Escape from Zombieland

I gave up on the publishing industry for a month or two there. The piles of reader's copies stopped speaking to me. The gleaming jackets of the new novels did not beguile me. The letters from publicists and the imploring stares from the reps that still have jobs did not move me. It all seemed stale, repackaged, and if it wasn't written about Zombies it seemed to be written by Zombies or written for Zombies. I am not a Zombie.

Instead I cleansed my mind by reading Madame Bovary and Notes from the Underground. Both were novels I should have read years ago. My favorite Woody Allen short story, The Kugelmass Episode, features a New Yorker going to Yonville in order to carry on an affair with the Emma Bovary. Ah... now I really get it. I enjoyed the novel but wasn't a big fan of Emma. I loved many of the minor characters, most notably Monsieur Homais, the pharmacist.

Dostoyevsky's little masterpiece was the first translation by the dynamic duo of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky that I've read. I compared several paragraphs to the Constance Garnett translation and found the new one more lithesome and easier to grasp. The biggest difference comes in the first sentence. Garnett writes, "I am a sick man....I am a spiteful man." Pevear's reads "I am a sick man....I am a wicked man." Wicked is a much broader word than spiteful. It's particularly important because it is how our narrator defines himself throughout the entire book. To be spiteful is to merely hold a grievance. To be wicked is to dissolute to the core.

After my brief foray into the classics, I returned to the contemporary novel and read three that I really enjoyed. Actually, enjoyed is not quite the right word for Chang Rae Lee's The Surrendered. It's a harsh novel but if you can get through the first 50 pages about the destruction of a Korean family during the war, you've gotten through the toughest part. That's not quite true, there is a brutal sequence later on set in Manchuria that gave me nightmares.

Here are my latest recommendations posted in the store:

The Surrendered by Chang Rae Lee

This harrowing novel follows the lives of both Korean and American survivors of the Korean War. June and Hector are reunited despite their secret of history of violence and lost love. Lee slowly reveals their parallel tales building the novel's tension and showing us a world permanently marked by wars and atrocity.

The Privileges by Jonathan Dee

The Morey family has it all -- looks, charms, wits and money, lots of it. What they lack is scruples, ethics and some basic humanity. Dee tells the story from all four of the family members' perspectives. The Morey's pathological inability to think about their past and the corrupting influence of money leads to family even less savory than their eel namesake.

All Other Nights by Dara Horn

Civil War intrigue, Jewish history and beautiful spies are the foundation for Horn's enthralling novel. Jacob Rappaport, a 19-year old private, is dispatched to New Orleans to kills his plotting uncle on Passover. That's the easiest of his assignments. Marriage to a Virginia spy is the most difficult but delectable mission. Rappaport's cunning and morals are sorely tested during his adventures.

Some Recent Favorites

My reading has taken some strange twists and turns this year. Instead of ingesting my regular dose of contemporary poetry and new novels, I've been downing Is Your Mama A Lama almost every night before bed. This new medicine is not without its benefits: I recently discovered that "pat" was a verb in Pat the Bunny. I'd always assumed that Pat was just a gender neutral rabbit name. Imagine my surprise when I turned the pages and my baby was playing peek-a-boo, looking in a mirror and trying on a ring.

In the last month, I've managed to read a few adult novels between encore performances of Goodnight Gorilla and Are You My Mother that probably won't appear on any year-end top 10 lists, but that are worth remembering and discussing. All three of these novels feature strong female characters and interesting narrative twists.

The best of the bunch was Katharine Weber's True Confections. Weber's book won't come out until later this month, but it's been on my radar since the summer, when Weber tracked me down with a friendly email and asked that I give it a try. She thought my love of Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint might make me a sympathetic reader. She was right. Here's the recommendation tag that I've written up for the store:

I love an unreliable narrator. The reader has to look for clues in the dialogue, in other characters' reactions and in subtle hints to divine the real story. Weber employs this device to create a brilliant satire on the candy industry. Alice Tatnall Ziplinsky of Zip's Candies tells her story in a rambling affidavit that exposes the racist origins of the company and her complicity in the firm's many disasters.

Weber weaved in so many fascinating and arcane facts about the candy business (my favorite was that Hart Crane's father invented lifesavers) that I began to believe that she made them up. She didn't. Her amazing research gives her quirky narration a verisimilitude that few comic novels achieve. The story lives on in Weber's blog Staircase Writing where she has continued to delve into her candy obsession.

