John Walters's Blog, page 17

Book Review: Elevation by Stephen King

The cover of this recent book by Stephen King says: Elevation: A Novel. In fact, though, it’s not a novel; it’s a novella, and a short one at that. We are all accustomed to King’s books being thousand-plus page brick-heavy tomes, so this small, slim volume might be quite a surprise to those familiar with his work. Don’t let that put you off, though. One of the things I like about this book is that it is not such a formidable read. It is told in succinct and simple prose that is nonetheless effective for the story it tells.

In fact, one of the things that puts me off from reading more of King’s work is its length. You have to commit to a significant amount of time and effort to tackle most of his novels. That’s not to say that the effort is not rewarded. I greatly enjoyed his time travel epic 11/22/63, about a man who attempts to thwart the assassination of JFK, even though the hardcover version I read was well over one thousand pages. Elevation, on the other hand, you can easily read in one sitting if you are so inclined.

Besides length, the other thing that causes me to hesitate before opening a King novel is the genre he usually writes in. His name is associated with horror, and for good reason. Horror, however, is simply not my thing. It generally frightens me in a bad way and not a good way. The good news, for me at least, is that Elevation is not a horror story. It has a fantasy element at the heart of the plot, but it is not dark fantasy; instead, King assiduously avoids taking it in that direction.

In short – and I’ll keep the synopsis brief because I don’t want to give too much away – a middle-aged man discovers he is losing weight while at the same time retaining his heavyset bodily appearance. It is an anomaly that his friend, an elderly doctor, is unable to explain. At the same time, he becomes involved in the lives of his neighbors, a lesbian couple, who have just opened a restaurant in a small conservative town in Maine. As his malady progresses, so does local ostracism of his neighbors. Using his signature straightforward writing style, King builds this situation up to an exceedingly satisfying conclusion.

Until now, my favorite book by Stephen King has been his memoir On Writing, in which he tells an abbreviated story of his life and offers this immortal advice to aspiring writers: “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” It is possible, though, that Elevation might supplant On Writing as my favorite King book. In fact, I wish that Stephen King would write more sweet, inspiring stories like this. I think that it might have been published separately instead of in one of King’s short story collections because it is so different from the rest of King’s work. It demonstrates, though, the range of King’s talent, and I hope that in the future he ventures into this unfamiliar territory again.

Book Review: Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle over Technology and Prosperity by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson

This brilliant book is not an easy read, but it is definitely a rewarding one. The authors (both professors at MIT) delve deep into history and economics to explain why in our present era the very few elite prosper while the rest of humankind gradually becomes poorer. It has to do with technological innovation and how those who control it decide to use it. As the authors explain, it is not inevitable that people lose jobs due to automation; in fact, in some countries this has not happened. However, those in power typically look out for themselves at the expense of everyone else.

Technological progress is supposed to make everyone’s lives better; at least that’s what corporate propaganda would have us believe, but at crucial historical moments this has not been true – nor is it true today. The authors prove this point through examples such as England at the beginning of the industrial revolution, the Deep South in the United States when machinery like the cotton gin enriched plantation owners and made the lives of multitudes of slaves miserable, and the rise of factories and communal farms in Soviet Russia. In each of these situations, only the elite prospered while most people endured worse conditions than before. The evolution of economic history the authors present clarify what most of us are aware of even now: that progress favors the few, while the rest of us see no gain or even a diminution of our quality of life.

Certainly modern tech companies are set up like this. Instead of using the amazing recent technological innovations to benefit us all (and the authors make it clear that this could have been an option), the biggest digital businesses are set up for exploitation of the masses, for surveillance and personal data collection that makes the very rich richer. This was not inevitable. Instead of focusing on automation that replaces humans, innovators could have opted for machine usefulness – in other words, machines complementing and assisting humans. The present social media algorithms, contrary to what is touted in slogans and advertisements, are not set up to increase communication and socialization. They are set up to sell advertisements. For this reason, they foster hatred, division, and misinformation. They want you to be enraged and upset (regardless of the truth or falsehood of what you read or see) because these emotions increase platform engagement and help them sell more ads. They honestly don’t give a damn about you.

