Harriet Devine's Blog

The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov (1956)

Regular readers of this blog may have discerned that Science Fiction is not a genre I have any interest in. This was not always so - I was introduced to it in my early twenties and read a lot of it. In later years I've tended to run a mile from anything that sounds like SF, but joining a book club has been very good for taking me out of my comfort zone. A few months ago I read and very much enjoyed Ian McEwan's brilliant Machines Like Me, but I never thought I'd be going back to the early famous SF novels such as I'd enjoyed decades ago. Then came the book club choice of Asimov's The Naked Sun, at which point my heart sank. But I'm not a quitter. The novel is not available on Kindle, so I ordered a used copy, but the weeks went by (we meet once a month) and there was no sign of it. I'd given up on it when suddenly, the morning before we were due to meet, it finally appeared in my mail box. I had just over twenty-four hours to read it, and read it I did. And to my great delight and amazement, I enjoyed it enormously.

The Naked Sun came out in book form in 1957, but it was first published in serialised form in 1956, so I'm counting it as qualifying for the 1956 Club. It's the second novel in Asimov's Robot series, and, like its predecessor, features the detective Elijah Baley - yes, detective, for this is indeed a whodunnit. No wonder I enjoyed it so much. There's no indication  as to when it is set, but the unspecified future time in which it takes place is one in which the human race has taken two diametrically opposite methods of survival. Elijah lives on earth, where humans have retreated underground and live their entire lives without seeing the sky or the sun. But the murder he has been assigned to investigate takes place on the far away planet Solaria. Here humans live what we call today a totally self-isolated existence. All the work is done by robots, and the only contact humans have with each other is for the purpose of breeding, though the newborns are taken away and raised in a scientifically controlled environment. Contact is normally carried out by what is called viewing - a rather sophisticated version of Zoom or Skype, in which the participants have a virtual experience of being in the same room. Occasional face to face interaction can take place if essential, but it's regarded as a dirty and upsetting experience.

Elijah is not new to robots, as for this task he is reunited with his partner from his previous case, robot R Daneel Olivaw. Unlike the Solarian robots, Daneel is a humanoid and thus indistinguishable from a human being, something which proves to be invaluable to the investigation. But Elijah has many difficulties to overcome in this unfamiliar world, not least the fact that he is exposed to the sun (the naked sun) for the first time in his life. Then, in the course of his attempts to find the murderer, he needs to meet the suspects face to face, which causes them all significant trauma. However, Elijah manages to form a face to face relationship with beautiful Gladia, who happens to be the prime suspect, as she was the wife of the victim and on her own in the house with him at the time of the murder. Also present, of course, was the house robot, but owing to the laws of robotics, he, or it, cannot be a suspect.

So, as you can see, this has all the ingredients of a classic locked-room mystery, but with the added pleasure of exploring a world which is simultaneously so alien from our own and so like - resonances with lockdown and our need to come to terms with a new reality are inescapable.

Amazingly, none of the other members of the book club enjoyed it nearly as much as I did - even the person who'd chosen it, having read it decades ago, said he was disappointed. I couldn't really see how this could be, but so it was. As for me, I shall be reading more of Asimov's Robot series. So overall an eye-opener. Hooray for book clubs in general and the 1956 club in particular..

The Forgetting Time by Sharon Guskin

If I tell you that this book takes the concept of reincarnation as its central premise, will you stop reading straight away? You'd be missing out if you did, because this is a fascinating novel and the scientific research that underpins it is pretty hard to explain away. 

This is the story of Janie, a single mother, and her four-year-old son Noah. He's a clever, funny little boy, but he's causing his mother, and his school, increasing amounts of anxiety. He loves Janie, his 'Mommy-Mom', but he's always asking when they can go and find his other mother, his brother Charlie, and his other home. He has a phobia about water, so Janie simply cannot bath him, he talks about Harry Potter books and guns, two things Janie has never mentioned to him or allowed him access to. In fact as the novel begins, his teachers are so concerned about him that they insist he sees a psychiatrist, who diagnoses early onset schizophrenia and writes out a prescription for heavy-duty drugs, which Janie really doesn't want to give Noah. But she's getting desperate. So when she runs across an online reference to a Professor Jerome Anderson, who has spent most of his working life investigating cases in which children appear to remember their past lives, she's desperate enough to agree to meet him and allow herself to be guided by him in uncovering the truth behind Noah's apparently inexplicable claims. And, after some intensive research and one devastating red-herring, the three of them find themselves knocking on the door of a woman whose beloved son Tommy disappeared without trace a few years before Noah was born. Denise has always refused to believe that Tommy is dead, and her first reaction to Noah's claims is furious disbelief, but in the end she and Janie are forced to believe that what the child says about his 'real' home and family cannot be explained in any other way. 

