Bob's Books

Why this book:  January 2024 selection  by my SEAL book club, in part because one of our members knows the author and was able to get him to join our discussion.

Summary in 3 Sentences:  Michael Scott Moore was kidnapped in 2012 and spent more that 2 1/2 years as hostage of Somali pirates who were demanding an exorbitant ransom payment. Not only do we learn of the boredom, frustration, discomfort,  uncertainty and fear associated with being a terrorist hostage,  but Moore also gives us background into the role of piracy in history, the history and culture of Somalia and what his experiences did to his personal values, and sense of himself and his place in the world. It is rich not only with details of his experience but also with his insights, and personal and spiritual growth that came from it. 

My Impressions:  Fascinating read about one man’s experience as a captive in a part of the world about which we read a lot, but know little.  He writes with a journalist’s flair for putting the reader in his shoes, and making his situation real and immediate.  

I have read a number of books by POWs and prisoners – among them and most notably, Stockdale’s In Love and War,  Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, and this one shares some qualities with those books – all of which include spiritual insights and reflections, suffering, fear and uncertainty, and an adversarial relationship with the captors.  But this one adds something different to that genre – Moore is a journalist with a flair for keeping his audience engaged, and also his captivity was part of a commercial venture – to make money for the captors.  He had a different relationship to his captors, and he had a different hope and expectation for release in the midst of suffering and uncertainty. 

In The Desert and the Sea, we experience with Moore, the months and years of uncertainty, changing news and prospects for recovery, frustration and anger with the lies, deception and even stupidity of his captors, as well as his fear and anxiety of what would come next, and whether he would survive. He also describes Somali culture and history, his relationship with his captors and his fellow captives, and there were many fellow captives  All were being held for ransom – this is a business in Somalia, as it has been in Mexico and other parts of the developing world – capturing citizens of first world nations and holding them for ransom. 

His description of his life before the capture, his childhood and his work as a journalist are all relevant to his experiences and reflections during his captivity.  While in captivity, several times he was beat up, physically abused,  his wrist was broken, he got malaria and only received the medical care that the captors believed would keep him alive long enough to get the ransom they were demanding.  They hoped and expected to get $20m for him in ransom, because in their minds, the US is a rich country and could afford it. They didn’t believe him when he told them that governments don’t as a matter of policy pay ransom.  His captors in general had very little understanding of the world outside their own domain. 

Through Moore, the pirates were able to get in touch with his mother, who was coached by the FBI about how to respond to their demands and phone calls.  His mother’s experiences during this period make up an important part of this book.  The pirates hired negotiators to help them get the money they were demanding, but their demands were way beyond what his friends and family could pay – it then  became a negotiation over price.

Moore  was held captive in various run down remote buildings in the Somali countryside, which he described variously as stinking cess-pools or filthy shit holes. He was fed the same basic beans and gruel, occasionally a bit of meat.  For part of his captivity he was kept on the Nahan3 a ship that the Somalis had captured and had anchored off the coast of Somalia, where he was one of many other  hostages, most of whom had been ship’s crew on various vessels that they had taken. His time on the ship was more tolerable, in that they had plenty of food, he made some friends with other hostages, and there were no mosquitos.  

Throughout his captivity the pirates were aware that US surveillance was looking for him.  During his captivity, there had been a successful rescue by Navy SEALs of Jessica Buchanan and Poul Thisted who had been taken hostage and held for ransom after working on a Danish humanitarian project in Somalia. During the rescue, the SEALs killed 9 Somali pirates.  The pirates holding Moore were aware of this and very afraid of a potential rescue attempt, and vowed to kill Moore immediately if one were attempted.  When they were aware of drones or surveillance aircraft, they hid him, while Moore himself did what he could to make himself visible to any such aircraft.

Ultimately a much lower ransom was paid and Moore was released, and he describes that process at the end of the book, as well as how his life changed afterward. He was able to reconnect with a number of the other hostages who had been able to attain their freedom.

A very engaging  and well-written book.  In addition to a fascinating story, it provides insights into Somalia culture, Somali pirate culture, his strong but occasionally flagging will to survive, his personal and spiritual struggle and growth during a period of suffering and uncertainty, and the squalid and anxious life that hostages for ransom face.  

