Book Review: The Chaplain's War by Brad R. Torgersen

  Brad R. Torgersen is an author who has made quite a name for

himself in a very short  time.  He has written a few short stories for  Analog Science Fiction &
Fact magazine.  He has also been published in such leading webzines as 
Galaxy's  Edge and Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show .
In 2015, Torgersen gained a great deal of notoriety as the creator of a
slate of science fiction works that succeeded, in conjunction with a slate created by his good
friend and collaborator Theodore Beale aka Vox Day, in sweeping the nominations for the 2015
Hugo Awards awarded by the World Science Fiction Convention.  

       Subsequent to this feat, Torgersen has gained notoriety for other 
actions.  For instance, he has likened himself to Theodore Roosevelt.  
He also created the smear term "Cliquish, Holier-than-thou, Obnoxious,
Reactionary, Fanatics" or CHORF for short.  He and his friends have 
used this term to trash anyone who disagrees with them or with their
tactics.

     Now that we know who Torgersen is and the kind of people he
associates with, what does he bring to the table of science fiction?  Previously, he
brought out two collections of short fiction, Lights in the Deep and Racers in the
Night.  Both of these are generally very good.  That being the case, you would think that a
novel by him would also be a good read.  

     However, such is not the case.

     The single most disappointing aspect of this novel is the way that
the author handles religion.  The treats the Christianity of 190 years in the
future just as if it is the exact same thing as the Christianity of the present day.  This
shows a lack of historical awareness by Brad Torgersen.  Over the years, the level of
religious fervor combined with how much of the population embraced Christianity has ebbed
and flowed.  Religions and religious devotion can change drastically.Some periods such as the Dark Ages and the Reformation saw notable for the level of  popular devotion to the discipline and teachings of organized religion. Other times, such as the present day, not so much.

     According to Torgersen,space is going to be an exciting place with
the invention of Faster Than Light (FTL) travel.  Yet religion is going to
remain the exact same thing.  The same is true not only of Christianity, but of all
the other  major religions  as well.  Nor are there any new religions that have
come into being during the intervening 190 years.  Science fiction is supposed to be all
about speculation about the future, but in this novel, there is none.

     Essentially, The Chaplain's War is a lame attempt at a Starship
Troopers type novel with the differences being that the main character is a
chaplain and that you do have some alien characters.  One gets the feeling that what
you have here is something that could have been a really good novelette surrounded by
an awful lot of padding.  Either Torgersen should get his act together and come up with
a story that is truly worthy of novel length or he  should stick to short fiction.

TSR Trivia

TSR did not stand for "They Sue Regularly." It originally stood for "Tactical Studies Rules" that in turn was derived from the wargaming group to which the co-creators of TSR, David Arneson & Gary Gygax, belonged to, the Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association (LGTSA).  Contrary to popular belief, TSR never attempted to trademark the word Nazi, but that did reflect that company's addiction to lawsuits as a means of defeating their competition.

The Strange Case of the Growth of Roman Historical Mysteries

The Strange Case of the Growth of Roman Historical Mysteries

     One of the more unexpected and  seemingly unlikely aspects in the growth of mystery stories set in historical times is that of the popularity of Roman historical mysteries.  This is a mystery in and of itself since there was no such ting as a Roman police force, to say nothing of a Roman Imperial Bureau of Investigation.  There is no mention in the writings of any ancient Roman historians of real life mysteries or of investigators into these mysteries. There would seem to be but little basis for mystery stories set in Roman times.

     And yet, these mystery novels and original anthologies of mystery stories set in Roman times do exist.  This is especially striking since so many of these stories seem to have little basis in historical reality.  For instance, in any mystery novel set from the far ancient past to the Enlightenment, there is little or no mention of torture.  And yet in real life, torture was the means most used to solve mysteries.  How historical is to have a mystery novel set tin times when torture was the preferred method, if not in fact the  only method really used to "solve" cases and the very word torture does not even come up?

