| Title: | Arcana Caelestia |
| Notice: | Directory listings are in topic 2 |
| Moderator: | NETRIX::thomas |
| Created: | Thu Dec 08 1983 |
| Last Modified: | Thu Jun 05 1997 |
| Last Successful Update: | Fri Jun 06 1997 |
| Number of topics: | 1300 |
| Total number of notes: | 18728 |
This is (apparently) the latest book from Joe Haldeman (copyright 1990).
This book is a howling disappointment, which may account for the
fact that it is only 150 pages long. It also ends incoherently,
with all the signs of something Haldeman started and didn't know
how to finish but finished anyway because of contractual obligations.
***** SPOILERS *****
"The Hemmingway Hoax" deals with a literature professor at Boston
University named John Baird who specializes in analyzing the life
and work of Ernest Hemmingway. One day he is approached in a Key West
bar by a con man named Castemaine who suggests that Baird forge a copy
of one of Hemmingway's lost manuscripts. Castlemaine is in it for the
money but Baird is interested in the scheme as an intellectual
exercise. For reasons that are never satisfactorily explained, this
plan attracks the attention of some sort of inhuman "timespace"
patrol whose business it is to ensure that the timelines of the
billions of parallel universes don't go off the track. The Baird/
Castlemaine scheme, for some reason, will lead to the end of all life
on Earth in several hundred parallel universes in the year 2006 because
of nuclear war.
The book then spends 120 pages detailing how Baird is stalked by a
"spacetime" agent who appears as Hemmingway at various times in
Hemmingway's life, each time to deter Baird from writing the
forgery. Baird is killed by this agent a number of times, only
to find himself in the next parallel universe, sharing the body of
his other-universe self with the mind of that body in that universe.
Each universe is a little different from the last. This goes on for
the rest of the book, interspersed with some gratuitous violence and
the sort of boring, repetitive sex that so cluttered-up Heinlein's
later books when he revealed himself to be a sex-starved middle-age
writer running out of ideas. The Hemmingway Hoax then ends in a totally
incoherent fashion I can't even describe, leaving the reader with the
feeling you get when you want a hot fudge sundae and get a container
or tofu instead.
It is tragic to see Haldeman come to this. Starting with his brilliant
"Forever War," it seems to have been all downhill for him. "The
Hemmingway Hoax" is just plain embarrassing.
kbs
| T.R | Title | User | Personal Name | Date | Lines |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 976.1 | Nebula Award-winning novella | TALLIS::SIGEL | Wed May 01 1991 17:26 | 11 | |
Re .0 I haven't read the book and so can't comment on it. However, it should be noted that "The Hemingway Hoax" won the Nebula Award for Best Novella (17500-40000 words) this past weekend from the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA). Then again, TEHANU by LeGuin won Best Novel, and I wasn't impressed with that book.... Andrew | |||||
| 976.2 | re: .1 | ICS::SHERMAN | Thu May 02 1991 18:13 | 8 | |
Now that IS scary. I have to believe that this book winning an award is
a comment on the very sad state of science fiction writing today.
Anyone disagree?
kbs
| |||||
| 976.3 | re: .1, .2 | ICS::SHERMAN | Thu May 02 1991 18:14 | 2 | |
Where are Ellison, Sheckley, and Brown when you REALLY need them???
| |||||
| 976.4 | Yuck is right | SNDPIT::SMITH | Husband of N1IUS | Fri May 03 1991 08:59 | 6 |
I read it when it got serialized in Asimov's (or was it Analog, I still
can't keep those 2 straight), and was pretty disappointed. Now that
yopu mention it, it does read kinda like some of the later Heinlein,
particularly JOB....
Willie
| |||||
| 976.5 | Yuck is right | KURMA::DREILLY | Sat May 04 1991 11:46 | 7 | |
Willie
This reminds me of a rescent article i read in this months Dandy
when Corky the cat,got run over with a tram on 2 straights.
I was disappointed as well.
DR.
| |||||
| 976.6 | Crud on a cracker | FSDB00::BRANAM | Steve Branam, DECcallserver Project | Wed Aug 21 1991 16:53 | 23 |
I am a big fan of Haldeman. He is one of those author's I buy right off the shelf, confident in the belief that whatever it is about, it will be good. Oh, well. This book is interesting up to a point, especially if you are a Hemingway afficianado, which I am, but the ending just drops into your lap like so much cow flop. It is extremely disappointing. Regarding Heinleinian-ness, the end is very reminiscent of a classic of time-travel paradox stories, "By His Bootstraps," which RAH published under the pseudonym Anson MacDonald, back in the days when he could write well. In this story, the main character keeps running into this old man who appears out of nowhere; in the course of his investigations, where the old man leads him along, it turns out that *he* is the old man, following this looping existence in time where the main character himself lives through all the temporal incarnations of the old man, seeing his past character through each different perspective. I can't possibly do it justice, you will have to read it yourself; if you dig recursive programming, you will love it. Also, if you liked the paradoxes inherent in Terminator and Terminator 2, you will appreciate this story (how did Skynet get built in the first place if the parts for it had to come from the future? If Cyberdyne's lab was blown up, why did the two terminators still exist? How can events initiated in the future have effects in the past that directly affects that future? These and other questions may you ponder late at night when you can't get to sleep.) So anyway, when does the next WORLDS book come out??? | |||||