So, maybe you'll have to suspend your own disbelief when reading this novel, but don't let the unusual premise put you off. Guskin has not only done her research -- the novel is interspersed with extracts from scholarly books on the subject -- but also convincingly imagines what it would be like if your beloved child constantly told you that you were not his real mother, or if a totally unknown little boy turned up on your doorstep not only claiming to be the son you have refused to believe is dead but also describes his own murder and the whereabouts of his bones. The denial, anger and pain of both mothers is moving believable, as is the effect on Denise's surviving son and her estranged husband. As for the police, they are grateful to Noah for telling them where to find the remains of poor Tommy, but insist on viewing him as an unusually high-level psychic, a concept they are familiar with, and cannot accept that he is remembering a past life.

Running in parallel to the main plot is an account of the history and present problems of Professor Anderson. A brilliant and initially much admired researcher and teacher, he has damaged his reputation by concentrating on an area thought to be peculiar and beyond the pale of true science. He has spent most of his life collecting accounts of children who have identified their previous families and demonstrated knowledge about them that they simply could not have gained any other way. But the majority of the cases he has found have been in India, Thailand and other far-Eastern countries, where reincarnation is taken for granted. For this reason, he is particularly anxious to include Noah's story, as a rare example of such things happening in a Western country too. But Anderson has his own problem -- he is suffering from a form of Alzheimers called semantic aphasia, in which the sufferer gradually and increasingly forgets common everyday words. Very scary for anyone, but particularly so for someone whose life has been spent reading and writing. 

So the underlying theme of this thoughtful and interesting novel is remembering, or failing to remember. Anderson tells Janie that children who have these clear memories of previous personalities almost invariably forget them as they reach the age of five or six, and at the end we find that this has proved to be true in Noah's case. But we've also seen the powerfully healing effect, for him and for his mother, of his vivid recollections being validated. 

I'd encountered convincing real life stories of this kind before, so it was fascinating to find them being treated in this way in a novel. I enjoyed it enormously, and I think you would too, whatever your belief system may be!

Maths Formula to Solve Christie's Whodunnits

You may have seen the recent articles in the Telegraph, Daily Mail and elsewhere proclaiming that there's now a mathematical formula for finding the identity of the killer in Agatha Christie's novels. Not being a mathematician I can't try it out, but I thought you might like to see the full press release. The study was commissioned by UK TV.

 

SO THAT’S HOW SHE DUNNIT!

On the 125^th Anniversary of Agatha Christie’s birth, scientists reveal the key clues behind the world’s best-selling novelist

 

 

• ·         Panel of experts reveal the secret to Agatha Christie - the world’s best-selling novelist’s success
• ·         Greatest mystery in fiction solved – how to spot ‘whodunnit’
• ·         Where the novel is set, the primary means of transport used throughout the book and how the victim dies, are all key factors that give away who the killer is
• ·         New research released today was commissioned by TV channel Drama to celebrate their Agatha Christie Hour, weekdays at 8pm, 3^rd – 14^thAugust

 

As Agatha Christie fans across the world celebrate the 125th anniversary of the best-selling author’s birth, new research reveals the formula for her incredible success and crucially – how to spot whodunnit!

 The research, commissioned by UKTV channel Drama for their Agatha Christie Hour at 8pm, weekdays from 3^rd – 14^th August, tasked a panel of experts including Dr. James Bernthal from the University of Exeter; Dr. Dominique Jeannerod, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Collaborative Research in the Humanities at Queens University; and data analyst Brett Jacob, with analysing a selection of Christie’s top selling mystery novels** to discover the secret to her success and the ultimate formula for predicting who the killer is.

 Key Findings:

Ø  The killer will be introduced within the first half of the book

Ø  The killer is likely to be emotionally involved with the victim, most killers are spouses or blood relatives of their victim

Ø  If there are a lot of land vehicles in the story, the killer is most likely female

Ø  If there are a lot of nautical vehicles and aircraft in the story, the killer is most likely male

Ø  If the victim is strangled, the killer is most likely male (or male with a female accomplice)

Ø  If the setting is a country house, the killer is most likely female (75% chance)

Ø  The language used throughout the book to describe a female killer is usually more negative than when describing a male killer

Ø  Female killers are normally discovered due to a domestic item

Ø  Male killers are normally found out through information or logic

Ø  If Poirot is the detective, and the cause of death is stabbing, the killer will be mentioned more frequently at the beginning of the book

Ø  If Miss Marple is the detective, and the motive for the murder is money/affair, the killer will be mentioned more in the later stages of the novel than the beginning.