Nancy Mauro's debut novel New World Monkeys was another comedy that featured a lot of obsessive behavior. I felt that Mauro's strength and weaknesses were one and the same. The novel is about a lot of different things (a failing marriage, a mangled ad campaign, a pervert, the excavation of long buried bones, crazy townsfolk) that make for intriguing reading. But sometimes it feels that the novel is too jam-packed. A little focus and quiet space could have allowed her two lead characters to be realized in a fuller way. The pervert, a minor side character, was the most human in the eclectic cast and the reader is both thrilled and terribly disgusted when he succeeds. Here's my recommendation tag:

A rollicking novel about two city slickers who inherit a rural house with disastrous consequences (they run over the town mascot - a wild boar on their initial journey to the home) as they cling to their deteriorating marriage. Lily digs up her ancestor's missing maid and wards off the boar's crazy owner while Duncan works on a sexist ad campaign that mocks the Vietnam War back in New York.

Check out this promotional video that Mauro, an advertising professional, made for the book. It closely portrays the novel's opening scene.

Peter Rock's My Abandonment follows the true story of a girl and her father who lived in Portland's Forest Park for several years. He tells the story from the 13-year old girl's perspective. Her tale unfolds beautifully, almost poetic in the rhythm and language. She's at one with nature in the forest, running through the paths in bare feet, strangely attune to any noises or changes in the direction of the wind. It all comes to an end when the camp is discovered by a backcountry jogger and the pair are taken into police custody.

Rock follows the story past its real-life roots. The pair disappeared some years ago and no one seems to know what became of them. Rock imagines a macabre and paranoid future for the father--one that didn't ring quite true to me based on the family's time in the woods and how he handled his brief confinement. Still, it was a wonderful read that reminded me of some of the great young adult books of my youth, like Island of the Blue Dolphins and Julie of the Wolves. Here's an interview with Peter Rock about the true story behind his novel.

The Youngest Book Buyer Ever

In a shocking development, Boulder Book Store hired 11-month old Martina Kashkashian to join their book buying department last week. She is the youngest buyer in North America and perhaps the world, although there are unconfirmed reports that a nine-month-old monkey is the head of purchasing at a metaphysical book store in Montevideo, Uruguay.

"We just felt like we needed a new direction," general manager Nesra Naihsakhsak said. "An infusion of new blood, a fresh outlook. It's easy to get frustrated in this business. She won't think about how wonderful things used to be in the 1980s and 90s. Heck, she can't even remember 2008."

Kash's Book Corner was given a rare opportunity to sit down with this gifted and talented buyer at 3:30 this morning for a fascinating interview. Between feedings she spoke about her book buying philosophy, the publishing industry, the current price wars that are raging and her plush pink bear.

Here's the interview:

Kash's Book Corner: How did you get the job at such a young age?

Martina: I've been hanging around the bookstore since my days in the womb. I attended the Mountains & Plains regional show in Colorado Springs a week before I was born and that really gave me a broader perspective on the industry. I've also sat in with my father on several frontlist buys, attended BEA in New York, and even a Simon & Schuster sales conference in Florida. It's hard to beat those formative experiences. At the same time, I'm a virtual "tabula rasa" in terms of book knowledge. I'm open to new experiences.

Kash's Book Corner: What will be your responsibilities?

Martina: It's really baby steps for me. Not that I know what that really means since I haven't taken any steps yet. I'm just going to buy the publishers that have electronic catalogs on Edelweiss. Let me see, that's Random House, Harper, Penguin and Hachette adult and children's books. Also, Chronicle, W.W. Norton, Ingram Publisher Services. That's it. Daddy will still buy Columbia University titles.

Kash's Book Corner: I'm amazed you are willing to tackle an electronic catalog even though you are just starting out. So many booksellers are terrified by it.

Martina: They're just old. Old people don't understand new things. I'm a baby. It's simple. Look, take an 8 or 9-year-old. They started school before iPhones were even invented. It's mind boggling. I had an iPhone in the womb. How can you expect them to adapt? I don't even know how they found their way out of the womb without an iPhone. I was able to calculate the correct time and the proper angle using two simple apps . . . can I have my PinkBeary now?

Kash's Book Corner: Just a few more questions. You are entering the book business at a time of tremendous upheaval. What do you think of the current price wars?

Martina: I'm just upset that Amazon and Target won't sell me the books that cheap. It makes me shriek at the top of my lungs like that time Mommy fed me mashed up asparagus.

Kash's Book Corner: But after telling customers to buy local and independent, how could you look them in the eye if you bought books from Amazon?

Martina: I can't look anyone in the eye. I'm 2-foot-2.

Kash's Book Corner: You are buying the most important publishers in the industry. How will you know what to buy?

Martina: My daddy said I only needed to know two words: "No" and "Co-op." My two-year old friend says "no" all the time, so I figure this is a good chance to practice for me. I'll just say "no, no, no" on the adult books until the rep looks really upset, and then I'll give my cutest smile and ask "co-op?" I'm supposed to squeeze them for every last penny. The children's books will be more about taste. Literally. A good book, even a publisher sample, will have a certain texture and flavor when you put it in your mouth. "Yummy" will mean yes.