The new trends in artificial intelligence platforms are also set up for similar reasons: to enrich a few innovators at the expense of everyone else. They scrape data from everywhere with complete disregard for privacy, let alone copyrights. And what AI is theoretically capable of (although at present it can do it only poorly) could put many, many more people out of work. This has happened to me personally recently. For years I have been ghostwriting articles and blog posts as a primary source of income, but in the last several months these income streams dried up. The reason? The companies that were paying me and many others to write for them decided it was cheaper to have AI write their articles (they even outright announced this), even though there is a significant drop in quality and basically all the AIs are doing is copying what they have scraped without permission from other sites.

In the final chapter, the authors of Power and Progress offer a number of possible solutions, none of which are easy but most of which are necessary. I won’t spoil the book by giving away the ending, though. Read it yourself if you want to know what’s really happening and not just what those in power tell us.

Book Review: At the Center of All Beauty: Solitude and the Creative Life by Fenton Johnson

A while back I became aware that there was no quick cure for my living alone and being alone much of the time. To mitigate the loneliness, I looked for some books that might give some insight on turning the negative state of loneliness into the more profound positive state of solitude. Back then I didn’t really find what I was looking for, but now I have come across this book, which though flawed (by flawed I mean that I don’t agree with everything the author says) is close to what I was looking for.

Johnson makes a compelling case for the solitary lifestyle; in fact, he gives the name solitaries to the individualistic people he profiles. Besides telling of his own life lived in solitude, in separate chapters he writes about Henry David Thoreau, the painter Paul Cezanne, poets Walt Whitman and Emily Dickenson, the novelist Henry James, Eudora Welty, Nobel Prize-winning Bengali author Rabindranath Tagore, Black writer Zora Neale Hurston, Rod McKuen and Nina Simone, and photographer Bill Cunningham. I am most familiar with the work of Thoreau, Whitman, Dickenson, and Tagore, but all of Johnson’s profiles and explanations shed light on the role of solitude in the life of artists. Johnson also often mentions Thomas Merton, the author and Trappist monk; the abbey Merton lived at was near Johnson’s family home in Kentucky, and the monks, including Merton, knew the family personally.

After a chapter about his own background, Johnson starts off with a study of Thoreau, claiming that though Thoreau was not a cloistered monk he lived a life of poverty, chastity, and obedience (to his conscience) without the trappings of ordinary religion. For me as a young writer making a decision to head off on the road seeking my own unique voice, Thoreau’s Walden was certainly of extreme importance. And Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road” is one of my all-time favorite poems. About Whitman Johnson writes that he “came gradually to understand, the solitary’s challenge is the conversion of loneliness into solitude.” In his explanation of Whitman’s and Dickenson’s distain of conventional marriage, Johnson says that they instead embraced “a literary polygamy as vast as their readerships.”

This brings up one of my disagreements with a conclusion that Johnson repeatedly expresses: that conventional marriage is a hindrance to wholeness and creativity. I was married for twenty-five years and wrote some of my best and most heartfelt books during those years. I can think of countless artists who were married but still managed to find time for solitude and the creation of great work. I think too that Johnson sometimes tries to over-explain the reasons for artists choosing solitude: their sexual predilections, for instance, or their racial or cultural backgrounds. Sexual orientation is incidental to creative solitude, as is, ultimately, race, nationality, gender and other such considerations. The fact is, in my opinion, artists seek out solitude to clear their minds for creative endeavors regardless of their backgrounds. I also believe that Johnson puts too much emphasis on celibacy. He writes that “the solitary foregoes openness to one for openness to all.” For me, though, and I think for many creative people, the patches of temporary celibacy in my life were always involuntary; I have derived intense creative energy from sexual relationships – whether long-term or short.

Still, Johnson is much more often right than wrong in his expostulations. Consider this gem: “Capitalism tells me I will find myself in things – I will locate myself, literally and psychologically, in and with my phone – when what my solitaries have taught me, again and again in their different ways, is that if I want to find the self, give it away, again and again, until there is no more left.” Or this, concerning Van Gogh’s mindset: “One understands being an artist as not about making product for a market but as a way of life.”

