far as I'm concerned the real point of the book is the world-building and exploration of how people live in that world. The German empire has expanded and made scientific advances that are the envy of the world, and undertaken great public works projects, including a Mars space program. Japan is the world's other great power, but clearly an underdog in any conflict. Both great empires are harshly oppressive by the standards of our world. Conflict between the two is looming. It's a detailed and coherent picture of the alternate world, though not a particularly bright one.

One major thing that sets The Man in the High Castle apart from many alternate history stories is the presence of "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy", a book that describes a world where the Allies won the war. Most of the characters encounter the book and largely dismiss it as fantasy, which makes perfect sense as that's exactly what the reader is doing with The Man in the High Castle. Mr Tagomi actually has an experience in an alternate world, but his mental state is precarious at best. In any event, the idea of an alternate world has little material impact, but it certainly affects the thoughts and actions of several of the main characters.

I really enjoyed the concepts set forth in The Man in the High Castle, with the alternate end to the war and the world that results. The actual writing wasn't really to my liking, but the ideas came through clearly enough and that makes it a fine read.

The House of Daniel by Harry Turtledove

The House of Daniel: A novel of wild magic, the great depression, and semipro ball by Harry Turtledove
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There's a lot of baseball in The House of Daniel, but not the kind you may be familiar with. The book is set around the time of the Great Depression, which for baseball players meant that a lot of the lower-level minor league professional clubs folded. Semipro teams featuring local players who happened to live in the area were the norm, as well as barnstorming traveling teams - some with big-name players since they didn't get paid millions like today's stars. Outside of one organized tournament, the baseball in this book is the kind played by a traveling team against a different small-town semipro team every day.

Money, or lack thereof, is a constant theme - unsurprising in a Great Depression-era story. Jake "Snake" Spivey, our narrator, is grateful for his athletic ability to play center field well enough to earn money at it, since other jobs aren't easy to find. Even so, the opportunity for a little extra cash leads him to fall in with the wrong crowd. He gets lucky when the House of Daniel traveling team happens to need a center fielder after an injury, giving him a chance to make better money while also leaving behind some of his own problems.

As is usual with a Turtledove book, there's a lot of actual history mixed in with the more fantastic elements. There was a traveling team called the House of David which formed the basis of the House of Daniel team, and many of the towns and ballfields are based on those that actually existed back in the 1930s. References to the wider world are sprinkled through the book, from mention of the "War to End War" (this being before WW II) to Weeghman Park (our narrator not yet knowing that it was renamed Wrigley Field).

The world of The House of Daniel is also one of magic, where wizards work alongside engineers and vampires roam the night. This affects the story only in fairly minor ways, aside from one big dangerous event around the middle of the book. Most of the time, Jack takes the magical side of the world in stride and describes it no differently than the more mundane aspects. Honestly, I didn't think the magical aspects added anything to the story - you could have replaced it all with equivalent mundane activities without changing much. But it doesn't hurt, either, and I'm guessing Turtledove enjoyed putting in zombies and elementals and chupacabras.

As a fan of both baseball and alternate history novels, not to mention just about anything Turtledove has ever written, The House of Daniel was right up my alley. I had a great time reading about the little details of the team's games as well as following the larger story arc. Those who aren't as much into either baseball or the concept of an alternate history may find that the amount of detail is overwhelming, but that won't bother those familiar with how Turtledove works.

The Man in the High Castle

When I heard that Amazon was making a TV series based on the Phillip K Dick book The Man in the High Castle, I was pretty excited. I purposely didn't read much about it, or watch the early release episodes, so that I could watch all of the first season once it came out. Now that it has, I'm happy to say that I really enjoyed it.

I did read the book, but it was many years ago when I was a teenager. I barely remember any of it; certainly none of the specific scenes or even characters. So while I can't say I went into the TV series with no prior knowledge, it was pretty minimal.

The premise of the series is a world in which World War II ends with the Axis victorious. That much you can find just from reading the series description. The writers do a good job of establishing the premise in the first couple of episodes, so even if you didn't read that description, you'd figure it out pretty quickly. Along the way there are many references that give the viewer an idea of what the past was like, such as a "Heisenberg Device" (our atom bomb) being dropped on Washington D.C.

In this world, North America has been divided between the Greater Nazi Reich (east of the Rockies) and the Japanese Empire (west to the Pacific) with a Neutral Zone in between. The series takes place in all three areas, as well as a few scenes in Europe, in the early 1960s. I thought the different settings were well defined: better technology on the Nazi side, plenty of Japanese cultural influence in the west, a lawless run-down area in the Neutral Zone. A good part of my enjoyment in watching this show came from all the little things that made each setting unique.

The story-line is fairly complex. The main focus is on various efforts to obtain newsreel films that show the world as it might have been (including the Allies winning the war). That's not the only focus, though. Heightening tensions between the Germans and Japanese, and intrigue within the Nazi ranks, are major plot lines as well. There are several plot threads taking place at once, eventually coming together in the last few episodes. For the most part, at least...still plenty to resolve in potential future episodes.

I found all the characters to be intriguing, if not necessarily likable. None of the major characters are stereotypes, even if if might appear so at first. The ruthless Japanese and Nazi police are shown to have human sides. The underground resistance is working for freedom, but has plenty of human failings as well. Plenty of character growth occurs throughout the season, too; none of the major characters remain static.

I did find a few things that I didn't like (minor spoilers here). I thought that Joe Blake's family was handled poorly. It seems he actually cares for the woman and boy that he lives with in the short time that they appear, but then doesn't seem to give them a second thought once he's chasing after Juliana. It would have made much more sense if he'd been shown to actively give up on them at some point. I also wasn't particularly impressed with the writing for Robert Childan, the antiques dealer that is trying to cozy up to his Japanese clients. I realize he's only a minor character, but the role is so one-dimensional that it was painful to watch. It was sometimes hard to tell how quickly time was moving, also. There were a few times that it seemed several days or longer had passed because so much had happened, but then some reference was made that pointed to a much shorter time period. Minor things, nothing to get too excited about, just a bit jarring when you notice them.

The series feels unfinished, which I hope is the case, because I'd definitely watch a second season. Hopefully Amazon decides to continue it.