I like and agree with Barnes and Noble’s short review: 
“A sort of Catch-22 meets Black Hawk Down, The Desert and the Sea is written with dark humor, candor, and a journalist’s clinical distance and eye for detail. Moore offers an intimate and otherwise inaccessible view of life as we cannot fathom it, brilliantly weaving his own experience as a hostage with the social, economic, religious, and political factors creating it.”

Why this book: Selected by my Sci Fi Reading Group – when I offered to bring in a friend of mine who is currently in Astronaut training with NASA to discuss it.

Summary in 3 Sentences: The book takes place during 24 hours within an International Space Station orbiting the earth – during which the space station orbits the earth 16 times.  We get the inner thoughts, experiences, impressions and perspectives from six astronauts – 2 women and 4 men, from Russia, UK, US, Japan. Italy. We get not only their impressions and perspectives, but also the author’s own thoughts about the significance of humans being in space, looking down from 250 miles, onto the earth where the rest of us live. 

My Impressions: Powerful and very much worth reading. It is short – about 200 small pages with large print, a 3, 4, or 5 hour read, but I read it in shorter intervals – and that is the way I believe it should be read it.  The book is divided into 16 chapters, each representing one of the orbits during the 24 hour period of the book.  But the chapters are not a chronological narrative of time. The sixteen chapters are simply a mechanism for the author to break up her story into various aspects of being in space and the stories and perspectives of the characters.  

Though it is a novel, it is also a meditation on being human, from the perspectives of six people from different parts of the world who are living together in a situation which is so very different from normal human life, that they can’t help but spending a considerable amount of time reflecting upon their own  humanity. There is also a cross-cultural dimension to their interactions, but the cultural differences seem trivial compared to the common humanity they share and the extensive training they’ve gone through to be there.   

They orbit the world and look down on different parts of it, 16 times a day, observing where they had lived, where their families are, countries with which their countries are either at war or experiencing significant tensions. Also with a direct view looking away from earth into the immensity of space, they are forced to confront the infinity of space, of the universe, of time, and the relative insignificance of their personal problems and the problems of earth within that unimaginable infinity.

They also have to adjust their basic human requirements to the dictates of near zero gravity in space – and this forces significant adjustments to the most basic of human needs:  sleep, eating, exercising, excretion, as well as privacy in a very confined space. In Orbital we learn about the nausea that most get during the first days in space, the challenges of adjusting to sleeping, moving, nearly all activities in a world in which there is no up or down. The author notes of one of the men:   “With the atrophying of the body, life doesn’t tug at him so much….he sleeps because he must, but his sleep is mostly tentative, not deep or robust as it is on earth. Everything in his body seems to lack commitment to the cause of its animal life, as if there’s a cooling of systems, an efficient running down of superfluous parts.” p 120 Without gravity, everything seems to slow down, and their sense of time is distorted because some how, it is tied to a  sense of space, which seems somehow to be tied to a sense of gravity. 

They think about why they are there – why THEY were selected from so many others, Why even try to live and thrive where one is not built or designed to live, much less thrive – why leave earth at all?   And thinking about the many chores and scientific experiments that they are running in space – couldn’t an AI robot do most, if not all of these tasks, perhaps better than they, and not have to deal with so many human needs and limitations?   Three of the astronauts had already been in the space station for nearly six months; three had arrived just a couple of months ago.  All were ambivalent about the prospect of leaving the simplicity and the “God’s eye view” of the earth, suspended in space.

They think about the discrepancies between what their training told them to expect and what they actually experienced in the space station, acknowledging that there’s no way to fully prepare for the dissonance between their lives on earth and their experience in a space station orbiting the earth 16 times in 24 hours.   When they look at earth, they see no borders (except the lights along the India Pakistan border,) cities and towns are visible only at night from the light they emit.   They come to prefer to view the earth during the day – “the humanless simplicity of land and sea,,” p106 where there are only patches of green, and brown, and white and many shades of blue of the various oceans and seas. 