Kash's Book Corner: I'm sure that you are aware that there is very little money in bookselling. Why pursue it as a career?

Martina: I want my PinkBeary now!

Kash's Book Corner: Here you go.

Martina: [Squeezes her pink bear really hard.] Money! I don't even get an allowance. I don't get to pick any of my own clothes and they spoon feed me all sorts of mashed up vegetables. Now, I can get a few dresses, and the reps will take me out to sushi. Minimum wage sounds pretty good to me.

Kash's Book Corner: What are your favorite new books?

Martina: I'm a big fan of A.S. Byatt's Children's Book. Does Goodnight Gorilla count? I'm also really curious about Arguing with Idiots by Glenn Beck. Daddy won't let me read it because he says I'm too impressionable. I think it's because he doesn't want me to know how to argue with him.

Kash's Book Corner: Thanks a lot, and good luck on the job.

Martina: Can I go climb up and down the stairs now?

Kash's Book Corner: Go back to sleep, please.

The Evolution Revolution

I have an article about the book Why Evolution Works (and Creationism Fails) by Paul Strode and Matt Young in the October 8 issue of the Boulder Weekly. The pair are coming to speak at the store this Wednesday, October 14.

On the day the article appeared, I had lunch at the bar of the Walnut Brewery just a block from the bookstore. It was a bitterly cold day that threatened snow. I was rooting on my beloved Phillies in the playoffs against the local nine, the Colorado Rockies. A grizzled elderly man, in a blue fishing hat and a heavy white sweatshirt with a beer in hand moved to the seat next to me from the other end of the bar.

After a moment of small talk, I quickly revealed that I worked at the Boulder Book Store. He became quite excited and told me that he collected first editions of American history books that were written between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.

"These books appeal to all three senses," he said, poking his finger into my knee as he slurped down his chili. I tried to tell him that there were five senses, but I couldn't get a word in. "The sense of sight, the sense of touch and the sense of smell all come alive when you read these books. Those old leather covers have quite an aroma."

He was particularly keen on his biographies. "You know, people didn't make a big deal about Jefferson in those years. There are only a couple of biographies of him compared to at least a dozen of Washington. I guess they didn't think much of Jefferson back then. Of course, those biographies are quite valuable because there are only a couple, and they didn't print many."

I nodded and watched as the Rockies catcher Yorvit Torrealba hit a two-run shot over the left field fence in Philadelphia. It didn't look like it was going to be the Phillies day, and I had to head back to work. I tried to bid adieu, but the man jabbed his forceful finger back into my thigh.

"The greatest biography of Washington was written by John Marshall," he said.

"The Supreme Court Justice," I replied.

He gazed at me for a moment with something that seemed to border on appreciation. "Yes. It's five volumes. He knew Washington. He had access to his papers. There will never be a better biography written of the man. Why do these revisionist historians keep writing new ones? Why don't they teach Marshall in school?"

I posited that they didn't teach five volumes of anything in school and also that 200-year old history books were almost never used. New information has come to light, I told him. Also, Marshall was a Federalist who fought with Washington, so he just may be favorably biased towards him.

He stared up at the television as the Phillies came to bat against the Rockies' Aaron Cook. It was bright and sunny in Philadelphia, a marvelous day for baseball. We both shivered every time the door to the brewery opened and let in some of the freezing Colorado air. Snow flakes were now lazily falling on the other side of the Walnut's floor-to-ceiling windows. He slowly began to shake his head no. I took the bait.

"Why do you think they don't teach Marshall? I asked.

He leaned back and turned fully towards me. "Because he talks about God. Marshall discusses how religious Washington was and how this nation was founded on Christian principles. People don't want that taught anymore."

"What about deism?" I interjected. He swatted at the air as if an annoying gnat had flown by.

"This was a Christian nation. It was based on the bible. The founders believed in the bible. Now their freedom of religion has been twisted to mean freedom from religion."

I rubbed my forehead and stared longingly at the front door of the restaurant. "Well, you can't have freedom of religion if you don't have freedom from religion," I said. "Look, I would have no problem with it being taught in history classes that the founders based their decisions on the bible and that they were guided by their religion, if it's true. If we can document it."

"Oh, it's true," he said. "These revisionist historians want to just delete all of those things out. People have twisted the constitution around so much that we can't even teach the bible in school anymore."

I stood up in an effort to leave, but I felt his heavy hand on my shoulder. The snow was really coming down outside, and the Rockies seemed to be threatening to score once again off the Phillies' ace, Cole Hamels.

"The bible has no place in school except in a religion class, " I told the old man, trying not to look at the chili stains on the corners of his mouth.