In the final chapter, Johnson sums up his ideas with great skill, making a strong case for what he refers to as secular monasticism. Did this book help to assuage the pain of my loneliness? Maybe not. However, it brings my solitude into clearer focus as a thing of value to be treasured and not despised. In time, perhaps, I will be able to better see it in that light.

My Story “Dark Mirrors” Has Just Been Published in the Summer 2023 Dragon Gems Anthology

The Dragon Gems anthology for summer 2023, published by Water Dragon Publishing, has just been released, and it includes my short story “Dark Mirrors.”

About “Dark Mirrors”:

The people of Earth are losing a war with aliens that they themselves provoked. Every able-bodied person is being called up to fight, even prisoners; those who refuse are threatened with dismemberment to provide spare parts for wounded soldiers. A battle-hardened general enters a prison to recruit a woman who refuses to fight, but who may have a most unusual special ability that can turn the tide of the war.

You can find links to sales outlets on the Water Dragon Publishing website.

Book Review: Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman

Joe Haldeman is best known for The Forever War, an award-winning novel about a military conflict with aliens that lasts for over a thousand years. Forever Peace was published two decades after The Forever War, but despite the similarity of titles, it is not a sequel to the earlier work. Forever Peace is also about futuristic warfare; however, its conflict takes place on Earth between opposing human factions.

It begins in a fairly conventional science fictional way: the Alliance, which includes the United States, is fighting a union of third world guerilla forces. The Alliance has the advantage of superior technology, including nanoforges that can construct anything as long as they are provided with materials, and surgically modified soldiers that can jack into a network system and operate combat robots called soldierboys by remote control. The story is mainly told in first person by a solderboy named Julian Class, but it occasionally switches to third person point of view. It begins by describing the violent and pointless conflict between the two factions, but it soon introduces other elements that add tension and intrigue. Julian’s lover Amelia Harding and her colleagues find out that a massive interplanetary physics project, if completed, could destroy the universe by creating a second big bang. The scientists that discover this want to warn the powers-that-be to end the project before the universe is destroyed, but a group of ultra-violent religious fanatics known as the Hammer of God want it to proceed and bring on the end of existence. At the same time, the creators of the jacking technology that makes it possible for people to share minds and for soldiers to power their robotic weapons find out that this technology, under certain circumstances, can “humanize” people, making it impossible for them to kill others; if this process were enabled universally, world peace would ensue.

All of this makes for an action-packed, if unlikely, tale of intrigue, warfare, politics, subterfuge, and fanatical religious assassins, as one side tries to bring about global peace and the other side tries to prevent it.

There is something profoundly wrong with the idea of achieving peace by forcing everyone to jack into a computer network. This in effect is what the protagonists are attempting to bring about. The pessimistic and cynical premise is that only forced mechanical reprogramming can bring peace to humankind. On the other hand, if we take a look at the current rabid, crazed, polarized state of the world, it seems increasingly unlikely that people will simply cease arguing, shake hands, and agree to live in peace. It might indeed take something spectacular to cure humankind’s inherent aggressiveness. So who knows? Right now, I think we all have to agree that whatever is being tried isn’t working. Despite the efforts of many, the world continues to become increasingly confused, chaotic, and divided.

Ultimately, Forever Peace works on two levels: it is an entertaining science fiction thriller, and it raises questions and introduces ideas on the importance of peace and how it can be achieved.

Why I Self-Publish

I shouldn’t really have to write a justification of self-publishing. If readers and writers were as open-minded and magnanimous as they should be, they would realize that there are as many artistic paths as there are artists. Unfortunately, however, there are always hecklers and naysayers who decry the outliers, the unusual, and those who deviate from established systems.

I don’t only self-publish. I have sold dozens of stories to magazines and anthologies owned and edited by others. However, I have also written dozens of books, including novels, short story collections (usually a mix of original and previously published tales), memoirs, essay collections, and other works, and these I have chosen to release under my own imprint. I am grateful to modern technology that has made possible the relatively easy publication and distribution of original works throughout the world. Some self-published works are low standard, it is true, but then, if we reference Sturgeon’s Law, 90 percent of everything is shit, even books put out by traditional publishing. Almost all publishers have always been much more concerned with their bottom lines and the prevailing winds of politics and public opinion rather than with pure quality. So it has been, and so it will likely continue to be.