This book entices the reader to imagine life in the confines of a small space, with a few other humans, traveling in space 250 miles above the earth.  In so doing, one may be able to distance oneself from the preoccupations and problems, that encumber our consciousness and our time here on earth.  And, I believe, that is the challenge Samantha Harvey presents to us in Orbital – to put ourselves in the environment she describes so well, and imagine ourselves apart from our earthly vanities and preoccupations, and more connected to the immense universe that surrounds us. 

Why this book: Selected by my Science Fiction Book Club

Summary in 3 Sentences: These are a series of stories told in an interview many decades in the future, with a woman at the end of her career as a robo-psychologist for company United States Robot, looking back at various incidents that have shaped the evolution of robots supporting humans.  Each of the stories presents a dilemma that those managing the robots had encountered, didn’t know how to deal with, and had to call on the the robo-psychologist to help solve the problem.  The problems all dealt with bridging the gap between how humans think and how they’d programmed the robots to “think.” 

My Impressions:  This book is actually a compilation of a number of different short stories, built into the framework of an interview with a woman, the first ever robo-psychologist at the end of her career in 2057 at the age of 88.  Note Azimov wrote this book in the 1940s and published it in 1950. so he was projecting the challenges of AI and robots nearly a century into the future.

Given that it was seven or eight individual stories loosely tied together through the interview with Susan Calvin, there was not a common plot, though there was a common theme.  The theme that was an issue in all the stories, was the challenge that humans will have learning to adapt to and live with the capabilities of highly intelligent robots programmed by humans.  The theme that was in most of the stories was the challenge that robot intelligence, what we now call AI, will have with ambiguous circumstances and having to make decisions between conflicting goods. 

Emphasized in the book and apparently a ground breaking perspective at the time, was Asimov’s three guiding principles for robots, in order of priority: 

1. Never intentionally harm a human being
2. Obey the orders of the human being who is the designated master
3. Preserve yourself, unless doing so will be at the expense of human beings. 

Also several of the stories were of robots that either misunderstood human direction and interpreted it in ways that humans did not foresee or imagine, or the human direction was more than it could process and it malfunctioned.  These are problems that current AI systems also face.   Two of the stories had robots that defied human guidance, and became autonomous, but eventually that was determined to be due to poor programming by humans. 

Asimov addresses anti-robot sentiments and resistance to what he perceived as inevitable AI/robot power and influence in future societies.  The first story has a very effective robot companion for a little girl, but mother is viscerally opposed to her child having a “relationship” with a machine, and insists that the robot leave the house. The little girl is devastated as the robot was her best friend and playmate. Later in the book, much of the good that robots are doing to reduce suffering and increase human flourishing is actively being undermined by the Society for Humanity which opposes AI robotic influence in world affairs and national economies.  The Society for Humanity was largely motivated by religious concerns about giving so much authority to logic and reason-based machines, vice faith in God and transcendent values. 

At the end of the book, and in the final stories, Asimov pretty clearly makes the case that AI and robots will be a positive force for humanity, and that human societies will eventually outsource to AI/robots much of what they currently assign to very imperfect and self-centered humans.   Steven Byerley, one of the final characters with whom Susan Calvin deals, the rough equivalent of the General Secretary of the UN and a very admirable character – it is unclear whether he is fully human, an android or a very human-like robot.  Susan (I believe) speaking for Asimov, didn’t believe it was important.  Susan, and I believe Asimov, believed that properly programed robots could lead human society better, and create more prosperity and less conflict than humans.  But Byerley’s judicious and well conceived policies to build cooperation and prosperity were being undermined surreptitiously by the Society for Humanity,  and there was a foreboding that much of the good that was being done, was being undone to promote one culture or nation group over another.  

Given when the book was written, there is a certain anachronism to the personalities and the people and how they interact, that sometimes seem quaint, but were at times for me, annoying.  But Asimov was writing for the people of the 1940s and 1950s, and our culture has changed.  I thought it a bit of a stretch how he gave his robots personalities, often with their own opinions and desires, when arguing with humans.  But  It is still amazing that Asimov foresaw so clearly 3/4 of a century ago, some of the challenges that we are facing today with AI and robot-human interface.  