     One wonders why the popularity of what appears to be non-reality based mystery stories that seem more like fantasies than anything even remotely historical.  And we have not even come to what is the central problem of so many historical mystery works in general.   Namely, that so many of these stories all too often have nothing more than a thin veneer of history to them and often fudge whatever historical facts make their way in those works.  These works may be great as mysteries, but often they are poor from a purely historical standpoint.

     Its a mystery all right.

Fornax #7 Rough Draft

The Beginnings of the Western:

     It may surprise some people, back when stories were first written about America's frontier experience, they were all set in what is now the Eastern U.S.  This is because until at least the time of the Civil War, 1861-1865, the frontier of settlement was to the east of the Mississippi River.  The term "western" did not even come into being until the early Twentieth Century.

     The earliest frontier stories were works by classy authors like James Fennimore Cooper.  However, the frontier story reached its greatest audience in the form of dime novels.  These works received their  name due to both their length and their price.  They first became a mass marketing phenomenon during the Civil War when bored troops on both sides were desperately in need of escape from the utter dullness of life in the camps.

     Dime novels were the literary equivalent of the yellow journalism that also began about the time of the Civil War.  Dime novels were sensationalistic to the extreme and often featured a great deal of violence.  The characters works were heroes of the Dudley Do-Right variety, the villains of the Snidely Whiplash type and he heroines were always as pure as silk.  The prose was always purple and sentences often ended with multiple exclamation marks.

     Dime Novels were where series fiction got its start.  Previously, it was rare for authors to use the same character in more than one work, such as Falstaff in some of the plays of William Shakespeare.  At least one of these series characters, Nick Carter aka Nicholas Carter, is till around today.  Of the fictional dime novel characters, Deadwood Dick is perhaps the best well known.

     Oddly enough, dime novels used real life people as characters.  Western dime novels used such folks as William F. Cody aka "Buffalo Bill," James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok, Calamity Jane, Annie Oakley and Kit Carson as characters.  By far and away, the most popular real life persons used as fictional characters were Frank and Jesse James.  Of course, all of thee dime novel exploits of real life people were purely fictional.  The laws governing such things have been changes to make this practice flat out illegal.

     Whatever their morality, taste and legal ethics, the dime novel ushered in the western as a literary form and it is still here to stay.


An Introduction to PBEMs:

     PBEM stands for "Play By E-Mail," games. In PBEMs, the Game Master
allots turns to the players who respond with their character's intended actions.
These games were he natural outgrowth of the play by postal mail games of 
pre-Internet times.

     If you want to try out a PBEM, look one up on the search engines. There are 
websites that have information on them. Input PBEM into a search engine 
and just see what you get. Follow the stated rules and email a character.
If the E-Gaming Master selects you, then you are all set.

     If you don't find any PBEMs that appeal to you, then you can create your own game.
However, you will need to know how to create a decent website as well as how to create
a decent game. You should be warned that there are a great many folks who created online
games thinking that it would be a fun project, only to find that it is a pretty time consuming thing.
Its also a lot harder to do than you might think. 

     If you are interested in learning more about how to play and/or operate a 
Play By E-Mail game your own, then one classic reference to read is 
"An Argosy of Play By E-Mail Advice" by Sean K. Reynolds that you can find at:
http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/gaming/pbem_faq.html

Other places to learn about PBEMs and also find a game to play is:

PBEM2 at http://www.pbem2.com/

PBEM Players at http://www.pbemplayers.com/


The Kennel Murder Case (1933)

     Wealthy gentleman about town Philo Vance (William Powell) solves yet another case that the stupid cops led by Detective Sergeant Heath (Eugene Pallette) and District Attorney Markham (Robert McEwan) are too stupid to solve.  The Philo Vance series of movies set the pattern for how the police would be protrayed in cenema for the next two decades.  It was not until Dragnet came along that a correction in popular culture was made.