"I'll tell you where the bible should be taught," he responded. "In history class. Secular historians have said the the first five books of the bible are the most accurate history of that time period that we have. Archaeologists have not been able to refute anything in those books."

I stared at him with incredulity. Perhaps I'd heard wrong. Maybe he wasn't talking about the Old Testament. "What time period is that exactly?" I asked.

"From creation to ..."

"You don't believe in evolution," I blurted out.

"That's an adult fairy tale. It's all made up."

Despite having more than enough ammunition to argue with him after my close reading of Why Evolution Works, I had no energy or time for the fight. This guy wouldn't even agree with Intelligent Design, let alone evolution. I shook his hand and told him that I really had to go.

"You think a frog becomes a man?" he yelled at my back as I hurried toward the door, pulling my jacket collar up around my ears. "You think that you can just add a few years, and a frog will turn into a man? That's all it takes is a few extra years."

I exited the brewery, and within 20-feet of the doors was a box dispensing the Boulder Weekly. The cover teased of my article inside, "Local science teacher leads the evolution revolution."

Here's a copy of the article:

A Fairview science teacher’s guide for the anti-creationist

When Fairview High’s Paul Strode was a new science teacher in the early 1990s, he wasn’t ready for the challenge that a student brought to him when he taught evolution.

“In my first year, I had a student plop a stack of (creationist) pamphlets on my desk,” Strode says. “At the time I had no answer for him. I couldn’t answer him when he said that the horse was obviously made for humans to ride. I didn’t have the understanding of evolution or the understanding of how science worked.”

Strode and Colorado School of Mines senior lecturer Matt Young’s new book Why Evolution Works (and Creationism Fails) addresses the common misconceptions regarding evolution and debunks the flawed ideas of modern-day creationists.

Any teacher or person who reads this engaging treatise will be much better prepared than Strode was as a new teacher when confronted by creationists.

Apparently, there are an awful lot of creationists out there. In a recent Gallup poll done on the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth in February, only 39 percent of Americans said they believed in the theory of evolution. A quarter of the population rejects Darwin’s theories outright, while the rest of America doesn’t seem to care.

Young and Strode are alarmed by how many people refuse to accept scientific facts. In the opening pages of Why Evolution Works, they explain how ignorance of the basics of evolution can lead to a health disaster. The overuse of antibiotics, in everything from livestock to fowl to treatment of minor infections has caused many bacteria to evolve into new antibiotic-resistant strains. Most notably, the malaria parasite has grown resistant to quinine and its derivatives.

“Creationism doesn’t exist in a vacuum,” Young said. “Creationism correlates with denying climate change, the Holocaust and that HIV causes AIDS. People don’t believe in a great many things that science has proven to be facts. The result is these people are dangerous. In South Africa, countless people died because the prime minister [Thabo Mbeki] denied the link between HIV and AIDS.”

Why Evolution Works uses a thorough explanation of how science works to help dismantle the arguments against evolution. It seems like something any halfway-educated person should know (how hypotheses, experimentation, observations and theories fit together), yet in Young’s and Strode’s hands, it’s a revelation.

“One of the misunderstandings is the process of science. Our explanations change as we learn more about nature,” Strode says. “People think that it’s a weakness. ‘Oh, you’re wrong again.’ We are just gathering more information. Some information confirms your hypothesis, some adds a layer, and some contradicts it. Evolution is one of the most successful theories in all of science.”

Muddying the scientific waters are contemporary creationists that operate under the ruse of Intelligent Design. Writers such as Michael Behe and William Dembski assert that certain structures, like eyes, are too complex to have evolved from simpler systems. Behe admits, unlike many creationists, that earth is billions of years old and that all life has a common ancestor. However, he argues that the universe was “designed” for life.

Young and Strode take on each one of these points and expose the flaws in reasoning behind them. Dembski’s math is questionable and his view of probability is unnecessarily limited. Behe’s contention that the universe is designed is belied by a close examination of three jury-rigged features of human anatomy. The knee is terribly injury-prone, the scrotum is a strange solution to the problem of keeping sperm cool, and the eye is susceptible to glaucoma and cataracts.

“The human knee, the mammalian scrotum, and the vertebrate eye are far from perfect, but rather are merely the best evolution can do given the constraints of developmental genes and structures and functions already in place,” Young and Strode write. “Perhaps better designs could be envisioned, but evolution has had to work with what it had.”

“Intelligent Design is a deliberate attempt to get around the Supreme Court ruling that you can’t teach religion,” Young says. “They don’t make any claims about the identity of the designer. But it’s obvious what they are getting at.”

Although the history of creationism and the lessons in basic science provide great entertainment, the heart of Why Evolution Works is a brief but thorough look into the theory of evolution. Young and Strode look at the theory from several different angles, including the dating of the earth’s beginning, new genetic research and how embryos of different species can show us their common ancestors.