ADDENDUM

At our discussion of this book several points were brought up that I thought worthy of note:

1. The human characters in the book were not particularly impressive – except for Steven Beyerley who it was not clear that he was indeed a human.  Not much real affection was shown between any of the humans in the book, or between robots or humans and robots, with the exception of the young girl with her robot playmate. That story seemed a precursort to Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro – a book this grop had read previously. 
2. The first law of robots – never to kill or harm a human being is ironic given the degree to which robots – or autonomous drones, and other military “robots” are designed specifically to kill human beings. When do Robtots get authority to make decisions that will result in lethal action – that is an issue that remains relevant.  I wrote an essay on that challenging issue 10 years ago: It is here/
3. It appeared that Byerley was a robotic clone of himself – the real Steve Byerley was severely injured in a car crash and the robot was taking care of him and representing him in public.   The question of longevity for the robotic clone arose – the biological Steven Byerley seemed fragile without long to live.  The (we believe) robotic clone may have had centuries left.  Issue not addressed, but left hanging in the novel.  

Why this book: Selected by my literature reading group.  Initially suggested by my daughter who said she was reading it with her husband, so Mary Anne and I wanted to join them, so we suggested it to our reading group which liked the idea.  I listened to it in it’s entirety.  

Summary in 3 Sentences:  It’s a complicated set of 5 (or so) different stories,  that take place in different periods of time with different characters –  the earliest a few centuries after Christ, then one in the 1400s, another in the second half of the 20th century, one in the more recent 2100s and the latest 60 or 70 years into the future. All the stories are loosely tied together by a connection to a fantasy story written by Antonius Diogenes about a disenchanted shepherd who longed to escape from his dreary life into a fantasy world – a Cloud Cuckoo Land.

My Impressions: This book is a bit confusing as one gets into it, because there is initially, no clear plot line, as the author jumps from one character and time window to another, with no seeming connection – at first.  Then as one patiently gets into the book, each story gathers up it’s own momentum, and one sees the Diogenes story of Cloud Cuckoo Land appearing again and again, and having at first subtle influence, As the individual stories progress, Diogenes’s story assumes a more prominent place in the flow and the lives of the characters in each of the stories told.  

Below is a brief look at the key characters and stories that intersect around the theme and story of Diogenes’s Cloud Cuckoo Land story. (the Diogenese characer was indeed based on a real Greek author, but Doerr makes up his fictional story of Cloud Cuckoo Land)

Antonius Diogenes – is the narrator of the eponymous Cloud Cuckoo Land story from 1800 or so years ago, told in his voice from the book at the beginning of each chapter/section of the book. Diogenes is a poor shepherd who longs to fly like a bird and be free of his troubles, and so decides to go in search of a magician or witch who can transform him into a bird who can fly to a wonderful city in the sky where all is good and peaceful.  He finds a magician, but instead finds himself transformed first into first load carrying donkey, then a fish, then a crow. At the beginning of each chapter Diogenes, in first person, shares with us his experiences 

The story of the book itself and how it came to light in the 20th century is a sub-theme of Doerr’s book. Diogenes (fictional) book was written and apparently lost for centuries, re-found and then lost again, and discovered again.

Anna and Oimir two characters of about the same age who live during the period when Constantinople is over-run and conquered by the Saracens and is transformed from a center of Christian worship to a great Muslim city.  Anna is a young girl working in a monastery in Constantinople as the city comes under siege.  Anna had found a mouldering copy of Diogenes book in a run down monastery and kept it as a prize possession.  Oimer is a young muslim boy with a deformed face, living on a farm in what is now Bulgaria on the route of the Saracen army on its way to lay siege to Constantinople.  He is conscripted to join the Army and becomes part of the invasion force. Anna and Oimir connect as they escape from the war. 