I had a sudden realization that I was a writer when I was in my late teens, during my one year of college at the University of Santa Clara. I was as confused concerning my life’s path as a directionless young person could be until I took a class in science fiction literature and read Harlan Ellison’s dynamic short story “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.” By the time I finished it, I knew that I had to be a writer. When I moved back to Seattle, I attended the Clarion West science fiction writing workshop in 1973, shortly after my twentieth birthday. In the mid-seventies, I set out on the road so I could gain experiences to write about and find my voice as a writer. Once I left the United States, I remained an expatriate for thirty-five years. After a long hiatus, I resumed writing and publishing in Greece, where my wife and I raised our children. It was there that I formulated the hybrid publishing model that works for me.

Every artist walks their own path, and no two paths are alike. I do the best that I can. I think most of us do.

Many well-known writers have chosen to self-publish at least some of their work. For instance, Harlan Ellison self-published several volumes, including collections of his early pulp work, through his own imprint Edgeworks Abbey and HarlanEllisonBooks.com; Andy Weir self-published The Martian; Hugh Howey self-published Wool; Christopher Paolini, or more specifically his parents, self-published Eregon. In other genres, Mark Twain self-published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Jane Austin self-published Emma and Sense and Sensibility; Lisa Genova self-published Still Alice. These are just a few of many possible examples.

In the end, of course, it’s not the accolades or the awards that define you. As Henry Miller observed in his essay “Reflections on Writing”: “Writing, like life itself, is a voyage of discovery.” Consider the markings I have made, in whatever channel of publication, to be signposts along the path I have chosen to take through this baffling, magnificent, and infinitely fascinating universe.

Book Review: Rough Sleepers by Tracy Kidder

Rough Sleepers is a term used to refer to the portion of the homeless populace in Boston that sleeps outside on the streets instead of in shelters. This book tells of the Boston Healthcare for the Homeless program, and specifically of Doctor Jim O’Connell, the man who initiated it and gave most of his life to it. Originally, the chief of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital asked O’Connell to participate in homeless outreach for a year when he finished his residency; that one year turned into two, and then into a lifetime of service. O’Connell developed real love and empathy for the patients he met on the streets and in the shelters, and devoted himself to their care. He was not always able to get them off the streets, and Kidder, who spent a considerable amount of time riding along in the program’s van and observing the level of care at its clinics, explains why. The problems of many of the program’s patients go back to their childhoods, to broken homes, dysfunctional parents, violence, sexual assault, and early drug and alcohol abuse. Still, despite these difficulties, O’Connell and his team always see them as precious people with their own sensitivities, vulnerabilities, talents, and stories.

There is no doubt that the United States is in the midst of a homeless epidemic. Often what we hear about in the news is precisely the wrong ways of addressing the problems: by ostracizing the homeless, arresting them, destroying their makeshift homes, outlawing sleeping on the streets – everything except providing the basic food, housing, and medical care that they need the most. The program in this book is a model for how to deal with homelessness in a positive way. Instead of criminalizing those who have become destitute, the program’s personnel treat their patients with respect and dignity. O’Connell likens his task to that of Sisyphus, the Greek king whose punishment in hell is to roll a heavy boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down so that he has to return to the bottom and roll it up again. Despite all the program’s efforts, the homeless problem seems endless and insurmountable. But that doesn’t mean they can just give up. Indeed, once the doctors and nurses in the program discern the depth and personalities of the patients they are nurturing, they often form long-term commitments to the program.

I have been homeless in the past, mainly when I spent time on the road traveling around the world in my youth. I was often broke and dependent on the hospitality of strangers. Once when I had run out of money and my passport was stolen in Iran, I begged on the streets of Tehran for two weeks before I could raise enough money for a new passport and move on. As a writer seeking experiences I could turn into stories, for me homelessness was a grand adventure. For most of the modern-day homeless the situation is different, though. They have no option but the streets – as well as shelters and clinics when they can find them. Try to imagine being thrown out of your house or apartment and being forced to abandon everything except the few belongings you can carry with you. Imagine further that when you try to pitch a makeshift tent to keep off the rain or snow the authorities come along, rip it down, and possibly cart you off to jail. Homelessness could happen to any of us under the wrong circumstances. If it does, we will be very fortunate if we can find sympathetic, compassionate people like Doctor O’Connell and his team to help us out.