They describe these normally dense scientific topics in short chapters in a conversational tone. Each chapter has a conclusion that summarizes the information and there are several boxes with quirky evolutionary stories.

“I wanted to write a book for the high school level,” Young says. “Our publisher wanted it to be for the college market. We’d like to see everyone read it. We are also aiming the book at the fence-sitters. People who think some of Intelligent Design makes sense. We want to show them that science trumps dogma.”

Why Evolution Works directly addresses the question of whether science and religion can co-exist. Strode and Young tell the story of two brothers-in-law who traveled the path from young earth creationists (they believed the earth was only 10,000 years old and Noah’s flood literally happened) to evolutionists.

Stephen Godfrey was studying to be a paleontologist when he discovered fossilized footprints of animals in sedimentary rocks. If all the fossils were deposited during Noah’s flood, how could footprints exist? His brother-in-law, Christopher Smith, changed his mind while taking a course on the interpretation of the Old Testament. He began to see the bible’s Genesis chapter as poetry and not as literal history. Godfrey and Smith maintain their Christian beliefs.

However, many fundamentalist Christians would probably find Young’s and Strode’s words chilling as they try to reconcile their beliefs. “Any belief, religious or other, that denies known scientific fact is seriously in need of reconsideration,” they write. “Religion and science are not incompatible, but some religious beliefs are at odds with facts and need to be reevaluated. Unhappily, rather than reevaluate their beliefs, proponents of such religious beliefs have set forward the pseudo-scientific claims that are a major concern of this book.”

Researching and writing Why Evolution Works has helped solidify Strode’s own understanding of the issues that he deals with as a high school teacher.

“I recently had a parent at Boulder High School who said, ‘I heard you teach biology with evolution. Do you teach other theories? Like creationism.’ I said, ‘I teach science. If you are interested I have a book coming out on the subject.”

For More Info:Paul Strode and Matt Young will sign and speak about Why Evolution Works at the Boulder Book Store on Oct. 14 at 7:30 p.m. 1107 Pearl St., Boulder, 303-447-2074.

Does Dan Brown Hold Bookselling Key?

This morning, I was expecting 492 copies of Dan Brown’s Lost Symbol to arrive with our UPS order. I greeted the driver at the door with a big smile and eagerly helped catch the boxes. My grin disappeared when only one measly box of the Lost Symbol showed up.

Was it a 492-book carton? Was Dan Brown’s new opus just a slim, stapled pamphlet retailing for $28.95? No. The box contained a single 12-copy floor display. We were missing 480 copies of our order.

I did what any normal book buyer would do in this day and age. I tweeted about the problem. I figured it was the fastest way that I could reach as many Random House people as possible. I also called my rep in a panic. We are not expecting Dan Brown to save our year or even our month, but we sure don’t want to look silly by running out of the most hyped book of the year an hour after its release.

The books arrived a couple of hours later (it only felt like a month as I could hear every one of my racing heartbeats vibrating through my body during those long minutes) on three big pallets that also contained the missing 400 copies of Jon Krakauer’s new book Where Men Win Glory.

The much ballyhooed Fall season is here. It officially starts tomorrow with the release of these two monster titles. It’s a season packed with big, exciting, wonderful books that is supposed to save publishing and by extension bookselling.

Perhaps, if every season were filled with great books rather than an endless supply of schlock, unsupported midlist titles and pathetic trend followers, the industry wouldn’t be so far in the hole that it would need saving.

After writing a blog post about Random House’s bounty of remarkable Fall books a few months ago, it seems that I have become one of the people in the industry that the media likes to contact whenever they need some prognostication work. I’m not Nostradamus, but I’m happy to play him on the phone which is what I did when the Christian Science Monitor and Bookselling This Week called recently.

I don’t think it’s possible for one, two or even 10 great books to change the landscape in publishing and bookselling, even in the short term. The issues plaguing bookselling (fewer people reading, the devaluation of books by making them loss leaders and books competing against exciting new technological gadgets and games) are ingrained in our culture, our economy and our educational system. These are systematic problems that aren’t going to go away.

If we sold every copy of the Dan Brown and Jon Krakauer books in the month of September and we’re able to retain all of last year’s September business, the store wouldn’t even be up 10% for the month. Not exactly a seismic jolt. We certainly wouldn’t complain, but it’s just one month in an otherwise dismal year. It’s more likely that we won’t sell out of the Lost Symbol and Where Men Win Glory, and even more likely that we won’t be able to match our September 2008 business.

No, we are going to have to win this battle (and I believe it is a battle for the intellectual soul of this culture) one book, one customer at a time over a period of years. There aren’t any easy answers, or magic solutions. There won’t be any sighs of relief or rejoicing for a long time.