Zeno and Rex  Zeno grows up as the son of a Greek immigrant in Lakeport, Idaho,  and feels ostracized as a young boy. His father is killed in WW2 and eventually Zeno joins the army during the Korean war, is taken prisoner by the Chinese and in the PoW camp becomes close friends with Rex,  a British soldier and fellow PoW who had been a classics teacher before being conscripted to fight in Korea.  They have a close and even romantic though not sexual relationship.  During their many days with nothing to do, Rex teaches Zeno ancient Greek, which many years later Zeno uses to do the one and only translation of Diogenes’ book.

Seymour and Bunny Seymour is a young boy who is mentally disturbed and socially very awkward.  Bunny his mother, is a single mom, living from manual labor cleaning hotel rooms or waiting tables at restaurants. Seymour does not fit in at school, and Bunny who is always under financial stress struggles to understand and support him while working full time to barely make ends meet.  As Seymour grows older he finds himself most at home with animals and in nature and becomes engaged with eco-terrorist groups, as he is increasingly alienated from mainstream culture. Seymour becomes connected to Diogenes incidentally as he disrupts a school play of Diogenies’ story  Cloud Cuckoo Land

Constance and Sybil Constance is a young girl on a spaceship – the Argos – that earth has sent to a distant galaxy to colonize a planet which has been determined to have an atmosphere and resources that would support human life.  The trip is expected to take several generations, and those on the Argos will live their entire lives on the Argos, but must bear children, whose children and grand children will save the species on a distant planet. Sybil is the AI computer which knows everything and runs life on the Argos.  We primarily get to know Sybil as Constance’s caregiver and surrogate parent, telling her what to do and when, and chastising her when she doesn’t follow her protocols.   Constance’s classes are with other children on the Argos, where they have a teacher who uses the Argos’s powerful computer as a classroom, which allows the students to virtually visit earth’s many wonders and places, even at different times in the past.  Constance is able to visit this virtual world on her own and through that learns that her father had owned Diogenes’ book, which inspires further interest.  

All of these characters don’t fit into, and are somehow alienated from main stream society, and are struggling under difficult circumstances. All somehow, directly or indirectly find inspiration in the story and fantasy of Diogenes’ dream of escaping to a better place.  Diogenes’ persistence in pursuing his dream inspires and gives them hope.  

There are so many tidbits of insight and wisdom in this book. Here are a few that struck me:

Superstition  Especially in the early stories, we are amazed at how much superstition drove the lives and decisions of people.  Oimir’s disfigured face was seen as an omen of the Devil and bad luck.  For Anna, reading books that were not about God and Christ were tantamount to sacrilege and evil.  Seymore saw evil everywhere.  When people didn’t understand something, they correlated unrelated events to provide a possible explanation. It is a human tendency that science tries often unsuccessfully, to overcome.

Accept where you are?  I initially thought that Diogenes misadventures trying to find Cloud Cuckoo land indicated the dangers of failing to appreciate what one has and seeking better.  But several of the chareacters only survived by putting all at risk by “going for it” – so there is no simple bromide to just kick back, dude, and go with the flow. 

Fate Key events that determined the fate of each of the characters seemed random and perhaps insignificant when they ocurred.  This was especially true of Anna and Oimer, but also of Zeno and Constance.  What ended up saving them or causing their lives to take key leaps forward were other seemingly insignificant or random events.  There seemed to be a message to follow one’s heart and accept the events, coincidences and opportunities that come one’s way. 

The drive to escape and transcend.   Each of these characters was caught in something of a dilemma that offered no solution or easy way out. They each had to persevere, and each sought a means to transcend – get beyond the seemingly insurmountable challenge they found themselves in.  And each in their own way was able to perservere through belief in themselves, persistence, and grit.  The City in the Clouds – Cloud Cuckoo Land – was a mirage, but the aspiration to get something better drove each of these characters.  

There was a sub-theme throughout the book of how Antonius Diogenes’ story made its way through the centuries.   Doerr’s story  points to how chance, coincidences, and the work and sacrifice of many have been necessary to preserve these ancient and wonderful stories from our past and make them available to us today.  And we note that these ancient stories can continue to teach and inspire us.  Each of the sub-stories in this novel contributes to how coincidence allowed this (fictional) ancient tale to impact the lives of people centuries after it was written. 