This book needs to be read and appreciated by as many people as possible. Highly recommended.

On Rereading Nexus by Henry Miller

Acquiring and reading Nexus came about through a visit to a small used book store I hadn’t been to in years. It’s had the same owner for decades, and I used to frequent it and stock up on books when I would visit Seattle while living in Greece. I wanted to purchase something to show solidarity with his efforts to keep his shop open, and Nexus is what I came up with after a quick browse.

I haven’t read anything by Henry Miller in years; when I was young, though, and just starting to learn what a commitment to writing was really all about, I somehow stumbled upon Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. It had a profound effect on me. It’s the story of Miller’s early years in Paris, when he was dirt poor and often itinerant, a companion of all sorts of nefarious street people. It’s shot through with vivid imagery, surrealistic descriptions, and eroticism. It is a cry of freedom of expression, a hallelujah celebration of Miller finally finding his own unique voice. That’s what got to me most: that Miller found a voice that was his and his alone, and though it was frequently raunchy, iconoclastic, and even depraved, he shouted it out as loud as he could.

Tropic of Cancer was his first full-length autobiographical novel. He followed it up with Tropic of Capricorn and others. His magnum opus, though, was the three-volume Rosy Crucifixion, consisting of Sexus, Plexus, and Nexus, which tell of his years in New York struggling to get started as a writer before becoming an expatriate in France and later in Greece. In Nexus, he and his wife are seriously contemplating a trip to Paris; his wife and her girlfriend even go to Europe for a time but leave Miller behind. The book ends just as he and his wife are about to board the boat to France together. Before that, Miller exuberantly describes his misadventures and the idiosyncratic people he meets leading up to the voyage in his own inimitable style. For instance, while in the midst of a passage depicting an altercation between himself, his wife, and his wife’s female companion, he might suddenly launch into a prolonged exposition on Dostoyevsky; a visit to his Jewish neighbors might bring on all sorts of discourses on history, literature, and international cuisine. He deals in the absurd, and he delights in allowing his multitudinous idiosyncratic characters ramble on and delve into all sorts of subjects.

I approached this book with trepidation; I’ve kind of outgrown Henry Miller. If you read him long enough, you’re sure to find something to offend you. Sometimes he seems to be out to deliberately offend everyone and everything. He maligns everyone, especially himself, and often his antiquated slurs carry more offensive weight now than when he wrote them many decades ago. A quote from the beginning of his novel Tropic of Cancer helps put this all in perspective: “This then? This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty…what you will. I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps but I will sing.” That’s Henry Miller for you. If you can’t handle that passage, you’re better off reading some other less offensive writer.

As for me, as I said, I haven’t read much by Miller or even thought much about him lately. Reading this book for me was primarily an exercise in nostalgia. It reminded me of how important Miller once was for me in my development as a writer. He helped me realize that abandoning conventions and rules and the styles of other writers was essential in breaking free to discover my own voice. I would suggest, though, if you’d like to sample some of Henry Miller’s work (he really is a fine writer) without all the raunchy language and controversy, start with his excellent travel memoir on Greece, The Colossus of Maroussi. 

Book Review: The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann

The title of this book confused me at first; I thought it referred to a bet. In fact, however, The Wager refers to the HMS Wager, a British man-of-war named after Admiral Sir Charles Wager, which left England in 1740 as part of a squadron of six warships commanded by Commodore George Anson. The squadron’s mission was to find and engage Spanish treasure ships. To accomplish this, they sailed southwest, pursued by Spanish warships, and amidst tumultuous seas and frequent storms rounded Cape Horn, the southernmost end of South America.

The extreme weather caused the ships to become separated. The Wager turned north prematurely, got too close to the coast, and wrecked on rocks in western Patagonia. The acting captain and some of the officers and crew made it to shore on a cold, remote, uninhabited island that became known as Wager Island.