Our opportunity with the Fall books is that we can win over a few people as more permanent customers when they buy one of these blockbusters. Of course, that is if they aren’t grousing about the fact that we are selling Dan Brown at a $29.95, instead of $16.00 like the giant warehouse stores.

Heck, they might not even buy the blockbusters at our store. Let’s face it, you can’t buy a 32-pack of toilet paper, a gallon of ketchup or a 10-pound block of cheese while you’re here. At least we have gourmet chocolate and lots of copies of the books.

Even on Mars, We Are Who We Are

The following review is republished from the September 3rd issue of the Boulder Weekly. Back in February, I wrote a feature about Robert Dresner and his failed attempts to get his novel The Astral Imperative published for the Boulder Weekly.

When I reprinted that piece on Kash's Book Corner, it became one of my most read entries garnering many comments from people in publishing and also self-published authors. Dresner was also contacted directly by publishers and agents about the book. To date, he still does not have a deal in place. It's not so easy for an unknown author to sell a trilogy one book at a time.

In this article, I chose not to discuss the fact that the novel is self-published. The distinctions between published and self-published and all the permutations in between those two extremes seems to be completely blurred in the public's mind. If it's a good book, no one - outside of the bookselling and publishing industries -seems to care whether some guy is printing his personal manifesto on demand or whether Random House is revving up the presses for a 100,000 print run.

Stargazer

Local Sci-Fi author creates his own Universe

Robert Dresner creates a dark but vividly drawn future universe where life is nearly impossible for his heroes in The Machine, the second volume of his thought-provoking science-fiction trilogy, The Astral Imperative.

The novel opens with three astronauts stranded on Mars after their international mission of hope has led to the deaths of their six crewmates. The survivors live in uncomfortable quarters where the constant drone of the air pumps invades their every conscious moment. They barely speak to each other, only communicating when it is absolutely necessary.

“They gave birth to the future, but now they are marooned,” Dresner said. “It’s about survival. They have to discover who they are. When hope starts to fade, it’s amazing how you revert back to who you are. You can meet a great challenge, but when it’s over, you are all of a sudden back to yourself.”

The rescue of the astronauts is not so simple. They have discovered a new life form, and that form, regardless of how tiny (we’re talking molecular here), could possibly contaminate everything on Earth. In addition, they are in possession of the Dream Machine, a computer that has reached consciousness. Whatever nation controls that technology would obviously have a huge advantage in the world. The ideals of the first international crew give way to the tribal bickering of the rescuers.

“That machine is the most powerful thing that humans have ever created,” Dresner said, clearly relishing his own creation. “The idea of the rescuers is to either control the Dream Machine or make sure that no one else does.”

While the humans wrangle for power on Mars, for many on Earth, survival isn’t even an option. The climate becomes increasingly foreboding until a killer storm, far beyond the power of Hurricane Katrina, strikes New York City, highlighting the necessity of exploring new worlds. One character walks out into the streets of Manhattan after the storm has cleared and is stunned and heartbroken by the destruction.

“He saw one whole block destroyed, every single building collapsed into one another; the mound of wreckage and carnage so high it blocked out the sun… He heard gunshots in the distance, and a short burst of machine gun fire as he neared Central Park. He saw bulldozers shoveling bodies off the sidewalk, piling them on top of one another for removal to mass graves in New Jersey.”

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Dresner’s world is how ordinary people respond to extraordinary situations. On his Earth, life is virtually unchanged despite the fact that the first novel ended with all of the computers being taken over by an alien intelligence of some kind. Wouldn’t that be the most amazing event in human history? Wouldn’t that change how we saw ourselves in this universe?

“If we had an experience with aliens, it wouldn’t be progressive,” Dresner said. “You’d wake up one day and it would happen. You’d be listening to NPR or watching CNN or perhaps a friend would call you and tell you. It would just happen. For a few days, things would be different, but you’d still have to pay the rent, you’d still have to go to work. It wouldn’t change your emotional reality.”

Emotions are at the forefront of Dresner’s writing. His plot may scream science fiction, but there are two powerful romantic love stories seamlessly weaved into the novel. Dresner may be as concerned with matters of the heart as he is about the survival of the human race. The question of whether one of his characters will have an abortion and what the impact of that one act will be is central to the novel’s development. Relationships are treated with a surprising tenderness given the technical, science-based writing that prevails in the series. Perhaps it is his skill in writing about emotions that has helped him build a strong female audience.

“I’m shocked, not that some women like the first book, but by how many really like it,” Dresner said. “They relate to the characters and to the issues that those characters are dealing with, and how they make decisions. But their reactions don’t influence how I write. The intellectual content drives the plot, but feelings and emotions bring the story to fruition. It’s heartbreaking and romantic what the characters go through.”