This was an enjoyable read – but the number and variety of the stories and the author’s method of going back and forth requires paying attention. It would not work to read this book slowly over time with other books – too easy to lose the thread of the various stories.  Each story was compelling and the characters are memorable in their own way. I’ll not soon forget any of them.  

Why this book:  Selected by my Science Fiction Book Club – as one of the classics which anticipates the future development of a Metaverse.

Summary in 4 Sentences:  The time frame is the 2040s and a Metaverse-like virtual world has been developed by a computer-virtual-reality-gaming genius who has a romantic and nostalgic view of the 1980’s, when he had become fully immersed in the very early stages of the computer gaming world.  He dies, leaving in his will that the winner of a game he had created will inherit his company and all that he has developed  – worth billions of dollars.  The virtual world has become so popular because the real world has devolved into a chaotic dystopia.  The book is told from the 1st person perspective of a teenage reclusive, socially awkward computer geek who has lived most of his life in this virtual world –  and who is determined to defeat millions of other computer gaming geeks and win the game.  He competes with and ultimately collaborates with friends from the virtual world to defeat an “evil” business internet  company that wants to control and profit from controlling this virtual world.

My Impresssions: A fun and imaginative book – which is regarded as one of the predictors and shapers of the coming Metaverse – and it is an excellent follow up to Snow Crash and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep as one of the seminal sci-fi books that have shaped the vision that continues to drive the evolution of the Metaverse. At only about 380 pages it goes quickly.  As literature, it won’t win any prizes, but for imagination, it is a winner.    It is written in an easy to read 1st person narrative form from the perspective of Wade Watts, a teenager obsessed with popular US culture of the 1980s – because that was the obsession of James Hallliday his hero and inspiration, and the creator of the game that Wade is trying to win.

Before he died, Halliday had created the intricate and extremely demanding and complex  computer game that gamers had been unsuccessfully trying to solve for several years –  in order to win the big prize that Halliday had left to the winner in his will – ownership and control over the “OASIS”.  Halliday had named his virtual Metaverse (the word “metaverse” however does not appear in the book) the OASIS – which stands for the Ontologically Anthroporcentric Sensory Immersive Simulation.   Halliday saturates the OASIS with direct and obscure references to 80’s culture, and because of this, Ready Player One is a nostalgic journey back to the 80’s in America for any reader who was fully engaged in popular culture during that window – TV programs, computer games, music, literature – all are referenced heavily throughout the book. The goal of the game is to find the “Easter Egg” that Halliday has hidden in the OASIS.  S/he who finds the Easter Egg wins the big prize.

Because the stakes are so high, millions of gamers around the world are trying to solve it and competition is fierce. Those searching for the Easter Egg are known as “Gunters’ short for Egg Hunters, and Wade Watts is one of millions of Gunters around the world trying to solve the riddles that will help them find the Easter Egg.

That’s the setting. The book includes Wade’s experience in school – which largely takes place in the OASIS, as well as the author’s dystopian descriptions of the world of 2045 America, which drives many people to find happiness and fulfillment in the virtual world of the OASIS. Wade’s avatar in the OASIS is called Parzival –  an alternate spelling for one of King Arthur’s Knights ‘Percival’, and suggests he will be defending good from evil throughout his quest for his version of the “holy grail”.

Most of the other characters in the book we only get to know as their Avatars in the OASIS.  Toward the end of the book, these characters, who have known each other only through their avatars actually, and reluctantly meet each other in person.  In each case, these are people whose actual identities don’t fit what society celebrates.  They are somewhat embarrassed about who they really are, but feel that they can truly express themselves, confidently and with few inhibitions as their avatar.  Therefore, revealing their true identities and appearances was a dramatic event.

The story of the Easter Egg hunt is full of geeky computer gaming scenes, where the avatars in the OASIS have access to magic, crazy weapons and super-human abilities, as well as a variety of science fiction threats.  Not being a gamer myslef, it was fun to play along, and get a sense for how gamers play.  The story (naturally) has an evil powerful antagonist who threatens all that Parzival and his co-avatars are trying to accomplish.