 Adrian Wills, General Manager for Drama said “Agatha Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time, so the television adaptations of her books are hugely popular.  To mark the 125^th anniversary of her birth, the Drama channel decided to pull together 10 nights of some of her most famous stories in the Agatha Christie Hour, weeknights at 8pm from August 3^rd. Given her on-going popularity, we wanted to know her formula for success, especially since the whodunit is such a classic of the crime drama genre.  We hope that her legions of dedicated fans will revisit their favourite whodunits with a better understanding of how to crack the ultimate code.”

 Christie’s Work:

The study found that Christie features similarities in language style, word length and sentence length across her works. According to a team of researchers lead by Dr Jeannerod, a key element of Christie’s writing style is to keep it simple; using middle-range language and repeating it. In fact, according to research, the most used word in Christie’s novels is ‘said’.

 Jeannerod's team also found that the structure of a Christie novel can be simplified down to a list of key events: the body will be found early on; a closed group of suspects (achieved either by remote location or the confines of a social group) will be presented to the reader; the detective will then be introduced and a series of red herrings will follow; and finally, after the outcome, the solution will wrap up the story quickly and efficiently, leaving the reader satisfied.

 The Main Clue:

As any mystery novel goes, the reader is subjected to the occasional red herring. Clues need to offer the reader an experience that satisfies expectations whilst avoiding disappointing predictability. According to Dr. Bernthal, Christie’s novels tend to include a “main clue” which is revealed “approximately half way through the text” and “it will usually be highlighted as it appears in the text,” so the reader is likely to remember it.

 However, according to Bernthal, even if the main clue is easily missed or consciously skimmed over by the author, with Christie’s work, because the “the reader already remembers the clue, this creates an impression of fair play,” so the reader doesn’t feel cheated by the addition of a random detail they could never have spotted. He also reveals that Christie’s female killers tend to be given away by domestic items whilst the male killers are discovered by information or logic.

Working out the Formula*:

 Relationship to the victim (=)

Dr. Bernthal’s research highlighted that the killer is likely to be emotionally involved with the victim; the most common relationship being a spouse or relative. Furthermore, if the killer’s victim is their spouse, the most probable motive will be love, whereas murders committed by blood relations are more varied in motive.

 Primary means of transport associated with the novel (=)

According to Dr Jeannerod's team, the novels which include a female killer are more likely to feature land vehicles (such as cars, vans, trucks), whereas novels with a male killer are more likely to involve nautical vehicles and aircraft (such as boats and planes).

 The sentiment of the language used in association with the killer (=)

By using a sentiment analysis program called “Semantria”, Dr Jeannerod's team found that in general, Christie uses more negative language to describe her female killers, whereas with male killers, she uses “higher levels of neutral or positive sentiment”. It was also found that in her later novels, Christie portrays her culprits in an overall more negative light.

 Method of murder and the detective characterized in the novel  

Jeannerod’s team also found that if the victim is strangled, the killer is more likely to be male (or male with a female accomplice) and that there is a correlation between the killer being a doctor and the victim dying from either stabbing or strangulation. The results also suggest that if Poirot is the featured detective, and the cause of death is stabbing, it is extremely probable that the killer will be mentioned more frequently at the beginning of the book rather than in the concluding chapters. However, if the detective is Miss Marple, and the motive for the murder is money/affair, “the culprit will be mentioned more in the later stages of the novel than the beginning.”

 Setting for the novel  

Dr. Bernthal’s research revealed that if the setting is a country house, there is a 75% chance that the killer will be female.

 Chapter of introduction of the killer 

Bernthal also discovered that the murderer will be introduced within the first half of the novel, and almost always within the first 20% of the book. 

 Number of mentions of the killer  

Furthermore, the later the book was published, the more the murderer will be mentioned throughout the novel according to Dr Jeannerod's team. In fact, it was found that on average the culprit had 11.7 new mentions with every new novel. The findings also reveal that “there is a 27% chance that the culprit will be mentioned most in the first quarter of the novel, a 36.5% chance for the second quarter, an 18.5% chance in the third quarter, and an 18% chance for the fourth quarter.”

 Agatha Christie Hour will air on TV channel Drama at 8pm, weekdays from 3^rd – 14^th August

* And for anyone who's keen to try it, here's the key to the formula:

Bill Bryson on Shiny New Books

Considering I'm the non-fiction editor of Shiny New Books, I've reviewed very few non-fiction books for issue 2, though I've commissioned some brilliant reviews by other people. One book I was delighted to get hold of, though, was Bill Bryson's most recent publication, One Summer: America 1927. 

Bryson is an endlessly entertaining writer, and though in recent years he has moved from his autobiographical/travel mode to historical, sociological research, his books are still a huge pleasure to read. This one focuses on one extraordinary year in America's history, one in which, as Bryson says, America suddenly became dominant in nearly every field  -- popular culture, finance, banking, sport, invention, technology, and more besides. 

Great book -- you can read my full review of it here.