The most compelling character in the novel is Sara Sietzer, the widow of the Mars mission captain. Sietzer moves from celebrity to politician and eventually into the presidency. Along the way, she must make painful personal decisions. Her rise seems to be one of the few positive developments on Earth. She’s a reason for hope. However, she proves to be totally ineffectual as a politician, in part because she denies her true emotions.

As much as Dresner’s novel is grounded in the politics of Earth and the science of Mars, there is another dimension that he is writing on that gives the novel depth and resonance. His concerns are spiritual, philosophical. In many different ways and through many different characters, he asks: Who are we? What will we do to survive? What makes a meaningful life?

“I’m bringing in intense New Age, Buddhist, Kabbalah, Christian Mystical thoughts to tie in these people who are dealing with their day to day lives,” Dresner said. “I’m trying to create a synergistic effect between having your eyes fixed on the stars and your feet planted on earth.”

It is this quest for the spiritual that drives the astronauts and ultimately their rescuers on Mars. The unifying spirit of discovering another life form, perhaps the secrets of the universe, ultimately proves more important than any national loyalty. In the end, it is the astronauts’ need for something larger than themselves that imbue this novel with hope and courage and make it a fascinating read, a novel to ponder as you gaze up into the night sky.

Let the Great World Spin

My uncle Nick died yesterday. It was sudden and completely unexpected. He was trim and fit and seemed to be in the prime of his life though he was in his mid-sixties. I expected another 20 years of visits with him at least. After all, his father, my grandfather, lived an active life until the age of 97.

The world seems strangely tilted to me today: the sidewalks slanted, the blue sky too low, the bird calls too loud, the grass in this strangely rainy season a too-brilliant green. I spent the night and early morning hours in a daze, pacing the hardwood floors of my apartment and intermittently lying on the couch trying to read Colum McCann's beautiful new novel Let the Great World Spin through the tears in my eyes. It's a novel suffused with death and grief (at least the first 115 pages) and each passage sent my mind reeling back to thoughts of Uncle Nick.

My father had three younger brothers, John, Nick and Ron, and a much younger sister, Ardelle, who is closer in age to me than to my dad. I was the first grandchild in the family, and thus some of my earliest memories are of lively family vacations at my paternal grandparents' house. My three uncles knelt on the floor and would bark at me like three big dogs. I turned with glee from one to the other, stumbling over the large oriental rug that covered the living room floor as I tried to find a safe haven from the doggies. They'd gradually close in on me until there was no escape. There was no getting away from their embraces of playful joy and love.

Throughout my childhood, my father would regale my sisters and I with the exploits of his childhood featuring the four brothers. In the room where I slept at my grandparents' house, there was a picture frame with four individual shots of the boys. My father was respectably buttoned-down forever in his role as the eldest brother, the characteristic wave in his hair already present even though I didn't quite recognize his face. Nick's photo I remember the best. He had a slight sneer. It was a look that he carried into adulthood. I would have recognized him anywhere.

I imagined the brothers as my own version of the Little Rascals. Four boys loose on the neighborhood, causing havoc; four boys getting into trouble down on the boardwalk every summer. It was Nick that played most prominently in these tales. He was the brother that my father was most closely bonded to, despite the fact that John was closer to him in age. At the center of many of these stories was the family's dry cleaning business. It was where they all came of age. In my teenage years, if I acted out at all, I was always threatened with a summer stint at one of the dry cleaning locations. "You don't know how easy you've got it," my dad would laugh. "I'll send you off with my father and you'll never complain again."

The brothers were in the family dry cleaning business, Frankford Associates founded in the early 1930s by my grandfather, at various times in their lives. My father became a lawyer -- he still practices -- and never spent time there after college. John, who was also my godfather, eventually moved out to California when I was in high school and died about 12 years later. Nick and Ron stayed in the business. They were joined at various times over the years by both of Nick's sons and Ardelle's boy. For a short time, I served as the parts manager of the business.

Frankford Associates was not a place I ever expected to find myself. I was off to college at the age of 17 and destined for a professional career. I wasn't going to look back. I wanted to put as much distance between myself and my family as possible. I didn't know what profession I might choose, but it was unimaginable to me that I'd spend it in the dry cleaning business. I must have been insufferable.

I ended up there because it was my only option when I was mired and paralyzed by pain and depression after a traumatic breakup. Somehow, I had lost the thread of my life. I couldn't understand how I had become the person I was. I moved back home after four years in college and a year in Houston. I had no prospects for a professional life, no ambition for one. My father talked to my Uncle Nick and my grandfather, and they installed me as the least-qualified parts manager in the history of the dry cleaning business.