I am not a gamer – but non-gamers should not hesitate to read this book – because it provides a glimpse into the exciting and scary implications of the continuing obsession many young people have with gaming, as well as the opportunities it offers to people otherwise restricted in their lives.  In the OASIS we experience some of the exciting possibilities for education – as Wade describes how easy it is for teachers to create engaging situations in different locations and times in history in which students can participate “directly” with their avatars.  Actual and imaginary worlds are created  in the virtual world in so much detail that the difference between actually visiting a real place,  or visiting the places virtually with one’s avatar is minimal.  And in the OASIS, the laws of physics are mutable and almost anything is possible.  

The 80’s theme.  In our discussion group we reflected on why Cline built such a strong reference to the 80s in his book.  Here are some of the ideas we had:   

• It was his personal window of coming of age and he himself was a self-described geek who got into the  80’s pop-culture
• The book’s hero, James Halliday was somewhat the embodiment of Ernest Cline the author – also an socially awkward and somewhat alienated computer geek.
• The 80’s was the first and opening window when alienated teenagers were able to escape social contact into social media, computer games, and the a very primitive and pixilated virtual world.  Life still included a large dose of forced connection with people and reality, before the early 90s, when computers became omnipresent, and a few years later, when social media began to take over people’s lives. 

I felt that one of the messages of the book is that the Metaverse  – the OASIS in the book,  has both  positive and negative potential. It provides great opportunities to explore dimensions of reality that are not available to many people, including travel to distant locations and in different time periods, as well as to be creative with one’s identity through an avatar.  It also has pernicious possibilities as well, which we are already seeing – young people and gamers becoming addicted to the fast paced and stimulating virtual world, and neglecting or ignoring opportunities in the real and natural world, which require effort, persistence and discipline to fully appreciate, and which have qualities all their own.  

Wade Watts states early in the book: “The OASIS is the setting of all my happiest childhood memoies.  p 18

The Movie  I did not find the movie as compelling as the book. It appeared to me to have targeted primarily young people who hunger for crazy special effects, more action and violence and less “meaty” content.  The story was adjusted and I’d say dumbed down to appeal more to teenagers than the book.  Though it is worth seeing how the characters are portrayed, as well as their avatars, and the special effects are pretty amazing, it is not a good substitute for the book.  I suggest watching it AFTER reading the book. 

Why this book: Selected by my SEAL book club, largely on the recommendation of Gen Jim Mattis.

Summary in 3 Sentences:  Written in the first person from the perspective of a young man from a working class familywho had been accepted into the University of Virginia, but decides to leave and join the Marine Corps to go to Vietnam.  The first half or more of the book is the narrator describing his experiences as a young recruit arriving in Vietnam, his initial combat experiences, and then how he mentally copes with the continuing horror of losing friends who are either killed, or severely wounded, week after week while on combat patrols.  The last third of the book is about his return home and his efforts to adjust to a world that hasn’t changed much, though he has, and to deal with the trauma of his experiences in Vietnam, as he tries to get on with his life, getting married, having a career, having a family.

My Impressions: Engaging and powerful.  Treanor’s intent was two fold with this book, and he achieved it in spades with me: First, he gave the reader a visceral feeling for how a young man thrust into combat reacts and adapts to the intensity of combat and losing friends to serious injury and death, as well as the demand to inflict death and serious injury on the enemy.   Second he shares with the reader the challenges of returning to normal civilized life in America – immediately after returning home from combat, and over many decades thereafter.

In the early part of the book, Marty, the novel’s protagonist and narrator, shares with the reader his  experiences of insecurity, his need to prove himself, his fear, anger, fatigue, trauma and moral uncertainty as he spends his first weeks in combat with his platoon mates.  We are privy to his thoughts and mindset in this intense and unforgiving environment.  We experience the camaraderie and tensions in his platoon, as well as the love and mutual commitment between very young men from very different backgrounds.  The setting is a Marine Corps rifle platoon in the jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam in the 1968-69 window, so we additionally are introduced to the culture of the infantry in the US Marine Corps in combat, which is very different from the military culture with which I am most familiar – the Navy SEALs.

