Tantalus Depths : my review

     Sooo I have a confession...

     I've had an advance copy of this book for a while now. I kept meaning and meaning to get around to it, and kept having other things demand my attention. Then I FINALLY (sorry, Evan) sat down with it last week, and once that finally happened I could not put it back down - tragically exempting work, sleep and food.

     Fast forward a couple of days. I hit the apex of the story. At almost 1am with about 5 chapters left to go, I grabbed a glass of wine, my pajamas and the book, and settled in to finish the adventure before I went to bed, white knuckling nearly as much as the heroine of the story.

     What is this story about? A mining crew are sent out to establish a colony on a planet, Tantalus 13, which will stake a claim on that area of the planet for their employers, Exotech Industries. An AI unit known as a SCARAB (Self-Constructing Autonomous Resource Acquisition Base) was sent ahead 2 years before to serve as a base for the crew and assist them in their mission. Once the crew reaches the planet however, Mary Ketch, the mission's pilot, starts noticing oddities about the planet and SCARAB. Soon the rest of the crew start picking up on oddities within the planet - and determine that they have to explore the new findings - and find out what is hidden within Tantalus 13. But in doing so they will find themselves in very deep over their heads, and SCARAB seems to be acting strange... which with an AI, is never a good sign. When patterns start to show up in the crews' data files and SCARAB's behavior, some disconcerting questions start to come up - but who can Mary voice them to, when SCARAB hears every word she speaks?

SCARAB drone

       Cleverly and vividly written, with elements from classic sci-fi, solid scientific footing, a touch of horror/thriller, and a strong female protagonist who would make Joss Whedon proud, Tantalus Depths will draw you in until you're as deep into the story as the characters exploring the unnatural world.

     Pre-orders and more information are available at https://www.inkshares.com/books/tantalus-depths, and you can find Tantalus Depths on facebook as well here.

Mere Christianity, Book 1 Part 1: C.S. Lewis, and Law of (human) Nature

"Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining 'It's not fair'..." C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

*A note on the context of this book - Mere Christianity is based on 3 radio talks C.S. Lewis gave during the years in which World War II was taking place, and there are multiple allusions to the war and the Nazis as a frame of reference to the Law of Human nature, and how if no such law existed the actions of the 3rd Reich could not be considered to be evil, which as much as we look back on now with astonishment, imagine what it was like for those who found out about it while it was happening.*

In the very beginning of this book, Lewis discusses the difference between 2 different types of natural laws - physical laws, which compel obedience (the laws of physics, chemistry, etc) and the "law" of human nature - a common standard which can be, and frequently is, dismissed by individuals who would be expected to obey its commands. To this he attributes the human tendency to quarrel, pointing out that without a common standard people could certainly fight, but could not quarrel over fairness or rightness. This last part, the law of human nature, is what he bases the arguments he puts forth in this section of the book.

Lewis seeks at this point in this search, without looking at the Bible, or any form of religion or god just yet, to find some ground in human history for a common Right and Wrong, this law that, while may be adjusted off be some degrees in some societies, is still present in nearly all of known human history. He asks the reader to "Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him." He finds it as astounding as finding a civilization where math worked entirely differently, and I'm inclined to agree with him. There are certainly civilizations that have praised the cleverness of a man who double crossed someone who had done him harm, but few would argue that doing so to an honest person was the right thing to do.

He then brings up the fact that, while most of us expect or demand that others follow the Law of Nature, we each fail miserably at it ourselves. Even more so, when we do so, we more often than not find a reason to excuse ourselves of the shortcoming, but we do know that we have broken it. We may blame it on another person, or outside circumstances, but when someone does the same to us we tend as human beings to hold them to the standard that we just fell short of ourselves.

He proceeds to point out that in the case of inanimate objects, if we call them "bad", what we mean is that they are not the way we would have them, not that they have actually done something wrong. Whereas when we consider a person "bad" (think of someone like a Hitler perhaps), we certainly DO mean that they have done something very wrong - they have killed people, or have stolen money, or committed another act that has caused us to decide that they are bad, there is a standard of Right and Wrong, and they have definitely fallen into the category we would call Wrong.

