Find the Constellations. By
H.A. Rey, with additional material by Ian Garrick-Bethell and Chris Dolan.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $19.99.
Andromedan Dark, Book One:
Altered Starscape. By Ian Douglas. Harper Voyager. $7.99.
The stylistic naïveté and
unfettered delight with which H.A. Rey (1898-1977) approached stargazing
continues to come through clearly decades after its author’s death in Find the Constellations, whose original
version dates to 1954 and whose current, much-modified one includes such extras
as an online planet locater, information on why Pluto is no longer considered
the ninth planet in our solar system, and much more. The basic Rey approach to
the material, however, stands up well despite the scientific advances that have
rendered some of the specifics of Find
the Constellations obsolete. “Simple shepherds 5,000 years ago were
familiar with the heavens; they knew the stars and constellations – and they
could not even read or write – so why don’t you?” Rey asks at the book’s
outset. And he points out that “you simply must know [the constellations] if
you are interested in space travel.” So begins a clearly explained, very
well-illustrated exploration of the Big Dipper, Great Bear, Herdsman, Lion, and
other star groupings to which we humans have given fanciful names: “One star,
for instance, is called Betelgeuse. You pronounce it like ‘beetle juice’ but it
has nothing to do with juice for beetles. It’s Arabic and means “giant’s
shoulder.’” To make his point amusingly, Rey illustrates this comment with a
picture of four beetles drinking from, or waiting their turn to drink from, a
glass of juice. Amusing little pictures like that enliven the entire book,
which is written with a straightforwardness that is as charming today as it was
in the 1950s. The presentation of material remains effective, too. Rey shows
the magnitude of stars in the various constellations, offers views of them with
connecting lines and without, and provides some excellent basic astronomical
information in easy-to-digest form – for example, a list, in order of
brightness, of the 15 brightest stars as seen from Earth, and a comment that
Cassiopeia “is a W when it’s low and an M when it’s high.” Charts of stars in
various seasons are interspersed with stories about how some constellations got
their names – the fanciful tale explaining why “Orion shines in winter, the
Scorpion in summer, and when one rises the other sets, to this very day,” is
particularly enjoyable. Rey’s attitude toward constellations is highly personal
and quite delightful: “Hercules was a Greek hero famous for his strength, but
as a constellation he is rather weak, without bright stars. Don’t bother about
him much but try to find the Dolphin. …The Dolphin is not hard to find, and
you’ll like him.” Rey’s astronomical introduction remains one of the best ways
to encourage young children’s interest in studying the stars, and perhaps
reaching for them in the future.
In the far future, humans have
reached for the stars in innumerable science-fiction works; and adults who have
long since given up any notions they may have had of interstellar travel are
only too happy to take journeys of imagination with SF authors of all sorts.
One of those is William H. Keith, who writes under a variety of pseudonyms,
including the name Ian Douglas. In that guise, he has now begun a series called
Andromedan Dark with a book called Altered Starscape. There is nothing
light or innocent here, and nothing for kids – this is adult-oriented military
space opera in which characterization is wholly absent and action is the
primary plot element. The central character is Lord Commander Grayson St.
Clair, who commands a warship and two accompanying habitats containing more
than a million beings: scientists and soldiers, diplomats and robots, and AIs
(one of which, Newton, the AI that runs the ship, has more personality than any
human character). The expedition is heading toward the galactic center to help
the awkwardly named but technologically advanced Coadunation in its war against
the mysterious and peculiarly named Denial. Things go wrong rather quickly as
the Earth vessel finds alien headquarters, known as Harmony (the names here are
not a high point), destroyed. Debris fortuitously hits the ship in a way that
does not wreck it but leaves it at the none-too-tender mercy of a black hole,
which promptly knocks it four billion years into the future and a war with
brain-sucking aliens that can warp space and seem to be made of dark matter.
Ridiculousness mounts on ridiculousness in this (++) novel, which does contain
bits of intriguing scientific speculation but which delivers them in an
extremely irritating manner: the author simply stops the plot in its tracks to
insert background information – a characteristic of Keith/Douglas elsewhere in
his work, too, and not an endearing one. Fans of the author will enjoy the book
and probably award it an additional (+) for one element or another – perhaps
for its political subtext, which involves disputes between St. Clair and the
ship’s civilian leader, Lord Director Günter
Adler, who will have none of this military-control nonsense and demands
formation of a civilian administration. Those not already enamored of the work
of this author, under whatever name he may be writing, will find little here to
draw them into this mostly formulaic story or its characters, who throughout
the book remain relentlessly unidimensional.
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