During the combat portion of the novel, in addition to the battle scenes and the fear, anger, intensity, and emotions that Marty and his platoon mates experience, we are introduced to the frustration and anger at being constantly victimized by booby traps and snipers and threats that they don’t see, and against which they can’t fight back. This frustration is expressed toward the Vietnamese villagers who they believe with some justification to be supporting or at least passively allowing these anonymous attacks.  Marty himself almost attacks and kills a civilian in frustration, all of his platoon mates are angry and want retribution against someone – and the villagers are a convenient target,  and it is a challenge to their officers to keep this frustration and anger in check.

In the second half of the book Marty has been wounded and returns to the States, but still has some time left in the Marine Corps, which he spends partly in recuperation from his wound, and then in an administrative position in Camp Lejeune.  Here we see that Treanor – through Marty – still respects the Marine Corps and its culture, as he works for and with admirable and honorable people.  Then his enlistment is up,  he leaves the Marine Corps and has to find a career and make a living.

During the remainder of the book, Marty goes back to college, falls in love, gets married, starts a family and gets a position as a teacher in a private school at which he stays for the next 30+ years.  And during that time, he deals with being a scapegoat for anger that many Americans felt toward  US policies and behavior in Vietnam, but mostly, he is dealing with the ghosts of  platoon mates who were killed or severely wounded in Vietnam. He obviously has what is now recognized as PTSD, but he is functional and is clearly a compassionate and otherwise, well adjusted man.  But secretly, in quiet moments and in his dreams, he is still haunted by what happened in Vietnam, to his friends and platoon mates, and the apparent pointlessness of the killing and suffering.  He is angry at the US declaring “Peace with Honor’ and then essentially turning Vietnam and all he and his comrades had fought for, over to the North Vietnamese.  But Marty is very much an introvert – he keeps all this to himself, as he gets on with his life as a husband, father, teacher and member of  his community..

He reconnects with a few of the members of his Vietnam Platoon and finds that each is dealing with their experience in their own way. He is conflicted about the Vietnam memorial and refuses to attend. In the end, some 40+ years later, he  is able to grieve and come to some sort of terms with his experience – but it has been a very private affair for him – his wife and a few of his Vietnam era comrades are the only ones with whom he shares his struggles.

This is a powerful book.  Gen Mattis told me that this book hit him hard – that he had trouble getting through it – and believes it to be an important contribution to our understanding of what Vietnam did to our country.  I’ve heard that from others as well.  Mark Treanor spent many years working on this and though he had been an officer in an infantry platoon in Vietnam, he felt it important to present the perspective of a very young Marine who was sent to this ugly war still in his (late) teens, and then the decades long struggles that follow exposure to, and participation in the horror.   Treanor felt that an important function of this book was to shine a spotlight on the challenges of living with those memories and experiences   

For those interested in knowing more about the author’s perspective, I’d recommend watching/listeneing to his youtube discussion of the book here. https://youtu.be/S0tB6CONqes?si=48EySy2YHTUYT7zT

ADDENDUM: The Navy SEAL reading group met and author Mark Treanor joined us for a great discussion. We also had several former Marine guests.  Topics covered were how differently Vietnam vets were treated than recent GWOT veterans upon returning from war; the differences between SEAL and Marine and Army infantry tactics in Vietnam; SEALs operated in small numbers and had much more preparation and intelligence for their operations than young marines; whether PTSD may be in part related to the degree to which the soldier has any sense of agency or control over his fate in combat; the important role that the priest had in the book, which the author used to add a spiritual dimension to the story, and to give Marty someone with whom he could share his very personal thoughts and feelings and guilt.  Also the cathartic impact of the Vietnam memorial to those who fought.  A very good and rich discussion. 

One of the great lines of the meeting was when a retired SEAL who had been in the marine corps before becoming a SEAL told of meeting a SEAL and asking the difference between SEAL Teams and Marines. The SEAL said;  “You know how marines will go over  a hill and see a huge number of the enemy, and they’ll tell them to charge and attack, and the marines will do it?  SEALS don’t do that.”  It got a big laugh from the Marines and the SEALs in the group.