What could cause this fairly uniform standard? What force in the universe could give us a moral compass, without forcibly compelling us to obey its decree of "do this, but not that"? There must be something, which at this point Lewis refers to as "Something Behind." Next week I want to take a look at what he thinks we can guess at, from how we know human nature works, about this "Something Behind."



<<This came out a little later than I'd hoped; Thursday snuck up on me after a particularly nasty week of allergies. Next week I'll make sure I get things written before Thursday, and schedule the post. >>

Starting Mere Christianity next week

Starting on next Thursday, I'll be going through Mere Christianity. The book is broken into 4 parts, so I'll spend the first 2 weeks on the first part, then probably moving to part 2 for two weeks, and so on for 8 weeks. I will be doing more commentary than summary (I hope) on the writings, so it may be a bit confusing for anyone who hasn't read the section I'm currently talking about.

Coming soon - Book "club"

For a while now, I've wanted to start a reading group, but because my schedule is somewhat reversed to most peoples' schedules, it hasn't been practical. But the wonderful thing about doing things online is that they aren't always bound by time the same way as meeting in person; I can post at midnight on Thursday, or 3 am on Sunday, and another person can read it at 10 am the next morning, or in 2 weeks or years.

That being said, I would like to keep it on a regular schedule. I'm leaning toward a post weekly on Thursdays at the moment. I would love any and all input from anyone who would be interested in joining in a discussion of a book week by week, what sort of books would most interest people for an interactive group-read, that sort of thing.

Right now I'm leaning toward "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis for the first book, as he's my favorite author (I grew up a Narnian) and his writing is both direct and witty in my opinion, but I don't know yet if I would go by chapters, or do half of a section at a time - basically how best to break up the book without taking a year to dissect it, but taking enough time to allow for an open discussion of the various topics he brings up.

Another thing I want to point out - I'm just a person like anyone else who is reading this blog, and I don't pretend to know better than anyone else what C.S. Lewis, or any other writer, meant on any given point all the time, or to have a monopoly on understanding any text for that matter. There are a lot of points where he and I agree, a handful where we disagree, and a few that I haven't gotten to think about as hard as I'm sure he did. So comments completely disagreeing with anything I say are 100% ok and awesome. As I've pointed out to a few people who know me well, I don't even agree with myself 100% of the time, and listening to different viewpoints is a good practice. So if I say something that you don't agree with, please feel free to disagree openly, but only one rule - PLEASE keep it respectful to all parties concerned.

There are a lot of other books I would like to do in the future, and not all of them are based on Christian doctrines or beliefs. Some are novels like "Tuesdays with Morrie", "Dewey the Library Cat" or "The Fault in our Stars", others are more like "Mere Christianity" and "H is for Hawk," going more directly into real life rather than seeing it through a fictional lens. My own take on them will, in all likelihood, be flavored by my faith, as anyone's life should reflect their faith. This is an unavoidable side affect of any worldview; like wearing glasses it will affect the way one sees the world and everything in it. I will not, however, bash anyone else's beliefs, and all respectful opinions are more than welcome.

The reason I put the word "club" in quotation marks is that the word club has a tendency to give an exclusive impression, and I want the reading here to be inclusive.

One thing I don't plan on doing in this section of the blog is a full weekly summary of the reading; I would like to be able to comment on the writing, but I don't want to only paraphrase any writer's book, so don't expect this blog to be a version of "Cliff's notes".

I will give a quick summary on Thursday this week on what and when I plan to start, as I'd like to give anyone interested time enough to grab the book and start reading before I start the actual book club/commentary/thing, but right now I'm thinking I would start Thursday next week with the first section of the book. But for anyone interested, I greatly look forward to reading with you and speaking with you both in the blog and the comments. I'd also love to hear your thoughts on other books to read (and would be very excited to find titles I haven't read yet to look through)

Hopefully I'll be able to start posting pictures of my work again soon; alas, the projects that I've started up so far are Christmas presents that I don't want to put pictures of online yet, lest the surprise be spoiled. So while those particular projects will have to wait until late December to be posted, I'm hoping to start a couple to-sell projects later this week that I can share with you all.