The story is told in ruthlessly grim detail, beginning in England with descriptions of the deteriorating condition of the vessels before they set sail and the need to send out press gangs to kidnap able-bodied men to serve as sailors. Grann graphically depicts the brutal life onboard British ships, the filth, the vermin, the lack of decent food, and the horrific scourge of scurvy, a debilitating disease caused by a lack of vitamin C. Burials at sea were common, so much so that by the time the Wager rounded the cape many of the crew had died or were incapacitated and the ship was undermanned. On Wager Island, the lack of food and poor living conditions led to anarchy. Most of the surviving sailors mutinied against the captain and his loyal officers and on a makeshift vessel made their way back through the Strait of Magellan and up the east coast of Argentina. Some of them survived and eventually made it back to England. The captain and a few of the officers that had remained with him also finally got home, leading to a court-martial to find out what had really happened amidst conflicting reports.

This is an exciting true story, and Grann has researched and written it extremely well. It is easy to empathize with the difficult plight of the castaways. I wonder how I would have fared and the decisions I would have made if I had been an officer or a member of the crew on this ill-fated voyage. That any of the shipwrecked officers and crew survived and returned home is nothing short of miraculous. Naval vessels were so primitive and so prone to rot and breakages and infiltration by pests, navigation was so imprecise, and medical science was so rudimentary that it is a marvel that seafarers were able to accomplish what they did, including exploration of vast unknown oceans and circumnavigation of the globe.

This is the type of book that doesn’t come along very often: a thrilling, well-written true story of adventure, tragedy, and eventual triumph on the high seas. Highly recommended.

Book Review: The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes: The Adventures of the Great Detective in India and Tibet; also known as Sherlock Holmes: The Missing Years by Jamyang Norbu

Many novels and stories have been written by a variety of writers using the character of Sherlock Holmes. I have read none of these by other authors than the original until now. However, when I was young I read with delight almost all of Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories about the uniquely methodical and logical detective. I came across a passage about The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes in a book about novels from various countries around the world. It attracted my interest because it is set in South Asia, an area that has long fascinated me and where I lived for ten years. Because Norbu is a Tibetan writer, the novel carries a strong sense of verisimilitude.

If you are familiar with the Holmes saga, you are aware that Doyle, having decided that his “literary energies should not be directed too much into one channel” decided to kill off his heroic detective in “The Final Problem.” In this story, Holmes has a last confrontation with his archenemy Professor Moriarty and they both fall to their deaths at the Reichenbach Falls. Doyle’s readers were devastated and outraged. Tens of thousands of them cancelled their subscriptions to The Strand Magazine in protest. After a hiatus of just a few years, Doyle resumed writing stories about his idiosyncratic detective. To account for the years from the incident at the falls until Holmes resumes his career, there are only a few lines in a story called “The Empty House.” Holmes tells his biographer Dr. Watson: “I traveled for two years in Tibet, therefore, and amused myself by visiting Lhasa and spending some days with the head Lama.”

This novel, then, offers an account of what happened during those years when Holmes had disappeared from the British public’s eye. It is told from the viewpoint of the East’s equivalent of Watson, a Bengali by the name of Huree Chunder Mookerjee, who is in fact a character taken from Rudyard Kipling’s novel Kim. Mookerjee is involved in the espionage intrigue that Kipling, in his novel, refers to as “the great game,” and he becomes Holmes’s assistant as well as his biographer. It seems that deadly assassins loyal to Moriarty are still on Holmes’s trail and intend to do him in. Holmes, meanwhile, is determined to make his way, for reasons that become apparent as the novel progresses, to Tibet. Mookerjee meets up with Holmes in Bombay (now known as Mumbai), and together they travel to Simla, the summer capital of the British Raj, with Moriarty’s henchmen hot on their heels. Eventually, at the invitation of the Dalai Lama, they undertake a trek through the Himalayan Mountains to Tibet.

I don’t want to give too much away, because this is a rousing good adventure tale. The allusions to Doyle’s and Kipling’s writings are fun, and Norbu’s familiarity with Tibet and its culture add depth and nuance. The author has even added a fantasy element to the tale, which caused me to recall times of yore when I would become absorbed in amazing tales of lost civilizations by Jules Verne, H. Rider Haggard, and others. Escapism is what it is, with larger than life characters grappling with evil in exotic locales. It would make a fun movie along the lines of Indiana Jones. In the meantime, find a copy somewhere and give it a read. You won’t be disappointed.