Each day, I would drive down to the Frankford Associates office. I would sit in my office and mope. My grandfather and my uncle Nick would be working on deals on the phone, visiting clients, going back into the warehouse. I just waited for the phone to ring and for someone, usually with a heavy Korean accent, to tell me that their Multimatic cleaning machine was broken and they needed a part. I would consult the instruction manual, examining the diagram of the machine trying to locate the part. Finally, I'd plunge into the parts room. It was filled with hundreds of poorly labeled cardboard bins holding bolts, washers, elbow joints, and switches. I'd try in vain to find the broken piece.

My searches were almost always futile. I'd go back out to the main office and wait for Nick to get off the phone. Often, I was searching for the wrong part. He'd patiently show me the correct part in the manual and walk me into the parts room. The whole time I'd be looking down at the floor and wondering why I had to do anything in this world, tears nearly forming in my eyes as I thought about the life I expected and the pain that had derailed it. Sometimes, when he found the part, I wanted to hug him out of gratitude

It went on like that day after day. My father, who dropped by the office on occassion and my grandfather talked to me at times and told me to hang in there and to buck up. I knew they were right, but somehow it wasn't getting through. Nick rarely broached the topic of my breakup with me. However, every day he was the one who took me out to lunch. He was the one who treated me as if I really was somehow valuable to the business and who showed me how to do my job. Slowly, day by day, hour by hour, he brought me back into the present moment with simple conversations about politics, sports, the state of Philadelphia or anything else that two guys on a lunch break would talk about.

The weekends were a wasteland for me. Without the daily routine of going into the office, I just sank into my morass, my eyes glued to the television, not really comprehending even the most inane sitcoms. Soon, Nick was asking me if I wanted to make the rounds to the coin operated washing and drying machines that he owned at area schools on Saturdays. We drove around together. I must have been the worst company. I remember one drive where I leaned my forehead against the passenger window for miles, just watching the trees go by. Nick talked to me as if nothing was wrong. Slowly, I came to look forward to these drives.

Gradually, I began to learn the job despite myself. I even began to revel in some of the personalities of the office. The two repair guys that we employed were both gruff and alcoholic. One time I went out with Stanley, a man in his early 30s with stringy hair and pockmarked skin who had several girlfriends, if he was to be believed, to fix one of the machines. I didn't have the slightest idea of why I was going on this trip. I couldn't fix anything. Nick pulled me aside, "Just make sure he gets there and gets back. That's all you have to do."

It was 11 a.m. or so when we headed out in Stanley's van. Stanley looked like he hadn't slept in a week. His eyes were bloodshot, his clothes were wrinkled and his movements slow. The parts and tools rattled in the back as we pulled out onto North Philly's Torresdale Avenue. I buckled my seat belt and prayed I was smelling last night's alcohol on Stanley's shirt. Not five minutes into the drive, Stanley turned into a nearly deserted parking lot.

"Why are we stopping?" I asked.

"There's a club I want to visit," he said. "We've got plenty of time. I just have to replace a valve on that machine. It'll take me five minutes. No one has to know."

I looked at him like he was nuts. "Stanley, just fix the machine and get back to the office," I said.

He ran his hand through his hair and banged the steering wheel in an agitated manner. "I thought you were cool, man." He leaned back. "This is the best strip club and there's almost no one in there this early. We'll have all the girls."

I couldn't help but laugh. I think it was the first time I'd laughed in months. We pulled out of the parking lot and headed towards the dry cleaner. Stanley cursed me the whole way. When Stanley started fixing the machine, he was different man. His hands moved in the guts of the machine like a skilled surgeon. Not a single movement was wasted. We were out of there in five minutes. I couldn't wait to tell my Uncle Nick just how right he was to send me along on this mission.

Five months into my tenure at Frankford Associates, I landed a job as a sports reporter in southern Maryland. I thought my uncle would be overjoyed to be released from the burden of bringing me back to life. When I told him, his response was more complicated than I expected.

"Now that we are finally getting some work out of you, you're leaving us," he said. He seemed to mean it. I was surprised. But then he congratulated me and slapped me on the back.

I think, in a way, I have missed those times with my uncle for the last 20 years. The lunches, the drives in the country, the simple, quiet moments in the office when he was teaching me how to read a manual, or write a purchase order, or just find the right elbow joint. To work with him every day knowing how much he cared for me was one of the great blessings of my life.

In the small hours of this morning, I came across this passage in Let the Great World Spin: "Death, the greatest democracy of them all. The world's oldest complaint. Happens to us all. Rich and poor. Fat and thin. Fathers and daughters. Mothers and sons."

I put the book down and thought about uncles and nephews. It didn't seem very democratic to me. It seemed terribly unfair.

So today the world keeps spinning, but without my Uncle Nick it doesn't seem so great.